Judith Krantz

by Till We Meet Again

  During the first four years after the war, until Marie-Frédérique’s second birthday, Paul had been forced to agree with the Marquis de Saint-Fraycourt that Bruno should remain in Switzerland with his grandparents. During those two overwhelming years, when Marie-Frédérique was under two and Delphine was enduring the worst years yet of croup, Paul admitted, unhappily, that to burden Eve with the responsibility of a third child would be asking too much of her.

  However, in 1922, when Bruno was seven, Paul wrote his former father-in-law and asked that his son be sent to join him as soon as possible.

  “He writes,” the Marquis de Saint-Fraycourt said to his wife, his tone as measured, as spare as ever, his concise, small lips set in their usual compressed lines, “that at last it is time for his son to join his daughters.”

  “He used those words?” the Marquise asked indignantly.

  “Precisely. As if they were all part of the same pack, our Bruno and the two brats he has got from that person.”

  “How will you answer him?”

  “I do not intend to answer this letter. It took weeks to get here, so presumably it could have been lost in the mails. It will be several more weeks before Lancel can expect my response. Then he will wait, believing perhaps that we are traveling, and after a month he will write again. Then you, my dear, shall answer, pleading my ill health. You will tell him that the doctors inform you that I have not many months to live, and you shall request that Bruno stay with us just a short while longer. Even a brute such as Lancel cannot deny this request. My illness will last and last … indeed, I shall linger.” The Marquis permitted himself a brief smile. “You will, of course, write to him to report on my condition frequently. He must not be allowed to worry about our eventual intentions.”

  “And when shall you be forced to recover your health, my dear?”

  “It is now almost March. Sometime next autumn, as late in the year as possible, I will send him a letter myself, explaining that although I am still extremely weak, I believe that I am on my way to recovery. However, I will throw myself on his mercy. I will tell him that my only joy during the months of my illness—I beg your pardon for saying this, my dear—was the daily visit of Bruno to my bedside. I will ask for a few more months in which to complete my recovery, just until the Christmas holidays are over, until the beginning of 1923, and I will promise to send Bruno out to Australia at that time.”

  “Then what?”

  “I fear that you must be the next of us to fall ill. Far more seriously than I. And for a longer time,”

  “You can’t expect Lancel to wait indefinitely just because one of us is sick,” the Marquise protested. “This is the man who left for the war when Laure was expecting a child.”

  “That is exactly what I am counting on. He cannot have forgotten that our poor child implored him not to leave her. He cannot have forgotten that if he had only remained with her a few more months, as he so easily could have done, she would be alive today. And if he should have forgotten how guilty he is, you may count on me to remind him. He will not want another death on his conscience. Furthermore, I shall tell him, if he doesn’t understand it by now, that Bruno has never known another mother than you. It is unthinkable that he could tear a child away from his mother when that mother is dying.”

  “For how long can my terminal illness be drawn out?” the Marquise asked, with a faint, superstitious quiver.

  “Fortunately for a very long time. You have the best medical attention in Europe and you are a strong woman. You will have complications—complications upon complications—yet you will continue to draw breath, thanks only to the miraculous presence of Bruno, who gives you a reason to live. In this way we will gain—oh, at least a year and a half, perhaps two. By 1925, who knows what may have happened?”

  “What if Lancel decides to come suddenly, without warning, and fetch Bruno himself?”

  “Nonsense. He cannot come from Australia in a twinkling of an eye. It is a long journey. Like all First Secretaries, he has a heavy schedule of official duties—I have made it my business to keep myself informed of his affairs, and I assure you that my friends at the Quai d’Orsay will not allow him to take several months’ leave for purely personal matters. But …”

  “What?”

  “One day, unquestionably, he will come.”

  “Bruno is seven now. Can we hope for more than four years’ respite before Lancel demands his rights?”

  “I am counting on no more than four. But by then Bruno will be eleven. No longer a child, my dear. And a Saint-Fraycourt in every sense.”

