“Oui, merci, Hubert.”
“It sounds like very dangerous research,” Vivienne Trent murmured.
“It is the most dangerous work in medical science today,” I replied. “The slightest little mistake, the merest slip on her part, and she could infect herself. She would die, of course, if that happened. There are no known vaccines.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
We were silent, she and I, as we sipped our lemon tea, but after a few seconds Vivienne Trent put down her cup and said, “I think I’ve read about the hot viruses. They’re somewhat rare, aren’t they?”
“Very, but so lethal I can hardly bear to think about them,” I responded. “As I explained a moment ago, there are no vaccines against them, no known cures. They kill in a matter of a few days, and in the most devastating ways.”
“How do they kill?”
“You don’t want to know,” I answered and drank a little tea.
Vivienne Trent did not press me. She asked quietly, “And they come out of Africa, am I correct?”
“Yes, you are.”
“Where from exactly?”
“Various areas. I’m not really an expert, you know,” I said giving her a slight smile.
“But surely your daughter has discussed her work with you? Told you about it?” she asserted, and a dark brow lifted.
“Yes, she has talked to me from time to time.”
“Then you must know more than the average person, Countess, a person like me.”
“I suppose I do.”
“Countess de Grenaille, forgive me if I sound as if I’m prying. I’m not, really. I’m just trying to understand about your daughter’s work. For my profile of Sebastian. Their emotional involvement aside, I can see that she must have had quite a lot in common with Sebastian, in that the foundation funded medical research there, fought disease. And, of course, he did love Africa, had so much knowledge about it. They must have got on very well—” She broke off, reached for her handbag. “Would you mind if I made a few notes? Just for background information.”
Briefly, I hesitated, and then before I could stop myself I acquiesced. “No, I don’t mind, that’s perfectly all right, Mrs. Trent.”
“Thank you so much.” She offered me a warm and very winning smile, took out a notebook and pen, closed her bag, and went on. “You said the viruses come from various areas in Africa. Did your daughter ever tell you anything about their actual source?”
“Ariel and the other doctors and scientists working in this field of medicine believe that the viruses come out of the rain forests of Africa. According to Ariel, the viruses have probably been around for hundreds of millions of years. However, they’ve been undetected. Undiscovered. My daughter explained to me that because the tropical forests are now being destroyed in a very systematic way the viruses are beginning to . . . come out. Emerge. And they’ve gone into the human population.”
“But how does that happen?” she asked, her voice rising an octave, her intelligent eyes fixed more intently on mine than ever.
“Scientists have discovered that the monkey can act as a host for the viruses, other monkeys get infected and become carriers. Ariel told me that the viruses have somehow managed to mutate, have changed their genetic structure in order to jump from monkeys into humans.”
“Oh, my God, that is frightening!” she exclaimed. Her voice was full of sympathy when she added, “It must be extremely worrying for you, Countess, knowing that your daughter is working with these deadly viruses, handling them constantly.”
“It is,” I answered, and then found myself unexpectedly confiding in her. “I’m afraid for Ariel. Always afraid. And afraid of the viruses. I try very hard not to think about her work, what she’s doing. She’s talented, you know, and very skilled. And she is careful, cautious—”
I broke off, reached for my cup of tea, reminding myself that I had not intended to have a long discussion with Vivienne Trent. But she was extraordinarily disarming. Her soft, sympathetic manner was effective, and I had begun to relax with her. I felt at ease. From the moment she had walked into the small salon I had detected something special in her, something fine and decent. Instinctively, I knew she was trustworthy, a good person. Besides which, we were only talking about Ariel’s work. Not that there was much else to discuss anyway.
“That’s quite a pressure on you, Countess de Grenaille,” Mrs. Trent was saying. “Living with that kind of . . . apprehension. About someone you love, I mean. I know only too well. Years ago, when I was married to Sebastian, and he went off alone to places that were in turmoil, in the midst of revolution or upheaval, I could barely sleep for worrying about him. I was always quite certain he was going to catch a bullet or get blown up. Or be kidnapped by rebel troops. I also worried that he would catch some deadly disease. He used to wander around Africa quite unconcerned for himself, and my heart was very often in my mouth, the risks he took.” She smiled and shrugged lightly. “But nothing ever did happen to him. I used to tell him that he had a guardian angel sitting on his shoulder.”
I nodded but made no comment. I hoped my daughter had a guardian angel sitting on her shoulder when she was working in the laboratory. Night and day I lived with the knowledge that if she made the slightest error she would endanger her life.
Vivienne Trent cut into my thoughts, when she said, “There’s been quite a lot written about hot viruses in the past few years, quite aside from the AIDS virus, I mean. Isn’t one of the more deadly ones called Marburg virus?”
“Yes. It’s from the filovirus family I told you about.”
“Is she working on that?”
“Not anymore.”
“What is she working on then?”
“A virus called Ebola Zaire. It’s the deadliest, the worst. It kills in nine out of ten cases.”
“Oh my God, how ghastly.”
“It is.”
“What are the symptoms?”
