Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  Forty-three people died in the explosion, among them Isobel and Jean-Paul, who, so close to the bomb, were killed instantly. The majority of the bodies could not be identified from their remains; a few were confirmed by dental records, or by jewelry and belongings that survived the blast intact.

  The boy François, also known as Abdel Saran, and a member of the FLN since the age of sixteen, was picked up within twenty-four hours. His elder brother had been shot by a French gendarme in a street incident two years before. François, alias Abdel, died—according to the army reports—in his cell, of self-inflicted injuries. Four years after his death, much as Edouard had predicted, Charles de Gaulle ended the strife in Algeria, the majority of the French left, and Algeria became a free state.

  Edouard never returned there to see the accuracy of his own prophecies. When the immediate formalities were over, he left Algeria for the last time, and flew back to Paris, where he shut himself away in the house at St. Cloud, seeing no one.

  It was there, about two weeks later, when he forced himself to look at Isobel’s correspondence, that he found the letter from her gynecologist with the recommendations she had requested regarding maternity clinics. It had been mailed the day they left for Algeria. He understood at once why she had not told him; he remembered the glass of milk in the café, and for the first time in weeks he was able to weep.

  Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. He did not blame the boy, or Jean-Paul, or Algeria, or colonialism, or even himself: he blamed God, the deity of his childhood, whom he had not worshipped since his sixteenth birthday.

  Once, Jean-Paul had accused him of acting like God, and that accusation had stayed with him, paining him. Yet if he, just a man, could not find it in his heart to condemn his brother or the boy who had used his brother’s weaknesses to lure him to his death—how could this God of love of his childhood destroy so savagely and so arbitrarily? Not just his brother, not just his murderer, but a woman of Isobel’s innocence and courage, the life of a child not yet born? And—more than that—do it day after day, month after month, year after year, throughout this miserable planet he was supposed to have created? For the past weeks Edouard had had to force himself to look at newspapers: all he saw there when he opened them was confirmation and repetition: accident, sickness, violence, and sudden death, handed out evenly to the guilty and the innocent. It was that which made his anger so violent: the knowledge that it was not his alone; that it was shared and felt by thousands upon thousands of others, rich and poor, strong and weak, man and woman, parent and child, all around the world. A God that created a world that should logically hate and revile its creator? No, he could not believe in such a God. But if he did encounter that God, he thought, his dearest wish would be to spit in his face.

  Some three months after the bombing, at the very end of the old year and on the eve of the next one, choosing the date with a certain bitter amusement, Edouard left the house at St. Cloud in the late evening, and drove, alone, into the center of Paris.

  He took the car which had been Grégoire’s favorite, and also, by chance, Isobel’s. Its long black hood gleamed in the light of the passing streetlamps, and its powerful engine echoed through empty streets. He avoided those parts of Paris where revelers had gathered to celebrate the New Year out of doors with drink and dancing. He drove through the back streets, and the quieter residential boulevards, where people had either ignored the date and retired to sleep, or were celebrating it in the privacy of their homes.

  He drove past the Café Unic, where his father, and Jacques, and other members of their cadre had held their last meeting, and where he had dined with Isobel the night he asked her to marry him. He drove past the parks and gardens where he had played as a child; past the houses of some of his past mistresses; past the apartment where Clara Delluc lived. He drove past the house of his mother, who, he knew, was holding a party that night for her new lover, a celebrated patron of the arts. He drove past the École Militaire, where his brother had begun his career as a soldier, in that uniform he still remembered so clearly. He drove past the dark oiled surface of the Seine; he saw a bateau-mouche pass, brilliant with lights, saw two lovers, entwined in each other’s arms in the shadows; saw a clochard out cold, slumped over the warmth of the vents from the métro, a brown paper bag and a puddle of alcohol by his side. He drove through the poorest streets of Paris, and some of the richest ones, and at length, shortly before midnight, stopped the car in a wide and gracious street of tall and beautiful houses.

