Jewels (38 page)

“He’s right. I did,” Sarah said quietly. She had nothing to hide from William, and she wanted him to know that. “He became my friend. Joachim hated what Hitler was doing as much as we did. And he helped keep us safe. When Joachim left, I knew I’d never see him again. I don’t know if he lived or died after that, but I wish him well. I kissed him good-bye, but I did not betray you.” There were tears rolling slowly down her cheeks as she said it. And what she said was true, she had been faithful to him, and it had been wrong of Phillip to make him jealous. She had known at the time that he was angry at her for kissing Joachim, and also for letting him go. He was angry about a lot of things, but she had never expected him to do anything about it. She was only glad now that she could tell William honestly, she hadn’t betrayed him. It was the only thing that made all those lonely nights worth it.

“I’m sorry I asked,” he said guiltfly, but she knelt next to him and took his face in her hands.

“Don’t be. There’s nothing you can’t ask me. I love you. I always did. I never gave up on you. Never. I never stopped loving you. And I always believed you’d come home.” It was true, and he could see it in her eyes—that, and how much she loved him.

He sighed then, relieved by what she had said, and he believed her. He had been terrified when Phillip told him. But he also knew that in his own way Phillip was also punishing him for having left them “I never thought I’d come back. I kept telling myself I would, just so I could survive another hour, another night, another day … but I never thought I’d make it. So many didn’t.” He had seen so many men die, tortured to death by the Germans.

“They’re a nation of monsters,” he told her as they went back to the house, but she didn’t dare tell him again that Joachim was different. As he had said, war was an ugly thing. But thank God, it was over.

They had been back at the château for a mere three weeks when Emanuelle and Sarah were making bread in the kitchen. They talked about many things and then Emanuelle began to ask questions.

“You must be very glad to have Monsieur le Duc back,” she began, which was certainly obvious to anyone who saw them. Sarah hadn’t been this happy in years, and they were slowly making new discoveries about their sex life. Some of the alterations were unfortunate, but very little seemed to have changed, much to William’s delight now that he had a chance to try it.

“It’s wonderful.” Sarah smiled happily, kneading the bread as Emanuelle watched her.

“Has he brought a great deal of money back from England with him?” It was an odd question, and Sarah looked up, astonished.

“Why, no. Of course not. Why would he?”

“I just wondered.” She looked embarrassed, but not very, and she seemed to have something on her mind, but Sarah couldn’t figure out what She had never asked anything like it before.

“Why would you ask something like that, Emanuelle?” She knew she had had strange involvements before, with the Resistance through her brother, during the war, and with the black market afterwards, but now she had no idea what she was up to.

“There are people … sometimes … who are in need of money. I wondered if you and Monsieur le Duc would lend it to them?”

“You mean, just give them money? Just like that?” Sarah looked a little surprised, and Emanuelle looked pensive.

“Perhaps not. What if they had something to sell?”

“You mean food?” Sarah still didn’t understand what she was after. She finished making the bread and wiped her hands, looking long and hard at the young woman, wondering more than ever what she was up to. She had never been suspicious of her before, but she was now. And Sarah didn’t like the feeling. “Are you talking about food or farm equipment, Emanuelle?”

She shook her head and lowered her voice again when she spoke. “No … I mean like jewels. … There are people …
dans les alentours
… in the region, who need money to rebuild their homes, their lives…. They have hidden things … sometimes gold … or silver … or jewelry … and now they need to sell it.” Emanuelle had been thinking for some time of how to make some serious money for herself now that the war was over. She didn’t want to clean houses forever, even for them, although she loved them. And she’d come up with this idea. She knew several people who were anxious to sell important things, jewels, silver, Fabergé cigarette cases, expensive objects they’d been hiding. She particularly knew of a woman in Chambord who had a fantastic string of pearls she was desperate to sell for any amount. The Germans had destroyed her house and she needed the money to rebuild it.

It was a kind of matchmaking of sorts, and Emanuelle knew people with beautiful objects and acute needs, and the Whitfields had the money to help them. She had wanted to approach them for a while, but she wasn’t sure how. But more and more people were contacting her, knowing how close to them she was, and begging her to help them. The woman with the pearls had already come to see her twice, and so had many others.

