Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  Scher paused, and looked at Hélène carefully. “However, there’s another problem, and it’s a more serious one. Has your mother-in-law spoken to you about her shareholding?”

  “Louise? No.”

  “She holds ten percent of the de Chavigny stock. It entitles her to a seat on the board…”

  “I’ll bet she never uses it,” Christian put in, and Scher gave a tight smile.

  “No. She doesn’t. In any case, that’s irrelevant now. She wants to transfer her stock, and her seat on the board, to someone else. A friend of hers, who’s apparently had great success with property speculation in Spain and Portugal. His name is Philippe de Belfort.” He glanced at Hélène. “Apparently, your mother-in-law invested heavily in his Portuguese developments, and she’s done very well out of it. He has a tie-up with a man called Nerval. Gustav Nerval.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Christian sat up. “The scorpion’s husband.”

  “Nerval?” Hélène frowned. “But I thought—there was some scandal. He’s a shark, he always was. It can’t be a very reputable company…”

  “Oh, extremely disreputable, I should imagine,” Scher said dryly. “Successful though, for the moment.”

  “But Louise can’t do this.” Hélène stood up angrily, “Legally, she can’t do it. She can’t assign her holdings to this man or anyone else. They’re entailed. Now that Edouard is dead, they pass from her directly to the children.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she knows that. It’s just a ploy. She wants de Belfort on the board of de Chavigny, and she’s determined to get him there. This is her first move. She will make others. She’s been holding a little series of dinners—I suppose you hadn’t heard that? For Temple. For Bloch. To introduce them to de Belfort again…”

  “Again? Who is this man?”

  Scher heard the imperious note come back into Hélène’s voice, and he smiled to himself. Carefully, and precisely, he told her. When he had finished, he leaned back in his chair with an air of satisfaction.

  “It happened at the time of Edouard’s first bid for the Rolfson Hotels Group. I was in America then, but of course, it was common knowledge in Paris, and in London. I’ve been through all the files, Edouard was very thorough; it’s all precisely documented. De Belfort went to South America for a period, and then he came back, about ten years ago. He’s been in Spain and Portugal ever since. And I gather he’s been in contact with Louise, though I’m sure Edouard knew nothing of that.”

  “De Belfort! The company Cassius. I remember now.” Christian sat forward excitedly. “Of course. Edouard always said—”

  “He was at the funeral.” Hélène interrupted him. “Don’t you remember? It was raining, and he was the last man to come up.”

  “He’s back in France now—more or less permanently. Wooing people within the company, people like Temple, who aren’t sure which way to jump. There was always a certain amount of opposition to the Wyspianski collections, but I think you’ll find that a great deal of the recent opposition stems from him. He was always against that side of the company; he’s intelligent; he can be a very persuasive man. Of course…” He looked down at his hands modestly, and spread his fingers. “Of course, it would be possible to make things quite uncomfortable for him in this country. Really quite uncomfortable. There’s a great deal of information on him in Edouard’s files which would interest the tax authorities very much. And of course, if Hélène were to make it clear, absolutely clear, to the entire board, that de Belfort was never getting so much as a toe in the door…If we were to reverse our decision to postpone the Wyspianski collection, and set a new date. If we were to make a stand on that, and on various other matters…”

  He allowed his voice to trail away. He continued to look at the back of his hands with great concentration for a few minutes longer, and then he looked up at Hélène directly. He smiled, politely; and Hélène, with amusement, with a surge of energy she had never expected to feel, recognized that smile, and remembered it.

  “A showdown!” Christian sprang to his feet. “A showdown. I love them. Edouard loved them. If this man has anything to do with the scorpion, or Louise, he’s bound to be perfectly frightful. We have to go onto the attack. Hélène—you have to go onto the attack…”

  He stopped. Hélène was not listening. Her face had become suddenly animated.

  “I’ve wasted time,” she said slowly. “I see that now. I’ve behaved in a way Edouard would have hated.” She stood up.

  “Simon. Christian—I’m sorry.”