  He had not visited the place he was seeking before, but he knew it was there, and had heard tales of it from numerous acquaintances. Pauline Simonescu, finding the austerities of postwar London bad for business, had moved back to Paris at about the same time he, too, had returned—from Oxford. That coincidence pleased him. It was as if she had been waiting for him for all these years.

  Some of his acquaintances favored her premises by night; like Jean-Paul, they felt the dark hours were the ones in which to drink and go hunting. Others favored the day, the long pleasures of an afternoon. It makes little difference in any case, one of them had said to him once. In that house the shutters are always closed, the lamps lit. In that house it is always night.

  He thought of that remark now as he paused outside the house. It was dark, and silent, from the outside no different from the respectable family mansions that flanked it. Ah, but when you entered it…

  He knocked once on the door, and it was instantly opened, not by the black man whom he had been expecting, but by Pauline Simonescu herself. Perhaps she heard his steps before he knocked—she opened the door very quickly—and he wondered for a moment if she had been standing exactly as she had when he last saw her—just inside the door, her head on one side, listening, as she had listened to the bombs, and to the all-clear siren which she heard before it was sounded.

  She did not greet him, but drew him quickly inside into another marble-floored hall, so similar in form to the previous one, with its glittering crystal lights and its wide forked staircase, that for a moment he felt only confusion, a sense of time warped, speeding him at once back and forward.

  He looked around him. The Fragonards. The Titian. From the adjoining room the sound of conversation and laughter. Madame Simonescu drew him forward, into the light, her hand, again wearing the heavy ruby, resting with a light tension on his arm. Again he felt that sense of an unseen force, an intense will. She said nothing; her head was slightly tilted, listening.

  He listened, too, and for a moment the noises from the next room ceased, and he heard only a great and total silence, a silence that extended beyond the city, beyond the planet, a silence as empty and bleak and beautiful as space, as the universe itself; the endless harmonious silence of the spheres.

  Then, through the silence, he heard the advent of the year: the ringing of the church bells, the rattles, the hoots of the ships on the Seine, the clatter and concatenation of men and women.

  He looked at Pauline Simonescu, and felt a great and total relief, as if a burden of enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He knew he needed to say nothing; she needed no fumbled accounts of the past, no pleas, no explanations. She knew him, and he recognized her; they had both heard the silence.

  “Monsieur le Baron,” she said as she had said to him once before.

  Then, not even glancing at the room beyond, or at a woman who had come out onto the stairs, she led him away to a small room of perfect luxury at the back of the house, which was clearly her own. She seated him before the blaze of a bright fire; she brought him, unasked, a glass of the Armagnac he preferred. Then she seated herself opposite him, and drew forward a small table on which were two packs of cards.

  An ordinary pack, a tarot pack; she spread them out on the polished mahogany. The Baron looked down at their butterfly colors, and saw they were very old and much used. He saw images: a ruined tower—and he thought of those black gaps behind the Eaton Square terrace; death by drowning—and he thought of Hugo Gle
ndinning; a hanged man—and he thought of his father’s cadre; two lovers—he thought of himself and Isobel; a king of cups, a queen of diamonds—he thought of nothing.

  Pauline Simonescu looked up, her thin hands moving over the cards, her black eyes holding his. Her fingers hovered over La Morte, Les Amoureaux, over the king of cups: the jester.

  “Monsieur le Baron,” she said. “It is the beginning of the new year. First, I shall read the cards for you. Then, if you still wish, you can do whatever it was you came here to do.” She smiled.

  “The cards first. Then you can begin your future.”

  Hélène

  Alabama, 1959

  “HOW D’YOU FIGURE ON wearing it, honey? You want it up, down? In a ponytail, maybe?”

  Cassie Wyatt’s capable hands cradled her head. Looking into the mirror, she turned Hélène’s head first one way, then the other. “You’ve got beautiful hair, you know that, honey? Just like silk, and thick! Why, you could do just about anything with hair like this.”

  Hélène’s eyes met Cassie’s in the mirror. Cassie winked.

  “This a special date, or what?”

  “Sort of. I want to look nice.”

  “No problem.” Cassie’s plain features split apart in a grin. “Nice which way, that’s what I’m askin’.”

