Sidney Sheldon
The Other Side of Midnight

Dedication

To Jorja

who pleasures me in a thousand ways

Prologue

Athens: 1947

Through the dusty windshield of his car Chief of Police Georgios Skouri watched the office buildings and hotels of down-town Athens collapse in a slow dance of disintegration, one after the other like rows of giant pins in some cosmic bowling alley.

‘Twenty minutes,’ the uniformed policeman at the wheel promised. ‘No traffic.’

Skouri nodded absently and stared at the buildings. It was an illusion that never ceased to fascinate him. The shimmering heat from the pitiless August sun enveloped the buildings in undulating waves that made them seem to be cascading down to the streets in a graceful waterfall of steel and glass.

It was ten minutes past noon, and the streets were almost deserted, but even the few pedestrians abroad were too lethargic to give more than a passing curious glance at the three police cars racing east towards Hellenikon, the airport that lay twenty miles from the centre of Athens. Chief Skouri was riding in the first car. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have stayed in his comfortable, cool office while his subordinates went out to work in the blazing noon heat, but these circumstances were far from ordinary and Skouri had a twofold reason for being here personally. First, in the course of this day planes would be arriving carrying VIPs from various parts of the globe, and it was necessary to see that they were welcomed properly and whisked through Customs with a minimum of bother. Second, and more important the airport would be crowded with foreign newspaper reporters and newsreel cameramen. Chief Skouri was not a fool, and it had occurred to him as he had shaved that morning that it would do no harm to his career if he were shown in newsreels as he took the eminent visitors into his charge. It was an extraordinary stroke of fate that had decreed that a worldwide event as sensational as this one had occurred in his domain, and he would be stupid not to take advantage of it. He had discussed it in great detail with the two people in the world closest to him: his wife and his mistress. Anna, a middle-aged, ugly, bitter woman of peasant stock, had ordered him to keep away from the airport and stay in the background so that he could not be blamed if anything went wrong. Melina, his sweet, beautiful young angel, had advised him to greet the dignitaries. She agreed with him that an event like this could catapult him into instant fame. If Skouri handled this well, at the very least he would get a raise in salary and – God willing – might even be made Commissioner of Police when the present Commissioner retired. For the hundredth time Skouri reflected on the irony that Melina was his wife and Anna was his mistress, and he wondered again where he had gone wrong.

Now Skouri turned his thoughts to what lay ahead. He must make certain that everything went perfectly at the airport. He was bringing with him a dozen of his best men. His main problem, he knew, would be controlling the press. He had been astonished by the number of important newspaper and magazine reporters that had poured into Athens from all over the world. Skouri himself had been interviewed six times – each time in a different language. His answers had been translated into German, English, Japanese, French, Italian and Russian. He had just begun to enjoy his new celebrity when the Commissioner had called to inform him that he felt it was unwise for the Chief of Police to comment publicly on a murder trial that had not yet taken place. Skouri was sure that the Commissioner’s real motivation was jealousy, but he had prudently decided not to press the issue and had refused all further interviews. However, the Commissioner certainly could not complain if he, Skouri, happened to be at the airport at the centre of activity while the newsreel cameras were photographing the arriving celebrities.

As the car sped down Sygrou Avenue and swung left at the sea towards Phaleron, Skouri felt a tightening in his stomach. They were now only five minutes from the airport. He mentally checked over the list of celebrities who would be arriving in Athens before nightfall.

Armand Gautier was suffering from airsickness. He had a deep-seated fear of flying that stemmed from an excessive love of himself and his life and that, combined with the turbulence usually found off the coast of Greece in summer, had made him violently nauseous. He was a tall, ascetically thin man with scholarly features, a high forehead and a perpetually sardonic mouth. At twenty-two Gautier had helped create La Nouvelle Vague in France’s struggling movie industry and in the years that followed had gone on to even bigger triumphs in the theatre. Now acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest directors, Gautier lived his role to the hilt. Until the last twenty minutes it had been a most pleasant flight. The stewardesses recognizing him had catered to his needs and had let him know they were available for other activities. Several passengers had come up to him during the flight to say how much they admired his films and plays, but he was most interested in the pretty English University student who was attending St Anne’s at Oxford. She was writing a thesis on the theatre for her master’s and had chosen Armand Gautier as her subject. Their conversation had gone well until the girl had brought up the name of Noelle Page.

‘You used to be her director, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘I hope I can get into her trial. It’s going to be a circus.’

Gautier found himself gripping the sides of his seat, and the strength of his reaction surprised him. Even after all these years the memory of Noelle evoked a pain in him that was as sharp as ever. No one had ever touched him as she had, and no one ever would again. Since Gautier had read of Noelle’s arrest three months earlier, he had been able to think of nothing else. He had cabled her and written her, offering to do whatever he could to help, but he had never received a reply. He had had no intention of attending her trial, but he knew he could not stay away. He told himself that it was because he wanted to see whether she had changed since they had lived together. And yet he admitted to himself there was another reason. The theatrical part of him had to be there to view the drama, to watch Noelle’s face as the judge told her whether she was to live or die.

The metallic voice of the pilot came over the intercom to announce that they would be landing in Athens in three minutes, and the excitement of the anticipation of seeing Noelle again made Armand Gautier forget his airsickness.

Dr Israel Katz was flying to Athens from Capetown, where he was the resident neurosurgeon and chief of staff at Groote Schuur, the large new hospital that had just been built. Israel Katz was recognized as one of the leading neurosurgeons in the world. Medical journals were filled with his innovations. His patients included a prime minister, a president and a king.

He leaned back in the seat of the BOAC plane, a man of medium height, with a strong, intelligent face, deep-set brown eyes and long, slender, restless hands. Dr Katz was tired, and because of that he began to feel the familiar pain in a right leg that was no longer there, a leg amputated six years earlier by a giant with an axe.

It had been a long day. He had done predawn surgery, visited half a dozen patients and then walked out of a Board of Directors’ meeting at the hospital in order to fly to Athens for the trial. His wife, Esther, had tried to dissuade him.

‘There is nothing you can do for her now, Israel.’

Perhaps she was right, but Noelle Page had once risked her life to save his and he owed her something. He thought of Noelle now, and he felt the same indescribable feeling that he had felt whenever he had been with her. It was as though the mere memory of her could dissipate the years that separated them. It was romantic fantasy, of course. Nothing could ever bring those years back. Dr Israel Katz felt the plane shudder as the wheels were lowered and it started its descent. He looked out the window and spread out below him was Cairo, where he would transfer to a TAE plane to Athens, and Noelle. Was she guilty of murder? As the plane headed for the runway he thought about the other terrible murder she had committed in Paris.

Philippe Sorel stood at the railing of his yacht watching the harbour of Piraeus moving closer. He had enjoyed the sea voyage because it was one of the rare opportunities he had to escape from his fans. Sorel was one of the few sure box-office attractions in the world, and yet the odds against his ever rising to stardom had been tremendous. He was not a handsome man. On the contrary. He had the face of a boxer who had lost his last dozen matches, his nose had been broken several times, his hair was thin and he walked with a slight limp. None of these things mattered, for Philippe Sorel had sex appeal. He was an educated, soft-spoken man, and the combination of his innate gentleness and truck-driver’s face and body drove the women frantic and made men look up to him as a hero. Now as his yacht approached the harbour, Sorel wondered again what he was doing here. He had postponed a movie that he had wanted to make in order to attend Noelle’s trial. He was only too well aware of what an easy target he would be for the press as he sat in the courtroom every day, completely unprotected by his press agents and managers. The reporters were certain to misunderstand his attendance and think that it was a bid to reap publicity from the murder trial of his former mistress. Any way he looked at it, it was going to be an agonizing experience, but Sorel had to see Noelle again, had to find out if there was some way in which he could help her. As the yacht began to slide into the white-stoned breakwater of the harbour, he thought about the Noelle he had known, lived with and loved, and he came to a conclusion: Noelle was perfectly capable of murder.

As Philippe Sorel’s yacht was approaching the coast of Greece, the Special Assistant to the President of the United States was in a Pan American Clipper, one hundred air miles northwest of the Hellenikon Airport. William Fraser was in his fifties, a handsome grey-haired man with a craggy face and an authoritative manner. He was staring at a brief in his hand, but he had not turned a page or stirred for more than an hour. Fraser had taken a leave of absence to make this journey, even though it had come at a most inconvenient time, in the midst of a congressional crisis. He knew how painful the next few weeks were going to be for him, and yet he felt that he had no choice. This was a journey of vengeance, and the thought filled Fraser with a cold satisfaction. Deliberately Fraser forced his thoughts away from the trial that would begin tomorrow and looked out the window of the plane. Far below he could see an excursion boat bobbing its way towards Greece, its coast looming in the distance.

Auguste Lanchon had been seasick and terrified for three days. He was seasick because the excursion boat which he had boarded in Marseille had been caught in the tail end of a mistral, and he was terrified because he was afraid that his wife would find out what he was doing. Auguste Lanchon was in his sixties, a fat, bald-headed man with small stumpy legs and a pockmarked face with porcine eyes and thin lips that constantly had a cheap cigar clamped between them. Lanchon owned a dress shop in Marseille and he could not afford – or at least that is what he constantly told his wife – to take a vacation like rich people. Of course, he reminded himself, this was not truly a vacation. He had to see his darling Noelle once again. In the years since she had left him, Lanchon had followed her career avidly in the gossip columns, in newspapers and magazines. When she had starred in her first play, he had taken the train all the way to Paris to see her, but Noelle’s stupid secretary had kept them apart. Later he had watched Noelle’s movies, seeing them again and again and remembering how she had once made love to him. Yes, this trip would be expensive, but Auguste Lanchon knew that it would be worth every sou of it. His precious Noelle would remember the good times they used to have together, and she would turn to him for protection. He would bribe a judge or some other official – if it did not cost too much – and Noelle would be freed, and he would set her up in a little apartment in Marseille where she would always be available to him when he wanted her.

If only his wife did not find out what he was doing.

In the city of Athens Frederick Stavros was working in his tiny law office on the second floor of an old run-down building in the poor Monastiraki section of the city. Stavros was an intense young man, eager and ambitious, struggling to make a living from his chosen profession. Because he could not afford an assistant, he was forced to do all the tedious background legal research himself. Ordinarily he hated this part of his work, but this time he did not mind because he knew that if he won this case his services would be in such demand that he would never have to worry again for the rest of his life. He and Elena could be married and begin to raise a family. He would move into a suite of luxurious offices, hire law clerks and join a fashionable club like the Athenee Lesky, where one met affluent potential clients. The metamorphosis had already begun. Every time Frederick Stavros walked out into the streets of Athens, he was recognized and stopped by someone who had seen his picture in the newspaper. In a few short weeks he had jumped from anonymity to the attorney who was defending Larry Douglas. In the privacy of his soul Stavros admitted to himself that he had the wrong client. He would have preferred to be defending the glamorous Noelle Page instead of a nonentity like Larry Douglas, but he himself was a nonentity. It was enough that he, Frederick Stavros, was a major participant in the most sensational murder case of the century. If the accused were acquitted, there would be enough glory for everyone. There was only one thing that plagued Stavros, and he thought about it constantly. Both defendants were charged with the same crime, but another attorney was defending Noelle Page. If Noelle Page was found innocent, and Larry Douglas was convicted … Stavros shuddered and tried not to think about it. The reporters kept asking him whether he thought the defendants were guilty. He smiled to himself at their naïveté. What did it matter whether they were guilty or innocent? They were entitled to the best legal defence that money could buy. In his case he admitted that the definition was stretched a bit. But in the case of Noelle Page’s lawyer … ah, that was something else again. Napoleon Chotas had undertaken her defence, and there was no more brilliant criminal lawyer in the world. Chotas had never lost an important case. As he thought about that, Frederick Stavros smiled to himself. He would not have admitted it to anyone, but he was planning to ride to victory on Napoleon Chotas’ talent.

While Frederick Stavros was toiling in his dingy law office, Napoleon Chotas was attending a black-tie dinner party at a luxurious home in the fashionable Kolonaki section of Athens. Chotas was a thin, emaciated-looking man with the large, sad eyes of a bloodhound in a corrugated face. He concealed a brilliant, incisive brain behind a mild, vaguely baffled manner. Now toying with his dessert, Chotas sat, preoccupied, thinking about the trial that would begin tomorrow. Most of the conversation that evening had centred around the forthcoming trial. The discussion had been a general one, for the guests were too discreet to ask him direct questions. But towards the end of the evening as the ouzo and brandy flowed more freely, the hostess asked, ‘Tell us, do you think they are guilty?’

Chotas replied innocently, ‘How could they be? One of them is my client.’ He drew appreciative laughter.

‘What is Noelle Page really like?’

Chotas hesitated. ‘She’s a most unusual woman,’ he replied carefully. ‘She’s beautiful and talented – ’ To his surprise he found that he was suddenly reluctant to discuss her. Besides, there was no way one could capture Noelle with words. Until a few months ago he had only been dimly aware of her as a glamorous figure flitting through the gossip columns and adorning the covers of movie magazines. He had never laid eyes on her, and if he had thought of her at all, it had been with the kind of indifferent contempt he felt towards all actresses. All body and no brain. But, God, how wrong he had been! Since meeting Noelle he had fallen hopelessly in love with her. Because of Noelle Page he had broken his cardinal rule: Never become emotionally involved with a client. Chotas remembered vividly the afternoon he had been approached to undertake her defence. He had been in the midst of packing for a trip that he and his wife were going to make to New York where their daughter had just had her first baby. Nothing, he had believed, could have stopped him from making that journey. But it had only taken two words. In his mind’s eye he saw his butler walk into the bedroom, hand him the telephone and say, ‘Constantin Demiris.’

The island was inaccessible except by helicopter and yacht, and both the airfield and the private harbour were patrolled twenty-four hours a day by armed guards with trained German shepherds. The island was Constantin Demiris’ private domain, and no one intruded without an invitation. Over the years its visitors had included kings and queens, presidents and ex-presidents, movie stars, opera singers and famous writers and painters. They had all come away awed. Constantin Demiris was the third wealthiest, and one of the most powerful men in the world, and he had taste and style and knew how to spend his money to create beauty.

Demiris sat in his richly panelled library now, relaxed in a deep armchair, smoking one of the flat-shaped Egyptian cigarettes especially blended for him, thinking about the trial that would begin in the morning. The press had been trying to get to him for months, but he had simply made himself unavailable. It was enough that his mistress was going to be tried for murder, enough that his name would be dragged into the case, even indirectly. He refused to add to the furore by granting any interviews. He wondered what Noelle was feeling now, at this moment, in her cell in the Nikodemous Street Prison. Was she asleep? Awake? Filled with panic at the ordeal that lay before her? He thought of his last conversation with Napoleon Chotas. He trusted Chotas and knew that the lawyer would not fail him. Demiris had impressed upon the attorney that it did not matter to him whether Noelle was innocent or guilty. Chotas was to see to it that he earned every penny of the stupendous fee that Constantin Demiris was paying him to defend her. No, he had no reason to worry. The trial would go well. Because Constantin Demiris was a man who never forgot anything, he remembered that Catherine Douglas’ favourite flowers were Triantafylias, the beautiful roses of Greece. He reached forwards and picked up a note pad from his desk. He made a notation. Triantafylias. Catherine Douglas.

It was the least he could do for her.

PART ONE

Chapter One

Catherine

Chicago: 1919–1939

Every large city has a distinctive image, a personality that gives it its own special cachet. Chicago in the 1920’s was a restless, dynamic giant, crude and without manners, one booted foot still in the ruthless era of the tycoons who helped give birth to it: William B. Ogden and John Wentworth, Cyrus McCormick and George M. Pullman. It was a kingdom that belonged to the Philip Armours and Gustavus Swifts and Marshall Fields. It was the domain of cool professional gangsters like Hymie Weiss and Scarface Al Capone.

One of Catherine Alexander’s earliest memories was of her father taking her into a bar with a saw-dust-covered floor and swinging her up to the dizzyingly high stool. He ordered an enormous glass of beer for himself and a Green River for her. She was five years old, and she remembered how proud her father was as strangers crowded around to admire her. All the men ordered drinks and her father paid for them. She recalled how she had kept pressing her body against his arm to make sure he was still there. He had only returned to town the night before, and Catherine knew that he would soon leave again. He was a travelling salesman, and he had explained to her that his work took him to distant cities and he had to be away from her and her mother for months at a time so that he could bring back nice presents. Catherine had desperately tried to make a deal with him. If he would stay with her, she would give up the presents. Her father had laughed and said what a precocious child she was and then had left town, and it was six months before she saw him again. During those early years her mother whom she saw every day seemed a vague, shapeless personality, while her father, whom she saw only on brief occasions, was vivid and wonderfully clear. Catherine thought of him as a handsome, laughing man, full of sparkling humour and warm, generous gestures. The occasions when he came home were like holidays, full of treats and presents and surprises.

When Catherine was seven, her father was fired from his job, and their life took on a new pattern. They left Chicago and moved to Gary, Indiana, where he went to work as a salesman in a jewellery store. Catherine was enrolled in her first school. She had a wary, arms-length relationship with the other children and was terrified of her teachers, who misinterpreted her lonely standoffishness as conceit. Her father came home to dinner every night, and for the first time in her life Catherine felt that they were a real family, like other families. On Sunday the three of them would go to Miller Beach and rent horses and ride for an hour or two along the sand dunes. Catherine enjoyed living in Gary, but six months after they moved there, her father lost his job again and they moved to Harvey, a suburb of Chicago. School was already in session, and Catherine was the new girl, shut out from the friendships that had already been formed. She became known as a loner. The children, secure in the safety of their own groups, would come up to the gangly newcomer and ridicule her cruelly.

During the next few years Catherine donned an armour of indifference, which she wore as a shield against the attacks of the other children. When the armour was pierced, she struck back with a trenchant, caustic wit. Her intention was to alienate her tormentors so that they would leave her alone, but it had an unexpectedly different affect. She worked on the school paper, and in her first review about a musical that her classmates had staged, she wrote, ‘Tommy Belden had a trumpet solo in the second act, but he blew it.’ The line was widely quoted, and – surprise of surprises – Tommy Belden came up to her in the hall the next day and told Catherine that he thought it was funny.

In English the students were assigned Captain Horatio Hornblower to read. Catherine hated it. Her book report consisted of one sentence: ‘His barque was worse than his bight,’ and her teacher, who was a weekend sailor, gave her an ‘A.’ Her classmates began to quote her remarks and in a short time she was known as the school wit.

That year Catherine turned fourteen and her body was beginning to show the promise of a ripening woman. She would examine herself in the mirror for hours on end, brooding about how to change the disaster she saw reflected. Inside she was Myrna Loy, driving men mad with her beauty, but her mirror – which was her bitter enemy – showed hopelessly tangled black hair that was impossible to manage, solemn grey eyes, a mouth that seemed to grow wider by the hour and a nose that was slightly turned up. Maybe she wasn’t really ugly, she told herself cautiously, but on the other hand no one was going to knock down doors to sign her up as a movie star. Sucking in her cheeks and squinting her eyes sexily she tried to visualize herself as a model. It was depressing. She struck another pose. Eyes open wide, expression eager, a big friendly smile. No use. She wasn’t the All-American type either. She wasn’t anything. Her body was going to be all right, she dourly supposed, but nothing special. And that, of course, was what she wanted more than anything in the world: to be something special, to be Somebody, to be Remembered, and never, never, never, never, to die.

