‘William, you are much too flirtatious for an American. I suspect your mother must have been Italian.’
When the old Duchess called him by his first name, a curious sensation overcame him, which he could not quite analyse: affection for the old lady certainly, but it was also a kind of awkwardness, even shamefacedness, as though she were welcoming him into an intimacy to which he had no right. She knew what they were about, he was certain of that, had known it perhaps before they were quite sure of it themselves, might even have assumed they were making love upstairs when in fact they were still shyly sounding out each other’s feelings. She came, after all, from a generation that took such arrangements for granted. Yet he wondered whether she might be less tolerant if she knew how deep and all-consuming their love was, how they now lived only for each other. Perhaps that was the one thing that might shock her. The Duke was, after all, her son.
Wm’s uncertainty, his awkwardness, did not entirely disappear when he and Rosalie were alone together. And she noticed how hesitant he was.
‘I do not want you to be gentle; that might show that you love me less. When we were let out of prison, it is true that I was almost as fragile as Maman. I could not think of such things, it was as though being in a convent so long had turned me into a nun. For a time my monthlies stopped and I was nervous even to touch my own body, but I have had a year’s convalescence and now – yes, like that, oh yes.’
He waited a day, then another day, and even then he was hesitant to ask. ‘You will say it is too soon, I am sure you will, but you know what I wish to ask you.’
‘It is not too early for you to ask, your asking gives me more pleasure than you can dream of, but it is too early for me to answer. You have seen the state Maman is in and I must tell you that she makes a great effort in front of you. When we are alone together her condition is much worse.’
‘Is it then – this I certainly have no right to ask – but is it the case that she will always, I do not say come between us because you know how fond of her I am, but will she always postpone your answering?’
‘You must assume so, I am afraid.’
‘But one day you will come back to America with me?’
‘Yes. I will,’ she said.
‘And seeing how respectable we Americans are, you know what that would mean?’
‘I do and that would be the best of all possible reasons for crossing the Atlantic, but you must not try to trap me into giving an answer which it is not now in my power to give, even for the dearest of motives.’
Sometimes, when he fucked her in the afternoon, she cried out like an animal in pain and he felt that they had gone back in time so far they were scarcely human. Then at night when he crept into her bed from his cold bachelor quarters down the passage, they made love like an old married couple, like two stately ships rocking at anchor.
‘As soon as I receive my official letters of recall, you know I must go to America and repair my fortune.’
‘Oh, I am sure you can repair it here,’ she said, lazily playing with him. ‘Look, it is repaired already.’
The letters came. After eleven years of public service he was officially a private citizen again. She was sitting in her arbour on the little island, bent over a book. He could see the pale blob of her straw hat through the rambling roses that had now swamped the pergola. He remembered seeing the workmen hammering the stripped logs together to construct it ten years ago, on his first visit.
She heard the click of the gate and got up to come and greet him, ducking her head under the bosomy roses.
‘I am a free man at last,’ he said, waving Mr Jay’s letter.
‘Free? Not free of me, I hope,’ she said, laughing because he was laughing, but not hiding the apprehension that flooded up inside her.
‘No, on the contrary, we are free to follow our own fancy together. Never again will I be dispatched at my master’s whim to fry in Madrid or freeze at The Hague.’
‘That is wonderful,’ she said dully.
He saw how upset she was and cursed himself for having run down to the arbour like a child who cannot wait to show off a new toy. He should have waited, pondered the matter and explained to Rosalie what he had in mind. But then that ought to be the glory of their new life, that there need be no pondering in it. So he kissed her neck, or rather the dear little nook just inside the collarbone that she told him the French called la salière, the salt cellar, and he said they called it that too in English. Then he murmured some foolishness about Rosalie among the roses and she slid her warm hand inside his shirt and caressed him, very tenderly as though he had a bruise there that needed massaging.
‘So,’ she said, ‘you are going to go away. That is what you intend, isn’t it?’
‘I only wish to be with you, to live with you, for us to be married – I know you told me not to say that word but I cannot help it because it is the only thing I really want in the world.’
‘But in America, only in America, that is what you really want. You must surely love me enough to tell me the truth.’
‘You said once, no, more than once, that you longed to go with me to my own country.’
‘Oh, and I meant it, Will, you cannot imagine how sincerely I meant it. All the time I was learning those strange English pronunciations, how “cough” and “through” end the same way but you say them so differently, all the time I was dreaming of you and me over there, how we would plant the vines below that oak tree you told me about, a whole new life together. But you must see that it cannot begin now. We have only just started to recover from our horrors. No, recover is not the word, we cannot recover, certainly Maman cannot, we are barely alive, she and I, but I have you to revive me. If I lose you now, I shall sink into the shadows, it will be the end of me.’
‘You will never lose me. Have I loved you so feebly that you cannot be sure of that? But I have to go back to America, only for a little time and then I will return and we can plan the rest of our life together.’
