Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  Yet the question why, to which his obstinate mind was drawn irresistibly, also terrified him, because he knew that it had a simple and a logical answer. She had left because she did not love him. There. He let himself think the words, at last, which he had been fighting to keep at a distance for two days, and to his own surprise the pain he felt immediately lessened, because he knew the words were false. They were reasonable, yes. They were logical, yes. To have left when she did, and as she did, without word, leaving everything he had ever given her behind, the pair of gray gloves from Hermès, and the square diamond ring laid neatly on top of them by her bedside, the Givenchy dress, with all the other dresses and the riding clothes, neatly hung away in the closets in her dressing room—to have done that, to have left so finally, as if the previous seven weeks had never happened—yes, he could see that looked like a rejection, a negation of everything that had taken place and everything that had been said.

  Yet, instantly, his mind refused to accept that explanation. He saw her face as she had looked at him that last night, and he heard her voice telling him that she loved him, and he knew that he believed in that still, and that he would go on believing in it—that if it was not true, there was no truth, and he was back in a life that was a wasteland.

  He glanced at Christian, who was sitting by the fire, and was tempted for a moment to tell him what he felt. But Christian, a man who believed in nothing except possibly the truthfulness of great art, and who certainly placed little reliance on the ability of any love to endure, would not understand, he thought. Besides, he had already said more than enough to Christian that night. He sighed and bent his head again to the photograph.

  Across the room, Christian watched him with a pity he was careful to hide beneath his customary detachment. He looked at his friend, and he knew that he was already regretting the things he had spoken of earlier. Poor Edouard, he thought. How hellish it must be to be so proud. Why was it so important to him, never to show that he was hurt? Was he different with women? Had he been different with Helen? Did he allow himself to show his vulnerability then? Christian looked at his friend’s bent head, and frowned. He supposed that he must. The realization hurt him a little. That Edouard, whom he deeply loved, could be closer to a woman than he was to his oldest friend was something Christian found incomprehensible. It was a barrier between them, he supposed, a barrier of understanding between a heterosexual and a homosexual man, and even the greatest friendship could not cross it. Christian felt a second’s jealousy, a dislike of Helen Hartland intensified by a lifetime’s distrust of women; then he pushed it aside. He leaned forward.

  “I should like to help, Edouard,” he said awkwardly, expecting rebuff. To his surprise, Edouard looked up at once, and met his eyes.

  “I need your help,” he said simply.

  Christian stared at him in astonishment. Edouard had never, in all the years of their friendship, made such an admission. Christian instantly felt a most undignified and idiotic delight. His face lit up.

  “What do you want me to do? I’ll do anything, Edouard, you know that. I—”

  “I want you to help me look for her.” Edouard paused. He looked down. “I feel I have to stay here—for another day or so at least—just in case she—” He broke off, looked up again. “Would you go to Paris for me, Christian? I’ve instigated other inquiries, in England, but I thought, perhaps, if someone went to Paris…She could have gone back there. The café I told you about, where she was working before…”

  Christian had begun to smile at Edouard’s stiff, almost legal phraseology. Now he sprang to his feet excitedly.

  “Of course! The café! And she said she had a room nearby, didn’t she? We can get that photograph copied. I can take that. I’ll ask at that café. I’ll ask at all the cafés. Someone’s bound to remember her. Someone will know where she was staying. She could have gone back there. Even if she’s moved on since—”

  He broke off. Edouard’s face wore a dry expression, and Christian gave a shrug, a half-ashamed smile. He loved action, and he was above all things impetuous.

  “I’m sorry. I’m running ahead. But I’ll do it, Edouard—of course I will. I’ll go tomorrow. I’ll be fantastically thorough. I…well, actually, I’ve always rather wanted to play private detective…”

  The words were out before he had time to curb himself, and for one awful moment Christian thought he had gone too far. He knew he sounded whimsical, and he knew he sounded frivolous—he very often did when he was, above all, serious. There was a moment’s silence. Their gazes met.

