Maybe she was, she herself thought. In limbo in England, going every day to the Rahni Boutique on the Kings Road, to an airless little room on the second floor where the accounting was done, sometimes taking a turn at the shop level, where the clientele reacted quizzically to her Oxbridge accent. The power over her imagination of the château money grew, came more and more to symbolize freedom – a freedom never to be hers without money. She knew she should be happy as part owner of a château and of the things found in Father’s safe-deposit box, but even this change in fortune could not dislodge the dull despair, the leaden pall, events had cast over her life.
The more she came to see that death and disappointment were life’s realities, the more important to her future did the money seem, and the more rightfully hers it came to seem. Paradoxically, at the same time, the possibility of some money, even the designated ten pounds, forced her to confront the real conditions of her life, presently pointed toward this dull job and no love life to speak of except what she’d have to work too hard at lining up, and just a general depressing flatness as she plodded on to middle age. Self-pity overcame her whenever she began to think like this, and hardened her resolve to get her share of the money and with it take her life in charge, even though this meant thwarting Rupert.
Today Posy was taking the underground from her apartment off the Portobello Road to the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo Station, struggling to carry her rolling suitcase up the stairs at the connection in the Picadilly Station. She had called her mother to be sure Pam had not changed her mind about her making this journey, had no regrets that it was she making this sacred (word used with irony) trip to France with Father’s ashes. It was Posy carrying the ashes today because Rupert couldn’t get any more time off work, and they all thought it would be inappropriate for Pam to be the one to deliver them to Father’s widow. Posy had sensed in Pam and Rupert a little mistrust, as if she might intend to desecrate Father’s ashes – flush them, maybe.
She bought Vogue and a Pariscope in the Eurostar waiting room, and began to feel mildly excited, apart from her difficult errand, by the idea of Paris. She’d be away from the Rahni Boutique, revelling in adventure, French food, absence from England, perhaps a glimpse of Emile. The train was called. As she rolled her case toward the escalators, she saw in front of her a familiar-looking back – tall, thin shoulders and neck, white hair with a curious pinkishness, rumpled coat – unquestionably Robin Crumley the poet, headed like her for Paris, with the Financial Times under his arm.
‘Hullo, there,’ she said, rolling up abreast of him. ‘I guess they can’t keep us away from those croissants and snails.’
‘Hullo! How nice! Miss Venn! Posy!’ he replied, with extreme cordiality, reassuring her that she was not intruding, he would be delighted if they sat together – she had acted diffidently for what did she know about poets on train journeys – would they be gregarious or deep in thought?
On the way, she told him about the things she hoped to do in Paris, not mentioning her grisly parcel. He said he was spending the weekend with the Desmarais, some delightful French people he sometimes visited in the summer in the Dordogne. Now they were all going to attend the performances of some Pinter plays in French in Paris. He also hoped while in Paris to see the American, Amy Hawkins, whom they had all met in Valméri – did Posy remember her? He and Posy reminisced about their lunch at Saint-Jean-de-Belleville and its aftermath of snowdrifts and rescue – to think it was so short a time ago, yet seemed so long when you had gone back to England, where everything was so unlike. They bought some small bottles of red wine, Badoît, and sandwiches from the bar car, and chatted over lunch.
‘What do you think of Wordsworth?’ she asked, and other such things. ‘Does a celebrated poet of today owe him anything? I seem to hear Wordworthian echoes in some of your work, though it’s very much in your own voice of course.’
‘Oh, everything, my greatest inspiration. The Preludes, intensely,’ said Crumley, thinking what a delightful young woman Posy was, much nicer and more relaxed here, out of the snow and relieved of the tension of her poor father’s condition. ‘It was Wordsworth who freed us, in some ways.’
‘The language?’
‘The simple diction, the meditative line…’
He agreed that the way she had been treated in her father’s will was outrageous, though she tried to present it with some jocularity, and he was happy to hear about her share in the property in the south of France, which must after all come to something – a half a million even, before taxes.
‘There is nothing that becomes a woman like property,’ he said in his most Wildean way, or was it Shaw, only half joking. He’d looked at the prices of French real estate. Posy thought him incredibly sympathetic – his niceness had not struck her before. She could see he had been through harrowing things himself – he didn’t say what. She found his frayed cuffs sympathetic, too, a famous, distinguished, but impecunious person, sort of like D. H. Lawrence; there was even a resemblance – the stalky neck and badly cut hair.
Pamela Venn and Trevor Osworthy were also coming to Paris, the next day. Osworthy had arranged rooms for all of them at the Hôtel de Lille, a small hotel suggested by Géraldine, not far from her own apartment and, for that matter, Amy’s, where they expected Posy would already be installed. Pamela had no Paris plans but to visit museums and go shopping, apart from meeting her homologue Géraldine, and, she supposed, being present at whatever sort of ritual the children and the widow intended for Adrian. In London they had had a simple cremation, but had hesitated to organize the memorial service, out of a feeling that Kerry would want to be there. Still, there had been an appreciative obituary in the Times and Guardian both, the latter with photo. Pam had clipped extra copies for, eventually, Kerry.