‘But you have only just come back to me. I cannot endure another separation. You would be away for months and months, six months at the very least and then the double sea voyages and you are such a bad sailor.’
‘Rosalie, I am desperate to settle my affairs. My brother Peyton is off to buy half of Kentucky with our share of father’s estate. Colonel Skipwith is snapping up military warrants as fast as Peyton is accumulating western land certificates. Neither of them has the first idea what he is doing and they may very well find themselves saddled with reams of worthless paper. Mr Jefferson who has charge of the income from my investments in Virginia has put nine thousand dollars of my money into his nail factory at Monticello and his flour mill at Milton, and even if any profits ever come out of either, I doubt if Mr J has the nous to keep separate accounts of our dealings. Last year he bought on my behalf for four thousand seven hundred dollars thirteen hundred acres of Albemarle County, at a place called Indian Camp next to Mr Monroe’s, and I have not had a penny out of it though he declares the land is good and I can expect to double my money if I should sell. I cannot presume for ever on Mr Jefferson’s kindness in looking after my funds, even if I were convinced of his acumen in such matters, which alas I am not. Then I have just entered into partnership with the Willinks and old Van Staphorst to buy a large tract of western New York that belonged to Mr Robert Morris before he went bankrupt despite Gouverneur slaving for him on his tobacco interests though they were no kin. The Dutchmen have taken upwards of a thousand square miles, reaching from Lake Erie to the Genesee river. I have eleven thousand dollars’ worth of the syndicate and they have invited me to stand as their agent, since they must have an American figurehead if they are to secure their rights. So you see, I cannot hope to manage all these ticklish matters at a distance of three thousand miles.’
He stopped for breath and was suddenly overtaken by embarrassment and did not know how to go on.
Rosalie froze too. The little hand which was still nestling inside his shirt
turned to marble. She withdrew it. ‘You certainly have a large number of interests, William, I had not known you possessed so many.’
‘When I was in Spain, I filled the desolate hours with a great quantity of business correspondence,’ he said lamely.
‘These are the concerns closest to your heart, I can see that. Maman and I cannot expect to occupy more than a small corner of your attention. It was foolish of me to imagine anything other. I shall always be grateful to you for preserving my fortune. Will it be safe for me to have the money placed back in my own name quite soon, do you think?’
‘Quite soon, I hope, if the Directory can find enough troops to maintain law and order, which they say they can. But you are welcome to leave the money in my name as long as you wish.’
‘I remember Lafayette saying to my husband once that the Americans were only interested in business. They may pretend to care for love or art or politics, they may have such exquisite manners as to put ours to shame, but really they are truly happy only in the counting house. My husband protested that such was not his experience, but for once Monsieur de Lafayette was the more perceptive, I think.’
‘Rosalie, you must forgive me, I was overexcited by the news of my official release, or I would not have run on so.’
‘On the contrary, monsieur, I am grateful to you for disclosing to me the true priorities of your heart. I must go and attend to Maman, she will be down by now and she needs me to help with her medicines, she gets so confused.’
Rosalie got up from the rustic wooden seat they had been sitting on (he remembered the woodmen sawing and hammering that too) and left him. There was a dignity in her walk that he could not help admiring.
And yet, he thought as he sat down again, what right did she have to be so high and mighty? If some of her family had shown a little enterprise they might have been able to feed their people better and would not have come to such bad ends themselves. America was going to be a country, damn it, was a great country already, the greatest the world had yet seen, even if they did have to borrow from the Dutch at four and a half per cent, and the reason America was so great was because Americans believed in tomorrow and were ready to back it with their own money. He had never been west of the Genesee himself, but he was prepared to make a wager on a tract of land he had never seen. That was an act of faith and though he was no sort of religious man himself (he went along with TJ in thinking that the teaching of Jesus had been encumbered with a whole bunch of superstitious fabrications), he believed that without faith, rational faith, homo sapiens would never amount to much. If Rosalie was going to take that kind of attitude, he was not so sure that she would transplant to the other side of the Atlantic.
He walked across the island and glared into the river as though this gentle backwater had done him a personal injury. The sun was beating on the water. The dragonflies were hovering over its shimmering surface looking like they might expire at any minute. William felt the sweat trickling down his neck. His anger had set his blood pumping.
He took off his shoes and stockings and paddled in the muddy shallows. The water was deliciously cool. He waded back to the shore, stripped naked and ran splashing back into the water, ducking his head beneath the surface with a gasp of pleasure. He swam a couple of strokes but then let the current carry him round into the dappled pool. With a modest effort he could float there without being carried downstream and so he lay lazily kicking his feet against the current when he needed to and watching his cock and bush twirling like pondweed in the bright water.
How ridiculous that he should be so het up – he was as absurd as she was, as all men and women were when they took themselves too seriously. One should love them all, just because they were so absurd, that was the thing to understand.
‘William!’
He turned in the water to see a frantic little figure wading out towards him, holding up her skirts as she splashed through the shallows. He rose in naked majesty and went towards her.
