‘Was Paul pleased with his party?’ I ask with forced casualness.
‘I think so,’ Beatrice laughs, drops a sugar cube into her coffee. ‘To tell you the truth, he’s been so busy I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to him. And on Friday, he’s off to Brittany with the kids for the long weekend.’
‘Aren’t you going to go?’
‘He’s taking his mother home,’ she says, as if this is explanation in itself. ‘If you’re here, we can do something. Go somewhere.’
‘The Miro Exhibition, perhaps.’
‘Yes.’ She gets up. ‘I’d better run home. Marie-Françoise will be waiting.’ She pushes the curtain back from the window a little and looks out.
‘She’s a lovely child,’ I say.
‘Maria, look,’ Beatrice is suddenly excited. ‘You can see into our front room from here. I can wave to you in the mornings over breakfast. We’re almost as close as when I stayed with you. Do you remember? When I had my broken leg.’
I stand next to her and look out. ‘Oh yes,’ I say with a tone of surprise, feeling like the errant deceiver I am. ‘Isn’t it amazing.’
The next morning I see Beatrice and Marie-Françoise standing by their front window and waving at me. I open mine and wave back. When I stop and return to my breakfast, I have a strange feeling that a reversal is taking place. The feeling persists over the next days. I have a sense that I am being watched, secretly, ardently, though I am not certain who is the watcher. Increasingly, I draw my curtains.
Marie-Françoise pops in on her own on Thursday after school. She wants me to show her my house, she says seriously, and I do so with equal seriousness. Then she hangs about, visibly unwilling to leave until finally I ask her if anything is wrong. She shakes her head at first, then shrugs, ‘Maman is not in a good mood,’ she confides to me.
‘Oh.’
‘A very bad mood.’
I smile at her. ‘Perhaps she’s tired. Perhaps she finds it difficult having your mémère around. Sometimes it’s hard for mothers.’
She thinks about this, then nods, while I think that I am relieved to hear that even serene Beatrice has moments of visible bad temper.
‘Problem is I got a two in my dictée and Madame Delfort says Maman has to sign my notebook,’ Marie-Françoise murmurs.
‘Two out of ten?’
‘Yes.’ A frown creases her brow. Tears are held back.
‘And why is that?’
‘I think I wasn’t paying attention.’
‘Well you’ll just have to tell your mother that you were day-dreaming and you’ll do better next time. A lot better.’
She considers this. ‘Alright.’
‘And I imagine you’d better get home now, or your mother will be worrying.’
‘Oh, I told her I was coming.’ She wriggles out of the sofa. ‘Can I come back next week? After the holiday.’
‘Whenever you like and I’m here.’
‘Well thank-you for having me,’ she says in her little girl rote voice.
I grin. ‘Thank-you for coming Marie-Françoise.’
After she has gone, I reflect to myself that in the logic of things, Nicolas should come and check me out next, closely followed by Paul. But it occurs to me that there is more wish than logic in this. Paul probably hasn’t touched base long enough to even learn that I’m here, and even if he had, the last thing he would want to do is visit. The trouble is I miss him. Even my research seems to have grown less compelling now that he isn’t there to argue it over with.
On Saturday Beatrice rings me early. She sounds a little shy, breathless. ‘You know you suggested we go to the Miro exhibition. Well, what I would really like to do - say no if you think it’s a waste of time - is go shopping. I need some summer clothes and I thought you could help me choose. You have such good taste.’
‘You have good taste, too, Beatrice,’ I demure. ‘But if you like…’
We traipse through the streets of Saint-Germain, go up as far as Saint-Placide and then down again the other side. It isn’t easy for me. Beatrice seems to have developed a desire for bright colours and patterns which drown her quiet looks. I pretend I am back in New York and grooming a client for television and persuade her into creams and tans, classical blacks. I wonder at one point if we are both wrong. I am trying to restore the gentle, demure girl of my childhood and she wants to create the dramatic persona who can stand up to her mother-in-law. We settle somewhere in between: two simple well-cut dresses, but with a patterned African wrap and some thick glossy beads for added effect. Beatrice gazes at herself as I show her how to arrange the shawl in different styles and seems pleased.
