Destiny

by Sally Beauman

“I see.”

  Edouard made a small pyramid with his fingers. This was precisely what he himself thought. He looked at Hélène thoughtfully. “It’s interesting,” he said slowly. “I knew you were watching them. You see it like a play.”

  “In some ways, yes.” Hélène leaned forward. “On the one hand there’re the arguments they put forward, but you can’t judge those on purely commercial grounds. You have to understand the men who make them, and their interrelationships—because that affects their proposals. It’s the politics of it, if you like. That interests me.”

  “And what else did you think while you were watching them so carefully and unobtrusively—on general grounds?”

  “Generally?” Hélène paused. “Well, generally, I was impressed. They’re able, and they speak their minds on most issues, with one possible exception, I thought.”

  “And that was?”

  “The jewelry division. There’s still some opposition to the Wyspianski collections, isn’t there? I could sense it. But they’re for the most part afraid to cross you on that, so they defer.” She hesitated. “And they’re all men, Edouard. It just struck me that might be one of the problems. They don’t have your interest in Floryan’s work; I don’t think they understand it. And the jewelry division is the only one whose products are aimed primarily at a female market. I think those two facts might be connected.” She paused. “I could see—they’re quite at ease when they’re dealing with hotels, or property, or wine—but when it comes to the jewelry division, they all become a little impatient.”

  “Are they wrong?”

  “You know they’re wrong.” She leaned forward. “Floryan is an artist. His work is the finest in the world. It’s unique, and it’s part of a long company tradition. The identity of de Chavigny is bound up with that tradition, you can’t separate the two. All the prestige associated with the name, it flows from the one central activity. You can’t classify what Floryan does for the company purely in terms of profit and loss. If they had their way, if the jewelry division were sold off—and I think that’s what some of them would like to see—de Chavigny would be just another faceless multinational corporation. They should understand that.”

  Edouard frowned. He thought of Philippe de Belfort, and of the arguments he had once propounded. It angered him that they should still linger on, as if, though de Belfort had left de Chavigny, his influence remained, a ghostly legacy. Sometimes Edouard felt that influence had grown stronger this past year; many times, in the past few months, he had recognized de Belfort’s arguments in other men’s mouths, phrased in almost the same way. It disturbed him; and it consoled him, now, to hear Hélène taking the opposite stance.

  He looked up at her with a dry smile. “Anything else?”

  “One other thing. It concerns you.”

  “Oh, I see. I might have known I wasn’t immune. Tell me.”

  “You should deputize more.” Hélène paused. “I understand why you haven’t. Partly because of the hours you used to work, partly because, among the men I’ve met, there’s really no obvious candidate. But you need someone, Edouard. Someone you can trust absolutely. Someone to cover for you. And perhaps—someone to watch your back.”

  “You think that?” Edouard looked up quickly.

  Hélène hesitated. “I do think that,” she said finally, with some reluctance. “Any man in your position has to consider that, and you, perhaps, more than most.”

  “Why is that?” Edouard looked at her steadily.

  Hélène sighed. “Oh, Edouard. Because you excite envy, I think, that’s why.”

  Edouard looked away when she said that. He seemed surprised, as if the idea, so obvious to her, had not occurred to him before, and made him uncomfortable.

  Shortly afterward, they left the dinner table, and the conversation changed to more personal concerns. It was not referred to again for some weeks. Hélène continued to attend board meetings, and began, gradually—to the severe shock of the men present—to voice her opinions, quietly and incisively. Now, when Edouard brought work home, he discussed it with her: they looked at his papers together, and slowly Hélène began to piece together a much more detailed understanding of de Chavigny, its many interests, and how, within the executive divisions of the company, they were structured. She met an increasing number of the de Chavigny senior personnel—and to her amusement, as her influence on board meetings became gently and then more strongly apparent, the very men who had so courteously patronized her before, now began to seek her out. Deftly, and delicately, they sought to involve her in their power games and their maneuverings: initially, perhaps, because they thought she had Edouard’s ear, but—more gradually—because they realized that if her viewpoints held sway, it was because they were rational.

