Chapter Twenty-One
Saint Antoine was a charming village on the banks of a river, near the foot of a waterfall cascading down the mountain.
At first sight, the place didn’t seem large enough to sustain a museum but there were plenty of tourists buying lavender bags and baskets embroidered with sunflowers who might choose to walk a little further up the hill to take a break from the sun in its cool, air-conditioned halls.
Entering the museum was like stepping into another world.
A crackly soundtrack played the Vichy anthem ‘Maréchal, nous voilà!’ on repeat as Juliette peered into rooms her grandmother might have inhabited: an antiquated kitchen, a dingy parlour with a portrait of Marshal Pétain over the mantelpiece and ration books on the table.
She saw handbags made of cork or woven straw, platform shoes with wooden soles, and bicycle wheel-rims jammed with wine-bottle corks in place of rubber tyres – ever more ingenious solutions to desperate shortages as the French struggled to survive.
Upstairs was devoted to the Resistance movement.
A suitcase containing a radio transmitter was on display, as well as one of the cumbersome flying suits worn by British agents who parachuted into France.
Many of them had been women, Juliette knew.
Surely her grandmother would have wanted to join them?
Yet try as she might, she couldn’t place Mémé in the middle of the action.
With nothing to go on but a hunch and a few old photographs, maybe it was time to admit her imagination had been running away with her.
Still, she’d enjoyed her visit and maybe she’d bring Nico back with her another time; with his grandfather having joined the Maquis somewhere in the south, he’d be interested to see these exhibits.
On the way out, she bought a short self-published book titled Histoire du Maquis de Vercors, and sat in a café beside the river to drink a citron pressé and read it.
So many men, marching together, yet Juliette knew that plenty of women had played important roles in the Resistance.
Nancy Wake and Pearl Witherington had fought alongside the men in armed combat, with Pearl ending up as leader of a large network, and thousands of anonymous Frenchwomen had acted as couriers and radio operators, received parachute drops of weapons and supplies, fed and sheltered refugees.
As Juliette leafed through the pages, looking for any mention of them, one word leapt out at her: Lionne.
‘A young woman known as Lionne was part of our network,’ the author had written, ‘fierce as any man and braver than most. She was a Parisian who hated the Nazis with a passion because they’d imprisoned her husband.
I owe her my life, as do many others, and I’ve often wondered where she is now and what happened to her.
She disappeared after the war so I never had the chance to thank her. ’
Juliette laid down the book, her heart racing.
Mémé had come from Paris and her husband Jacques had been captured by the Nazis: surely this had to be more than coincidence.
Had Jacques given her that Cross of Lorraine, inscribed with her code name?
Yet they were apart by then and he couldn’t have known she was Lionne.
Was Juliette so keen to prove her grandmother had been heroic too that she was making something out of nothing, or had Mémé played as much of a role in liberating France as her husband?
One way or another, she was determined to find out.
The lure of Provence was a distraction from Juliette’s investigations, though.
For the next few days, she shopped and cooked, got to know the cats and explored the local area.
She swam in the crystal-clear waters of the river beneath the Pont du Gard, took a proper look at the Roman ruins in Arles and visited the hospital where Van Gogh stayed after cutting off his ear, now converted to an exhibition space surrounded by gardens.
By the time Nico arrived, she was longing to show him everything she’d discovered – and to hear the news from Paris.
After he’d showered and changed, they sat outside to drink beer, listen to the cicadas chirping and chat over their time spent apart.
Juliette filled him in on her news and sat back to hear his.
He was getting on well with Emily, apparently, who was a hard worker he’d have been happy to employ long term.
‘And I’ve discovered what might be the real reason she wanted to stay in Paris. She’s met someone.’
‘You’re kidding! On vacation?’ That didn’t sound like her rational, cautious daughter. ‘Who is this person?’
‘She’s an American, on a study exchange programme at the Sorbonne,’ Nico replied. ‘Her name’s Hannah. I’ve only met her once but she seems lovely.’
‘Maybe we should invite her to the wedding,’ Juliette said, her mind jumping ahead.
Nico shook his head. ‘I already suggested that but Emily thinks it would be far too intense. Exposing the poor kid to her entire family when they’ve only known each other five minutes?’
Juliette could see Emily’s point – though she couldn’t help minding that now it would be even longer before she met Emily’s love interest. ‘So, tell me how things went with Marc,’ she said, changing the subject.
