47 Lisette
June, 1962 – Rome
Church bells woke Lisette at six o’clock. She got dressed in the chilly morning air. The market would be open soon.
‘Signora Lisette?’ the landlady said, tapping on the door.
That name. She should have given it up long ago, but she chose to keep it, changing only her surname from time to time.
‘He’s back,’ the landlady said. ‘Out in the courtyard.’
Lisette went downstairs to find him. He waited by the steps. He was thirty-eight now, but he still had traces of the eighteen-year-old she’d met in the apartment. He was the only person she knew who could make her feel light-hearted.
‘Jacques,’ she said, smiling. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Come on, you must’ve given up on me by now. I’m an old woman.’
‘Nonsense. You’re only forty-one, and you’ll never be old to me.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘Besides, I’ve had twenty years to grow up and sow my wild oats. Don’t you think it’s time?’
Lisette laughed, a belly laugh that made her feel, for a moment, as if all the past grief could be overcome. Jacques had been the one constant in her life since the war. Friends and family had never understood what she’d experienced. Only with Jacques could she relax, because he’d experienced it too.
‘Tell me the real reason why you’re here,’ she said.
‘I’ve bought that place in Nice.’ A smile brimmed on his lips. ‘Builders are renovating it as we speak. Every table has a view of the Mediterranean. The kitchen is huge. All I need now is a chef.’
‘I’m proud of you, Jacques. Your family must be so pleased.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘You didn’t ask one.’
Jacques raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s the same question I’ve been asking for the last five years.’
He still had a thick shock of black hair. He’d trusted her implicitly that night, following her out on to the streets of Paris. She had taken him to a man on rue Marbeuf who forged papers and produced new identity cards for them both. Travelling together as brother and sister, they’d got out of Paris in a party of fruit-pickers heading to the fields south of the city. From there, she’d used the skills she’d learned in her SOE training to get them across the country – camping in woods by day and travelling by night.
Jacques had come into his own on the road. He grew fit and healthy, tanned by the sun, his muscles strengthening from the walking and fresh food. He became her equal, taking turns to keep watch at night and learning how to hunt. He was protective when she grew tired, and when they huddled close for warmth on the cold nights she was conscious of his strong arms around her. He seemed older than his eighteen years. While she grieved in secret for the loss of Christoph, Lisette came to depend on Jacques. His optimism and humour gave her a much-needed reprieve after the trauma of leaving Paris.
Despite the terror and fear of those days, Jacques had kept his spirits up. Looking at him now, in the sunshine, he wore it well, this burden of still being alive. Lisette struggled with it sometimes.
‘Jacques, I’m in charge of lunch. The markets have just opened …’
‘All right, I’ll meet you later. But it’s time, Lisette, to look to the future. You know I’m right. It’s what we both deserve.’
He kissed her hand. She should be flattered that such a man cared for her – Jacques was successful, handsome, kind, and the bond forged in those days on the run was unbreakable – but she waved him goodbye with a heavy heart. How many times could she say no before he never came back?
‘We have a full house,’ the manager at La Casa said. ‘Some people have waited months for a table.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll give them a meal to remember,’ Lisette said, putting down the bags of shopping.
She opened her recipe book and flicked through the pages. The book had been with her through it all, more constant than any person had been.
‘We’ll start with fresh caviar,’ she said to the attentive sous chefs, ‘then filets de maquereaux à la flamande, followed by poached peaches and raspberry coulis.’
As she cooked, Lisette forgot all about Jacques, and the past. She concentrated on frying the mackerel, adding the herbs and the lemon juice. Cooking was the only time she experienced a sense of calm. That was why she took on as many shifts as possible.
At the end of the meal she had to tour the tables with the manager. She answered one or two questions about the composition of the dishes, nodding politely at the diners’ compliments.
At last they reached the final table, tucked away in the corner. A couple sat finishing their main course. Lisette stopped. The man. It couldn’t be. Her heart pounded. The room seemed to tilt. It was Christoph.
