The Ghosts of Paris, page 31
Steady, beautiful Sam.
She slipped on her shoes and picked up her handbag, grinning like a child. It could get tricky between them. Not that many men seemed to trouble themselves with such concerns when it came to their secretaries. No. She deserved a little happiness, didn’t she? After the war, and everything she had been through. After her grief. This was Sam, after all. Had she any reason to fear him? To worry what he might do if she didn’t want to pursue things? No, she felt safe with Sam. More than safe.
Most pressingly, after lunch they would have to talk seriously about where to move to. Somewhere smaller? Hôtel des Arts in Montmartre? Two men had seen someone who might be Montgomery frequenting the bars around there. Besides, it could be a terribly romantic area, she reflected. Beaming, Billie walked over to the door.
When she opened it, she dropped her handbag to the floor in shock.
“Jack?” Billie exclaimed, her husband’s name hanging uncomfortably in the air, four letters full of hope and pain.
“Billie,” Jack Rake said, looking down and then stealing a glance at his wife again, before returning his gaze to his polished shoes.
Billie backed away from the open door and tried to speak, but found that nothing further came out. All the air had been sucked out of her, as if she’d been struck in the belly at the sight of him.
She did her best to steady herself quickly and put on the best emotional armor she could muster without notice. “You are in Paris.” You are alive. “I didn’t . . . know if it could be true,” she managed to say. Why now? Why? “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I’m sorry to arrive unannounced,” he apologized politely, his expression that of a man on the back foot, conflicted and uncertain. Her shock would be plain, despite her attempt at reserve, and he seemed to regret shaking her so. “May I come in for a moment?” he asked.
For a moment?
“Your sense of timing was always something,” she replied. “Sure, you may come in for a moment.”
Billie had fought back several instincts—to rush forward and embrace him, to slam the door in his face, to kiss him hard on the mouth, to slap him with fury. Now she couldn’t move. She did nothing but work to calm her heart and think on what her missing husband might be doing here, alive.
After a pregnant pause, Billie stepped back from the door and motioned for Jack to enter her hotel room with a hand that was impressively steady. As he passed her to enter, she shook herself barely perceptibly and stood tall, chin raised, watching his back.
Sam would be back soon to accompany her to lunch. Sam, who had spent the night. He would have to wait, she supposed, and she would have to face this surreal moment on an empty stomach, and without tea, which seemed an extra measure of cruelty. She closed the door and placed her handbag on the side table.
Much as Simone Chapelle had warned her, Billie’s estranged husband was changed. The clothes were different—new. Sharp. He wore a neat suit and necktie, and shiny leather shoes, like some kind of bureaucrat, or even an advertising man like the one she was hunting down. Despite these odd details, it really was him, even as he stood like an alien in her room, his eyes downcast. This was Jack Rake, returned from the grave or wherever he’d been since before the end of the war, before Billie’s return to Australia, before she’d pulled herself up by her bootstraps and got on with her life alone, without her husband. Yes, it was him. This was really happening, one part of the mystery solved.
She was not a widow. She’d been abandoned and he was back for a visit.
Jack bloody Rake.
Jack was looking around, perhaps impressed by the well-appointed room, or even somehow sensing that she had not spent the night in it alone. She could still sense Sam in the room, his masculine scent lingering.
It seemed they weren’t quite ready to talk yet, circling each other, silent and watchful. Jack. Those earnest hazel eyes of his were almost the same, almost the ones she knew, though the lines around them were much more pronounced, and when he looked up, actually dared to make eye contact with her, she saw something behind them she had never seen before. Something dark.
How odd to see him. How odd this all was. It occurred to her to be pleased she was fully dressed, her skirt suit and Fighting Red acting as a kind of armor against her vulnerability, and indeed pleased that he had not knocked when she and Sam were sleeping together in her hotel bed, having come dangerously close to intimacy of another kind.
“How could I not come?” she heard her husband mutter softly, as much to himself as to her. He tried unsuccessfully to smile as he looked at his wife, seeming as uncertain in her presence as she was in his.
“A drink?” she offered, on autopilot. Here she was, offering him hospitality. How utterly absurd.
“Yes, I think I will, despite the hour,” he said.
“I gather you still enjoy a whisky.” She poured and handed him a glass, which he instinctively sniffed. The bottle was getting low. At this rate she’d have to get another just to survive Paris.
“Well, I must say I am pleased to see you’re alive,” she said, aloud this time, finding the words surreal. “In truth, we all thought it unlikely in the end, after news about Warsaw and the uprising, and no news about you.”
Dangerously, a tear welled up in her eye at the memory of her distress, her concern for his well-being. She turned away and paced the room, letting the threat of tears settle back down and disappear. There had been quite enough tears spent on this man.
“I know,” he said simply. “I . . . I knew you would be terribly worried.”
A drink. Now. No matter that she had not eaten and had only just woken up an hour before. She poured herself a whisky, and no sooner did she recap the bottle than she wet her throat with the bracing drink. “You didn’t write,” she pointed out, the liquor fresh on her tongue. “I received one letter from Warsaw when you first arrived, and then nothing. But then I suppose you know that.”
