Goodbye, Janette

by Harold Robbins

  “He won’t,” Lauren said with conviction. “He’s not only kinky, he’s a closet queer. They never get over that.”

  “Half the women in Europe wouldn’t be married if they objected to that,” Janette said. She glanced at Lauren again. “Patrick’s father and grandfather were noted pedes in their day. Their wives knew it and accepted it. It didn’t keep them from making a successful marriage and raising a family.”

  Lauren had stopped crying and stared at the road in silence.

  “Perhaps Patrick didn’t hate his father as much as he hated his father in himself. At least, he tried to break the pattern.” Janette slowed the car to allow a farm truck loaded with just-picked corn to turn onto the road in front of them, then crawled slowly along the road behind it. “You waited a year to get married. Do you think you’re being fair to yourself deciding to destroy it so quickly?”

  “Then you think I should stay married to him?” Lauren asked directly.

  Janette hesitated a moment, then glanced at her sister. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it could be a good marriage. Patrick’s family is one of the best in Britain, the title has spanned four generations. And when his mother dies, Patrick will be one of the richest young men in the world.”

  “If it’s really that good, why didn’t you marry him? He asked you first.”

  Janette glanced at her quickly then back at the road. She answered in a low voice. “Because I couldn’t give him what the marriage would eventually require to be successful. Heirs. I had an accident when I was a young girl and I can’t have any children.”

  Impulsively, Lauren touched her sister’s hand. “I didn’t know, Janette. I’m sorry.”

  “C’est la vie.” Janette shrugged, then glanced across the car. “But you’re all right. You have choices. You can make it work if you want to.

  Lauren met her gaze. “Maybe you’ll think I’m naive. Or stupid. Or both. But the money and the title never meant anything at all to me. They still don’t.” She was silent for a moment as the car entered the narrow streets of the village leading to the port. “I guess I’m more American than I thought. I can’t play the games that you Europeans play. To me, a marriage without love is no marriage at all.”

  She made the seven thirty morning flight from Nice to Paris and the ten o’clock polar flight from Paris to California. And it wasn’t until six weeks later, two days after she had received her interlocutory decree of divorce in the courtroom at Santa Monica, that she found out she had been pregnant for two months.

  ***

  The doorman at Maxim’s opened the door of the Rolls. He touched his cap. “Bon jour, Madame,” he said, then hurried to hold the restaurant door for her. She went inside, pausing for a moment as the maitre d’ hurried up to her.

  “Madame de la Beauville.” He bowed. “Monsieur Caramanlis is waiting for you. Please follow me.”

  She walked through the corridor into the restaurant, her eyes adjusting to the dimness from the bright sunlight outside. Maxim’s at luncheon was very different from Maxim’s at dinner. At luncheon, all the important regular clients occupied the front room, many of them at the same table each day, while the tourist and occasional client were seated in the backroom, the dance floor of which was also covered with tables. At night, the opposite was true—the important clients were seated in the backroom near the orchestra, while the others were seated in the front room.

  Caramanlis was one of the regulars. He was seated alone at a large round table near the window in the far corner, not far from Robert Caille, the editor of Vogue, who always had the center table, who was deeply involved in conversation with several men and did not see her as she walked by. Caramanlis rose as she approached the table.

  He kissed her hand and gestured to her seat, then turned to the maitre d’. “You may open the champagne now.”

  Janette smiled and sat down as the maitre d’ held the chair for her. She looked at Caramanlis without speaking. After what had happened between them last night, she had not expected to hear from him again.

  It had begun that morning, as she was sitting down to breakfast at home. Promptly at eight o’clock she heard the chime at the front door. A few minutes later, the butler came in with a box of roses and held them while she removed the card and read it. There was no message, just the handwritten name. Caramanlis.

  Then, exactly at ten o’clock, as she sat down at her desk in the office, Robert, her secretary, came into the room. He, too, was bearing a box of red roses. This time there was a velvet-covered jewel box inside as well as a card. She opened the jewel box first.

  Inside the box, lying on black silk, was a choker of square-cut emeralds, set in gold and linked to each other with small round white diamonds. She stared at it silently. After a moment, she snapped the box shut and reached for the card.

  “Wouldn’t Madame like to wear it?” Robert’s voice was almost shocked.

  “No,” she answered shortly. “It’s too Greek.”

  This time there was a message on the card. “Luncheon. Maxim’s. One o’clock.” But no name. Only the initial “C.”

  She shook her head. For a moment, she was tempted to send it back to him without even a note, but the subtlety would be lost on him. An ego such as his had no limits. She would meet him for lunch and see for herself the expression on his face as she gave it back to him. She looked up at her secretary, still there, the box of flowers in his hands.

  “Stop standing there with that silly expression on your face,” she said in an annoyed voice. “Go and put the roses in water.”

  “Yes, Madame.” He began to hurry from her office.

  “And, Bobby,” she called after him, stopping him at the door, “have them placed on the reception desk outside. I don’t want them in here.”

