Her eyes shone. ‘That would be lovely, Greg. The woods around the lake remind me of the beech woods at Valmy.’
Despite his pain Greg laughed. ‘There’s not the remotest similarity between the redwood forests north and west of Tahoe, and the chocolate box beech woods at Valmy, sweetheart. Normandy itself could be dropped into the forests up there and quite easily be lost.’
‘Big is not always best,’ she said with husky laughter, glad that the moment of awkwardness between them had faded. ‘Just because the Tahoe and Eldorado forests remind me of Valmy’s beech woods, does not mean that they are as beautiful as Valmy’s beech woods!’
They had gone to Lake Tahoe and in the succeeding months they visited the Napa Valley, Salt Lake, La Jolla, and Mexico. The agency continued to flourish. When he went on business trips to New York, Lisette accompanied him. They employed another nanny to help Simonette. They entertained on an even bigger and grander scale. The success of Dering Advertising made them newsworthy. Greg was a millionaire. He was young, handsome. Their photographs appeared with increasing frequency in newspapers and magazines. They were a stunning couple: Greg with his tousled shock of sun-bleached hair, his powerful shoulders, his easy manner; Lisette, with her dark vibrancy, her captivating French accent, her exquisite grace. They were a couple who had everything. A couple who were envied wherever they went.
‘I can only help you if you trust me, Mrs Dering,’ Dr Helen Rossman had said, leaning back in her leather swivel chair and surveying Lisette with interest.
‘I do trust you,’ Lisette said, the roof of her mouth dry. She hadn’t known what to expect from a psychiatrist. It had taken months for her to pluck up the courage to make an appointment and now she had she knew that she was on the defensive. She didn’t want to tell this stranger about her intimate life with Greg. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. Forgive me for taking up your time, Dr Rossman.’
‘Not at all,’ Dr Rossman said, unperturbed. ‘But as you are paying for the hour of my time that you have booked, it seems a shame to waste it. Why not sit in silence for a little while. Silence is so very hard to come by, isn’t it?’
Lisette looked at her doubtfully but sat back in her very comfortable chair. It was impossible to guess how old Helen Rossman was. She could have been anything from thirty-five to fifty. She wore no make-up, made no concessions to femininity at all. Her hair was dust-coloured, pulled tightly away from her face in an unbecoming bun.
The silence began to grate on Lisette’s nerves. ‘It isn’t a psychiatrist I need at all,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’m not mad. I don’t need to find out what is wrong with me, I already know. I really am wasting your time, Dr Rossman.’ She began once again to rise to her feet.
Dr Rossman smiled. ‘Please tell me,’ she said. ‘I’m very interested.’
Lisette closed her eyes for a moment and then said, ‘I love my husband. I love him desperately. But I freeze when he touches me. I can’t give him the physical love he deserves, or the physical love that I need.’
‘Were you once able to do so?’ Dr Rossman asked, picking up a pencil and surveying the tip thoughtfully before laying it down again.
‘Yes. At first. When we were in Paris.’
‘You said that you knew what was wrong with you, Mrs Dering. Does that mean you know why your responses have changed?
Lisette’s heart-shaped face was taut. Her hands tightened in her lap. Apart from her father and Luke, she had never spoken of Dieter to anyone. She was not sure that she could do so now. She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I am a Frenchwoman, Dr Rossman. I met my husband when he landed with the Allies on D-Day. We were married six weeks later.’ She paused. The room remained silent. Dr Rossman seemed to be intently studying the pattern on the floor-to-ceiling curtains. ‘A few hours after we were married, he returned to his battalion and I did not see him again for ten months.’ She passed a hand unsteadily across her eyes. ‘When he returned I had a three-month-old baby. My husband was thrilled. Delighted. He said his sister had been a seven-month baby. He didn’t give me the chance to explain …’
The silence this time was longer. Dr Rossman waited. Her interest seemed to have shifted from the curtains to the pattern on the carpet.
‘The baby wasn’t his. I had meant to tell him. I intended to tell him …’
Again there was silence. ‘But you never did,’ Dr Rossman prompted at last.
Lisette shook her head. ‘My baby’s father was a German. My husband was among the first to liberate Dachau. He would never have understood. If I had told him. I would have lost him.’
