Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  Now he had just consumed an excellent tea brought in on silver trays by the butler, Parsons, and by the senior parlor maid, and solemnly laid out for him before the fire on several small tables. Hot buttered crumpets with English honey, tiny cucumber sandwiches, three different kinds of cake, his favorite tea, Lapsang Souchong, with its delicate smoky taste.

  Edouard read The Times each morning; on sorties around the city he had glimpsed the long lines of shoppers outside food shops, and the limited stock on sale. He was perfectly well aware that the kind of meals his mother took for granted would be served in her household were now, in wartime, exceptional—possibly even unpatriotic. But he knew the household had been carefully stocked before the war, and besides, he was always so hungry. Was it really going to help the war effort if he refused a second slice of filet de boeuf en croûte, or a second spoonful of Sevruga? He thought not. It would only offend the cook.

  He glanced down guiltily at the book on his lap. His Latin assignments. He was supposed to have translated at least five pages of Virgil before tomorrow morning; so far he had completed only two. In France he was taught Latin by an elderly Jesuit who was given to dozing off most conveniently as Edouard stumbled through The Aeneid. But his English tutor was another matter.

  He had been hired by Edouard’s mother on the recommendation of a friend, and Edouard was perfectly sure that his papa would have disapproved of him deeply. Hugo Glendinning was a man of uncertain age, too old to be drafted, and probably in his mid-forties, though he could look older. He was very tall, very thin, and very elegant in a raffish kind of way. He had graying hair, worn slightly too long in Edouard’s conservative opinion, and he would run his hands through it before uttering the melodramatic groan that signified Edouard had just committed another appalling solecism. He was an old Etonian, an Oxford classics scholar, his eyes were habitually vague, and he had a mind like a razor. On the day of his arrival he had confounded Edouard by chain-smoking Black Russian cigarettes throughout their tutorial.

  Of his family background and his academic qualifications Papa would have approved—Edouard had no doubts about that. But of his politics? Edouard was more doubtful. Hugo Glendinning had fought in the Spanish Civil War; it had become rapidly obvious to Edouard that he was a political radical—something Edouard had never encountered before; more than that, he was probably a Socialist.

  His tutorials were unconventional, to say the least. The first day he had tossed two books at Edouard: the first was The Iliad, the other the dreaded Aeneid.

  “Right.” He put his feet up on the table in front of him and stretched. “The first page of each. Read them. Then translate.”

  Edouard groped his way through the texts while Hugo Glendinning leaned back with closed eyes and a pained expression around the mouth. When Edouard fumbled to a halt, he sat up abruptly.

  “Well. You’re not a total dunce, which is something, I suppose.” He looked at Edouard keenly. “There might be some glimmerings of intelligence there. Deeply buried, of course, but latent. I could do a great deal better than that when I was nine. I wonder…are you lazy?”

  Edouard considered this possibility, which had never been put to him before.

  “I do hope not.” Hugo extinguished one cigarette, and lit another. “It’s extremely boring, laziness. I detest it above all things. Now…” He leaned forward, suddenly, and fixed Edouard with his gaze. “What is The Iliad about?”

  Edouard hesitated. “It’s about—er—well, the Greeks and the Trojans…”

  “And?”

  “The Trojan War.”

  “Precisely so.” Hugo smiled. “War. You have possibly observed that there is a war going on at present?”

  Edouard rallied. “A very different war.”

  “You think so? Well, literally, yes, you are right. Homer is not going to describe the activities of tanks and aeroplanes. However. War is war. Killing is killing. The Iliad is perhaps not the remote and irrelevant document you seem to consider it. I suggest you compare—let me see—Book Sixteen, ‘The Death of Patroclus,’ with this morning’s account in The Times of yesterday’s aerial battles over the south coast. The one is bellicose propaganda of the most unimaginative kind, and the other is—the other is art.” He paused. “Possibly, if you heard it read with slightly more correct pronunciation, and a genuine attempt to honor the rhythms of Homer’s verse structure…Let us see…”

  He leaned back in his chair again and shut his eyes. Not once looking at the book before him, he began to recite in Greek. Edouard sat silently.

