‘I had so many plans for us,’ he said through his tears. ‘I was going to take her to the Waldorf in New York and have a picnic in Central Park. My folks would’ve loved her, and even if I could never keep her like her own folks did, we would’ve had a good life together.’
All Belle could do was hold him and tell him all the lovely things Miranda had said about him. That she’d been waiting all her life for love like his, and how she couldn’t wait to marry him.
They sat on an old tree trunk and cried together, then Belle gave him the diary and the photograph.
‘I haven’t read the entries since she met you,’ she told him. ‘That’s just for your eyes. But I hope it will give you some comfort to read the funny things she said, and help you understand more about her. Try and remember her as she was on your last night together, not how her life ended. She’ll be looking down on you and wanting you to be happy with someone else one day.’
The memory of that painful evening with Will was still imprinted on Belle’s mind, and she hoped he’d called today to tell her that he’d heard from Miranda’s parents because she didn’t feel she could cope with any further emotional scenes.
‘You’ll be in trouble if you get any more male visitors,’ Sally added waspishly. ‘But then, I suppose you’ve wormed your way round Captain Taylor.’
Sally often sniped at Belle. It reminded her uncomfortably of the cattiness of some of the girls in Martha’s sporting house in New Orleans. She didn’t know what Sally had to be jealous about; it wasn’t as if they were in competition here, and Sally was a far better driver and a really good mechanic too.
‘Well, no one could ever accuse you of worming your way round anyone,’ Belle retorted. ‘You’re more of a cobra, you spit venom to paralyse your victims.’
Sally flounced away without responding. Vera, who had heard the exchange, grinned at Belle and put one thumb up in approval.
Vera had been such a comfort to Belle. She had moved into Miranda’s old bed, perhaps understanding that it would be at night that Belle would miss her old friend the most. The other girls didn’t speak about Miranda at all, it was as if she’d never been there, but Vera got Belle to talk about her, and that had helped a great deal.
As Belle didn’t want Will seeing evidence of the nature of her job, she quickly ran back to the hut, took off her bloodstained overall, washed her face and hands and brushed her hair before going over to meet him.
The drivers’ hut door was open, and she walked in ready to greet Will with a smile, but when she saw who was waiting there she froze in shock.
It was Etienne.
Whenever she pictured him in her mind it was always as he’d looked in Paris at the Gare du Nord, with a trilby hat, a dark suit and striped waistcoat, his eyes like blue glass. But now he was dashing in the French grey-blue uniform, his boots polished to a mirror shine and sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeve. Yet his blue eyes were just the same and made her heart flip.
When she first got to France, she had scrutinized the French soldiers, half hoping to see him. She had always checked the names of any French wounded brought in too. But she certainly hadn’t expected him to turn up here to see her.
‘Etienne!’ she exclaimed. ‘What? How?’ She paused, so shocked she couldn’t get any sensible words out.
‘I ran into Will Fergus at the American base when I collected some supplies from there,’ he said. ‘He told me what happened to his girl. I felt I had to come and see how you were; I knew you must be taking it just as badly as he is.’
Belle felt a bit faint with the shock and had to sit down. ‘But how do you know I knew her?’ she asked.
Etienne frowned and sat down too. ‘Didn’t Miranda tell you that we met when she was staying at the Faisan Doré?’
‘No, she didn’t,’ Belle said. ‘But she got back late that night and it was the next morning she was killed.’ She paused, looking at him in puzzlement. ‘But how on earth did she connect you with me?’
Etienne shrugged. ‘I was in there with a couple of men from my company. Will spoke to us and I translated what he said to the other two. At one point we exchanged names. I can only suppose she recognized mine because of something you’d said to her, because she inquired if I was from Marseille. When I said I was, she asked if I knew someone called Belle. I was like you are now, stunned. She said you came here together.’
‘But she never told me this,’ Belle gasped.