The summer she was fifteen, Catherine came across Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy and for the next two weeks she spent an hour a day before her mirror, willing her reflection to become beautiful. At the end of that time the only change she could detect was a new patch of acne on her chin and a pimple on her forehead. She gave up sweets, Mary Baker Eddy and looking in the mirror.

Catherine and her family had moved back to Chicago and settled in a small, dreary apartment on the north side, in Rogers Park, where the rent was cheap. The country was moving deeper into an economic depression. Catherine’s father was working less and drinking more, and he and her mother were constantly yelling at each other in a never-ending series of recriminations that drove Catherine out of the house. She would go down to the beach half a dozen blocks away and walk along the shore, letting the brisk wind give wings to her thin body. She spent long hours staring at the restless grey lake, filled with some desperate longing to which she could not put a name. She wanted something so much that at times it would engulf her in a sudden wave of unbearable pain.

Catherine had discovered Thomas Wolfe, and his books were like a mirror image of the bittersweet nostalgia that filled her, but it was a nostalgia for a future that had not happened yet, as though somewhere, sometime, she had lived a wonderful life and was restless to live it again. She had begun to have her periods, and while she was physically changing into a woman, she knew that her needs, her longings, this aching-wanting was not physical and had nothing to do with sex. It was a fierce and urgent longing to be recognized, to lift herself above the billions of people who teemed the earth, so everyone would know who she was, so when she walked by, they would say, ‘There goes Catherine Alexander, the great – ’ The great what? There was the problem. She did not know what she wanted, only that she ached desperately for it. On Saturday afternoons whenever she had enough money, she would go to the State and Lake Theatre or to the McVickers or the Chicago, and see movies. She would completely lose herself in the wonderful, sophisticated world of Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, laugh with Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler and agonize over Bette Davis’ romantic disasters. She felt closer to Irene Dunne than to her mother.

Catherine was in her senior year at Senn High School and her archenemy, the mirror, had finally become her friend. The girl in the mirror had a lively, interesting face. Her hair was raven black and her skin a soft, creamy white. Her features were regular and fine, with a generous, sensitive mouth and intelligent grey eyes. She had a good figure with firm, well-developed breasts, gently curving hips and shapely legs. There was an air of aloofness about her image, a hauteur that Catherine did not feel, as though her reflection possessed a characteristic that she did not. She supposed that it was part of the protective armour she had worn since her early school days.

The Depression had clutched the nation in a tighter and tighter vice, and Catherine’s father was incessantly involved in big deals that never seemed to materialize. He was constantly spinning dreams, inventing things that were going to bring in millions of dollars. He devised a set of jacks that fitted above the wheels of an automobile and could be lowered by the touch of a button on the dashboard. None of the automobile manufacturers was interested. He worked out a continuously rotating electric sign to carry advertisements inside stores. There was a brief flurry of optimistic meetings and then the idea faded away.

He borrowed money from his younger brother, Ralph, in Omaha to outfit a shoe-repair truck to travel around the neighbourhood. He spent hours discussing the scheme with Catherine and her mother. ‘It can’t fail,’ he explained. ‘Imagine having the shoemaker coming to your door! No one’s ever done it before. I have one Shoe-mobile out now, right? If it only makes twenty dollars a day, that’s a hundred and twenty dollars a week. Two trucks will bring in two hundred and forty a week. Within a year I’ll have twenty trucks. That’s two thousand four hundred dollars a week. A hundred and twenty-five thousand a year. And that’s only the beginning …’ Two months later the shoemaker and the truck disappeared, and that was the end of another dream.

Catherine had hoped to be able to go to Northwestern University. She was the top scholar in her class, but even on a scholarship college would be difficult to manage, and the day was coming, Catherine knew, when she would have to quit school and go to work full time. She would get a job as a secretary, but she was determined that she would never surrender the dream that was going to give such rich, wonderful meaning to her life; and the fact that she did not know what either the dream or the meaning was made it all the more unbearably sad and futile. She told herself that she was probably going through adolescence. Whatever it was, it was hell. Kids are too young to have to go through adolescence, she thought bitterly.

There were two boys who thought they were in love with Catherine. One was Tony Korman who was going to join his father’s law firm one day and who was a foot shorter than Catherine. He had pasty skin and myopic watery eyes that adored her. The other was Dean McDermott, who was fat and shy and wanted to be a dentist. Then of course, there was Ron Peterson, but he was in a category by himself. Ron was Senn High’s football star, and everybody said he was a cinch to go to college on an athletic scholarship. He was tall and broad-shouldered, had the looks of a matinee idol and was easily the most popular boy in school.

The only thing that kept Catherine from instantly getting engaged to Ron was the fact that he was not aware she was alive. Every time she passed him in the school corridor, her heart would begin to pound wildly. She would think up something clever and provocative to say so he would ask her for a date. But when she approached him, her tongue would stiffen, and they would pass each other in silence. Like the Queen Mary and a garbage scow, Catherine thought hopelessly.

The financial problem was becoming acute. The rent was three months overdue, and the only reason they had not been evicted was that the landlady was captivated by Catherine’s father and his grandiose plans and inventions. Listening to him, Catherine was filled with a poignant sadness. He was still his cheerful, optimistic self, but she could see behind the frayed facade. The marvellous, careless charm that had always given a patina of gaiety to everything he did had eroded. He reminded Catherine of a small boy in a middle-aged man’s body spinning tales of the glorious future to hide the shabby failures of the past. More than once she had seen him give a dinner party for a dozen people at Henrici’s and then cheerfully take one of his guests aside and borrow enough to cover the cheque plus a lavish tip, of course. Always lavish, for he had his reputation to maintain. But in spite of all these things and in spite of the fact that Catherine knew that he had been a casual and indifferent father to her, she loved this man. She loved his enthusiasm and smiling energy in a world of frowning, sullen people. This was his gift, and he had always been generous with it.

In the end, Catherine thought, he was better off with his wonderful dreams that would never materialize, than her mother who was afraid to dream.

In April Catherine’s mother died of a heart attack. It was Catherine’s first confrontation with death. Friends and neighbours filled the little apartment, offering their condolences, with the false, whispered pieties that tragedy invokes.

Death had diminished Catherine’s mother to a tiny shrivelled figure without juices or vitality, or perhaps life had done that to her, Catherine thought. She tried to recall memories that she and her mother had shared, laughter that they had had together, moments when their hearts had touched; but it was Catherine’s father who kept leaping into her mind, smiling and eager and gay. It was as though her mother’s life was a pale shadow that retreated before the sunlight of memory. Catherine stared at the waxen figure of her mother in her casket, dressed in a simple black dress with a white collar, and thought what a wasted life it had been. What had it all been for? The feelings Catherine had had years ago came over her again, the determination to be somebody, leave a mark on the world, so she would not end up in an anonymous grave with the world neither knowing nor caring that Catherine Alexander had ever lived and died and been returned to the earth.

Catherine’s Uncle Ralph and his wife, Pauline, flew in from Omaha for the funeral. Ralph was ten years younger than Catherine’s father and totally unlike his brother. He was in the vitamin mail-order business and very successful. He was a large, square man, square shoulders, square jaw, square chin, and, Catherine was sure, a square mind. His wife was a bird of a woman, all flutter and twitter. They were decent enough people, and Catherine knew that her uncle had loaned a great deal of money to his brother, but Catherine felt that she had nothing in common with them. Like Catherine’s mother, they were people without dreams.

After the funeral, Uncle Ralph said that he wanted to talk to Catherine and her father. They sat in the tiny living room of the apartment, Pauline flitting about with trays of coffee and cookies.

‘I know things have been pretty rough for you financially,’ Uncle Ralph said to his brother. ‘You’re too much of a dreamer, always were. But you’re my brother. I can’t let you sink. Pauline and I talked it over. I want you to come to work for me.’

‘In Omaha?’

‘You’ll make a good, steady living and you and Catherine can live with us. We have a big house.’

Catherine’s heart sank. Omaha! It was the end of all her dreams.

‘Let me think it over,’ her father was saying.

‘We’ll be catching the six o’clock train,’ Uncle Ralph replied. ‘Let me know before we leave.’

When Catherine and her father were alone, he groaned, ‘Omaha! I’ll bet the place doesn’t even have a decent barber shop.’

But Catherine knew that the act he was putting on was for her benefit. Decent barber shop or no, he had no choice. Life had finally trapped him. She wondered what it would do to his spirit to have to settle down to a steady, dull job with regular hours. He would be like a captured wild bird beating his wings against his cage, dying of captivity. As for herself, she would have to forget about going to Northwestern University. She had applied for a scholarship but had heard nothing. That afternoon her father telephoned his brother to say that he would take the job.

The next morning Catherine went to see the principal to tell him that she was going to transfer to a school in Omaha. He was standing behind his desk and before she could speak, he said, ‘Congratulations, Catherine, you’ve just won a full scholarship to Northwestern University.’

Catherine and her father discussed it thoroughly that night, and in the end it was decided that he would move to Omaha and Catherine would go to Northwestern and live in one of the dormitories on the campus. And so, ten days later, Catherine took her father down to the La Salle Street station to see him off. She was filled with a deep sense of loneliness at his departure, a sadness at saying goodbye to the person she loved the most; and yet at the same time she was eager for the train to leave, filled with a delicious excitement at the thought that she would be free, living her own life for the first time. She stood on the platform watching the face of her father pressing against the train window for a last look; a shabbily handsome man who still truly believed that one day he would own the world.

On the way back from the station Catherine remembered something and laughed aloud. To take him to Omaha, to a desperately needed job, her father had booked a Drawing Room.

Matriculation day at Northwestern was filled with an almost unbearable excitement. For Catherine it held a special significance that she could not put into words: It was the key that would unlock the door to all the dreams and nameless ambitions that had burned so fiercely within her for so long. She looked around the huge assembly hall where hundreds of students were lined up to register, and she thought: Someday you’ll all know who I am. You’ll say, ‘I went to school with Catherine Alexander.’ She signed up for the maximum number of allowed courses and was assigned to a dormitory. That same morning she found a job working afternoons as a cashier at the Roost, a popular sandwich and malt shop across from the campus. Her salary was fifteen dollars a week, and while it would not afford her any luxuries, it would take care of her school books and basic necessities.

By the middle of her sophomore year Catherine decided that she was probably the only virgin on the entire campus. During the years she was growing up, she had overheard random snatches of conversations as her elders discussed sex. It sounded wonderful, and her strongest fear was that it would be gone by the time she was old enough to enjoy it. Now it looked as though she had been right. At least as far as she was concerned. Sex seemed to be the single topic of conversation at school. It was discussed in the dormitories, in classrooms, in the washrooms and at the Roost. Catherine was shocked by the frankness of the conversations.

‘Jerry is unbelievable. He’s like King Kong.’

‘Are you talking about his cock or his brain?’

‘He doesn’t need a brain, honey. I came six times last night.’

‘Have you ever gone out with Ernie Robbins? He’s small, but he’s mighty.’

‘Alex asked me for a date tonight. What’s the dope?’

‘The dope is Alex. Save yourself the trouble. He took me out to the beach last week. He pulled down my pants and started to grope me, and I started to grope him, but I couldn’t find it.’ Laughter.

Catherine thought the conversations were vulgar and disgusting and she tried not to miss a word. It was an exercise in masochism. As the girls described their sexual exploits, Catherine visualized herself in bed with a boy, having him make wild and frantic love to her. She would feel a physical ache in her groin and press her fists hard against her thighs, trying to hurt herself, to take her mind off the other pain. My God, she thought, I’m going to die a virgin. The only nineteen-year-old virgin at Northwestern. Northwestern, hell, maybe even the United States! The Virgin Catherine. The Church will make me a Saint and they’ll light candles to me once a year. What’s the matter with me? she thought. I’ll tell you, she answered herself. Nobody’s asked you and it takes two to play. I mean, if you want to do it right, it takes two to play.

The name that most frequently cropped up in the girls’ sexual conversations was Ron Peterson. He had enrolled at Northwestern on an athletic scholarship and was as popular here as he had been at Senn High School. He had been elected freshman class president. Catherine saw him in her Latin class the day the term began. He was even better looking than he had been in high school, his body had filled out, and his face had taken on a rugged devil-may-care maturity. After class, he walked towards her, and her heart began to pound.

Catherine Alexander!

Hello, Ron.

Are you in this class?

Yes.

What a break for me.

Why?

Why? Because I don’t know anything about Latin and you’re a genius. We’re going to make beautiful music. Are you doing anything tonight?

Nothing special. Do you want to study together?

Let’s go to the beach where we can be alone. We can study any time.

He was staring at her.

‘Hey! … er —?’ trying to think of her name.

She swallowed, trying desperately to remember, herself. ‘Catherine,’ she said quickly. ‘Catherine Alexander.’

‘Yeah. How about this place! It’s terrific, isn’t it?’

She tried to put eagerness in her voice to please him, agree with him, woo him. ‘Oh yes,’ she gushed, ‘it’s the most —’

He was looking at a stunning blond girl waiting at the door for him. ‘See you,’ he said, and moved away to join the girl.

And that was the end of the Cinderella and Prince Charming story, she thought. They lived happily ever after, he in his harem and she in a windswept cave in Tibet.

From time to time Catherine would see Ron walking along the campus, always with a different girl and sometimes two or three. My God, doesn’t he ever get tired? she wondered. She still had visions that one day he would come to her for help in Latin, but he never spoke to her again.

At night lying in her lonely bed, Catherine would think about all the other girls making love to their boyfriends, and the boy who would always come to her was Ron Peterson. In her mind he would undress her and then she would slowly undress him, the way they always did it in romantic novels, taking off his shirt and gently running her fingers over his chest, then undoing his trousers and pulling down his shorts. He would pick her up and carry her towards the bed. At that point Catherine’s comic sense would get the better of her and he would sprain his back and fall to the floor, moaning and groaning with pain. Idiot, she told herself, you can’t even do it right in your fantasies. Maybe she should enter a nunnery. She wondered if nuns had sexual fantasies and if it was a sin for them to masturbate. She wondered if priests ever had sexual intercourse.

She was sitting in a cool, tree-shaded courtyard in a lovely old abbey outside Rome, trailing her fingers in the sun-warmed water of an ancient fish pond. The gate opened, and a tall priest entered the courtyard. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and a long black cassock and he looked exactly like Ron Peterson.

Ah, scusi, signorina, he murmured, I did not know I had a visitor.

Catherine quickly sprang to her feet. I shouldn’t be here, she apologized. It was just so beautiful I had to sit here and drink it in.

You are most welcome. He moved towards her, his eyes dark and blazing. Mia cara … I lied to you.

Lied to me?

Yes. His eyes were boring into hers. I knew you were here because I followed you.

She felt a thrill go through her. But – but you are a priest.

Bella signorina, I am a man first and a priest afterwards. He lurched forwards to take her in his arms, and he stumbled on the hem of his cassock and fell into the fish pond.

Shit!

Ron Peterson came into the Roost every day after school and would take a seat at the booth in the far corner. The booth would quickly fill up with his friends and become the centre of boisterous conversation. Catherine stood behind the counter near the cash register and when Ron entered, he would give her a pleasant, absent nod and move on. He never addressed her by name. He’s forgotten it, Catherine mused.

But each day when he walked in, she gave him a big smile and waited for him to say hello, ask her for a date, a glass of water, her virginity, anything. She might as well have been a piece of furniture. Examining the girls in the room with complete objectivity she decided she was prettier than all but one girl, the fantastic looking Jean-Anne, the Southern blonde with whom Ron was most often seen, and she was certainly brighter than all of them put together. What in God’s name then was wrong with her? Why was it that not one single boy asked her for a date? She learned the answer the next day.

She was hurrying south along the campus headed for the Roost when she saw Jean-Anne and a brunette whom she did not know, walking across the green lawn towards her.

‘Well, it’s Miss Big Brain,’ Jean-Anne said.

And Miss Big Boobs, Catherine thought enviously. Aloud she said, ‘That was a murderous Lit quiz, wasn’t it?’

‘Don’t be condescending,’ Jean-Anne said coldly. ‘You know enough to teach the Lit course. And that’s not all you could teach us, is it, honey?’

Something in her tone made Catherine’s face begin to redden.

‘I–I don’t understand.’

‘Leave her alone,’ the brunette said.

‘Why should I?’ Jean-Anne asked. ‘Who the hell does she think she is?’ She turned to Catherine. ‘Do you want to know what everyone says about you?’

God, no. ‘Yes.’

‘You’re a lesbo.’

Catherine stared at her, unbelievingly. ‘I’m a what?’

‘A lesbian, baby. You’re not fooling anybody with that holier-than-thou act.’

‘Th – that’s ridiculous,’ Catherine stammered.

‘Did you really think you could fool people?’ Jean-Anne asked. ‘You’re doing everything but carrying a sign.’

‘But I–I never —’

‘The boys get it up for you, but you never let them put it in.’

‘Really – ’ Catherine blurted.

‘Fuck off,’ Jean-Anne said. ‘You’re not our type.’

They walked away, leaving her standing there, numbly staring after them.

That night, Catherine lay in bed, unable to sleep.

How old are you, Miss Alexander?

Nineteen.

Have you ever had sexual intercourse with a man?

Never.

Do you like men?

Doesn’t everyone?

Have you ever wanted to make love to a woman?

Catherine thought about it long and hard. She had had crushes on other girls, on women teachers but that had been part of growing up. Now she thought about making love to a woman, their bodies intertwining, her lips on another woman’s lips, her body being caressed by soft, feminine hands. She shuddered. No! Aloud, she said, ‘I’m normal.’ But if she was normal, why was she lying here like this? Why wasn’t she out somewhere getting laid like everyone else in the world? Perhaps she was frigid. She might need some kind of operation. A lobotomy, probably.

When the Eastern sky began to lighten outside the dormitory window, Catherine’s eyes were still open, but she had made a decision. She was going to lose her virginity. And the lucky man was going to be every maiden’s bedside companion, Ron Peterson.

Chapter Two

Noelle

Marseille – Paris: 1919–1939

She was born a Royal Princess.

Her earliest memories were of a white bassinet covered with a lace canopy, decorated with pink ribbons and filled with soft stuffed animals and beautiful dolls and golden rattles. She quickly learned that if she opened her mouth and let out a cry, someone would hurry to hold and comfort her. When she was six months old her father would take her out in the garden in her perambulator and let her touch the flowers and he would say, ‘They’re lovely, Princess, but you’re more beautiful than any of them.’

At home she enjoyed it when her father lifted her up in his strong arms and carried her to a window where she could look out and see the roofs of the high buildings, and he would say, ‘That’s your Kingdom out there, Princess.’ He would point to the tall masts of ships bobbing at anchor in the bay. ‘Do you see those big ships? One day they’ll all be yours to command.’

Visitors would come to the castle to see her, but only a few special ones were permitted to hold her. The others would stare down at her as she lay in her crib and would exclaim over her unbelievably delicate features, and her lovely blond hair, her soft honey-coloured skin, and her father would proudly say, ‘A stranger could tell she is a Princess!’ And he would lean over her crib and whisper, ‘Someday a beautiful Prince will come and sweep you off your feet.’ And he would gently tuck the warm pink blanket around her and she would drift off to a contented sleep. Her whole world was a roseate dream of ships, tall masts and castles, and it was not until she was five years old that she understood that she was the daughter of a Marseille fishmonger, and that the castles she saw from the window of her tiny attic room were the warehouses around the stinking fish market where her father worked, and that her navy was the fleet of old fishing ships that set out from Marseille every morning before dawn and returned in the early afternoon to vomit their smelly cargo into the waterfront docks.

