in the Louvre, I’ve longed more than ever for a more tangible sense of connection to her. I’ve pored over the photograph and my heart has bled as I’ve imagined the day it was taken: a day which started so well, full of joy and optimism as she’d got dressed in her best clothes and set out with her friends. A day which had ended so badly.
I realise that, increasingly, my feelings of shame at my grandmother’s naivety and terrible choice of partner have been replaced by sympathy for her – and a cold fury at Ernst. How dare he have treated her so shabbily, toying with her emotions, using her youth and her innocence to facilitate his deception? Was the damage done by that devastating encounter in the Louvre one of the things that contributed to the fragility of her heart? Was she strong enough to be able to recover from it, or did something break in her that day? Did the impact of that fleeting encounter knock her so hard that she was irreparably damaged? Can a broken heart be real?
And, if so, was that one of the moments that sealed my own mother’s fate, too, the moment that wounded my grandmother?
A sadness overwhelms me as I feel more keenly than ever the loss of my grandmother and my mother. And I feel afraid, too. Because I wonder whether it is my inescapable fate to feel that they have abandoned me . . . And to know that my connection to life could be so fragile and so tenuous as well.
I try to shake off these morbid thoughts, hurrying away from the sculpture gallery, feeling the need to catch up with Thierry and have his comforting presence beside me. And how I wish I had Mireille and Vivienne beside me too, at times like this, so that I could absorb some of their strength and their joie de vivre as well.
1942
Mireille and Vivi had been so kind to her when they’d got back to the apartment after that awful encounter with Ernst and his family in the Louvre, but Claire had shut herself in her room, not wanting to see the pity written on their faces, knowing what an idiot she’d been.
Mireille had tapped on the door in the evening, bringing Claire a bowl of stew. ‘Come on,’ she’d urged, with a kindness that brought tears to Claire’s eyes. ‘You need to eat. Keep your strength up.’
Claire had shaken her head, feeling sick with humiliation, but Mireille had insisted, perching on the bed beside her.
And then the floodgates had opened and Claire began to sob. ‘How could I have been so stupid? Did he single me out because he could see I was a foolish girl who would fall for his charms?’
Mireille shook her head. ‘You’re not stupid. Just young and inexperienced in the ways of the world. Perhaps he sensed your innocence. He fed you the words you’d wanted to hear.’
‘Yes, but I swallowed them without stopping to wonder whether there was any truth in them.’ Claire’s cheeks blazed as she recalled the asides he used to make to his fellow-officers when they went out, how they’d all laugh. At the time, she told Mireille, she’d assumed they were just harmless jokes, part of the role as the life and soul of the party he enjoyed playing when in company. But now she wondered how many of those asides had been at her expense.
Overcome with humiliation and shame, she sobbed on Mireille’s shoulder as she spoke of her family. When she’d been with Ernst, she’d pushed the memories of Jean-Paul’s words to the back of her mind, justifying her actions by telling herself that he didn’t understand how hard it was to live in the city. Women were powerless at the best of times, and the war heightened that feeling, but being with Ernst had given her a sense of security as well as the luxury of being pampered and envied. Now she saw that that sense of safety had been built on the fantasy that she’d spun for herself out of silk stockings and glasses of champagne. ‘How could I have betrayed my own brothers in that way? Oh Mireille, I can’t bear to think what they must think of me. Jean-Paul went off to the work camps knowing that I was . . .’ she hesitated, choosing her words carefully, ‘. . . Enjoying the attentions of the enemy. How I wish I could tell