  She paused, and Christian, watching her, saw her expression change. There was a certain set to her lips, a certain angle at which she held her head, a certain glint of determination in the eyes. He recognized Edouard in her, at that moment, as if she were a de Chavigny by birth, and not just by marriage. She turned to Simon Scher.

  “Simon, when is the next board meeting?”

  “Not for another three weeks. You could, of course, call one whenever you wished.”

  “And how long to see off de Belfort?”

  “Oh, well, if we were to see him, mention certain things, make it clear he’ll never make it to the front lobby, let alone the boardroom—not long.”

  “A week?”

  “More than adequate, I should have said. The man has a good instinct for self-preservation.”

  “We’ll see him a week from now. The board meeting in ten days’ time. And I want some plans drawn up to have the Wyspianski collection rescheduled.”

  “Oh, good. Oh, good,” Christian said. “I can’t wait to hear what happens. Hélène—the moment you and Simon have seen him, I’m coming to dinner. I’ll fly over from London if necessary. I want to hear it all, every appalling detail…”

  Christian loved drama, of course. He was perhaps envisaging some splendid and impassioned confrontation. In which case, he was going to be disappointed: Hélène sensed that, as soon as she met de Belfort.

  The interview was conducted in Edouard’s office at the de Chavigny headquarters. It had remained unchanged since his death, and as de Belfort came into the room, with his heavy deliberate tread, Hélène saw him glance around him, and note that. He looked at the bronzes, at the black desk, at the Jackson Pollock. Then he drew up a chair on the far side of the desk, facing Hélène and Simon Scher, who sat a little to one side.

  He looked at them, with his pale heavy-lidded eyes, while first Scher, and then Hélène, spoke. His face never betrayed the least emotion; he looked, if anything, almost bored.

  When they had both finished, he gave a faint smile. He rested his large pale hands on the surface of the desk, and flicked at its surface with one well-manicured finger.

  “Oh, well. I shall return to Portugal then, and Spain. You can hardly interfere with my activities there. All that was in the files? Really? You know, Edouard would have done awfully well working for a police state…”

  He saw Hélène’s flush of anger, and it seemed to please him, momentarily. Some slight animation appeared in his pale heavy face; it flickered in his eyes, and then was gone. He gave a small shrug.

  “I’m not too disappointed. Louise was very optimistic about my chances here—but then, Louise is a stupid woman. There was a time when I thought she might be correct, when I thought I might be able to fill the vacuum, so to speak. Now—” He paused. “Well, the zest has gone out of it somehow, in any case. It was rather more amusing to operate from the sidelines, to slip in and out of France, to advise Louise—when Edouard was still alive. Besides, we’re doing extremely well, Nerval and I. To return here now—it might cramp my style a little, I think…”

  Hélène leaned forward. “Before you go,” she said, “there’s one thing that interests me. Why did you always oppose the Wyspianski collections? Why did you oppose that part of the company’s work? You’re not stupid. I can’t believe you were unable to see how important it was.”

  De Belfort smiled faintly; he looked at her with slightly more interest than he had before.

&n
bsp; “Why? I’m sure you know the answer. Because it mattered so much to Edouard, of course.”

  “But the work was good. The collections were always very fine. And simply from a commercial point of view, they were a success from the first. Do you mean to say that you disliked Edouard so much that you could not make an objective business decision?”

  “Is there such a thing?” De Belfort stood up. “Are you making an objective decision now? Is Mr. Scher?”

  “It’s objective in my case.” Simon Scher leaned forward. “I don’t even know you. But I do know your record, and that’s enough to make me sure we have no place for you here.”

  De Belfort turned a cold haughty gaze upon him. There was a pause, then de Belfort looked away, his lips pursed with a kind of patrician disdain. He regarded Hélène levelly, then, slowly he swiveled around in his chair, and looked about the room, his expression close to regret.

  “I always said this would never outlast Edouard. I told him that once—did he ever mention it to you?”

  “He never mentioned your name,” Hélène said coldly. “And if that was what you predicted, you were wrong.”