‘I see,’ Dr Rossman, said, doodling idly on a sheet of paper. ‘When did you begin to feel the weight of your deception?’
‘When I came to America. When I saw my mother-in-law’s joy at believing herself to be a grandmother. When I heard my husband introducing Dominic as his son.’ She leaned forward, her eyes burning. ‘I understand why I feel guilty, Dr Rossman! But why should it affect me in this way? Why should it sexually freeze me?’
Helen Rossman’s eyes were compassionate. ‘Because you are afraid,’ she said gently. ‘You are afraid of the moment of orgasm. Afraid of losing control. To lose control would be to render yourself powerless against your driving need to tell your husband the truth. In the moment of orgasm there is no control. There is an emotional and physical explosion. A loss of identity and sense of separate being. A momentary disintegration of self. It is then that your subconscious knows you would be vulnerable. Then that you would break down and tell him the truth. And to prevent that happening, your subconscious mind is protecting you. It is not allowing such a moment to occur. It is, as you so accurately describe it, freezing you. Removing you from danger.’
Lisette stared at her, appalled. ‘Then there is nothing I can do?’
Dr Rossman continued to doodle lightly on her notepad. ‘Many women have the same problem, or a similar problem, Mrs Dering. A woman does not always know who the father of her child is. She has an affair. There are sexual relations between herself and her lover. Between herself and her husband. She becomes pregnant. In those circumstances most women if they have decided to carry the child, have one of two decisions to make. To continue the marriage, or to terminate it and begin a new life with their lover. Either way, they have to convince themselves that the child they are carrying is the child of the man they have chosen to stay with. And they do so. They have, after all, a fifty-fifty chance of being right.’
Lisette’s eyes flew wide. ‘But that is terrible!’
‘Perhaps, but it is reality. It is a way of maintaining sanity. Of coping. The human mind is very flexible, Mrs Dering. We believe what we want to believe and, in believing it, it becomes the truth.’
‘But I know!’ Lisette protested, rising abruptly to her feet. ‘There is no fifty-fifty chance that Dominic is Greg’s child! He isn’t. He’s Dieter’s son! I can’t lie to myself like that! It isn’t possible!’
‘Then you must tell your husband the truth. I cannot remove the guilt you feel. Only you can do that. But I would advise you not to free yourself of your burden until you are quite sure that you are strong enough to live with the possible consequences.’
Lisette drove south of the city, parking the car at the side of the freeway, walking for hour after hour on a deserted stretch of beach, the sea wind tugging at her hair. Her visit to Dr Rossman had resolved nothing. She understood her frigidity a little better, but that was all. She could not free herself of it. It was the prison she had entered of her own volition on that far distant day when Greg had stood magnificently naked in the room above the stables and had first held Dominic in his arms.
Greg knew that most men would have sought satisfaction elsewhere. There were times when the temptation came but he ruthlessly suppressed it. He loved Lisette. He was damned if he was going to cheapen that love by squandering it elsewhere.
In the years after Lucy’s birth he had stee
led himself to approach her sexually less and less. The effort had nearly killed him. Only the knowledge that the less frequently he made demands on her, the more relaxed she became, gave him the strength to continue.
He had known that he stood no hope of success unless they slept separately. Even now, years later, he could remember the raw agony he had felt when he had suggested that they have separate bedrooms. He had wanted to see shock on her face. Horror. He had wanted her to say immediately that such an arrangement was unthinkable. She hadn’t. She had stood very still, sand clinging to her sandals from one of her long walks on the beach, her hair windblown, her eyes so dark he could read no expression in them.
‘You said you had been sleeping badly and I thought …’
‘Yes,’ she had said, quickly. Too quickly. ‘I understand.’
She had been wearing a sweater of rich cornflower blue over a pair of white slacks. The desire to touch her, to hold her, had been almost more than he could bear. ‘It was just a thought, Lisette. We don’t have to. Not if you don’t want to.’ He had stepped towards her, intending to crush her against him, to tell her that it was the last thing in the world he wanted.
