Stranger at the Gates

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Stranger at the Gates

Evelyn Anthony

To

NICHOLAS AND DENISE

with my love

1

It was a wide, quiet street, lined with chestnut trees; the houses were protected by walls and wrought-iron gates, and there were few of them. It was a place where the rich lived, but not those who had recently acquired money and wished to make a display. It was a little faded, reserved, very conscious of its status as an address in one of the most status-conscious cities in the world. The taxi cruising slowly down its length came to a halt outside a pair of tall iron gates. There was a gilded crest at the top of them, a circle of oak leaves and a boar rampant, with a coronet above. The driver leaned out and opened the passenger door.

‘This is it,' he said. ‘Rue de Varenne.' A woman climbed out; she moved clumsily, a heavy-set body on thick legs. She was dressed in a dull coat and skirt and flat shoes, her greying hair showing at the edges of an unflattering felt hat. She opened her handbag and gave the driver the exact fare; after a moment's hesitation she added a very small tip. He took the money, slammed the gears and drove off without thanking her. She stood on the pavement looking up at the gates. A house was visible beyond them, a three-storied grey-stone building with a graceful classical façade the work of an eighteenth-century architect. There was a small paved courtyard, and two huge stone urns stood at the foot of a flight of steps, filled with flowers. The woman didn't move; she stood as if she were uncertain what to do, looking through the gates. She had arrived in Paris the night before, booked into a modest tourist pension on the Left Bank, and spent a miserable evening sitting in her room. She had never travelled abroad before; her youth had been spent in pre-war Germany where foreign travel was actively discouraged, and then the war had come, binding her to home and a part-time job in a hospital.

While her husband had gone to France, she had kept his letters, all the weekly news sent from his posting outside Paris, full of enquiries about her and the children, prosy, serious letters which she read over and over again to ease her loneliness while he was away. She still had them, yellow and ragged at the edges, tied up in a cardboard box. They had been married thirty-two years and she still loved him. That love and the extreme of desperation had brought her from her homeland to Paris and to the house of a woman she had never seen. A woman who might try not to see her if she knew who she was. Under the ugly hat her blue eyes narrowed. The face was lined and its contours blurred by middle age, but it showed traces of a vanished prettiness; the colour of her eyes and the shape of her mouth were pleasing. When she married she had been a gay and attractive girl of twenty, with a nice rounded figure and a tiny waist. Now she was coarse and shapeless, the result of all the post-war years of hardship, worry and hard work. While the other woman, the one who lived in the elegant house behind her crested gates—how had she survived the onslaught of the years? Was she as beautiful still as she had been when her own husband had first met her—Louise, Comtesse de Bernard.

She said the name under her breath. An aristocrat, smart and spoiled, a prominent figure in Parisian society. On an impulse she opened the gate and went into the courtyard. Her expression was hard, hostile, masking the inward fear of facing the unknown with such a brutal sense of disadvantage. Only for Heinz, her husband … for him she would have faced anyone in the world. Even the woman with whom he had fallen in love, all those years ago. She crossed the courtyard and rang the bell.

Louise de Bernard was on the telephone. She used her small boudoir as an office; there was a plain desk and a small filing cabinet, and a telephone with an internal system. A large desk diary was open beside her. Long fingers with beautifully polished nails held a pen and wrote in a name and a time on a day two weeks ahead.

As she talked she smiled. ‘Of course Raoul; I'll be delighted. And thank you again for the flowers. Yes. Goodbye.'

The door of the study opened and a girl who somehow looked like Louise de Bernard and was yet completely different in type, put her head round and shook it at her mother.

‘Is that the faithful Raoul again?'

‘Yes, you know it is; don't be nasty, darling. He's very sweet.'

‘He's a stuffy old bore.' She came in and sat on the edge of the desk. She was painfully slim in the modern fashion, casually dressed in trousers and a shirt, her feet in canvas shoes and her ankles bare. Long straight hair hung down past her shoulders and there was no make-up on her face. She put an arm round her mother and kissed her.

‘Don't marry him for God's sake! He's a dreadful old reactionary.'

Louise de Bernard glanced up at her daughter. ‘He's the same age as me. And I'm not going to marry anyone, as you know perfectly well. Don't sit on those papers, darling, I haven't read them yet.'