  In 1924, after almost five years in Australia, Paul de Lancel was posted to Cape Town as Consul General. The domestic upheaval caused by the new position forced him to postpone yet again a journey back to Paris, which he had long planned, in order to see the ailing Marquise de Saint-Fraycourt and arrange, finally, for Bruno to join his family. The frequent letters and photographs he received from the Marquis, and from Bruno himself, had done much to relieve Paul’s mind on the subject of his son. Certainly the boy seemed entirely happy and busy in the Parisian life to which his grandparents had returned in 1923. He did not lack for friends or family pleasures, since he took his place, as a cousin, among the many grandchildren of the family.

  However, it was growing increasingly difficult to realize that he actually had a son, Paul thought. The newborn baby he had seen only once during the first year of the war had lived more than nine years without being reunited with his father. If he were not a career diplomat, condemned to go to the ends of the earth at the command of his government, the boy would have been returned to him as soon as the war ended. The subsequent ill health of the Marquis and Marquise had created an impossible situation, but he felt he was too indebted to them for their care of his child during the war years to take Bruno away suddenly. It would be condemning to a tragic end people who had already lost so much.

  With every letter from them he was reminded again of the loss of Laure. They wrote stoically, yet the letters were all the more powerful for a restraint he suspected they forced themselves to maintain so as not to reopen his own wounds.

  But Bruno was his son. His place was with his father. The situation was unnatural in spite of its having happened so inevitably. No one was to blame. Everyone was to blame. And as soon as he had settled into the Consulship in Cape Town, as soon as the office was running smoothly, as soon as Eve and the girls had moved into their new home, he would return to Paris and not come back unless Bruno was with him.

  Troubled, Paul de Lancel walked along the Rue de Varenne toward the entrance to Bruno’s school. It was June of 1925. He had just arrived in Paris and immediately paid a visit to the Marquise de Saint-Fraycourt. What an effort she had made, he thought, actually to receive him in her sickroom. He knew that for such a proud woman to be forced to be seen lying helplessly in bed, with an embroidered bed jacket modestly covering her nightgown, must have been a humiliation, no matter how much she had protested that she must greet him in person. She had been so pale, so slow to speak, and obviously in pain, although she had insisted, as of course she would, that she was on the road to recovery. It must be cancer, he decided. In his letters the Marquis de Saint-Fraycourt had been unwilling to dwell on the exact nature of her illness in the way that, in Paul’s experience, always meant cancer.

  The Marquis still insisted that only Bruno’s presence kept the Marquise alive, yet surely, Paul told himself, the Marquise must be putting the boy’s future ahead of her own suffering. She had visibly repressed her unhappiness when Paul told her of his plans for Bruno to rejoin him, and she had not attempted to dissuade him from his intention. Could it be that she saw her own end near, and therefore was able to make this sacrifice? Was she so weary that she had no power left to try to keep the boy, or was she being ultimately unselfish?

  He didn’t understand her and he never would, Paul realized, as he approached closer to the school. The Marquise de Saint-Fraycourt belonged to this part of Paris,
this walled, closed, secret heart of the Ancien Régime, where great houses stood like a maze of splendid gray fortresses, protected by their walled courtyards to which the uninvited could never gain entrance, their huge gardens hidden forever from view to anyone but their noble proprietors who lived in vast rooms with creaking parquet floors and sublime proportions. How different it had been for him, growing up in the open air of Champagne, running in and out of Valmont with his dogs, a part of ever-renewing nature. The Lancels had been too busy supervising the growth of the grapes, and the honor of the Marque, to make a ritual out of pure tradition, he mused, but in the Seventh Arrondissement, where the descendants of the highest nobility in France still lived, ancestor worship hung like incense in the air.

  Paul turned a corner and stood on the curb, waiting. In a few minutes, Bruno would emerge from school. Bruno knew his father was going to be there, but Paul had not yet written him of his plan to be reunited with him. That, he decided, must be announced in person.