She had turned away from him swiftly. ‘I think it’s a good idea.’ she had said, her eyes avoiding his. ‘I don’t sleep well and I know how it must disturb you. I’ll move your things for you tomorrow.’
It was then that all his doubts had crystallized into certainty. He had spun on his heel, striding swiftly from the room, not trusting himself to remain.
‘Papa is not very well,’ she said, her brows puckering into a frown as she read the latest letter from France. ‘Mama says it’s a slight stroke. She wants him to move to Paris for good, not just for the winter months, but he’s refusing. He says no power on earth will remove him from Valmy.’
Greg looked across at her. They were sitting on the patio, watching as Dominic and his friends did spring dives into the pool. Whenever a letter came from Valmy she was pensive and he knew that no matter how hard she tried to hide it, she was longing for rain-washed skies and apple orchards and deep-shaded, high-hedged country lanes. He frowned. It had been six years since their last visit. Dering Advertising was flourishing and could survive quite well without him for five or six weeks, but Frank Warner was due to appear before the House Committee of UnAmerican Activities and he had promised to give him all the support he could.
‘Would you like to see him?’ he asked, as Dominic hurled himself into the pool with a somersault and his friends cheered.
‘Alors! Of course I would like to see him’ she said, her eyes overly bright. ‘But the agency … Dominic’s schooling …’
‘They’ll survive,’ he said, and then, reluctantly, ‘But we won’t be able to leave till the end of next month. Frank Warner has been subpoenaed to appear before the Committee for UnAmerican Activities.’
‘Frank has?’ She stared at him aghast. ‘Frank? Mon Dieu! How could anyone, even a fanatic like McCarthy, suspect Frank of being a communist? Why, he’s not even political!’
Greg’s mouth tightened. He had not intended telling her about Frank’s subpoena. McCarthy’s witch-hunt for communists and radicals reflected too shamefully on his country.
Lisette was still staring at him with horror. ‘But I thought you said that the House Committee was nothing but a backwater for racially prejudiced political has-beens?’
‘So it was. Unfortunately, McCarthy has altered all that. He’s winkled out a handful of communists from the government and now panic has set in and he’s been given a free hand to subpoena anyone who can be even remotely suspected of being a communist or a radical.’
‘But, Frank! He doesn’t hold a hard line view on anything! Why should they have picked on Frank?’
‘Because he mixes socially in government circles. Because he’s a chatterbox,’ Greg said, the white lines around his mouth deepening. ‘The Committee is scrounging for information. They want him to testify on the subject of his acquaintances, past and present.’
Lisette rose to her feet, white and trembling. ‘Merde! That is disgusting! I can’t believe that such a thing is happening! Not here, in America!’ She pushed her hair away from her face, her eyes flashing. ‘Who will this McCarthy start chasing next? Homosexuals? Jews?’
Greg shook his head. ‘No, it won’t go that far, Lisette. Not now Eisenhower is president. There will be no political necessity for it.’
She stared down at him. ‘There’s none now,’ she said quietly. ‘And Frank? What will he do?’
‘He’s going to take the Fifth Amendment.’
‘And what does that mean?’ Lisette asked confusedly. ‘Does it mean that he will refuse to testify against his friends?’
Greg nodded.
‘And then what will happen to him?’
Greg rose to his feet and crossed to the poolside bar, pouring a drink. ‘It means he could end up being blacklisted.’ he said heavily. ‘Financially no one will deal with him anymore. His company will be ruined.’
‘Could he be jailed?’ Lisette asked, as he passed her a large gin and tonic: ‘Isn’t that what they did to the writer Dashiell Hammett, when he refused to testify?’
Greg nodded. ‘Yes, but he’ll be doing the right thing, Lisette. He’ll be taking a stand against them and God knows, someone is going to have to soon, and in a big way.’
There was something in his voice that chilled her. The dark pupils of her eyes dilated.
‘Alors! Have you been subpoenaed, Greg? Are you going to have to testify to them?’
He grinned. The conversation had brought them suddenly very close together. ‘No, don’t worry about me. But by the time Eisenhower comes to the end of his term of office, I think you’ll find me giving the next Democratic candidate a lot of support. I might even stand for Congress myself.’