It had been years since she had been in Paris – the Louvre had been remodelled since the last time she had been here, with the glass pyramid perched in its courtyard, now a fixture of Paris scenery, that was how long it had been! She marvelled at how most things had stayed unchanged, and looked forward to cassoulet and confit de canard and decent camembert.
‘Yes, the cheese is very good,’ Osworthy allowed.
On the train, he confided to Pamela his problems with settling the estate. He was faced with meetings with the French tax officials in an attempt to reconcile the English and French testamentary discrepancies. He was fairly sure things would boil down to paying taxes on the French property in France, on the English estate in England, each nation agreeing to ignore Venn’s possessions in the other country; but at the moment, each nation seemed disposed to regard Adrian’s entire estate, whether in France or England, as taxable by itself. He was baffled by some French ideas, but luckily there were tax treaties, and it would be sorted out. Luckily, Adrian had kept his legal domicile in England, otherwise France would be sure to tax the English estate as well. As it was, they might avoid this.
One especially strange tax provision was that Victoire, an illegitimate child, was going to inherit in France equally, or almost equally, with Posy and Rupert, though Venn had not even mentioned her in his will, nor indeed had he ever acknowledged her. Mr Osworthy was indignant. ‘This would never happen in England unless the deceased had intended it, and Adrian certainly had not intended any such thing – may not even have known of this woman’s existence. Some bizarre French Revolutionary logic which rewards people for being love children. Only the French!’ Though he acknowledged the sentimental charm of the idea of privileging love children, Osworthy was deeply outraged at the total violation, imposed by French laws, of Adrian’s testamentary intentions, clearly expressed, that his wife and youngest child inherit his goods and chattels, with ten thousand pounds for his older son and ten pounds for Posy. What could be clearer, or for that matter more sensibly organized? There was the upbringing and education of baby Harry yet to be paid for. Kerry had been living in the château, it was her home. Rupert didn’t need the money, he was grown, employed, set on his path.
/> ‘No, it was badly done by Adrian,’ Pamela disagreed.
Osworthy felt a moral obligation to Kerry Venn to see that she was not done out of what Adrian had so plainly intended for his beloved wife. Even if he could not compel Posy and Rupert to comply, he could make them aware of the ethics of the situation. ‘In decency, Posy and Rupert should refuse their shares in behalf of Kerry and Harry.’
‘What an idea!’ cried Pamela.
‘But even if they did, there is no controlling that wild card, the French daughter,’ she who had never set eyes on Venn and now was to claim his property.
Meantime, he knew that Rupert was worried that Posy, now that she knew of Father’s vindictive ten-pound legacy, would insist on the château being sold. This was another issue provoked by French laws addressing the problem of dividing property among four heirs. Instead of the sensible English custom of keeping an estate intact by giving it all to the eldest son, the French law, as he understood it, provided that in the case of disagreement about whether to keep a château, say, property will be sold and the money divided up. What a shame! Rupert and Harry, being males, could be counted on to behave sensibly; Rupert dreamed of stepping into his father’s shoes as director of the press, not that he knew anything about presses. Kerry would stay in the château and raise Harry. But the future rested with Posy and Victoire, neither of whom seemed the least interested in châteaux or publishing, and as it was in their power, in the power of any one of them, to call in her share, and given that none of them had the money to buy the others out, this would probably happen.
Osworthy had weighed whether, were Rupert to give Posy half – or even all – of his English ten thousand pounds, she would still want to sell her share of the château, and predicted she would. Ten thousand was not enough to keep her or change her life. A pity. If the place were sold, Harry and Kerry would be out of a home, and the press would have to close or move, an enterprise of huge, probably fatal, proportions. If Rupert had to pay rent somewhere else, he probably could not run it profitably, whereas he had a chance of success if it could stay where it was. There was every reason to hold on to the château, whatever sort of dinosaur it might be, while its loss would disrupt almost all of them. A slim hope lay in the possibility that there would be enough money for Kerry in England, after death duties paid there, to enable her to buy out Posy and Victoire. But on the whole he didn’t think there would be enough money for that.
34
Amy had had a week of her cooking school, enough to reassure her that this skill was not beyond her, and even to suggest that she might have a feel for pâtisserie and purees – her gougère (first lesson) had turned out delicious, and so, too, her velouté de chou-fleur. She had been given an understanding of crème soups, pureed legumes, and the principles of rôtisserie, by which was not meant a turning spit, as she had always thought, but simple roasting, which was no more than a matter of an oven thermometer and a meat thermometer, well within her level of competence. Could it be that French cultural superiority was based on an intimidating air of mystery that would prove to have little behind it? She actually looked forward to the unimaginably elaborate skills she would have by the end of the five-week course, and to the surprise of her parents and friends when she got home.
French was another matter. Here she felt retarded, though the teacher assured her she was better than many Americans, and not nearly as backward as Chinese and Japanese people, who seemed unable to learn it at all, or even if they understood its principles, were unable to pronounce it. At least Amy had a clear American accent people could understand. The French teacher, Mademoiselle Godrion, didn’t grasp that Amy found this praise completely wounding, quite apart from the insult to her Asian friends. She had really wanted to sound French, not American, wanted to be indistinguishable from a French person, and wanted to assimilate mysteriously the core of cultural assumptions that went with the language but which seemed, alas, still opaque to her.