  “I wonder.” Again de Belfort smiled, that slow glacial smile. “Not that I doubt your energies for one moment, Madame, I hope you understand. I hear that—for a woman—you are very able. No, no—but in the long term? How many children is it? Three? A girl and two boys, I believe. Very difficult. One of them might take after Edouard, of course, but it’s hardly likely they both will. Louise tells me the elder boy—Lucien, isn’t it?—so much resembles her son Jean-Paul, and Jean-Paul, or so I’ve always heard, would have finished this company within three years, had it not been for Edouard. So I doubt the future is as assured as all that. One of the weaknesses of a private company—too few children, and there’s no one suitable to carry on; too many, or the wrong kind, and they squabble so viciously that—”

  “None of this is your concern. You were not invited here to speculate on the future of this company. You might do better to concern yourself with your own.”

  Simon Scher had spoken, tersely, rising as he did so. Hélène said nothing, and de Belfort noted that. He looked at her intently, then got to his feet with a smile. He took his time, looking around the austere room, from painting to painting, object to object. Then, just before he left, he turned back to Hélène.

  “You know, it’s quite odd,” he remarked in an easy conversational tone. “I did dislike your husband very much—just as you suggested. Disliked is possibly the wrong term. I hated him. Such an arrogant man. Living in the wrong era, I always felt, despite his success. Not a part of the modern world at all. And yet—the odd thing is, the unaccountable thing is—now that he’s dead, I rather miss him. He leaves a gap in my life—which would no doubt have amused him very much. Now, who would have predicted that?”

  He gave a small puzzled frown; then, ponderously, in a leisurely way, he left the room. Hélène watched him leave, thoughtfully; from the first moment he came in, he had reminded her of someone, but she had been unable to place who it was. When he made those last few remarks, and then turned to go, it suddenly came to her. Physically, of course, they were nothing alike; it was perhaps what had confused her. But she had sensed his hate, and his antagonism, before he spoke of it—and that she had recognized. He reminded her of Thad.

  She tried to explain this, that night, to Christian, and he, after the first burst of elation at what he regarded as clear-cut victory, listened quietly.

  “They both needed him, in a way—do you understand, Christian? They needed the rivalry. Maybe they even needed the hate. I don’t know. Perhaps people do need that, just as people need love.”

  “He enjoyed the contest, you mean?” Christian looked thoughtful. “Yes. I can see that.” He paused. “Men like Edouard attract hate—though he could never understand that. Also love, of course.”

  Hélène heard the affectation leave his voice; she heard the catch of regret in it. She leaned across the dining table, and rested her hand on his.

  “Oh, Christian,” she said sadly. “I know.”

  “I loved him very much,” he said jerkily. “He could be arrogant, and obstinate and impossible. He made me laugh. He made me think. He was also the kindest man I ever met. Hugo thought—my cousin Hugo said…Oh, hell. I’m sorry about this, Hélène.”

  “Don’t be,” she said simply as he turned his face away. She waited awhile, and then got Christian a brandy. She sat down again and rested her arms on the table, her face in her hands.

  “Tell me about him, Christian. I wish you would. Tell me what he was like—when you first met him, before I knew him.”

  Christian looked up. “It won’t hurt you?”

  “No. Not now. I want you to.”

  “I understand that. To begin with, you can’t bear to say or hear anything at all, and then, after that—” He paused. “I’ll tell you how I first met him. I’d heard of him before, through Hugo. But this was the first day we met. It was in London, in Eaton Square, about a month before we were both going up to Oxford. Hugo said…”

  He began to speak more rapidly, with his usual animation, his hands gesturing wildly in the air.

  Hélène listened. She saw the street, and the house, and Christian’s eighteen-year-old friend. And after a while, as he spoke, she felt that icy calm, which had already begun to desert her, slip further away, and further, and with a sense of release she let it go.

  Christian talked on; the candles on the table burned lower. His Edouard; her Edouard.

