Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  “Good God no.” Jean-Paul stood up angrily. “She’s married now, isn’t she? I give her husband employment. These people are peasants, Edouard, and proud of it—they accept these things. Their way isn’t our way. And besides, give her money, and people would talk. Half the pregnant women on the estate would be swearing I fathered their children. Mind your own business for once, can’t you, Edouard? Really—it’s not your affair.”

  Edouard looked at him, red in the face with indignation, reaching for the brandy bottle, glancing toward his brother uneasily, as if he feared more self-justification would be needed. In that moment the last of Edouard’s illusions about his brother fell away. He stopped making excuses for him; he let his loyalty and his trust slip aside, and he saw Jean-Paul clearly. Perhaps Jean-Paul read the disgust and the anger in his face; Edouard thought that he did, for he started, in a stubborn voice, on a whole new series of excuses. He was still in mid-speech when Edouard turned and walked out of the room.

  Edouard went back to the Loire. He went back to the small house in which Grégoire lived and attempted to interview his mother. The attempt was not a success. The woman refused to sit in his presence; she kept looking over her shoulder as if she feared her husband would come in. Edouard saw that she had bruises on her wrists and that one side of her face, which she tried to turn away from him, was swollen. He looked around the cottage with a sense of despair. It was poorly and sparsely furnished; a brave effort had been made to keep it tidy and clean. The woman had four other children by her marriage; they crept into the room, peeped at Edouard, and crept away.

  “I manage,” the woman kept saying in response to his questions. “I manage. I get by.”

  “But five children…” He hesitated. The cottage was without heat, except from a stove; there was no running water.

  “My sister helps me.” Her face grew set. “I told you. We manage.”

  Finally, Edouard left her. He returned to the château, furious with himself that he could have allowed people to live in this way. He called in his estate manager, rebuked him, and angrily ordered that there should be a complete overhaul of the property of every de Chavigny tenant. The houses should be repaired and modernized; proper plumbing should be installed, and more adequate heating…The manager listened to this; he frowned.

  “It will be expensive. The question arose, immediately after the war. I discussed it with the Baron then. He said—”

  “I don’t give a damn what he said,” Edouard roared, unable to contain his anger. “I want this done, do you understand? And I want it done now.”

  Later that day, when he left the garden to walk by the river alone, a small figure appeared from the bushes beside the path. It attached itself to him, and Edouard, looking down, recognized the young girl he had seen with Grégoire, pulling him back into the cottage. He stopped. The girl looked up at him. She had a square, intense face, and very dark hair. The mother’s sister, Edouard thought, and was correct. Her name was Madeleine.

  “I heard this morning. I was listening.” She looked up at him, clearly terrified to be speaking to him, and yet determined to go on.

  “She won’t tell you—my sister. She’s too frightened. He drinks. He beats her up. He hates Grégoire. He resents him—he always has. He’s not a bad man, but he has a violent temper. He always blames Grégoire. He takes his belt to him—I try and hide him sometimes, but he always finds him in the end. I wish—I wish someone would do something…”

  The words had all tumbled out, one upon another. Now she stopped, biting her lip. Edouard, moved by her words, lifted his hand gently to touch her arm, and to his horror, she flinched as if she expected him to hit her.

  “Please.” Edouard looked at her in consternation. “I mean you no harm. I’m not angry. I’m glad you came after me. I wanted to help—that’s why I came to see your sister. Here”—he held out his hand to her—“come back to the house with me. Then we can sit down and you can explain properly.”

  Madeleine was reluctant, but finally agreed. She shrank from entering the château, and had to be cajoled inside. Once there, she sat nervously on the edge of a Louis XIV chair, her bare legs drawn together, her hands in her lap. Edouard ordered her a citron pressé, and then quietly listened as—slowly at first, then with gathering confidence—she told him the whole story. It was predictable enough, and Edouard’s face grew taut as he listened. When she had finished, he suggested gently that perhaps he might meet Grégoire.