  “Not up. And not a ponytail.” Hélène hesitated. “I thought if you could just trim it a bit, and make it wave a bit more maybe…”

  “You leave it to me, honey.”

  She picked up her scissors, then rested her hands on Hélène’s shoulders, still staring at her reflection in the glass.

  “You’ve grown up real fast,” she said suddenly. “Real fast—you know that? Sixteen, and a real head-turner, honey.” She paused. “You ever catch any of those Grace Kelly movies at the drive-in? Rear Window? High Society? That come ’round again the other week. I reckon you remind me a bit of her. We could try something like that—back off of your face. You willin’ to let me try?”

  “Sure.”

  “Fine. Here we go.”

  She began to lift the long honey-colored hair on her comb, and to snip at it. To begin with, Hélène watched her, then gradually her attention drifted away. She was excited. It was a special date, though she couldn’t explain to Cassie just how special. She was going out to dinner with Ned Calvert. His wife was away, and he was taking Hélène out to a restaurant, somewhere fancy, he said, just the two of them.

  And she had a new dress—not an altered dress, not a homemade dress, a new one from a store! Last time she’d seen him, Ned had slipped a twenty-dollar bill into her hand.

  “A little present for my girl,” he said. “Don’t you argue now. I want you to go over to Montgomery, and go right in a store, and buy yourself just the prettiest dress you can find. And then wear it for me…”

  She had felt faint with excitement, walking around the store, but she’d found the dress, and it was perfect. It was pink and white checked cotton, with a low sweetheart neckline, and puff sleeves that left most of her arms bare. It had a paper nylon petticoat which was stiff and scratchy, and made the skirt stick out in a big circle, just the way Priscilla-Anne’s dresses did. She’d had enough money left over to buy some underwear too: little frilly panties, and a lacy bra, with wire built in under the cups so it lifted her breasts. And now she was having her hair done. She just wished it didn’t take so long, because she couldn’t wait to get home and put it all on and look in the mirror.

  “You been over to Montgomery today?” Cassie was looking at her reflection. “Saw you gettin’ off the bus, so I figured you had.”

  “Oh, yes. I was just looking in the stores—you know.”

  “Any trouble on the bus?” Cassie frowned.

  “No. No trouble.”

  “Was the other day. You hear about that? Over Maybury way? The coloreds been boycottin’ the buses there weeks now, of course. And I don’t know but I didn’t sympathize with them, just a little, you know? Must feel bad, always havin’ to ride way back in the bus. Ought to have their own buses, the way I see it.”

  She paused, then started snipping again. “But there was a big protest over Maybury last week. Fightin’. Some colored boy got himself cut up real bad, I heard.” She let a lock of hair fall. “You want to be careful now, Hélène. It’s gettin’ so it’s not safe to take a bus no more…”

  “It was fine. No trouble.”

  “How’s your mama doin’?” Cassie obviously decided to change the subject. She paused, and her kind face clouded. “I miss her, you know, Hélène. I mean, I knew she wasn’t feelin’ too good, but I never figured on her leavin’, not like that.”

  Hélène’s eyes dropped. Her mother had left Cassie Wyatt’s a month ago.

  “She’s fine,” she answered in a small voice. “Okay—you know?”

  “I sure hope so, honey.” Cassie sighed. “Your mama and me, we go a long ways back…”

  Hélène could hear the pity in her voice. She knew Cassie knew her mother didn’t have another job; everyone in Orangeburg must know that. She tilted her chin.

  “We might go back to England soon,” she said proudly. “When I finish school next year. My mother’s busy—making plans. That sort of thing.”

  “Sure, honey.”

  Cassie’s face took on a closed expression. She said no more. She shook out the towel around Hélène’s neck, and a cascade of honey-colored hair fell to the floor.

  “Let’s get that washed and set now. Then I’ll put you under the dryer, okay?”

  It took hours under the dryer, Hélène thought. It was baking hot under the hood, and the metal rollers and pins Cassie had used got hotter and hotter by the minute. Hélène flicked the pages of Redbook, glanced at a tattered copy of Time magazine. It was nearly two years out of date. She closed the magazine. There was a whole world out there, waiting: Hollywood, New York, England, Europe.