This was the kingdom of Noelle Page.

The friends of Noelle’s father used to warn him about what he was doing. ‘You mustn’t put fancy ideas in her head, Jacques. She’ll think she’s better than everybody else.’ And their prophecies came true.

On the surface Marseille is a city of violence, the kind of primitive violence spawned in any waterfront town crowded with hungering sailors with money to spend and clever predators to relieve them of it. But unlike the rest of the French, the people of Marseille have a sense of solidarity that comes from a common struggle for survival, for the lifeblood of the town comes from the sea, and the fishermen of Marseille belong to the family of fishermen all over the world. They share alike in the storms and the calm days, the sudden disasters and the bountiful harvests.

So it was that Jacques Page’s neighbours rejoiced at his good fortune in having such an incredible daughter. They too recognized the miracle of how, out of the dung of the dirty, ribald city, a true Princess had been spawned.

Noelle’s parents could not get over the wonder of their daughter’s exquisite beauty. Noelle’s mother was a heavyset, coarse-featured peasant woman with sagging breasts and thick thighs and hips. Noelle’s father was squat, with broad shoulders and the small suspicious eyes of a Breton. His hair was the colour of the wet sand along the beaches of Normandy. In the beginning it had seemed to him that nature had made a mistake, that this exquisite blond fairy creature could not really belong to him and his wife, and that as Noelle grew older she would turn into an ordinary, plain-looking girl like all the other daughters of his friends. But the miracle continued to grow and flourish, and Noelle became more beautiful each day.

Noelle’s mother was less surprised than her husband by the appearance of a golden-haired beauty in the family. Nine months before Noelle had been born, Noelle’s mother had met a strapping Norwegian sailor just off a freighter. He was a giant Viking god with blond hair and a warm, seductive grin. While Jacques was at work, the sailor had spent a busy quarter of an hour in her bed in their tiny apartment.

Noelle’s mother had been filled with fear when she saw how blond and beautiful her baby was. She walked around in dread, waiting for the moment that her husband would point an accusing finger at her and demand to know the identity of the real father. But, incredibly, some ego-hunger in him made him accept the child as his own.

‘She must be a throwback to some Scandinavian blood in my family,’ he would boast to his friends, ‘but you can see that she has my features.’

His wife would listen, nodding agreement, and think what fools men were.

Noelle loved being with her father. She adored his clumsy playfulness and the strange, interesting smells that clung to him, and at the same time she was terrified by the fierceness of him. She would watch wide-eyed as he yelled at her mother and slapped her hard across the face, his neck corded with anger. Her mother would scream out in pain, but there was something beyond pain in her cries, something animal and sexual and Noelle would feel pangs of jealousy and wish she were in her mother’s place.

But her father was always gentle with Noelle. He liked to take her down to the docks and show her off to the rough, crude men with whom he worked. She was known up and down the docks as The Princess and she was proud of this, as much for her father’s sake as for her own.

She wanted to please her father, and because he loved to eat, Noelle began cooking for him, preparing his favourite dishes, gradually displacing her mother in the kitchen.

At seventeen the promise of Noelle’s early beauty had been more than fulfilled. She had matured into an exquisite woman. She had fine, delicate features, eyes a vivid violet colour and soft ash-blond hair. Her skin was fresh and golden as though she had been dipped in honey. Her figure was stunning, with generous, firm, young breasts, a small waist, rounded hips and long shapely legs, with delicate ankles. Her voice was distinctive, soft and mellifluous. There was a strong, smouldering sensuality about Noelle, but that was not her magic. Her magic lay in the fact that beneath the sensuality seemed to lie an untouched island of innocence, and the combination was irresistible. She could not walk down the streets without receiving propositions from passersby. They were not the casual offers that the prostitutes of Marseille received as their daily currency, for even the most obtuse men perceived something special in Noelle, something that they had never seen before and perhaps would never see again, and each was willing to pay as much as he could afford to try to make it a part of himself, however briefly.

Noelle’s father was conscious of her beauty, too. In fact, Jacques Page thought of little else. He was aware of the interest that Noelle aroused in men. Even though neither he nor his wife ever discussed sex with Noelle, he was certain she still had her virginity, a woman’s little capital. His shrewd peasant mind gave long and serious thought to how he could best capitalize on the windfall that nature had unexpectedly bestowed upon him. His mission was to see that his daughter’s beauty paid off as handsomely as possible for Noelle and for him. After all, he had sired her, fed her, clothed her, educated her – she owed him everything. And now it was time for him to be repaid. If he could set her up as some rich man’s mistress, it would be good for her, and he would be able to live the life of ease to which he was entitled. Each day it was getting more and more difficult for an honest man to make a living. The shadow of war had begun to spread across Europe. The Nazis had marched into Austria in a lightning coup that had left Europe stunned. A few months later the Nazis had taken over the Sudeten area and then marched into Slovakia. In spite of Hitler’s assurances that he was not interested in further conquest, the feeling persisted that there was going to be a major conflict.

The impact of events was felt sharply in France. There were shortages in the stores and markets, as the government began to gear for a massive defence effort. Soon, Jacques feared, they would even stop the fishing and then where would he be? No, the answer to his problem was in finding a suitable lover for his daughter. The trouble was that he knew no wealthy men. All his friends were piss-poor like himself, and he had no intention of letting any man near her who could not pay his price.

The answer to Jacques Page’s dilemma was inadvertently supplied by Noelle herself. In recent months Noelle had become increasingly restless. She did well in her classes, but school had begun to bore her. She told her father that she wanted to get a job. He studied her silently, shrewdly weighing the possibilities.

‘What kind of job?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Noelle replied. ‘I might be able to work as a model, papa.’

It was as simple as that.

Every afternoon for the next week Jacques Page went home after work, carefully bathed to get the smell of fish out of his hands and hair, dressed in his good suit and went down to the Canebière, the main street that led from the old harbour of the city to the richer districts. He walked up and down the street exploring all the dress salons, a clumsy peasant in a world of silk and lace, but he neither knew nor cared that he was out of place. He had but one objective and he found it when he reached the Bon Marché. It was the finest dress shop in Marseille, but that was not why he chose it. He chose it because it was owned by Monsieur Auguste Lanchon. Lanchon was in his fifties, an ugly bald-headed man with small stumpy legs and a greedy, twitching mouth. His wife, a tiny woman with the profile of a finely honed hatchet, worked in the fitting room, loudly supervising the tailors. Jacques Page took one look at Monsieur Lanchon and his wife and knew that he had found the solution to his problem.

Lanchon watched with distaste as the shabbily dressed stranger entered the door of his shop. Lanchon said rudely, ‘Yes? What can I do for you?’

Jacques Page winked, poked a thick finger in Lanchon’s chest and smirked, ‘It is what I can do for you, Monsieur. I am going to let my daughter work for you.’

Auguste Lanchon stared at the lout standing before him, an expression of incredulity on his face.

‘You are going to let —’

‘She will be here tomorrow, nine o’clock.’

‘I do not —’

Jacques Page had left. A few minutes later, Auguste Lanchon had completely dismissed the incident from his mind. At nine o’clock the next morning, Lanchon looked up and saw Jacques Page entering the shop. He was about to tell his manager to throw the man out, when behind him he saw Noelle. They were walking towards him, the father and his unbelievably beautiful daughter, and the old man was grinning. ‘Here she is, ready to go to work.’

Auguste Lanchon stared at the girl and licked his lips.

‘Good morning, Monsieur,’ Noelle smiled. ‘My father told me that you had a job for me.’

Auguste Lanchon nodded his head, unable to trust his voice.

‘Yes, I–I think we could arrange something,’ he managed to stammer. He studied her face and figure and could not believe what he saw. He could already imagine what that naked young body would feel like under him.

Jacques Page was saying, ‘Well, I will leave you two to get acquainted,’ and he gave Lanchon a hearty whack on the shoulder and a wink that had a dozen different significances, none of them leaving any doubt in Lanchon’s mind about his intentions.

For the first few weeks Noelle felt that she had been transported to another world. The women who came to the shop were dressed in beautiful clothes and had lovely manners, and the men who accompanied them were a far cry from the crude, boisterous fishermen with whom she had grown up. It seemed to Noelle that for the first time in her life the stench of fish was out of her nostrils. She had never really been aware of it before, because it had always been a part of her. But now everything was suddenly changed. And she owed it all to her father. She was proud of the way he got along with Monsieur Lanchon. Her father would come to the shop two or three times a week and he and Monsieur Lanchon would slip out for a cognac or a beer and when they returned there would be an air of camaraderie between them. In the beginning Noelle had disliked Monsieur Lanchon, but his behaviour towards her was always circumspect. Noelle heard from one of the girls that Lanchon’s wife had once caught him in the stockroom with a model and had picked up a pair of shears and had barely missed castrating him. Noelle was aware that Lanchon’s eyes followed her everywhere she went, but he was always scrupulously polite. ‘Probably,’ she thought, with satisfaction, ‘he is afraid of my father.’

At home the atmosphere suddenly seemed much brighter. Noelle’s father no longer struck her mother and the constant bickering had stopped. There were steaks and roasts to eat, and after dinner Noelle’s father would take out a new pipe and fill it with a rich smelling tobacco from a leather pouch. He bought himself a new Sunday suit. The international situation was worsening and Noelle would listen to discussions between her father and his friends. They all seemed to be alarmed by the imminent threat to their livelihood, but Jacques Page appeared singularly unconcerned.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s troops invaded Poland and two days later Great Britain and France declared war against Germany.

Mobilization was begun and overnight the streets were filled with uniforms. There was an air of resignation about what was happening, a dèjá vu feeling of watching an old movie that one had seen before; but there was no fear. Other countries might have reason to tremble before the might of the German armies but France was invincible. It had the Maginot Line, an impenetrable fortress that could protect France against invasion for a thousand years. A curfew was imposed and rationing was started, but none of those things bothered Jacques Page. He seemed to have changed, to have calmed. The only time Noelle saw him fly into a fury was one night when she was in the darkened kitchen kissing a boy whom she dated occasionally. The lights suddenly went on and Jacques Page stood in the doorway trembling with rage.

‘Get out,’ he screamed at the terrified boy. ‘And keep your hands off my daughter, you filthy pig!’

The boy fled in panic. Noelle tried to explain to her father that they had been doing nothing wrong, but he was too furious to listen.

‘I will not have you throw yourself away,’ he roared. ‘He is a nobody, he is not good enough for my Princess.’

Noelle lay awake that night marvelling at how much her father loved her and vowing that she would never do anything to distress him again.

One evening just before closing time a customer came into the shop and Lanchon asked Noelle to model some dresses. By the time Noelle finished, everyone had left the shop except Lanchon and his wife, who was working on the books in the office. Noelle went into the empty dressing room to change. She was in her bra and pants when Lanchon walked into the room. He stared at her and his lips began to twitch. Noelle reached for her dress, but before she could put it on Lanchon swiftly moved towards her and shoved his hand between her legs. Noelle was filled with revulsion, her skin beginning to crawl. She tried to pull away, but Lanchon’s grip was strong and he was hurting her.

‘You are beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘Beautiful. I will see that you have a good time.’

At that moment Lanchon’s wife called out to him and he reluctantly let go of Noelle and scurried out of the room.

On the way home Noelle debated whether to tell her father what had happened. He would probably kill Lanchon. She detested him and could not bear to be near him, and yet she wanted the job. Besides, her father might be disappointed if she quit. She decided that for the moment she would say nothing and would find a way to handle it herself.

The following Friday Madame Lanchon received a call that her mother was ill in Vichy. Lanchon drove his wife to the railroad station and then raced back to the shop. He called Noelle into his office and told her he was going to take her away for the weekend. Noelle stared at him, thinking at first that it was some kind of joke.

‘We will go to Vienne,’ he babbled. ‘There is one of the great restaurants of the world there, Le Pyramide. It is expensive, but it doesn’t matter, I can be very generous to those who are good to me. How soon can you be ready?’

She stared at him. ‘Never’ was all she could bring herself to say. ‘Never.’ And she turned and fled into the front of the shop. Monsieur Lanchon looked after her for a moment, his face mottled with fury, then snatched up the telephone on his desk. An hour later Noelle’s father walked into the shop. He made straight for Noelle and her face lit up with relief. He had sensed that something was wrong and had come to rescue her. Lanchon was standing at the door to his office. Noelle’s father took her arm and hurried her into Lanchon’s office. He swung around to face her.

‘I’m so glad you came, Papa,’ Noelle said. ‘I —’

‘Monsieur Lanchon tells me that he made you a splendid offer and you refused him.’

She stared at him, bewildered. ‘Offer? He asked me to go away with him for the weekend.’

‘And you said no?’

Before Noelle could answer, her father drew his hand back and slapped her hard across the cheek. She stood there in stunned disbelief, her ears ringing, and through a filmy haze heard her father saying, ‘Stupid! stupid! It’s time you started thinking of someone besides yourself, you selfish little bitch!’ And he hit her again.

Thirty minutes later as her father stood at the kerb watching them drive off, Noelle and Monsieur Lanchon left for Vienne.

The hotel room consisted of a large double bed, cheap furniture and a washstand and basin in one corner. Monsieur Lanchon was not a man to throw away his money. He gave the bellboy a small tip and the moment the bellboy left, Lanchon turned towards Noelle and began to tear off her clothes. He cupped her breasts in his hot, moist hands and squeezed them hard.

‘My God, you are beautiful,’ he panted. He pulled down her skirt and pants and pushed her onto the bed. Noelle lay there unmoving, uncaring, as though she were suffering from some kind of shock. She had not uttered one word driving down in the car. Lanchon hoped that she was not ill. He could never explain it to the police or, God forbid, his wife. He hastily took off his clothes, throwing them on the floor and then moved onto the bed beside Noelle. Her body was even more splendid than he had anticipated.

‘You father tells me you have never been fucked.’ He grinned. ‘Well, I am going to show you what a man feels like.’ He rolled his plump belly on top of her and thrust his organ between her legs. He began to push harder and harder, forcing himself into her. Noelle felt nothing. In her mind she was listening to her father yelling. You should be grateful to have a kind gentleman like Monsieur Lanchon wanting to take care of you. All you have to do is be nice to him. You will do it for me. And for yourself. The whole scene had been a nightmare. She was sure that her father had somehow misunderstood, but when she started to explain, he had struck her again and begun screaming, ‘You will do as you are told. Other girls would be grateful for your chance.’ Her chance. She looked up at Lanchon, the squat ugly body, the panting animal face with its piggish eyes. This was the Prince to whom her father had sold her, her beloved father who cherished her and could not bear to let her waste herself on anyone unworthy. And she remembered the steaks that had suddenly appeared on the table and her father’s new pipes and his new suit and she wanted to vomit.

It seemed to Noelle that in the next few hours she died and was born again. She had died a Princess, and she was reborn a slut. Slowly she had become aware of her surroundings and of what was happening to her. She was filled with a hatred such as she had not known could exist. She would never forgive her father for his betrayal. Oddly enough she did not hate Lanchon, for she understood him. He was a man with the one weakness common to all men. From now on, Noelle decided, that weakness was going to be her strength. She would learn to use it. Her father had been right all along. She was a Princess and the world did belong to her. And now she knew how to get it. It was so simple. Men ruled the world because they had the strength, the money and the power; therefore it was necessary to rule men, or at least one man. But in order to do that one had to be prepared. She had a great deal to learn. And this was the beginning.

She turned her attention to Monsieur Lanchon. She lay under him, feeling, experiencing how the male organ fit and what it could do to a woman.

In his frenzy at having this beautiful creature under his fat, bucking body, Lanchon did not even notice that Noelle simply lay there, but he would not have cared. Just feasting his eyes on her was enough to rouse him to heights of passion he had not felt in years. He was accustomed to the accordioned, middle-aged body of his wife and the tired merchandise of the whores of Marseille, and to find this fresh, young girl under him was like a miracle come into his life.

But the miracle was just beginning for Lanchon. After he had spent himself making love to Noelle for the second time, she spoke and said, ‘Lie still.’ She began to experiment on him with her tongue and her mouth and her hands, trying new things, finding the soft, sensitive areas of his body and working on them until Lanchon cried aloud with pleasure. It was like pressing a series of buttons. When Noelle did this, he moaned and when she did this, he writhed in ecstasy. It was so easy. This was her school, this was her education. This was the beginning of power.

They spent three days there and never once went to Le Pyramide, and during those days and nights, Lanchon taught her the little that he knew about sex, and Noelle discovered a great deal more.

When they drove back to Marseille, Lanchon was the happiest man in all France. In the past he had had quick affairs with shopgirls in a cabinet particuliers, a restaurant that had a private dining room with a couch; he had haggled with prostitutes, been niggardly with presents for his mistresses, and notoriously penurious with his wife and children. Now he found himself saying magnanimously, ‘I’m going to set you up in an apartment, Noelle. Can you cook?’

‘Yes,’ Noelle replied.

‘Good. I will come for lunch every day and we will make love. And two or three nights a week, I will come for dinner.’ He put his hand on her knee and patted it. ‘How does that sound?’

‘It sounds wonderful,’ Noelle said.

‘I will even give you an allowance. Not a large one,’ he added quickly, ‘but enough so you can go out and buy pretty things from time to time. All I ask is that you see no one but me. You belong to me now.’

‘As you wish, Auguste,’ she said.

Lanchon sighed contentedly, and when he spoke, his voice was soft. ‘I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. And do you know why?’

‘No, Auguste.’

‘Because you make me feel young. You and I are going to have a wonderful life together.’

They reached Marseille late that evening, driving in silence, Lanchon with his dreams, Noelle with hers.

‘I will see you in the shop tomorrow at nine o’clock,’ Lanchon said. He thought it over. ‘If you are tired in the morning, sleep a little longer. Come in at nine-thirty.’

‘Thank you, Auguste.’

He pulled out a fistful of francs and held them out.

‘Here. Tomorrow afternoon you will look for an apartment. This will be a deposit to hold it until I can see it.’

She stared at the francs in his hand.

‘Is something wrong?’ Lanchon asked.

‘I want us to have a really beautiful place,’ Noelle said, ‘where we can enjoy being together.’

‘I’m not a rich man,’ he protested.

Noelle smiled understandingly and put her hand on his thigh. Lanchon stared at her a long moment and then nodded.

‘You’re right,’ he said. He reached into his wallet and began peeling off francs, watching her face as he did so.

When she seemed satisfied, he stopped, flushed with his own generosity. After all what did it matter? Lanchon was a shrewd businessman, and he knew that this would insure that Noelle would never leave him.

Noelle watched him as he drove happily away, then she went upstairs, packed her things and removed her savings from her hiding place. At ten o’clock that night, she was on a train to Paris.