  “You think like a man, Madame,” said Monsieur Bloch graciously one evening, at a party of his that she and Edouard attended.

  He clearly saw this as a compliment: Hélène let it pass.

  She assumed that her suggestion to Edouard regarding his need for a lieutenant or deputy had been forgotten, for Edouard did not refer to it again; but in this supposition, she was wrong.

  At the beginning of 1970, Hélène looked up one morning from the pages of the Financial Times, which she read each day at breakfast, and passed it across to Edouard.

  She was flanked, on one side, by Cat, in her convent school uniform, who was as usual late, in a cross mood, and bolting her breakfast at high speed; and on the other hand by Lucien, trapped in a highchair he detested, who was attempting to eat a soft-boiled egg, unaided. Hélène, who liked breakfasts en famille, was unflurried. She dealt with Lucien and the problems of his egg; she turned to Cat and persuaded her to finish eating, and also—which was more difficult—to tidy her unruly hair before she left for her classes.

  The spectacle of Hélène, with her hair loose, en déshabille, dressed in a simple blue cotton dressing gown the color of her eyes, made Edouard inclined to delay. When Cat kissed them both and rushed off to school, and Lucien was claimed for the nursery by his new English nanny, Edouard was considering whether, just this once, he might not delay his arrival at the office by at least one hour.

  He stood up, without looking at the article Hélène had indicated, and let the Financial Times fall. He walked around the table to Hélène, and rested his hand gently on the nape of her neck, lifting her hair, and letting it brush through his fingers.

  Hélène bent her head back and looked up at him: he saw the answering response in her eyes, the stilling of her face. He bent, and kissed her on the lips; he slipped his hand down over her throat, and under the soft blue cotton; Hélène sighed. She stood up and rested against him, in his arms.

  “You’ll be late…”

  “I know I’ll be late. I don’t give a damn.”

  She was about to protest further, though without great conviction. Edouard, who could feel the warmth, and the sudden lassitude in her body, stopped her from further words.

  He was one and a half hours late, but before he left, as they came back downstairs, Hélène, with a smile, retrieved the copy of the Financial Times from the dining room and pushed it into his hands.

  “You should read that.” She attempted to look at him sternly. “I won’t be put off. You were going to bid once for the Rolfson Hotels Group, weren’t you? I remember your saying. Well, you should bid again now.”

  Edouard groaned. “So that’s the kind of woman you are. That’s what you were thinking about just then, when I…”

  Hélène kissed him. Her eyes danced.

  “No. Not then. As you know very well. But I am now. And so should you.”

  The bid was made, in the summer of 1970, and was successful. It had two direct repercussions. Edouard, tied down by the negotiations for weeks, finally admitted to himself that when Hélène had said he needed a deputy, she was right. As soon as he acknowledged that to himself, he placed a call to the only man he was certain had all the qualifications he needed: Simon Scher.

>   He put his proposals clearly and concisely, without preamble. From Texas, all the way across the Atlantic, he could hear the smile, and the surge of elation in Scher’s voice.

  “Well, now, Edouard. It’s been a long transfer. I guess Drew might be persuaded to let me go. And you do get very tired of grilled steer…” He paused. “When might you want me?”

  Edouard also smiled. He knew perfectly well that the negotiations would hardly be straightforward, and Drew Johnson might well oppose the move.

  “Tomorrow,” he said carefully.

  There was a small silence, then Scher laughed.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “It must be marriage. You’ve become a patient man.”

  Scher finally returned to de Chavigny at the end of 1970, in the same month that Edouard and Hélène celebrated the birth of their third child, another boy, whom they named Alexandre.

  “He ought perhaps to have had Rolfson among his names,” Edouard said as he cradled the baby in his arms. He looked at Hélène dryly. “Considering the time and place and circumstances when he was conceived.”