  At first, he resisted. Hugo Glendinning seemed to him dreadfully arrogant and extremely rude: none of his French tutors would have dared to speak to him in this way. He had no intention of being impressed or interested. Then, gradually, in spite of himself, he began to listen. And it was extraordinary—that liquid, fluid, impassioned language, so very different from the dry halting way it sounded when his Jesuit tutor read it, stopping every two lines to construe them.

  He began to listen more closely, looked down at his own book, and the words—already familiar to him—began to take new shape and life of their own: he saw the battlefield, saw the light glint on the weapons, heard the cries of the dying men. From that moment he was hooked. For the first time in his life, Edouard looked forward to lessons, and worked. One day, one day he was going to force Hugo Glendinning to pay him a compliment; if it killed him he’d do it.

  When they came to Latin, Hugo tossed Caesar’s Gallic Wars aside. “Good clear pedestrian stuff.” He sniffed. “Ditches and ramparts. We’ll stick to Homer for war, I think. Now…what about love? Sexual attraction? Passion? You’re interested in that, I presume? I was, at your age…”

  “Aren’t you now?” Edouard put in slyly, and Hugo smiled.

  “Possibly. That is beside the point. We shall read The Aeneid, naturally. But also Catullus, I think. You’ve read Catullus?”

  “No.” Edouard felt a pulse of excitement. As far as his Jesuit teacher was concerned, Catullus was most definitely not on the curriculum for fourteen-year-old boys.

  “Then let us begin.” Hugo paused. “Catullus is a wit and a cynic. He mocks his own passion, but at the same time acknowledges his enslavement. We may usefully compare some of these poems with certain of Shakespeare’s sonnets. In both cases the emotions described may be a little difficult for a boy to understand. Are you able to imagine how a man feels when he is obsessed, physically and spiritually, with a woman? A woman whose character and moral worth he despises?”

  Edouard hesitated. He thought of his mother and father, and of certain scenes, certain conversations overheard.

  “Possibly,” he said cautiously.

  Hugo’s eyes turned dreamily to the window.

  “Sexual infatuation—and that is what we are talking about, of course—sexual infatuation seems to me a very interesting condition. A great deal more interesting than romantic love, with which it is often confused. It is powerful, and it is deadly. It is also, alas, commonplace. As commonplace for us as it was in Rome in 60 B.C. or in Elizabethan London.” He smiled dryly. “I have no doubt you will experience it yourself at some time. Then you will no doubt assume, as we all do, that your experience is unique. Of course it is not. Let us begin then. By the way, did you know Catullus was thirty when he died?”

  And so it went on. No matter how hard he tried, Edouard could never predict the course of the next day’s lessons. Sometimes they would dart about in history—not carefully working their way through the French kings and learning their dates as he had always done before, but leaping centuries and continents. The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the American Civil War. Suddenly, Hugo would pounce.

  “Why was that war fought, do you think, Edouard?”

  “Well—to free the slaves in the South.”

  “Nonsense. Yankee propaganda. It was no such thing. It was fought primarily for commercial reasons, because the northern states regarded the wealth of the South with acquisitive eyes.
It improved the lot of the Negro slave only marginally. You are aware, I take it, that a black man in the southern states of America still does not possess the vote?” He paused. “Not that the English have any cause for smugness in that respect, of course. Next week we will look at the lamentably slow extension of suffrage in this country, the abolition of property requirements, which previously protected the interests of the ruling classes, and the extension of voting rights to women.” He stopped. “You find that amusing?”

  Edouard shrugged. “I’ve read about Suffragettes. I can’t see that women need to vote. Papa says he never met a woman who was remotely interested in politics. Maman never bothers to vote.”

