by Anne Doughty
She paused and shook her head.
‘Given that I was only nine, it seems an amazing decision to have made, but I was perfectly clear that that’s what I wanted to do.’
To her great surprise, Robert laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘I am amused that the characteristics I so value professionally were already well developed at such a tender age.’
‘What characteristics?’
‘The ability to make up your own mind, which is a gift you have developed for yourself. And the gift of knowing who you can trust.’
He paused and considered.
‘Were I a religious man, which, alas, I am not, I would have to say that this particular gift is probably a gift of grace. One can develop shrewdness through experience, but what you have is an intuitive sense of what is right. In particular, as I say, you always seem to know who you can trust. I have never known you make a mistake yet.’
For a moment she was quite baffled, but before she could speak the waiter reappeared with the fish course. She was grateful for the time it took to serve, for her mind had filled suddenly with the memory of a summer day.
She and Jessie had gone down the steep slope opposite Richardsons’ gates to their secret talking place by the stream. When they came back up to retrieve their bicycles, Andrew was there, bending over hers, fiddling with the valve caps. Jessie had been hostile and suspicious, thinking he’d let down their tyres, but she had simply looked at Andrew and knew he would be incapable of an unkind act.
It was very strange that a man like Robert should speak about a gift of grace. But it was stranger still that his words should call up a memory of Andrew on their very first meeting.
It was almost midnight when Clare arrived back at her apartment. Sitting over coffee, Robert had looked at his watch, spoken of the busy day she’d have tomorrow, asked if she were tired. It was perfectly obvious he’d no more wish to end the evening than she had, so she shook her head and scolded him gently for even mentioning work.
Only when the other diners disappeared and the waiters began to walk past their table, discreetly but a little more frequently, did they rise reluctantly and move out into the palm-filled foyer.
‘I should like us to dine regularly, Clare, if you are happy with the idea, but on one condition,’ he said, as her taxi drew up at the kerb.
‘And what is that?’
‘That we dine only when none of your admirers are available. You have very few evenings at leisure in Paris.’
‘And what if I prefer to dine with you?’
He opened the car door, made sure the hem of her dress was well clear of the sill and stood looking down at her.
‘I should be honoured,’ he said, with a slight bow. ‘I fully intend to enjoy your company until I am forced to part with you. Sleep well, my dear.’
The lights on the river gleamed in the velvety darkness as Clare settled herself in her chair by the window. She knew she should be in bed, but it had been such a remarkable evening she knew she couldn’t possibly sleep. She would need to settle some of the thoughts whirling around in her head like the tiny moths circling the street lamp a little way along the quay.
How extraordinary it was that two people could get to know each other so well in one evening. Not only had they shared life histories, but they had spoken openly about even the most painful parts. They had moved on from the sadness of loss to her long relationship with Andrew and how the heartbreak of Edward’s death had changed everything between them. He listened with a kind of attention she had not encountered before, even with dear Marie-Claude. She felt almost as if she was talking about Andrew for the first time, seeing her experience through the eyes of someone much older, yet able to understand her feelings.
She’d been shy of asking him how he’d managed to cope after he lost his wife and daughter, but he had been remarkably open and easy about it. Work, he said, was what had helped him through. Asserting his own right to life, despite his heartache.
‘I had one wise friend who had faced great loss many years earlier,’ he began. ‘It was he who told me I must act. He said I’d often feel that what I was doing was a waste of time, that it brought no pleasure, or joy, but nevertheless I must act, believing that it would make a difference. And it did. I was successful in the work I chose and he was right. From time to time, I have felt both pleasure and joy. But using action to shape one’s life does have its limitations. I’ve few friends, but those I have are mature enough to tell me the truth. They say I have become remote and unapproachable,’ he ended sadly.
‘I don’t find you at all unapproachable.’
‘I’m glad of that. Perhaps there is hope for me yet.’
‘Don’t you think perhaps your job requires you to be unapproachable?’
‘Yes, that is so. But perhaps I have allowed the demands of the job to shelter me from a proper engagement with my fellow creatures. What do you think?’
She’d been amazed he should ask her such a personal question. But then, why not? She’d already shared more with him than with most of her oldest friends.
‘I think it’s very easy to develop habits. When I was a student, I was often lonely. Yet there were people who would have been glad to see me, places I could have gone. I sometimes wonder if loss breeds loss. That those who’ve lost loved ones expect to lose what they value. And because you fear loss, you defend yourself by trying not to be too involved.’
She’d been amazed to hear her own answer, but Robert had smiled gravely and said something complimentary about her seeing more already than many he had known who were twice or three times her age.
Beyond her window a couple strolled into view, arms entwined. They stopped, embraced and moved on. She wondered if they were lovers with a place to go to, or whether, like she and Andrew walking by the Thames two years ago, the choice was to walk all night or return to their respective hostels.
‘You ought to go to bed, Clare Hamilton,’ she said severely. ‘You’ll need more than a good layer of foundation and rouge if you don’t get some sleep.’
But she didn’t move an inch.
So much of their conversation had been thoughtful and serious and yet they had laughed often.
‘Say, honey, what did the man say?’
