The Many Lives of John Stone

by Linda Buckley-Archer

  Then, three autumns ago (as I write this letter) we met in Saint James. You offered to take me back with you to Suffolk, and I, against my better judgement, found myself agreeing. Call it a premonition, a woman’s instinct, a flower’s last chance to bloom. And so we were reconciled for a few short weeks. For the very last time, although we did not know it—and I regret that I did not know it. Then a remarkable thing happened: I started to exhibit all the symptoms of being with child once more, even though I believed myself to be past childbearing age. More convinced than ever that I could not carry a child of yours to full term, I made the decision to leave. I picked some trifling argument with Martha as an excuse and when I announced my departure I recall that you made little effort to persuade me to stay. My intention was to give myself up to calm and solitude in the hope that I could persuade the baby inside me to cling on to life.

  I was not hopeful, yet, to my astonishment, the baby continued to grow and thrive, while my own health faltered. These ill-formed words are testament to the now-constant tremors caused by a disease of the nerves whose first symptoms revealed themselves during my confinement. I envisaged a birth at Stowney House. This baby would be a late triumph, an atonement, a beacon of hope. But as the weeks passed a growing conviction held me back from writing to you. One day I awoke and I knew that if my own life was slipping away, I could not allow my unborn daughter (I never doubted that I was carrying a girl) to be brought up at Stowney House.

  You will feel that I stole our daughter’s early years from you—but do I not return her to you now? Your instinct would have been to protect her from the world. Mine was to let her be a part of it. And so it was that with my cuckoo’s instinct I thought to spare her from a childhood too laden with the cautious weight of years. After all, did not your beloved Spaniard put into place precisely such a stratagem?

  After my previous request, I wonder if you have paid much attention to the family of the hardworking man whom I installed in the gatekeeper’s cottage. My guess is that, unsure of my purpose, you will have kept your distance. You will have had more sense than to give them money, though perhaps you will have done something with regard to the children’s education—most likely you will have done something for the son. It may be that you will have done nothing, and left well alone: We have both learned long ago the folly of trying to direct the lives of others. God willing, Stella Theresa Park’s upbringing within that family will have been less careful than the one you would have given her—though I hope it will have allowed her more freedom to grow. Heaven forbid, in any case, that I should have let Martha and Jacob influence the character of our precious daughter. By the time you read my letter, Stella will be approaching eighteen years of age and more than capable of judging them for herself.

  I accept that you remain determined to hide from the world for Martha and Jacob’s sake. However, I beg you, Jean-Pierre, to allow our daughter to decide for herself whether she wishes to follow in your footsteps. With a new generation, consider the possibility of change. And in your final judgement of me, grant me this, at least, that despite my opposing views, I never did anything to endanger the anonymity of our race—even in these final stages of my illness, when I have been sorely tempted to submit myself to a surgeon’s care.

  Soon I shall retreat to some peaceful spot until the end comes, for I no longer judge myself fit to be seen. You would come to me, I know, but I prefer you to remember me in my prime. Besides, my pride will not suffer any deathbed comparisons. . . . I forbid you to pity me—I have led an extraordinary life, and it gives me joy to picture our daughter on the cusp of womanhood.

  I have been the grit in your oyster shell, Jean-Pierre. Without me, you might not have become the man that you are, a man with whom I could not share my life, but whom I have been proud to call my husband. It pleases me that, finally, I was able to bear you a sempervivens child. How I envy you, Jean-Pierre, for you will know a daughter’s love.

  Therese

  Mine!

  There are no words!

  No words!

  John Stone feels that he is viewing the world through something solid and transparent, a block of glass. This astonishing news! All he can do is obey a powerful urge to move, to run. A strong, hot wind blows as he speeds past strolling tourists in the sun-dappled park. He loosens his billowing white shirt and tugs it out of his belt; he pulls at the neck until the top button flies off.

  When he can run no more, he jogs, and when he can no longer jog, he sinks to his knees and bends double, panting, leaning forward until his forehead presses into prickly, dry grasses. His cheeks are slick with sweat and tears—of joy, he supposes. For most of his life he has despaired of ever having a sempervivens child to make sense of his absurdly long existence. “She’s mine!” he whispers to the earth. “Mine!”

  * * *

  Later, when he has mustered the courage, he slowly lifts the lid of the cedar chest as if it were a trapdoor to another time, another place. He is greeted by a sea of tissue paper, which the ceiling fan overhead causes to ripple with miniature waves. A pulse thumps in his neck as he carefully removes the tissue. Growing impatient, he plunges in his hands and his fingertips touch something soft: It is a baby’s shawl. He holds it to his cheek: cashmere, he thinks, or finest lamb’s wool. With it he finds a smocked and embroidered newborn’s dress and a pair of socks whose cuffs are threaded through with satin ribbon. John Stone lays them out on the low glass table and kneels in front of them. The dress is so small. The silk embroidery, he knows, is Thérèse’s work. He presses his fingers down on the spot where Spark’s baby heart would have beaten eighteen years ago. Now he picks up a sock and imagines the size of her newborn feet, the immaculate toenails, the delicacy of her skin. How long did Thérèse risk keeping her? And when the time came to part from her beautiful child, where did she find the strength? She must have told herself that it was an act of love.