  The massive doors swung open as the first group of boys rushed out into the sunshine. They were too young, Paul saw immediately. Bruno would not be among them. Paul was tense with suspense. He had thought it would be easier to first meet his son like this, in the open air, but now he longed for the formality of the Saint-Fraycourt salon, for the presence of other people, to blur the edges of this difficult, too-long-postponed reunion.

  Another swarm of boys left the school, all dressed alike in their blue blazers and gray flannel shorts, the school caps on their heads, and heavy, brown book bags slung across their chests. They lingered in the doorway, joking in high animation before they disappeared in different directions, each boy giving his fellows the brisk, indispensable handshake of farewell.

  The tallest boy of all approached Paul.

  “Good day, Father,” Bruno said with composure, extending his hand. Paul took it automatically, too surprised to speak. He had no idea that ten-year-old Bruno would be so tall, as tall as any fourteen-year-old Paul had ever seen. His voice, clear, high and even, was that of the child he still was, but his handshake was vigorous and his features were already well formed. Paul blinked with startled eyes at his son. Dark hair, well cut and well kept; dark eyes flecked with green that met his own with frank curiosity; a high, thin, arched nose, the Saint-Fraycourt nose; and, unexpectedly, a small smiling mouth, the only somewhat disappointing feature of a handsome face which otherwise was remarkable for its definition and purpose.

  The moment had passed when he could have embraced his son, Paul realized in confusion, as he found himself walking by Bruno’s side. Just as well perhaps, for the boy’s poise was surely hard-fought-for, and a hug, certainly a kiss, might have destroyed it.

  “Bruno, you can’t know how happy I am to see you,” Paul said.

  “Do I look as you hoped, Father?” Bruno asked politely.

  “Much better, Bruno, much, much better.”

  “Grandmother says I look just like my mother,” Bruno continued calmly, and as he spoke, Paul realized that the small, full mouth was Laure’s mouth. It was oddly shocking to see it on a male face.

  “You do, yes, you do indeed. Tell me, Bruno, do you like school?” Even as he asked, Paul cursed himself for the banal question that every child must hear from every adult. Yet Bruno brightened, his grown-up composure becoming suddenly the enthusiasm of his age. “It’s the best school in the Seventh, you know, and I’m at the head of my class.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that, Bruno.”

  “Thank you, Father. There are boys who have to study much longer hours than I do, but I get the best marks. I don’t even mind taking exams. What’s there to be afraid of, when you’re really prepared? My two best friends, Geoffrey and Jean-Paul, give me a lot of competition, but so far I’m keeping just ahead of them. One day the three of us together will run France.”

  “What!”

  “Yes, that’s what Jean-Paul’s father says, and he’s president of the State Council. He says that only boys who start out like us can make it to the top. The future leaders of France are all destined to come from a few schools in Paris, so we’ve got every chance. It’s my ambition to be Prime Minister one day, Father.”

  “Isn’t it a little early in life to decide on your career?”

  “Not at all. If I hadn’t decided by now, it would almost be too late. Geoffrey and Jean-Paul aren’t any older than I am. We know already how well we must do on the Baccalaureate—that’s only a few years away. Then we have to pass the entrance exams for the Institute for Political Studies. But once we’ve graduated from ‘Sciences Po,’ well … we’ll be in. Then it will just be competition from the other graduates. I’m not going to worry about that now.”

  “Good,” Paul said dryly. In his years out of his country, he realized, he had almost forgotten the elitist mind-set of the French ruling class. There was an unquestioning acceptance of a system based on a combination of intellectual superiority and access to the very few select schools. The system effectively eliminated any other kind of person from participating in the government of France. It utterly rejected the outsider, although unquestionably it attracted the most brilliant minds and formed them early. Somehow, Paul had never expected Bruno to be part of this system. Certainly his letters had not indicated the ambition he so obviously felt, but then they had always been short and impersonal.

