Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  From the distance, as he drove toward it, the great house appeared unchanged. The sun struck the steep blue slates of the roof, and the glass of the tall ranked windows of the main façade.

  The elderly servants greeted him nervously; silently, Edouard went on a tour of the house. There was little furniture, for most of that was stored in Switzerland, and the few pieces that remained had been damaged beyond repair. The walls were bare of the famous Brussels tapestries; his footsteps echoed on uncarpeted floors. Edouard stared around him in mounting disbelief and anger. The paneling was scarred with initials and obscenities; greenish damp from blocked gutterings seeped through walls hung with silk that was torn and ripped. On the great curving staircase, which was one of the most celebrated features of the house, half the banisters had been ripped out and used for firewood. In the ballroom, the Venetian mirrors that lined the walls had been smashed; doors hung on broken hinges; the place stank of mice and damp.

  The servants had done their best: they had tried to clean the house for his arrival, but their efforts only heightened the destruction Edouard found. Slowly he went upstairs: his father’s bedroom, his dressing room, his bathroom, where the mahogany paneling had been axed and the old fittings of brass and copper had been wrenched from their sockets and looted. His mother’s bedroom, once hung with hand-painted eighteenth-century Chinese wallpaper, now ripped and defaced and stained with urine. The library, where the bookcases had been smashed. Room after room, twenty bedrooms in all, and then the attics, where the roof had leaked, and where ceilings had caved in. Edouard went back down the stairs; he stood in the huge marble-floored foyer and closed his eyes. He saw the house as it had once been, in his childhood—still, ordered, each thing in it the finest and most beautiful example of its kind. He thought of the dinners, for eighteen, twenty, thirty people; he thought of the dances, and the whisper of music from the ballroom; of the quiet afternoons he had sometimes spent in his father’s study. He opened his eyes again; the old butler looked at him anxiously.

  “We tried, Monsieur Edouard…” The old man gave a helpless gesture. “You see. We have washed all the floors.”

  Edouard wanted to weep with anger and frustration, but he hid his feelings out of consideration for the old man. The next day, he returned to the house with Louise. His mother, who had taken one look at the place when she first returned to France, had been firm. She was beyond coping with it; she had no intention of living there; she had moved, instead, to an early eighteenth-century town house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, a quarter of Paris still preferred by the pre-Napoleonic French aristocracy. She returned to St. Cloud with obvious reluctance. Paris was more convenient in any case; the memories of St. Cloud were too painful. When Edouard pressed her, she shrugged irritably. “Edouard. The place is too far gone. It belongs to the past. I think Jean-Paul should sell it…”

  She left, half an hour after she arrived, in her stately dark blue Bentley. Edouard stood for a while, alone in the gardens. He watched her car depart; he stood on the terrace and looked across toward the city, then back toward the house. The gardens were overgrown and neglected, the gravel paths a wilderness of weeds, the formal hedges unclipped for years. A few late roses struggled through the encroaching tangles of nettles and bindweed. Edouard stood looking around him, his mouth set, his hands clenched. His mother was not interested; Jean-Paul was not concerned: very well, then, he would do what had to be done, and he would do it alone.

  It was the same in the Loire, at the Château de Chavigny where the famous mirrored salon, built for the seventh Baron de Chavigny, had been used as a shooting gallery. It was the same in the vineyards there: production of wine had almost ceased during the war years; acres had been decimated by disease; attempts at postwar wine production had been sporadic and ill-organized. Edouard tasted some of these thin sour wines with disgust, and gave orders that the entire cellar stock be jettisoned forthwith.

  “But Monsieur de Chavigny, what shall we do with it?” The elderly régisseur looked around the vast cellars in despair.

  “It’s of no consequence. Pour it down the drains if necessary. I will not have such wine sold under the de Chavigny label.” He paused, feeling a momentary pity for the old man. “Would you drink this?”

  The régisseur hesitated, then smiled a slow gap-toothed smile. “No, Monsieur de Chavigny. I should prefer not to.”

  “I also.” Edouard pressed his arm, not unkindly. “Scrap it. We shall begin again.”