The days pass. Tanya comes to visit and tells me she has been following Paul’s current case, went to court to watch him at work. ‘Pretty good,’ she says grudgingly. ‘Sometimes very good. But I think his client’s going to lose. And boy did he bite my head off afterwards because he’d seen me there. Told me I had no business coming without telling him beforehand. So I gave him a piece of my mind and told him he was neither my Lord nor Master, not even my boss. And guess what? He apologized.’
I wish I could give Paul a piece of my mind, though I don’t know quite what piece I’d give him.
More days pass. I go out to dinner with Patrick Morin and make witty noises, but don’t let him past the front door. Vesna Dimic rings and comes round with Jasha. She is timid and hostile by turn, until I bring out a set of children’s language tapes and French songs for the boy and set him up with earphones. Then she confides in me that what she would like most of all is to get him a musical instrument, a piano or a guitar. He likes music and he will need it, she tells me. He is due for another eye operation next month, but no one knows how much sight he can hope to regain. She doesn’t tell me how he lost his sight. She doesn’t talk about the war at all. I don’t press her. Sometimes one needs secrets, even from oneself. To keep one’s face in place and one’s legs moving. I know. Instead we talk about all the food we can eat and clothes we can buy in French. This fantasy gorging tickles her and she goes off smiling - Jasha, his tapes and the walkman I have lent him in tow. She isn’t effusive in her thanks. Gratitude, I realise, is only an easy emotion when one has a lot to give. Instead, she says that next time, she and Jasha will bring me some cevapcici, so that I can taste some local cooking.
I work. I ferry files to and from the office and go to libraries. I see Beatrice and Marie Françoise, who even drags her brother with her one day. He is so uncomfortable that he only manages three sentences during the time they stay. But he flashes me a rare smile as they go through the door.
I do all these things and while I do them I know that I am waiting. Though what exactly I am waiting for isn’t clear. Perhaps it is simply a confrontation with Paul. It comes to me at one point that he may think the confrontation is already over and I am waiting in vain. But I cannot get rid of this sense of waiting.
One evening, I think it is the day when Nicolas has come to visit and it must be late for it is finally dark, I am sitting at the table in the front room reading, when I have the distinct sense that comes upon me from time to time that I am being watched. I look out and I see Paul silhouetted against the window. There is a light somewhere behind him and it is the first time I am certain it is him. I stare for a moment and then something takes me over. I don’t draw my curtains. Instead I begin slowly to undress, unbutton my shirt, pull down my trousers, shake out my hair. I walk back and forth in front of the windows and take off my bra, my knickers, throw them flagrantly towards the window. I am performing a strip, like in my dream, but more leisurely, more methodical. I tell myself I am only doing this because I so hate the passivity of waiting.
The next day Madame Duval rings me. She tells me the Maître would like to see me on Friday. The trial is finally over. I tell her that Friday would be very inconvenient. Could the Maître name a date next week. She says she will ring me back.
A few minutes later the phone rings again and a tiny ache of trium
ph goes through me. I am certain it is Paul. But the voice that greets me isn’t Paul’s and it takes me a moment to recognize it.
‘Hello beautiful. I’ve just landed. Are you free for dinner tonight?’
‘Grant?’
‘The very same.’ He chuckles. ‘So cancel all the beaux and let me take you out.’
I let him.
We sit in the art deco ocean liner which is the restaurant of the Hotel Lutetia and float over our lives. Apart from the grey which is winning the battle against the brown in his hair, Grant is unchanged. He still openly assesses me over the tops of his spectacles.
‘Odd to see you in your native habitat,’ he says to me after I have grilled him about New York. ‘You never used to want to come here when we travelled together.’
I laugh. ‘Do my plumes look less bright?’
‘No, not that. But you’re quieter.’
‘Maybe it’s just that I have no one to be noisy with.’
He chuckles.’I don’t know whether I should be sorry about that or not. But you’re not still succumbing to the easy seductions of despair, are you?’
I think about this. ‘I didn’t find it so easy,’ I say at last.
‘No, of course not, that was crass of me.’ He takes my hand.
‘But yes, I think I’ve climbed out of the pit.’
