I adopted a wise and thoughtful air. ‘But it’s such a frightening cat. Am I to think it must be chasing a mouse?’
‘It has already caught one,’ she confessed shyly.
The eye was a little inflamed. A speck of sand from the fight? I wondered anxiously. ‘Darling, don’t look at me like that,’ I said, betraying my very English side, my irritability.
She blinked. Tears rushed into her great big eyes. I crouched and, heedless of the paint, took her into my arms. Lifting her up, saying, ‘Oh, my, you’re getting heavy!’ I stood there studying the painting.
Droplets, blotches, bold strokes, and swaths of colour had been blended harmoniously and that was the remarkable thing. At three years of age, the child had an artist’s eye. There was even a faint suggestion of a tail. As for the rest of the cat, I was certain she could see it.
‘Ah, bon, you’re a painter, chérie. Another Millet or Rousseau, one of the Barbizon school. No, wait a moment. Cézanne, I think. Yes, you have that boldness. Some day you will be a great artist, or maybe even a potter like your grandmother.’
Taking a corner of the smock, I dried her eyes and dabbed at the paint on her cheek. Her nose was cool, the lips warm and wet. I tidied her hair and ran a smoothing hand over her brow.
Not for a moment did those hazel eyes leave mine. They were so innocent and full of love. Just like mine had once been before it all began.
‘Paris, please. The Sorbonne. Department of Art History. Yes, Operator, I know the lines are still bad. Yes, of course, I’ll wait. Look, I want to speak to Jules de St-Germain.’
Zurich is a lovely city and they’ve let me out of the clinic for the afternoon. The nurse who accompanies me has asked to do a bit of shopping.
I return to the table and wait for my call. Out over the lake, the water shimmers under the alpine sun. The air, it is so pure and good, but I can’t breathe in deeply, not yet. They say it may take years.
Even coffee is too much. I have to drink it well watered, and preferably made from roasted barley and acorns. The ersatz stuff. Caffeine is still too much even though it’s the autumn of 1945, and I’ve been out of Bergen-Belsen for nearly six months, the last two of which have been spent in this place.
Rare in this city, and beautiful, sunlight glints from the coffeepot. It may take an hour for that call to get through. Everything’s in such a shambles except for here. Almost the whole of Europe’s been torn to pieces. It’s crazy being able to sit on a terrace like this among everyday people who enjoy a smoke, cuddle tiny dogs, read a newspaper, eat cake, or stir coffee.
They can’t know why I listen all the time for the sound of hobnailed boots or for the shrieks, or wait for the beating that must come before the bullet or the axe.
‘Madame, your call to Paris.’
It’s such a civilized thing, the telephone, so everyday the touch of it makes my hands tremble as I hear the operator saying, ‘Paris, you must wait. Allô … allô, is that Zurich?’
‘Ici, Zurich.’
‘Your party’s on the line.’
‘Is that Jules de St-Germain?’ I ask.
There’s silence at the other end, the crackling of a bad connection. ‘Oui, c’est moi, c’est Jules de St-Germain.’
‘Le mari de Lily?’
Again, there’s silence. ‘Yes … yes, I was once her husband.’
‘Ah, bon, monsieur.’ That’s all I say. I hold the receiver from me and I hear him cursing:
‘Are you the one who sent that thing to me?’
I put the receiver down. The man behind the counter looks questioningly, but I walk out to my table to sit in the sun, to shut my eyes, and to remember.
My name is Lily Hollis-Lily de St-Germain, though I’d love to delete that upper class de. I didn’t choose to do what I did. Me, I’m ashamed to have survived.
You see, the death sentence had been passed long ago and the order had finally come down. We went out behind the hut. I remember that it was raining and that there was a wooden chopping block standing in a sea of mud. There were boot prints all around it. We could hear the guns of the approaching British. It was only a matter of hours until our liberation and yet these bastards were going to kill us.
Seven … there were seven of us women. Some fell to their knees to pray. Some stood erect and tried to sing the “Marseillaise.” I reached for Michèle’s hand and was struck hard across the face.
The rain … April’s a wretched month in the lowlands to the north of Hanover. There was always water everywhere. It dripped constantly through the roof and from the fir trees.
The axe came down. Michèle turned swiftly towards me. ‘Lily … Lily …’
I held her. I felt her frail body trembling. I couldn’t stop her tears; she was far too young.
Another of us was grabbed and flung to her knees before that thing. A boot pressed the head down as if it were a log. The axe went up …
In the confusion of those last hours at Bergen-Belsen, all but one of us died. Stricken by what had just tumbled in front of me, I was conscious only of a burst of orders, all in German. The sounds of gunfire.
Guards and executioner fled. The axe was left lying on the ground. Michèle Chevalier’s lovely brown eyes stared up at me.
I knelt. I remember reaching out to her, but I couldn’t stop shaking. Her hair had always been so like my daughter’s but, of course, they’d cut it off and shaved our heads again.
All dead … all of them. Both the men and the women, my comrades-in-arms. Tommy Carrington and Nicki. My sister, Janine. Even my two children-I’m certain they’re dead. Certain! Me, I was the only one to live. Can you imagine what a burden that’s been?
I think it was a British corporal who discovered me some hours later. I know someone took me to a senior officer who said, ‘My God, get her out of here.’
The number on the inside of my lower left forearm is blue, and when I press a finger against the skin, its seven digits open out a little and their edges are blurred.
Lily Hollis-Lily de St-Germain. No matter how hard I rub, this number will never go away, and I know that somewhere there’s a record of my name against it. There were so many of us in the camps-millions, I suppose. Such confusion at the end. Still, it’s only a matter of time until the doctors and nurses discover who I am.
But for now everyone thinks Lily de St-Germain is dead, that she died by execution in Bergen-Belsen.
You see, mes amis, I’ve sent them all their little black pasteboard coffins just like we did with the collabos during the Occupation, each with their name in white chalk on the lid, a large cross at the top, and at the foot, between the two V’s-for-Victory, the cross of Lorraine, and I’ve come back to remind them of what they did.
The children were having their rest or private time. Hopefully, Marie-Christine would be sleeping, for Tante Marie and Georges had come. Freed for an hour, I left the house but, at the road, paused to look back as if I couldn’t leave them yet.
The château was partially screened by beeches and cedars of Lebanon. Framed by tall, spiked iron gates, it was seen across a lawn that needed cutting and was bleached by the sun. Smoke trailed above the grey slate roof, thinning as it merged with the cloudless sky.
Tante Marie would look after the rest of the baking. Though she’d complain about the quality of the bread, she and Georges would eat it well enough.
I remember that I smiled then and gave a gentle laugh, for I liked the two of them and thought they must like me, though it was often hard to tell.
Brick-red flowerpots full of crimson geraniums flanked the low stone steps to the front entrance. The doors were almost French windows, for the panes of glass didn’t quite extend to the floor but stopped at a quarter panelling of wood. In the storey above, the windows were French but there were no fanlights, they were simply tall and rectangular, their balconies being an expense that was never added. Shadows made the glass appear dark and rippled.