He stared at Lisette, shock bleeding colour from his face, his wine glass held mid-tip.
‘May I present the chef,’ the manager said.
Lisette couldn’t take it in. His hair was longer, greyer, he wore a suit, a red tie … but it was him.
The woman sitting opposite Christoph smiled.
‘When we decided to go away for our tenth wedding anniversary, I knew Rome was the place, didn’t I, Christoph?’ she said in broken English. ‘He insisted we have lunch at La Casa.’
Christoph put down his glass and forced a smile when his wife – his wife – addressed him. He was here. Alive. But he was also married. The tall, elegant woman reaching out to take his hand was his wife.
It was too much. Lisette muttered words of thanks and fled. She escaped out into the backyard, breathing lungfuls of air, heart racing with the sheer unexpectedness of seeing him here. He’d survived. All this time she’d mourned the fact that he was dead, killed in Stalingrad, so Seraphin had told her. But he was here. In Rome. Close enough to touch.
Eventually, she went back in. The restaurant was empty. She went to the table where Christoph and his wife had sat. There was a smear of lipstick on the woman’s napkin. Christoph’s coffee and petit fours lay untouched.
‘Telephone for you, Lisette,’ the manager called. ‘A man asking for Sylvie. I told him there’s no one of that name, so he asked for the chef.’
Lisette took it by the desk, where no one could overhear.
‘Hello.’
‘Sylvie.’
An avalanche started in her heart. It was really him. ‘Yes.’
‘I thought …’ Christoph said, his voice breaking. ‘I hired an investigator. The records in Paris said you’d been killed. If I’d known you were alive …’
‘Oh, Christoph.’ All the empty years, only to find each other like this.
‘You told me about La Casa – do you remember, by the millpond?’ he said. ‘I’d never have brought her if I’d known you were alive and here in Rome. It was such a shock to see you standing there.’
Lisette breathed deeply. ‘I looked for you too, but I heard you’d died in Russia.’ All this time … her heart ached with the waste of it.
‘Hilde’s waiting for me at the hotel,’ Christoph said. ‘I had to ring you. I wanted you to know I’d never have married her if there was a chance of finding you. I can’t bear that you’re here and I can’t see or hold you.’
‘Please stop,’ Lisette said. ‘There’s no use. Those years have happened. You can’t change that. You’re married now. That’s what you’ve chosen.’
‘Sylvie, don’t say that.’
‘Christoph, it’s too late,’ she said. This day had been bearable until now. She’d been coping. She couldn’t let this moment make things worse. ‘Let’s just be glad we’re both alive. That we made it. Forget we met today.’
‘What do you mean, forget? How can I?’
‘You must.’
Lisette put the phone down before she changed her mind, then grabbed her coat from the hook.
All these years, she’d lived half a life mourning the loss of him. But he was alive and married, for Christ’s sake. He hadn’t mourned her, he’d moved on with his life. What was she doing, treading water like this?
When she reached the pensione , Jacques was waiting for her. He got out of his car. The years were etched on his face, but he was still ready to follow her, to cast in his lot with hers, just like he’d done that night at the apartment.
‘Shall we go for a spin?’ he said.
Lisette’s mind cleared. Maybe it was time.
‘Jacques, are you going to ask me again?’
‘You know I am,’ he said. ‘And this time, it’s not just my hand I’m offering, it’s a restaurant too. We’ll make an amazing team; I know we will. My grandmother knew it. For her, Lisette, for her memory, marry me.’
At the mention of his grandmother Lisette’s eyes filled with tears. That tiny, fierce woman who’d given Lisette a second chance at life.
‘I’ll marry you, Jacques,’ she said. ‘Let’s leave for Nice tonight.’
Jacques enfolded her in his arms. She choked back tears. Jacques must never see them. For him, today was the start of a new life. For Lisette, it was the end of an old one.