Jack did not answer, only stared at those new shoes of his, as if they held the answers. When he turned his head and looked out the window, she caught a glimpse of it—the raised scar above his collar, slashed straight across his neck and snaking up the side. Simone had been right about that, too. Billie fought an urge to ask him about it, or to move forward and cup that face with both hands as she had imagined doing so many times. He had lost weight since she’d seen him, and it seemed to her that there were deeper hollows below his cheekbones. Despite this, there was a kind of heaviness about him that was unfamiliar. A new weight and formality. Or perhaps that was the distance between them?
She didn’t move, just waited for what he would do next, empty glass in her hand. She would get through this. She would. She’d been through worse. Hell, had last night not been worse?
“Mind if I smoke?” she finally said, breaking the tension. She walked over and pulled her cigarette case from her handbag. Jack stepped in to light her fag, her narrowed eyes watching his face. Again, the absurdity. She’d asked him if she could smoke, in her own hotel room. “Oh, of course you don’t mind.” She laughed cynically.
Her husband would be perfectly well aware that he had not written to her. Perhaps she had to make him confirm it, make him confirm that he had not tried to reach her, that it had not been some terrible mistake, some unfortunate turn of events that had prevented him from reuniting with her. In the intervening years she’d picked herself up, reopened her father’s agency, and helped so many women find missing husbands or uncover the truth about cheating partners, and all that time she had still given Jack the benefit of the doubt, imagined him tragically killed in the Warsaw Uprising, imagined him a dead hero, only allowing for the slim possibility of his being alive, somehow separated from her due to circumstances beyond his control. He would be faultless in their separation.
And yet here he is in a new suit and shoes, scarred but fine. Just fine.
After three years without contacting her, what excuse could he possibly have? And why show up now, when she was finally finding some professional success in the new life she had built for herself, even some happiness of her own?
Jack was bent at the shoulders, as if an invisible weight pressed down on him. His was an expression she interpreted as guilt, and his silence seemed to be an admission—no, he had not written her, his wife. Despite their vows, despite their bond, he had not tried to contact her for all this time. Jack took a long breath and Billie continued to watch him, unflinchingly. She would do nothing to ease the moment for him. He had some explaining to do. Rage, relief, and frustration fought for supremacy inside her, but mostly it was the urge to ask if he was okay that overrode all else, and that fact was infuriating.
“Come, sit,” she finally said.
He obeyed, finding a place on her settee. “You’ve come up in the world since you were last in Paris,” he observed, and tried on a soft laugh, which sounded awkward and forced. “We certainly never stayed anywhere like this.”
Jack, beneath her in the dark, the bombs falling in the distance.
Jack, bringing her a hunk of bread while she lay naked on a wool blanket.
Jack, kissing her passionately and murmuring her name, “Billie, Billie, Billie . . .”
“Well, some of us have held on okay, I suppose. I’ve been running an investigation agency in Sydney.”
“I heard. That’s good, Billie.”
Funny, I hadn’t heard a thing about you, she wanted to say.
A knock came at her hotel door, and Billie closed her eyes, readying herself. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said, and stood. She left her empty glass on the side table, noting that she would need to refill it presently, and strode across the room to open the door.
It was Sam. He was dressed in a fresh shirt and trousers, looking vulnerable and utterly wonderful. His eyes went from her pale face to the back of the male figure seated on the settee behind her, and his face dropped.
“I might need to take a rain check, Sam,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”
“Ms. Walker,” he said stiffly. He shifted on his feet, studying her expression, and looking past her into the room again. “Are you okay?” he asked in a low voice, so that only she could hear.
“I am, Sam.” She hesitated. “I believe I am.”
“If you need anything at all, I’m going to be right outside this door, Billie,” he told her.
“You don’t have to do that. I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” His eyes searched hers for answers, for a clue.
“I know him.” Mostly. How much did she really know him? She realized that Sam couldn’t be expected to recognize her long since assumed-dead husband, sitting across the hotel room as he was, his head bent. There was no reason for Sam to guess who her visitor was. Who could?
“You go down and eat something. You must be starved.” She knew Sam’s appetite.
“I’ll be here,” he said. “I’m not leaving.”
Billie couldn’t explain right now, didn’t even know what she would say. She placed a hand on his arm. “Please, for me? Eat something and I’ll see you in your room in maybe an hour. Okay?”
Still clearly hesitant, he nonetheless nodded, and she closed the door softly, blocking Sam from view, and turned to face her visitor. He really was there. Her husband, Jack, sitting in her hotel room. Instead of the ecstasy and relief she had imagined in her dreams, it felt awful, like a weight was sitting on her chest, rather than being lifted. She could hardly breathe.
“Who was that?” he asked, as if he deserved to know.
“That was my assistant,” she said evenly, and crossed the room to return to the settee. He didn’t need explanations. She needed explanations.
“You have an assistant? You’ve done well,” Jack remarked.
Three years of wondering if her husband was dead, only to find out he’d simply been . . . what? Avoiding her? She wasn’t quite sure what he meant by “done well.” This wasn’t quite how doing well was supposed to feel.
