Peach by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online Page B

still incapacitated with her broken hip, was desperate to see Peach. What few sailings there were, were overcrowded anddangerous. One ship loaded with women and children had already been sunk. Peach and Lais must stay with Leonie, and Gerard would come to them whenever he could. They all prayed that the war wouldn’t last long. He left almost immediately without telling them his mission and Peach’s eyes followed him anxiously as the grey army car with a uniformed driver at the wheel disappeared down the road in a cloud of white dust. She’d promised her father that she would be walking by herself the next time she saw him and she would try to keep that promise.
    The months drifted into winter and still Peach and Leonie swam every day in the now deserted hotel pool, braving its cool depths together as Peach slowly gained strength.
    Six months later, in February, Dr Marnaux was able to remove the calliper from her left leg. But the right, where the muscles had suffered more severe damage, was weaker and still needed the support of the hated steel frame. Sometimes Leonie would observe Peach with her right leg stuck out in front of her, just staring at it with such an unchildish look of loathing on her face that it shocked her. “I hate it, Grand-mère, I hate it,” whispered Peach. “One day I shall throw it into the sea for ever.”
    “In a way,” said Jim on a chill March morning as they drank their coffee and tucked into a fresh batch of Madame Frenard’s brioches, “it’s a good thing you’ve got Peach here. And Lais and Leonore.”
    Leonie paused in mid-bite and looked at him in surprise. “Why now, especially?”
    “I’m off to Paris tomorrow, my darling,” Jim set down his cup and took her hand in his. “They may consider me too old to fight but at least they can use my organising and administration experience.”
    She might have guessed he would do something like this.Jim wasn’t the sort to sit around and let someone else fight his war. Gerard was already involved, she didn’t know exactly how but they heard from him intermittently, when he told them about Amelie, alone in Florida, worried about her family—and especially Peach. “Amelie will be all right,” Gerard had said on the telephone, “just look after her girls for her.”
    They told Leonore and Lais later that afternoon. “Let me come with you, Jim,” begged Lais, bored with the lack of activity at the Cap. The hotel was almost empty and all the young men had been drafted into the army. At least Paris would be
alive
. “Someone had better pack up the silver and the paintings at the Ile St Louis, and get them into a safer place,” she said. “I’ll take care of it, I promise.”
    But listening to her sister’s easy promises, Leonore knew why Lais wanted to be in Paris.

6

    Lais prowled the big house on the Ile St Louis like a caged animal, pausing now and then to peer from the long windows of the great first-floor drawing room. The bridges were empty and the streets silent. Even the Seine was quiet without its usual bustle of barges and river traffic.
    Switching back the heavy yellow silk curtains, she peered out yet again. There was nothing. Just the noise in the distance. The heavy roar and rumble of the traffic of an advancing victorious army.
    The staff had departed and the house was deathly quiet. There was just the concierge left in his apartment by the gate. Faithful old Bennet, who had returned after the incident with Nikolai years ago that had precipitated her own departure from Paris, had left last week for the south where he was to stay at the hotel for the duration of the war, though the butler was now so aged that Lais had privately doubted whether he would survive the terrifying journey. All the roads south of Paris were jammed with families fleeing the city, their possessions strapped to the roofs of their cars, and they were sitting targets for the German planes raking them with machine guns.
    She’d done her best