Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  She could have picked up a taxi at any point along the way, but today she felt she could not bear to be confined in a car: she wanted to walk, she felt borne along on happiness. In just over a week, she would be married to Edouard; she increased her pace as she came into the park; she felt she wanted to dance rather than walk. Such a long time—two years of lawyers, and then more lawyers, two years in which progress had been so terribly slow, not because Lewis was opposing the divorce, but simply because, these days, he never answered letters, and it took weeks for his lawyers to prize so much as a signature from him.

  She paused, and then turned off, making a small detour toward the boating lake, and the brightly painted bandstand. In that time, she had sometimes despaired, though Edouard never did. This unlocking, this disentangling of a marriage, of the past—it had seemed to her so sad that it had to be done in this dry and official way, even when both parties were perfectly amicable, and the arrangements to be made—for she wanted nothing from Lewis—were straightforward. Signatures; documents; letters from one lawyer to another—she had hated it all.

  She still felt guilty toward Lewis, she still felt that she had played a part in his decline—and the decline had been so sharp, so accelerated, since she left America.

  She stopped near the lake, in the sunlight, and thought of the letters which Lewis had sent her. Long, rambling, confused letters, pages of them, in which he hardly seemed to be aware of what time of year it was, let alone what was happening. She had spoken to him on the telephone, too, several times, in the first year she was in France, and the conversations had been impossible. She could hear the pills in his voice: the bursts of frantic confidence, or—on another occasion—the slow, disoriented groping after a reality which clearly pained him.

  This year, she had hardly spoken to him at all, and he had answered none of her letters. Whenever she telephoned him now, either Betsy, or one of the other, ever-changing cast of people who seemed to stay in the house, would answer. And they might make an excuse. Sorry, Lewis is asleep. Lewis is a bit spaced-out just now. Or sometimes they wouldn’t even bother to do that: they might just laugh, and say, Lewis? Who’s he?

  It alarmed her, sometimes. Once, in desperation, she wrote to Thad, asking if he would go to see Lewis, and make sure he was all right. On another occasion, she even wrote to his mother. Thad never answered. Emily Sinclair sent a small frosty note: Lewis’s family were perfectly well aware of Lewis’s situation. In a few lines, she managed to suggest both that Hélène’s concern was unnecessary, and that it came too late. Hélène had not tried to write again, and when she had told Edouard her worries, he had been firm: “My darling. Lewis is an adult, not a child. Look, you see, he’s answered the last letter from my lawyers now—he’s signed the documents. Hélène. You can’t worry now about trying to prop Lewis up.”

  He had even shown her Lewis’s signature on the legal papers, and Hélène had looked at it in silence. He had used the familiar broad-nibbed Mont Blanc pen; the signature he had scrawled, which ended his marriage, was large, flowingly inscribed, the individual letters cramped, the up-and-down strokes exaggerated. The writing she remembered; the person she remembered. She could see all Lewis’s paradoxes, the flamboyance and the insecurity, just in those two words. She thought then of those letters he had sent her from Paris, with their wild affirmations of love, their boyish optimism, and she felt very sad. She had loved Lewis, she thought, though he could never see that, and she had, in any case, loved him in the wrong way, the way he could never accept, as a mother might love a child.

  Protectiveness. She stood still, looking across the lake. Several couples and some children were rowing back and forth in the sunshine. Around her, on the lawns surrounding the little bandstand, people sat in deck chairs, and read, or slept, or simply lay lifting their faces to the sun. Edouard was right, she thought suddenly; he was right—but it was not easy.

  She turned away from the bandstand and the water. She began to walk, more quickly, toward the northern boundary of the park. At once, irrepressibly, her spirits rose again. She could not be unhappy on such a day; she could not; it was impossible.

