Along the Infinite Sea: Love, friendship and heartbreak, the perfect summer read

Published by HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by Penguin Group USA 2015

First published in the UK by Harper 2015

Copyright © Beatriz Williams

Cover layout design © HarperColl‌inPublishers Ltd 2015Cover photograph courtesy of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation (Two Women on the Beach, 1936. By Yva / Else Neuländer).

All other photographs by Cherie Chapman, (sea and sky). Cover texture © CGTextures (wood).

Beatriz Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008134952

Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008134969

Version 2015-09-09

To those who escaped in time

and those who did not

and those who risked their lives to help

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Overture

Annabelle

First Movement

Pepper

Annabelle

Pepper

Annabelle

Pepper

Annabelle

Pepper

Annabelle

Second Movement

Annabelle

Pepper

Annabelle

Pepper

Annabelle

Intermezzo

Annabelle

Third Movement

Annabelle

Pepper

Annabelle

Pepper

Fourth Movement

Annabelle

Pepper

Annabelle

Pepper

Annabelle

Pepper

Annabelle

Fifth Movement

Pepper

Annabelle

Coda

Stefan

Historical Note

Note on the Cover, From the Publisher

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading

By the Same Author

About the Author

About the Publisher

“To see all without looking;

to hear all without listening.”

CÉSAR RITZ

King of Hoteliers, Hotelier of Kings

All you really need to know about the Paris Ritz is this: by the middle of 1937, Coco Chanel was living in a handsome suite on the third floor, and the bartender—an intuitive mixologist named Frank Meier—had invented the Bloody Mary sixteen summers earlier to cure a Hemingway hangover.

Mind you, when I arrived at Nick Greenwald’s farewell party on that hot July night, I wasn’t altogether aware of this history. I didn’t run with the Ritz crowd. Mosquitoes, my husband called them. And maybe I should have listened to my husband. Maybe no good could come from visiting the bar at the Paris Ritz; maybe you were doomed to commit some frivolous and irresponsible act, maybe you were doomed to hover around dangerously until you had drawn the blood from another human being or else had your own blood drawn instead.

But Johann—my husband—wasn’t around that night. I tiptoed in through the unfashionable Place Vendôme entrance on my brother’s arm instead, since Johann had been recalled to Berlin for an assignment of a few months that had stretched into several. In those days, you couldn’t just flit back and forth between Paris and Berlin, any more than you could flit between heaven and hell; and furthermore, why would you want to? Paris had everything I needed, everything I loved, and Berlin in 1937 was no place for a liberal-minded woman nurturing a young child and an impossible rift in her marriage. I stayed defiantly in France, where you could still attend a party for a man named Greenwald, where anyone could dine where he pleased and shop and bank where he pleased, where you could sleep with anyone who suited you, and it wasn’t a crime.

For the sake of everyone’s good time, I suppose it was just as well that my husband remained in Berlin, since Nick Greenwald and Johann von Kleist weren’t what you’d call bosom friends, for all the obvious reasons. But Nick and I were a different story. Nick and I understood each other: first, because we were both Americans living in Paris, and second, because we shared a little secret together, the kind of secret you could never, ever share with anyone else. Of all my brother’s friends, Nick was the only one who didn’t resent me for marrying a general in the German army. Good old Nick. He knew I’d had my reasons.

The salon was hot, and Nick was in his shirtsleeves, though he still retained his waistcoat and a neat white bow tie, the kind you needed a valet to arrange properly. He turned at the sound of my voice. “Annabelle! Here at last.”

“Not so very late, am I?” I said.

We kissed, and he and Charles shook hands. Not that Charles paid the transaction much attention; he was transfixed by the black-haired beauty who lounged at Nick’s side in a shimmering silver-blue dress that matched her eyes. A long cigarette dangled from her fingers. Nick turned to her and placed his hand at the small of her back. “Annabelle, Charlie. I don’t think you’ve met Budgie Byrne. An old college friend.”