‘So Mr. Jimenez is properly buried at last.’
‘And properly remembered. Maybe that’s just as important.’
We are quiet for a moment. Then he says, ‘And you feel at home here. You have no thoughts about coming back? To New York, I mean.’
The question startles me and I have to consider it. Finally I shake my head and tell Grant about what I’ve been doing, about the notion of studying law which has arisen from it. I don’t tell him about Paul, but he is in my mind as I talk and I wonder whether my decision is really only to do with him and will crumble without him. It suddenly becomes terribly important to me to hear how Grant will respond to my plans, he who knows me so well.
When I finish, he whistles under his breath. I have a feeling he is going to give me a piece of throw-away irony, scupper my best-laid plans with a swingeing remark about belated adolescence. But he doesn’t. He looks at me seriously and says, ‘I take it all back. No slough of despair. You’ve come a long way.’
It is over coffee that he asks me whether I might consider doing the occasional work for him from here, a little consultancy - French clients again. I could meet one lot of them in the coming days. He’d make sure I was well paid. And it shouldn’t interfere with studies.
‘You’re doing this to help me out?’ I quiz him.
‘Have I ever been that generous? No. I’ve been trying to get hold of you on and off for months. You could have saved me a trip.’
‘Done.’ I grin at him. ‘It couldn’t have come at a better time.’
Later, he insists on seeing me home. He doesn’t care that it’s a five minute walk and the streets are safe. Anyhow he wants to inspect the site of my new life, he tells me. I don’t protest. I like having Grant’s protective arm round my shoulders, I like showing him into the apartment. It makes me feel as if my various lives are coming together.
‘Nice,’ he says as he looks around. ‘Very nice.’ He settles into the sofa. ‘Now all you have to do is offer me a drink and invite me to stay and I’ll be a supremely happy man. Who does stay, by the way?’ he asks before giving me a chance to answer.
I turn my back to him, busy myself with drinks. ‘No one.’
He waits until I have sat down. ‘Is that part of the new you?’ He is studying me.
I laugh, ‘I’m not sure.’
We look at each other for a few moments. Then he comes over to me, lifts me out of my chair. ‘Shall we see if it still works between us, Maria?’ He kisses me. It is a warm kiss, warmly familiar, and it warms me. I think of Paul and put Paul out of my mind and hold Grant closer. Then in the midst of the kiss, I have an odd sense, as if there are eyes burning into the back of my head. Someone is watching. I am certain of it. I move to draw the curtains, peer out. There are no lights on in the Arnault apartment. Perhaps I have imagined it.
I go to bed with Grant. I go to bed with him to prove that I’m still a desirable woman, to prove that I still know how. And to prove to myself that I’m not in love with Paul. Bed is not always a good place for tests and I don’t think in this case that I altogether pass.
The next morning the phone rings just after nine.
‘Maria.’
I hold myself very still.
‘Madame Duval tells me you can’t come in today. Are you sure? We could meet somewhere else if that would make it easier. I need to go through some things with you.’ Paul doesn’t ask my how I am. He is formal, cool.
‘You’ll find all the work I’ve done is with Madame Duval.’ I match his tone. ‘And I’m afraid I’m busy. A friend has come in from the States.’
‘One of the platoon?’ His voice changes register.
‘Its general.’ I hang up. I am shaking.
The phone rings again a moment later and I am tempted not to pick it up but I haven’t the strength of will.
‘I’m sorry. I’m just finding it very hard, Maria. I’m trying, but I’m finding it very hard. Let’s have a walk together. I’ll meet you in front of the Jeu de Paumes. Anytime you say. Now.’ I hear him swallow.
‘In an hour.’
‘An hour.’
He is already there when I arrive, pacing in front of the gallery door. There is a sombre air about him and when he sees me, it doesn’t change. He doesn’t wave. He just stands completely still. We look at each other across the distance of steps and I start to tremble. He comes slowly towards me, takes my hand and holds it, holds it so tight that it hurts. We walk into the Tuileries Gardens, our hands clenched. When I steal a glance at him, his face is taut, as closed and distant as the ranks of inexorably cropped trees which line the aisles of the park. He doesn’t speak until we reach their shelter. Then he is curt.
