Peach (22 page)

Noel fiddled around until he found the lever that opened the bonnet. The engine was beautiful, a perfect, simple and yet complex piece of machinery. He sniffed the hot smell of oil and gasoline, consumed with a desire to understand how it worked.

Later, he borrowed books from the library, taking them with him to the garage, checking the diagrams against the engine, tapping nuts and bolts experimentally the way a mechanic would, filled with a sense of satisfaction.

Mrs Grenfell’s attitude diminished from anger to indifference as Noel ceased to be a problem to be dealt with by her. He had finally become useful cleaning the cars.

Six months of Saturdays spent at Old Joe’s Garage and Body Shop in town when the other kids were on the football or baseball field taught Noel the beauty of precision engineering. And those Saturdays replaced any need in his heart for human companionship. It was enough to watch the mechanics turn the engines from grimy, malfunctioning, illused objects into gleaming, powerful efficiency. In between pumping gas, of course, because that’s what Noel did, Saturdays.

Stripping bare the flower boxes on Carolina Montalva’s balcony, Peach tossed the blossoms on the heads of the liberating American troops rolling through Paris in their jeeps and armoured vehicles, laughing as they grinned up at her. “I’m American too,” she yelled, returning their thumbs-up signal delightedly.

The people of Paris cheered and sang and the city sparkled shabbily in the spring sunshine. Every now and then the jeeps stopped to allow pretty young girls to kiss the liberators.

“Paris is alive again,” cried Leonie, “they’re embracing in the streets, Caro, just the way they used to.”

“The terrible thing is,” said Caro, “that I’m getting too old to take part in it. Now,” she went on briskly, “what time do you think we might expect Amelie and Gerard?”

Leonie glanced at the Meissen porcelain clock whose pretty gilt hands had ticked away Caro’s life for as long as she had known her, and now it was ticking away the minutes to Gerard’s return.

“Soon,” she said smiling, wishing it could have been a true homecoming at the house on the Ile St Louis. But that was now the headquarters of an American general and his staff.

Peach looked at the table set for her father’s homecoming lunch. The old damask cloth gleamed with Caro’s silver, reclaimed from its wartime hiding place beneath the flagstones of her country house. A posy of zinnias decorated the
centre like a brightly coloured mosaic and celebration champagne cooled in ice buckets on the sideboard. Peach knew that she was one of the fortunate ones—her father was returning. They knew so many other families for whom there would be no celebration and whose posies of flowers would be placed on cold graves and watered with tears.

“They’ll be at the hospital now,” she said, unable to contain her own happiness, “and soon—
Papa will be here!
” She danced across the sapphire blue rug, suddenly mad with joy. “
Papa’s coming home!
” If only Lais were able to share her joy. But Lais lay in the white hospital bed with all the complicated weights and pulleys and the dangling bottles and tubes that fed life into her through her arms and her throat. Lais was surrounded by ugly steel tables that held little kidney shaped dishes and there was always a smell of antiseptics and fading flowers. And in poor Lais’s twilight world the curtains were always half-drawn to keep out the sun. At home Lais’s room had always been a wonderful clutter of paintings and books and small pretty objects, it had been filled with colour and scattered with her clothes, smelling of powder and perfume and nail polish. But now Lais lay pale and weightless, her eyes closed to the hospital ugliness, her long slender legs covered with the neatest white sheet that never,
never
got crumpled.

Every day when she went to see her, Peach would remember to wear her smile in case Lais woke up and saw her there. She was
sure
Lais knew she was there. It was just that she had never opened her eyes since that night.

Peach had protested over and over again that it would have been her in that hospital bed if brave Lais hadn’t run in front of her, and even though Leonie explained that Kruger had aimed his gun at Lais and it had gone off by accident, still Peach felt sure that it was all her fault. If she hadn’t gone back after Ziggie, if she hadn’t panicked … Most
often the guilt would sneak up on her at night when she was alone in bed and despite herself she would re-live the horror of those moments. The scent of blood would be in her nostrils and Lais’s thin eerie scream would split her ears. There was the cold, terrible look in Ferdi’s face as he turned the gun on Kruger and the fountain of blood that spilled from Kruger’s throat—so much blood for such a little man! It was Leonore who had found Lais’s fluttering pulse, and Leonore who had screamed for someone to get an ambulance as the German doctor tried to staunch the flow of blood from Lais’s side …

The bell rang at last. “He’s here, he’s here,” cried Leonie, hurrying to the door.

Peach hovered on the balcony, suddenly shy. It had been five years since Papa had seen her, she had been just a little girl. Now she was eleven and tall for her age. He might be expecting his baby and all he would get would be this gangling half-child.

Papa was shockingly thin, so thin that she’d bet she could count his ribs. His hair was mostly grey where it used to be so glossy and dark, and his blue eyes were weary, even though he was smiling. He leaned heavily on a silver-topped cane and Amelie held his arm protectively.

Peach’s eyes met his across the room and the years fell away. The cane dropped to his side, forgotten as Gerard held open his arms and she ran into them. “I thought you’d be all grown-up,” he murmured into her hair in between kisses, “but I see you’re still my little girl.”

“Always Papa,” whispered Peach hugging him madly, “I’ll always be your little girl.”

The doorbell rang suddenly and for a moment there was silence. It was still too soon to have forgotten when the unexpected ring at the door meant terror. “Hope I’m not too late for lunch,” said a familiar voice in the hall. Wearing
the uniform of an American Air Force colonel, Jim breezed through the door. “Well, well,” he said taking in the lunch table, the champagne, the assembled family. “I see you were expecting me.”