  “Don’t you have any time to have fun, or is it all study, Bruno?” he asked, worried at the image of a child spending all his time on schoolwork.

  “All study?” Bruno laughed briefly. “Of course not. I have fencing classes twice a week, Father. My fencing master is very pleased with my progress, but the most important thing to me is riding. Didn’t Grandfather send you a picture of me on horseback? I’m studying dressage already, because—no, don’t laugh at me, Father, but I want to be on the French Olympic Equestrian Team someday. It’s my biggest ambition.”

  “I thought you wanted to be Prime Minister?”

  “You are laughing at me!” Bruno said angrily.

  “No, Bruno, not at all, just teasing you.” His son didn’t seem to have a sense of humor, Paul thought. He must remember that he was just a child, after all, in spite of his grown-up talk about ambition. “There’s no reason you can’t do both.”

  “Exactly. That’s what Grandfather said. I ride every weekend and during the school vacations. I’m too tall for ponies, of course, but my cousin François, Grandmother’s nephew, has many wonderful horses, and he lives near Paris. I go there as often as I can—last Easter I spent the whole vacation at his château, and this summer he’s invited me again, to stay as long as I like. His children all ride well. We intend to follow the hunt next winter, even though we’re too young to join yet. I can’t wait!”

  As they walked the next few blocks, Bruno told Paul who lived in each of the great houses, which, to him, were familiar territory. There didn’t seem to be one, except the embassies, which was not the home of one or another of his classmates, not one in which he had not played games in the secluded gardens and explored the attics and cellars. “This is the only part of Paris anyone would want to live in, don’t you agree, Father?”

  “I suppose so,” Paul answered.

  “I’m certain of it,” Bruno said, with a conciseness that reminded Paul of the Marquis de Saint-Fraycourt. “Everything important is here. Even when I go to ‘Sciences Po,’ it’s just right down that street.”

  “Bruno—”

  “Yes, Father?”

  Paul hesitated, drawing back for a moment from telling Bruno that next year he would be living in Cape Town. “I brought some photographs for you.” He stopped on the street and took out the pictures he had taken of Eve and the girls in the garden of their house. “This one, these are your sisters.” Bruno glanced at the picture of the two laughing little girls.

  “They look nice,” he said politely. “How old are they now?”

  “Delphine is seven and Marie-Frédérique—she insists that we call her
Freddy now—is five and a half. They were a little younger when this picture was taken.”

  “They are pretty children,” Bruno said. “I don’t know much about little girls.”

  “And this is my wife.”

  Bruno’s eyes slid quickly away from the photo of Eve.

  “Your stepmother is very anxious to grow to know you, Bruno.”

  “She is your wife, Father. But not my stepmother.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Paul demanded.

  “I don’t like the word stepmother. I had a mother, I have two grandmothers, but I do not need a stepmother.”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “It is not an idea, it is a feeling. I didn’t ‘get it’ anywhere—I have always felt it, for as long as I can remember.” For the first time, Bruno’s voice trembled with emotion.

  “That’s only because you don’t know her, Bruno. You wouldn’t feel that way if you did, I assure you.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” Bruno’s brief, withdrawing words put the subject away on a distant shelf. Paul looked at his son’s half-averted face, his features even more distinct and formed in profile than they were in full face, and put the photos back in the breast pocket of his jacket.

  “Look, Bruno. I think that it is time for you to come and live with me,” he said firmly.

  “No!” The boy stepped back and his head snapped up.

  “I understand your reaction, Bruno. I expected it. It’s a new idea for you, but not for me. I’m your father, Bruno. Your grandparents have been the finest of grandparents, but they can’t take the place of a father. You should be with me as you grow up.”

  “I am grown up!”

  “No, Bruno, you’re not. You’re not even eleven years old.”

  “What does my age have to do with it?”

  “Years matter, Bruno. You’re mature for your age, but ‘grown up’ is something else. ‘Grown up’ means having a wider experience of life, so that you’ll know more about yourself and other people than you do now.”