‘That may have been because she thought it best not to,’ he said. ‘It struck me afterwards that you must have told her a great deal about me for her to remember my name. That touched me. Then to hear she’d been killed in such a terrible way! Will could hardly bring himself to tell me about it.’
‘Yes, it was terrible,’ Belle said. ‘I still can’t really believe it. We were such good friends and I thought we always would be. I’m lost without her.’
‘I thought that would be the case, that’s why I had to come,’ he said. ‘But I have to admit that finding you’d told her about me made me glad you hadn’t forgotten me entirely.’
The hut door was open, they were sitting opposite each other, and should anyone look in they would see nothing to suggest the French sergeant and she were anything other than casual acquaintances. Yet Belle suddenly felt very nervous.
‘Oh, we had one of those you-tell-me-your-story-and-I’ll-tell-you-mine conversations once,’ she said lightly, as if it was of no real importance. ‘She was the only person I ever told about New Orleans and Paris and your part in it. But Miranda was a romantic, and a great one for reading more into things than was really there.’
‘She must have meant a great deal to you if you felt able to confide in her about that time.’ He looked straight at Belle, one eyebrow raised questioningly. ‘How did you meet her?’
‘In my shop,’ she said. ‘She lived nearby, and yes, she did come to mean a great deal to me. Her death has knocked me sideways. It was just so awful, as it wouldn’t have happened if the crossing had been manned like it’s supposed to be.’
‘It’s hard losing good friends,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost so many since the war started I avoid getting friendly with anyone now.’
‘I’d never had a real friend before, not someone you can confide in and talk about anything. I don’t think she had either. We might have come from very different backgrounds but we had a great deal in common.’
‘So what happened to the shop?’
‘Jimmy joined up, I lost the baby I was carrying, and I grew disenchanted with making and selling hats, it seemed so frivolous when men were dying at the front.’
‘I am very sorry about the baby,’ he said. ‘I can see that would change everything for you, especially with your husband away. But what made you and Miranda come here?’
Belle felt that his line of questioning was to discover if thoughts of him had prompted her choices. She knew she must make it clear they had not, but the feelings she had had for him and believed were dead and buried were bubbling up again inside her. His French accent was so attractive, and it brought back many good memories of the time they shared together.
‘That was pure chance,’ she said, not meeting his eyes because she was afraid he’d read in hers that she wasn’t being entirely truthful. ‘We decided to do our bit for the war by volunteering at the military hospital and in the year we were there Miranda taught me to drive. Then we were told ambulance drivers were desperately needed here. I thought I’d get the chance to see Jimmy more often too.’
‘Have you seen much of him since you’ve been here?’
As before, when asked about meeting up with Jimmy she felt a twinge of guilt that she hadn’t even attempted to do so. ‘No, unfortunately it’s too busy here to get away.’
‘Miranda managed it,’ he said.
Belle blushed. She might have known he would pick up on that. ‘It was easier for her. Will isn’t tied down by regular duties and anyway, he was close by.’
‘I’m not close by, and
I have regular duties too, but when I knew you were here I wanted to come and see you straight away. The only thing that stopped me was not the difficulties, but fear you wouldn’t want to see me.’
She felt he was pushing her into a corner, trying to get her to admit her feelings for him. The easiest way out of it would be to say she hadn’t wanted to see him, but she couldn’t bring herself to say that.
‘I didn’t expect to see Will ever again,’ he went on. ‘But fate intervened and I was sent to the depot he was at in Calais. When he told me how upset you were about Miranda’s death, I felt you needed an old friend. But if I’m unsettling you, then perhaps I should go?’
‘You unsettled me last time you turned up,’ she said. ’Why do you do that?’
‘Why do I turn up? Or why do I unsettle you?’ he asked. His clear blue eyes seemed to be looking right into her soul. ‘I turn up because I can’t stay away. Only you can say why that unsettles you.’