When the train pulled into Paris early the next morning, the PLM Station was crowded with those travellers who had eagerly just arrived, and those who were just as eagerly fleeing the city. The din in the station was deafening as people shouted cheerful greetings and tearful farewells, rudely pushing and shoving, but Noelle did not mind. The moment she stepped off the train, before she had even had a chance to see the city, she knew that she was home. It was Marseille that seemed like a strange town and Paris the city to which she belonged. It was an odd, heady sensation, and Noelle revelled in it, drinking in the noises, the crowds, the excitement. It all belonged to her. All she had to do now was claim it. She picked up her suitcase and started towards the exit.

Outside in the bright sunlight with the traffic insanely whizzing around, Noelle hesitated, suddenly realizing that she had nowhere to go. Half a dozen taxis were lined up in front of the station. She got into the first one.

‘Where to?’

She hesitated. ‘Could you recommend a nice inexpensive hotel?’

The driver swung around to stare at her appraisingly. ‘You’re new in town?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded. ‘You’ll be needing a job, I suppose.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘Have you ever done any modelling?’

Noelle’s heart leaped. ‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ she said.

‘My sister works for one of the big fashion houses,’ the driver confided. ‘Just this morning she mentioned that one of the girls quit. Would you like to see if the vacancy is still open?’

‘That would be wonderful,’ Noelle replied.

‘If I take you there, it will cost you ten francs.’

She frowned.

‘It will be worth it,’ he promised.

‘All right.’ She leaned back in the seat. The driver put the taxi in gear and joined the maniacal traffic heading towards the centre of town. The driver chattered as they drove, but Noelle did not hear a word he said. She was drinking in the sights of her city. She supposed that because of the blackout, Paris was more subdued than usual, but to Noelle it seemed a city of pure magic. It had an elegance, a style, even an aroma all its own. They passed Notre Dame and crossed the Pont Neuf to the Right Bank and swung towards Marshall Foch Boulevard. In the distance Noelle could see the Eiffel Tower, dominating the city. Through the rearview mirror, the driver saw the expression on her face.

‘Nice, huh?’

‘It’s beautiful,’ Noelle answered quietly. She still could not believe she was here. It was a Kingdom fit for a Princess … for her.

The taxi pulled up in front of a dark, grey stone building on the rue de Provence.

‘We’re here,’ the driver announced. ‘That’s two francs on the metre and ten francs for me.’

‘How do I know the job will still be open?’ Noelle asked.

The driver shrugged. ‘I told you, the girl just left this morning. If you don’t want to go in, I’ll take you back to the station.’

‘No,’ Noelle said quickly. She opened her purse, took out twelve francs and handed them to the driver. He stared at the money, then looked at her. Embarrassed, she reached into her purse and handed him another franc.

He nodded, unsmiling, and watched her lift her suitcase out of the taxi.

As he started to drive away, Noelle asked, ‘What’s your sister’s name?’

‘Jeanette.’

Noelle stood on the kerb watching the taxi disappear, then turned to look at the building. There was no identifying sign in front, but she supposed that a fashionable dress house did not need a sign. Everyone would know where to find it. She picked up her suitcase, went up to the door and rang the bell. A few moments later the door was opened by a maid wearing a black apron. She looked at Noelle blankly.

‘Yes?’

‘Excuse me,’ Noelle said. ‘I understand that there is an opening for a model.’

The woman stared at her and blinked.

‘Who sent you?’

‘Jeanette’s brother.’

‘Come in.’ She opened the door wider and Noelle stepped into a reception hall done in the style of the 1800’s. There was a large Baccarat chandelier hanging from the ceiling, several more scattered around the hall, and through an open door, Noelle could see a sitting room filled with antique furniture and a staircase leading upstairs. On a beautiful inlaid table were copies of Figaro and L’Echo de Paris. ‘Wait here. I’ll find out if Madame Delys has time to see you now.’

‘Thank you,’ Noelle said. She set her suitcase down and walked over to a large mirror on the wall. Her clothes were wrinkled from the train ride, and she suddenly regretted her impulsiveness in coming here before freshening up. It was important to make a good impression. Still, as she examined herself, she knew that she looked beautiful. She knew this without conceit, accepting her beauty as an asset, to be used like any other asset. Noelle turned as she saw a girl in the mirror coming down the stairs. The girl had a good figure and a pretty face, and was dressed in a long brown skirt and a high-necked blouse. Obviously the quality of models here was high. She gave Noelle a brief smile and went into the drawing room. A moment later Madame Delys entered the room. She was in her forties and was short and dumpy with cold, calculating eyes. She was dressed in a gown that Noelle estimated must have cost at least two thousand francs.

‘Regina tells me that you are looking for a job,’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Noelle replied.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Marseille.’

Madame Delys snorted. ‘The playpen of drunken sailors.’

Noelle’s face fell.

Madame Delys patted her on the shoulder. ‘It does not matter, my dear. How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

Madame Delys nodded. ‘That is good. I think my customers will like you. Do you have any family in Paris?’

‘No.’

‘Excellent. Are you prepared to start work right away?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Noelle assured her eagerly.

From upstairs came the sound of laughter and a moment later a red-headed girl walked down the stairs on the arm of a fat, middle-aged man. The girl was wearing only a thin negligee.

‘Finished already?’ Madame Delys asked.

‘I’ve worn Angela out,’ the man grinned. He saw Noelle. ‘Who’s this little beauty?’

‘This is Yvette, our new girl,’ Madame Delys said. And without hesitation added, ‘She’s from Antibes, the daughter of a Prince.’

‘I’ve never screwed a Princess,’ the man exclaimed. ‘How much?’

‘Fifty francs.’

‘You must be joking. Thirty.’

‘Forty. And believe me, you’ll get your money’s worth.’

‘It’s a deal.’

They turned to Noelle. She had vanished.

Noelle walked the streets of Paris, hour after hour. She strolled along the Champs-Élysées, down one side and up the other, wandering through the Lido Arcade and stopping at every shop to gaze at the incredible cornucopia of jewellery and dresses and leather goods and perfumes, and she wondered what Paris was like when there were no shortages. The wares displayed in the windows were dazzling, and while one part of her felt like a country bumpkin, another part of her knew that one day these things would belong to her. She walked through the Bois and down the rue du Faubourg-St.-Honoré and along the avenue Victor-Hugo, until she began to feel tired and hungry. She had left her purse and suitcase at Madame Delys’, but she had no intention of going back there. She would send for her things.

Noelle was neither shocked nor upset by what had happened. It was simply that she knew the difference between a courtesan and a whore. Whores did not change the course of history: courtesans did. Meanwhile she was without a cent. She had to find a way to survive until she could find a job the next day. Dusk was beginning to brush the sky, and the merchants and hotel doormen were busy putting up blackout curtains against possible air attacks. To solve her immediate problem, Noelle needed to find someone to buy her a good hot dinner. She asked directions from a gendarme and then headed for the Crillon Hotel. Outside, forbidding iron shutters covered the windows, but inside, the lobby was a masterpiece of subdued elegance, soft and understated. Noelle walked in confidently as if she belonged there and took a seat in a chair facing the elevator. She had never done this before, and she was a bit nervous. But she remembered how easy it had been to handle Auguste Lanchon. Men were really very uncomplicated. There was only one lesson a girl had to remember: A man was soft when he was hard and hard when he was soft. So it was only necessary to keep him hard until he gave you what you wanted. Now, looking around the lobby, Noelle decided that it would be a simple matter to catch the eye of an unattached male on his way, perhaps, to a lonely dinner.

‘Pardon, mademoiselle.’

Noelle turned her head to look up at a large man in a dark suit. She had never seen a detective in her life, but there was no doubt whatever in her mind.

‘Is Mademoiselle waiting for someone?’

‘Yes,’ Noelle replied, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘I’m waiting for a friend.’

She was suddenly acutely aware of her wrinkled dress, and the fact that she carried no purse.

‘Is your friend a guest of this hotel?’

She felt a surge of panic rising in her. ‘He – er – not exactly.’

He studied Noelle a moment, then said in a hardened tone. ‘May I see your identification?’

‘I–I don’t have it with me,’ she stammered. ‘I lost it.’

The detective said, ‘Perhaps Mademoiselle will come with me.’ He put a firm hand on her arm, and she rose to her feet.

And at that moment someone took her other arm and said, ‘Sorry I’m late, cheri, but you know how those damned cocktail parties are. You have to blast your way out. Been waiting long?’

Noelle swung around in astonishment to look at the speaker. He was a tall man, his body lean and hard-looking, and he wore a strange, unfamiliar uniform. He had blue-black hair with a widow’s peak and eyes the colour of a dark, stormy sea, with long, thick lashes. His features had the look of an old Florentine coin. It was an irregular face, the two profiles not quite matching, as though the minter’s hand had slipped for an instant. It was a face that was extraordinarily alive and mobile so that you felt it was ready to smile, to laugh, to frown. The only thing that saved it from being femininely beautiful was a strong, masculine chin with a deep cleft in it.

He gestured towards the detective. ‘Is this man bothering you?’ His voice was deep, and he spoke French with a very slight accent.

‘N-no,’ Noelle said, in a bewildered voice.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ the hotel detective was saying. ‘I misunderstood. We have been having a problem here lately with …’ He turned to Noelle. ‘Please accept my apologies, Mademoiselle.’

The stranger turned to Noelle. ‘Well now, I don’t know. What do you think?’

Noelle swallowed and nodded quickly.

The man turned to the detective. ‘Mademoiselle’s being generous. Just watch yourself in the future.’ He took Noelle’s arm and they headed for the door.

When they reached the street, Noelle said, ‘I–I don’t know how to thank you, Monsieur.’

‘I’ve always hated policemen.’ The stranger grinned. ‘Do you want me to get you a taxi?’

Noelle stared at him, the panic beginning to rise in her again, as she remembered her situation. ‘No.’

‘Right. Good night.’ He walked over to the stand and started to get into a taxi, turned around and saw that she was standing there, rooted, staring after him. In the doorway of the hotel was the detective watching. The stranger hesitated, then walked back to Noelle. ‘You’d better get out of here,’ he advised. ‘Our friend’s still interested in you.’

‘I have nowhere to go,’ she replied.

He nodded and reached into his pocket.

‘I don’t want your money,’ she said quickly.

He looked at her in surprise. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘To have dinner with you.’

He smiled and said, ‘Sorry. I have a date, and I’m late already.’

‘Then go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

He shoved the bills back into his pocket. ‘Suit yourself, honey,’ he said. ‘Au ’voir.’ He turned and began walking towards the taxi again. Noelle looked after him, wondering what was wrong with her. She knew she had behaved stupidly, but she also knew that she could not have done anything else. From the first moment she had looked at him she had experienced a reaction that she had never felt before, a wave of emotion so strong that she could almost reach out and touch it. She did not even know his name, and would probably never see him again. Noelle glanced towards the hotel and saw the detective moving purposefully towards her. It was her own fault. This time she would not be able to talk her way out of it. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and as she turned to see who it was, the stranger took her arm and propelled her towards the taxi, quickly opened the door and climbed in beside her. He gave the driver an address. The taxi pulled away, leaving the detective at the kerb, staring after them. ‘What about your date?’ Noelle asked.

‘It’s a party,’ he shrugged. ‘One more won’t make any difference. I’m Larry Douglas. What’s your name?’

‘Noelle Page.’

‘Where are you from, Noelle?’

She turned and looked into his brilliant dark eyes and said, ‘Antibes. I am the daughter of a Prince.’

He laughed, showing even, white teeth.

‘Good for you, Princess,’ he said.

‘Are you English?’

‘American.’

She looked at his uniform. ‘America is not at war.’

‘I’m in the British RAF,’ he explained. ‘They’ve just formed a group of American flyers. It’s called the Eagle Squadron.’

‘But why should you fight for England?’

‘Because England’s fighting for us,’ he said. ‘Only we don’t know it yet.’

Noelle shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that. Hitler is a Boche clown.’

‘Maybe. But he’s a clown who knows what the Germans want: to rule the world.’

Noelle listened, fascinated, as Larry discussed Hitler’s military strategy, the sudden withdrawal from the League of Nations, the mutual defence pact with Japan and Italy, not because of what he was saying but because she enjoyed watching his face as he talked. His dark eyes sparkled with enthusiasm as he spoke, blazing with an overpowering, irresistible vitality.

Noelle had never met anyone like him. He was – that rarity of rarities – a spendthrift with himself. He was open and warm and alive, sharing himself, enjoying life, making sure that everyone around him enjoyed it. He was like a magnet pulling into his orbit everyone who approached.

They arrived at the party, which was being given in a small flat on the rue Chemin Vert. The apartment was filled with a group of laughing, shouting people, most of them young. Larry introduced Noelle to the hostess, a predatory, sexy-looking redhead, and then was swallowed by the crowd. Noelle caught glimpses of him during the evening, surrounded by eager young girls, each trying to capture his attention. And yet there was no ego about him, Noelle thought. It was as though he were totally unaware of how attractive he was. Someone found a drink for Noelle and someone else offered to bring her a plate of food from the buffet, but she was suddenly not hungry. She wanted to be with the American, wanted him away from the girls who crowded around him. Men were coming up to her and trying to start conversations, but Noelle’s mind was elsewhere. From the moment they had walked in, the American had completely ignored her, had acted as though she did not exist. Why not? Noelle thought. Why should he bother with her when he could have any girl at the party? Two men were trying to engage her in conversation, but she could not concentrate. The room had suddenly become unbearably hot. She looked around for a means of escape.

A voice said in her ear, ‘Let’s go,’ and a few moments later she and the American were out on the street, in the cool night air. The city was dark and quiet against the invisible Germans in the sky, and the cars glided through the streets like silent fish in a black sea.

They could not find a taxi, so they walked, had dinner in a little bistro on the place des Victoires and Noelle found that she was starved. She studied the American sitting across from her, and she wondered what it was that had happened to her. It was as though he had touched some wellspring deep within her that she had never even known existed. She had never felt happiness like this before. They talked about everything. She told him about her background, and he told her that he came from South Boston and was Boston Irish. His mother had been born in Kerry County.

‘Where did you learn to speak French so well?’ Noelle asked.

‘I used to spend my summers at Cap D’Antibes when I was a kid. My old man was a stock-market tycoon until the bears got him.’

‘Bears?’

So Larry had to explain to her about the arcane ways of the stock market in America. Noelle did not care what he talked about, so long as he kept talking.

‘Where are you living?’

‘Nowhere.’ She told him about the taxi driver and Madame Delys and the fat man believing she was a Princess and offering to pay forty francs for her, and Larry laughed aloud.

‘Do you remember where the house is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on, Princess.’

When they arrived at the house on the rue de Provence, the door was opened by the same uniformed maid. Her eyes lit up as she saw the handsome young American, then darkened when she saw who was with him.

‘We want to see Madame Delys,’ Larry said. He and Noelle walked into the reception hall. There were several girls in the drawing room beyond. The maid left and a few minutes later Madame Delys entered. ‘Good evening, Monsieur,’ she said to Larry. She turned to Noelle, ‘Ah, I hope you have changed your mind.’

‘She hasn’t,’ said Larry, pleasantly. ‘You have something that belongs to the Princess.’

Madame Delys looked at him questioningly.

‘Her suitcase and purse.’

Madame Delys hesitated a moment, then left the room. A few minutes later the maid returned, carrying Noelle’s purse and suitcase.

‘Merci,’ Larry said. He turned to Noelle. ‘Let’s go, Princess.’

That night Noelle moved in with Larry, to a small, clean hotel on the rue Lafayette. There was no discussion about it, it was inevitable for both of them. When they made love that night, it was more exciting than anything Noelle had ever known, a wild primitive explosion that shook them both. She lay in Larry’s arms all night, holding him close, happier than she had ever dreamed possible.

The next morning they awoke, made love, and went out to explore the city. Larry was a wonderful guide, and he made Paris seem a lovely toy for Noelle’s amusement. They had lunch in the Tuileries, spent the afternoon at Mal Maison and spent hours wandering around the place des Vosges at the end of Notre Dame, the oldest section of Paris, built by Louis XIII. He showed her places that were off the beaten track of the tourists, the place Maubert with its colourful street market and the quai de la Mégisserie with its cages of brightly hued birds and squeaky animals. He took her through the Marché de Buci and they listened to the din of the hawkers, pitching the merits of their bins of fresh tomatoes, their seaweed-bedded oysters, their neatly labelled cheeses. They went to the Du Pont, on Montparnasse. They had dinner on the Bateau Mouche and finished up by having onion soup at four in the morning at Les Halles with the butchers and truck drivers. Before they were through Larry had collected a large group of friends, and Noelle realized that it was because he had the gift of laughter. He had taught her to laugh and she had not known that laughter was within her. It was like a gift from a god. She was grateful to Larry and very much in love with him. It was dawn when they returned to their hotel room. Noelle was exhausted, but Larry was filled with energy, a restless dynamo. Noelle lay in bed watching him as he stood at the window looking at the sun rise over the rooftops of Paris.

‘I love Paris,’ he said. ‘It’s like a temple to the best things that men have ever done. It’s a city of beauty and food and love.’ He turned to her and grinned, ‘Not necessarily in that order.’

Noelle watched as he took off his clothes and climbed into bed beside her. She held him, loving the feel of him, the male smell of him. She thought of her father and how he had betrayed her. She had been wrong to judge all men by him and Auguste Lanchon. She knew now that there were men like Larry Douglas. And she also knew that there could never be anyone else for her.

‘Do you know who the two greatest men who ever lived were, Princess?’ he was asking.

‘You,’ she said.

‘Wilbur and Orville Wright. They gave man his real freedom. Have you ever flown?’ She shook her head. ‘We had a summer place in Montauk – that’s at the end of Long Island – and when I was a kid I used to watch the gulls wheel through the air over the beach, riding the current, and I would have given my soul to be up there with them. I knew I wanted to be a flyer before I could walk. A friend of the family took me up in an old biplane when I was nine, and I took my first flying lesson when I was fourteen. That’s when I’m really alive, when I’m in the air.’

And later:

‘There’s going to be a world war. Germany wants to own it all.’

‘It won’t get France, Larry. No one can cross the Maginot Line.’

He snorted: ‘I’ve crossed it a hundred times.’ She looked at him puzzled. ‘In the air, Princess. This is going to be an air war … my war.’

And later, casually:

‘Why don’t we get married?’

It was the happiest moment of Noelle’s life.

Sunday was a relaxed, lazy day. They had breakfast at a little outdoor café in Montmartre, went back to the room and spent almost the entire day in bed. Noelle could not believe anyone could be so ecstatic. It was pure magic when they made love, but she was just as content to lie there and listen to Larry talk and watch him as he moved restlessly about the room. Just being near him was enough for her. It was odd, she thought, how things worked out. She had grown up being called Princess by her father, and now, even though it had happened as a joke, Larry was calling her Princess. When she was with Larry, she was something. He had restored her faith in men. He was her world, and Noelle knew that she would never need anything more, and it seemed incredible to her that she could be so lucky, that he felt the same way about her.

‘I wasn’t going to get married until this war was over,’ he told her. ‘But to hell with that. Plans are made to be changed, right, Princess?’

She nodded, filled with a happiness that threatened to burst inside her.

‘Let’s get married by some maire in the country,’ Larry said. ‘Unless you want a big wedding?’

Noelle shook her head. ‘The country sounds wonderful.’

He nodded. ‘Deal. I have to report back to my Squadron tonight. I’ll meet you here next Friday. How does that sound?’

‘I–I don’t know if I can stand being away from you that long.’ Noelle’s voice was shaky.

