Sophie spoke now of the royals: “… Carol, our King, he works you know always standing up. It is the army has made that. And she, the Queen, she write—oh, so romantic. And now there is young English crown princess, this Marie of Edimbourg, as you will know. For her it is not being easy. She was used to live warmer, not so stiff life. For us, we go to court or not, as we please. We are true Romanian…. But because my mother—twenty years ago, she is part of court…. And then I, young married …”
Lily listening, wondered, Where am I?, realizing she was pleasantly drunk. Robert, seen through a champagne haze, looked distinguished, kindly. So delightfully muzzy was she that it seemed to her the night in Nice had never happened.
But that very evening, back in their suite at the Grand, holding her arm roughly, he ordered her to undress. The drink wearing off had left her tired, happily so, ready for sleep. Taken aback, fearful—this second time she was more afraid—she hesitated. Then made as if to leave the room.
He pleaded with her then. “Oh, if you would. Dear, I don’t ask very much. I must see you, so that I can … Lily, adorned.” His face, close to hers, was taut, anxious; his eyes hard. It is he—another person, she told herself, I must think of him as another person.
Again, she was festooned with the contents of the treasure chest—the terrible red leather box. But this time he took longer to arrange everything— sometimes changing for better effect. Twice he asked—no, ordered—her to kneel. She was shivering now, could not stop, even though a fire burned in the hearth. She tried to control an urge to pull at the ropes of jewels, coils of bracelet, the heavy tiara pressing into her scalp. (Somewhere, back at The Towers, the Diamond Waterfall lay in waiting. That, too, must be worn. Whether in or out of the bedroom had ceased to matter.)
She saw herself once again in the cheval glass. She thought wildly of dashing to the windows, out on to the balcony. There in the moonlight tearing them all off, throwing them to the street below. Down, down. Crowds appearing to amass them. Lily Greene the actress—she has gone quite mad….
“Wait there,” he said. His handiwork was finished. “Do not, I implore you, move—or alter anything.”
She did not. She did not dare. It was hateful. Hateful
The door opened and Lionel came in. Robert was just behind.
“What—” she cried. “What?” She reached angrily for her wrap.
“No, my dear, no.” He pulled it from her. “Let him see. Let my little brother see.”
“Now,” he said, turning to Lionel. “Look. You wanted—see what I have…”
She could not bear to look at Lionel’s face. At either of them. She was more naked than if she were wearing nothing. I would prefer he saw me naked. They have made me a slave girl. Fettered.
She trembled with fear. Were they to be three in that huge bed? If Lionel is to touch me too … If, if. But Lionel yawned. In the silence later, in the darkness, she thought she would never forget that.
“Oh dear.” And he yawned again. “Very nice,” he said. “Such a white skin. Just like a lily. So apt. Yes, yes, I do approve.”
It seemed an hour, was perhaps only five minutes—and he left, saying only “I must to the arms of Morpheus. It’s late. Good night—-frère Robert. And the fair Lily. Amusez vous bien.”
It was worse, far worse this time, because she was expecting the pain, the discomfort, the sharp jabbing of the stones. And of him. After, she did not get into bed but took her volume of Tennyson through into the sitting room and sat before the dying fire. The room seemed strangely without air.
She browsed among the Idylls, trying to still her heart, her shaking, used body—looking to be soothed by the rhythm, the romance. She read:
“Advance and take your prize
The diamond; but he answer’d, ‘diamond me
No diamonds! For God’s love, a little air.’ ”
She closed the book and wept.
Why Lionel? She had asked herself that already several times on this trip. If it were not for the shame of it all she could and would ask Robert directly. Why Lionel?
Once he said, speaking of something else, “Lionel and I—we have always been close. Tom—my brother Thomas—quite a different sort of person. But Lionel and I—a bond. We do not need always to be together. Although in childhood … our mother, we both …” He went no further.
Remembering that he had said of the massed bracelets, running the length of both her arms, that first terrible night, “These—they belonged to our mother,” she wondered if there was some need, for both of them, to see the jewelry their mother had worn. And to see it on a naked woman. Some rivalry too, almost. (“You wanted … See what I have.”)
