'Nonsense.' With a quick movement, Brandt snapped the water off. 'I know her. She'll grow very fond of you. Now promise you'll stay…'
'All right,' Christian said slowly. 'I'll stay.' He could see Brandt's eyes glistening. Brandt's hand, as it patted Christian's bare shoulder, was trembling a little.
'We're safe, Christian,' Brandt whispered. 'At last we're safe…'
He turned awkwardly and put on his shirt and went into the other room. Christian put his shirt on slowly, buttoning it carefully, looking at himself in the mirror, studying the haggard eyes, the ridged lines on his cheeks, the topography of fear and grief and exhaustion that was obscurely and invincibly marked there. He leaned close to the mirror and stared at his hair. There was a sanding of grey, heavy at the temples, glistening in little pale tips on top. God, he thought, I never saw that before. I'm getting old, old… He braced himself, hating the wave of self-pity that for a moment he had allowed to flood through him, and walked stiffly out into the living-room.
The living-room was cosy, with the one shaded lamp diffusing a dull rosy glow over the room and over the long, reclining figure of Francoise on the soft couch.
Brandt and Simone had gone to bed, holding hands domestically as they had gone down the hallway. After eating, after telling a jumbled, inaccurate account of the last few days, Brandt had almost fallen asleep in his chair and Simone had fondly pulled him up by his hands and led him away, smiling in an almost motherly way at Christian and Francoise left together in the shadowy room.
'The war is over,' Brandt had mumbled in farewell, 'the war is over, boys, and now I am going to sleep. Farewell, Lieutenant Brandt, of the Army of the Third Reich,' he had said with sleepy oratory, 'farewell, soldier. Tomorrow once more the decadent painter of non-objective pictures awakens in his civilian bed, next to his wife.' He had pointed in a limp, gentle way at Francoise. 'Be good to my friend. Love him well. He is the best of the best. Strong, delicate, tested in the fire, the hope of the new Europe, if there will be a new Europe and if there is any hope for it. Love him well.'
Shaking her head fondly, saying, 'The drink has gone to the man's tongue,' Simone had pushed him gently towards the bedroom.
'Good night,' they had heard Brandt's mumbled valedictory in the hallway, 'good night, my dear friends…'
Then the door had closed and there had been silence in the small, feminine room, with its pale wood and its dark, nighttime mirrors, its soft-coloured cushions, and its silver-framed photograph of Brandt taken in beret and Basque shirt before the war.
'A tired soldier,' Francoise murmured from the depths of the couch, 'a very tired soldier, our Lieutenant Brandt.'
'Yes,' said Christian, watching her carefully.
'He's had a hard time, hasn't he?' Francoise moved her toes.
'It hasn't been pleasant, the last few weeks, has it?'
'No, not very.'
'The Americans,' said Francoise, in a flat, innocent voice, 'they're very strong, very fresh, aren't they?'
'You might say that.'
'The papers here,' Francoise shifted her weight gently and the long lines rearranged themselves in silvery shadows under the robe, 'keep saying it is all going according to plan. The enemy are being cleverly contained, there will be a surprising counter-attack.' The tone of lazy amusement in Francoise's voice was very clear. 'The papers are very reassuring. Mr Brandt ought to read them more often.' She laughed softly. The quiet laugh would have seemed sensual and inviting, Christian realized, if they had been talking on a different subject. 'Mr Brandt,' Francoise said gently, 'is not of the opinion that the enemy will be contained. And a counter-attack would be really surprising to him, wouldn't it?'
'I imagine so,' Christian said, sparring, wondering: What is this woman up to?
'How about you?' She spoke abstractedly, not really to Christian, but into the warm, dusky air.
'Perhaps I share Brandt's opinion,' Christian said.
'You're very tired, too, aren't you?' Francoise sat up and stared at him, her lips straight and quite sympathetic, but her heavy-lidded green eyes contracted in what seemed to Christian to be a hidden smile. 'You probably want to go to sleep, too.'
'Not just now,' said Christian. Suddenly he couldn't bear the thought of this long-limbed, green-eyed, mocking woman leaving him. 'I've been a lot more tired than this in my time.'
'Oh,' said Francoise, lying back again, 'oh, what an excellent soldier. Stoical, inexhaustible. How can an army lose a war when it still has troops like that?'
Christian stared at her, hating her. She turned her head in a sleepy movement of the cushions, to look at him. The long muscles under the pale skin of her throat made a delicate new pattern of flesh and shadows in the lamplight. Finally, Christian knew, staring at her, he would have to kiss that place where the skin swept in an ivory, trembling, living sheet from the base of her throat to the half-exposed shoulder.
'I knew a boy like you long ago,' Francoise said, not smiling now, looking directly at him. 'A Frenchman. Strong. Uncomplaining. A resolute patriot. I liked him very much, I must say.' The deep voice murmured in his ears. 'He died in ' 40. In another retreat. Do you expect to die, Sergeant?'
'No,' said Christian, slowly. 'I do not expect to die.'
'Good.' Francoise's full lips moved into the semblance of a smile. 'The best of the best, according to your friend. The hope of the new Europe. Do you consider yourself the hope of the new Europe, Sergeant?'
'Brandt was drunk.'
'Was he? Possibly. Are you sure you don't want to go to sleep?'
'I'm sure.'
'You do look very tired, you know.'
'I do not wish to go to sleep.'
Francoise nodded gently. 'The ever-waking Sergeant. Does not wish to go to sleep. Prefers to remain awake, at great personal sacrifice, and entertain a lonely French lady who is at a loose end until the Americans enter Paris…' She put her hand, palm upward, over her eyes, the loose sleeve falling back from the slender wrist and the long, sharp-nailed fingers. 'Tomorrow,' she said, 'we will enter your name for the Legion of Honour, second class, service to the French nation.'
'Enough,' Christian said, without moving from his chair.
'Stop making fun of me.'
'Nothing,' said Francoise flatly, 'could be further from my mind. Tell me, Sergeant, as a military man, how long do you think it will be before the Americans get here?'
'Two weeks,' said Christian. 'A month.'
'Oh,' Francoise said, 'we are in for an interesting time, aren't we?'
'Yes.'
'Shall I tell you something, Sergeant?'
'What?'
'I have remembered our little dinner party again and again.
''40? '41?'
''40.'
'I wore a white dress. You looked very handsome. Tall, straight, intelligent, conquering, shining in your uniform, the young god of mechanized warfare.' She chuckled.
'You are making fun of me again,' Christian said. 'It is not pleasant.'
'I was very much impressed with you.' She waved her hand, as though to stop a contradiction that Christian had no idea of voicing. 'Honestly, I was. I was very cold to you, wasn't I?' Again the small remembering laugh. 'You have no idea how difficult it was for me to manage it. I am far from impervious, Sergeant, to the attractions of young men. And you were so splendid-looking, Sergeant…' The sleepy, hypnotic voice whispering musically in the soft-lighted, civilized room, seemed remote, unreal. 'So ripe with conquest, so arrogant, so beautiful. It took all my enormous powers of self-control. You are less arrogant, now, aren't you, Sergeant?'
'Yes,' said Christian, feeling himself between sleeping and waking, rhythmically adrift on a soft, perfumed, subtly dangerous tide. 'Not arrogant at all any more.'
'You're very tired now,' the woman murmured. 'A little grey. And I noticed that you limp a bit, too. In '40 it did