  “What nonsense,” she said. “Considering the circumstances, you can’t possibly be certain.”

  “Oh, yes, I can.” Edouard lifted Alexandre in his arms and looked at him solemnly. “You came into this world because of the Financial Times. There now. What do you think of that?”

  Alexandre gurgled obligingly, and they both laughed.

  There was one third repercussion, but it was very small, and in the elation surrounding the successful bid, the arrival of Simon Scher, and the birth of his second son, Edouard hardly noted it at all. It puzzled him for the space of a few hours—then, dismissing it, he allowed it to slip from his mind. It came in the form of a telegram, delivered to his offices on the day the Rolfson Hotels Group takeover was completed.

  It read: Congratulations on the bid—belatedly. It had been sent from Portugal, and it was unsigned.

  In the spring of the next year, shortly before Cat’s eleventh birthday, Thaddeus Angelini came back into their lives. He did so without warning. There was no letter, no telephone call, there was merely an invitation, sent not by Thad himself, but by the public relations company that was organizing the première of his latest film, an epic about the American Civil War, which was called Gettysburg.

  Hélène looked at the invitation, and at first assumed that she and Edouard had been invited because the première was in aid of a charity for which they had both worked in the past. Then she wondered: was that the reason—or had the invitation been made at the request of Thad?

  She glanced down at the date: May 19, two days after Cat’s birthday, and also precisely six years since she had last seen Thad. Could that be right? It seemed to her very much longer, and the days when she had worked in Hollywood very remote. But no: she calculated the years, and saw that she was correct. Six years ago to that day, she had visited Thad’s house, and he had taken her down to that room with its insane collection of photographs. Once she was sure of the coincidence, she was also sure that Thad had arranged the invitation, and her first instinct was to refuse it; but she hesitated, and eventually changed her mind.

  Partly, and she knew this, it was curiosity. In the six years that had passed, Thad had never contacted her once. Even when Lewis died, there had been no call, and no letter. What Hélène knew of him she learned from newspapers, and it was not a great deal. He had made a string of films, first for Joe Stein at Artists International, and then for a succession of other studios: two of them had been modest successes with the critics, but none had succeeded at the box office. In interviews, Thad blamed the studio system for this. With Sphere, he had enjoyed a measure of independence. Now, he claimed, his work was thwarted from first to last by constant and philistine interference.

  His reputation as a director had declined, Hélène was aware of that. He had recently been compared, unfavorably, with other directors, including Gregory Gertz, and a whole generation of new names, who were being called the coming men. The two films she had seen had only served to confirm the reactions of the critics: she had liked neither, and had been surprised that Thad, whose work had always been so precise and assured, should demonstrate such uncertainty of touch.

  Some of the younger European critics, she had noted with a smile, had begun to date the decline in Thad’s work from the ending of her own partnership with him, and one particularly excitable French critic had proclaimed that, in losing Hélène, Angelini had lost his muse. This she did not take seriously, though she noticed once or twice that, when the idea was put to Thad in interviews, he responded very irritably.

  The truth of the matter was, she thought, as she looked at the square of pasteboard, she had almost forgotten Thad. She was so occupied with her family, and with her work at de Chavigny, that all memories of Thad had receded. Like Hollywood, he had been relegated to the past.

  But still, she was a little curious, and she also felt a certain lingering loyalty to Thad. It gave her no satisfaction to see critics who had once fawned over him now turn on the attack, often dismissing, in the process, earlier work they had once praised. Gettysburg, she had noted, with pleasure, seemed to have been a major success in America, reversing the tide of Thad’s critical fortunes. It was breaking box office records; it had been acclaimed by Susan Jerome—yes, Hélène thought, she owed it to Thad at least to go to the première.

  When she put the idea to Edouard, he agreed, but unwillingly. Hélène assumed that the reluctance was due to Edouard’s dislike of Thad, but this was not entirely the case.

