After our five-hundred-mile flight south, more shock and grief. “Oh, no, monsieur,” the petrol station owner told Jacques at the fueling station where we used our next-to-last coupon. “You will not be able to pass through the southern border to Spain or elsewhere.”
“But my wife is an American citizen.”
“We had all best to learn the new rules, no? You must drive to the American consulate in Bordeaux, and get a visa there. I know these things, monsieur, for my cousin, he works there, yes, right in the consulate, but not as an officer. He is a guard and they are besieged now, as are we all, no? Here, I can draw you directions once you get to Bordeaux. It is such a lovely city, but what will become of it now? Besieged by people and panic.”
Besieged and panicked, indeed. I was distraught.
“I do not think we have a choice but to go there,” Jacques told me when we were back in the Citroën. “Our petrol coupons are running out, our money . . .”
“Our patience, our courage,” I added.
He reached over to squeeze my thigh. “For now this Citroën is our home and best friend. We are off to the lovely city of Bordeaux.”
IT WAS A beautiful city, but the excellent directions to the American consulate took us to what looked like a mob scene. Motorcars in long lines, people packed around the building. The only comforting thing was that the American flag hung above the door, and it was so good to see it. My longing to escape, to be home safe, was a physical ache now—or was that my exhaustion and fear gnawing at me again?
We stood for three hours in a queue of panicked people waiting to see one of seven officials. God forgive me for wishing I could pull some strings as Mother had more than once with the Vanderbilt name, but it was not on my French passport.
“Yes?” the mustached, chubby man said in a most harried tone when we were finally at the front of the line. “I must tell you at once, that under these circumstances, we officers are struggling with requests and regulations the U.S. State Department keeps sending out and changing. And the border will close soon, hence all the panic, so I know you will be reasonable.”
Not a good beginning, I thought, as I began to explain. We had decided not to try to mention our plight of needing to escape the Nazis. Would he even believe such a story?
“Passports, please,” he interrupted my explanation that we wanted to go to our home in Florida. “But you will need a visa, too—a visa,” he repeated loudly in the noise of the room. I read his lips for the buzz was bothering my hearing aid.
He skimmed our paperwork. “You do not have a visa?”
“No, but I am an American citizen also and—”
“To issue you a visa—for both of you—I would need your birth certificates and marriage certificate.”
“But those are with our lawyer in Paris.”
He rolled his eyes. “Paris might as well be the moon, madame, until this hellish, so-called armistice is worked out with the Germans. You must come back in the morning, and I will inquire, but there are many more behind you.”
Jacques cut in, “We are not giving up our passports. Is there any other way to obtain visas, then?”
“Well, you could have your passports visa-ed for Spain and Portugal but you would have to go to Bayonne where those countries have consulates. Then you could go to Lisbon in Portugal to get your official entry to the U.S. But that is a gamble, because the frontier will be closing soon, very soon, if it has not already. Yes, that might be your best chance. Please move on, then. Next!”
I could have hit the man and yet he had given us a ray of hope to not have to be separated from our passports and to get out of France. But to drive on with our last petrol coupon to another place and the threat of the way being cut off there, too, was daunting.
We walked several blocks to our motorcar, buying a loaf of bread and soda water on the way. We had no place to sleep but in the car. How far to Bayonne? We looked at each other, weary, frightened but determined. We did not even talk it over, for we had no choice.
“Bayonne, it is,” Jacques said and started our faithful, old motorcar.
WE DROVE THROUGH a torrent of rain. It seemed the very heavens were against us. I might not be able to hear the swish-swish of our windscreen wipers, but they mesmerized me as I tried to help Jacques navigate the road to the west. And they said it rained too much in England! Strange, but I thought of beautiful Blenheim in the spring rain. I thought of Winston leading the nation through this dreadful war and yet taking time to be worried about me. I missed my English family and wanted to see them all again, desperately.
“I just thought of something,” Jacques said, still squinting at the wet pavement and traffic splashing water at us. “My father was friends with the former Spanish ambassador to France. He lives now at Biarritz.”
