The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  “I’m bored to death with him,” she whispered and knew that in this moment she’d have said and done anything he demanded. In the next second he was inside her, and she forgot Frederic and everything else that was part of her life.

  7

  “It’s after one o’clock,” Franca said softly. “And I didn’t even notice how fast the time’s gone by.”

  Beatrice started. She had been deeply submerged in her memories. “Excuse me, Franca. I keep on talking without letting up and prevent you from going to sleep. I hope you weren’t bored.”

  “Not at all! Quite the contrary. What happened after that?”

  Beatrice sighed. “Well — it didn’t stop with this … experience in the bay. Of course it didn’t. We both wanted more. We saw each other every day, we made love every day. We forgot everything and everyone. Helene noticed that something was going on, and Frederic noticed too. He called daily, just as he had before, and I told him things weren’t progressing with the sale of the house, and I’d have to stay longer than planned. He said I sounded funny and different, and something had to be off, and of course I denied it, explained again and again that everything was alright. But nothing was alright, nothing at all. I was having an affair with the man who’d left me behind once already, and I knew that he’d do it again, but I couldn’t resist him.” Beatrice moved her hand nervously over the table’s surface. “Everything I’d once been so proud of failed. My will power, my pride, my discipline. I was wax in Julien’s hands. And I couldn’t even sense the desire not to be. I was alive! With every fiber of my being, with all of my soul, I was alive. I wouldn’t have given up a second, not willingly.”

  “Did you talk about the future? About the possibility of a future together.”

  Beatrice shook her head. “Somehow it was clear that this was never an option. Julien didn’t say it, but it was simply the case. We had these few weeks in summer. Afterwards, we would go back, each of us, to our own lives, and we would probably never see each other again.”

  “You were able to live with this?”

  “I had to live with it, and therefore I was able to. I think that at the time each of us was taking something for ourselves, something we needed. We didn’t think ahead.”

  “What were you taking?”

  “I had had so little time to be young,” said Beatrice. “And after the war I had gone through a valley of tears. Afterwards, I’d withdrawn into a life that wasn’t fitting for how old I was. With Julien I found a bit of lightness again. This lightness has never completely left me. Even to this day it hasn’t, and for this I’m very grateful, both to Julien and to fate.

  “And what did Julien want?”

  Beatrice shrugged her shoulders. “You should look at it without any sentimentality. Julien simply wanted to reclaim possession of his old territory. He wanted to know if he could still have me. These men from the south of France, that’s how they are.”

  “Did Suzanne notice anything?”

  “Of course. Looking back it was clear to me that she’d noticed something in those first few seconds, when we met on the cliff path and Julien and I recognized each other. The meal together enabled her to feel out the situation. Not for nothing did she want to take Julien with her to Venice right away. And it was all definitively clear to her when, at the end of that first week, he didn’t go back to Paris to meet her as they’d agreed, but rather told her on the telephone that he wanted to stay longer on Guernsey. She was already on to her next job and she couldn’t travel back here to come between us. It must have driven her rather mad to know that we were enjoying ourselves on the island while she was off somewhere making her fashion photos and was out of action.”

  “An extremely unpleasant situation for her.”

  “Of course. And so she’d built up a well of fury when she finally came rushing in at the end of July. The scene she made was film-worthy. I’ll ask you not to make me get into details, words were said that can hardly be repeated. Suzanne was a temperamental woman. And she turned into a wild animal when she saw a threat to what was hers.”

  “Helene,” said Franca, “heard all of it.”

  Beatrice nodded. “The production took place in our house. Helene stood by the whole time, and Mae too, actually, she’d just come by for a visit. When it was over the two of them had come to understand that for six weeks I had been having intimate relations with a French journalist who had also been my lover from the days of the war. Poor Helene went from one shock to the next. I’d tricked her twice: during the war, and now once again. But now, she finally had all the information she’d been missing up to that point.”

  “Did you see Julien again?”

  “Never. Not even after the scene with Suzanne, not for any kind of goodbye. We couldn’t bid each other adieu. When I went to the hotel the next day they had both gone. My guess is she gave him an ultimatum: either he would go with her immediately, without seeing me again, or she would throw their marriage on the trash heap. Julien knew the jig was up. And he’d gotten what he wanted. So he went.”

  “And you …”

  “And I was pregnant. Which became apparent a little later. I went back to Cambridge without having sold the house, and at some point it was also visible to Frederic that a child was on the way. He thought it was his, of course. He was beside himself with joy.”

  “And you?”

  “I went through a bad phase,” said Beatrice. “I felt miserable and unhappy. The pregnancy was very difficult for me, I was ill all the time, and I felt depressed. I was raw with longing for Julien, and at the same time I had a horribly bad conscience where Frederic was concerned, who was touching in his efforts to be of help to me. He of course noticed my moodiness, my frequent crying. But he chalked it up to the pregnancy and never hit on the idea that something else could have been behind it.”

  “It would never have come to light,” Franca said quietly.