There were Jews coming out of hiding too. And women who had accepted expensive gifts from Nazis and were afraid to keep them. There were jewels that had been traded for lives or information in the Resistance. And Emanuelle wanted to help people sell them. She would make a profit, too, but a small one. She didn’t want to take advantage of them. She wanted to help them, but herself too. But Sarah was still looking at her in confusion.

“But what would I do with jewelry?” Only that morning they had taken hers out from under the floorboards of Phillip’s bedroom.

“Wear it.” She smiled. She would have liked to herself, but she couldn’t afford to buy anything yet. Perhaps one day. “You could sell it again. There are many possibilities, Madame.”

“One day”—Sarah smiled at her—“you will be a great woman.” They were only six years apart, but Emanuelle had an incredible sense of enterprise and survival, in clever ways that Sarah knew that she didn’t. What she had was inner strength and endurance, which was different from what Emanuelle had. Emanuelle Bourgois had cunning.

“Will you ask Monsieur le Duc,” She begged as Sarah left the kitchen with his lunch tray. There was something very anxious in Emanuelle’s voice, which Sarah heard.

“I will,” she promised, “but I guarantee you, he’ll think I’m crazy.”

The funny thing was that he didn’t think she was crazy at all, when she told him. He was amused. “What an intriguing idea. That girl is quite extraordinary, isn’t she? It’s actually a very nice, clean way of helping people, and lending them money. I really rather like it. I’d been thinking recently about what we could do to help the locals. I wasn’t thinking of anything quite so exotic.” He grinned. “But it’s possible. Why don’t you just tell Emanuelle that I will entertain the possibility, and see what happens.”

What happened was that three days later, the bell on the front door of the château rang at nine o’clock in the morning. And when Sarah went downstairs, she found a woman standing there, in a shiny black dress that looked as though it might have been expensive, and worn shoes, and an Hermès bag Sarah recognized at once. But she did not recognize the woman.

“Oui
…? Yes …? May I help you?”

“En effet
…
je m’excuse
… I …” She looked frightened, and she kept looking over her shoulder as though she expected someone to grab her. And as Sarah looked at her more closely, she suspected she might be Jewish. “I must apologize … a friend of mine suggested … I have a terrible problem, Your Grace, my family …” Her eyes filled with tears as she started to explain, and Sarah gently invited her into the kitchen, and gave her a cup of tea. She explained that her family had all been deported to concentration camps during the war. To the best of her knowledge, she was the only one left. She had been hidden for four years in a cellar by her neighbors. Her husband had been a doctor, the head of an important hospital in Paris. But he had been deported by the Nazis, as had her parents, her two sisters, even her son…. She began to cry again as Sarah fought back tears of her own as she listened to the story. The woman said that she needed money to find them. She wanted to go to Germany and Poland, to the camps there, to see if she could find any record of them among the survivors.

“I think the Red Cross would help you, Madame. There are organizations to do this for people all over Europe.” She knew William had already donated quite a lot of money to them in England.

“I want to go myself. And some of the private organizations are very costly. And after I find them, or …” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “I want to go to Palestine.” She said it as though it were truly the promised land, and Sarah’s heart went out to her, as the woman drew two large boxes from her handbag. “I have something to sell … Emanuelle said you might … she said that you are very kind.” And that her husband was very rich, but Mrs. Wertheim was polite enough not to say that. What she brought out of her purse were two boxes from Van Cleef, one with an enormous emerald-and-diamond necklace, the other with the matching bracelet. The pieces looked like lace. They were beautifully articulated, quite astonishing, and most impressive.

“I … good Lord … ! They’re really beautiful! I don’t know what to say. …” She couldn’t imagine wearing anything even remotely like them. They were both important pieces, and certainly worth whatever she wanted, but how did one begin to put a price on something like that? And yet, looking at them, for reasons she couldn’t explain, Sarah had to admit she found the idea of buying them exciting. She had never owned anything like them. And the poor woman was shaking in her shoes, praying they would buy them. “May I show them to my husband? I’ll only be a moment.” She ran up the stairs then with both boxes in her hands, and burst into their bedroom. “You’ll never believe this.” She was breathless as she told him. “There’s a woman downstairs….” She opened the boxes and tossed the contents into his lap. “And she wants to sell us these …” She shook the magnificent emeralds at him and he whistled.