  That night, when she went to bed, she reached out her hand as she did every night, to touch the cool space on the sheets beside her. She let it rest there, and closed her eyes, knowing that tonight she would sleep. Now that the calm had gone, and the inertia had gone, Edouard was very close to her.

  I shall take the children to Quaires, she thought, for the summer.

  That summer Hélène arranged for a certain box to be sent from Paris to England, and, one evening, kneeling on the floor of the drawing room at Quaires, Cat opened it.

  It was an antique box, the size of a small trunk, with a domed lid, covered in fine leather, which had faded to a soft mossy green; on its lid was the de Chavigny crest, and Cat’s initials. Cat’s hands trembled a little as she opened it: she did not know what it contained, but she knew that it was important, that it related in some way to her father, the second anniversary of whose death had just passed. Inside the box were two trays, with compartments, which lifted out, and inside the trays were a series of other exquisitely made leather boxes. Jewelry cases. She knelt back on her heels, afraid to open them.

  The room was still and quiet; outside, the light was fading from the thick dusty gold of late afternoon, to the blue of twilight; shadows sloped across the lawn. After a while, Hélène crossed to her, and knelt down beside her.

  “Cat, I wanted you to see them; I wanted you to know,” she said gently. “It was too soon before, but I thought, now—”

  She hesitated, and lightly touched one of the small boxes in front of them.

  “Before we came back to Edouard, the years when we were in America—every year, Edouard remembered your birthday. He chose a present for you, and it was put in the safes in Paris. To wait for you. To wait for when you came back.” She paused. “There’s one to mark your birth—this one here. And then one for each year after that. They’re each dated—you’ll see.”

  “Every year? Before he even knew me?” Cat lifted her eyes to Hélène’s face.

  “Every year. And after we came back, he continued, just the same. And I continued, after he died. Oh, Cat, I wanted you to see them. He loved you so much.” She touched Cat’s hand. “Open them, darling. Open them, please…”

  Very carefully, Cat began to do so. For Catharine, with my love, 1960. A necklace of pearls, rose, and briolette-cut diamonds, an exquisite delicate thing, like a circlet of flowers, which she knew at once could have been designed only by Wyspianski. For Catharine, with my lo
ve, 1961. A Cartier tiara, of black onyx surmounted with pearls; 1962: a Chinese necklace of carved coral, with tiny carved flowers spilling little clusters of onyx and diamonds. Year after year; box after box: a necklace with five strands of perfectly matched pearls for her fifth birthday. Two matching bracelets, so cunningly mounted they appeared to have been carved from sapphires. Lapis and gold; every stone except emeralds; 1973, the year of his death, a cabochon ruby ring, which fit her finger exactly.

  Cat looked at them in wonder and bewilderment. Tears came to her eyes; a tiara—would she ever wear a tiara? It touched her heart that her father should have chosen something so much a part of his era, and taking it from its box, she pressed it against her face, thinking that yes, if she wore one, ever, it would be this one.

  She held it away from her face, looking at it, tracing its outline with her fingers. Her face grew fierce and tight, and then abruptly, with a little cry, she set it down again, and rose to her feet.

  “I want to show you something—Mother, wait. Wait there.” She ran from the room and returned, a few minutes later, clutching a folder under her arm. She knelt down beside Hélène, her hands shaking, and opened it carefully. It was a portfolio of designs, jewelry designs; page after page of them, each signed and dated, and drawn, as Cat always drew, meticulously.

  “I’ve been working on these for a year. When I’m in Paris, I show them to Floryan and he helps me. He tells me what is technically possible, and what impossible. This one—you see. I had to revise it. It couldn’t have been made, not the way I first drew it. And this one—oh, I like this one. I think this is one of the best. Mother, I know they’re not very good yet, but they’ll get better—as I learn, as I work on them…”

  She lifted her face eagerly to Hélène’s, and Hélène drew the folder toward her. She bent over them intently. She had had no idea that Cat was working on these, and they were good; they were imaginative. She turned the pages slowly, scrutinizing each drawing, and the small technical notes Cat had made in the margins. “But Cat—these are beautiful. They’re very fine…”