They unwrapped more packages, finding several more kugel ornaments in cobalt blue, green, gold, and amethyst.
‘Lined with real silver,’ he said. She showed me when I broke one and she said they’d be valuable one day. I wonder how she got them.’
Florence shrugged. The German baubles had given her a funny feeling in her stomach. So much information was missing from her life. What might her German father,Friedrich, have passed on to her that she had no idea about? There must be millions of little things, not just the love of gardening she and her half-brother Anton already knew they shared, but other unknown things. What was Friedrich’s favourite colour? Did he like fish? Anton had saidheenjoyed fishing. Did Friedrich too? And what about swimming? Florence loved to swim. And there would be bigger things, too, that at present she couldn’t begin to fathom. Since finding out about her father, she’d felt as if her psyche had altered. She could still feel the music of her French life beating in her heart, but something about the rhythm was no longer the same.
She and Jack spent the rest of Christmas Eve peacefully enough, demolishing Gladys’s delicious Christmas cake, heavily doused with home-made cherry brandy, drinking Armagnac, which did remind Florence of home, and listening to the BBC Home Service on the wireless in front of the fire. After the news they enjoyed an adaptation ofAlice Through the Looking Glass, and later, at half past nine, there was Christmas Eve music from the BBC Symphony Orchestra. They didn’t refer to their conversation about Hélène, or to her outing with Bruce, and went to bed at half past ten. But Florence still felt a trace of tension hanging between them.
CHAPTER 23
It was quiet when Florence woke on Christmas morning except for the purr of little Bart, who had somehow managed to fall asleep right beside her face, making her sneeze. She thought of Christmas in France with her sisters before the war and how noisy it used to be, and she wondered how it would be with a new baby in the house. They would have already had the long feast they calledLe Réveillon– the French Christmas Eve midnight meal, though she wasn’t sure who would have cooked it or what they’d have had to eat. Supplies must be getting awfully low without her to manage them.
She pictured them before the war. Hélène madly polishing everything until it shone before everyone arrived – she’d have polished Florence and Élise if they’d let her; Hélène always did run a tight ship. And Élise would be dragging in greenery at the very last minute and pinning it everywhere. There used to be mulled wine in the bars.Mulled wine. And the thought of that brought tears to her eyes. But she wiped them away and remembered how she would have been in the kitchen roasting the goose. She could almost smell her old kitchen and longed again for that feeling of home.
Then, in the old days, Marie and Doctor Hugo would arrive bearing a hugebûche de Noël,a decorated yule log made of chocolate and chestnuts. And Marie would also carry in a box full of fruits, dried figs, hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, nougat, and dried grapes. To bring good luck for the coming year, after the meal was over you had to taste thirteen different sweet things representing Jesus and the twelve apostles.
But then the war had come, and Christmas had never been the same, although they’d done their best. And now it was changing again. How unsettled it made you feel – you thought your world would remain unchanged and go on just as it always had but then suddenly, without you doing anything, anything at all, it completely turned on its head. She wondered if Friedrich and Anton would be eatingstollen, dusted with a thick coat of powdered sugar and baked with aromatic spices. And would they be thinking of her?
She got out of bed and glanced in the mirror. Her eyes were pink and teary. This wouldn’t do. You were supposed to be happy on Christmas Day, so she tried a cheerful face, checking her success in the mirror. Hmmm. Not brilliant. But they were going to see Gladys soon, and no matter what, Gladys always cheered her up.
She washed, dressed and went downstairs.
‘Happy Christmas,’ Jack said, and looking self-conscious, handed her a small box.
‘Oh, I wasn’t expecting—’
‘Last-minute thought,’ Jack said, interrupting her.
She opened it, and nestled in red velvet was the prettiest bracelet she’d ever seen. Two silver chains with small pearls and blue stones threaded through it.
‘It was my grandmother’s,’ he said.
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘The pearls are real and the little blue stones are sapphires. I think my grandfather brought it back from India.’
‘It must be terribly valuable. A family heirloom. Are you sure you want to give it to me?’
He smiled. ‘Who else? In any case my grandmother would be delighted to see it worn.’
After a light breakfast, and when they were finally ready, she and Jack went outside to check the weather. As they did it began to snow again. He glanced at the heavily laden sky. ‘A steady fall, I think. Wouldn’t want to take the car.’
‘That’s fine. We’ll walk,’ she said.
He went back inside and she stamped up and down on the ground to keep herself warm while she waited. He came out carrying a box.
‘What have you got there?’
‘Wine, brandy and dried fruit. Brought it back from London.’
‘My God! How did you get it?’ she asked, frowning. ‘Not with ration cards?’
‘It’s not black market, if that’s what you’re thinking. Acontact of mine gave it to me for smuggling him out of France safely. I told him he owed me nothing, but he insisted.’
‘The whole boxful?’
He nodded. ‘His family are fabulously wealthy so he raided their Gloucestershire home and gave me some of the spoils.’
When they knocked on the farmhouse door, Ronnie answered and ushered them into the kitchen. ‘We’re all in the sitting room,’ he said, pushing them in front of him along a corridor.