  This grand tour of Edouard’s took over six months. At the end of that time, by working ceaselessly, he had been through every file in every office. He had seen every room in every house, and had personally interviewed every one of the old Baron’s servants, and all his senior employees. He had been to his father’s lawyers; to his father’s banking partners and advisors; to his stockbrokers at the Bourse; to his accountants. He had visited Switzerland, London, Rome, and New York. In that time, he had despaired. It had seemed to him, about halfway through his investigation, that in the past five years Jean-Paul had done one thing and one thing only. He had, with Edouard’s assistance, erected a memorial to their father in the chapel at the Château de Chavigny where he and his ancestors were buried. But the true memorial to his father, the empire Xavier de Chavigny had so painstakingly and brilliantly built up during his lifetime—that he had simply allowed to decay.

  By the end of the six months, Edouard’s old resolve grew fiercer: he would restore that empire to its former glory, and then he would develop it, increase it, expand it. It could be done. Gradually, in the second half of the six months, he grew in confidence. He began to see ways, to make plans. Thanks to his father’s prewar prudence, a fortune was there; it simply had to be deployed. And it should be deployed: it would be his tribute to his father, his memorial to the reticent man he had scarcely known but deeply loved, and who had died so courageously. His and Jean-Paul’s tribute. He did not doubt for an instant that once he explained things to his brother, once he made him see what assets were available and how they could be used, Jean-Paul would rise from his lethargy and be as engaged, as excited, and as determined as Edouard.

  Armed with papers, his head filled with lists of stockholdings, production figures, statistics of pre- and postwar profits and losses, with preliminary architectural plans for the restoration, first, of the three houses in France, and ideas for those property holdings abroad, Edouard arranged to meet his brother for a week-long series of discussions. Jean-Paul was at first resistant; eventually, when Edouard pressed him, and after changing their proposed schedule three times, he agreed to a week in the autumn of 1950, when he would be on leave. They would meet in Algeria, at the Maison Alletti, the large low-built white house which the old Baron had had built in the late 1920s and which formed the base for his Algerian vineyards and timber plantations. It was built among gardens on the slope of a hill, overlooking the city and the breathtaking bay of Algiers.

  Edouard demurred, but Jean-Paul was adamant. It was there or nowhere. He spent all his leaves there now; he liked Algeria; besides, Edouard should see for himself the vineyards and plantations there. They were doing well, Jean-Paul said proudly. He had taken a personal interest in them; there, he said a little pettishly, Edouard would find room for no complaints.

  Edouard had never been to North Africa; he was unprepared for the beauty of Algiers itself and the magnificence of the surrounding country, with its rugged sun-burned hills, its narrow winding roads which would suddenly open up on views of a vivid blue Mediterranean Sea. From the start it fascinated him: a country and a city at once so French and so Arab, in which two cultures very different from each other seemed to him at first to blend triumphantly. He could sit on a terrace in the French quarter, sipping wine, and feel he was in France. The wide formal boulevards of Algiers, the plane trees with their trunks painted white, the tall graceful white-painted houses with their balconies and shutters, the shade of the squares reserved for Europeans—all these reminded him of the France
he had loved so much as a child: the towns of the South—Arles, or Nimes or Avignon; some of the small towns of the Loire. Here was a city relatively unscarred by war, with signs of growing prosperity. He could drink good wine; eat French food superlatively cooked and apparently available in abundance; be waited upon as he had been waited upon in the old days before the war, by a succession of polite, quiet, efficient, well-trained servants, all of whom were Arab, all of whom spoke perfect French.

  But there was another Algiers, of which he caught, in the first couple of days, heady glimpses. There was the Algiers of the Arabs themselves: the old Casbah, the Arab quarter of the city, was built on a hill. A fascinating warren of steep narrow alleyways, of flat-roofed tenement housing, it was visible from the French quarter, visible almost throughout the city; that teeming place filled with barefooted children, with women shrouded from head to foot in black, who clasped their headdresses across their faces and between their teeth, and never raised their eyes.

