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MY ENEMY MY LOVE

by James Walker

    Cosette is spoilt, rich young woman, living just outside the Northern French city of Lille, whose privileged existence is shattered by the German invasion of France at the outset of the First World War. Rescued from being raped by a handsome German staff officer, they fall in love, little realising the twists and turns of fate that lie ahead of them.
This is a tale of love, war, and the capacity of the human spirit to be strengthened by and to overcome adversity, set against a background of resistance to a brutal occupation that has become overshadowed by the events of a later conflict. The courage displayed especially by women in the face of that occupation deserves to be better remembered outside France.

An extract from chapter one.

Northern France 24th July 1914

    It was an especially beautiful day, with only a few, high clouds in the sky. The temperature had been rising steadily for several hours, the air was still, and the ground parched through lack of rain. Cosette Guilloux could feel a trickle of sweat down her back but was unperturbed.
    “Come on, Antoine, race you home.”
    Turning her head as she spoke, she grinned at her younger brother who was almost alongside her. He was mounted on a well bred stallion but she knew that, wearing her jodhpurs and sitting astride her mare, Sesame, rather than on a side saddle, she could still outride him.
    “Alright, Cosette, this time I’ll beat you!”
    They had just emerged from a wood into open country and as they broke into a gallop she was quick to build up a comfortable lead. They had only about a kilometre left to go and her only concern was that she had given Sesame her head too soon.
    As they raced on she was the first to have a clear view of the house where she had been born in July 1893. Erected with the entrepreneurial wealth acquired by her great-grandfather, it was a fine-looking building surrounded by substantial grounds. Standing four stories high, with two towers at each end, it resembled a medieval chateau and including servants’ quarters in the attics it had all of twenty rooms
    She was still maintaining her lead but as she looked back she could tell that her brother was gaining on her.
    “I’m going to catch you, Cosette,” he called out excitedly.
    “Never!”
    It was at moments like these that she was grateful for her competitive spirit when in the saddle, something which she had inherited from her father, who was still a fine horseman.
    One major obstacle remained to be surmounted; a hedge that stood on the boundary of the chateau’s grounds. It was well maintained, barely half a metre wide but slightly more than a metre and a half tall. To jump it safely demanded courage and skill on the part of both horse and rider but Cosette was equal to the task.
    As she approached the hedge, still maintaining a small lead, she had to be careful to steady Sesame and ensure that she maintained both balance and control as they went into the jump. Then they were both flying through the air, clearing the hedge by barely a centimetre, before landing comfortably on the other side. She shrieked with pleasure.
They were now only metres from their destination and she was aware that Antoine, having also successfully negotiated the hedge, was barely more than a length behind her and coming up fast. She could feel the sweat beginning to drip off her forehead in the heat and Sesame’s breath growing laboured. The mare was tiring fast. She leaned further forward in the saddle and offered her some encouragement.
To her delight she just held on by barely a head to reach the finishing line first. It was a tall, isolated elm tree, standing only a short distance from the stable entrance.
    Then her carefree mood suddenly darkened a little. Everywhere she had been in the city of Lille the previous day there had been talk of war. After a generation and a half of peace, many people she had met had seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the prospect whereas to her mind it carried with it only connotations of death and suffering.
She simply didn’t understand or care about the reasons that, her father, Aubert, told the family gravely, were hurtling the whole of Europe towards conflict. It was some comfort at least that he seemed to take no pleasure in the unfolding events, describing them as an act of collective madness. This helped her cling to the hope that it would somehow all blow over like a thunderstorm, that however fierce it may be in the distance, never quite arrives.
    Antoine, never a poor loser, was happy to congratulate her. “Well done, Cosette. I thought I was going to catch you at the line.”
    She smiled at him. “Not this time, Antoine.”
    Like her he had a passion for riding while his lack of achievement at school and easy going manner had caused him to be fiercely rebuked by their father on more than one occasion. Now, to her dismay, he seemed swept away with excitement at the thought of war breaking out.
    “I don’t want you to go and fight,” she appealed to him as they dismounted and handed their horses over to the stable lads to look after. “Don’t you realise that you might be killed?”
    He simply laughed. “You know I enjoy a little danger in life. When we gallop across country and jump fences don’t we risk our lives?”
    She shook her head. “That’s not the same thing at all, you know it isn’t.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “I wish I could persuade you.”
    “You can’t, Cosette. If our nation is once again to be at war with Germany do you take me for a coward? Anyway, what choice do I have? I am due to be called up into the army in a few weeks whatever happens. ”
    “Oh, that stupid law!” For the last year and more she had heard so much boring talk about the extension of conscription from two to three years without exemptions.
    “Even if there was no call up, I would still enlist. It’s time that we avenged the defeat at Sedan.”