  Hugo frowned. “Do women have minds?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then do you not think that they should exercise them? As you should yours. It is the mark of a lazy mind, Edouard, to rely on idées reçues. Question. Always question. And think…”

  Edouard tried. He could see the logic of Hugo’s arguments, but it was often very difficult to apply those arguments to life. It was all very well to talk about suffragettes, and women’s minds, but Edouard found it exceedingly difficult to consider their minds at all. How could you think about that when, he found, his eyes were always drawn to their slim ankles, to the whisper of their petticoats, to that sweet line between the soft curve of their breasts?

  He shut the Virgil midway through Dido’s impassioned pleas to Aeneas. Damn, damn—he could not concentrate. He could feel that stirring, that tension between the legs; his head was filled with rapturous and confused images: breasts, and thighs, pillows and tumbled hair, moistness and mounting pleasure. He knew what he wanted to do; he wanted to go up to his bedroom, and lock his door, and shut himself up with those images, touch himself, slowly, rhythmically bring his body to shuddering and guilty release. Guilty, because the priests’ lectures about the evils of self-abuse, the temptations of the devil made flesh, had begun years ago, when he was eight or nine, and had continued ever since. Jean-Paul said that was all rubbish, that all adolescent boys masturbated—it was a stage you went through, that was all. Once you started having women, you needed it less and less. Edouard was sure he was right; he hoped he was right; he thought that if he dared to ask Hugo, Hugo would certainly agree. But still, he couldn’t quite shake off the warnings of the priests.

  Father Clément said it made hair grow on the palms of your hands even if you only did it once. “It will be there, my child, like the mark of Cain, for all to see. Remember that.”

  Edouard surreptitiously looked down at his palms. There was no hair there yet, and if Father Clément was right, there certainly ought to be. Surely it couldn’t be true? But Father Clément also said masturbation was a sin; it had to be acknowledged in the confessional, and Edouard had acknowledged it. The conversation had been hideously embarrassing.

  “Were you alone when you did this thing, my son?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You are sure of that, my son?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  That confused Edouard. Who else would he have been with? he wanted to ask. But he didn’t dare. Each time resulted in thirty Hail Marys and an admonition never to commit the sin again. Yet he was hardly out of the confessional before he felt the need more strongly than ever. He sighed. What he had really wanted to ask the priest was why the fact that it was forbidden seemed to make him want to do it more. But he didn’t dare to ask that, either.

  He stood up, and looked at the clock. Then opened The Aeneid again, because distraction was the best remedy, he knew that. When fifteen lines of Latin translation had taken effect, and the stubborn erection had finally faded, he felt the satisfaction of virtue triumphant. He looked at the clock again. Nearly six. At six, Jean-Paul was due back, and with luck, if Jean-Paul hadn’t forgotten all about it, he might have news for him. Important news—the most important there could possibly be. If he had been in Paris, Papa would have arranged it, as he had for Jean-Paul. But since he wasn’t, Jean-Paul had promised him, sworn, that he would take on the responsibility. Jean-Paul, this very day, was going to arrange Edouard’s first woman.

  From Edouard’s earliest childhood, Jean-Paul had been the most important figure in his life. He loved his papa, and admired him greatly, but his father, though always kind, was remote. As a small child, Edouard saw him, as he saw his mother, at appointed times. He would be brought down to the drawing room from the nursery wing at St. Cloud at precisely four each day, accompanied by his elderly English nanny. There he would sit, trying not to squirm about or make too much noise, while his parents either questioned him politely about his day and the progress of his lessons, or occasionally, seemed to forget he was there at all and simply talked to each other.

  At four-thirty he was returned to the nursery, and made to eat a horrible English nursery supper, because his nanny had made it quite clear from her arrival that her word was law, and her charge would be brought up in the proper English manner. So Edouard would eat loathsome overboiled eggs from an egg cup, or—even more horrible—bread and milk from a bowl, and all the while the most delicious smells would drift up the back staircase from the kitchens below: roast partridge in autumn, grilled salmon in summer. Oh, the delights of that kitchen! The huge bowls of thick cream; the mountains of freshly picked raspberries and wild strawberries. The tiny shrimps, the dark blue lobsters that turned clear pink when the cook boiled them. The freshly baked bread, the pale butter, the rows of cheeses laid out on little straw mats in the larder. Occasionally, on Nanny’s one afternoon off a week, he would creep down to the kitchen, and Francine, the cook, would seat him at the long deal table and gaily feed him little tidbits—tastes of the glories destined for the Baron’s dining room, of whose secrets she was fiercely proud.