She’d looked around, startled, sure one of the nearby diners had spoken. But when she turned back, Robert was grinning broadly and looking pleased with himself.
‘Robert, I thought so,’ she said, moving to English. ‘I was sure you understood English far better than you pretended. So you speak it as well.’
‘Most, certainly not,’ he replied, returning to French. ‘There is a very good reason. I worked with an American organisation at the end of the war. That’s when I learnt my English. I can follow a good deal of what is said, but I have an appalling accent, probably a worse English accent than the French one your friend Andrew acquired in Brittany. It would be quite unsuitable in my position,’ he said, deliberately sounding pompous.
She laughed and shook her head.
‘Don’t you get bored, hearing everything twice?’
‘I even get bored sometimes hearing it once,’ he said abruptly. ‘But not when you are there. I see things differently when I look through your eyes. It is most illuminating. And very good for business. But that is a subject of which we may not speak. Have you forgotten our promise? Perhaps when we dine together in London next week, we may speak of business, but not tonight.’
Clare yawned. Suddenly, her tiredness had caught up with her. As she drew back the covers and slid gratefully into bed, she thought of that July day last year when he had asked her to read The Times, and then offered her a job and a salary she couldn’t possibly refuse.
16
‘There is a telephone call for Mr Lafarge,’ said the waiter, as he stopped beside their table and caught Clare’s eye.
Robert lowered his newspaper and looked at her.
‘From Paris?’ she asked, as she put dow
n her toast and wiped crumbs from her fingers on a large damask napkin.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. The young lady on reception asked me to come and tell you because she’s new and doesn’t know Mr Lafarge,’ he explained before he moved away.
‘I’ll go and see who it is,’ Clare said, getting to her feet. ‘If it’s Paris, I’ll ask them to call again in half an hour. If it’s about today’s meeting, I can take a message. All right?’
Robert nodded and retired gratefully behind The Times.
Clare moved quickly through the large dining room full of the smell of bacon and egg, the rustle of newspapers and the sound of well-bred English voices. Robert was not a morning person. Even in Italy, where he spoke not a word of the language and could only read the exchange rates, he still insisted on having his newspaper.
‘Good morning,’ she said, picking up the phone and trying English first. ‘This is Clare Hamilton, Mr Lafarge’s assistant.’
‘Clare! What a relief. I thought I was going to have to use my schoolboy French.’
‘Charles,’ she replied, laughing.
One of the things she liked most about Charles Langley was his disarming honesty.
‘Has something gone wrong?’ she asked quickly. ‘We were expecting you and John Coleman at nine thirty.’
‘Well, it’s good news in one way, but there is a real problem. I don’t know how Robert Lafarge will take it. John’s wife went into labour last night. It’s her third pregnancy, but they lost the first two. Naturally, she’s in a bit of a state. John’s even worse, but he’s trying to do the stiff upper lip bit. He’s with her at the hospital and he really can’t leave her at this stage.’
‘And he’s the one that’s worked out the growth projections?’
‘Absolutely. I’d have swotted them up if I’d been coming to Paris, but there was no point when you were coming here and I could bring him with me. Will your boss be furious, or can you charm him? I’ll turn up and grovel, but I can’t waste his time trying to have a meeting. Is there any hope we could have the meeting tomorrow, or were you flying back tonight?’
‘No, he’s booked on the evening plane tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘There’s nothing in the diary, but I think he wants to do some shopping.’
‘Sounds hopeful, if you can persuade him. I could take you both shopping today and then out to lunch. Do you think he’d like a Langley Town and Country Tour? I think it’s going to be a nice day. I really do feel bad about this, Clare, but poor old John is up to thirty thousand. Lafarge is a bachelor, isn’t he?’
‘No, Charles, he isn’t. He lost his wife and daughter during the German advance. There was a baby son that might or might not have survived.’
‘Oh lord, Clare, that’s tough,’ he said, with an audible intake of breath. ‘Makes one’s own problems seem pretty trivial,’ he added resignedly. ‘What shall I do? Give me good advice.’
‘Well, I think you should appear, but leave it till ten. I’ll tell him you’ve offered to take us shopping or whatever he wants to do. With any luck, he’ll suggest tomorrow. Can John get in touch with you?’
‘Yes, he’ll ring my secretary from the hospital as soon as there’s any news and I’ll keep in touch with her whenever I can get to a phone.’
‘Right, I’ll do what I can. See you at ten.’
The moment Clare sat down, Robert folded his paper and signalled to the waiter.
‘London or Paris?’ he asked, as the waiter set down a pot of coffee, a rack of toast and a well-polished cup and saucer bearing the hotel’s crest in gold.
‘Yours was getting cold,’ he said abruptly, as he poured her a fresh cup. ‘Now finish your breakfast,’ he added firmly.
‘It was Charles Langley,’ she began, as she buttered the hot toast. ‘John Coleman’s wife went into labour last night. They’ve lost two babies already.’
‘So, no meeting today. Is tomorrow a possibility?’
‘Yes, distinctly so, if baby arrives today. Charles has offered to take us shopping and then to lunch. He thought you might like a tour of London or a drive out into the countryside. It looks as if it’s going to be a nice day.’