She knew that Nico had set up a meeting before his brother went back to Miami, and had been half expecting him to pull out.
Nico smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘You were right. So, we’re never going to be best friends but we’ve had it out with each other – cleared the air.
’ They’d talked for hours, apparently, and although Marc had been defensive at first, eventually something had shifted and he’d been able to describe what it had been like growing up with a younger brother who could do no wrong.
When their mother had died, everyone had been mainly worried about the effect on Nico because he was so young and had been her favourite.
‘Nobody asked how I was feeling,’ Marc had told him. ‘I was left to get on with my life. But I was devastated, because now there was no chance of her ever loving me as much as she loved you.’
‘We’ll never be as close as you and Andrew,’ Nico told Juliette, ‘but at least we understand each other better and have something to build on. He’s invited us out to Miami and I’m thinking about accepting. Could you bear to come with me?’
‘Sure,’ Juliette replied, smiling. ‘Miami’s the premier destination for high-net-worth individuals, so I’d say we should definitely check it out.’
She was overjoyed to see him again, giddy with happiness.
They ate a long, leisurely dinner, made love instead of washing up and slept until late the next morning.
After breakfast, they shopped at the market and Juliette spent most of the afternoon preparing for supper.
She made a dip called lou saussoun, from Madame Leclerc’s recipe book – a blend of almonds, anchovies, garlic and mint – followed by the famous fish stew of Marseille, bouillabaisse, accompanied by crusty baguettes.
‘So delicious,’ Véronique said, swiping a radish through the dip. ‘Did you know this is what they used to give the workers at midday, during the grape harvest?’
Everyone seemed to get on, and the conversation ranged from food and wine to property renovation, weddings and the Maquis.
Alison and Matt were on good form and clearly delighted to have been invited.
Alison had arrived bearing a package wrapped in brown paper, which she said Juliette was to look at later, adding mysteriously, ‘I think you’ll be pleased – it’s much more interesting than those papers.
A loan, not a gift, but you’re welcome to copy whatever you like. ’
When at last everyone had gone home and they’d finished clearing the kitchen, Juliette sat down at the table, untied the string and opened the parcel.
Inside was a leatherbound album with a gold crest on the front above the words ‘Chateau Albertine’.
Hardly daring to hope, she turned the pages, each protected by a layer of gauzy tissue paper, to find picture after picture of the chateau in the 1930s and early 1940s.
The photographs were grouped by date, starting in 1932 with a studio portrait of the couple who presumably owned the house: a man with a pencil moustache and crinkly grey hair, standing with his arm resting lightly on the shoulder of his beautiful blonde wife, who was sitting in a high-backed armchair.
They looked completely sure of their place in the world.
The next few years showed Chateau Albertine at the height of its glory: dining table laid for a banquet, salon crowded with spindly gilt furniture, gardens manicured.
The moustachioed man reappeared several times – at the wheel of a sporty coupé, playing tennis, riding a magnificent horse – but his wife was not to be seen.
Perhaps she was the photographer? A young man and woman were also much in evidence, staring back at the camera with the same insouciance as their parents.
He was tall and athletic, blond like his mother, while the girl took after her father, with dark hair and eyebrows.
She looked sulky in many of the pictures, as though she’d rather have been anywhere else.
There were behind-the-scenes shots of servants at work, too, and in the 1937 kitchen Juliette recognised Madame Leclerc’s mother; much younger, naturally, and with the birthmark clearly evident over half her face.
She would have to take this album to the gate lodge and show the old lady.
Yet the photographs ended abruptly after the summer of 1939 and there were hardly any for the whole of 1940.
What had happened to all these people? The girl and her father were last seen in 1938 and her brother in 1939.
And then after a couple of blank pages came a flurry of pictures taken in 1941 and the first few months of 1942.
At last, Juliette could see her grandmother as a young woman in the chateau.
She was always outdoors: driving a pony and carriage, working in the gardens or among the vines.
Juliette recognised her immediately from the wedding photograph she’d had on her phone for years, although now Mémé’s hair was cut short.
In the very last picture of the album, her grandmother was captured in profile unawares, hands on her hips as she stretched out her back, gazing up at the mountains.
Juliette blinked, holding the album closer, then called Nico over to show him.
‘Am I going crazy, or could she be—?’ She couldn’t say the word.
Nico whistled. ‘No doubt about it. She’s definitely pregnant. Six or seven months, by the look of it.’