‘Then why didn’t you come to England and see me after I left Paris?’ she blurted out. ‘You must have known I was hoping you would.’
He sighed deeply. ‘I thought you needed time to get over all you’d been through.’
‘That one letter you sent me could have come from an uncle asking after my health,’ she said indignantly.
He got up from his seat and came over to her to take her hands. ‘I told you I wasn’t good at writing in English,’ he said reproachfully. ‘The letter you sent was full of Jimmy this and Jimmy that, you were living under the same roof as him too. Noah wrote to me and said he thought you would marry him. I wanted you to be happy and I thought it best to bow out of your life.’
‘How could I tell you how I felt when you’d never given me any encouragement to believe you thought of me as anything but a friend?’ she asked, his closeness to her and his hands holding hers making her tremble.
‘Surely coming to your aid so quickly and staying near you as you recovered in Paris was enough evidence of my feelings for you?’ he said. ‘After what you’d been through I didn’t dare even to kiss you.’ He cupped her face in his hands, then kissed her.
It was the gentlest and most tender of kisses, lingering just long enough to make her heart race.
‘I am a married woman,’ she said, but she didn’t move away and she knew she hadn’t even sounded indignant.
‘All is fair in love and war, so they say,’ and his smile was mischievous and boyish. ‘None of us know if we will survive this war. I wouldn’t want to die knowing I failed to tell you my true feelings for you.’
‘That is a cheap shot,’ she said, and now she did feel indignant. ‘I suppose you came here thinking that I’d fall into your arms because I’m lonely without my friend and because Jimmy is at the front? Well, you thought wrong. You had your chance to express your feelings back in Paris.’
‘If I had, would you have stayed with me?’
Belle recalled the last few minutes with him at the Gare du Nord and the ache in her heart from wanting him so badly. ‘At the station I asked you to say something in French. I didn’t understand what you said, but I know it wasn’t that you loved me.’
‘I said that I’d walk through fire, flood and face any peril for you,’ he said, looking right into her eyes. ‘If that wasn’t telling you I loved you, I don’t know what it was. I would still do all that, even face your displeasure for coming here now you are a married woman.’
Tears started up in Belle’s eyes. She felt as if something was melting inside her, and although she knew she ought to tell him such words were too late now and walk away from him, she couldn’t.
He lifted his hand and silently wiped her tears away with his thumb, then his mouth came down on hers and he was kissing her the way she’d hoped for back in Paris.
Her arms went round him involuntarily. His tongue was teasing hers, his body pressing against her, and passion flared up between them like a forest fire. She forgot that the door was open and she could be seen by anyone passing; she forgot too that she had a husband whose heart would break if he got to hear about this.
She was lost, and she knew it. There was no breaking away now and pretending it meant nothing to her. She wanted him to possess her, the feeling was too strong to fight off.
‘Come with me,’ he said as his lips finally released her, but he still held her tightly in his arms. ‘I know a place we can be together.’
‘It’s wrong, Etienne,’ she said weakly.
‘How can it be wrong when I found the girl I love, by pure chance in a country torn apart by war? I could be killed in the next battle, Jimmy could too. We have to seize what we have now, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.’
She’d heard these words so many times since she’d been in France, and she had always agreed with the sentiment, but a small voice inside her was trying to remind her it didn’t apply to her situation because she was married. However, a much louder voice was shouting it down, telling her that it was now or never with Etienne, and to hell with the consequences.
She heard herself telling him to drive out of the hospital grounds and wait for her by the same bit of broken fence that Miranda had climbed through to meet Will.
One more kiss sealed it. Etienne drove off and she ran back to the hut to change her clothes and pack an overnight bag.
As luck would have it, Vera was alone in the hut, lying on her bed reading. She said the others had gone to play a game of tennis. ‘Will you cover for me?’ Belle asked her, after only telling her that she was going out with an old friend. ‘Be vague, imply you think it was my husband who called to see me. I’ll be back in time for work in the morning.’
