They were in the stiff sitting-room, Andrée on the upright sofa, Flavia leaning against the back of a chair. Andrée got up and used the house telephone to order citron-pressés. They came fairly quickly. Andre told the waiter to leave the tray. She cut and squeezed one of the lemons and filled up her glass, she seemed to want to underline the point of not making Flavia fetch and carry. “Help yourself,” she said.
“Why did he marry me? Have you ever asked yourself? Would you like to hear our story? Why did I marry him? He was madly in love with me, which won’t surprise you. I was far from displeased. Michel then was not so dusty either, everybody thought the world of him. He had an exceptional academic record and he had had a very brave war—he came back with so many medals that they forgave him the anti-war pamphlet he wrote and published, he’d only have to choose his career, they said. And he was so handsome. Well, he is still, but you cannot imagine what he was like then. It was just after the war and young and whole men were rare, women used to stop in the street to have a second look at Michel. It was also the time when the country was beginning to discover le sport, and there he was back from horse-shows in Rome and Madrid and Brussels having won all those prizes for France. Michel on a horse, I must say, was a lovely sight. People were mad about him, M. J. Devaux was a kind of god. (That was one of the reasons why he gave it up so soon, he couldn’t stand the publicity.) I was never much a one for horses—I don’t seem to get very far with them—but I travelled with Michel a few times, to Budapest, to Brioni, I was his fiancée and we were fêted everywhere. There was a certain quality about it all then, an elegance, in those first free years of peace. Tennis was my own line. I was good at it, really good, Suzanne says I once took a game off her (I did take more than one off Señorita Alvarez). I didn’t push it, what with the training and being told I would have to put on some weight and muscle, perhaps someone ought to have made me a bet. I played the tournaments a bit though, Michel played too—he wasn’t bad either—he and I used to do mixed doubles. People looked twice at me as well. Oh, we were quite a couple!
“The ball, as they used to say, was at our feet. I was always fond of that saying although one only hears it about people for whom things did not turn out that way. Then, everyone was for us. We basked in approval. To our families nothing could have been more fitting: he was considered brilliant, so was I; he would have solid property, I would bring ample cash; we were supposed to share the same interests; if I was older than girls of our milieu are when they marry it was thought right for Michel to have a wife with a mature mind and nearer his own age; but what counted in their eyes above all else was that we were cousins—of a suitably remote degree—for a Devaux can do no better than marry a Devaux. We are a family with a long record of achievements and responsibilities, which I daresay stands for more in the world today than a moth-eaten Italian title.
“Oh, I wanted him all right, it suited me. Even Michel’s being so much in love; it’s not a bad thing in the man you’re going to marry, it will make it all the easier to lead him, or so I thought. (I am not infallible.) For the time being we enjoyed ourselves, Michel’s not solemn; we had fun.
“We moved about a good deal but Paris was where we were both living, and you know, or perhaps you don’t, how that can be. In the evenings one drove out into the country to have dinner or dance in the banlieu—in our beautifully made fast cars and there seemed to be no one on the roads except people like ourselves and our friends. I gave Michel a second-hand Hispano Suiza—an Hispano of a good year—for an engagement present. It wasn’t a thing people did but we were not conventional in that way. It was the most sentimental present I ever gave, and he loved it; we both did. We got on. We didn’t know each other at all well then—we’d never played together when we were children or anything like that; we met, as it happened, in somebody’s château in the depth of the winter of 1919. It was a hunt ball and Michel’s party was late. I’ve never seen so much snow. He came in, you know in that light way he moves, I didn’t know him from Adam but he had hardly greeted his hostess when he was by my side. He kissed my hand (as I wasn’t married yet men didn’t do that, at least not in public) and he said, ‘Je crois que nous soyons un peu cousin.’ He told me later that he knew I would be there, and that he had seen me before, at a theatre in Paris, it was at a Bernstein première. Michel could have great charm.