How horrible it all was! Lionel and little girls. Evie, my dresser, told me that. I wish I didn’t know. It takes place of course in another world. An underworld, where innocents are bought and sold. It is better not to know of such things. And imperative not to think of them. Over the months she had managed to separate Lionel from all this, so that he seemed almost two people. It must continue that way. With Robert and his habits, she did not expect to be so successful.
She thought afterward, and was to think for a long time, that it was Sophie and Teodor who saved her. From that first evening together began a series of shared outings: days that were so nearly enchanted—evenings too, when she could forget what might await her return. When she could just be Lily Greene, on holiday in Paris.
The opera, invitations to their suite, a cinematograph show at the Grand Café, drives by the Seine in sunshine.
It had almost ceased to matter that she was in Paris, and not in love. For she was almost in love, with the city, and this couple, Sophie and Teodor.
They sat next to each other and talked, she and Sophie, at every gathering. Alone together, they talked. Lily hoped and hoped they would not lose touch later. Back in Flaxthorpe, would she not need just such friends? And indeed Sophie, Teodor too, said again and again that this meeting in Paris must not be the last. That they would come to England, surely, and Lily and Robert in their turn must visit Romania.
“I am your friend, “ Sophie said, pressing Lily’s hand. Sophie: warm, affectionate, easy, a mother almost. What my mother should have been, she thought. If she could have told anyone of what had happened, what might happen again any night, it would be her. When Sophie admired her jewelry, as she did often, she wanted to tell her—but could not. Yet she felt certain that the blend of sophistication and coziness that was Sophie would be able, if not to help (how could she?), to understand a little. And how I need that
She supposed they had no children, since none were mentioned. She did not like to ask. All their talk was of their nephews, the sons of Teodor’s brother. Valentin, Ion, Nicu—their names were often invoked:
“When Valentin hears of this naughty dog—pom you call it?—and how he is comporting self in Paris, he shall be not pleased. By the way, all have English governess once. The count’s sister, she is Anglophile. Valentin most especially, he has such English. It runs and runs. He is in your university of Oxford, but only one year. How he plays! Nothing is au sérieux. Ion too much—he have philosophic thought. And politic one. Too many. That can be danger, chez nous. “
One afternoon in the last week of their stay she went to a reception in the Rue de Varenne given by yet more of their friends. Robert had a headache and stayed behind; he wanted to be well enough for the opera that evening.
Lily, feeling unusually calm and peaceful, enjoyed the gathering. One elderly man, eager to speak English, talked to her about her new friends.
“It is so sad they lose a daughter. Yes, they lost one. She died of inflamed brain, I think. She was a dear little thing, not pretty, jolie laide. It is a big loss they have.”
So that was their secret sorrow. She thought yet again, I make a great fuss of nothing, and have not suffered at all. She said nothing to Sophie. It is for her to mention it, she thought.
Today Sophie was the center of a circle of admire
rs. She threw up her hands in mock horror as the little Pomeranian ran yapping among the guests. Teodor, with good-humored exasperation, picked him up and handed him to a footman. Lily, half listening to the woman talking to her, watched Lionel. He was deep in conversation with the daughter of the house, a little girl of about twelve. He had stopped her as she was walking solemnly around the small onyx coffee tables, among the guests. She giggled and pouted as he chatted to her. His arms encircled her waist. She giggled again. “My little butterfly,” Lily heard him say.
It was Bizet’s Carmen they went to hear at the Opéra. Halfway through the second act, she began to feel ill. Leaving the box, she went to the ladies’ room, where she was violently sick. She thought at first it was something she had eaten, and indeed for the rest of the evening she felt a little better. But she awoke next morning to acute nausea. Her sickness came and went throughout the day. She said nothing to anyone. That evening at dinner, seeing the dish of swordfish cutlets in a rich wine and herb sauce, she knew that she would be ill.
Ten minutes later, as she sat in the ladies’ room, smelling salts to her nose, Sophie joined her. Her expression was concerned. She said in English, while the attendant, impassive, continued with her crocheting:
“Dear little one, I see certainly what is wrong.” She took Lily’s arm. “I have order you some bitters drink. We go upstairs. We speak alone there.”