Larry took her in his arms and held her. ‘Love me?’ he asked.

‘More than my life,’ Noelle replied simply.

Two hours later Larry was on his way back to England. He did not let her drive to the airport with him. ‘I don’t like good-byes,’ he said. He gave her a large fistful of franc notes. ‘Buy yourself a wedding gown, Princess. I’ll see you in it next week.’ And he was gone.

Noelle spent the next week in a state of euphoria, going back to the places she and Larry had been, spending hours dreaming about their life together. The days seemed to drag by, the minutes stubbornly refusing to move, until Noelle thought she would go out of her mind.

She went to a dozen shops looking for her wedding dress, and finally she found exactly what she wanted, at Madeleine Vionett. It was a beautiful white organza with a high-necked bodice, long sleeves with a row of six pearl buttons, and three crinoline petticoats. It cost much more than Noelle had anticipated, but she did not hesitate. She used all the money that Larry had given her and nearly all her own savings. Her whole being was centred on Larry. She thought about ways to please him, she searched through her mind for memories that might amuse him, anecdotes that would entertain him. She felt like a schoolgirl.

And so it was that Noelle waited for Friday to come, in an agony of impatience, and when it finally arrived she was up at dawn and spent two hours bathing and dressing, changing clothes and changing again, trying to guess which dress would please Larry most. She put on her wedding gown, but quickly took it off again, afraid that it might bring bad luck. She was in a frenzy of excitement.

At ten o’clock Noelle stood in front of the pier glass in the bedroom, and she knew that she had never looked as beautiful. There was no ego in her appraisal; she was simply pleased for Larry, glad that she could bring him this gift. By noon he had not appeared, and Noelle wished that he had told her what time he expected to arrive. She kept phoning the desk for messages every ten minutes and kept picking up the phone to make sure it was working. By six o’clock that evening, there was still no word from him. By midnight he had not called, and Noelle sat huddled in a chair, staring at the phone, willing it to ring. She fell asleep, and when she woke, it was dawn, Saturday. She was still in the chair, stiff and cold. The dress she had so carefully chosen was wrinkled, and there was a run in her stocking.

Noelle changed clothes and stayed in the room all that day, stationing herself in front of the open window, telling herself that if she stayed there, Larry would appear; if she left, something terrible would happen to him. As Saturday morning lengthened into afternoon, she began to be filled with the conviction that there had been an accident. Larry’s plane had crashed, and he was lying in a field or in a hospital, wounded or dead. Noelle’s mind was filled with ghastly visions. She sat up all night Saturday, sick with worry, afraid to leave the room and not knowing how to reach Larry.

When Noelle had not heard from him by Sunday noon, she could stand it no longer. She had to telephone him. But how? With a war on it was difficult to place an overseas call and she was not even certain where Larry was. She knew only that he flew with the RAF in some American squadron. She picked up the telephone and spoke to the switchboard operator.

‘It is impossible,’ the operator said flatly.

Noelle explained the situation, and whether it was her words or the frantic despair in her voice she never knew, but two hours later she was talking to the War Ministry in London. They could not help her, but they transferred her to the Air Ministry at Whitehall who put her through to Combat Operations, where she was disconnected before she could get any information. It was four more hours before Noelle was reconnected, and by then she was on the verge of hysteria. Air Operations could give her no information and suggested she try the War Ministry.

‘I’ve talked to them!’ Noelle screamed into the phone. She began to sob, and the male English voice at the other end of the phone said in embarrassment, ‘Please, miss, it can’t be that bad. Hold on a moment.’

Noelle held the receiver in her hand, knowing that it was hopeless, certain that Larry was dead and that she would never know how or where he died. And she was about to replace the receiver when the voice spoke in her ear again and said cheerfully, ‘What you want, miss, is the Eagle Squadron. They’re the Yanks, based in Yorkshire. It’s a bit irregular, but I’m going to put you through to Church Fenton, their airfield. Their chaps will be able to help you.’ And the line went dead.

It was eleven o’clock that night before Noelle could get the call through again. A disembodied voice said, ‘Church Fenton Air Base,’ and the connection was so bad that Noelle could barely hear him. It was as though he were speaking from the bottom of the sea. He was obviously having difficulty hearing her. ‘Speak up, please,’ he said. By now, Noelle’s nerves were so frayed that she could hardly control her voice.

‘I’m calling’ – she did not even know his rank. Lieutenant? Captain? Major? ‘I’m calling Larry Douglas. This is his fiancée.’

‘I can’t hear you, miss. Can you speak louder, please?’

On the edge of panic Noelle screamed out the words again, sure that the man at the other end of the phone was trying to conceal from her that Larry was dead. For a miraculous instant the line cleared, and she heard the voice saying as though he were in the next room, ‘Lieutenant Larry Douglas?’

‘Yes,’ she said, holding on tightly to her emotions.

‘Just a moment, please.’

Noelle waited for what seemed an eternity and then the voice came back on the line and said, ‘Lieutenant Douglas is on weekend leave. If it’s urgent, he can be reached at the Hotel Savoy ballroom in London, General Davis’ party.’ And the line went dead.

When the maid came in to clean the room the next morning, she found Noelle on the floor, semiconscious. The maid stared at her a moment, tempted to mind her own business and leave. Why did these things always have to happen in her rooms? She went over and touched Noelle’s forehead. It was burning hot. Grumbling, the maid waddled down the hall and asked the porter to send up the manager. One hour later an ambulance pulled up outside the hotel and two young interns carrying a stretcher were directed to Noelle’s room. Noelle was unconscious. The young intern in charge raised her eyelid, put a stethoscope to her chest and listened to the rales as she breathed. ‘Pneumonia,’ he said to his companion. ‘Let’s get her out of here.’

They lifted Noelle onto the stretcher and five minutes later the ambulance was racing towards the hospital. She was rushed into an oxygen tent, and it was four days before she was fully conscious. She dragged herself reluctantly up from the murky green depths of oblivion, subconsciously knowing something terrible had happened and fighting not to remember what it was. As the awful thing floated closer and closer to the surface of her mind, and she struggled to keep it from herself, it suddenly came to her clear and whole. Larry Douglas. Noelle began to weep, racked with sobs until she finally drifted off into a half-sleep. She felt a hand gently holding hers, and she knew that Larry had come back to her, that everything was all right. Noelle opened her eyes and stared at a stranger in a white uniform, taking her pulse. ‘Well! Welcome back,’ he announced cheerfully.

‘Where am I?’ Noelle asked.

‘L’Hotel-Dieu, the City Hospital.’

‘What am I doing here?’

‘Getting well. You’ve had double pneumonia. I’m Israel Katz.’ He was young, with a strong, intelligent face and deepset brown eyes.

‘Are you my doctor?’

‘Intern,’ he said. ‘I brought you in.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’m glad you made it. We weren’t sure.’

‘How long have I been here?’

‘Four days.’

‘Would you do me a favour?’ she asked weakly.

‘If I can.’

‘Call the Hotel Lafayette. Ask them – ’ she hesitated. ‘Ask them if there are any messages for me.’

‘Well, I’m awfully busy —’

Noelle squeezed his hand fiercely. ‘Please. It’s important. My fiancé is trying to get in touch with me.’

He grinned. ‘I don’t blame him. All right. I’ll take care of it,’ he promised. ‘Now you get some sleep.’

‘Not until I hear from you,’ she said.

He left, and Noelle lay there waiting. Of course Larry had been trying to get in touch with her. There had been some terrible misunderstanding. He would explain it all to her and everything would be all right again.

It was two hours before Israel Katz returned. He walked up to her bed and set down a suitcase. ‘I brought your clothes. I went to the hotel myself,’ he said.

She looked up at him, and he could see her face tense.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘No messages.’

Noelle stared at him for a long time, then turned her face to the wall, dry-eyed.

Noelle was released from the hospital two days later. Israel Katz came to say good-bye to her. ‘Do you have any place to go?’ he asked. ‘Or a job?’

She shook her head.

‘What work do you do?’

‘I’m a model.’

‘I might be able to help you.’

She remembered the taxi driver and Madame Delys. ‘I don’t need any help,’ she said.

Israel Katz wrote a name on a piece of paper. ‘If you change your mind, go there. It’s a small fashion house. An aunt of mine owns it. I’ll talk to her about you. Do you have any money?’

She did not answer.

‘Here.’ He pulled a few francs out of his pocket and handed them to her. ‘I’m sorry I don’t have more. Interns aren’t very well paid.’

‘Thank you,’ Noelle said.

She sat at a small street café sipping a coffee and deciding how to pick up the pieces of her life. She knew that she had to survive, for she had a reason to live now. She was filled with a deep and burning hatred that was so all-consuming that it left no room for anything else. She was an avenging Phoenix rising from the ashes of the emotions that Larry Douglas had murdered in her. She would not rest until she had destroyed him. She did not know how, or when, but she knew that one day she would make it happen.

Now she needed a job and a place to sleep. Noelle opened her purse and took out the piece of paper that the young intern had given her. She studied it a moment and made up her mind. That afternoon she went to see Israel Katz’s aunt and was given a job modeling in a small, second-rate fashion house on the rue Boursault.

Israel Katz’s aunt turned out to be a middle-aged, grey-haired woman with the face of a harpy and the soul of an angel. She mothered all her girls and they adored her. Her name was Madame Rose. She gave Noelle an advance on her salary and found her a tiny apartment near the salon. The first thing Noelle did when she unpacked was to hang up her wedding dress. She put it in the front of the closet so that it was the first thing she saw in the morning and the last thing she saw when she undressed at night.

Noelle knew that she was pregnant before there were any visible signs of it, before any tests had been made, before she missed her period. She could sense the new life that had formed in her womb, and at night she lay in bed staring at the ceiling thinking about it, her eyes glowing with wild animal pleasure.

On her first day off Noelle phoned Israel Katz and made a date to meet him for lunch.

‘I’m pregnant,’ she told him.

‘How do you know? Have you had any tests?’

‘I don’t need any tests.’

He shook his head. ‘Noelle, a lot of women think they are going to have babies when they are not. How many periods have you missed?’

She pushed the question aside, impatiently. ‘I want your help.’

He stared at her. ‘To get rid of the baby? Have you discussed this with the father?’

‘He’s not here.’

‘You know abortions are illegal. I could get into terrible trouble.’

Noelle studied him a moment. ‘What’s your price?’

His face tightened angrily. ‘Do you think everything has a price, Noelle?’

‘Of course,’ she said simply. ‘Anything can be bought and sold.’

‘Does that include you?’

‘Yes, but I’m very expensive. Will you help me?’

There was a long hesitation. ‘All right. I’ll want to make some tests first.’

‘Very well.’

The following week Israel Katz arranged for Noelle to go to the laboratory at the hospital. When the test results were returned two days later, he telephoned her at work. ‘You were right,’ he said. ‘You’re pregnant.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ve arranged for you to have a curettage at the hospital. I’ve told them that your husband was killed in an accident and that you are unable to have the baby. We’ll do the operation next Saturday.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Is Saturday a bad day for you?’

‘I’m not ready for the abortion yet, Israel. I just wanted to know that I could count on you to help me.’

Madame Rose noticed the change in Noelle, not merely a physical change, but something that went much deeper, a radiance, an inner glow that seemed to fill her. Noelle walked around with a constant smile, as though hugging some wonderful secret.

‘You have found a lover,’ Madame Rose said. ‘It shows in your eyes.’

Noelle nodded. ‘Yes, Madame.’

‘He is good for you. Hold onto him.’

‘I will,’ Noelle promised. ‘As long as I can.’

Three weeks later Israel Katz telephoned her. ‘I haven’t heard from you,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if you had forgotten?’

‘No,’ Noelle said. ‘I think of it all the time.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘Wonderful.’

‘I’ve been looking at the calendar. I think that we had better go to work.’

‘I’m not ready yet,’ Noelle said.

Three weeks passed before Israel Katz telephoned her again.

‘How about having dinner with me?’ he asked.

‘All right.’

They arranged to meet at a cheap café on the rue de Chat Qui Peche. Noelle had started to suggest a better restaurant when she remembered what Israel had said about interns not having much money.

He was waiting for her when she arrived. They chatted aimlessly through dinner and it was not until the coffee arrived that Israel discussed what was on his mind.

‘Do you still want to have the abortion?’ he asked.

Noelle looked at him in surprise. ‘Of course.’

‘Then you must have it right away. You’re more than two months pregnant.’

She shook her head. ‘No, not yet, Israel.’

‘Is this your first pregnancy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then let me tell you something, Noelle. Up until three months, an abortion is usually an easy matter. The embryo has not been fully formed and all you need is a simple curettage, but after three months’ – he hesitated – ‘it’s another kind of operation, and it becomes dangerous. The longer you wait, the more dangerous it becomes. I want you to have the operation now.’

Noelle leaned forwards. ‘What’s the baby like?’

‘Now?’ He shrugged. ‘Just a lot of cells. Of course, all the nuclei are there to form a complete human being.’

‘And after three months?’

‘The embryo starts to become a person.’

‘Can it feel things?’

‘It responds to blows and loud noises.’

She sat there, her eyes locked onto his. ‘Can it feel pain?’

‘I suppose so. But it is protected with an amniotic sac.’ He suddenly felt an uneasy stirring. ‘It would be pretty hard for anything to hurt it.’

Noelle lowered her eyes and sat staring at the table, silent and thoughtful.

Israel Katz studied her a moment and then said shyly, ‘Noelle, if you want to keep this baby and are afraid to because it will have no father … well, I would be willing to marry you and give the baby a name.’

She looked up in surprise. ‘I have already told you. I don’t want this baby. I want to have an abortion.’

‘Then, for Christ’s sake, have it!’ Israel shouted. He lowered his voice as he realized that other patrons were staring at him. ‘If you wait much longer, there isn’t a doctor in France who will do it. Don’t you understand? If you wait too long, you could die!’

‘I understand,’ Noelle said quietly. ‘If I were going to have this baby, what kind of diet would you put me on?’

He ran his fingers through his hair, bewildered. ‘Lots of milk and fruit, lean meat.’

That night on her way home Noelle stopped at the corner market near her apartment and bought two quarts of milk and a large box of fresh fruit.

Ten days later Noelle went into Madame Rose’s office and told her that she was pregnant and asked for a leave of absence.

‘For how long?’ Madame Rose asked, eyeing Noelle’s figure.

‘Six or seven weeks.’

Madame Rose sighed. ‘Are you sure what you are doing is the best thing?’

‘I’m sure,’ Noelle replied.

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Very well. Come back to me as soon as you can. I will ask the cashier to give you an advance on your salary.’

‘Thank you, Madame.’

For the next four weeks Noelle never left her apartment, except to buy groceries. She felt no hunger and ate very little for herself, but she drank enormous quantities of milk for the baby and crammed her body with fruit. She was not alone in the apartment. The baby was with her and she talked to him constantly. She knew it was a boy just as she had known she was pregnant. She had named him Larry.

‘I want you to grow to be big and strong,’ she said as she drank her milk. ‘I want you to be healthy … healthy and strong when you die.’ She lay in bed every day plotting her vengeance against Larry and his son. What was in her body was not a part of her. It belonged to him and she was going to kill it. It was the only thing of his that he had left her, and she was going to destroy it just as he had tried to destroy her.

How little Israel Katz had understood her! She was not interested in a formless embryo that knew nothing. She wanted Larry’s spawn to feel what was going to happen to him, to suffer, as she had suffered. The wedding dress was hanging near her bed now, always in sight, a talisman of evil, a reminder of his betrayal. First, Larry’s son, then Larry.

The phone rang often, but Noelle lay in bed, lost in her dreams until it stopped. She was sure that it was Israel Katz trying to reach her.

One evening there was a pounding on the door. Noelle lay in bed, ignoring it, but finally when the pounding continued, she dragged herself up and opened the door.

Israel Katz was standing there, his face filled with concern. ‘My God, Noelle, I’ve been calling you for days.’

He looked at her bulging stomach. ‘I thought you might have had it done somewhere else.’

She shook her head. ‘No. You’re going to do it.’

Israel stared at her. ‘Haven’t you understood anything I told you? It’s too late! No one’s going to do it.’

He saw the empty bottles of milk and the fresh fruit on the table, then looked back at her. ‘You do want the baby,’ he said. ‘Why won’t you admit it?’

‘Tell me, Israel, what’s he like now?’

‘Who?’

‘The baby. Does he have eyes and ears? Does he have fingers and toes? Can he feel pain?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Noelle, stop it. You talk as if … as if …’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘I don’t understand you.’

She smiled softly. ‘No. You don’t.’

He stood there a moment, making up his mind.

‘All right, I’m putting my ass in a sling for you, but if you’re really determined to have an abortion, let’s get it over with. I have a doctor friend who owes me a favour. He’ll …’

‘No.’

He stared at her.

‘Larry’s not ready yet,’ she said.

Three weeks later at four o’clock in the morning, Israel Katz was awakened by a furious concierge pounding on his door. ‘Telephone, Monsieur Night Owl!’ he yelled. ‘And tell your caller that it is the middle of the night, when respectable people are asleep!’

Israel stumbled out of bed and sleepily made his way down the hall to the telephone, wondering what crisis had arisen. He picked up the receiver.

‘Israel?’

He did not recognize the voice at the other end of the phone.

‘Yes?’

‘Now …’ It was a whisper, disembodied and anonymous.

‘Who is this?’

‘Now. Come now, Israel …’

There was an eeriness to the voice, an unearthly quality that sent a chill down his spine. ‘Noelle?’

‘Now …’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he exploded. ‘I won’t do it. It’s too late. You’ll die, and I’m not going to be responsible. Get yourself to a hospital.’

There was a click in his ear, and he stood there holding the phone. He slammed the receiver and went back to his room, his mind churning. He knew that he could not do any good now, no one could. She was five and a half months pregnant. He had warned her time and time again, but she had refused to listen. Well, it was her responsibility. He wanted to have no part of it.

He began to dress as fast as he could, his bowels cold with fear.

When Israel Katz walked into her apartment, Noelle was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, hemorrhaging. Her face was dead white, but it showed no sign of the agony that must have been racking her body. She was wearing what appeared to be a wedding dress. Israel knelt at her side. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘How did —?’ He stopped, as his eyes fell on a bloody, twisted wire coat hanger near her feet.

‘Jesus Christ!’ He was filled with a rage and at the same time a terrible frustrating feeling of helplessness. The blood was pouring out faster now, there was not a moment to lose.

‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ and he started to rise.

Noelle reached up and grabbed his arm with surprising strength, and pulled him back down to her.

‘Larry’s baby is dead,’ she said, and her face was lit with a beautiful smile.

A team of six doctors worked for five hours trying to save Noelle’s life. The diagnosis was septic poisoning, perforated womb, blood poisoning and shock. All the doctors agreed that there was little chance that she could live. By six o’clock that night Noelle was out of danger and two days later, she was sitting up in bed able to talk. Israel came to see her.

‘All the doctors say that it is a miracle you’re alive, Noelle.’

She shook her head. It was simply not her time to die. She had taken her first vengeance on Larry, but it was only the beginning. There was more to come. Much more. But first she had to find him. It would take time. But she would do it.

Chapter Three

Catherine

Chicago: 1939–1940

The growing winds of war that were blowing across Europe were reduced to no more than gentle, warning zephyrs when they reached the shores of the United States.