“I didn’t keep him dangling. What I wanted was a partnership, and that postulates equality, not coquetry. My idea was that, together, we could make ourselves quite a place in life. He had everything, I thought, except the ruthlessness. I didn’t think he would really prevent me from using mine. I wasn’t so aware of all those ethics, or rather I took them for conventional ones, family ethics, what they call une conduite honorable is a fetish with that kind of French. Michel himself appeared to be a rebel all right. (He is, of course, but in such an eccentric and exaggerated way.) Then, we all were.
“Freedom was the great thing, and it meant freedom from almost anything pre-war—patriotism, family life, making money. We decided not to marry for some time. Neither of us wanted to settle down; we were doing a hundred things at once and none of them was playing house. He was definite then that we ought to have no children, no more cannon-fodder. Many of our friends felt the same way, no children for this world until we’ve changed the world. Not even children of the quality ours were bound to be. It suited me down to the ground. I have no disposition towards maternity whatsoever, the whole business rather revolts me. (What irritates me perhaps most about you is your devotion to mama.)
“Another thing we were down on was sexual fidelity. Jealousy was possessive and therefore disgusting like hanging on to armament shares. Goodness knows, I gave Michel no cause, anyway I liked him better than anyone else I knew. But there was a girl, very young and pretty, sizzling with life, whom Michel had had a brief affair with just before we met. Nothing serious, nothing tragic, she slept round a great deal, with artists and writers mostly, and didn’t care a scrap, we three met often quite amicably, but I think she and Michel still had got something for each other. I managed, well, to turn her head. I did it chiefly to tease Michel, but when he found out, as he was almost bound to do, he was very angry indeed. Men don’t like that kind of thing, and he certainly doesn’t. Naturally he said it wasn’t jealousy, that it was the spirit, my spirit, of the thing that disturbed him. I told him he was absurd. That wouldn’t do at all—when he is angry, which isn’t often, he is pretty formidable. He doesn’t say much. . . . It took quite a time to make it up; he never forgot it.
“I was cool, cooler perhaps than Michel would have liked, but then one was that way at the time. Coolness meant style, tenu, the one indecency people were afraid of was showing sentiment.
“That did not mean you were allowed not to have any. Michel, for all his cynicism about the human race, was full of affection for his friends; he wanted everyone he knew to have bon cœur, though he was apt to choose them mainly for intelligence. They had that, Bertrand . . . Gaston . . . Drieu . . . They were full of bright plans—don’t think it was all horse-shows and dancing—though none of us including myself realized how far Michel’s plans really went. It wasn’t merely total disarmament and changing the parliamentary system, he wanted to change the texture of life, private as well as public. He believed that it should be tackled from two ends, education and the management of our natural resources. And by changes in education he didn’t mean something like switching from dead languages to commercial German, he meant a radically new physical and emotional training, babies brought up without fear, that line, and smaller cities, universal birth control, forests in the deserts, tropical agriculture to improve the food supply, and the whole of it run by a supra-national administration and unarmed police. He spent all the money he could get hold of on homework: laboratory research (on a tiny scale, inevitably) and he and his friends formed a little new party, we have so many of them, they come and go. Michel didn’t even want to be elected, he only wanted a platform f
rom which he could make himself heard, so he went about quite valiantly sticking up posters and making speeches.”
“Did you go with him?” said Flavia.
“Everyone had a rather spectacular wife or fiancée, and we tagged along. We were quite a circus. But the party fell to pieces even before they started disagreeing about scope and means. Michel was the worst public speaker I have ever heard.”
“He was?”
“He didn’t get stuck, and he wasn’t long-winded. In fact he spoke in shapely fluent sentences and to the point. It would have gone down at the Institut de France. It did not at the café de l’Univers at Le Mans. And they had been prepared to like him because of the sports page. We would write in some introductory chaff and a bit of local colour, Michel refused to use our stuff. He was not a demagogue, he said. We tried to laugh him out of it. We couldn’t. He laughed with us, but he wouldn’t be budged.