  He reaches into the chest again: Now his fingers close on a small silver casket. It contains Thérèse’s wedding ring and the golden locket, engraved with an apple tree and studded with rubies, that he had made for her in the first year of their marriage. These items too he adds to the collection on the glass table.

  The last object to be relinquished by the cedar chest is a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame. The resemblance shocks him anew. Thérèse wears a velvet maternity dress; her long, elegant fingers support her rounded belly. She must have been close to full term. The image of this once-vibrant and infuriating woman regards John Stone. He understands that, as she looks into the camera, she is picturing him, the father of her precious unborn child; she is sending to him a message that must travel through time and an uncertain future to reach its mark. Thérèse used to insist that she did not want to bear him children and he had believed she said it to hurt him. Now, finally, he understands why. A throb of sorrow, tinged with guilt and regret, rises in his gullet, as he remembers an errant wife whom he has not, until this moment, been able to mourn.

  * * *

  That evening he walks for several hours before retiring to bed. London’s streets are crowded with people he seems to have met before: shuffling old men, their spines drooping like wilting flowers; lovers, latched on to each other, tenderly oblivious of the rest of the world; city men, self-assured and seemingly invincible, ignoring the cracks growing beneath their feet. He wants to put his hands on their shoulders and say: I understand. Live well. Be happy while you can.

  When John Stone awakes with a start in the middle of the night, he is still unable to articulate his thoughts. An emotion pulses in a place he cannot reach. He retrieves the shawl from the cedar chest and stands on his balcony, holding it to his cheek. He gazes at the swaying treetops, opposite, in the orange glow of the streetlamps and listens to the distant whine of police sirens.

  Notebook 5

  XV

  Like migrating birds follow the course of a river home, when I survey the vast expanses of my own past, I am forever searching for a line o
f meaning. If I had listened to the Spaniard—ignored Monsieur Bontemps’s promises and turned my back on France—would I have been a different man, a better man? Who can tell? But when I was young, my line of meaning, my river’s course always led me back to Isabelle. For better or for worse, the man that I am now was forged by my first experience of love in the court of the Sun King. Of course, we all present our stories in a particular light, hoping to shape how we are perceived, and desiring, above all, to be understood.

  * * *

  And so I returned to the palace of the Sun King and learned the trick of remaining invisible. Like a young deer left to graze in safety within tall bracken, I moved among the giant characters of Versailles and, as long as I didn’t reveal myself in the open, drew little attention to myself at court. I was now living in the household of the King’s brother, the Duc d’Orléans—known as “Monsieur”—and his second wife, the Princess Palatine, Elisabeth-Charlotte—known as “Madame.”

  Sometimes I looked at Monsieur and thought I was gazing at a smaller version of the King, for the resemblance was remarkable: He had the same physical poise, dark features, and strong nose. Slighter than his brother, and with a small potbelly, Monsieur was always exquisitely dressed. In principle, I was to play the role of secretary; in practice, Monsieur rarely required me to do anything at all. I was admitted to his household as a favor to his brother, and since he was not permitted to know the reason, I think he felt at a disadvantage. In any case, he largely avoided my company.

  As for Madame, his German wife (we knew her as Liselotte), it was an entirely different matter. My arrival in her household raised her spirits, or at any rate provided some distraction. Theirs was not an ideal marriage given that Monsieur preferred the company of men. Moreover, in a court that valued beauty, style, and grace above all things, Liselotte was plump, inelegant, and loathed dancing. She lived, instead, for her hunting, for her dogs, and for the quantities of letters she would write daily. I liked her: She spoke her mind and knew how to enjoy herself. In the right mood Madame could be extremely vulgar, which always made me laugh.

  The Spaniard came to tutor me daily, and would tease me on account of the grandeur of my new surroundings. It was true that there was so much gold in my room, it seemed full of sunshine even on a cloudy day. Best of all was the luminous goddess who smiled down at me from panels in the ceiling. Garlanded with flowers, she cavorted with plump cherubs against a sky of heavenly blue. I would let the Spaniard’s words drift over me and gaze up at her instead.

  One morning he arrived with a copy of his favorite book in his hand. As he had been unable to dissuade me from returning to Versailles, he was determined, at least, to teach me the ways of the world, and introduce me to the earthly wisdom of Baltasar Gracián.

  We were interrupted by Liselotte, who flounced into the room with her ever-present lapdogs. We caught a glimpse too of her son and daughter—the two surviving heirs she had dutifully produced before resigning from that particular royal duty. The children peeped in at us before their mother gestured for them to hurry along, and they clattered away down the corridor. Young Elisabeth-Charlotte, who was fascinated by my broken nose (I would tell her outlandish tales about how I got it), lingered long enough to give me a solemn wave. Her mother flopped, red-faced, into a gilt armchair. Five or six small dogs instantly jumped up onto her lap and snuggled into her.