“But we are almost to Bayonne! We will run out of petrol!”
“But you know how things work. I swear, we will find a mess again at the Spanish consulate. But with a paper to take us to the front of the line . . . Consuelo, you know I am not a betting man, but I think we should try. Coupons or not, we can find someone who wants French francs or that little bit of American cash you have.”
“I only brought those bills because my father gave them to me, told me to hold them for him one time, then never—never got them back—before . . .”
“We are both exhausted and on edge.”
“And hunted.”
“Are you with me?”
“I trust you, my love. Biarritz, it is.”
WE HAD TO wait an endless day for the former ambassador, Baron Almeida, to return to his home, but we slept in our car and saved our money. Then, armed with the special letter from him and having turned down a night in a lovely home because we were terrified the border would close, we finally reached Bayonne. And found another mob scene to face.
Our hearts fell when we heard the Spanish consulate insisted on there being a visa with the passports, so we rushed on foot to the nearby Portuguese consulate. After all, we had decided to leave Europe via Lisbon—somehow.
We were greeted by a crowd of people chanting over and over, “We want our passports! We want them now!”
We looked at each other in dismay, but we plunged into the crowd. We slid and squeezed our way slowly ahead. My height helped me to navigate. My panic grew that we would be trapped, found, imprisoned. I saw a slight space in the crowd as people shifted, shouting. With Jacques right behind me, I pushed ahead, up the stairs, which were also packed. Would this wooden staircase even hold?
I heard the man just ahead of us tell his younger male companion, “I know how to empty these stairs.” He began to shout, “Look out! These stairs are giving way! Too much weight! They will crash!”
Jacques grabbed my arm and turned to flee. “No,” I told him, amazed I had heard the man in this din, a gift from God. “That is a lie this man tells. Up, we go up!”
We made it up right behind the shouting man. The first door in the hallway was closed but there was a bell there, and we rang it while the other two men ran farther down the hall. We waved the ambassador’s seal on our letter in the face of the first man at the door. He took us in. When we explained, we had our visas in five minutes. Outside, with the rain still pouring down, I sobbed in relief.
BUT I SHOULD have known we were not home free—and certainly not even home yet. Once in Spain, where foreigners like us were frowned upon, we learned we must take a train to get to Lisbon where we could catch a plane. We realized we had not enough money for either, let alone food and a place to sleep before the train left.
We sold the Citroën that day for a wretchedly low price, but what choice did we have? I hated to see it go, our deliverer this far.
The travel bureau now controlling the train station asked an exorbitant price for our tickets. We could not afford a sleeper car but sat in seats as, thank God, the train finally headed for Lisbon. But we were frightened each time the conductor asked to see our precious papers. Here we were, refugees on a train, and it had been trains that had made my family its fortune. How I missed my father, and, yes, my mother too. She would have settled down those confusing and confused people in the places we had just been.
“Señor, señora, I must have your passports, please. You will receive them back later in Lisbon.”
“We do not wish to give them up,” Jacques argued. “Can you not examine them?”
“Do not worry. I will give you this official paper, and you will have them returned to you at the Passport Office.”
My stomach cramped, and I had to rush to the horrid, swaying toilet on the train while Jacques guarded our meager pieces of paper as our precious passports—our safety and our future—were taken away. The train was hours late and the hotels were occupied, but we finally found a single room with a bed so unkempt that we slept curled up together on the small settee. But we were together. We were out of France. But still far from home, and where was home now?
We stood in a long line, which they even dared to close for an hour for a siesta, but at last—at last!—we had what we needed and a moment of help, too.
“Oh,” the officer said. Thankfully, he spoke decent English since Portuguese was something neither of us understood well. That alone and his handing over our passports and visas made him a hero in my eyes already. “Here, it is yes—oh, two documents sent for you here.”