‘Why did you do it, Maria?’
‘Do what?’ I wrench my hand away, read my own thoughts in his. ‘Sleep with Grant? I did it for you. To free myself of you. It’s like closing a door. Hard. The way you closed it.’
He clutches my arm. ‘And is it irrevocably closed now?’ I look into his eyes and he kisses me, too hard, as if he is breaking the door down. I break with it. I have to sit down when he releases me. I sink into a bench, stare at the monumental curves of the sculpture in the fenced garden in front of me. The flanks seem too soft, too tender to have been hammered out of stone.
‘That’s not what I meant, Maria.’ Paul is sitting beside me. His voice is soft and hard, like the stone. ‘I know I’m not your keeper. I have no rights. There’s no contract between us. Not even a promise.’ He laughs a short savage laugh. ‘As you pointed out so succinctly in your barbed little asides to my last chapter. What I meant was why did you move in? Across the street? Now?’
He takes my hand, strokes it finger by finger. ‘It’s like slow torture having you there. So close. So visible. So inaccessible.’ His hand closes over mine.
I want to lie, but I can’t lie to him. And I don’t know how to explain. ‘Beatrice, for Beatrice,’ I say.
‘You mean she asked you to? Told you about an apartment?’
I shake my head. ‘I wish it were dark,’ I mumble, get up. ‘Let’s walk.’
He walks stiffly by my side, then after a moment shrugs, puts his arm tentatively round my waist. I don’t move away and we stroll silently for a while, step in step. Sunlight bursts erratically through leaves, then vanishes into gloom. In the gloom I start to tell him.
‘I moved in there before I met you. I only went to the other place, the one you know, sometimes. That’s why you couldn’t reach me on the telephone that time.’
I wait for the horrified glance of suspicion, the chastising words. But he doesn’t say anything, only murmurs, ‘Go on.’
‘Beatrice d
idn’t know either, not until after your party. It became too hard to tell her once I hadn’t. I got hoist on my own secrecy.’ I laugh too bitterly.
‘But why?’
‘Good question. It just seemed right at the time. When I bumped into Beatrice, after all those years, Beatrice who had always been so good, so serene, and who I’d been such a pig to, Beatrice who was the closest I ever came to a sister. Beatrice who was still so good, so gentle, so… so everything I wasn’t. Beatrice whose life seemed to work. Well, I just wanted to be close to her. Maybe I thought I’d learn something. About how to live. After Sandro. Or she’d spread some magic dust my way. I don’t know. It seems mad now. I’ll move soon. As soon as I can.’
His arm tightens around my waist. ‘It’s not working like this Maria. I can’t seem to… Come away with me. For the weekend. Any weekend.’
I am glad he has asked. I have wanted him to ask. But now that he has, I know that I can’t. Much as I may regret it when I’m alone. I can’t do that to Beatrice. I hold his hand anyway, to savour his closeness.
‘It’ll make things harder,’ I say, shake my head.
‘It couldn’t be any harder.’
We have come to one of the little cafés which dot the gardens and I smile at him tentatively. ‘Coffee?’
He nods. He isn’t smiling. ‘A week then. Two, over the summer. We could go to the sea. The Mediterranean. Italy perhaps.’ He looks at me and in the burst of sunshine through the trees his eyes look very blue, as if they already had the sea in them.
‘It isn’t the length of time. It’s Beatrice. She trusts me. Trusts you too, I imagine.’
‘We often have separate holidays,’ he murmurs.
‘Anyhow, by the summer, I’ll have finished my work for you. And I’ll disappear from your life. ‘
I cannot read his face. Too many emotions cross it in rapid succession. The waiter arrives. We order coffee. A toddler comes bounding down the path. She is all tiptoes and plump thighs and brown curls. ‘Glace,’ she calls over and over. ‘Ice cream.’ There is a rapt smile on her face. Just beside our table, she trips and lets out a howl. I pick her up, dust off her frock. ‘Glace?’ I repeat. She stops in mid-howl, twists her still open mouth into a tentative smile, nods. ‘Veux une glace.’
A Good Woman Page 31