Lily, without protesting, let herself be led. Up in Sophie and Teodor’s suite, she said faintly, “I don’t know—I’ve drunk none of the water. It can’t be that. And I have no fever. The wine, perhaps? The white, acid …” She thought of the swordfish and nausea returned. Her throat filled.
Sophie’s arm was about her. “Oh my dear. You are just married. One month? So you forgive me because I am your friend when I tell you it is perhaps—baby.”
At first she could not answer, for the shock. For the nausea too. How could I have been so simple, so naïve? Her ignorance embarrassed her. But of course, of course! What she had been used to see every month, postponed she had thought by the excitement, the travel. Often, on theatrical tours, had not the same thing happened, and nothing thought of it?
As she sipped the bitters, as they dried her mouth, she could think only, Now there is no going back.
I played for high stakes—and I have lost.
“I can’t,” she said, “oh but I can’t.” She wanted to tell Sophie everything. She saw the leather coffer, with its massed jewelry. It seemed part of her nausea.
“No, but I am certain, yes, I am right,” said Sophie, holding her close. “And you shall be happy, so happy that it is so. Soon, very happy.”
Never. Never.
7
It would quite ruin Christmas. No doubt about it. And so much fuss being made too. The grave faces: Dr. Sowerby calling twice a day. And two strange nurses, one for day and one for night. The night one had spoken to Alice in the corridor. “So you’re the lucky young girl who has a baby brother! We must take great care if he’s to stay with us. Mother needs care too.”
“Don’t you dare call her ‘Mother,’ ” she’d muttered under her breath, hurrying away.
The worst was, no one had thought to tell her. Not a word until September. She had guessed nothing. She was annoyed with herself since she knew after all that babies were carried inside, and once she’d heard the news she saw clearly the difference in Belle Maman’s appearance. (And that was another thing—fancy being told to call her by a name which meant in French not only “stepmother” and “mother-in-law,” but “beautiful Mama” too…. How dare they?) Angry too that she had not been trusted with knowledge which concerned her so much. Knowledge which would change her whole life.
Not only am I expected to love Belle Maman, she thought, but now I must love it as well. The son and heir. And sickly. She was terrified when the wicked thought came to her, I hope he dies.
Belle Maman had looked tired and wan in the weeks before the birth. But when Alice was taken in to see her on the second day, she was sitting up in a swansdown wrap, surrounded by flowers. The baby, lost in drapes and frills of white lace and organdy. (Her cot, it had been her cot once.) She could think only, It should be my mother sitting up there, with my brother beside her. Then someone said, “Shouldn’t you like a closer look at your little brother?” and she realized—oh, make it not true—that he was her brother….
Aunt Violet tried to help. When Alice told her a little of how she felt (some of it she could tell no one), and how she was angry with God as well as Belle Maman, Aunt Violet said God would understand: “He is All Wise, Alice. Almighty. And your mother, dear, in heaven, will understand.”
“But I don’t understand …” Alice wailed.
Nan-Nan let her down badly. Greeting Alice with “What a wonderful start to 1898—back in my nursery again!” Only Fräulein, dear Fräulein, with her moon face, her hair in that absentminded crooked bun, only she could be relied on. Although probably she was thinking about her brother Augustin, who was in some fresh trouble at the university. But when Alice said, “Fräulein, repeat after me ‘We don’t need a baby here … ”’ she had smiled and nodded that great head, floppy on its neck even with her stiff collar.
“Ja, Ja, we are so happy, how we are now. The life before …”
Christmas Day. At church the vicar, Mr. Nicolson, preached only a very short sermon. His voice trembled as he stood in the pulpit. She looked at him with awful fascination because she had heard his wife was dying. Mrs. Nicolson hadn’t been seen out for four months now. A friend brought her little boy to church.