“Jim! Oh Jim!” cried Leonie. Sweeping her off her feet, he crushed her to him as though he’d never let her go again.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she protested. “Why?”

Jim’s laugh boomed around the elegant salon, “I was under orders, ma’am. I’m one of your liberating soldiers. Of course they didn’t believe me when I said I was just off to see my old friend Caro. They figured I must have a smart mistress tucked away somewhere in Paris.” He grinned at Caro. “I must admit I didn’t expect to find all of you here. I’m as surprised as you are.”

“And Papa’s home too,” cried Peach, “and Maman. Oh Jim. It’s a miracle, a true miracle.”

“It’s our second miracle today,” said Amelie. “I took Gerard to visit Lais at the hospital. Gerard was holding her hand talking to her quietly, saying he was home, that he would look after her now and that everything would be all right. ‘Back to square one, Lais,’ he said. And then he kissed her and we turned to go. At the door we looked back at her—
and Lais’s eyes were open!
”

Wearing a faded blue shirt and his best grey flannel trousers that were two inches too short and had belonged to Tom Robinson last year, Noel poked in the car’s engine with a wrench, frowning as he noticed the oil stain on his newly starched sleeve. He would rather be in his overalls down at Joe’s Garage but Mrs Grenfell had said the visitors were special and that the lady raised enormous sums for charity.
Charity!
Noel despised that word. Charity only made you feel good when you were bestowing it. When you were on the receiving end it meant being grateful for things others took for granted and always having to say “thank you” for your daily bread, it meant wearing trousers that were too short and flapped around your skinny ankles.

The bell rang summoning them to the assembly hall. Mrs Grenfell had given instructions for them all to be dressed in their best and neatly brushed and combed. Noel rubbed at the oil stain on his sleeve despondently. He doubted it would ever come out and he knew he’d be in trouble with Matron again. The bell summoned him a second time and wiping his hands on the cloth he walked reluctantly back towards the house.

Peach shifted her eyes from the flat vista of wheat under a leaden sky, to her grandmother. Leonie’s hands gripped the wheel tightly, arms extended, sitting well back in her seat in the proper position for driving. The big Chrysler covered the empty road at twenty-five miles an hour and Peach
sighed. At this rate they wouldn’t be there before four o’clock.

“No need to sigh,” said Leonie, “we’ll get there.” She’d brought Peach on the tour of the American orphanages instead of Amelie, because Amelie had wanted to stay at the hospital in New York where Lais was undergoing treatment. But Peach was an impatient traveller. No sooner were they in the car than she expected to be there!

Peach grinned. “Can’t we at least go thirty-five?”

Leonie glanced at her eleven-year-old granddaughter. “It’s just that I’m not used to driving these big American cars,” she said apologetically, “there was always a chauffeur, or Jim …”

“Come on, Grand-mère,” teased Peach, “yours was the horse and carriage era.”

“You’re right,” admitted Leonie. “I watched the world change with the automobile—and your grandfather made some of the finest cars in France. Why, I remember the night Monsieur took me out in the very first de Courmont car. I can see it now, it had soft cream leather seats and little Lalique flower vases. It was a bright red, a dozen coats of special polished lacquer, he said, with big brass lamps and leather straps around the bonnet … I wore a red silk dress to match and Monsieur had bought jasmine for the vases …”

Peach waited, scarcely daring to breathe, for what Leonie would say next. Was she going to tell her at last, about her and Monsieur?

“We caused quite a sensation outside the theatre that night,” said Leonie.

“Not only
that
night,” said Peach quickly, “you were always sensational, Grand-mère.”

Leonie smiled. “Not always. And anyway it was Monsieur who was the sensation—
he
was the one in the public
eye. He was a very clever man, very powerful.” Leonie’s fingers gripped the wheel tighter.

Encouraged by Leonie’s sudden intimacy Peach asked the question that had burned in her mind for a long time. “Why didn’t you marry him?”

She looked so sad Peach wished she hadn’t asked. “Maybe I’ll tell you one day, Peach, if I must. Oh, I wish I could spare you all the traps that women fall into. Wait. You’ll know too soon that
love
is the most complex emotion of all—and it makes
fools
of us all.”

“Still,” said Peach, “if I loved someone, I’d marry him …”

“Good,” replied Leonie briskly, shutting out the past, “just bring him to meet your grandmother first so that I can give my approval. Now look, Peach—there on the horizon. That’s the first building we’ve seen in half an hour—that must be it. The Maddox.”

The harsh clanging of a bell greeted them as the car swept through the iron gates, held back by a two well-scrubbed young boys. Peach surveyed the squat grey buildings with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. No flowering creepers attempted to soften their outline, and no carefully cultivated roses or azaleas bordered the paths the way they did at the Château d’Aureville. And the group of children drawn up behind the staff to welcome them looked grey too, pinched from the everlasting wind from the plains. They didn’t smile as the car came to a halt.

“Grand-mère, I can’t,” whispered Peach.

Leonie looked at her in surprise, “Can’t what, darling?”

“I can’t go in there.” A flash of fear at the thought of what it would be like made Peach feel sick. “I don’t like it …”

Mrs Grenfell’s face loomed nearer, false teeth gleaming in a sudden shaft of sunlight.