  ***

  The maitre d’ placed the chilled champagne glasses in front of them and poured a little in Caramanlis’ glass for him to taste. Caramanlis nodded without tasting the wine. Bowing, the maitre d’ filled both glasses and left.

  Caramanlis raised his glass to her. “I owe you an apology and an explanation.”

  She didn’t touch her glass. “You owe me nothing,” she said quietly, taking the jewel box from her purse and pushing it across the table to him. “Especially trinkets like this.”

  “But—but you don’t understand,” he said, almost stammering in surprise. “I wanted you to know—that after last night—there were no hard feelings.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” she said sarcastically. “It never got hard enough last night for me to feel anything.”

  A veil seemed to drop over his eyes. “You bitch!” he said, unsmiling.

  She knew she had scored. She was smiling sweetly as she rose from the table. “Goodbye, Monsieur Caramanlis,” she said and walked away.

  He didn’t turn to look after her. He felt the flush creep up over his collar into his face, and he kept his eyes down, looking at the jewel box lying on the tablecloth. He was sure the sudden silence in the restaurant meant that their conversation had been heard throughout the room. He picked up his champagne glass, his hand almost trembling with the anger surging through him.

  As quickly as it had stopped, the conversation level in the room went back to its normal heights. Slowly he sipped the champagne. Through the window he could see the doorman holding open the door of the Rolls as she entered. Then he closed the door and the car moved away.

  A waiter appeared and quickly removed Janette’s glass of champagne and place setting. A moment later, the maitre d’ was standing next to him. “Is Monsieur Caramanlis ready to order his lunch now?” he asked as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

  “I’ll have the grilled Dover sole, lemon, no butter, no potatoes, and plain green salad with just lemon.” The maitre d’ left and he picked up the jewel box and slipped it into his jacket. He felt his lips tighten again. This trinket, as the bitch had called it, cost him a quarter of a million dollars. Fo
r the first time since she had left the table, he lifted his eyes and gazed around the room.

  No one seemed to be watching him; they were talking to each other with their usual animation. But he knew better. By cocktail time, all Paris would be talking and laughing about him.

  The champagne suddenly tasted bitter in his mouth. He put his glass down. She was like every other French whore that he had known, playing out their games in front of an audience, thinking that their cunts made them inviolable.

  But this one would discover that she was wrong. In the small Greek village in which he had been born they knew how to take care of whores who had overstepped their privileges. It was a lesson they usually never forgot for the rest of their lives.

  ***

  “You’re getting old, Jacques,” she said, looking across her desk at him. “At one time you were always urging me to push—now all I hear from you is ‘Slow down.’ What could be wrong with owning all the results of our work ourselves?”

  He returned her gaze, not allowing his face to express the hurt her words had given him. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Janette,” he said. “But I’m not saying there is anything wrong in wanting to own it all. What I’m asking you to consider is whether it is worth ten million dollars.

  “Right now, without any investment at all on our part, we’re earning between four and five million dollars a year and most of it just on licensing agreements and royalties. Kensington had to make the investment in stores, inventories, manufacturing facilities, sales organization and advertising. All we contributed was our name and designs.”

  “My name and designs,” Janette said sharply.

  “That’s right.” He nodded. “That’s our real investment and I think we should stick with it and protect it. Just look at what it cost us just to get Soie on the market. Twenty-five million of our own hard-earned francs. And it will be three years before we can even hope to see a significant profit. And that is a successful promotion.

  “Also take couture, where we also own it all. We are doing more business than we ever dreamed. We are as successful as any of them—Dior, St. Laurent, Givenchy. Still, operating expenses manage to eat up everything we make. If we break even each year, we’re happy.

  “It’s not just the ten million dollars which at the moment we haven’t got that I’m objecting to, Janette. It’s what lies beyond that. More money will be needed to create and operate all the various services that Kensington now performs for us. That could be another ten million dollars. And what I am saying is that even if we had the twenty million dollars to do it, are we equipped for it? What do we know about manufacturing in South America and Asia? About operating a chain of retail boutiques in America? Nothing. We’d be worse than amateurs. Even the professionals run into trouble where they never expected. Look at Agache-Willot, one of the most successful retail operators in France. Just a short time ago they bought Korvettes in the States, also a most successful operation. But something went wrong. Almost in no time at all they managed to lose forty million dollars, and because of it, they face the possibility of losing control of their own company here at home to the banks.” He paused for a moment to catch his breath.

  “Finished?” Janette asked coldly.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet. I want you to hear me out. Then you can decide whether you think I’m getting old or not.” He paused again, then continued without waiting for a word from her. “And even if we are successful, what do we gain?

  “We have heard that they make more than twice the profit that we do. But we don’t know how that profit is broken down or from where it comes. Don’t forget they made this deal with us because they already have the plants and facilities to manufacture their own textiles as well as finished goods. They make them from every step of the operation, and I’m willing to venture that the greatest portion of their profit comes from that end rather than the retail. They can, if they want to, even operate the retail division at a loss because it can be absorbed into their manufacturing profits.