Presents. Papa’s to her: a camera. Waiting for her beneath the tree, with all the other equipment she might need, packed in a box. A new camera. Not his old one, as she had been promised. He told her the gift was Belle Maman’s idea. She knew that she should be grateful, pleased, surprised, but instead she felt only angry and somehow disappointed. First she was tongue-tied, then very ungraciously she said, “Thank you.” I shall never use it, she told herself.
But later in the day, after the Christmas meal, alone in her room for an hour’s rest, she unpacked it with all its effects. Papa had said that she might use the rooms in the small tower. She would set up there her very own darkroom. It will be my own, the photography, she thought. She began to think of whom, what, where she would photograph first. For a moment she felt almost happy.
Early in the New Year Belle Maman seemed much better, and the baby, they said, was safe now. He was to be called Henry. He held for Alice altogether a great fascination, but she steadfastly refused offers to go and see him in the nursery, and ignored him the few occasions he was on show. She wasn’t sure really how long she could keep it up—since after all, he was most probably here to stay….
The second week in January, the vicar’s wife, Mrs. Nicolson, died. Alice overheard Nan-Nan and Mrs. Piatt, the housekeeper, talking. “Quite horrible, a growth like that—and lingering so, it was a merciful release. They say she was no more than a skeleton. And then at the end … the little lad was there, they let him, I’d not have allowed …” Alice remembered again the tall figure in the pulpit, with the trembling voice. She shut her eyes and tried not to think….
Later that same month the Hawksworth baby was christened in the Norman church. He was to be called John. Belle Maman was one of the godmothers (she and the American Mrs. Hawksworth had become great friends) and Alice was invited also to the ceremony and the family party afterward. After the ornateness of The Towers, the simple lines of the Hall always seemed to her a little ordinary, but nice. Mrs. Hawksworth was very kind. She asked Alice about her baby:
“Those two boys are going to have such a good time—isn’t it just so lucky, their being born almost together?” She asked too about Alice’s photography. “I hear you’ve gotten so good at it, your parents want you to photograph the christening.”
Well, that was true. For very soon after, Papa asked. Again, it was Belle Maman’s idea. It is only flattery, Alice told herself,
toadying up to me, like that. She is an actress, and not sincere. It would not be at all surprising if, on the day, they were to produce an official photographer as well, saying they never meant it.
“All right,” she told Papa. “I will take them.”
He asked her then where her smile had gone. She told him, hearing her voice sharp, cold, “It flew out of the window when Mama died.”
On the day of the christening, they played fair. There was no official photographer, and before tea they were all assembled on the front steps, and she was allowed her moment. She made the most of it. She bossed them all. Aunt Hetty, down from Cumberland, and fearsome old Aunt Minnie…. She wished Uncle Thomas could have been there. Uncle Lionel she ignored and hoped he would ignore her. Belle Maman looked white and drawn beneath her pink velvet and chiffon hat, in her arms the baby in christening robes and shawl.
She wasn’t very skilled with the camera yet. And nervous. Too much to think of at once.
“One more,” she insisted, “I have to have one more!” She put her hand up. “Papa, tell Belle Maman that if she looks at the baby like that, I shall get only her hat in the picture.”
But then it was over, and the tea party began. She went from person to person, taking care to avoid Uncle Lionel. He seemed to be absorbed in conversation with Belle Maman. She grew a little bored, restless.
She was sitting in a corner of the drawing room, nearest the door, when she saw a Miss Hutton coming toward her. She had by the hand the vicar’s son.
“Alice, dear, just the very person. See who I have here…. Gilbert,” she said, “say good afternoon to Alice.”
He stood there, in black jacket, black knickerbockers. His brown, nearly auburn hair clung to his scalp as if with misery, sad eyes stared out of a freckled face, his hands were clenched tight.
“Well …” Alice began. (Well she thought, we cannot surely be meant to play together? He is only ten, and I am thirteen.)
Miss Hutton smelled of mothballs and good works. She was the daughter of an old and scholarly man (whom Alice thought to be about ninety-five) and lived on the outskirts of Flaxthorpe. She handled Gilbert with a firm, no-nonsense grasp. Letting go of him now, she turned to Mrs. Kent, wife of the master of foxhounds:
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