‘What time’s he due?’
‘I said ten.’
‘Good. I hate nine-thirty meetings.’
He stood up unexpectedly, paused for a moment.
‘I’ll meet you in the foyer at ten. I have some things to see to.’
He tramped across the dining room and disappeared in the direction of the lifts, a small, almost square figure with dark, thinning hair and a very determined set to both his face and figure.
Clare watched him as she ate her toast. In the two weeks since they’d first dined together, she’d discovered the second Robert in her life was often as silent and awkward as the first. The better he got to know her, the more he let it show. He was never bad-tempered, never discourteous, but he no longer concealed either his irritation at changed arrangements or his discomforts. This morning, his inside was playing up. She’d noticed the discarded foil of his indigestion tablets by his plate when she came down to join him. Eating breakfast usually helped, but until he’d been to the bathroom he wouldn’t feel much better.
She looked at her watch. It was only ten to nine. She sat drinking her coffee and watching people standing up, collecting themselves and moving towards the foyer and their day’s work. Men in dark suits with loud voices and identifiable accents. Women, smartly dressed, up in town to go shopping. A handful of tourists in casual clothes being shepherded by their courier. A group of twenty men and women, who got up together and turned out of the dining room towards one of the smaller conference suites.
Clare thought of John’s wife lying in some labour ward. Poor woman. To lose two babies. She wondered if they had both been born dead or if they had simply not survived for very long, like Robert’s brothers and sisters. Robert’s wife had lost a child too before their daughter was born. Then Robert had lost them both and his son, whom he had never even seen.
Sometimes the world seemed such a cruel place. She couldn’t really accept that everything was the will of God, the way it had been put to her from the pulpit all through her schooldays. It just wasn’t logical. If God was all powerful, then why did he let it happen? And if he wasn’t all powerful, why did the Church try to insist that he was?
The image of Robert’s wife with her tiny baby and her five-year-old daughter haunted her. At Film Society, with Keith Harvey she’d once seen a newsreel about the fall of France. The sad columns of people trudging away from burnt-out villages or fleeing before the German advance. Women and children and old men, carrying bundles, pushing prams stacked high with possessions, pulling carts because all the horses and donkeys had been requisitioned for the army. Moving as quickly as they could, hampered by children who could walk no faster and cried in fright when the planes passed overhead. Diving for the ditch when they heard the rattle of their machine guns.
Suddenly, she realised she was the same age as Robert’s daughter would have been, had she survived. The baby boy would be William’s age. In her own mind, she’d always think of him as little Robert, calling him after his father, just as generations of women in her own family had named a son either Robert or Thomas.
Beyond the tall windows with their heavily draped velvet curtains, the traffic flowed down Park Lane under a bright blue sky dappled with small white clouds. If the weather were like this tomorrow evening when she flew to Belfast she’d be able to see more of the green hills and little fields than she’d ever seen before.
‘Can I bring you some more coffee, Miss Hamilton?’
The voice drew her back to the present. She smiled up at the waiter who’d served breakfast and brought them the message about the telephone call.
‘No thank you. That was splendid. It’s time I did some work!’
She went to reception, checked there were no letters or telegrams for Robert, collected her key and went up to her room. She couldn’t decide what was making her
so sad, Robert’s loss, or the Colemans’ loss, or some loss of her own she could put no name to.
‘How do you do, Mr Langley?’ said Robert Lafarge, pronouncing each word slowly and carefully.
Clare smiled to herself. The words were fine, but the intonation was all wrong. It sounded more like, ‘How do you do a reverse turn, or a back flip, or a victory roll?’ She had a feeling he was teasing her, but couldn’t be sure.
‘Je suis très bien, merci, Monsieur Lafarge,’ replied Charles Langley, speaking French for some reason best known to himself.
‘Bon. Bon.’
Having shaken hands most cordially, Robert turned to Clare and addressed her at a speed she knew Charles couldn’t possibly follow.
‘You will explain to Monsieur Langley that I appreciate his difficulties. We will meet tomorrow at ten, all being well with the Coleman family. As for today, I would be grateful if he would entertain you. I have made my own arrangements, but will expect to see you at breakfast at eight thirty tomorrow.’
He turned away before she could protest and beamed at Charles Langley, while he waited for her to translate.
From the look on his face, it was perfectly obvious Charles hadn’t managed to catch so much as a word. She could do nothing other than give an exact translation.
It was now Charles’s turn to smile broadly. He assured Robert Lafarge, in English, that he would be most happy to entertain Miss Hamilton. He could rest assured that she would be well looked after.
Clare translated, they shook hands again, exchanged good wishes in each other’s language. Robert wished ‘Miss ’Amilton’ a pleasant day, and went off looking pleased with himself.
‘Well then, what shall we do? Where would you like to go? Would you mind if we call in at my office on the way?’
‘No, of course not. I’ll go and get my coat. Is it as nice as it looks outside?’
‘Yes, it’s lovely, but there’s a chilly edge to the breeze. You’ll certainly need a coat over that suit. Unless you want to go shopping?’