Sophie de Bernard slipped off the desk, fumbled in her breast pocket and produced a flattened packet of cigarettes. She flicked at the desk lighter and blew a cloud of Gauloise over her mother's head.

She was thirty but she looked younger, almost coltish. The expression on Louise's face was tender as she looked up at her. Sophie was the younger of her two children, the most physically like her father, and the most temperamentally akin to her. She was unmarried, living with a left-wing writer whom Louise considered an offensive boor, with whom she quarrelled and became reconciled at regular intervals. She was a Maoist who sincerely believed that her mother's generation and all it stood for should be swept away by force. At the same time there was a deep and devoted relationship between them which nothing, neither Louise's disapproval of her mode of life or Sophie's revolutionary convictions, could ever undermine. They loved and understood each other and were far closer than Louise could ever be with her son. Paul was steady, conventional and immersed in his own family life. As Sophie said, and Louise didn't disagree with her, his marriage to Françoise de Boulay had stifled an individuality he might have had. He was a good son, an excellent father and husband and, in his sister's merciless description, a catastrophic bore. Married to a woman whose personality wore a strait-jacket. They were pleasant, dutiful to Louise, who never interfered, and frankly horrified by the antics of Sophie, whose lovers and political activities caused them agonising embarrassment.

‘Mother, I didn't mean to disturb you. How's the appeal going?'

‘Very well,' Louise said. ‘I'm holding a meeting here tonight. I think we may raise more than our target.'

‘At least you work hard,' Sophie said. ‘But you know what I think of organised charity, don't you?'

‘Oh yes,' her mother said. ‘I know all about that. Give me a cigarette?'

‘Here.' She lit it for her. ‘What did Raoul want? Dinner again?'

‘The opera; there's a gala performance of
Norma
. I said I'd go.'

‘I think it's extraordinary. Half the men in Paris are sniffing round you, and you choose to go out with that pompous idiot. Why don't you take a lover—somebody glamorous and exciting. It would be good for you, darling. Much better than all this committee work.'

‘I don't want a lover,' Louise said firmly. ‘And I like Raoul; he's an old friend. I also like committee work. Now go away and don't lecture me.'

‘You only stick to him because he's safe,' her daughter remarked. ‘Papa wouldn't want you to waste your life. You can't go on forever living in the past.'

‘Please,' Louise said. ‘Don't start all that this morning. I'm happy, Sophie. I have a busy life and I've no intention of having a lover or marrying Raoul. Now let me get on with some work! We can lunch together if you're free.'

‘I am,' Sophie admitted. ‘I'm furious with Gerard, he can get his own lunch today. And his own dinner!'

Louise, who had heard this threat before, only smiled slightly and said nothing. The bombastic Gerard had a feeble streak, which had so far claimed Sophie's ready sympathy. The day she discovered that it concealed a contemptible character, there would be no more meals and no more relationship. Louise, who had seen the pattern repeat itself, without her daughter suffering any apparent harm, was content to wait upon events.

‘I'll go and leave you in peace,' Sophie announced. ‘But actually I came up to tell you something—there's a woman downstairs, asking to see you. I told Gaston I'd give you the message.'

‘What woman—I'm not expecting anyone this morning. Who is it?'

‘I don't know,' Sophie said. She had gone to the door and opened it. ‘I've never seen her before. She's a German; she said her name was Minden.'

Louise de Bernard still held the pen balanced between her fingers; the cigarette burned in an ashtray in front of her. Now the pen dropped, spattering ink across the blotting pad. ‘Minden?'

‘Yes.' Her daughter changed her mind about going out. She pushed the door shut. ‘My God, Mother, what's the matter?'

‘Minden,' Louise repeated. She got up slowly and turned round. ‘Are you sure that was the name?'

‘Perfectly sure. Mother, what is it—what
is
the matter?'

‘Oh, Sophie—it's not possible, it can't be!' The girl came towards her quickly.

‘For God's sake, who is this Minden woman—why are you looking like that?'

Louise didn't answer for a moment. Minden. It wasn't possible after all these years. After so much pain and suffering …

‘What did she say?' she asked. ‘What does she want?'

‘To see you, apparently. That's what Gaston said. I saw her waiting in the hall. She looked very ordinary, a dumpy kind of frump … Mother, will you please sit down and tell me what this is about? You look as if you'd seen a ghost. Who is Minden, what does it mean?'