  “No,” said Beatrice. “No, it wouldn’t have. Alan would have been born and would have grown up as our son. I would have again become accustomed to the limited life of Cambridge and would likely have found my peace again. I’d have had it good. Frederic and I would have grown old together, hand in hand.”

  “But then along came Helene.”

  “Yes. Literally. She made the trip in early January, 1957. She stood outside the door as unexpectedly as that time in London when I was going to take Frederic back to my apartment for the first time. She had two suitcases with her and was deeply upset that we hadn’t invited her for either Christmas or New Year’s. I was at seventh months, my belly was rather large, I had swollen ankles, and I waddled like a duck. In general though, I was just starting to find my way back into my old, familiar life. But you get strange premonitions sometimes, you know? I saw Helene standing there at the door and I knew that there were troubles in store for me.”

  “She told Frederic all she knew.”

  “I don’t know if she had come to Cambridge specifically with this intention or if she came to the decision spontaneously — but one day, when I was going for a walk, she laid it all out for him, told him everything about that summer, gave an account of Julien and me and Suzanne and came out with her suspicion that the child that was to come into the world in March was from Julien and not from him, Frederic. I still remember, it was a wet, cold January day, ugly and gloomy, and I came back to the house as darkness was settling in, rather frozen. I was looking forward to a warm bath, hot tea, and an evening in front of the hearth. Helene had already gone to bed, which struck me as odd, and Frederic didn’t come out of the study to greet me, as he always used to do. Finally, I went to him. The room stank of whiskey, which was completely out of the ordinary. Frederic had never drunk to excess. His eyes were red with tears, he was deathly pale, and at first I thought there’d been some tragedy. Someone must have died, someone who was very close to him. One of his stude
nts? A few possibilities flew through my head as I stood by the door and saw him coming towards me, and although I didn’t know what was really going on, I felt how something dark was developing between us, between me and Frederic, a danger was starting to emerge there that I couldn’t yet see, but that flooded me with fear.

  “ ‘Frederic,’ I whispered. ‘What’s happened?’

  “He must have drunk a ton, but he didn’t stumble. Probably the shock had hit him so hard that the alcohol couldn’t totally numb him. He spoke haltingly, but he didn’t slur his speech. He was drunk, and he also wasn’t. I’d never seen a person in such a state.

  “ ‘Say that it isn’t true,’ he pleaded. ‘For God’s sake, tell me it isn’t true!’

  “I wanted to know what he meant, but he seemed barely able to put it into words and speak it out loud. Had it not been for the smell of whiskey, I wouldn’t have guessed that he had been drinking; I would have thought he was sick. I pressed him into the chair next to the small fireplace and asked what had happened. I’d most have liked to fall to his feet and wrap my arms around his knees but my fat belly wouldn’t allow it. So I stood before him and stroked his hair, and after a stretch of time that seemed like forever, during which he was hopelessly searching for words, he finally told me about the conversation with Helene. He didn’t look at me as he spoke. Rather he stared at the opposite wall or simply out into space. Whereas I looked at the bookcase next to the fireplace, without seeing anything but the flickering letters in the titles of the books. The floor was swaying under my feet, my mouth was dry all of a sudden, and I felt horribly ill. It was clear to me at once that I wouldn’t be able to deny anything, even if Frederic had perhaps been all too willing to believe me.

  “ ‘Say it isn’t true,’ he repeated, and now he looked up at me, looked in my eyes. He saw the answer there before I could open my mouth, and if it was at all possible, his face grew even paler. He began to cry once more, and I stroked his hair mechanically while I struggled against the dizziness that made it hard for me to keep standing up. I had never seen someone so deeply hurt, so distraught, I realized that before me were lying shards that could never be put back together. On this afternoon, Frederic was broken. Our love was broken. And inevitably, soon afterwards, our marriage broke up as well.”

  Beatrice was silent, the memory etching pain into her features.

  “We should never even have tried any more,” she added.

  “He wanted the divorce?” Franca asked with a catch in her voice.

  “Frederic would never have done that. He was ready to give his name to the child I was expecting; he was ready to continue our living together. He wanted to try and have everything be like it was before. But it didn’t work. He couldn’t get past what had happened, and eventually it became clear to me that I couldn’t live with this broken man. His anguish became more and more overwhelming to me. I lost all my joy in life. I grew thinner and would just hang around all pale and weepy. When Alan was six months old, I decided to go. Frederic accepted it at once. I’m sure it had become obvious to him also that there was no future for the two of us.”

  “You came back here.”

  “It was the only place I could go. My house, my home. The alternative would have been some small apartment, but I wanted Alan to have space and to be able to grow up in healthy surroundings. Guernsey was ideal.”

  “But Helene was here,” Franca pointed out. “And Helene had destroyed everything. Could you be under the same roof as her?”