  They were to be married in the Loire, in a small country town some ten kilometers from the château: a civil wedding, of course; as a divorced woman she had no alternative. A quiet marriage, a simple marriage: it was what they both wanted. No fuss. No publicity. Just a very few friends. Christian would be there, of course, Edouard was to ask him today; and Anne Kneale; Madeleine, who would be marrying shortly herself; Cassie, who had a new outfit for the occasion, of which she was inordinately proud; and Cat—who did not comprehend any of the complications attendant on this wedding; Cat, who seemed to have forgotten she ever knew someone called Lewis Sinclair; Cat, aged seven, who adored Edouard, and who regarded this marriage as the happiest, most exciting, and most inevitable thing in the world.

  Hélène smiled to herself, and quickened her pace. North again toward the leafy streets and quiet backwaters of St. John’s Wood. Past the grand and rather vulgar houses of Avenue Road, which always reminded her of Hollywood, and into a network of smaller streets, and leafy gardens. The lilac was in bloom: huge heavy trusses of vanilla-white flowers hung over the sidewalk; she stopped to smell them as she passed.

  She loved London now, she thought with a sudden passion. She loved it as she loved Paris, and the village of the Loire, because these places she associated with Edouard, and with their love for each other. They came to London often, and now, when she walked as she did today, she constantly passed places which brought back memories. Here they had driven; there they once discovered a little restaurant; there they once went to a party, and then, very late, when the streets were deserted, just walked together, hand in hand, and talking, taking no particular direction, just letting their footsteps guide them. In so many places—in Paris, when she looked across the Seine to the Île de la Cité; in the Loire, at the neighboring market, perhaps, which they sometimes visited, for they both loved markets; here, by the slopes of Primrose Hill, where they had once walked at night, and stopped at the summit to look across the city; or even in crowded places—Piccadilly Circus, the Bayswater Road, one particular corner in Knightsbridge—all these places were alive with Edouard. These places were their places, and the fact that other men and women, other lovers, before and after them, might pass the same way, and feel the same sense of claim, only strengthened the intensity of her feelings.

  She stood quietly, just near the lilac tree: for a moment their love seemed to her very large, a great thing, so powerful it made the city silent. The next it was small but vital, part of a long continuum. Lovers and a city; she quickened her pace once more, and as she did so felt a great serenity and contentment: she and Edouard, she felt, were now part of London’s past; they were part of the spirit of the place.

  Anne Kneale’s studio was now in the garden of a gabled, rambling white-painted house, where, it was rumored, Edouard VII once entertained Lily Langtry. Inside, it was very similar to her old Chelsea studio, which she had abandoned promptly when the waves of fashion threatened to engulf it.

  “My greengrocer is now a clothes shop,” she had said gruffly. “They don’t call it a clothes shop, or even a dress shop. They call it a boutique. And I can’t buy a cauliflower the length of the King’s Road. I’m moving.”

  She had moved, and taken her ambience with her. In the sitting room of the new house, there were still faded kelim rugs, still two fat red velvet chairs, still a line of pebbles, and a vase of bird’s feathers on the mantelpiece. And her studio was every bit as disorderly as the old one had been.

  Today, Hélène entered it apprehensively, for Anne had been painting a portrait of Cat—the wedding present. The surprise! And she herself was to see it today, for the first time. When she came in, the session was clearly over, and she thought Anne was pleased: she was being extremely truculent, and—just as with Cassie—that was usually a good sign. Cat was sitting perched on the edge of a table, eating a
n orange with a fine unconcern for the mess she was making. The juice ran down her bare brown arm, and she licked at it, and then gave Hélène an orangy kiss.

  “Like painting an eel,” Anne was saying in her most churlish voice. “I bribed her. I threatened her. None of it the least bit of good. She can’t keep still for more than five seconds. I shall never, under any circumstances, paint a child that age again…”

  Cat made a small rebellious face, and Anne, seeing her, repressed a smile. She turned back to Hélène.

  “However. You may look at it now. I suppose.”

  She led Hélène around to the far side of the easel, folded her arms, and scowled at her own handiwork. But Hélène was not deceived either by the tone, or the expression of dissatisfaction. She looked at the painting quietly.