He squinted at the envelopes and handed them to me. One was a cable from my brother Mike, telling us he had followed Jacques’s request—which I had not realized he had sent from Biarritz—and had booked two spaces for us on a Clipper land-and-sea aeroplane to the United States via Lisbon. Even more amazing, the other missive was an invitation to a formal state dinner as the guest of Prince George, Duke of Kent, at a champagne reception and dinner that night, for he was in Lisbon on a diplomatic mission and had heard we were here to leave the country.
Our nightmare, I prayed, was over. I thrust both letters at Jacques and burst into tears.
IT FELT TO us surreal to be greeted by the duke amid happy chatter and the clink of goblets. Jacques wore his uniform, which he had hidden under the seat of the Citroën and had only remembered to rescue at the last moment when we sold it, but here I was at a formal dinner in a plain black day dress and no jewelry but my wedding ring and the family heirloom pin my husband had given me long ago at dear Crowhurst.
The duke understood when we told him what we had been through, but I was the target of a narrow glance or two from the Portuguese guests. Imagine, I thought. Ordinarily, I would have laughed it off, but I still felt so delicate—nearly traumatized. Here was Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, once a duchess, hostess of charities and parties, not dressed for the ball.
“Such an adventure,” the duke told me. He had kindly seated me on one side and Jacques on his other. “And I fear our beloved England is about to feel the upheaval, too. But with your cousin Winston at the helm, steady as she goes. A shame his influence does not reach here with the visa and passport people, but I fear not. Still, we are hoping your America will help us out as before.”
“I feel so out of touch with . . . with home,” I told him. “And I leave my family—on my side, not Jacques’s side—in England. I know both my sons, the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, will serve to help protect their homeland.”
“I too, in the skies if the Luftwaffe dares to visit us. Jacques, we could use your skills.”
“I would fight them on the ground or in the skies.”
“I pulled a few strings to find out about your village,” the duke said as he slowly cut into his beef, which Jacques and I had tried not to gobble, for it was the best, heartiest food we had eaten in over a week. Still, I was so upset that nothing tasted quite right. Worry. Guilt over those on the roads, those in endless lines, those in our village. I held my breath as the duke went on.
“Ironically, the German general for the air command has taken over your château, but the hospital, which your butler, Albert, mentioned to my aide just before your house staff fled the village—is currently intact and operating, evidently to be left alone for now.”
I breathed out a sigh and clasped my hands to my chest. “Thank you so much for that kindness,” I told him. “And for having us here.”
“The least I could do for a French hero and an English—and American—duchess,” he said.
I ignored the bejeweled woman across the table who alternately glared at or dramatically feigned looking away from me. Here I was in a plain dress, with hardly any money to my name, no motorcar, no plush hotel room, no maid, and only a settee on which to lay my head this last night before leaving. But I had my dear sons and family, I had my beloved hero Jacques, and I had memories of people and places I had loved. In that moment, if I could take on Hitler himself, I would.
“I HAVE NEVER been on a seaplane before,” I told Jacques as we boarded and strapped ourselves into our seats at the wharf along the Tagus River in Lisbon the next morning. And I have never flown the Atlantic in a plane—just give me a ship for that.”
“My love, you have not stopped talking. I know you are excited but—”
“Just happy. Relieved. Oh, yes, and in love with a Frenchman.”
He smiled and exhaled audibly. “I feel as if I am running, but I will come back—if I can help in any way. Winston said when he phoned to tell us he was P.M. months ago that he could use me.”
“He finally told me what this means,” I said, flashing him the two-fingered V sign. “When we were young—when I first knew him—I always thought of it as meaning vim and vigor, that was Winston.”
“Still is. If anyone can best the bastard Fuehrer, it is him. It is for victory, yes? He will use it, he will preach it and speak it.”
As the engines started, we held hands. I had made so many journeys, seen so much, met so many. Loved many, too, but the best was here beside me. I closed my eyes as we rocked a bit, moving away from the wharf, then I looked out the window as we picked up speed and lifted from the water into the clear, blue sky. I was heading home. Well, to one of the homes of my heart.