“Of course,” she said. “This way, lieutenant colonel.”
Von Sternburg followed her into the hallway and into the foyer. Because it was May, he hadn’t brought a coat. He lifted his gloves from the tray on the commode and tugged them over his fingers before he turned to Daisy, who held his stiff officer’s cap, and said solemnly, “Thank you, madame. It has been a great pleasure to spend the evening in your company.”
Daisy held out the cap. “It was nothing.”
Von Sternburg placed the cap on his head and drew the brim low on his brow. The ugly scar on the side of his face fell into shadow, so he seemed a degree less forbidding. He took her hand and kissed it, just as he had upon his arrival, and said, in a voice almost too low to be heard, “If you have need of anything, madame, anything at all, I hope you will not hesitate to find me.”
Daisy withdrew her hand. “I can’t imagine the necessity. Good evening to you, sir.”
He stood another second or two, quite rigid, studying her expression as if he meant to continue the conversation, wanted to discover some common ground between them. But not for nothing had Daisy endured eight years of marriage to Pierre Villon. She schooled her features into impassivity, a complete absence of intent, of personhood. She refused to acknowledge the earnest blue of his eyes, or the stern cut of his features beneath the brim of his hat, or the curve of his mouth that seemed to be pleading with her. To all these things she returned nothing, not the slightest sign of recognition, not even her own breath.
He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. “Good night, Madame Villon,” he said, and spun in an exact semicircle, opened the door, and left the apartment.
When the door clicked shut, Daisy let out all the air in her lungs. Her shoulders slumped. She put out one hand and leaned against the wooden panel, panting as if she’d just run a mile, as if she’d just dashed across Paris, all the way across France itself. Her pulse thudded in her neck.
“Madame?”
Daisy wheeled around. Justine stood a few meters away, holding her hat in her hands. She stared cautiously at the quick movements of Daisy’s chest.
“I’ve finished the dishes. Is there anything else?”
“No thank you, Justine. I’ll see you Monday.”
“Yes, madame.”
But Justine didn’t move, and Daisy realized she was waiting for her wages. She hurried into the salon and unlocked the desk, where she kept her precious store of francs. When she returned to the foyer, Justine was adjusting her hat before the mirror. She was a short, sturdy, dark-haired girl, the kind who might have been stout if it weren’t for the war and its shortages.
“Here you are, Justine. Good night. Give my greetings to your parents.”
Justine counted the coins and put them in the pocket of her jacket. “Yes, madame.”
This time, when the door closed, Daisy didn’t hesitate. She took off her shoes and padded down the hallway to the study, the door of which was closed and probably locked, though she didn’t try the handle. Instead she leaned the side of her head carefully against the hairline crack between door and frame. A low mutter of voices came to her, muffled by wood. She closed her eyes, so that every ounce of her concentration might pour through that little gap and gather up noise, gather up syllables and connect them into words, connect the words into sentences.
But the voices remained too low and too muffled. Daisy could distinguish only the smell of cigarettes, the clink of glasses, the occasional creaking of wood as somebody shifted his feet or his seat on a chair.
At last she stepped away and moved down the hall to the kitchen. Justine had left everything tidy, every dish put away, the table wiped and the floor swept, the lamp switched off, the curtains snug so as not to permit the slightest leak of warmth or light into the air outside. From the corner, the radiator groaned softly. Daisy turned and went back down the hallway, all the way to the end, where their bedroom lay. The men were still talking, and Pierre (she knew this from experience) would not want her to linger and wait, to add any feminine awkwardness to their masculine farewells. She changed into her nightgown, washed her face, brushed her hair and her teeth, checked briefly on the children—both sleeping peacefully—and crawled into bed. The sound of voices drifted through the walls, and as she lay awake on her thin pillow, staring through the darkness at the shadowed ceiling, she thought she heard the word July.
Possibly she fell asleep then, because she next became aware of Pierre banging open the door of their bedroom, reeking of cigarettes and brandy, humming something in his flat, tuneless way. He switched on the lamp carelessly and she opened her eyes a millimeter or two to watch him strip his clothes away, toss everything on the floor, piece by piece, necktie and collar and shirt and trousers, and clatter open a drawer for a pair of pajamas. She shut her eyes again and felt the sway of the mattress, the groan of springs as he settled in beside her.
“Daisy?” he said. “You’re awake?”
She made a small noise that might mean anything. His hand found her hip and turned her over.
“Pierre, I’m so tired,” she said.
To her surprise, he laughed and withdrew his hand, rolled on his back and switched off the lamp. “So am I, my dear. Very well. Let’s go to sleep.”
She stared at the faint gray outline of his nose. In the darkness, she couldn’t quite tell for certain, but he seemed to be smiling.
“What’s going on?” she whispered. “What does this mean?”
He laughed again, and it was not the way he had laughed at her earlier, like the edge of a saw. This laugh was soft and happy, like the laugh she remembered from their honeymoon.
“It means we are moving up in the world at last, my little wife,” Pierre said. “It means, for one thing, we will soon be moving out of this stupid dump to the kind of apartment even your grandmother will envy.”
Chapter Seven
Babs
The Hôtel Ritz
Paris, France
April 1964
It was far from a dump, but it wasn’t Langford Hall, either. There were no drafts, or the sound of old, aching floors and walls gasping throughout the night. No sound of wind blowing down chimneys, and no windows rattling like ghostly visitors. No scratchy bed linens that had been left on the line in a rainstorm by Mrs. Finch rubbing against my skin. And no need for socks on my feet to keep out the chill as I slept. No, the Paris Ritz wasn’t anything like home.
Instead, plush carpeting swallowed all sound, and when I flipped a switch, the light was guaranteed to turn on without a flicker or pop. The pipes in the bathroom didn’t groan and rumble, and water was dispensed into the basin via a gold swan. I found I rather missed the gurgles, but as I sat in the heated water of the bath that was actually hot and remained so, I wondered if I missed it all because it was home, or because I didn’t belong at a place such as the Paris Ritz.
By the time I’d bathed—making sure not to use more than one towel and face cloth despite the veritable pile of them heaped on the heated towel rack—and dressed, I’d confirmed my decision from the previous day to go back to England. Sitting at the desk and using the provided Ritz stationery, I wrote a note to Mr. Bowdoin explaining how I’d made a mistake and would not be joining him for a rendezvous or anything else that evening, and then another to Miss Dubose thanking her for her kindness, but letting her know that I’d be on my way home to England by the time she received my note.