“Very pretty, darling. They’d look lovely on you in the garden. Go wonderfully with green …”

“Be serious.” She told him the woman’s story then, and he felt sorry for her too.

“Can’t we just give her a check? I feel like a scoundrel taking these away from her. Even though I must say they’d look very pretty on you.”

“Thank you, my love. But what are we going to do about her?”

“I’ll come down and talk to her myself.” He had already shaved, and was wearing trousers and his shirt and his dressing gown. He was getting very good at dressing himself in spite of his limitations. He followed Sarah out of the room, and worked his way downstairs on the ramp they had had made for him.

Mrs. Werthéim was still waiting nervously for them in the kitchen. She was so frightened, she was almost tempted to flee without her jewels, for fear they would do something terrible to her, but Emanuelle had insisted they were nice people. Emanuelle knew the people who had hidden Mrs. Wertheim in the cellar, she had met them in the Resistance.

“Good morning.” William greeted her with a smile, and she tried to look relaxed as she waited to hear about her emeralds. “I’m afraid we’ve never done anything like this before, and it’s a bit of a novel idea to us.” He decided to put the woman out of her misery and go right to the point. He had already decided he wanted to help her. “How much do you want?”

“I don’t know. Ten? Fifteen?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

She quaked, and spoke in a whisper. “I’m sorry, Your Grace … five?” She would have sold them for next to nothing, she was so desperate for money.

“I was thinking more like thirty. Does that seem reasonable? That is, thirty thousand dollars.”

“I … oh, my God …” She started to cry, unable to control herself any longer. “God bless you … God bless you, Your Grace.” She dabbed at her eyes with an old lace hankie, and kissed them both when she left with his check in her handbag. Even Sarah had tears in her eyes when she left.

“The poor woman.”

“I know.” He looked somber for a moment, and then put the necklace and bracelet on Sarah. “Enjoy them, my darling.” But they both felt good about the charitable deed they had done.

And before the end of the week, they had the chance to do another.

Sarah was helping Emanuelle clean up after dinner, and William was in his study, which still vaguely reminded Sarah of Joachim, when a woman appeared at the kitchen door. She was young and looked even more frightened than Mrs. Wertheim. She wore her hair short, but not as short as she had just after the Occupation. Sarah thought she had seen her with one of the German officers who had lived in the château and worked with Joachim. She was a beautiful girl, and before the war she had been a model for Jean Patou in Paris.

Emanuelle almost growled when she saw her, but she had told her to come. This time though, she promised herself, she would take a bigger commission. From Mrs. Wertheim she had taken almost nothing at all, but the old woman had insisted on at least something.

The girl glanced nervously at Emanuelle and then at Sarah. And it began again. “May I speak to you, Your Grace?” She had a diamond bracelet to sell. It was from Boucheron and it was very pretty. It was a gift, she told Sarah But the German who had given it to her gave her more than that. He had left her with a baby. “He’s sick all the time … I can’t buy him food … or medicine. I’m afraid he’ll get TB….” The words went straight to Sarah’s heart as she thought of Lizzie. She glanced at Emanuelle and asked her if it was true, and she nodded.

“She has a German bastard … he’s two years old, and always sickly.”

“Will you promise to buy him food and medicine and warm clothes if we give you some money?” Sarah asked her sternly, and the girl swore she would.

And with that, Sarah went to see William, and he returned to look at the girl and the bracelet. He was impressed by both, and after talking to her for a while, he decided she was honest. He didn’t want to find himself buying stolen jewels, but there seemed to be no question of that here.

They bought the bracelet from her for a fair price, probably what the German had paid for it, and she left them, thanking them profusely. And then Sarah looked at Emanuelle and laughed, as she sat down in her kitchen.