“He mustn’t tell anyone I’m here. Please.”
Jack’s plea was a surprise. “I see. Well, he doesn’t know who you are yet, Jack. Besides, Sam doesn’t have anyone to tell in Paris. He knows even fewer people here than I do now. Why can’t anyone know you are here?”
“My work. I can’t talk about it,” he said cryptically. “You saw Simone. I was pleased by that, though I suppose she told you about our encounter at the Hôtel Lutetia. That wasn’t supposed to happen . . .”
“How did you know I saw her?”
“I know,” he said. “This must all seem so strange to you,” he added, staring off at the view as if he could see past the skyline of Paris all the way to where his mind was fixed, in some faraway place. “Paris held up okay, didn’t it?” he said.
There’d been no Blitz here. No bombs had torn apart the very heart of Paris. The people of Paris, well, that was a different matter. And what of her heart, now? “Is this where you’re spending your time now—Paris—or did you seek me out?” she demanded.
“Both. But yes, I am . . . in Paris these days.”
Interesting. “You came here to tell me what happened, did you? To get that off your chest? Now that I know you’re alive? Have you spoken to Simone? Is that how you knew where I was?”
Would she suggest he come, without warning Billie first? Surely not. But then, Billie had been sleeping in, with Sam, and a Do Not Disturb sign on her door.
Billie hadn’t dared to believe Jack was alive, but she should have trusted that Simone would be right about seeing him. All Billie could do now was refill his glass, and then her glass, raise it to her mouth, and take a swig to partially replace the sting of grief in her throat with another, more immediate kind. It did nothing to obliterate the pain, though. Not really. And again her glass was empty. She looked at it, disappointed, and took her seat on the settee—the settee on which she had, only the night before, been kissing Samuel Baker, breaking years of romantic drought, tortured by the fate of this man she had married as the world was at war. The world was an ever-changing, always surprising thing, she concluded. Always surprising.
“What brings you all the way here? What’s the case?” he asked, as if that was the topic of conversation. “I was pleased when I’d heard you’d reopened your father’s private inquiry agency. Like I said.”
Billie leaned back on the settee. “We’re going to talk about me, are we? Okay, let’s talk about me. I’m here on a missing person case,” she said, and paused. “A missing husband. Ironic, isn’t it? He went missing in ’45.”
Jack didn’t answer, but removed a blue pack of Gauloises Caporal from the pocket of his suit, tapped a gasper and lit it. “I hear you’re going by Ms.”
“I am. And you’re going by . . . What is it these days, anyway? John Doe, perhaps?”
“I deserve that,” he said. He sunk down on the settee, one hand holding his cigarette, and sipped his whisky. Jack and his whisky. She would have to choose another drink from here on.
“Why are you here, Jack?” she asked him. “Be honest with me.”
“To see you.” He shrugged. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“You say that as if you couldn’t have just written.”
There was a long silence. “I couldn’t,” he admitted with some reluctance.
“Why? What happened in Warsaw?”
Billie had found all the information she could, and every piece had supported the conclusion that her husband had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, his luck finally running out.
“I was almost killed, Billie. I should not even be here,” he said, and went silent for a moment. “Warsaw was . . . brutal. Unlike anything I’d seen before. Himmler’s orders were that it be completely destroyed and the civilian population exterminated.”
As reporters, they’d covered Kristallnacht together, the deadly pogrom against the Jews in Austria in 1938. What they’d witnessed still haunted Billie. It was hard to imagine worse, though she did not doubt him.
“Tell me,” Billie said. She wanted to know. She needed to know.
Jack inhaled deeply and let out a plume of smoke that drifted in the air. “The Polish were betrayed. The Brits sent some supply drops, but not enough and many didn’t make it through and were dropped in Italy. The Americans sent one. One. And the Red Army did nothing to assist. There were mass executions, Billie. Himmler ordered the Nazis to kill Polish civilians,” Jack explained. “They went from house to house, the SS and German police, shooting everyone they found and burning the bodies.”
The Wola massacre. Billie knew of it.
“I was at the Warsaw Ghetto. The resistance had liberated the Gęsiówka concentration camp, freeing about three hundred and fifty Jews. There was hope there for a moment . . .”
“But what happened to you, Jack? What happened to us?” she pressed. “I’m not going to ask anything of you. Not anymore. But you owe me this, the truth . . . I think you know that, and that’s why you’re here.”
He doubled over and held his head in his hands, seeming to diminish before her eyes. She fought the urge to comfort him. That was not her job. Not anymore. He’d seen to that.
“Yes, you deserve to know,” he said.
Oh, here it comes. Out with it, she thought.
“There was a woman.” The words came out forced, like they caused him pain.
Billie stood up straight and loosened her suit jacket, barely aware of what she was doing. A woman. The way he’d said the words, she was pretty sure she knew what was coming next, had all but concluded it, and now her stomach prepared itself for the inevitable, sinking lower, lower. This was not the first time she’d considered the possibility, but now here it was, the reality before her, whether she wanted to know or not. All of the conflicting emotions she’d felt at his presence vanished in an instant. She felt cold inside. Emptied.