“After that had fizzled out, he decided to become a publisher. Of educational and political material. That failed too. We were married by then.”
“Yes——?” said Flavia.
“There is not much else to say. We nearly weren’t. I saw that Michel would have liked to call it a day—release me from my word, or the other way round—I wouldn’t let him; for a woman that situation always looks like a defeat. So he did his duty as I saw it.”
Flavia said, “What had happened? What had gone wrong?”
“We had got to know one another.”
“That was all?”
“That was all. The rest you can imagine.”
“No,” said Flavia. “Yes.”
“One day we knew what not to expect.”
When that had sunk in, Flavia said, “But you stayed? You did not leave him?”
“Oh, we were tied in so many ways.”
Presently Flavia said, “It doesn’t explain everything, it doesn’t explain about you.”
“I was not explaining,” Andrée said, “I was talking about the past. The past is short, we got landed in the present.”
“You hadn’t come to that yet.”
“Hadn’t I? The foundations of it. Life with Michel was no help. I fell short of something he wanted from me, or imagined of me, one day he ceased to be interested in me as an individual or in my emotions. He endured them. My presence made no impact; except to hurt him—that I was always able to do—but he never gave way. Can you wonder that now and then I endeavour to remind him of my continuing existence?”
After a pause, Flavia said, “I wish you had not brought me into it. I am out of my depth.”
“You were in it from the time your mother was in it, from the time they saw each other; from the time you saw me.”
Flavia said, “Is there never an escape—from the minute you are born?”
Andrée in her other manner said, “There can be. A matter of timing.” Then, “Who sought me out in the Fournier’s drawing-room? Remember?”
She held out her glass, “Make me another citron-pressé.” Flavia complied and also gave herself a large glass of ice and soda-water.
“Tell me, my dear, have you written that letter you talked about? The letter ‘telling exactly what happened’?”
Flavia hesitated.
“Have you, or haven’t you?”
“Not yet,” said Flavia.
“Not yet. Never say that you haven’t had your chance. So as far as you’re concerned there’s been no communication—they are still in the dark?”
“They do know, then?”
“He does. He knows about my foray in Spain. He must wonder who was the informer.”
Without warning Flavia burst into tears.
Andrée sat waiting as people do when the curtain goes down briefly.
Flavia brought out, “Am I unfit to live?”
Andrée said, “Let us not exaggerate.”
“It is what you think of me.”
“You are as fit to live as the next person—if you lower your sights a little.”
Flavia said, “It was my fault.”
“Would you say so? One might say that you have quite a case.”
“Do I have a case?”
“Don’t you know?”
“You left me no choice but to take you to the tower. Did you not?”
“I left you no choice?” Andrée said. “Very likely. Only you can tell, only you can tell.”
“I?”
“Only you, Flavia.”
•
Flavia said, “Do you realize—this was the third time since I’ve known you that you called me by my name.”
“I realize.”
“It meant nothing the other time.”
“And when was that?”
Flavia said bravely, “When you were the stranger, when you kissed me that night outside the villa.”
Andrée stood up, holding Flavia’s eyes, she said slowly, “And did I use your name in vain, mon bel éphèbe?” and they were in each other’s arms.
A few seconds later Flavia broke away. She cried out, “But I still hate you!”
Andrée withdrew to the window. She stood still for a time. When she had recovered, she spoke, “That will have been almost my last lesson. Yes—you hate me. One can. Physical passion is not as delicious dix-huitième as you like to think it is, it has little to do with friendship, moral worth, choice or will; it is not cosy, easy, reassuring, debonair. It is—But need I go on?”
Flavia stood before her struck and trembling: she need not have spoken.