‘But it isn’t Jimmy?’ Vera asked. She looked surprised but not horrified; she never seemed to suffer from that rigidity the English had. She had also said many times that she thought any chance of happiness should be grabbed with both hands.
Belle shook her head. ‘I’ll explain tomorrow. And pray for my soul because I know I really shouldn’t be doing this.’
After only the quickest wash and changing into fresh underwear and her one good dress, and stuffing her working clothes into a bag for the morning, Belle rushed off down through the rows of wards and out on to the road where Etienne was waiting.
Her pulse was racing and her heart was doing somersaults, but as she jumped up into the lorry he was driving, one look at his face, alight with joy, told her that whatever came later, it would be worth the risk.
‘It’s only a café with some rooms above where I’m taking you,’ he said. ‘But I know other men who’ve taken their wives there and they said the rooms were clean. I promise I’ll get you back to the hospital well before six, that’s if you haven’t changed your mind about it?’
Belle could only shake her head, smile and reach over to kiss his cheek. For tonight she would pretend she was as free as a bird. The reckoning could come later.
The café was around fifteen miles away down winding lanes. It was in a place that couldn’t even be called a village, it was so small, just a handful of small houses, a general shop and the café which rented out rooms above.
They ate egg and chips with a glass of red wine so rough that Belle had a job to drink it without wincing. There were a few French soldiers in there too, but Etienne got them a table at the back, and if he knew any of them he didn’t say. He had spoken to the man behind the counter about a room when they arrived, a fast interchange peppered with shrugging shoulders and waving hands. When Belle asked him what had been said he just laughed and claimed the man had remarked that she was a beauty and he’d give them the bridal suite.
‘So this is the bridal suite,’ Belle said when they went upstairs later. It was a very small room at the back of the building, with scarcely room to walk round the double bed, and the flowery wallpaper was peeling off in places.
‘Well, it’s got a double bed,’ Etienne said as he prodded it. ‘And there is a bathroom next door – I expected a latrine out the back.’
Bel
le felt awkward when he moved to look out of the window. She was neither a whore expected to take the initiative, nor a wife who usually got into bed first and waited to see her husband’s mood. She was bashful about taking off her clothes in front of him, which, considering at sixteen she’d got into his bunk on the ship to New Orleans and blatantly offered herself to him, seemed ridiculous.
He turned from the window and smiled at her. The evening sun was coming through the window and it turned his hair to a golden halo. ‘Scared?’
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. He squeezed around the edge of the bed and put his arms around her. ‘I have the remedy for that,’ he said softly, and kissed her.
As his lips covered hers and his tongue darted into her mouth she was instantly aroused and it blotted out all fear or shame.
He moved her back until she fell on to the bed, and carried on kissing and kissing her until she was writhing against him and pulling at his uniform to get it off.
‘You first,’ he whispered, pushing her hands away and turning her over so he could unbutton her dress. He kissed and licked her back as each button came undone, then slid the sleeve down over one arm, kissing all the way till it went over her wrist, and did the same on the other arm. Then he pulled the dress down and rolled her over to kiss her breasts, which were barely covered by her camisole.
‘They are bigger now than they were at sixteen,’ he whispered. ‘Beautiful, womanly breasts, just as I imagined they would become.’
He continued to kiss them as he unbuttoned the waist of her petticoat and tossed it to the floor, then peeled off her stockings, drawers and finally the camisole, leaving her naked.
The rough serge of his uniform against her naked flesh heightened her arousal, and he seemed in no hurry to shed it. He pressed his upper leg between her legs and moved it against her, all the time kissing and sucking at her breasts.
Impatiently she unbuttoned his tunic, pulling at it roughly in her desire to feel his skin against her. He had braces beneath over a blue cotton shirt and she clawed them off him. ‘What’s the hurry, little one?’ he whispered. ‘We’ve got all night.’