  When she showed him the invitation, Edouard looked at it, then tossed it back. He stood up. “Very well,” he said shortly. “You’re probably right. We’ll go.”

  He turned away—angrily, Hélène thought—and Edouard was angry, but not with her. He was angry with himself. Simon Scher had now been working with him for over six months: Edouard was perfectly well aware of the fact that Scher’s arrival had been the moment, if ever there was one, to tell Hélène of his own previous involvement with Partex, and with Sphere. He had, in fact, decided to do so, resolved to do so: he had had the necessary sentences framed in his mind. But whenever he came to say them, he deferred.

  He had—and this was in some ways worse—told her part of the truth. He had told her that Simon Scher had a previous association with his own companies, going back many years. He had even told her that both he and his mother held stock in Partex Petrochemicals. And there, abruptly, he had stopped, finding himself quite unable to go on. On the first occasion he had tried to tell her, Hélène had been nursing Alexandre. She had lifted her face, and looked up at him, quite obviously unsuspecting, and delighted by the news of Scher’s appointment.

  “I had no idea you even knew him. And you’re sure he’s the right man? Oh, Edouard, I’m so glad.”

  Edouard had been dismayed. He kept hoping that Hélène would question him further, because he knew that though he might lie to her by evasion and omission, he could never lie to her directly. If only she had asked him—But Edouard, did you never know he was working with Sphere?—then, he knew, he would have told her. But she never asked, never cross-examined him. This complete trust was, more than anything else, the one thing which made him unable to speak. To have kept silent on the question in the first place was one thing, but to have kept silent for six years—what would Hélène’s reaction be once she knew that?

  Edouard felt it would undermine their shared past, undermine her trust in him. Try as he would, time and time again, he could not bring himself to speak. When the moment of Hélène’s first meeting with Simon Scher in Paris came and went, and still no questions arose, Edouard knew himself to be trapped. Scher was inclined to dismiss the matter.

  “Edouard, it’s ancient history now. Forget it,” he said. But Edouard could not forget it. The lie diminished him in his own eyes: he could not believe that it would not diminish him in Hélène’s.

  He was not familiar with the guilt that
comes from deceit, and so, when he experienced it, it made him angry. He found himself constantly on edge, whenever Simon Scher and Hélène met, which they did with increasing frequency; whenever some article about Partex appeared in the newspapers; whenever the question of his or Louise’s continuing investment in that company came up—as it did, on various occasions when, in front of Hélène, Louise might take it into her head to discuss the management of her portfolio, over which she had, in the past year, become increasingly fretful.

  At the same time he was worried about Partex itself, and the aggressive policy of expansion Drew Johnson was set on. Those doubts, which had begun at the time of the last Partex merger, had multiplied since, and multiplied still more, once Simon Scher returned to Paris. Scher’s presence, and Edouard’s influence, had, in the past, acted as a brake to Drew Johnson’s impetuosity; within six months of Scher’s return, it was becoming clear that the brakes were off. Johnson embarked on a program of heavy borrowing, and when Edouard and Simon Scher looked at those borrowing figures, they were both alarmed.

  When, not long before the première of Gettysburg, Drew Johnson began to throw out hints that he was interested in strengthening his own stockholdings in Partex, Edouard therefore felt a certain relief. At another time, he might have hesitated, but now he did not. To Johnson’s transparent delight, he agreed to sell.

  “You think you can persuade your mother to transfer her stock?” Drew asked.

  It was almost his only question, and Edouard felt a mixture of distaste, regret, and relief, at such an end to what he had once regarded as a partnership.

  The sale of his own shares was organized very swiftly. Edouard anticipated problems in persuading Louise, however, and arranged to see her, finally, on the afternoon of May 19, before the première of Gettysburg.

  He went to his mother’s house, expecting fretful inquiries and time-wasting arguments, and armed with the evidence of Partex’s latest borrowing figures.

  To his surprise, Louise did not argue at all. She seemed almost pleased at the suggestion.