    “But that was so long ago and what if we are beaten again? Have you thought of that?”
    “We won’t be. This time we will have not only our own Imperial forces but, Papa thinks, those of the English Empire on our side as well. Russia too will attack Germany from the East. Come on, it’s getting late, time to get changed for dinner.”
    With the help of her personal maid, Jeanne Desaix, Cosette dressed as quickly as she could. She put on one of her silk evening gowns, which she had bought it only a few weeks before in Paris. Following a recent change of fashion it was v-necked, allowing her to show off her bosom, which was anyway forced upwards by the brocade corset she had put on.
    Much as she felt constrained by her corset, as she looked at herself in the mirror, she had to confess that it helped her to display her figure to perfection. It helped remind her too that she had the timeless asset of dark-haired good looks. Her fulsome lips were, she felt, her best feature but others were more complimentary about her eyes, which one admirer had been bold enough to describe as dazzling.
She quickly made up her mind to wear the expensive pearl necklace that her grandmother had given her for her eighteenth birthday, and motioned to Jeanne to hand her the jewellery box that sat on her dressing table.
    “Give me my pearls please, Jeanne.”
    As the girl handed them to her she then passed them round her neck and checked that her hair was properly in place. It was drawn back into a chignon or bun. It crossed her mind whether she should wear a little make up but she knew that her complexion was still fresh and unblemished enough not to need such flattery. Then, as a final touch, she merely applied a little scent to her neck.
    “Yes, that will do very well I think, Jeanne.”
    “You look lovely, Mademoiselle.”
    “Thank you, Jeanne.” She smiled warmly at her maid. She had chosen her the previous year because she sensed that she was a sweet natured girl who would also be loyal and attentive, as well as keep secrets if she had to. So far she had not been disappointed in her choice.
    “Now, I really must go down to dinner. Papa never likes it if I am late.”
    Descending the large staircase that dominated the interior of the house, she found that she was the last of the family to arrive.
    “We have been waiting for you, Cosette,” her father said a little testily as she entered the dining room. She immediately realised that he was not in the best of moods, but then barely a day had passed in the last month when it had been otherwise. Although not yet quite fifty he also struck her as looking care warn and old with his grey beard and hair.
    “I am sorry, Papa. Please forgive me.” She smiled at him warmly and he smiled back. It was at his knee that she had learnt how to ingratiate herself with men and she had no fear of even his worst tempers.
    Glancing around her, she exchanged knowing looks with Antoine. She could see that his green eyes were full of affection for her and she found herself admiring his boyish good looks and easy charm. Of all her family, he was the one she most adored.
    Meanwhile, her older brother, Philippe, was looking down at his soup bowl, and seemed lost in another world. But then she knew that was not unusual so thought no more of it. He had always been serious minded and thoughtful and although she loved him dearly they had never had very much in common.
    She took it for granted that Philippe would in due course succeed her father as chairman of the board of the private company that the family owned, his training as an accountant being expected to enhance his ability to do so. Antoine, on the other hand, as she very well aware, was decidedly uninterested in the prospects of a business career. Indeed, he had often confessed to her that he couldn’t think of anything more boring.
    Her mother, Beatrice, was meanwhile giving her a stern, rather disapproving look. The kind of tactics that she found invariably worked so well with men held no sway with her at all, and they both knew it. She still felt that she was capable of reading her every thought and was unbending in her sense of propriety and good taste.
    Putting her hand across her necklace rather nervously, she wondered if it was her low cut dress that her mother disliked. In stark contrast to this she was attired in a high necked gown that she thought would not have looked out of place a decade previously.
    Beatrice had a graciousness of manner, which Cosette hoped she had inherited, and a year younger than her father, her hair too had begun to show more than a hint of grey, while she had long since grown plump as a result of child bearing, a love of good food, and too little exercise. It frightened Cosette that she would one day look like her mother but she immediately dismissed any such notion from her mind.
    She found her parents’ innate conservatism tiresome. Most particularly, she would have liked the freedom to travel on her own to Paris, and to be able to meet men without a chaperon being present, but this was deemed quite out of the question. She thought it something of a miracle that she had even managed to exchange kisses with any man, given how protective her parents were of her virtue, and she had needed to resort to subterfuge on more than one occasion to be able to achieve this.
    As she had feared all conversation around the table was dominated by the latest news about the impending war.
    “It’s in all the papers. Austria has now sent Serbia an ultimatum,” her father declared gloomily. This sounded like bad news. For the past few days she had become increasingly fearful that if war broke out too quickly it would put an end to her twenty-first birthday party planned for the following evening. She had been looking forward to this for ages, thinking herself fortunate that her birthday should fall on a Saturday. Now, however bad the international news, it was surely too late to cancel the event and a good attendance by family and friends could still be expected.