Free Peach by Elizabeth Adler

her, he rolled on top of her. She gasped as he began to thrust harder. “More, more,” she begged. God, he was such a fantastic lover, oh my God … “More, more. Don’t stop now. Oh please … Karl, don’t stop.” It seemed the night would never end.

9

    Caroline Montalva had always been considered one of the smartest of Parisians and like most of them she was also thrifty. Caro never threw anything away. From the momentshe was seventeen and had bought her first couture dress, she had saved every single garment. “After all,” she’d said to her lover Alphonse, when he’d protested as the closets and armoires grew in size and quantity until whole rooms had to be converted to hold her expanding wardrobe, “anything that costs this much can’t possibly be thrown away. You wouldn’t discard a chair or a painting simply because it had been purchased last year.” And dear Alphonse, round, bespectacled and adoring, had agreed, adding with a laugh, “And when we run out of rooms, your economy will force me to buy a larger house!”
    What a pity, thought Caro as she hurried down the rue de Rivoli, that Alphonse was no longer here to see her thrift put to such good use. Despite the war she able to clothe herself decently from the depths of her closet—and some of those garments dated back to the days of Worth at the turn of the century—and, with the aid of a little sewing woman, she saw to it that her friends, too, were supplied with her newly converted “old” clothes. She felt quite chic in this soft blue wool suit, despite the wartime restrictions. And, of course, the hat added just the right finishing touch—a wonderful fine woven straw bought from Madame Reboux ten years ago; she’d simply added a length of spotted veil from another hat and a clutch of purple-blue flowers that had decorated the bosom of some twenties evening dress. Growing older, she decided with a wry smile, had its advantages. But it was
feeling
old she didn’t like, and she had to admit that there were days when she felt every one of her seventy-three years.
    A glance at her reflection in a shop window showed that her back was still straight and that the new shorter skirts quite suited her—thank God her legs were still good. “Like a thoroughbred filly,” Alphonse used to say, “high-stepping with slender ankles and a skittish rear end!” She still missedhim even though he’d died twenty years ago—in the
last
war.
    Caro stepped smartly aside to avoid being jostled by a band of laughing noisy young German soldiers, back from the front for a few days’ leave in Gay Paree. God, how she hated the very
sound
of that language! Was it different now than it used to be in the old days when she’d enjoyed herself at Baden-Baden in the company of those civilised men and women of Germany? She’d never noticed
then
that her companions were any different. They were cultured, charming, softly spoken. Then who were these new people? All she knew was that they were the enemy and they had driven through her beloved Paris as conquerors. Their ugly swastika flag flew from the city’s most beautiful buildings and so-called “officers”, who were merely underlings inflated with a sense of their own power, could command tables at the Ritz. Rumours of mass exterminations were filtering through the city, though the stories were too hard to believe. Yet people disappeared every day and the Jewish family who owned the elegant apartment on the next floor—a well-known banker with whom she’d been friendly for years—had been escorted away late one night. She had watched from her window, tears streaming down her face, as silently the small family—the banker, his wife and two young daughters—had climbed into the black van with the wire mesh on the windows and the flash of yellow on the hub caps. She knew what that meant. Gestapo. The very word filled the nation with fear.
    She had had a visit from them too—a tall young officer in that