  Ned Calvert had been to Europe—in the war first, but on vacations as well. He and Mrs. Calvert had been to London, Paris, and Rome. They stayed at the finest hotels, he said; they went to the theaters and museums and art galleries. In London they went to the races; in Paris they took a trip on a bateau-mouche down the Seine; in Rome, Mrs. Calvert said, the men had no manners.

  She pushed the magazines aside. Across the salon Susie Marshall’s mother was having her hair done. She had bright red hair, dyed and permed into a frizz; Cassie was touching up the roots. Hélène caught Mrs. Marshall’s eyes in the mirror, and Mrs. Marshall looked right through her.

  Small-town blues. That was what Priscilla-Anne used to call it, afternoons when school was through, up behind the ball park. Feeling trapped. Feeling mean. Feeling impatient.

  Priscilla-Anne was engaged to Dale Garrett now, and the rumor was, she was pregnant. They were going to marry in the fall and move into a large house on a brand-new estate outside Montgomery, an estate Merv Peters was developing. Merv Peters was rising fast now; the house was their wedding present. Priscilla-Anne was jubilant. At least, that’s what Hélène had heard. Priscilla-Anne didn’t talk to her anymore, not since the night at Howard Johnson’s. She didn’t sit next to her in class either, and the others had followed her example.

  Hélène Craig: social leper.

  She set her lips. She didn’t care. Let them gossip; let the boys smirk. Did you get small-town blues in Montgomery too? She didn’t know, but she hoped you did. She hoped Priscilla-Anne got them real bad. One thing for sure—it was not going to happen to her, to Hélène.

  She was leaving. Soon, one day soon, she was going to get out of Orangeburg for good and all, and take her mother with her. Then she’d go to England, and Europe, Paris maybe. And she’d become rich and famous, so famous they heard about her even back in Orangeburg. And then maybe one day she’d come back, come into town in a big Cadillac car, and a couture dress and jewels, and when she did that, she’d look right through them all, all the boys at Selma High, all Priscilla-Anne’s friends, look through them like they were inv
isible. The way they looked at her now.

  The hair dryer was giving her a headache. She shut her eyes and tried to hold on to the dream, which wasn’t a dream, she told herself firmly: it was something that was going to happen. Something she was going to make happen. You could do that, she believed it, if you were certain enough, determined enough.

  The best part of the dream was that her mother would be happy then too. Hélène would find her somewhere wonderful to live, and her mother would have all the clothes she wanted, and not have to worry about money ever again. And she would get well. She wasn’t well now, Hélène could see it. She seemed so tired all the time, dragging herself around the trailer as if she had no energy at all. She was very thin, and hardly ever ate anything; her skin was sallow and dull, like crêpe. She was doing dressmaking since leaving Cassie’s—sewing things, altering things, and that brought in a little, but it couldn’t be enough, Hélène knew.

  Hélène had wanted to leave school, and get a job, but when she’d suggested it, her mother had been terribly upset. Those two bright spots of color flared up in her cheeks, and she’d started to shake. Hélène had to finish her education, she said. She must. You needed an education to get on in the world.

  Hélène didn’t agree. She looked at the newspapers and magazines, and she listened to the radio, and she thought there were lots of ways you could get on in the world, education or no education. Sportsmen got on, and singers, and dancers and writers and movie stars and fashion models, and people like Merv Peters, who started off with a little business and built it into a big one. Beautiful women got on in the world. And she was beautiful. She knew that now, she’d finally realized it was true. She didn’t see it so much when she looked in the mirror; she saw it in the boys’ eyes, in men’s eyes. She saw it in Billy’s; she saw it in Ned’s, that fixity, that intentness, that fascination. It made her feel powerful when she saw that response; it made her feel happy; it made her feel safe.

  Because she knew, just knew, that no matter what happened, no matter if she flunked school, or had no talent, couldn’t act, she still had that. The one certain weapon in her armory: her beauty. If all else failed, her beauty could be relied on. Her beauty was going to be her ticket out.