On the Northwestern campus, a few more boys joined the ROTC, there were student rallies urging President Roosevelt to declare war on Germany and a few seniors enlisted in the Armed Forces. In general, however, the sea of complacency remained the same, and the underground swell that was soon to sweep over the country was barely perceptible.

As she walked to her cashier’s job at the Roost that October afternoon, Catherine Alexander wondered whether the war would change her life, if it came. She knew one change that she had to make, and she was determined to do it as soon as possible. She desperately wanted to know what it was like to have a man hold her in his arms and make love to her, and she knew that she wanted it partly because of her physical needs, but also because she felt she was missing out on an important and wonderful experience. My God, what if she got run over by a car and they did a post mortem on her and discovered she was a virgin! No, she had to do something about it. Now.

Catherine glanced around the Roost carefully, but she did not see the face she was looking for. When Ron Peterson came in an hour later with Jean-Anne, Catherine felt her body tingle and her heart begin to pound. She turned away as they walked past her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the two make their way to Ron’s booth and sit down. Large banners were strung around the room, ‘TRY OUR DOUBLE HAMBURGER SPECIAL’ … ‘TRY OUR LOVER’S DELIGHT’ … ‘TRY OUR TRIPLE MALT.’

Catherine took a deep breath and walked over to the booth. Ron Peterson was studying the menu, trying to make up his mind. ‘I don’t know what I want,’ he was saying.

‘How hungry are you?’ Jean-Anne asked.

‘I’m starved.’

‘Then try this.’ They both looked up in surprise. It was Catherine standing over the booth. She handed Ron Peterson a folded note, turned around and walked back to the cash register.

Ron opened the note, looked at it and burst into laughter. Jean-Anne watched him coolly.

‘Is it a private joke or can anyone get in on it?’

‘Private,’ Ron grinned. He slipped the note into his pocket.

Ron and Jean-Anne left shortly afterwards. Ron didn’t say anything as he paid his cheque, but he gave Catherine a long, speculative look, smiled and walked out with Jean-Anne on his arm. Catherine looked after them, feeling like an idiot. She didn’t even know how to make a successful pass at a boy.

When her shift was up, Catherine got into her coat, said good night to the girl coming in to relieve her and went outside. It was a warm autumn evening with a cooling breeze skipping in off the lake. The sky looked like purple velvet with soft, far-flung stars just out of reach. It was a perfect evening to – what? Catherine made a list in her mind.

I can go home and wash my hair.

I can go to the library and study for the Latin exam tomorrow.

I can go to a movie.

I can hide in the bushes and rape the first sailor who comes along.

I can go get myself committed.

Committed, she decided.

As she started to move along the campus towards the library, a figure stepped out from behind a lamp post.

‘Hi, Cathy. Where you headed?’

It was Ron Peterson, smiling down at her, and Catherine’s heart started to pound until it began to burst out of her chest. She watched as it took off on its own, beating its way through the air. She became aware that Ron was staring at her. No wonder. How many girls did he know who could do that heart trick? She desperately wanted to comb her hair and fix her makeup and check the seams of her stockings, but she tried to let none of her nervousness show. Rule one: Keep calm.

‘Blug,’ she mumbled.

‘Where are you headed?’

Should she give him her list? God, no! He’d think she was insane. This was her big chance and she must not do a single thing to destroy it. She looked up at him, her eyes as warm and inviting as Carole Lombard’s in Nothing Sacred.

‘I didn’t have any special plans,’ she said invitingly.

Ron was studying her, still not sure of her, some primeval instinct making him cautious. ‘Would you like to do something special?’ he asked.

This was it. The Proposition. The point of no return. ‘Name it,’ she said, ‘and I’m yours.’ And cringed inwardly. It sounded so corny. No one said, ‘Name it and I’m yours’ except in bad Fannie Hurst novels. He was going to turn on his heel and walk away in disgust.

But he didn’t. Incredibly, he smiled, took her arm and said, ‘Let’s go.’

Catherine walked along with him, stunned. It had been as simple as that. She was on her way to getting laid. She began to tremble inside. If he found out she was a virgin, she would be finished. And what was she going to talk about when she was in bed with him? Did people talk when they were actually doing it, or did they wait until it was over? She didn’t want to be rude, but she had no idea what the rules were.

‘Have you had dinner?’ Ron was asking.

‘Dinner?’ She stared up at him, trying to think. Should she have had dinner? If she said yes, then he could take her right to bed and she could get it over with. ‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘I haven’t.’ Now why did I say that? I’ve ruined everything. But Ron did not seem upset.

‘Good. Do you like Chinese food?’

‘It’s my favourite.’ She hated it, but the gods certainly weren’t going to count a little yellow lie on the biggest night of her life.

‘There’s a good Chinese joint over on Estes. Lum Fong’s. Do you know it?’

No, but she would never forget it as long as she lived.

What did you do the night you lost your cherry?

Oh, I went to Lum Fong’s first and had some Chinese food with Ron Peterson.

Was it good?

Sure. But you know Chinese food. An hour later, I was sexy again.

They had reached his car, a maroon Reo convertible. Ron held the door open for Catherine, and she sat in the seat where all the other girls she envied had once sat. Ron was charming, handsome, a top athlete. And a sex maniac. It would make a good title for a movie. The Sex Maniac and the Virgin. Maybe she should have held out for a nicer restaurant like Henrici’s in the Loop and then Ron would have thought, This is the kind of girl I want to take home to Mother.

‘A penny for your thoughts,’ he said.

Oh, great! All right, so he wasn’t the most brilliant conversationalist in the world. But that wasn’t why she was here, was it? She looked up at him sweetly. ‘I was just thinking about you.’ She snuggled against him.

He grinned. ‘You really had me fooled, Cathy.’

‘I did?’

‘I always thought you were pretty standoffish – I mean, not interested in men.’

The word you’re fumbling for is lesbian, Catherine thought, but aloud she said, ‘I just like to pick my time and place.’

‘I’m glad you picked me.’

‘So am I.’ And she was. She really was. She could be certain that Ron was a good lover. He had been factory-tested and approved by every horny coed within a radius of a hundred and fifty miles. It would have been humiliating to have had her first sexual experience with someone as ignorant as she was. With Ron she was getting a master. After tonight she would not be calling herself Saint Catherine any longer. Instead she would probably be known as ‘Catherine the Great.’ And this time she would know what the ‘Great’ stood for. She would be fantastic in bed. The trick was not to panic. All the wonderful things she had read about in the little green books she used to keep hidden from her mother and father were about to happen to her. Her body was going to be an organ filled with exquisite music. Oh, she knew it would hurt the first time; it always did. But she would not let Ron know. She would move her behind around a lot because men hated for a woman to just lie there, motionless. And when Ron penetrated her, she would bite her lip to conceal the pain and cover it up with a sexy cry.

‘What?’

She turned to Ron, appalled, and realized she had cried aloud. ‘I–I didn’t say anything.’

‘You gave a kind of funny cry.’

‘Did I?’ She forced a little laugh.

‘You’re a million miles away.’

She analysed the line and decided it was bad. She must be more like Jean-Anne. Catherine put her hand on his arm and moved closer. ‘I’m right here,’ she said.

She tried to make her voice throaty, like Jean Arthur in Calamity Jane.

Ron looked down at her, confused, but the only thing he could read in her face was an eager warmth.

Lum Fong’s was a dreary-looking, run-of-the-mill Chinese restaurant located under the Elevated. All through dinner they could hear the rumble of the trains as they ran overhead rattling the dishes. The restaurant looked like a thousand other anonymous Chinese restaurants all over America, but Catherine carefully absorbed the details of the booth they were seated in, committing to memory the cheap, spotted wallpaper, the chipped china teapot, the soy-sauce stains on the table.

A little Chinese waiter came up to the table and asked if they wanted a drink. Catherine had tasted whiskey a few times in her life and hated it, but this was New Year’s Eve, the Fourth of July, the End of her Maidenhood. It was fitting to celebrate.

‘I’ll have an old-fashioned with a cherry in it.’ Cherry! Oh, God! It was a dead giveaway.

‘Scotch and soda,’ Ron said.

The waiter bowed himself away from the table. Catherine wondered if it were true that Oriental women were built slantwise.

‘I don’t know why we never became friends before,’ Ron was saying. ‘Everyone says you’re the brightest girl in the whole goddamned university.’

‘You know how people exaggerate.’

‘And you’re damned pretty.’

‘Thank you.’ She tried to make her voice sound like Katherine Hepburn in Alice Adams and looked meaningfully into his eyes. She was no longer Catherine Alexander. She was a sex machine. She was about to join Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Cleopatra. They were all going to be sisters under the foreskin.

The waiter brought the drink and she finished it in one quick nervous gulp. Ron watched her in surprise.

‘Easy,’ he warned. ‘That’s pretty potent stuff.’

‘I can handle it,’ Catherine assured him, confidently.

‘Another round,’ he told the waiter. Ron reached across the table and caressed her hand. ‘It’s funny. Everybody at school had you wrong.’

‘Wrong. No one at school’s had me.’

He stared at her. Careful, don’t be clever. Men preferred to bed girls who had excessively large mammary glands and gluteus maximus muscles and exceedingly small cerebrums.

‘I’ve had a – thing for you for a long time,’ she said, hurriedly.

‘You sure kept it a secret.’ Ron pulled out the note she had written and smoothed it out. ‘Try our Cashier,’ he read aloud, and laughed. ‘So far I like it better than the Banana Split.’ He ran his hands up and down Catherine’s arm and his touch sent tiny ripples down her spine, just like the books said it would. Perhaps after tonight she would write a manual on sex to instruct all the poor, dumb virgins who didn’t know what life was all about. After the second drink Catherine was beginning to feel sorry for them.

‘It’s a pity.’

‘What’s a pity?’

She had spoken aloud again. She decided to be bold. ‘I was feeling sorry for all the virgins in the world,’ she said.

Ron grinned at Catherine. ‘I’ll drink to that.’ He lifted his glass. She looked at him sitting across from her obviously enjoying her company. She had nothing to worry about. Everything was going beautifully. He asked if she would like another drink, but Catherine declined. She did not intend to be in an alcoholic stupor when she was deflowered. Deflowered? Did people still use words like deflowered? Anyway, she wanted to remember every moment, every sensation. Oh, my God! She wasn’t wearing anything! Would he? Surely a man as experienced as Ron Peterson would have something to put on, some protection so she wouldn’t get pregnant. What if he was expecting the same thing? What if he was thinking that a girl as experienced as Catherine Alexander would surely have some protection? Could she come right out and ask him? She decided that she would rather die first, right at the table. They could carry her body away and give her a ceremonial Chinese burial.

Ron ordered the dollar seventy-five six-course dinner, and Catherine pretended to eat it, but it might as well have been Chinese cardboard. She was beginning to get so tense she couldn’t taste anything. Her tongue was suddenly dry and the roof of her mouth felt strangely numb. What if she had just had a stroke? If she had sex right after a stroke, it would probably kill her. Perhaps she should warn Ron. It would hurt his reputation if they found a dead girl in his bed. Or maybe it would enhance it.

‘What’s the matter?’ Ron asked. ‘You look pale.’

‘I feel great,’ Catherine said, recklessly. ‘I’m just excited about being with you.’

Ron looked at her approvingly, his brown eyes taking in every detail of her face and moving down to her breasts and lingering there. ‘I feel the same way,’ he replied.

The waiter had taken the dishes away, and Ron had paid the cheque. He looked at her, but Catherine couldn’t move.

‘Do you want anything else?’ Ron asked.

Do I? Oh, yes! I want to be on a slow boat to China. I want to be in a cannibal’s kettle being boiled for dinner. I want my mother!

Ron was watching her, waiting, Catherine took a deep breath. ‘I–I can’t think of anything.’

‘Good.’ He drew the syllable out, long and lastingly so that it seemed to put a bed on the table between them. ‘Let’s go.’ He stood up and Catherine followed. The euphoric feeling from the drinks had completely vanished and her legs began to tremble.

They were outside in the warm night air when a sudden thought hit Catherine and filled her with relief. He’s not going to take me to bed tonight. Men never do that with a girl on the first date. He’s going to ask me out to dinner again and next time we’ll go to Henrici’s and we’ll get to know each other better. Really know each other. And we’ll probably fall in love – madly – and he’ll take me to meet his parents and then everything will be all right … and I won’t feel this stupid panic.

‘Do you have any preference in motels?’ Ron asked.

Catherine stared up at him, speechless. Gone were the dreams of a genteel musicale evening with his mother and father. The bastard was planning to take her to bed in a motel! Well, that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that the reason she had written that insane note?

Ron’s hand was on Catherine’s shoulder now, sliding down her arm. She felt a warm sensation in her groin. She swallowed and said, ‘If you’ve seen one motel, you’ve seen them all.’

Ron looked at her strangely. But all he said was, ‘OK. Let’s go.’

They got into his car and started driving west. Catherine’s body had turned into a block of ice, but her mind was racing at a feverish pitch. The last time she had stayed in a motel was when she was eight and was driving across country with her mother and father. Now she was going to one to go to bed with a man who was a total stranger. What did she know about him anyway? Only that he was handsome, popular and knew an easy lay when he saw one.

Ron reached over and took her hand. ‘Your hands are cold,’ he said.

‘Cold hands, hot legs.’ Oh, Christ, she thought. There I go again. For some reason, the lyrics of ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’ started to go through Catherine’s head. Well she was about to solve it. She was on her way to finding out what everything was all about. The books, the sexy advertisements, the thinly veiled love lyrics – ‘Rock Me in the Cradle of Love,’ ‘Do It Again,’ ‘Birds Do It.’ OK, she thought. Now Catherine is going to do it.

Ron turned south onto Clark Street.

Ahead on both sides of the street were huge blinking red eyes, neon signs that were alive in the night, screaming out their offers of cheap and temporary havens for impatient young lovers. ‘EASY REST MOTEL.’ ‘OVERNIGHT MOTEL,’ ‘COME INN,’ (Now that had to be Freudian!) ‘TRAVELLER’S REST.’ The paucity of imagination was staggering, but on the other hand the owners of these places were probably too busy bustling fornicating young couples in and out of bed to worry about being literary.

‘This is about the best of them,’ Ron said, pointing to a sign ahead.

‘PARADISE INN – VACANCY.’

It was a symbol. There was a vacancy in Paradise, and she, Catherine Alexander, was going to fill it.

Ron swung the car into the courtyard next to a small white-washed office with a sign that read: RING BELL AND ENTER. The courtyard consisted of about two dozen numbered wooden bungalows.

‘How does this look?’ Ron asked.

Like Dante’s Inferno. Like the Colosseum in Rome when the Christians were about to be thrown to the lions. Like the Temple of Delphi when a Vestal Virgin was about to get hers.

Catherine felt that excited feeling in her groin again. ‘Terrific,’ she said. ‘Just terrific.’

Ron smiled knowingly. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He put his hand on Catherine’s knee, sliding it up towards her thigh, gave her a quick, impersonal kiss and swung out of the car and went into the office. She sat there, looking after him, trying to make her mind blank.

She heard the wail of a siren in the distance. Oh, my God, she thought wildly, it’s a raid! They’re always raiding these places!

The door to the manager’s office opened and Ron came out. He was carrying a key and apparently was deaf to the siren which was coming closer and closer. He walked over to Catherine’s side of the car and opened the door.

‘All set,’ he said. The siren was a screaming banshee moving in on them. Could the police arrest them for merely being in the courtyard?

‘Come on,’ Ron said.

‘Don’t you hear that?’

‘Hear what?’

The siren passed them and went ululating down the street away from them, receding into the distance. Damn! ‘The birds,’ she said weakly.

There was a look of impatience on Ron’s face.

‘If there’s anything wrong – ’ he said.

‘No, no,’ Catherine cut in quickly. ‘I’m coming.’ She got out of the car and they moved towards one of the bungalows. ‘I hope you got my lucky number,’ she said brightly.

‘What did you say?’

Catherine looked up at him and suddenly realized no words had come out. Her mouth was completely dry. ‘Nothing,’ she croaked.

They reached the door and it said number thirteen. It was exactly what she deserved. It was a sign from heaven that she was going to get pregnant, that God was out to punish Saint Catherine.

Ron unlocked the door and held it open for her. He flicked on the light switch and Catherine stepped inside. She could not believe it. The room seemed to consist of one enormous bed. The only other furniture was an uncomfortable-looking easy chair in a corner, a small dressing table with a mirror over it, and next to the bed, a battered radio with a slot for feeding it quarters. No one would ever walk in here and mistake this room for anything but what it was: a place where a boy brought a girl to screw her. You couldn’t say, Well, here we are in the ski lodge, or the war games room, or the bridal suite at the Ambassador. No. What this was was a cheap love nest. Catherine turned to see what Ron was doing and he was throwing the bolt on the door. Good. If the Vice Squad wanted them, they’d have to break down the door first. She could see herself being carried out in the nude by two policemen while a photographer snapped her picture for the front page of the Chicago Daily News.

Ron moved up to Catherine and put his arms around her. ‘Are you nervous?’ he asked.

She looked up at him and forced a laugh that would have made Margaret Sullavan proud. ‘Nervous? Ron, don’t be silly.’

He was still studying her, unsure. ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you, Cathy?’

‘I don’t keep a scorecard.’

‘I’ve had a strange feeling about you all evening.’

Here it comes. He was going to throw her out on her virgin ass and tell her to get lost in a cold shower. Well, she wasn’t going to let that happen. Not tonight. ‘What kind of feeling?’

‘I don’t know.’ Ron’s voice was perplexed. ‘One minute you’re kind of sexy and, you know, with it, and the next minute your mind is way off somewhere and you’re as frigid as ice. It’s like you’re two people. Which one is the real Catherine Alexander?’

Frigid as ice, she automatically said to herself. Aloud she said, ‘I’ll show you.’ She put her arms around him and kissed him on the lips and she could smell egg foo young.

He kissed her harder and pulled her close to him. He ran his hands over her breasts, caressing them, pushing his tongue into her mouth. Catherine felt a hot moisture deep down inside her and she could feel her pants dampen. Here I go, she thought. It’s really going to happen! It’s really going to happen! She clung to him harder, filled with a growing, almost unbearable excitement.

‘Let’s get undressed,’ Ron said hoarsely. He stepped back from her and started to take off his jacket.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Let me.’ There was a new confidence in her voice. If this was the night of nights, she was going to do it right. She was going to remember everything she had ever read or heard. Ron wasn’t going back to school to snicker to the girls about how he had made love to a dumb little virgin. Catherine might not have Jean-Anne’s bust measurement, but she had a brain ten times as useful, and she was going to put it to work to make Ron so happy in bed he wouldn’t be able to stand it. She took off his jacket and laid it on the bed, then reached for his tie.

‘Hold it,’ Ron said. ‘I want to see you undress.’

Catherine stared at him, swallowed, slowly reached for her zipper and got out of her dress. She was standing in her bra, slip, pants, shoes and stockings.

‘Go on.’

She hesitated a moment, then reached down and stepped out of her slip. Lions, 2 – Christians, 0, she thought.

‘Hey, great! Keep going.’