‘Oh, thank, thank heaven,’ she panted. ‘When I saw your clothes, I thought, oh, the worst.’
‘You didn’t.’ He could not help laughing.
‘And then when I saw you floating, I thought you were already—’
He hugged her to his bare body. A shower of drops fell over her muslin dress and he was carried back to the days of their innocence – the canoeing and the boy who had nearly been carried over the weir and Rosalie running everywhere. He realised that it would be madness to leave her now. She was right, they had earned a respite from the brutal rush of history. Against all the odds she had been reprieved. He must help her to make the most of it.
For the rest of that year he did not write a line to his bankers, nor to Mr Jefferson. At Christmas Jan Willink wrote discreetly enquiring after his health. Wm did not bother to reply. He had taken new lodgings in Paris, at 8 rue de Matignon, but he scarcely used them.
Much of the time they lay by the log fire at La Roche (he cut the logs and brought them in himself) and read the Arabian Nights in French or made idle conversation of that meandering kind that they could hardly remember which of them was talking or what they were talking about.
‘We have turned into vegetables.’
‘The only question is whether to be a carrot or a cabbage.’
‘A carrot, I think, one of those white carrots with delicate fronds that only grow in France.’
‘You or me?’
‘Both of us. A fine matched pair, we shall win prizes at the Liancourt show.’
In English he recited,
‘My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow.’
‘Did you invent that?’
‘No, it was an old poet called Marvell – Merveille to you.’
‘You are my Monsieur Marvell.’
‘Even if I do think of nothing but money?’
‘Money and me – what else is there to think about?’
The second week in January it snowed for three days. He found some planks in the sawmill and knocked them together into a rough sleigh. Beyond the chateau there was a meadow that sloped down to the river at a tolerable angle and they tobogganed down it through the hissing snow, throwing themselves off before they hit the hawthorn hedge at the bottom. He had never seen her cheeks so pink. Perhaps she would do in America after all.
The fancy revived in her too and in her pale leather drawing book she began to sketch her idea of the house they would build together. ‘Mr Jefferson will be green with jealousy. It will be twice the size of Monticello.’
‘In that case I will abolish the stable wing. I should not like to upset Mr Jefferson.’
But then the thaw came and the restlessness began again. In March there was a letter from Peyton and another letter from the Willinks. If he did not return to the United States soon he would lose everything – the land titles, the agency beyond the Genesee, any hope of a political career. If he dawdled in France any longer he would not simply be a forgotten man, he would be a bankrupt.
Without letting slip a word to Rosalie he began to make preparations. He instructed the Willinks to switch his Paris investments to their American agent. He wrote (swallowing hard) to tell Mr Jefferson that he would be setting sail for Virginia in May. He booked his berth on the Siren and even paid his passage money in advance to cement his intention. Then he told her.
‘It will only be for a short time. Think of the separations we have already endured when I was in Holland and Spain. We came through those and our love was stronger than ever.’
‘That is why I cannot endure another. When you threatened to go after you were released from your foreign service I nearly died, do you not remember? I could not go through another such agony.’
‘Listen, my darling. I shall only be three days in New York at the most, then a brief visit with Willinks’ man to view the Lake Erie tract, let us say no more than a week. Then I shall go straight across country to Virginia – another week, perhaps less. I trust that Peyton and
TJ will have the papers ready and we should have finished our business in one week more. Then there will be a choice of boats from Norfolk. At worst I shall be a month in America, well, perhaps six weeks. If I am not back by Christmas, you may burn my effigy at the stake.’
But she was sobbing too violently to listen to his calculations. For several days her frenzy prevented any conversation between them. She raged through the little kneehole desk she had allotted him, hoping to find and destroy the receipt for the passage money, thinking that then they would not let him on board. But he kept the receipt safe in his wallet to remind him of his resolve, which was not nearly as strong as he pretended. For they were glorious, these early spring days at La Roche-Guyon and his eyes grew misty at the thought that he would not this year see the pale green corn turn to tawny gold and ripple across the chalky fields. When she was calmer, though no more reconciled to his going, they wandered side by side along the hedges where the hawthorn blossom had already grown dusty and the first scarlet poppies were showing through the grass. She held his hand very tight as though she feared he might make a run for it that very minute across the field and jump into a waiting carriage.
‘The corsairs will have you, I know they will. The Mercure says they have never been so bad as they are this year.’
‘They will not attack an American boat.’
‘You cannot know that. I am sure they are too savage to know the difference. And the ice, it is floating further south than ever, Madame d’Astorg told me yesterday. I am sure you will hit an ice mountain.’
‘Rosalie, there is more danger of the coach overturning on the road to Rouen than of running into an iceberg.’
At night she made love to him with a passion that seemed unappeasable, as though she were doing it for the last time on earth. In the morning he was so sore he could hardly move.
Even as he was halfway into the coach she still clung to him. ‘I cannot bear it, you know I cannot. I shall never see you again. Even if you come back, I shall be dead.’
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