Danielle Steel - Crossings

“You've given enough.”

“I will give them my best now.” She knew he would and could only pray that it would not cost him his life.

“Is there nothing less dangerous you can do for France?”

“Liane …” He pulled her into his arms. She knew her husband very well. It was much, much too late to change his mind. She was only glad that he had told her the truth before they left France. It would have killed her to believe him allied sincerely with Pétain. At least now she knew the truth. She would not be able to tell anyone, lest her indiscretion cost him his life, but at least she knew, and one day they would tell the girls, who were too young to understand anyway for now.

It took her a long time to gather up the courage to ask him what she least wanted to know. “How soon do we leave?”

For a moment he didn't answer her, and then he pulled her tighter still. “Tomorrow night.” She gasped at his words, and in spite of her best efforts to be brave, her shoulders shook and she began to cry.

“Shhh … mon ange … ça ne vaut pas la peine … we will be together again soon.” But God only knows when. They lay awake side by side for a long time that night, and Liane wished, as the sun came up, that the night would never end.

hey made their trip to Toulon by back roads in a borrowed car with their headlights off, and Armand's new official papers with them in the car. Liane wore a black dress and a black scarf. She had dressed the girls in slacks and shirts and sensible shoes. They each carried one small bag with their things. The rest they would have to leave in France. They spoke very little on the trip. The girls slept, and Liane glanced at Armand frequently, as though to drink in her last hours of him. She could scarcely believe that in a few hours she and the girls would be gone.

“This will be worse than my last year in school,” she joked in a soft voice as the girls slept. And they both remembered the year they were engaged, when he was in Vienna and she at Mills College in Oakland. But this could go on for much longer than a year, as they both knew. No one knew for how long. Hitler had a firm grip on Europe's throat, and it would take time to loosen his grasp. But she knew that Armand would do all he could to make the end come soon. And there were scores of others just as devoted as he was. Even the children's nurse had astonished her. Liane had told her regretfully that she was taking the girls back to the States, and that they could not take her along. And she had been amazed to find Mademoiselle pleased. She told Liane bluntly that she would not work for one of the followers of Pétain, and then, in a passionate outburst, she admitted that she was going to leave them anyway, she was going to join the Resistance centered in the heart of France. It was a brave admission for her to make, but she trusted Liane, and the two women hugged and wept, and the girls cried when she left them earlier that day. It had been a long, painful day of good-byes, but the worst of all came on a creaking dock in Toulon as Armand handed the girls to the powerful men on the fishing boat. They clung to each other and cried, and then Liane held on to him for a last time, her eyes begging him, her voice beyond control.

“Armand, come with us…. Darling, please …” But he only shook his head, his body ramrod straight, and his arms as powerful as they had always been.

“I have a job to do here.” He looked once more at the girls and then at her. “Remember what I told you. I will get letters to you, censored or not, in whatever way I can. And even when you hear not a single word, know that I am well … be confident, my love … be brave …” His voice began to crack and tears filled his eyes as well, but he looked down at her and smiled. “I love you with all my heart and soul, Liane.” She choked on her own sobs and kissed him on the mouth and then gently he pushed her into the men's hands. “Godspeed, my love … Au revoir, mesfilles….” And without waiting a moment more the boat pulled out and left him there, waving in the night in his pin-striped suit, his mane of white hair blowing in the summer breeze. “Au revoir …”He whispered it again as the little fishing boat was swallowed up by the dark of night. “Au revoir …” And he prayed it was not adieu.

s it turned out, it took them two days, not one, to meet the freighter, the Deauville . She had had to move farther out several days before to avoid detection, but the fishing boat from Toulon knew exactly where she was. They had been making this same trip all week, each time stopping on the way back to fish, so that they would have something to show for their absences if they were stopped. But the Germans were too busy enjoying France, and the Resistance had not gotten under way in full yet. There were cafés and girls and boulevards to catch their eyes on the shore. And all the while the Deauville sat, collecting passengers that had been arriving on board all week. She had left her cargo in North Africa, and she was traveling light, with the exception of the sixty passengers occupying the fifteen cabins on board, mostly Americans, and two French Jews, a dozen Englishmen who had been living in the South of France, and some Canadians. It was generally an amazing assortment of people, anxious to be out of France and relieved to be on the ship.

They huddled quietly on the deck all day, and sat in the overcrowded dining room at night with the crew, waiting for the ship to set sail. The captain had said that they would sail out quietly, late that night, though he was still expecting a woman and two little girls, the family of a French diplomat. And when Liane and the two girls boarded the ship, they discovered that they were the only females on board, but Liane was too numb and exhausted to care. The girls had cried for two days for their papa, and all three of them reeked of fish from the little fishing boat. Elisabeth had been sick the whole way, and all Liane could think about was Armand. It was a nightmarish beginning to their return to the States, but they had begun the journey now and they had to persevere. She owed it to Armand to keep the girls happy until they were all together again, but every time she thought of it, she had to fight back tears of her own. She almost fell into the arms of the crewmen on the Deauville , who half carried Liane and the girls to their room. Both the girls were sunburned and chilled, and Liane herself felt too exhausted to walk another foot. They closed the door and fell onto the bunks, and all three of them fell asleep. Liane didn't wake again until late that night when she felt the gentle pitching of the ship. She looked out the porthole into the night, and she realized that they had set sail. She wondered if a U-boat would catch them before they reached the States, but it was too late to turn back now, and Armand would never have let her anyway. They were going home. She went quietly back to her bunk, after tucking the girls in as they slept, and then went back to sleep until the dawn.

When she got up, she took a shower in the bathroom they shared with approximately fifteen men. There were four bathrooms for the use of the fifteen cabins on the ship, and the lines were long, but not yet at that hour of the day, and she returned to the cabin, feeling refreshed and hungry for the first time in three days.