Catherine slowly sat down on the bed and carefully removed her shoes and stockings, trying to make it look as sexy as she could. Suddenly she felt Ron behind her, undoing her bra. She let it fall to the bed. He lifted Catherine to her feet and started sliding her pants down. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, wishing that she were in another place with another man, a human being who loved her, whom she loved, who would father splendid children to bear his name, who would fight for her and kill for her and for whom she would be an adoring helpmate. A whore in his bed, a great cook in his kitchen, a charming hostess in his living room … a man who would kill a son of a bitch like Ron Peterson for daring to bring her to this tacky, degrading room. Her pants fell to the floor. Catherine opened her eyes.

Ron was staring at her, his face filled with admiration. ‘My God, Cathy, you’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘You’re really beautiful.’ He bent down and kissed her breast. She caught a glimpse in the dressing-table mirror. It looked like a French farce, sordid and dirty. Everything inside her except the hot pain in her groin told her that this was dreary and ugly and wrong, but there was no way to stop it now. Ron was whipping off his tie and unbuttoning his shirt, his face flushed. He undid his belt and stripped down to his shorts, then sat down on the bed and started to take off his shoes and socks. ‘I mean it, Catherine,’ he said, his voice tight with emotion. ‘You’re the most beautiful goddamn thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.’

His words only increased Catherine’s panic. Ron stood up, a broad, anticipatory grin on his face, and let his shorts drop to the floor. His male organ was standing out stiffly, like an enormous, inflated salami with hair around it. It was the largest, most incredible thing Catherine had ever seen in her life.

‘How do you like that?’ he said, looking down at it proudly.

Without thinking, Catherine said, ‘Sliced on rye. Hold the mustard and lettuce.’

And she stood there, watching it go down.

In Catherine’s sophomore year there was a change in the atmosphere of the campus.

For the first time there was a growing concern about what was happening in Europe and an increasing feeling that America was going to get involved. Hitler’s dream of the thousand-year rule of the Third Reich was on its way to becoming a reality. The Nazis had occupied Denmark and invaded Norway.

Over the past six months the talk on campuses across the country had shifted from sex and clothes and proms to the ROTC and the draught and lend-lease. More and more college boys were appearing in army and navy uniforms.

One day Susie Roberts, a classmate from Senn, stopped Catherine in the corridor. ‘I want to say good-bye, Cathy. I’m leaving.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘The Klondike.’

‘The Klondike?’

‘Washington, D.C. All the girls are striking gold there. They say for every girl there are at least a hundred men. I like those odds.’ She looked at Catherine. ‘What do you want to stick around this place for? School’s a drag. There’s a whole big world waiting out there.’

‘I can’t leave just now,’ Catherine said. She was not sure why: She had no real ties in Chicago. She corresponded regularly with her father in Omaha and talked to him on the telephone once or twice a month and each time he sounded as though he were in prison.

Catherine was on her own now. The more she thought about Washington, the more exciting it seemed. That evening she phoned her father and told him she wanted to quit school and go to work in Washington. He asked her if she would like to come to Omaha, but Catherine could sense the reluctance in his voice. He did not want her to be trapped, as he had been.

The next morning Catherine went to the dean of women and informed her she was quitting school. Catherine sent a telegram to Susie Roberts and the next day she was on a train to Washington, D.C.

Chapter Four

Noelle

Paris: 1940

On Saturday, June 14, 1940, the German Fifth Army marched into a stunned Paris. The Maginot Line had turned out to be the biggest fiasco in the history of warfare and France lay defenceless before one of the most powerful military machines the world had ever known.

The day had begun with a strange grey pall that lay over the city, a terrifying cloud of unknown origin. For the last forty-eight hours sounds of intermittent gunfire had broken the unnatural, frightened silence of Paris. The roar of the cannons was outside the city, but the echoes reverberated into the heart of Paris. There had been a flood of rumours carried like a tidal wave over the radio, in newspapers and by word of mouth. The Boche were invading the French coast … London had been destroyed … Hitler had reached an accord with the British government … The Germans were going to wipe out Paris with a deadly new bomb. At first each rumour had been taken as gospel, creating its own panic, but constant crises finally exert a soporific affect, as though the mind and body, unable to absorb any further terror, retreat into a protective shell of apathy. Now the rumour mills had ground to a complete halt, newspaper presses had stopped printing and radio stations had stopped broadcasting. Human instinct had taken over from the machines, and the Parisians sensed that this was a day of decision. The grey cloud was an omen.

And then the German locusts began to swarm in.

Suddenly Paris was a city filled with foreign uniforms and alien people, speaking a strange, guttural tongue, speeding down the wide, tree-lined avenues in large Mercedes limousines flying Nazi flags or pushing their way along the sidewalks that now belonged to them. They were truly the über Mensch, and it was their destiny to conquer and rule the world.

Within two weeks an amazing transformation had taken place. Signs in German appeared everywhere. Statues of French heroes had been knocked down and the swastika flew from all state buildings. German efforts to eradicate everything Gallic reached ridiculous proportions. The markings on hot and cold water taps were changed from chaud and froid to heiss and kalt. The place de Broglie in Strasbourg became Adolf Hitler Platz. Statues of Lafayette, Ney and Kleber were dynamited by squadrons of Nazis. Inscriptions on the monuments for the dead were replaced by ‘GEFALLEN FUR DEUTSCHLAND.’

The German occupation troops were enjoying themselves. While French food was too rich and covered with too many sauces, it was still a pleasant change from war rations. The soldiers neither knew nor cared that Paris was the city of Baudelaire, Dumas and Molière. To them Paris was a garish, eager, overpainted whore with her skirts pulled up over her hips and they raped her, each in his own way. The Storm-troopers forced young French girls to go to bed with them, sometimes at the point of a bayonet, while their leaders like Goering and Himmler raped the Louvre and the rich private estates they greedily confiscated from the newly created enemies of the Reich.

If French corruption and opportunism rose to the surface in the time of France’s crisis, so did the heroism. One of the underground’s secret weapons was the Pompiers, the fire department, which in France is under the jurisdiction of the army. The Germans had confiscated dozens of buildings for the use of the army, the Gestapo and various ministries, and the location of these buildings was of course no secret. At an underground resistance headquarters in St Remy resistance leaders pored over large maps detailing the location of each building. Experts were then assigned their targets, and the following day a speeding car or an innocent-looking bicyclist would pass by one of the buildings and fling a homemade bomb through the window. Up to that point the damage was slight. The ingenuity of the plan lay in what followed next.

The Germans would call in the Pompiers to put out the fire. Now it is instinctive in all countries that when there is a conflagration the firemen are in complete charge: And so it was in Paris. The Pompiers raced into the building while the Germans stood meekly aside and watched them destroy everything in sight with high-pressure hoses, axes and – when the opportunity presented itself – their own incendiary bombs. In this way the underground managed to destroy priceless German records locked away in the fortresses of the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo. It took almost six months for the German high command to figure out what was happening, and by that time irreparable damage had been done. The Gestapo could prove nothing, but every member of the Pompiers was rounded up and sent to the Russian front to fight.

There was a shortage of everything from food to soap. There was no gasoline, no meat, no dairy products. The Germans had confiscated everything. Stores that carried luxury goods stayed open, but their only customers were the soldiers who paid in occupation marks which were identical with the regular marks except that they lacked the white strip at the edge and the printed promise to pay was not signed.

‘Who will redeem these?’ the French shopkeepers moaned.

And the Germans grinned, ‘The Bank of England.’

Not all Frenchmen suffered, however. For those with money and connections there was always the Black Market.

Noelle Page’s life was changed very little by the occupation. She was working as a model at Chanel’s on rue Canbon in a hundred-and-fifty-year-old greystone building that looked ordinary on the outside, but was very smartly decorated within. The war, like all wars, had created overnight millionaires, and there was no shortage of customers. The propositions that came to Noelle were more numerous than ever; the only difference was that most of them were now in German. When she was not working, she would sit for hours at small outdoor cafés on the Champs-Élysées, or on the Left Bank near the Pont Neuf. There were hundreds of men in German uniforms, many of them with young French girls. The French civilian men were either too old or lame, and Noelle supposed that the younger ones had been sent to camps or conscripted for military duty. She could tell the Germans at a glance, even when they were not in uniform. They had a look of arrogance stamped on their faces, the look that conquerors have had since the days of Alexander and Hadrian. Noelle did not hate them, nor did she like them. They simply did not touch her.

She was filled with a busy inner life, carefully planning out each move. She knew exactly what her goal was, and she knew that nothing could stop her. As soon as she was able to afford it, she engaged a private detective who had handled a divorce for a model with whom she worked. The detective’s name was Christian Barbet, and he operated out of a small, shabby office on the rue St Lazare. The sign on the door read:

ENQUÊTES

PRIVÉES ET COMMERCIALES

RECHERCHES

RENSEIGNEMENTS

CONFIDENTIELS

FILATURES

PREUVES

The sign was almost larger than the office. Barbet was short and bald with yellow, broken teeth, narrow squinting eyes and nicotine-stained fingers.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked Noelle.

‘I want information about someone in England.’

He blinked suspiciously. ‘What kind of information?’

‘Anything. Whether he’s married, who he sees. Anything at all. I want to start a scrapbook on him.’

Barbet gingerly scratched his crotch and stared at her.

‘Is he an Englishman?’

‘An American. He’s a pilot with the Eagle Squadron of the RAF.’

Barbet rubbed the top of his bald head, uneasily. ‘I don’t know,’ he grumbled. ‘We’re at war. If they caught me trying to get information out of England about a flyer —’

His voice trailed off and he shrugged expressively. ‘The Germans shoot first and ask questions afterwards.’

‘I don’t want any military information,’ Noelle assured him. She opened her purse and took out a wad of franc notes. Barbet studied them hungrily.

‘I have connections in England,’ he said cautiously, ‘but it will be expensive.’

And so it began. It was three months before the little detective telephoned Noelle. She went to his office, and her first words were: ‘Is he alive?’ and when Barbet nodded, her body sagged with relief and Barbet thought, It must be wonderful to have someone love you that much.

‘Your boyfriend has been transferred,’ Barbet told her.

‘Where?’

He looked down at a pad on his desk. ‘He was attached to the 609th Squadron of the RAF. He’s been transferred to the 121st Squadron at Martlesham East, in East Anglia. He’s flying Hurri —’

‘I don’t care about that.’

‘You’re paying for it,’ he said. ‘You might as well get your money’s worth.’ He looked down at his notes again. ‘He’s flying Hurricanes. Before that he was flying American Buffaloes.’

He turned over a page and added, ‘It becomes a little personal here.’

‘Go on,’ Noelle said.

Barbet shrugged. ‘There’s a list of girls he is sleeping with. I didn’t know whether you wanted —’

‘I told you – everything.’

There was a strange note in her voice that baffled him. There was something not quite normal here, something that did not ring true. Christian Barbet was a third-rate investigator handling third-rate clients, but because of that he had developed a feral instinct for truth, a nose for smelling out facts. The beautiful girl standing in his office disturbed him. At first Barbet had thought she might be trying to involve him in some kind of espionage. Then he decided that she was a deserted wife seeking evidence against her husband. He had been wrong about that, he admitted, and now he was at a loss to figure out what his client wanted or why. He handed Noelle the list of Larry Douglas’ girl friends and watched her face as she read it. She might have been reading a laundry list.

She finished and looked up. Christian Barbet was totally unprepared for her next words. ‘I’m very pleased,’ Noelle said.

He looked at her and blinked rapidly.

‘Please call me when you have something more to report.’

Long after Noelie Page had gone, Barbet sat in his office staring out the window, trying to puzzle out what his client was really after.

The theatres of Paris were beginning to boom again. The Germans attended to celebrate the glory of their victories and to show off the beautiful Frenchwomen they wore on their arms like trophies. The French attended to forget for a few hours that they were an unhappy, defeated people.

Noelle had attended the theatre in Marseille a few times, but she had seen sleazy amateur plays acted out by fourth-rate performers for indifferent audiences. The theatre in Paris was something else again. It was alive and sparkling and filled with the wit and grace of Molière, Racine and Colette. The incomparable Sacha Guitry had opened his theatre and Noelle went to see him perform. She attended a revival of Büchner’s La Morte de Danton and a play called Asmodée by a promising new young writer named François Mauriac. She went to the Comédie Française to see Pirandello’s Chacun La Verité and Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Noelle always went alone, oblivious of the admiring stares of those around her, completely lost in the drama taking place on the stage. Something in the magic that went on behind the footlights struck a responsive chord in her. She was playing a part just like the actors on stage, pretending to be something that she wasn’t, hiding behind a mask.

One play in particular, Huis Clos by Jean Paul Sartre, affected her deeply. It starred Philippe Sorel, one of the idols of Europe. Sorel was ugly, short and beefy, with a broken nose and the face of a boxer. But the moment he spoke, a magic took place. He was transformed into a sensitive handsome man. It’s like the story of the Prince and the Frog, Noelle thought, watching him perform. Only he is both. She went back to watch him again and again, sitting in the front row studying his performance, trying to learn the secret of his magnetism.

One evening during intermission an usher handed Noelle a note. It read, ‘I have seen you in the audience night after night. Please come backstage this evening and let me meet you. P.S.’ Noelle read it over, savouring it. Not because she gave a damn about Philippe Sorel, but because she knew that this was the beginning she had been looking for.

She went backstage after the performance. An old man at the stage door ushered her into Sorel’s dressing room. He was seated before a makeup mirror, wearing only shorts, wiping off his makeup. He studied Noelle in the mirror. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ he said finally. ‘You’re even more beautiful up close.’

‘Thank you, Monsieur Sorel.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Marseille.’

Sorel swung around to look at her more closely. His eyes moved to her feet and slowly worked their way up to the top of her head, missing nothing. Noelle stood there under his scrutiny, not moving. ‘Looking for a job?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘I never pay for it,’ Sorel said. ‘All you’ll get from me is a pass to my play. If you want money, fuck a banker.’

Noelle stood there quietly watching him. Finally Sorel said, ‘What are you looking for?’

‘I think I’m looking for you.’

They had supper and afterwards went back to Sorel’s apartment in the beautiful rue Maurice-Barres, overlooking the corner where it became the Bois de Boulogne. Philippe Sorel was a skilful lover, surprisingly considerate and unselfish. Sorel had expected nothing from Noelle but her beauty, and he was astonished by her versatility in bed.

‘Christ!’ he said. ‘You’re fantastic. Where did you learn all that?’

Noelle thought about it a moment. It was really not a question of learning. It was a matter of feeling. To her a man’s body was an instrument to be played on, to explore to its innermost depths, finding the responsive chords and building upon them, using her own body to help create exquisite harmonies.

‘I was born with it,’ she said simply.

Her fingertips began to lightly play around his lips, quick little butterfly touches, and then moved down to his chest and stomach. She saw him starting to grow hard and erect again. She arose and went into the bathroom and returned a moment later and slid his hard penis into her mouth. Her mouth was hot, filled with warm water.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he said.

They spent the entire night making love, and in the morning. Sorel invited Noelle to move in with him.

Noelle lived with Philippe Sorel for six months. She was neither happy nor unhappy. She knew that her being there made Sorel ecstatically happy, but this did not matter in the slightest to Noelle. She regarded herself as simply a student, determined to learn something new every day. He was a school that she was attending, a small part in her large plan. To Noelle there was nothing personal in their relationship, for she gave nothing of herself. She had made that mistake twice, and she would never make it again. There was room for only one man in Noelle’s thoughts and that was Larry Douglas. Noelle would pass the place des Victoires or a park or restaurant where Larry had taken her, and she would feel the hatred well up within her, choking her, so it became difficult to breathe, and there was something else mixed in with the hatred, something Noelle could not put a name to.

Two months after moving in with Sorel, Noelle received a call from Christian Barbet.

‘I have another report for you,’ the little detective said.

‘Is he all right?’ Noelle asked quickly.

Again Barbet was filled with that sense of uneasiness. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Noelle’s voice was filled with relief. ‘I’ll be right down.’

The report was divided into two parts. The first dealt with Larry Douglas’ military career. He had shot down five German planes and was the first American to become an Ace in the war. He had been promoted to Captain. The second part of the report interested her more. He had become very popular in London’s wartime social life and had become engaged to the daughter of a British Admiral. There followed a list of girls that Larry was sleeping with, ranging from show girls to the wife of an under-secretary in the Ministry.

‘Do you want me to keep on with this?’ Barbet asked.

‘Of course,’ Noelle replied. She took an envelope from her purse and handed it to Barbet. ‘Call me when you have anything further.’

And she was gone.

Barbet sighed and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Folle,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Folle.’

If Philippe Sorel had had any inkling of what was going on in Noelle’s mind, he would have been astonished. Noelle seemed totally devoted to him. She did everything for him: cooked wonderful meals, shopped, supervised the cleaning of his apartment and made love whenever the mood stirred him. And asked for nothing. Sorel congratulated himself on having found the perfect mistress. He took her everywhere, and she met all his friends. They were enchanted with her and thought Sorel a very lucky man.

One night as they were having supper after the show, Noelle said to him, ‘I want to be an actress, Philippe.’

He shook his head. ‘God knows you’re beautiful enough, Noelle, but I’ve been up to my ass in actresses all my life. You’re different, and I want to keep you that way. I don’t want to share you with anyone.’ He patted her hand. ‘Don’t I give you everything you need?’

‘Yes, Philippe,’ Noelle replied.

When they returned to the apartment that night, Sorel wanted to make love. When they finished, he was drained. Noelle had never been as exciting, and Sorel congratulated himself that all she needed was the firm guidance of a man.

The following Sunday was Noelle’s birthday, and Philippe Sorel gave a dinner party for her at Maxim’s. He had taken over the large private dining room upstairs, decorated with plush red velvet and deep dark wood panelling. Noelle had helped write the guest list, and there was one name she included without mentioning it to Philippe. There were forty people at the party. They toasted Noelle’s birthday and gave her lavish gifts. When dinner was over, Sorel rose to his feet. He had drunk a good deal of brandy and champagne and he was a little unsteady, his words a bit slurred.

‘My friends,’ he said, ‘we’ve all drunk to the most beautiful girl in the world and we’ve given her lovely birthday presents, but I have a present for her that’s going to be a big surprise.’ Sorel looked down at Noelle and beamed, then turned to the crowd. ‘Noelle and I are going to be married.’

There was an approving cheer and the guests raced up to clap Sorel on the back and wish luck to the bride-to-be. Noelle sat there smiling up at the guests, murmuring her thank-yous. One of the guests had not risen. He was seated at a table at the far end of the room, smoking a cigarette in a long holder and viewing the scene sardonically. Noelle was aware that he had been watching her during dinner. He was a tall, very thin man, with an intense, brooding face. He seemed amused by everything that was happening around him, more an observer at the party than a guest.

Noelle caught his eye and smiled.

Armand Gautier was one of the top directors in France. He was in charge of the French Repertory Theatre, and his productions had been acclaimed all over the world. Having Gautier direct a play or a motion picture was an almost certain guarantee of its success. He had the reputation of being particularly good with actresses and had created half a dozen important stars.

Sorel was at Noelle’s side, talking to her. ‘Were you surprised, my darling?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Philippe,’ she said.

‘I want us to be married right away. We’ll have the wedding at my villa.’

Over his shoulder Noelle could see Armand Gautier watching her, smiling that enigmatic smile. Some friends came and took Philippe away and when Noelle turned, Gautier was standing there.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. There was a mocking note in his voice. ‘You hooked a big fish.’

‘Did I?’