A month later Frank appeared before the House Committee and took the Fifth Amendment, refusing to testify. He was jailed for contempt and Greg flew back from Washington alone, his fury white-hot.
‘Isn’t there anything anyone can do?’ Lisette asked despairingly when he had showered and changed.
He shook his head. ‘Not yet, but McCarthy’s days are coming to an end. He’s beginning to express open hostility towards Eisenhower, and he’s fast losing support in the Senate. When we come back from France, I’m going to put the entire resources of Dering Advertising behind an attempt to show the public just what it is McCarthy stands for.’
A shadow touched her eyes. ‘I received a letter from Maman this morning. Our visit is going to coincide with a visit by Luke and Annabel. You don’t mind, do you, chérie?’
He turned away from her, strong and lithe, his jeans hugging his hips, his white silk shirt open at the throat revealing a pelt of darkly curling hair.
‘No,’ he said, and only the sharpest ear could have detected a note of terseness in his voice. He had long since convinced himself that Luke Brandon was not the cause of the unhappiness that lay, unacknowledged, at the heart of their marriage. He was certainly not going to delay taking Lisette home to Valmy simply because Luke would be there at the same time. He turned towards her and felt the same rising fervour at the sight of her that he had felt when they had first met.
‘Melanie will be company for Lucy,’ he said, not really caring whether she would be or not. Caring about nothing but his driving need to make love to her, knowing that if he did so her response would be feigned. A sham that he had not the courage to tell her he had seen through long ago.
‘Will Grandpére speak only French?’ a very American Lucy had asked curiously as they stood at the deck rails waiting for their first view of France.
‘Nearly,’ Lisette said with a laugh. ‘And you must speak French, too, Lucy. Do you remember the nursery rhymes I taught you? Sur le pont, d’Avignon, Frére Jacques, Frére Jacques?’
Lucy’s rosy cheeks were like ripe apples, her hair a tumbled mass of curls. ‘I don’t like speaking French, Mummy. It takes me so long to sa
y what I want to say. I can never remember the words like Dominic. My tongue gets fast.’
‘That’s because you’re a chatterbox, ma petite,’ Lisette said, hugging her tight. ‘Look! Can you see the white of the cliffs? That’s France, chérie. We’re nearly home!’
Lucy looked up at her mother curiously. ‘We’ve just left home,’ she said with childlike logic. ‘We won’t be going back for ages and ages. Not until the end of the summer.’
Lisette leaned eagerly over the deck rail, her eyes shining. ‘This is my home,’ she said rapturously. ‘This is France!’
She was shocked by her father’s frailty. He had begun to stoop and there was a hesitancy about his movements that had never been there before.
‘Oh, it’s so good to be home, Papa,’ she said, perching on the arm of his chair, her arm lovingly around his shoulders. ‘Why does San Francisco have to be so very far away?’
He had pressed her hand to his cheek, overjoyed at having her home once more, at having his grandchildren running noisily through the chateau and gardens.
‘Luke and Annabel and Melanie arrived five days ago,’ he said contentedly. ‘He looks very much the Englishman when he arrives. Always the dark suit. The white shirt. The very correct tie with the tiny, tiny dots.’ He chuckled with amusement. ‘And then he unpacks his luggage and he wears a turtleneck sweater and slacks and the suit stays in the back of his wardrobe until it is time for him to return to England.’
She was looking forward to seeing Luke again. For six years their letters had flown across the Atlantic. His, addressed ostensibly to both herself and Greg. Hers, addressed to both himself and Annabel. Both knew it was a politeness. Neither Greg nor Annabel were really interested in what they had to say to each other. Luke’s letters were full of his regular visits to Valmy. Of news of Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts. Of Old Bleriot’s health and Madame Pichon’s retirement. Lisette’s letters were full of Dominic and Lucy, but Dominic was mentioned far more often than Lucy. Not because she loved Dominic more. She didn’t. Lucy was just as fiercely precious to her. But because Luke was the only person with whom she could discuss Dominic without restraint. She could tell him how he looked, what he was achieving, without having to suffer the well-meant lies of how very like Greg he was. With Luke there was no pretence. No lies. He was, as he had said he would be many years before, her very best friend.
Never Leave Me Page 31