  Her face lifted. She flushed, and pressed her hands together. “You would do that?” She paused. “But not here. It would frighten him. I’ll bring him—to the stables. May I do that? He won’t be so shy there. He loves horses…”

  Edouard smiled, and agreed. Madeleine stood up. She looked about the room, and then back at him.

  “So many things,” she said in a puzzled voice as she left. “What do you do with them?”

  “I look at them, I suppose.” Edouard shrugged. He was aware that, half the time, he hardly saw them.

  Madeleine frowned. “They must make a lot of dusting.” She left then, and Edouard, amused by her words, which had touched some chord in him, looked at the room with new eyes. Things indeed; priceless things—which gathered dust just as cheap ones did. The room suddenly seemed to him both overcrowded and empty.

  The next day he went to the stables as arranged, and the meeting with Grégoire took place. Madeleine left them alone after a while, and at first Grégoire was shy and hardly spoke.

  Edouard took him on a tour of the stables; he showed him the tack room; he introduced him to the horses, and gave the little boy lumps of sugar to offer them. Gradually Grégoire seemed to relax: he explained that he was allowed to help the stable boys sometimes; he would have liked to ride, too, but of course he was not allowed to do that.

  “You are allowed now. Here.” Edouard lifted the little boy into the saddle of one of the older horses. He was very light, and his bones felt as delicate as a bird’s. He looked down at Edouard from the horse’s back, and Edouard looked up at him. The boy’s mother was from the Landes region, and Grégoire took after her rather than Jean-Paul: he was very thin, very tanned, with a narrow solemn face, and thick black hair. He looked down, and for the first time, smiled.

  Edouard felt something snap inside him. In that instant it was as if some dam erected long ago around his heart had been breached. He took Grégoire riding. He canceled his appointments for a week, and stayed in the Loire, spending each day with the boy. At the end of that week, Grégoire was allowed to canter. He executed the run well, without mishap; Edouard’s heart was in his mouth as he watched him. When the boy drew his horse in triumphantly beside him, he felt more pride, more sense of achievement than he had felt in four years of high-powered business dealings.

  He talked to Grégoire. He talked to the boy’s mother. He talked to Madeleine. With their glad acceptance, it was agreed: Grégoire should return to Paris with Edouard and live at St. Cloud. Edouard would arrange for his education; he would take care of the boy personally. Madeleine would accompany Grégoire to Paris for a while, to help him adjust, and then—when she felt ready, when Grégoire felt ready—Edouard would help her find training and work. He outlined these plans stiffly, fearing a proud rejection. When he finished, Grégoire’s mother fell to her knees, all control gone. She kissed his hand and wept; Edouard, helping her back to her feet, felt rebuked by that gratitude. He had been blind to need, he thought, ashamed. He would never be so blind again.

  Edouard was worried that it might be difficult for Grégoire to adjust to St. Cloud, and that he might be homesick. But his worries proved groundless. The little boy loved the place. He was made a great pet of by Edouard’s manservant, George, and by his cook. If other servants resented him, these two carefully shielded him. Edouard set aside a part of each day to be with him.

  That winter, he took him skiing. In the spring he took him to the house in Normandy. He spent hours on the beach with Grégoire, quite alone, just swimming and
talking and playing. It was after that holiday, when they returned to Paris, that Madeleine said one day: “You don’t need me anymore. Grégoire doesn’t need me. I have never known him so happy.”

  She was then eighteen, serious, intense, and very single-minded. She loved children, she said. She would like to be a children’s nurse. Yes, she would like to train to do that.

  Edouard made inquiries, and finally arranged that she should go to the place of her choice, Norland College in England, which had trained generations of nannies.

  “You’re sure? You’re certain, Madeleine? You don’t have to leave—there is always a home for you here.”

  “I’m certain. I want to learn. I want to work.” She stopped abruptly. “I wish to thank you, and I don’t know how. You have changed my life.”

  “Ah, but you changed mine,” Edouard said.