Now, little by little, she understood that none of this was going to happen. She would always sound like an American. Pronunciation aside, the grammar was slow going, too, and speaking aloud in a market or social setting was still utterly beyond her, cheerful, gregarious person though she knew herself to be. Mademoiselle Godrion and she managed well enough. (Bonjour, mademoiselle. Comment-allez vous?) Her reading skills surged forward with the daily stint with the Figaro and the Pariscope, but she could not rid herself of the feeling, the whole time, that the effort might not be worth it, because no revelations lay before her, and even if there were some, she was not prepared for them.
Robin Crumley and Posy Venn had spent the afternoon in the little hotel on the rue de Lille, in bed, Posy teaching Robin certain things she had learned, from Emile in fact, though she didn’t mention that. What a surprise that Robin was not gay, though he was veiled about the nature of his past experiences. She was naked, astride him, his expression was dreamily rapt, his erection very sturdy. She had actually read a number of his poems, even before they had met, and some of the most beautiful lines streamed through her mind now.
He had been quite compliant on the train, even eager, given that she had thought him rather above or beyond sex, for instance hadn’t seemed interested at all in the glamorous Frenchwomen at the Hôtel Croix, sticking to his friends the desiccated little Eurotrash couple, despite being much younger than they. He proved to be forty-eight, though she had thought older. The first time had come about on the train, with the inspiration of the red wine, and involved them locking themselves, with many giggles, in the toilet – fortunately, it being the Eurostar, a larger and cleaner place than train toilets in general; with rather unsatisfactory results, but technically a success, in that they had completed the act, even if it was a bit inconvenient and hasty, with people trying the door and so on – and confirmed a promising relationship.
For his part, Robin was perfectly thrilled that Posy had proposed this way of passing the afternoon. He saw with almost painful clarity that he had left too many aspects of his life untended. Yesterday, arriving in the Gare du Nord, he had rung Madame Desmarais, who had expected him to lunch, made his excuses, and they had come to the hotel where Mr Osworthy had made reservations for Posy, the Lille. They had been here ever since, his spirits almost hysterically rising. Really, the vagina has something!
Posy’s presence in his life seemed to raise a storm of vital questions in his mind, especially concerning the need of the human heart to attach itself. Of course it needed to, and here she was, as beautiful as a handmaiden of the Round Table as she stooped to sweep his shirt into the hotel laundry sack, and now filling out the laundry slip like the most organized amanuensis; how thrilling that she desired him, and in her role of lover was as passionate as a cat – a woman of infinite variety.
A certain boredom he had been feeling lately with life in general, he could sense was beginning to lift, or a corner of it, at least. He had the sense it might lift entirely, eventually. It was a question of gravity. His mind toyed with the pun. Gravity: seriousness and the pull of the earth. The earth itself a metaphor for the dark pull of the sexual self. He had truly not given enough weight to his Dionysian self, had too privileged the Olympian.
He would see the Desmarais later, when he went to stay with them. Tonight, Robin Crumley reminded Posy, he had been invited to a cocktail party being given in Amy Hawkins’s honor by Géraldine Chastine, Posy’s half-sister’s mother. Surely Posy had been invited?
‘Yes, but I’m not going. You go, I don’t want to. I don’t want to see any of them ever again,’ Posy said, and instead lay back on the bed, brooding on the nature of her next move. ‘I’ll go and find us another hotel. My mother and Mr Osworthy are staying at this one, which I think is rather off-putting.’
Victoire and the children arrived at Géraldine’s at four, Nike and Salome in matching Scottish-plaid party dresses and ballerina shoes. They embraced their grandmother. Géraldine could see at once that Victoire wore a pained, damp look quite unlik
e her normal self; her usual halo of hair was flat, her eyes narrow with resolve. She carried a suitcase. She withheld any explanation of her mood, as if waiting for a better moment, but took her little case into her old bedroom, now used by Géraldine for her business records, present wrapping, and storing out-of-season clothes. More trouble with Emile, thought Géraldine.
‘Allez, les enfants, regardez la télé dans le bureau de Grandpapa.’ The little girls, of almost the same age, looked at each other and alertly dawdled off, ears straining.
‘Maman, I have left Emile,’ whispered Victoire. ‘I see now that things will never change. Some women endure what – what I have had to endure, but not I. I don’t want the girls to see their mother as an abject victim, I want – I want out!’
What had brought this on now, after their apparently harmonious trip to Valméri, with its brilliant suite for Emile? Since they returned from Valméri, Emile had seen his star rise. His visibility in the matter of Joan of Arc, and his already large following for his roundtable appearances on TV, had led Antoine de Persand, who himself had recently joined the cabinet as an underminister, to contact Emile about a new role as press secretary to the minister, a position, once he was inside the government, that would yield fascinating prospects of influence, preference, and even a salary. The news of his new appointment had been announced.
L'Affaire Page 27