  “How fortunate for me,” Edouard said in that dry tone he had used before. Then he smiled again. The Oxford smile. This time the attempt was more successful, and Christian felt reassured. It was not until he left the room some while later, and—pausing outside the closed door—heard, from inside, the sudden giving-in to anguish suppressed, the peculiarly painful sound of a man’s tears, that he realized exactly how iron was his friend’s self-control, how well he could act when he wanted to.

  He listened for a moment, and then turned quietly away. His determination to help Edouard redoubled. The hell with her, he thought angrily. She was a young, inexperienced girl, not worth the tears of a man like Edouard. But if Edouard wanted her back—well, at least it should be fairly easy to find her.

  Paris, he thought, not without a certain arrogance; she probably had gone back to Paris. She probably had returned to exactly the place where she knew she would certainly be sought. He smiled to himself confidently: a typical woman’s contrivance, he thought, designed to disturb and provoke. A piece of melodrama, signifying nothing.

  By the end of tomorrow, he thought as he drifted off to sleep, she will either have come back, or we’ll have found her.

  Christian found the café easily enough. He spent the morning with Edouard, assisting him with the inquiries his aides were making in England. He left the Loire after lunch, and had a long and exhausting drive back to Paris. By the time he reached the café, it was late, and already dark.

  It was called the Café Strasbourg, and it stood near the corner where the Boulevard St. Michel debouched into the square of the same name. An unpromising place, Christian thought, with none of the gaiety of some of its rivals farther south on the boulevard. Six tables outside on the terrasse; six booths inside, partitioned off from one another by ugly high-backed seats of fumed oak. Smeary mirrors advertising Pernod; a waiter and waitress on duty, both looking bored; and the patron inside behind the small bar—a short dark man with an Adolf Hitler moustache, polishing glasses lugubriously. Easing himself into the situation, Christian stationed himself inside, at one of the booths, and, planting his elbow a few inches from a drooping rubber plant, ordered an omelette and a glass of wine. He would have a picnic of foie gras, he consoled himself, when he returned to his apartment later. Meanwhile he noted with interest as he chewed his way through the leathery meal that the Café Strasbourg obviously did employ casual staff. The waitress was French, a student from the look of her; but the waiter, a tall good-looking boy, had an American accent. His spirits rose. He ordered a fine à l’eau with his coffee, lit one of his Black Russian cigarettes, and leaned thoughtfully back in his seat. In a minute he would beard the proprietor. He was beginning to feel quietly confident that he was on the right track.

  Some half an hour later, his confidence had been shattered. At first, the patron would hardly speak to him, hardly glance at the photograph Christian slid across the bar. Christian, who spoke perfect French, had to be most persuasive to get him to talk at all. The man warmed slightly when he realized Christian was not from the police; he warmed slightly more when Christian slid a thousand-franc note across with the photograph, and he became positively expansive once he grasped the essentials of Christian’s hastily improvised story, which was that he was looking for his younger sister, who had run away from home and was nearly breaking her father’s heart.

  At this, the small man’s dark eyes became moist. He, too, it seem
ed, had a daughter, his only child, and she, too, had done nothing but cause her poor father trouble. They moved to a booth, and Christian bought the patron a drink. Clasping a schnapps, the small man gave the photograph his full attention, and with transparent honesty dashed Christian’s hopes one by one.

  No, he would swear it in any court in the land, he had never laid eyes on this young woman: who could forget such a face? Yes, he employed foreigners quite often—they did not have work permits, and so did not require the exorbitant wages French waiters now demanded—here he winked. But this girl, no. And she had told a friend she worked here? Really, girls were without shame—his own daughter, yes, he had to confess it, was precisely the same.

  “You’re sure? This would have been about seven weeks ago. The first week of August?”

  The patron sighed: “Monsieur, I have told you. Not in August—never.”