  After Madeleine left, Edouard spent more and more time with the little boy—every free moment. Grégoire called him “uncle,” at his request, which caused great gossip in Paris, but Edouard did not care. He felt like the boy’s father; he loved and cared for Grégoire as if he were his son. And at the back of his mind, knowing that Jean-Paul had never married and seemed unlikely to, knowing that he himself had met no woman he wished to make his wife, he thought: Grégoire could be my heir. Everything I have done could be for him. He will carry on from me, perhaps, as I have carried on from my father.

  He consulted his lawyers and altered his will. Then, slowly at first, he began to prepare the little boy for this possible destiny. He never spoke of this inheritance, but he tried, gently, to introduce Grégoire to some aspects of his business empire. As his father had shown him jewels, so he showed them to Grégoire. He took him to all the different workshops de Chavigny maintained in different parts of Paris: he let him watch these highly skilled men at work, the specialists in metal work, the specialists in inlay work and enamels, the gem cutters, the gem setters, the team of highly skilled men who made the mechanisms for clocks and watches.

  These, Grégoire especially loved. He had, Edouard saw, a technical mind, and loved to see how working parts fitted together. He would sit for hours, quite silent, watching the assembling of minute coils and springs; he seemed to find the exactitude satisfying.

  He loved cars, Edouard quickly discovered that, and—since Edouard loved them too—this became a shared pleasure. But whereas Edouard loved cars for their design and their beauty, and collected them on that basis, Grégoire loved them for the engines under their gleaming hoods.

  Some of their happiest hours together were spent driving, or looking at cars, or simply in the huge garages at St. Cloud, where Grégoire would contentedly remove wheels, and then replace them, and Edouard would contentedly watch him. His mechanic gave Grégoire lessons, and the little boy learned very quickly. After a few months he could strip down the simpler engines, service and reassemble them. When he had finished such a task, he would lift his face, streaked with oil and grease, beaming with contentment.

  “I can do it,” he would say to Edouard. “Look. Everything in the right place.”

  Edouard smiled at him gently; at such times his own life seemed to him equally simple; the components were there—they had been assembled.

  The weeks passed happily. They went to the Loire and toured the vineyards together. They returned to the house in Normandy and, one weekend, just for the excitement of it, camped outside, making a fire on the beach, cooking their own supper, and burning it. Neither of them minded the burned taste in the least; they sat side by side on the sand, the tall dark man, and the small dark boy; at peace together.

  “I’d like to stay here forever, just like this,” Grégoire said.

  “So should I,” Edouard answered.

  Later, in sleeping bags, with Grégoire quiet and breathing peacefully, Edouard lay on his back and looked up at the stars. It was the first time in his life that he had slept out of doors; as a boy, he and Jean-Paul had often pleaded to do this, and it had always been forbidden. Now, breathing the cool night air, listening to the soft sucking of the sea against the sand, Edouard experienced great happiness. He glanced toward Grégoire, knowing that happiness sprang from him; he had brought Edouard love; he had also given back to him a sense of purpose.

  The next day they went riding, the boy in riding clothes made for him by Edouard’s English tailors, a miniature copy of Edouard’s own. As they were returning, Grégoire grew quiet and thoughtful.

  “What are you thinking about, Grégoire?”

  “Of you. And of me.” The child hesitated. “I call you ‘uncle,’ but I wish sometimes…”

  “Wish what? Tell me.”

  “I wish I could call you Papa.” Grégoire raised his dark eyes to Edouard’s face. “Just when we are alone. I understand that.”

  Edouard drew in his horse. He dismounted and lifted Grégoire down beside him. He put his arms around him.

  “I wish you were my son,” he said very gently. “I wish it very much. And I feel as if you were. That’s the most important thing, don’t you think, Grégoire? Names don’t really matter. Not between us.”

  “Je vous aime.” Grégoire slipped one small hand around Edouard’s neck and planted a loud kiss on his brow.

  “Et je t’aime aussi, tu sais…”

  “Beaucoup?”

  “Bien sûr. Beaucoup.”