  In it, Cat was sitting much as she was now, perched on the edge of the table, poised to move—as she always was. Behind her, through the long studio window, were glimpses of Anne’s wild, untamed garden. The garden was like Cat: abundant, generous, undisciplined, and also beautiful. There was her daughter—a little girl still, but with an unconscious grace in the disposition of her limbs, caught with an expression on her face, startled, alert, about to break into laughter, an expression that was very characteristic of her, and at the same time—Hélène saw it now—curiously adult.

  She looked at the painting for a long time, greatly moved. She turned to Anne, and embraced her warmly.

  “Oh, Anne. It’s beautiful. You’ve shown me my daughter—and you’ve shown me the woman she will become…”

  Anne permitted herself a smile. She glanced across at Cat, who was not listening, and who had retreated to the far end of the studio.

  “I hope so. I thought that—” Anne hesitated. She lowered her voice. “I showed it to her, Hélène. She could see the resemblance to Edouard straightaway. She remarked on it—it was the first thing she said.” Anne paused; she pressed Hélène’s arm. “You should tell her,” she said. “I know you both wanted to wait for the right moment. Well, it’s come.”

  They stayed to have tea with Anne, served in the old blue Spode cups that Hélène remembered. Then, in the early evening, they found a taxi and opened all the windows, and settled back for the long journey to Eaton Square.

  “Will Edouard bring Christian back, do you think?” Cat said.

  “Oh, I expect so. It can’t have been very pleasant for him, going back to his old home. I imagine he’ll be sad, and we’ll need to cheer him up.”

  “I’ll cheer him up. I’ll show him some of my card tricks. Cassie just taught me a new one…”

  Cat was sitting on the jump seat, as she always did, leaning with the sway of the cab. Her long thin legs were stretched out; her hair, as ever, stuck up in disorderly waves and tufts. Her face, usually so animated, wore a slightly dreamy and abstracted expression.

  Hélène sat opposite her, watching her, thinking of what Anne had said. She knew she was right. Cat was seven now—they could not delay much longer. She tried now, as she had often tried in the past, to frame the correct sentences in her mind, so they were clear and comprehensible to a child, so that Cat was left, as much as was possible, without doubts or worries. But Hélène could think of so many causes for doubt herself that, in the end, as in the past, the sentences would not be spoken, and she was silent.

  They crossed Hyde Park; Cat lolled against the window, watching the people, the dogs, the children playing. She pointed to the Serpentine, and the boats on it, and then, as they reached the gates on the south side of the park, she looked back at Hélène.

  “You know I went to play with Lucy Cavendish the other day?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “Well, Lucy says her daddy isn’t her daddy. He’s her—” she paused, frowning. “Her stepfather. Her real daddy used to be married to her mummy, but he isn’t anymore. She’s married to someone else, and he’s married to someone else…”

  “Yes?” Hélène said cautiously. Her heart had begun to beat very fast.

  “Lucy says it’s nice. Having two. Daddys I mean.” She paused; they were halfway down Exhibition Road. “Lewis wasn’t my daddy, was he? I mean—not my real daddy?” It was the first time Hélène had heard her mention Lewis’s name in the past year. Her eyes were now fixed on Hélène’s face.

  “No, Cat, he wasn’t. Lewis was…was more like a stepfather in a way. When I was married to him. But I’m not married to him anymore…”

  “Oh, I know.” Cat sounded offhand. “You’re going to marry Edouard. Which is much better.” She hesitated. “I liked Lewis. Sometimes I did. But he wasn’t there very often.” Her brow wrinkled. “I don’t think I remember him very well. A little bit. I remember the house, and my room—with the rabbits on the blind, and the garden…”

  She stopped. There was a pause; they had reached Chelsea, they were turning in the direction of Eaton Square. Hélène reached in her bag for her purse, her mind full of a thousand sentences now, all jumbled, all flurried.

  “I look like Edouard. Just like Edouard. I could see it when I looked at Anne’s painting. I never noticed before.”

  Hélène leaned forward.

  “Of course you look like Edouard, Cat. You’re his daughter.”

  There was a small silence. The cab drew up to a halt outside their house. Cat opened the door, bounded out, and then held it back politely for Hélène. Hélène paid the driver. As the cab began to pull away, and they stood on the sidewalk together, Cat gave a small skip and a jump.