  But those were the special days. Ordinarily, he had his nursery supper, presided over unsmilingly by Nanny, then he was bathed, and then he was put to bed. Once or twice a week his father or mother would make the journey to the nursery wing to kiss him good night. His mother would sparkle with jewels, the silk of her dress would rustle, she would smell of roses, and he would hear her laughter on the stairs before she came into the room. She came up to him only when she was happy, so she always seemed to be laughing. She had a high brittle laugh; when Edouard was young, it used to frighten him a little: she sounded as she looked—frail, as if she might break.

  His papa smelled of cologne, and sometimes of cigars, and it was more fun when he came, because he stayed longer than Maman, and could sometimes be persuaded to do imitations, or to talk. Edouard liked to talk to his father. He was interested in what Papa did. His father explained to him about grapes and vines and vintages; about diamonds and the secrets of their cutting. Sometimes, at the four o’clock visits when his mother was out, Papa would dismiss Nanny and take Edouard into his study. Then, if he was in a good mood, he would unlock his safe and show Edouard jewels, teaching him about settings, about design, about quality. By the time he was seven Edouard could see at once if a diamond was flawless, even without a glass, just by holding it against the light. But those were rare days, hedged in by rules and formalities. It was to Jean-Paul that he was close, to Jean-Paul that he could talk.

  One of his first memories of his brother was of his glorious return for the holidays from his école militaire. He must have been about four or five, his brother about fourteen. He wore the uniform of the college, a uniform that was plain, but to Edouard magnificent. He ran to his elder brother, and Jean-Paul gave a whoop of welcome, and lifted him up in the air and perched him on his shoulders. It had seemed to Edouard then, and ever since, that his brother was a model of everything a French gentleman and a soldier ought to be.

  He was handsome, but in a very different way from Edouard himself, being shorter and more heavily built. He took after his American grandfather—with his Scots ancestry—being fair-skinned, with thick reddish-blond hair and eyes of a paler blue than his brother’s. His beard was red, or would have been
had he ever allowed it to grow, which he did not; but he had to shave twice a day, and that seemed to Edouard the epitome of manliness.

  He was always, unfailingly, good-tempered. Edouard never had to worry with him, as he did with his mother, that his mood might suddenly change, or that his temper would spark. Edouard had hardly ever seen him angry, unless his horse had gone unexpectedly lame in mid-hunt, or he had had a poor day’s shooting. Even then, his anger was brief and soon forgotten. He was easygoing, lazily, irrepressibly so: it was the great source of his charm, to men as well as to women.

  Nothing could persuade him to do anything that bored him: as a boy, he disliked lessons, rarely read a book, never attended a serious play, though he became fond of chorus girls. He liked popular music—easy tunes, which he could whistle or hum; the only paintings he liked in his father’s collection were those by Toulouse-Lautrec. The Cézannes, the magnificent Matisse, the Gauguins, the Monets—these interested Jean-Paul not at all. The Lautrecs, Edouard suspected, found favor only because of their subject matter. Jean-Paul preferred champagne or beer to the complexities of other wine, horses to art, certainties to questions. The de Chavigny jewelry empire, which he would one day inherit, frankly bored him. It was useful to have expert family advice when he wanted some pleasing trifle for a woman, but that was all. Apart from the difference in price, Jean-Paul couldn’t tell garnets from rubies, and he had no intention of learning.

  He was so certain of everything, that was what he most admired and envied in his brother, Edouard sometimes thought. Perhaps it was because he was the elder, the heir. Jean-Paul had grown up safe in the knowledge that without lifting one finger or exercising one muscle of his brain, he would one day be one of the richest men in Europe. He would be the Baron. He was born to a role, a position in life, and it would never have occurred to him to question it.