•
When they met again, at luncheon the next day, Andrée’s surface was perfect. She appeared, perhaps was, gay, interested in outside things, almost joyous. Flavia, who had an idea of how much Andrée gloried in her control displayed, tried to match the performance. Their table was on the terrace under an ample awning, the day was as sunny as all the days had been but that noon there was an agreeable breeze; the waiter rolled forth the hors-d’œuvres. Andrée insisted on their having wine. The food at that hotel, though Flavia would not allow herself to notice it, was excellent, the cold straw-pale wine in the thin clear glass looked charming, it was a setting for well-being.
Again Andrée fell back on reminiscence. She, too, seemed to have a need to talk. “I haven’t told you yet about the little boys and the motor car. Well, one holiday Michel was asked to stay with a schoolmate of his, some people called Barraton who had a house not far from Chantilly. So Michel arrives at the station and is met there by his chum who says, ‘Bon-jour, tu as fais bon voyage?’ They shake hands. French boys are mandarin with each other on such occasions. They were all of eleven, the two of them, you can see them very neat and trim with their clean haircuts and knickerbockers and well-pulled stockings. Outside the station waits the family Hispano, chauffeur standing by. Little Jacques Barraton opens the door, makes a bow to Michel and says casually, ‘Want to take the wheel, Devaux?’ Michel bows back, says, ‘Just as you like,’ and steps in. Jacques gets into the passenger’s seat, the chauffeur puts on his cap and gets in at the back. Needless to say, Michel had never driven a live car before; (as it was he was hard put to touch feet to pedals) though of course he had practiced on stationary ones and in his dreams ever since he was six years old. He slips into gear and off they go, the chauffeur, if you please, on the back seat with folded arms. Michel drives the blooming great thing all the five kilometres, or whatever it was, to the house without a swerve or hitch and pulls up in front—the Barratons were on the doorstep—switches off the engine, does another bow, ‘Thanks, Barraton, runs beautifully, doesn’t she?’ ”
“True story?” Flavia said. Food and drink had lifted her morale.
“Literally.”
“It’s a sweet story.”
But Andrée had already suffered one of her quick reversals. “It’s a horrid story! Stupid, conceited little boys, those awful Barratons letting their brat drive that car as a matter of course, they might have wrecked it and served them right, the little beasts.”
Flavia was sur
e then that the control must have been a performance; she had never seen Andrée so nervous.
Quite soon she said that she could not stand the luncheon clatter any longer. “We can have coffee upstairs.”
They went, and as Flavia wanted to withdraw as had been their custom, Andrée stopped her. “No, stay with me, I don’t feel like being by myself.”
The coffee came. “No—not in here, stuffy little room, in my room, at least we’ll have more air.”
Flavia had not been inside Andrée’s bedroom since the day the manager had shown them in. Again it was shuttered and in semi-darkness. Andrée did not sit down; like Flavia, but unlike herself, she began to move from place to place, touching objects here and there.
She said, “I almost regret having brought you here. When I went to fetch you and saw you come out of that villa I realized that you needed no further rubbing in. Ah well, too late now.”
Then, unaccountably, “One has to go through with difficult things—we all pass through bad moments.”
After that she had nothing further to say.
The house telephone rang in the sitting-room. Flavia made a move but Andrée had already gone. She heard her say, “Ask him to come up, please.”
Andrée returned, leaving the door open. They heard someone enter the sitting-room. Andrée seized Flavia by the arm and pulled her to sit beside her on the bed; she called out, “I’m in here!”
A man stood in the door, there was light behind him, it was Michel Devaux.
The coldest voice ever heard fell into the silence. “You have sent for me?”
“I sent for you—and you came. I believe we have matters to discuss.” The bravado was in the tone but it had worn thin.
The room was still unlit but by now he had seen Flavia.
Andrée went on, “But first I must ask you to remove . . . this. I may like being run after, but there are limits, aren’t there? Isn’t she rather your responsibility now?”
He said, “Get out of here.”
Flavia was unable to speak.
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