  “Edouard’s my real daddy? He is? He is?”

  “Darling, yes—and we would have lived with Edouard before, always, right from the day you were born, but—”

  Cat was not interested in such ramifications. She clapped her hands.

  “I knew it! I knew it! Oh, I’m so glad.” She stopped. “Does Cassie know? And Madeleine?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “And Christian?”

  “Yes.”

  “How stupid of me. Lucy Cavendish said he was, and I said yes, and then I wasn’t sure. I felt a bit muddled.”

  “But you don’t feel muddled now?”

  “Now?” Cat gave her a scornful look. “Oh, not now, of course not.” She paused. “It’s a pity we didn’t always live with him, I think. But that was such a long time ago. And I was very little…” She tilted her face up to Hélène. “We’ll always live with him now, won’t we?”

  “Of course, darling, always.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad.” Cat gave another skip and a jump. “I’ll talk to him all about it tonight,” she said with a decisive air, and then she ran into the house.

  “And your card was…”

  Cat held the deck in her slender hands. Christian, stretched out in a chair, long legs crossed, arms behind his head, surveyed her quizzically.

  “The king of diamonds! Le voilà!” With some dexterity, Cat extracted the card, and held it aloft. Christian obligingly looked stupefied.

  “Astonishing. Quite astonishing. Cat—I can’t believe it. Was it magic, or was it a trick?”

  “Magic,” Cat said firmly.

  Christian shook his head and took a swallow of his whisky. “If I had not just witnessed it, with my own eyes—I should never have believed it. Will you do it for me again sometime? You’re a wizard. Or a witch. What else can you do? Can you tell fortunes?”

  Cat glanced at Cassie, who was standing magisterially by the door, arms folded, in an attitude that said: bed.

  “Not yet.” She began to move obediently and reluctantly to the door. “I might learn though. Madeleine says she knows how to do it. And Cassie can read tea leaves in the bottom of a cup. Her grandmama showed her. You look at the patterns the leaves make, and—”

  “Cassie. You have hidden depths.” Christian’s eyes turned to her lazily; he smiled. “I took you for many things, but never a sibyl…”

  Cat was giving beseeching glances toward Edouard and Hélène, who were watching this scene from the far end of the ro
om. Hélène inclined her head very slightly, and Cat’s face at once brightened. Cassie gave both Cat and Christian a stern look.

  “I can see into the future all right,” she said crisply. “And I can see when someone’s playing for time. I can see it’s seven o’clock now, and someone’s not going to be in bed until nearly eight at this rate. And I can see—”

  “No, you can’t, Cassie,” Cat said in a meek tone of voice. “I’m coming now. And tonight I’ll be especially quick…”

  She went around the drawing room to say her formal good nights. Christian, who found her very droll, stood up, kissed her hand, clicked his heels, and smacked her bottom. Hélène hugged her, and then, as Edouard went to kiss her, said quickly, “Maybe Edouard will come up and say good night, Cat. If you’re very quick. Not too long in the bath now…”

  Edouard smiled, and promised, and Cat scampered away. Hélène crossed to Christian, and sat down next to him. “Now,” she said. “Tell me all about it, Christian. Was it very hard? Were you glad Edouard went with you?”

  “Oh, awfully glad. For all sorts of reasons,” Christian began.

  Edouard gave him a sharp warning look, and Christian, who enjoyed teasing him, settled back into a careful and innocuous account of their day. Edouard watched them both, half-listening for a while; he moved to the long windows, and the balcony that overlooked the square gardens. After a while he replenished their drinks, and then, at a sign from Hélène, left them to say good night to Cat.

  He climbed the stairs slowly. Today, for some reason, perhaps because of his conversation with Christian, and the visit to his parents’ house, the past seemed very close. Just then, in the drawing room, when Cat produced that card—The king of diamonds, le voilà!—he had both seen and heard Pauline Simonescu: The cards first, Monsieur le Baron. Then you can begin your future.