  It was the first time they had ever spoken of the affection they felt. It made Edouard alive with happiness.

  When they returned to Paris, however, he discovered that his relationship with Grégoire, so simple to him, was less simple to others. His mother summoned him; she made it clear that she wished to see him alone.

  She gave him tea; she chatted of this and that. Edouard waited. He had been aware from the first that Louise disapproved of Grégoire, and disapproved of this informal adoption. She had previously limited her expression of that disapproval to hints, and to glancing remarks; now, clearly, she had decided the time had come to be more open. She was cautious though, and Edouard, watching her, realized that his relationship with his mother was changing yet again—that it had, perhaps, been altering over a period of time.

  Louise had still not agreed to divert any of her capital into the de Chavigny companies, and Edouard, biding his time, had not pressed her. But she no longer treated him with the old irritable dismissiveness; she knew of Edouard’s reputation as a businessman, and obviously had heard his abilities praised, for she now regarded him warily, as if trying to decide whether, after all, she might have been wrong, and her younger son might be of use to her. There was a certain speculativeness in her glance now when she looked at him; she listened when he advised her on her investment portfolio, and—increasingly—she took his advice. She spoke of some of those investments now, in particular some of her land investments in Texas, which her American advisors were counseling her to sell.

  What she said was of interest to Edouard, but he could see that it was by way of a preamble. His mother wanted his help; she, also, he felt more and more certain, wanted to attack him on the question of Grégoire. In the past she would have done so at once; not now. Now she was cautious, and Edouard—to his surprise—realized she was weighing the risk of offending him.

  “Dearest Edouard,” she said at last, finally coming to the point. “I did just want to raise the question of that boy…”

  “Grégoire?”

  “Yes. Grégoire.” Her mouth tightened a little. “People do talk, you know, Edouard. They say such wicked and wounding things…”

  “It’s of no concern to me. Let them say what they like.”

  “Of course. Of course.” Louise attempted to sound soothing. “I realize you’re in a very difficult position. Really, it is Jean-Paul’s responsibility. And you will step in, Edouard…”

  “Someone had to.”

  “I fail to see why. And to take things this far…” Louise gave a small toss of her head. “Having the boy live with you. Treating him as if he were your own son, y
our legitimate son. It’s unfair to him, Edouard, to take him out of his station in that way. He’ll never be totally accepted, you know that. And he won’t be able to return home. He’ll fit in nowhere—he’ll be neither fish nor fowl…”

  Edouard turned away. He was angered, and for a moment was tempted to reply that Louise herself had managed to fit in to French society despite her origins and her antecedents, but he curbed himself.

  “He fits in with me,” he answered stubbornly. “At the moment that is all that concerns me.”

  “But Edouard, how can he?” Louise was now quivering with indignation. “Obviously, you’re fond of him, but surely you can see? His accent, Edouard. You’ll never eliminate it altogether, you know. And he looks so surly, so shifty—he won’t meet my eyes…”

  “That’s because you make him shy and self-conscious, that’s all.” Edouard sighed. “Look, why don’t you make an effort? Let me bring him here. Try to talk to him. You’ll see then—when he relaxes, he’s delightful. Maman, he’s your grandchild, surely you can overcome your prejudices for once…”

  There was a small silence. Louise looked at him, a long speculative glance. He could see her deciding whether to agree or disagree; he could see her weigh the advantages and the possible disadvantages. The moment when he knew his mother finally acknowledged that she needed him was then, when she lowered her eyes, and gave a small resigned sigh of agreement.

  Edouard looked at her bitterly. When, as a child, he had been desperate for her love, and had offered his own, she had always turned away from him. Now, because she needed something from him, she was prepared to give in. Not that she wanted his love even now; she did not—just his advice, just his financial acumen. Well, it was a bargain of sorts, he thought coldly.

  “Very well, Edouard. Bring him here for tea next week. I’ll try, for your sake.”

  So she signaled her capitulation, recognized the alteration in the balance of power between them. Edouard, watching her, wondered if she had any idea that it was too late.