  He hesitated, and then, clearly eager to help, gestured outside to the terrasse, where the waiter was serving some new arrivals. That boy might be able to help, he suggested. He was a good boy, bright, a cut above the rest, American, hard-working, good-looking, and with an eye for the girls. He’d been at the Strasbourg nearly three months now, working shifts. He had a room nearby, knew the neighborhood; it would be worth asking him—he might recognize the girl from her picture.

  At the mention of the room nearby, Christian looked up with interest. The patron stood up and gestured through the window. After a pause, the waiter came back inside; there was a brief conversation with his employer. Then the boy turned. Christian felt himself examined by a pair of clear and astute hazel eyes. The boy hesitated, then shrugged and slid into the seat opposite him. Christian looked at him, and the boy gave a frank, open smile.

  “Lewis Sinclair, hi.” He held out his hand. “Monsieur Schreiber tells me you’re looking for someone. How can I help?”

  Silently, Christian slid the photograph across the table. Lewis Sinclair bent his head, and Christian looked at him appraisingly. Ivy League, he thought: even in a waiter’s uniform it stuck out a mile. The feet that were negligently crossed under the table were wearing hand-stitched loafers. Thick blond hair, bleached by New England summers, expertly cut in the conventional prep school style, falling forward slightly over the clean-cut handsome face. Tall, athletically built, with shoulders wide enough and powerful enough to have made him an asset to a football team. A golden boy, Christian thought, and then—no, not a boy, a man, twenty-four, possibly even twenty-five, but with the typically boyish good looks of his class and type, the kind who would still look boyish when he was pushing forty. A firm handshake, a direct gaze, a hint of arrogance in the manner, and an accent that was twenty-four-carat Harvard Yard.

  Christian had encountered many such young men in America; he was a little wary of them, just as he was wary of their equivalents in England. Unconventional himself, it had taken him some years to learn not to underestimate the apparently conventional, to realize that under that civilized veneer, they could be tough. He looked at Lewis Sinclair now with interest, and some surprise. The watch he wore was Tiffany’s, and while Christian could imagine it might amuse such a boy to slum it for a while on the Left Bank, three months on shifts at the Strasbourg seemed to be overdoing it. He waited. Lewis Sinclair gave the photograph his full attention for about thirty seconds. Then he looked up, with that same frank look Christian instinctively distrusted, and shook his head.

  “Sorry. I can’t help. She’s a beautiful girl, and I wouldn’t mind meeting her. But I’ve never seen her around here.”

  “I know she didn’t work here…” Christian paused. “But she might have visited the café—hung around the neighborhood maybe.”

  “If she came in here, I wasn’t waiting tables, that’s for sure. I’d remember.”

  “She would have been rather differently dressed…”

  “Well, yes. I guess not too many women hang round the Boule Miche in jodhpurs and hacking jacket.”

  He gave a disarming smile to soften the sharpness of his comeback, and when he received no answering smile from Christian, he did what his class and type always did, Christian thought: he went on the attack.

  “She’s your—sister—I think Monsieur Schreiber said?” Just an insolent hint of a pause before the word sister, and a dismissive glance at Christian’s elegant but raffish clothes.

  “My sister, yes.”

  “And she’s run away from home?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Too bad.” He sighed, and glanced down at the Tiffany watch. “Well, I’d like to help, but I’m sorry, I can’t. You could ask around the other cafés. Except there are quite a few of them, and the staff turnover is high. It could be a wild goose chase…”

  “I realize that.”

  Lewis Sinclair gave a slight smile, as if the very impossibility of Christian’s task gave him a certain smug satisfaction. Christian, watching him, registered that fact with interest. He also observed that, when he thanked M. Schreiber for his help, and remarked that he would continue his search the next day, he had one or two other leads he could follow up, the boy reacted. Very slightly, it was true: just a brief tensing of the body, a quick appraising glance. But the reaction was there.

  Christian left the café and strolled across the street. In spite of having drawn a blank, he was beginning to enjoy himself; the night was warm and balmy, and he didn’t feel like giving up yet.