  In that zone of the city that lay between the French quarter and the Casbah, Edouard caught glimpses of the Arabic world. The scents of North African cooking, of couscous, of saffron and cumin and turmeric; street markets, where they sold powdered dyes and spices, sticks of sandalwood for burning, little piles of henna powder and ground indigo. He smelled the scents eagerly, gazed, fascinated, at the henna-stained feet and palms of the women and children, listened to the cries of the muezzin and the harsh guttural shouts in a language he could not understand—and he saw, he thought, why Jean-Paul was so drawn to Algeria.

  He announced his intention of visiting the Casbah. Jean-Paul yawned. If he wanted. It could be arranged. He must take a servant with him, naturally—they knew how to get rid of the beggars. And besides, it was not entirely safe to go alone.

  “Go if you must.” He shrugged. “But watch your wallet. And stay well clear of the women.”

  So, for the first few days of his visit, Edouard explored the city alone, except for the servant. In the evenings Jean-Paul made an effort to entertain him, and held a number of elaborate dinner parties. They ate outdoors, under a vine pergola on a wide terrace overlooking the sea. The elaborate French dishes were cooked to perfection by the Arab cook and served gracefully by Arab boys in white uniforms, the eldest of whom seemed about fifteen years old. All the guests were French. The majority owned vineyards. Several, like Jean-Paul, had military experience or backgrounds. Their wives were chic, exquisitely dressed—far better than the majority of women in postwar Paris. Their jewels sparkled, and their talk palled. Edouard found them stiflingly boring, and curiously closed.

  The women could discuss with animation the latest novel to take Paris by storm, the politics of the Comédie Française, the reputations of actors, writers, musicians, politicians, painters. They regarded them from afar, with a delicate patronage. The consensus was clear: France was finished; Europe was finished; they were better off here. Edouard listened to them and disliked what he heard. He had been naive, he saw that now. He returned to the Arab quarter, and saw the poverty, no longer as picturesque, but as a by-product of French colonial prosperity. It made him angry; Jean-Paul’s smugness, and that of his friends, made him angrier still. He said nothing; it would be useless to discuss the politics of the country with Jean-Paul. Instead, when a week had passed, during which time he and Jean-Paul had made one cursory visit to the Baron’s vineyards and had inspected perhaps one eighth of that vast acreage, Edouard decided to return to the purpose of his visit. He bearded Jean-Paul when his brother finally got up at about eleven in the morning.

  “Jean-Paul—please. Could we not look at these company figures? Discuss my plans?”

  Jean-Paul sighed and stretched back in his wicker armchair. “Oh, very well, little brother. But I’ll think better over a pastis.”

  So, for the next two hours, they sat on the terrace, and Edouard talked. He produced sheafs of paper; he rounded off figures to make his calculations simpler; he kept them all in francs, because Jean-Paul became hopelessly confused by rates of exchange. Jean-Paul drank three pastis and smoked kif.

  “You’re sure you wouldn’t like some?” He passed Edouard a silver box in which cigarettes of kif mixed with tobacco were ready rolled.

  “No, thank you.”

  “It’s very relaxing.”

  “Jean-Paul…”

  “Oh, all right, all right. I follow you so far, I think. Go on.”

  Edouard continued his dissertation over lunch. He could see that the pastis, the wine, and the kif had taken effect. Jean-Paul’s eyes were pinkish and glazed; his color had risen; his immaculate white clothes already looked crumpled. Edouard knew he was wasting his time, but he couldn’t stop. This was so important, he had done so much work—he had to make Jean-Paul understand.

  After lunch they took coffee, thick Arabic coffee. Jean-Paul lay back on the silken divan and closed his eyes.

  “Jean-Paul.” Edouard’s voice was hoarse with desperation. “Surely—can’t you see? For our father’s sake. He built all this up. Oh, it was big before he started, but he made it great. There are so many possibilities. We could build on what he did—Jean-Paul. It was his life’s work. We can’t just let it disintegrate into the dust.”

  Jean-Paul opened his eyes, and Edouard looked up. While he had been talking an Arab serving woman had silently entered the room. She stood now, head bowed, just inside the door.