  “At first I thought I couldn’t,” said Beatrice. “I was filled with rage, filled with pain. I wanted to throw her out, once and for all. But then I arrived, and here she sat, at this table, and wailed and whined and blamed herself — and I knew I’d never manage it. She presented such a picture of misery, and eventually there was the kernel of a thought growing within me that …,” Beatrice hesitated, “that in the end it wasn’t Helene who had destroyed my marriage. She had done something awful, but she hadn’t said anything that wasn’t the truth. Do you understand? The affair with Julien had really taken place, and the feelings that had led me to go through with the affair had been real. Something had never been right between me and Frederic, otherwise I’d never have fallen into Julien’s arms in that hungry way. Today I’m sure that even without Helene’s involvement, it would eventually have come to an end between us.”

  “You didn’t feel hatred any more?”

  “Oh no, that I certainly felt,” said Beatrice. “And I still feel it today. But not because of all that. I hate Helene because she has managed to tie me down all my life and to bind me to her. Because she came into my house in 1940 and occupied it, and to this day still occupies it. She’s never given up her occupier mentality. When Winston Churchill announced the liberation of the Channel Islands, he forgot Helene Feldmann.”

  “You rebuilt your parents’ rose nursery?” Franca asked carefully.

  Somewhere inside the house a clock struck the half hour.

  “Half past one,” said Beatrice. “We should gradually start to make our way to bed. Come on,” she reached for the bottle of wine, “we’ll both have one more proper drink each. You simply feel better afterwards.” She poured the ruby-red liquid into the glasses.

  “Yes, I grew roses,” she said, returning to Franca’s question. “I had to do something, and it was natural to build on something my parents had made.” She took a large drink from her wine. It showed in her eyes that she was looking back over the years and retracing the path she had taken.

  “I hired a gardener from here on the island. He knew loads about roses and instructed me on what I didn’t know. I do have to say, though, that he always did most of the work, and if we were able to count a few successes with the operation, it was on account of him. I didn’t get rich, but I was able to pay him, and I was able to feed myself. And, on top of that, put money away for the modest pension that now keeps me afloat. So instead of Cambridge, I had these damn flowers.” She smiled bitterly.

  “I raised my child and cared for Helene, who over the years became less and less capable of taking care of herself. There were times when I hated every single moment of my life. But somehow I endured, and I don’t think there’s any sense in whining about it now. Taken together, everything wasn’t at all that bad.”

  That was a lie, and Franca knew it, but she did the old woman the favor of not contradicting her.

  8

  She hadn’t thought she’d be so bored. From St. Peter Port she knew these gray, uneventful days, days when the morning dragged along, sluggish and without end, and then turned into an afternoon that was just as torpid. Life picked up again when twilight fell, but every day presented anew the almost insurmountable problem of figuring out what to do with all the time until then.

  She could sleep into the late hours of morning, but by eleven at the latest she was wide awake and couldn’t stand to be in bed any longer. Then she would slink around the apartment wearing only a T-shirt and panties; look at the pictures on the wall, even though she knew each of them down to the last detail; take a few books off the shelves and page through them, bored; and finally settle on the colorful fashion magazines that she’d usually bought the day before. The magazines that he had lying around the apartment didn’t interest her; they were almost exclusively all trade publications for lawyers.

  The breakfast she ate while reading — or really, while looking at photos — almost always consisted of a glass of orange juice, a slice of bread with a bit of cheddar, and many cups of strong, black coffee. Then she would smoke a cigarette, stare out the window, listen to the bustling activity on the street and ask herself if the grand adventure she’d embarked upon was really supposed to look like this.

  Eventually she was showered, dressed, and ready to start — without knowing what she was actually going to start. She was drawn from street to street and in and out of shops. She stared longingl
y at all the wonderful things she’d so badly have liked to have, spent hours at Harrod’s trying on dozens of dresses and then putting them back since she didn’t have the money to buy them.

  The weather was sunny and mild, and most of the time around two o’clock she would drink a coffee at a sidewalk café and have a donut along with it, and in order to arrive at cheerier thoughts she would often order a glass of sparkling wine — she’d have liked champagne better, but her money was threatening to run out, and she could hardly permit herself the luxury.

  Alan might see fit to throw something my way every now and then, she sometimes thought in anger. She’d now been with Alan in London for ten days, and there didn’t seem to be anything in the works that would have really changed her life in a lasting way. The idea to make her time there any more pleasant seemed not to occur to Alan.

  He took her out to dinner in the evening, that she did have to admit, and later, when they were together in his living room, he was more than generous with the champagne and expensive wines. But early in the morning he went off to his law firm, and there he stayed until evening.

  What does he think I’m doing the whole time, she thought, infuriated.

  At noon on the second day of her stay she’d shown up at his office unannounced, intending to meet him for lunch. He had been in a meeting with two clients, but had come out after his secretary had told him that Maya was there. Maya had put on a monstrously chic outfit and had gone to great lengths with her appearance. She could tell by looking at him that he found her attractive.

  “Darling, it’s not going to work,” he said regretfully. “I have to have lunch with my clients. It’s been fixed for a long while.”

  She pouted her lips and tossed her long hair back. Her earrings jangled, soft and suggestive. “What about tomorrow?”