“A lot of bleeding . . . terrible bleeding . . . hemorrhagic fever—” I let my voice trail off. The horror of it was always too much to contemplate.
Vivienne Trent seemed to be digesting my words. Then she looked across at me and said, “What prompted Dr. de Grenaille to become a virologist?”
“Ariel was always interested in viruses and in Africa, and one day these two interests merged.”
“So she always wanted to be a doctor, did she?”
“Not a doctor practicing medicine, but a scientist, and even when she was quite a young girl.”
“I can certainly understand her interest in Africa,” Mrs. Trent said and confided, “I went there with Sebastian on our honeymoon, to Kenya, and I fell in love with the place. I often went back to other parts of Africa with him, on foundation business, and it never ceased to fascinate me. Does your daughter feel that way?”
“Yes, I think she does. My husband’s uncle had business interests and holdings in French Equatorial Africa, the French Congo, as it was known years ago. Ariel loved to sit and listen to his tales when he visited us. In 1973, when she was about twelve, he invited us all to the French Congo. We started out in Brazzaville and then traveled all over Africa. She too fell in love with its beauty and its mystery, its sense of timelessness.”
Mrs. Trent nodded, remarked casually, “So your daughter must be about thirty-three?”
“Yes. Thirty-four at the end of April.”
“I hope you don’t mind me asking this, Countess, but was Dr. de Grenaille ever married before?”
“No, she wasn’t. She’s always been very dedicated to her work. She once told me that she had been so busy looking down the lens of a telescope all her life she hadn’t had time to look up and find a man.”
Vivienne Trent smiled. “I do wish I could meet her—”
“I told you earlier that’s not possible,” I cut in swiftly, sounding a little more sharp than I had intended. “She’s in a laboratory that’s been isolated, contained if you like, for safety. She’s involved in a very special project a
t this moment. She and her team work long hours, and the work itself is very difficult, quite debilitating in a variety of different ways. For one thing, they wear special clothes. Biological suits—”
“Do you mean space suits, the kind astronauts wear?” she interrupted.
“Something like that. Plus helmets with windows, boots, and several pairs of gloves. Between the danger, the intensity of the work, and the complicated clothing, it’s a very stressful environment, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“I can,” Vivienne Trent said. There was a small silence. She leaned back against the sofa looking reflective. “Doctors like your daughter are the true heroes, Countess, so very selfless and in so many ways,” she said at last. “You must be awfully proud of her and the contribution she is making. After all, she is endeavoring to create a safer world for us to live in.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Trent, that’s very kind of you to say so. And yes, it’s true, I am proud of Ariel. Very proud.” I paused, shook my head. “But I’m also very worried a great deal of the time,” I finished with a pained smile.
“I can well appreciate why. Did your daughter meet Sebastian through her work? I imagine she must have.”
“You’re correct in that assumption. In actuality, she sought him out, went to see him. She wanted his foundation to fund a special project. A medical project some friends of hers were working on in Zaire.”
“And did he?”
“Of course. Would you expect otherwise?” I looked at her pointedly.
She laughed. “No. He was always so generous, and especially when it came to medical research.”
“From what I know of him . . . have learned about him, he was a very good man, I think.” As I said this I realized Vivienne Trent’s eyes were focused on a table at the other side of the room.
Following her gaze, I exclaimed, “Ah, I see you are interested in photographs of my family . . . of my husband Édouard, my son Charles, and my Ariel. She’s the young woman in the photograph standing next to theirs.”
Swinging her eyes back to mine, she said, “She’s very lovely. May I go and take a closer look, Countess?”
“Please do.”
She rose and walked across the room. I watched her staring at the photograph of Ariel, fully understanding her interest in my daughter. She then peered at the pictures of my husband and my son. It was at this moment that I felt the first stab of pain, a pain so fierce I closed my eyes and sucked in my breath, trying not to gasp out loud. I had not suffered from the pain for several weeks now and it took me by surprise.
“Countess, Countess, is there something wrong?” Vivienne Trent was saying.
I opened my eyes as she drew to a standstill next to my chair.
Taking a deep breath, I explained, “I’m afraid I’m in pain quite suddenly, Mrs. Trent.”
“Can I help you? Perhaps I can get you something.” Bending over me, her face taut with concern, she asked, “Are you ill? Do you need medication of some kind?”
I was moved by her consideration and reached out, touched her hand resting lightly on my arm. “I’ll be all right, thank you. But I will have to bring our talk to a close now”
“Yes, of course, I do understand. You’ve been very generous with your time, Countess. In fact, I think I may have overstayed my welcome. When we spoke on the phone, you did say an hour and I think I’ve been here a bit longer than that.”
“I enjoyed meeting you,” I said. I was feeling faint, and when the stabbing pain attacked again I winced.
Vivienne Trent could not fail to notice this and exclaimed, “Oh, Countess! I know you’re ill! I must go and fetch your butler. Don’t you think I should do that?”
I could only nod. Then I managed to say, “There’s a bell over there, near the console. You just have to push it, and Hubert will be here in an instant.”