  “Time for my siesta.” Jean-Paul heaved himself to his feet. They looked at each other, Jean-Paul focusing his eyes with difficulty, and Edouard saw the coarsening in his brother which he had been trying to ignore for days. He was overweight, thickening around the waist; his face was perpetually flushed; he was still handsome, but his features were heavy now, and the once strong jawline was jowled. Edouard looked at him and felt a sickening dismay.

  “I have to rest in the afternoons.” Jean-Paul’s voice was defiant. “It’s the climate here. It’s so damn hot. I’ll be able to think more clearly this evening. When it’s cooler…”

  He glanced across the room to the silent figure of the Arab woman, who still stood waiting, head bowed. He grinned at Edouard, winked.

  “A sleep and a fuck.” He spoke in English, presumably so the woman would not understand, and Edouard suddenly felt furiously angry. “Then I’ll be all right. We’ll talk again. This evening. Really. I’m grateful to you, Edouard. I can see how much work you’ve done…”

  They did talk again that evening. Edouard forced his brother. He pushed him into an upright chair.

  “No pastis. No wine. No kif.” He slammed a pile of papers down on the table. “You listen, Jean-Paul, and you listen properly. I’ve sweated over all this for six months, and I’m not going to see that work wasted. So you listen, damn it, or I’ll get the next plane out and leave you to cope with the whole damn lot.”

  “All right. All right.” Jean-Paul lifted his hands amiably. “There’s no need to get so hot under the collar. You were always hot-tempered, impatient. I’m just slower than you, that’s all. Now explain again, and explain slowly.”

  Edouard explained. At the end of his impassioned arguments, Jean-Paul stood up. “All right. Fine. Okay.”

  “What do you mean, all right, okay?”

  “I mean, do it.” Jean-Paul put his hand on his shoulder. “I can’t—you must know that. I wouldn’t know where to begin. You do it. All the things you said. I trust your judgment. I’m sure you’re right. You were always the clever one. Just let me know what I have to sign—make as much of it as possible over to yourself, and get on with it. All right, little brother? Now can I have that pastis?”

  Edouard looked at his brother. At the eyes which slid away from his own in embarrassment. His mouth tightened, and he stood up. “Very well, I’ll do as you say. And by all means ring for your pastis.”

  And so it was, in 1950, that Edouard effectively became the Baron de Chavigny. Jean-Paul signed over power of attorney to his brother in all the financial affairs of his companies, and Edouar
d, Baron in all but name, returned to Paris and began work.

  Initially both brothers found they were delighted with the arrangement.

  Edouard defined his work to himself in two stages: first he would restore, then he would build and expand.

  All the furniture, silver, paintings, and the private jewelry collection stored in Switzerland by his father were returned to France. The huge house at Deauville, with its gardens and private beach, was sold to one of the newly oil-rich Americans beginning to invest in European property. It had, in any case, rarely been used. Edouard used the capital to buy a smaller house near the Normandy coast, telling himself that—one day—his children, or Jean-Paul’s, might like to stay there. The rest of the capital was used to defray the very great costs of restoring the house at St. Cloud and the Château de Chavigny in the Loire. When the structural work on the houses was completed, the furniture, tapestries, paintings, carpets, and hangings were restored and replaced. This, and the restoration of the celebrated gardens of both houses, took two years. Even Louise de Chavigny, whom he took to St. Cloud for a triumphant tour when the work was finished, was impressed.

  “It’s quite lovely, Edouard. As lovely as it ever was. And you’ve made some additions…” Her eyes flicked over the Louis XIV furniture of the formal salon. “You have my eye. You’ve chosen well.”

  “You can return here now, Maman. Your rooms are ready for you. Just as they were. Only the curtains aren’t yet complete; the identical silk could not be found. But they’re being rewoven now, in England. They’ll be ready very soon. The same design, the same dye even—I’ve had them copied exactly…”

  “No, Edouard. I shall stay in Paris. I’m used to it now.” She gave a little gesture out toward the windows, to the formal parterre which had taken twenty men as many months to relay and replant. “Too many memories, Edouard. I told you.”