  “Don’t give them that disapproving look of yours, Signor,” Liselotte scolded in her German accent. “They are the best people I have come across in France . . . and no eiderdown is as cozy. Though, in truth, my darlings”—she was addressing her dogs in a voice she reserved only for them—“I am quite warm enough after all that exercise.”

  She peeled the spaniels off one by one and dropped them on the floor. I offered to call for refreshments.

  “No, no, no,” she said. “I have no wish to interrupt your lesson. Continue as if I were not here. I shall lie here quietly and listen. I’m steaming like a spent horse after my walk.”

  Liselotte folded her hands across her ample stomach and closed her eyes expectantly. I grew self-conscious: Jolly though she was, the Princess Palatine was a highly intelligent woman who prized the art of conversation. I did not wish to appear stupid in her eyes.

  The Spaniard asked me to describe Gracián’s book. I mumbled something about good advice. When he pressed me for more, I suggested that it was a series of lessons about surviving in a world that wants to break you.

  “Ah, so it is about surviving?” asked the Spaniard.

  “Perhaps not only surviving. Succeeding. Winning,” I said.

  “Good,” said the Spaniard. “Go on.”

  Liselotte half opened her eyes and scrutinized me through her eyelashes. I continued.

  “Gracián talks about cultivating prudence and good sense. Self-mastery. Coolness. He says: Don’t reveal what you are thinking; don’t reveal what you are feeling. You should keep your secrets tight to your chest and conceal your abilities and intentions from your adversaries in order to win—”

  Liselotte snorted quietly: “I can think of several people who follow those rules—and I can’t say I’m fond of any of them—”

  “With respect,” said the Spaniard, “at court one’s reputation is everything. One must pay careful attention to how others perceive you. Jean-Pierre, who has a kind, open character, must learn how to protect himself.”

  Liselotte held her tongue while the Spaniard listed some of Gracián’s advice: Get to know the great people of your age; make people depend on you while avoiding outshining those on whom you depend; don’t expose your weaknesses; only excellence counts, only achievement endures.

  Liselotte heaved herself up noisily from the chair. “I have to say I find it all a little depressing.”

  “Not all of them are depressing,” I said, feeling that I should come to the Spaniard’s defense. “The one I like best of all is: There is no desert like that of living without friends.”

  Liselotte pouted and said: “Well, it seems to me that this is the kind of advice to give to a man with enemies, a man who is struggling to make his way in the world. But Jean-Pierre has been welcomed into the court by the King himself. Why should he beat at a door he has already entered?”

  The self-evident truth of Liselotte’s casual remark struck us both, I think. When I looked over at the Spaniard I caught a forlorn look in his eyes, which I was unable—then—to understand. He did not want this for me. What the world saw as success, he viewed very differently.

  Liselotte paused with her hand on the door handle. “Would you care to come hunting with me this afternoon, Jean-Pierre?”

  I accepted her invitation with thanks, but when she did not extend it to the Spaniard, I felt as if I had betrayed him.

  We left off our lessons early that day, but not before the Spaniard had given me a piece of advice. One day I might speak with the King, and on that day, he said, I must not admit the small possibility that I might not be a sempervivens. I am certain that Baltasar Gracián would have agreed with him. As for me, unconvinced as I still was by the Spaniard’s story, my greatest fear was what would happen to me when, sooner or later, I was found out.

  XVI

  After some weeks in my new position at court, I became anxious that the King had forgotten about me. Louis attended mass at the royal chapel every day, leaving his apartment at ten in the morning, but it was only on Sunday, as Monsieur Bontemps had instructed, that I dared climb the private staircase that allowed me to pass, unseen, from Monsieur’s apartment to that of his brother. The King, who loved music, insisted that the chapel choir perform a new piece every day, and I had got into the habit of opening my windows and sticking my head out, straining for the sound of singing coming from the north wing of the palace. When the music reached me I knew it was safe to climb the stairs and look inside the secret compartment of the tortoiseshell desk.

  Ten o’clock had already struck that Sunday morning and I leaned out of my window at the b
road courtyard. There was a smell of summer rain. A stooped, ancient gardener was scraping his rake over damp gravel, making it difficult for me to make out if the choir had started to sing. When someone tapped my shoulder I jumped, grabbing hold of the sill for balance. I turned to see Liselotte smiling at me.

  “So this is what you do while the rest of us are at mass! You daydream and look out of your window.”

  “Madame! You startled me!”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What do you get up to on Sunday mornings? I’ve noticed that you avoid the chapel—”

  Protesting that I was up to nothing, really nothing at all, I changed the subject, and asked if she intended to hunt that afternoon. She asked if I had seen a ring that she had misplaced and might have left here. I said that I had not, although I did not believe Liselotte’s explanation for her presence any more than she believed I had no reason for being here. She walked over to a mirror and adjusted her headdress, which was slipping to one side. Our eyes met in the mirror and she said: “Who precisely are you, Jean-Pierre?”