She did this and then returned to my side, hovering over me. “I wish I could help you in some way make you feel better, Countess.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Mrs. Trent,” I said. “You see, I have cancer. I’m dying.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
It is foolish for an old woman to fall under the spell of a younger one. Both women are bound to get hurt.
Inevitably the younger woman will grow bored, resentful of the older woman’s wisdom and the burden of her age. And the old woman will feel hurt and abandoned when she is eventually rejected.
I suppose it is only natural that young feet want to keep running, doing, experiencing, while old feet have a tendency to slow.
I knew all this, had known it for a long time, and yet I had allowed myself to fall under the spell of Vivienne Trent. Fortunately, the negative aspects did not feature in the equation in our particular case. And for one simple reason: I was not going to be in this life very long. Therefore, there was no time for either of us to cause pain to the other.
My doctors had told me several months ago that there was nothing more they could do for me. They had allowed me to leave the hospital so that I could spend what time I had left in my own home.
I had not told Charles or Ariel, or anyone else, how close the end was for me. There was no point. They could do nothing to help me. In one sense, I was being self-protective. I had long realized that I would not be capable of dealing with my children’s emotions if they knew I was dying. I did not have the strength.
I yearned for peace and quiet, needed to spend what short time I had left leading as normal a life as possible. It was important for me to go about my business whenever I was able to do so with my dignity and pride intact.
Although I had not confided in my children, I had told Vivienne Trent the truth. I had done this one week ago today, the afternoon we were having tea. The words had been said without any thought on my part, nor did it matter that I had uttered them.
I felt quite comfortable that she knew I was facing imminent death. In part this was because she was a stranger. However, I had also witnessed her display of genuine concern for me, and she had shown me her compassionate side.
The fact was I trusted this young woman.
I had seen something fine and good and essentially honest in her that day. And in the past week she had proven that I was correct in my judgment of her.
A day hasn’t gone by without her telephoning me to see how I was feeling. She has sent flowers and books she thought I might like. Two of the books were her own, books she had written herself.
One of them was about Napoleon and Josephine and the early years of their marriage, and the other was a biography of Catherine the Great of Russia. They had been most revealing of the author in so many different ways.
Every day for the past few days, Vivienne had come to tea at four o’clock, just to sit with me and keep me company. She had told me a great deal about herself, her life, her houses in Lourmarin and Connecticut, entertained me in such a delightful way she had managed to take my mind off my illness.
Thankfully I’ve come to feel much better in the last twenty-four hours. The pain has finally lessened. I’m almost free of it again.
Never once in this last week has Vivienne asked me a single question about Ariel and her relationship with Sebastian Locke. Nor did she mention the profile she is writing about him.
It is possible to know a person for a whole lifetime and not know them at all. Yet I knew Vivienne Trent the very first day we met, knew her as if we had been intimate friends for many years.
She was an endearing young woman, very beguiling, and crept under one’s skin. I could understand why a man like Sebastian Locke had loved her as a young girl and later when she was a grown woman.
Vivienne was intelligent, sincere, warm, and loving, and she did not have a bad bone in her body. What is more, she seemed to be totally without cynicism.
In certain ways she reminded me of my daughter.
They were rather similar in character—responsible, caring, dedicated, and disciplined young women with good values and a sense of purpose.
But Vivienne was much more worldly, more sophisticated, and certainly more lighthearted than Ariel.
My daughter had always had an unusual aura about her, one that many mistook for aloofness. It was, in fact, an aura of isolation, something which is not uncommon in the truly gifted, who are different, who do seem somewhat removed from us lesser mortals. It is as though they live on another plane altogether.
Ariel’s work had always dominated her life. She had had little time for anything else most of her adult years. Until Sebastian Locke came into her life. Now that he was dead I was thankful that she had her work as a virologist to fall back on. Dangerous work in so many ways, but it had always consumed her, was something she loved and was excited by. And it would get her through this difficult period in her life.
I longed to see her again before I died, my beautiful child of my heart. But I feared I would not. Unless she finished her current project sooner than expected and came home to Paris.
It was not possible for me to tell her how ill I really was. If I did, if I said I needed her, she would drop everything in Africa and come running to me. But that would be such a selfish act on my part.
She had been mine for thirty-three years and had given me so much pleasure and joy, fulfilled so many of my dreams and hopes for her. And she had been a good daughter. Therefore my impending death did not amount to much in the overall scheme of things.
I knew Ariel loved me, knew that I would live on in her heart and memory long after I was dead. Just as Édouard did. Like most girls she had been close to her father, and Édouard had adored her. She would have her memories to sustain her. She and her brother were also close. They would always be there for each other.
As for Charles, he would hurry to me when I finally told him the truth, and he and Marguerite would stay with me until the end.
But the pale rider on the pale horse had not come to take me yet. I believed I still had a few weeks left on this earth. I had felt so much better today. The medication had finally alleviated the severe pain that had attacked me so savagely last week. I was back on my feet again, able to cope.
Her Own Rules Page 47