  He bought some cigarettes at the corner tabac—only Gauloises, but they would have to do—and strolled on around the corner and into a side street. Then he doubled back, so he had a clear view of the café, and waited.

  He did not have to wait long. He saw Monsieur Schreiber come out and fasten the shutters. Lewis Sinclair piled the last of the chairs on the tables. Then he went back inside, came back out with a Burberry trenchcoat over his arm, and wished Monsieur Schreiber good night. He looked quickly up and down the boulevard, and then, with long easy strides, crossed, and turned into a side street. Christian waited five seconds, and then, feeling more and more like Humphrey Bogart, set off after him.

  The pursuit was easy. Lewis Sinclair never once looked back, and besides, even at this time of night there were still plenty of people on the streets. Sinclair turned right into the Rue St. Jacques, then left again into the maze of narrow streets and old houses that lay between the Sorbonne to the south, and the Seine to the north. Christian, who knew this area well, felt a quickening excitement: they were now less than five minutes’ walk from the place where Edouard had first seen Helen Hartland.

  Halfway down a dimly-lit street, outside a tall, narrow house, Lewis Sinclair stopped abruptly. At the far end of the street, Christian also stopped. He felt he should shrink back into a doorway: there was no doorway. He shrank back against the wall as best he could, and held his breath. The precaution was unnecessary: clearly Sinclair had something on his mind, and it was not the possibility of his being followed.

  He felt in his trouser pockets. He swore. He lifted the Burberry, and shook it out. He felt in his trouser pockets again. Christian smiled to himself maliciously. Oh, dear: no keys.

  Sinclair hesitated some time, looking up at the dark house in front of him, and then, seeming to brace himself, stepped forward and hammered on the door. The reason for his reluctance rapidly became obvious. He had to thump hard on the knocker several times before anything happened. Then a light went on at a ground floor window, and a shutter was thrown back. Lewis Sinclair retreated, and clear on the still air came a sound familiar to any Parisian: the shrill-voiced complaint, the outraged indignation, of an elderly female concierge roused from her respectable sleep by the inconsiderate near-imbecility of one of her tenants.

  This one was a mistress of the art, Christian thought to himself with a smile, as the tide of invective carried down the street. It went on, imaginatively, for a good two minutes; finally, the door opened, and Sinclair was admitted.

  When the bar of light at the ground floor window had been snapp
ed off, and there was silence once more, Christian padded softly down the street and looked up at the house. It was still in darkness, so Sinclair must have a room at the back. He waited a short while, but there were no signs of further activity, and the thought of his Paris flat grew increasingly tempting.

  Shortly after midnight, Christian left. He walked back to his very beautiful apartment, converted from a seventeenth-century merchant’s house in the Rue des Grand Augustins, made himself some toast, opened a tin of foie gras and a fine bottle of Montrachet, and enjoyed his midnight feast. He telephoned Edouard, who, he knew, would not be asleep, and hoped he sounded cautiously optimistic.

  Then he went to bed. He would return to Sinclair’s lodginghouse the next morning, he thought sleepily, as he lay back. It was not much of a lead, but it was better than nothing.

  At six, he woke suddenly, surfacing from a tangle of dreams, totally alert. He sat bolt upright in bed, staring across the room to the photograph of Helen Hartland which he had propped against the brushes on his dressing chest the night before. Quite suddenly, something Edouard had said, just a tiny detail, leapt back into his mind with a hideous new clarity. “I left her at the café. She said she lived in a room nearby, and would walk back later. She said she had a very bad-tempered concierge…”

  “Oh, hell and damnation,” Christian cried, and, wrenching at his silk pajamas, began to pull on his clothes.

  He was back at the house by six forty-five, and it was too late. The concierge launched into a superb tirade, and Christian, whose command of vitriolic insult and veiled obscenity was accomplished in four languages, gave as good as he got. But it was hopeless: Lewis Sinclair and his friend had a room in the house, yes, but they had left, paid up and gone, at five that morning.