‘Philippe Sorel is a great catch.’

‘For someone perhaps,’ Noelle said indifferently.

Gautier looked at her in surprise. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re not interested?’

‘I’m not trying to tell you anything.’

‘Good luck.’ He turned to go.

‘Monsieur Gautier …’

He stopped.

‘Could I see you tonight?’ Noelle asked quietly. ‘I would like to talk to you alone.’

Armand Gautier looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. ‘If you wish.’

‘I will come to your place. Will that be satisfactory?’

‘Yes, of course. The address is —’

‘I know the address. Twelve o’clock?’

‘Twelve o’clock.’

Armand Gautier lived in a fashionable old apartment building on rue Marbeuf. A doorman escorted Noelle into the lobby and an elevator boy took her to the fourth floor and indicated Gautier’s apartment. Noelle rang the bell. A few moments later the door was opened by Gautier. He wore a flowered dressing gown.

‘Come in,’ he said.

Noelle walked into the apartment. Her eye was untrained, but she sensed that it was done in beautiful taste and that the objets d’art were valuable.

‘Sorry I’m not dressed,’ Gautier apologized. ‘I’ve been on the telephone.’

Noelle’s eyes locked onto his. ‘It will not be necessary for you to be dressed.’ She moved over to the couch and sat down.

Gautier smiled. ‘That was the feeling I had, Miss Page. But I’m curious about something. Why me? You’re engaged to a man who is famous and wealthy. I am sure that if you are looking for some extracurricular activities, you could find men more attractive than I, and certainly richer and younger. What is it you want from me?’

‘I want you to teach me to act,’ Noelle said.

Armand Gautier looked at her a moment, then sighed. ‘You disappoint me. I expected something more original.’

‘Your business is working with actors.’

‘With actors, not amateurs. Have you ever acted?’

‘No. But you will teach me.’ She took off her hat and her gloves. ‘Where is your bedroom?’ she asked.

Gautier hesitated. His life was full of beautiful women wanting to be in the theatre, or wanting a bigger part, or the lead in a new play, or a larger dressing room. They were all a pain. He knew that he would be a fool to get involved with one more. And yet there was no need to get involved. Here was a beautiful girl throwing herself at him. It would be a simple matter to take her to bed and then send her away. ‘In there,’ he said, indicating a door.

He watched Noelle as she walked towards the bedroom. He wondered what Philippe Sorel would think if he knew that his bride-to-be was spending the night here. Women. Whores, all of them. Gautier poured himself a brandy and made several phone calls. When he finally went into the bedrom, Noelle was in his bed, naked, waiting for him. Gautier had to admit that she was an exquisite work of nature. Her face was breath-taking, and her body was flawless. Her skin was the colour of honey, except for the triangle of soft golden hair between her legs. Gautier had learned from experience that beautiful girls were almost invariably narcissistic, so preoccupied with their own egocentricities that they were lousy lays. They felt their contribution to lovemaking was simply conferring their presence in a man’s bed, so that the man ended up making love to an unmoving lump of clay and was expected to be grateful for the experience. Ah, well, perhaps he could teach this one something.

As Noelle watched him, Gautier undressed, leaving his clothes carelessly strewn on the floor, and moved towards the bed. ‘I’m not going to tell you you are beautiful,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard it too many times already.’

‘Beauty is wasted,’ Noelle shrugged, ‘unless it is used to give pleasure.’

Gautier looked at her in quick surprise, then smiled. ‘I agree. Let’s use yours.’ He sat down beside her.

Like most Frenchmen, Armand Gautier prided himself on being a skilled lover. He was amused by the stories he had heard of Germans and Americans whose idea of making love consisted of jumping on top of a girl, having an instant orgasm, and then putting on their hat and departing. The Americans even had a phrase for it. ‘Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.’ When Armand Gautier was emotionally involved with a woman, he used many devices to heighten the enjoyment of lovemaking. There was always a perfect dinner, the right wines. He arranged the setting artistically so that it was pleasing to the senses, the room was delicately scented and soft music was playing. He aroused his women with tender sentiments of love and later the coarse language of the gutter. And Gautier was adept at the manual foreplay that preceded sex.

In Noelle’s case he dispensed with all of these. For a one-night stand there was no need for perfume or music or empty endearments. She was here simply to get laid. She was indeed a silly fool if she thought that she could trade what every woman in the world carried between her legs for the great and unique genius that Armand Gautier possessed in his head.

He started to climb on top of her. Noelle stopped him.

‘Wait,’ she whispered.

As he watched, puzzled, she reached for two small tubes that she had placed on the bedside table. She squeezed the contents of one into her hand and began to rub it onto his penis.

‘What is this all about?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘You’ll see.’ She kissed him on the lips, her tongue darting into his mouth in quick bird-like movements. She pulled away and her tongue started moving towards his belly, her hair trailing across his body like light, silky fingers. He felt his organ begin to rise. She moved her tongue down his legs to his feet and began to suck gently on his toes. His organ was stiff and hard now and she mounted him as he lay there. As he felt himself penetrating her, the warmth of her vagina acted on the cream she had put on his penis and the sensation became unbearably exciting. As she rode him, moving up and down, her left hand was caressing his testicles and they began to grow hot. There was menthol in the cream on his penis and the sensation of the cold while inside her warmth, and the heat of his testicles, drove him into an absolute frenzy.

They made love all night long and each time Noelle made love to him differently. It was the most incredibly sensuous experience he had ever had.

In the morning Armand Gautier said, ‘If I can get up enough energy to move, I’ll get dressed and take you out to breakfast.’

‘Lie there,’ Noelle said. She walked over to a closet, selected one of his robes and put it on. ‘You rest. I’ll be back.’

Thirty-five minutes later Noelle returned with a breakfast tray. On it were freshly squeezed orange juice, a delicious sausage-and-chive omelet, heated, buttered croissants and jam and a pot of black coffee. It tasted extraordinarily good.

‘Aren’t you having anything?’ Gautier asked.

Noelle shook her head. ‘No.’ She was seated in an easy chair watching him as he ate. She looked even more beautiful wearing his dressing gown open at the top, revealing the curves of her delicious breasts. Her hair was tousled and carefree.

Armand Gautier had radically revised his earlier estimate of Noelle. She was not any man’s quick lay; she was an absolute treasure. However, he had met many treasures in his career in the theatre, and he was not about to spend his time and talent as a director on a starry-eyed amateur who wanted to break into the theatre, no matter how beautiful she might be, or how skilled in bed. Gautier was a dedicated man who took his art seriously. He had refused to compromise it in the past, and he was not about to start now.

The evening before, he had planned to spend the night with Noelle and send her packing in the morning. Now as he ate his breakfast and studied her, he was trying to figure out a way to hold onto Noelle as a mistress until he got bored with her, without encouraging her as an actress. He knew that he had to hold out some bait. He felt his way cautiously. ‘Are you planning to marry Philippe Sorel?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ Noelle replied. ‘That is not what I want.’

Now it was coming. ‘What do you want?’ Gautier asked.

‘I told you,’ Noelle said quietly. ‘I want to be an actress.’

Gautier bit into another croissant, stalling for time. ‘Of course,’ he said. Then he added, ‘There are many fine dramatic coaches I could send you to, Noelle, who would …’

‘No,’ she said. Noelle was watching him pleasantly, warmly, as though eager to accede to anything he suggested. And yet Gautier had a feeling that inside her was a core of steel. There were many ways she could have said ‘no.’ With anger, reproach, disappointment, sulking, but she had said it with softness. And absolute finality. This was going to be more difficult than he had anticipated. For a moment Armand Gautier was tempted to tell her, as he told dozens of girls every week, to go away, that he had no time to waste on her. But he thought of the incredible sensations he had experienced during the night and he knew he would be a fool to let her go so soon. She was surely worth a slight, a very slight, compromise.

‘Very well,’ Gautier said. ‘I will give you a play to study. When you have memorized it, you will read it to me and we will see how much talent you have. Then we can decide what to do with you.’

‘Thank you, Armand,’ she said. There was no triumph in her words, nor even any pleasure that he could detect. Just a simple acknowledgment of the inevitable. For the first time Gautier felt a small twinge of doubt. But that of course was ridiculous. He was a master at handling women.

While Noelle was getting dressed, Armand Gautier went into his book-lined study and scanned the familiar-looking worn volumes on the shelves. Finally, with a wry smile, he selected Euripides’ Andromache. It was one of the most difficult classics to act. He went back into the bedroom and handed the play to Noelle.

‘Here you are, my dear,’ he said. ‘When you have memorized the part, we shall go over it together.’

‘Thank you, Armand. You will not be sorry.’

The more he thought about it, the more pleased Gautier was with his ploy. It would take Noelle a week or two to memorize the part, or what was even more likely, she would come to him and confess that she was unable to memorize it. He would sympathize with her, explain how difficult the art of acting was, and they could assume a relationship untainted by her ambition. Gautier made a date to have dinner with Noelle that evening, and she left.

When Noelle returned to the apartment she shared with Philippe Sorel, she found him waiting for her. He was very drunk.

‘You bitch,’ he yelled. ‘Where have you been all night?’

It would not matter what she said. Sorel knew that he was going to listen to her apologies, beat her up, then take her to bed and forgive her.

But instead of apologizing Noelle merely said, ‘With another man, Philippe. I’ve come to pick up my things.’

And as Sorel watched her in stunned disbelief, Noelle walked into the bedroom and began to pack.

‘For Christ’s sake, Noelle,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t do this! We love each other. We’re going to get married.’ He talked to her for the next half hour, arguing, threatening, cajoling, and by that time Noelle had finished packing and had left the apartment and Sorel had no idea why he had lost her, for he did not know that he had never possessed her.

Armand Gautier was in the middle of directing a new play that was to open in two weeks and he spent all day at the theatre in rehearsals. As a rule when Gautier was in production, he thought of nothing else. Part of his genius was the intense concentration he was able to bring to his work. Nothing existed for him but the four walls of the theatre and the actors he was working with. This day however was different. Gautier found his mind constantly wandering to Noelle and the incredible night they had had together. The actors would go through a scene and then stop and wait for his comments, and Gautier would suddenly realize that he had been paying no attention. Furious with himself he tried to focus his attention on what he was doing, but thoughts of Noelle’s naked body and the amazing things it had done to him would keep coming back. In the middle of one dramatic scene he found that he was walking around the stage with an erection, and he had to excuse himself.

Because Gautier had an analytical mind he tried to figure out what it was about this girl that had affected him like this. Noelle was beautiful, but he had slept with some of the most beautiful women in the world. She was consummately skilled at lovemaking but so were other women to whom he had made love. She seemed intelligent but not brilliant; her personality was pleasant but not complex. There was something else, something the director could not quite put his finger on. And then he remembered her soft ‘no’ and he felt that it was a clue. There was some force in her that was irresistible, that would obtain anything she wanted. There was something in her that was untouched. And like other men before him Armand Gautier felt that though Noelle had affected him more deeply than he cared to admit to himself, he had not touched her at all, and this was a challenge that his masculinity could not refuse.

Gautier spent the day in a confused state of mind. He looked forward to the evening with tremendous anticipation, not so much because he wanted to make love to Noelle but because he wanted to prove to himself that he had been building something out of nothing. He wanted Noelle to be a disappointment to him so that he could dismiss her from his life.

As they made love that night, Armand Gautier made himself consciously aware of the tricks and devices and artifices Noelle used so he would realize that it was all mechanical, without emotion. But he was mistaken. She gave herself to him fully and completely, caring only about bringing him pleasure such as he had never known before and revelling in his enjoyment. When morning came Gautier was more firmly bewitched by her than ever.

Noelle prepared breakfast for him again, this time delicate crêpes with bacon and jam, and hot coffee, and it was magnificent.

‘All right,’ Gautier told himself. ‘You have found a young girl who is beautiful to look at, who can make love and cook. Bravo! But is that enough for an intelligent man? When you are through making love and eating, you must talk. What can she talk to you about?’ The answer was that it didn’t really matter.

There had been no more mention of the play and Gautier was hoping that Noelle had either forgotten about it or had been unable to cope with memorizing the lines. When she left in the morning, she promised to have dinner with him that evening.

‘Can you get away from Philippe?’ Gautier asked.

‘I’ve left him,’ Noelle said simply. She gave Gautier her new address.

He stared at her for a moment. ‘I see.’

But he did not. Not in the least.

They spent the night together again. When they were not making love, they talked. Or rather Gautier talked. Noelle seemed so interested in him that he found himself talking about things he had not discussed in years, personal things that he had never revealed to anyone before. No mention was made of the play he had given her to read, and Gautier congratulated himself on having solved his problem so neatly.

The following night when they had had dinner and were ready to retire, Gautier started towards the bedroom.

‘Not yet,’ Noelle said.

He turned in surprise.

‘You said you would listen to me do the play.’

‘Well, of – of course,’ Gautier stammered, ‘whenever you’re ready.’

‘I am ready.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t want you to read it, cherie,’ he said. ‘I want to hear it when you have memorized it so that I can really judge you as an actress.’

‘I have memorized it,’ Noelle replied.

He stared at her in disbelief. It was impossible that she could have learned the entire part in only three days.

‘Are you ready to hear me?’ she asked.

Armand Gautier had no choice. ‘Of course,’ he said. He gestured towards the centre of the room. ‘That will be your stage. The audience will be here.’ He sat down on a large comfortable settee.

Noelle began to do the play. Gautier could feel the goose-flesh begin to crawl, his own personal stigmata, the thing that happened to him when he encountered real talent. Not that Noelle was expert. Far from it. Her inexperience shone through every move and gesture. But she had something much more than mere skill: She had a rare honesty, a natural talent that gave every line a fresh meaning and colour.

When Noelle finished the soliloquy, Gautier said warmly, ‘I think that one day you will become an important actress, Noelle. I really mean that. I am going to send you to Georges Faber, who is the best dramatic coach in all of France. Working with him, you will —’

‘No.’

He looked at her in surprise. It was that same soft ‘no’ again. Positive and final.

‘“No” what?’ Gautier asked in some confusion. ‘Faber does not take on anyone but the biggest actors. He will only take you because I tell him to.’

‘I am going to work with you,’ Noelle said.

Gautier could feel the anger mounting in him. ‘I don’t coach anyone,’ he snapped. ‘I am not a teacher. I direct professional actors. When you are a professional actor, then I will direct you.’ He was fighting to check the anger in his voice. ‘Do you understand?’

Noelle nodded. ‘Yes, I understand, Armand.’

‘Very well then.’

Mollified, he took Noelle in his arms and received a warm kiss from her. He knew now that he had worried unnecessarily. She was like any other woman, she needed to be dominated. He would have no further problem with her.

Their lovemaking that night surpassed anything that had gone before, possibly, Gautier thought, because of the added excitement of the slight quarrel they had had.

During the night he said to her, ‘You really can be a wonderful actress, Noelle. I’m going to be very proud of you.’

‘Thank you, Armand,’ she whispered.

Noelle fixed breakfast in the morning, and Gautier left for the theatre. When he telephoned Noelle during the day, she did not answer, and when he arrived home that night she was not there. Gautier waited for her to return, and when she did not appear he lay awake all night wondering if she could have been in an accident. He tried to phone Noelle at her apartment, but there was no answer. He sent a telegram that went undelivered, and when he stopped at her apartment after rehearsal, no one answered his ring.

During the week that followed, Gautier was frantic. Rehearsals were turning into a shambles. He was screaming at all the actors and upsetting them so badly that his stage manager suggested they stop for the day and Gautier agreed. After the actors had left, he sat on the stage alone, trying to understand what had happened to him. He told himself that Noelle was just another woman, a cheap ambitious blonde with the heart of a shopgirl who wanted to be a star. He denigrated her in every way he could think of, but in the end he knew it was no use. He had to have her. That night he wandered the streets of Paris, getting drunk in small bars where he was unknown. He tried to think of ways to reach Noelle but to no avail. There was no one he could even talk to about her, except Philippe Sorel, and that, of course, was out of the question.

A week after Noelle had disappeared, Armand Gautier arrived home at four o’clock in the morning, drunk, opened the door and walked into the living room. All the lights were on. Noelle was curled up in an easy chair dressed in one of his robes, reading a book. She looked up as he entered, and smiled.

‘Hello, Armand.’

Gautier stared at her, his heart lifting, a feeling of infinite relief and happiness flooding through him. He said, ‘We’ll begin working tomorrow.’

Chapter Five

Catherine

Washington: 1940

Washington, D.C., was the most exciting city that Catherine Alexander had ever seen. She had always thought of Chicago as the heartland, but Washington was a revelation. Here was the real core of America, the pulsating centre of power. At first, Catherine had been bewildered by the variety of uniforms that filled the streets: Army, Navy Air Corps, Marines. For the first time Catherine began to feel the grim possibility of war as something real.

In Washington the physical presence of war was everywhere. This was the city where war, if it came, would begin. Here it would be declared and mobilized and masterminded. This was the city that held in its hand the fate of the world. And she, Catherine Alexander, was going to be a part of it.

She had moved in with Susie Roberts, who was living in a bright and cheery fourth floor walk-up apartment with a fair-sized living room, two small adjoining bedrooms, a tiny bathroom and a kitchenette built for a midget. Susie had seemed glad to see her. Her first words were:

‘Hurry and unpack and get your best dress steamed out. You have a dinner date tonight.’

Catherine blinked. ‘What took you so long?’

‘Cathy, in Washington, it’s the girls who have the little black books. This town is so full of lonely men, it’s pitiful.’

They had dinner that first evening at the Willard Hotel. Susie’s date was a congressman from Indiana and Catherine’s date was a lobbyist from Oregon, and both men were in town without their wives. After dinner they went dancing at the Washington Country Club. Catherine had hoped that the lobbyist might be able to give her a job. Instead she got the offer of a car and her own apartment, which she declined with thanks.

Susie brought the congressman back to the apartment, and Catherine went to bed. A short time later she heard them go into Susie’s bedroom, and the bedsprings began to creak. Catherine pulled a pillow over her head to drown out the sound, but it was impossible. She visualized Susie in bed with her date making wild, passionate love. In the morning when Catherine got up for breakfast, Susie was already up, looking bright and cheerful, ready to go to work. Catherine searched for telltale wrinkles and other signs of dissipation on Susie, but there were none. On the contrary she looked radiant, her skin absolutely flawless. My God, Catherine thought, she’s a female Dorian Grey. One day she’s going to come in looking great, and I’ll look a hundred and ten years old.

A few days later at breakfast Susie said, ‘Hey, I heard about a job opening that might interest you. One of the girls at the party last night said she’s quitting to go back to Texas. God knows why anyone who ever got away from Texas would want to go back there. I remember I was in Amarillo a few years ago and …’

‘Where does she work?’ Catherine interrupted.

‘Who?’

‘The girl,’ Catherine said patiently.

‘Oh. She works for Bill Fraser. He’s in charge of public relations for the State Department. Newsweek did a cover story on him last month. It’s supposed to be a cushy job. I just heard about it last night, so if you get over there now, you should beat all the other girls to it.’

‘Thanks,’ Catherine said gratefully. ‘William Fraser, here I come.’

Twenty minutes later Catherine was on her way to the State Department. When she arrived, the guard told her where Fraser’s office was and she took the elevator upstairs. Public Relations. It sounded exactly like the sort of job she was looking for.

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