  “If I am right, the most we can gain, if we buy our way out, and if we are successful in doing all the things I have said we must do, will amount to about two million dollars a year. That means it would take us ten years just to recoup the twenty million dollars we would have to invest. And that is without even knowing what we have to pay for the twenty million dollars if we could get it. It is entirely possible that the four or five million dollars a year we do make will disappear entirely, eaten up by the operations of a business we know nothing about. It happened to Agache-Willot. It can happen to us.”

  He took another deep breath. She was still watching him silently. “I am your friend, Janette. We have fought many battles together, side by side, so I don’t think I have to prove either my friendship or devotion to you. I have watched with admiration the fierce drive within you that brought you from a girl to the strong and important woman that you are today, second to none in our business. So, as a friend, I feel free to caution you. No one in this world can own it all. Always leave something for others to do and profit by, and you will profit.

  “Do not let your own ego and blind ambition lead you to your own destruction.”

  They were silent for a long while, just looking at each other. Finally, she spoke. “That was quite a speech.”

  He nodded slowly. “It was. I don’t know where it came from. I didn’t expect it.”

  “Neither did I,” she said. They were silent again for a moment, then she met his eyes. “Do you really mean that? What you said about my ego and blind ambition?”

  He was embarrassed. “I don’t know. I guess so. I don’t know what else it could be that is pushing you. We’re making all the money we really need. Up to now, everything we’ve done has been a challenge and fun to do. But suddenly it’s not fun anymore.”

  “And if I were to give you another ten percent of the company?” she asked. He already had five percent. “Would it become fun then?”

  “I thought you knew me better than that, Janette,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t want anymore. I have all that I need. What I said, I said for your sake, not to gain something for myself.”

  “What would you say if I told you I was going to do it despite your advice?”

  He looked at her. “I would say, ‘Good luck, Janette.’”

  She met his eyes. “And that is all?”

  He rose from his chair heavily. “No, Janette. I would also say for that you would need someone far more capable and knowledgeable about those matters than I.”

  Suddenly she was angry. “I was right!” she snapped. “You’re not only getting old, Jacques. You’ve become a coward, afraid to fight.

  This time the hurt showed on his face and echoed in his voice. “I’m sorry that you feel like that, Janette.” His voice broke and he went quickly to the door so that she could not see the sudden blurring in his eyes.

  At the door, he turned and looked back at her. She looked at him in stony silence. He shook his head slowly. If only she would say one word. He didn’t want it to end like this. But she remained silent. It was over.

  He opened the door, still looking at her. She returned his gaze as if he were a stranger. “Goodbye, Janette,” he said. And silently closed the door behind him.

  She stared at the closed door. Goddamn him! What right did he have to sit in judgment on her? Her anger began to dissipate, replaced by an impulse to run after him and bring him back. But that was what men always wanted. A woman to run after them, begging them to come home.

  She wouldn’t do it. She would wait. He would come back. He would think it over and in the morning he would be in his office as if nothing had happened.

  But then the tone of finality in his farewell echoed in her mind and she knew it was not to be. A strange sense of loss came into her. He was never coming back. In a way, he was the only real friend she had ever had. He had always been there. Now she was truly alone.

  ***

  Lauren could hear the car horn bl
ast in front of the white beach house on the Pacific Coast Highway clear into the kitchen at the other end of the house. She put down her coffee cup and got to her feet. Before going to the front door, she glanced out the terrace window at the beach. Anitra was naked, sitting on the sand, playing with the two puppies. Sitting in the shade of a beach umbrella, her nanny, Josefina, a Mexican woman in her forties, was knitting and watching the child.

  Lauren ran through the house, out the front door into the courtyard, and opened the front gate. The car was right in front and Harvey was already opening the straps that held the surfboard to the roof. She laughed and went to help him. Nothing had changed about Harvey except the car. It was a Porsche 918 now instead of a Volkswagen. He had not achieved his ambition to become a millionaire at twenty-one, but now at twenty-five he was getting close. And he had never become a dealer as he had planned. Instead, everything was very straight. Sun Earth had really taken off.

  He turned to look at her as she came next to him and began to tug at the next rack strap. She was tan and lithe in her cut-off jean shorts and bikini top, her hair long and white from the sun, her blue eyes sparkling in her tanned face. “You’re looking good,” he said, kissing her upturned cheek.

  “How, paleface,” she said mockingly, holding up a hand face out, Indian style.

  He laughed, tugging his strap loose. “Some people have to work for a living,” he said. “They can’t afford to lay around on the beach all day.”

  “That ain’t the way you used to tell it,” she said, pulling her own strap loose. “Things sure have changed.”

  He lifted the surfboard from the roof carefully. “How’s the surf?”

  “Not bad,” she said. “Running at six feet according to the radio. You might have some fun.”

  “Great,” he said, holding the surfboard under one arm and pulling a small bag from the jump seat with the other. “I can’t wait to try it. It’s been too long.”

  “A month and a half,” she said.

  He followed her into the courtyard. “How’s Anitra?”

  “You won’t recognize her,” Lauren laughed. “She’s getting so big. She’s having a ball with those two Dalmatian puppies you gave her. She hasn’t realized yet that they’re getting bigger than she is.”