She responded with ardor at first, and then pulled away abruptly. I felt uncertain then as to whether I had crossed a line, followed suddenly by shame that she was my brother’s wife.
“I’m so sorry, Mariette,” I said humbly. “That was careless of me and in no way your fault.”
“Of course it is not my fault! You are a man, and that is what men do.”
I thought she was being serious at first, and I felt worse, that I was some kind of animal also. But she followed this quickly with a small laugh and then ran ahead of me toward the moon that hung nearly to the ground.
“And I would be a hypocrite,” she called behind her, “if I blamed you in any way. If you are guilty, then so am I.”
She was intriguing and beguiling, and I watched the yellow shimmer in front of me, daring me to run my hands over it. But I daren’t of course. There was a certain order to such things, and I was determined, in that moment anyway, to not lose control of my head.
We reached the house, and she went into her room but not before she put her hand to my cheek, then kissed the spot where her hand had lain.
She left down the hallway, and I was filled with such excitement and wonder that all I could do was lie down on top of my bed, unchanged, and think of her for hours until I was showered in sunlight through the window and finally fell asleep.
Peggy woke me a short time later and said that Mother wanted to speak with me.
I dreaded it. Her summons usually meant she had found complaint. I sought out Bert first in the work shed to give him my apologies.
“No need,” he said. “I had a nice sleep in the car while I waited. When it got too late, I supposed you had decided to sleep at your apartment.”
This didn’t make me feel any better. I sought to make it up to him by helping him with more maintenance that day and perhaps giving him an afternoon off if he would accept it. I had behaved like Laurence, I thought, uncaring of the inconvenience caused to others. I dragged myself to Mother’s villa, and she was still in bed. On her side table, there was a photograph of the three of us as boys, taken at the rear of the property: Edgar with his eyes averted, perhaps at a more interesting happening on the lake; Laurence daring the lens to find only him; and me looking curiously unsure at the both of them and attempting to understand where I fit in, if indeed I did.
“Are you well?” I asked her.
“I’ve had better days,” she said. “And tomorrow I daresay will be one of them. But that is not why I have called you in.” She paused. “Mariette visited me this morning.”
I waited silently and withheld my surprise that Mariette would be so bold as to visit Mother in her private rooms, and at what could have been so important. Could Mariette have been displeased with me? Could she have said something about what had happened between us? Could she have presented Edgar’s will?
“You have done a wonderful job. She has shown me the two lovely dresses, and she told me how well you looked after her.”
“Yes, it was a good day!” I said, relieved, but the relief was only brief.
“Rudy, I will only say this once. Mariette is a bright girl, and I can see why any man might fall for her. But don’t make a fool of yourself. You have a duty as her chaperone and only that.”
I realized later that I must have carried every thought on my face, that perhaps I was as naive as Mother had always thought.
“And if I should make a fool of myself?” I dared.
She looked away. She did not intend on saying anything else.
I walked from the room, wondering what Mariette might have said. Pride told me not to query Mother’s full meaning and what else was on her mind. I did not want the cold message in my ears, but I assumed she was saying that if Mariette was indeed Edgar’s wife, then she must remain so. And it reminded me again that Edgar was Mother’s favorite, though she would never admit it of course.
What would it take for Mother to love me like she did Edgar? And was it so wrong for a man to fall for his dead brother’s wife?
Feelings of doubt were now creeping in, backed by the fact that I hardly knew the woman. Most of her stay had been spent in her room with illness.
I walked onto the terrace and spied Mariette running between the boxed gardens that lined the length of the driveway. Samuel was chasing her, and I could hear the bells of her laughter ring out far across the valley.
She waved gaily, a different picture from the one when she had arrived. She had adapted so quickly, accepted things, returning, I gathered, to the girl she was before. I waved back, willing her beside me yet knowing that Mother was right. I had no claim to Edgar’s past. The best Mariette and I could be was friends. She had run from the kiss and was polite when she said good night. She had perhaps tried herself to tell me that such attentions weren’t welcome. But in the back of my mind was that time in the house by the bay. She kissed me first that day. There had been something there: some willingness for something more. Surely I had not got it so wrong?
I spoke to Bert and offered him the afternoon off, which of course he refused. We took stock of the tasks we needed for maintenance, and I took a list of the items we would need to purchase to accomplish them. Bert was wondering if he could hire an apprentice, a young boy of fifteen years who had originally traveled up north from a workhouse but was soon to be let go from one of the farms. It was likely a silent plea from Bert also, a small surrender that he was looking for a way out for me more than for him, knowing that I’d had to do some of the labor to help him. I said I would get back to him, though in my head I had already been planning for this. Selling the bay property would provide funds to modernize the manor, better support the tenants, and hire more help for Bert until the economy righted itself. While Mother was still the trustee, I would take advantage of all the ways to improve and maintain the estate.
Back in the house, Mariette and Mother were already in the dining room, Peggy told me. I put my hand on the handle of the door to enter but stopped myself. It was best I leave some distance until I could get my head clear. I decided I would leave the two women alone this time. Several days hence, I would be back at work, and perhaps I would need to look for new accommodation since the lease of my current Manchester address was about to run out.
Peggy brought my dinner to the room and didn’t ask why I requested this. I know she had long been my mother’s confidante, and no doubt Mother had told her of her fears. I did not wish to give away anything else that might be taken back to Mother. I was in a vastly different state than the previous day.
There was a knock on my door after dinner. Presuming it was Peggy collecting my tray, I was surprised to see Mariette instead. She slipped into my room and shut the door behind her.
“I have just put Samuel to bed, and I thought we might spend a little time together. You seemed quite distant earlier.”
I looked at her face, which seemed sincere, though all I could hear were my mother’s words that had plagued and temporarily ruined all thoughts of Mariette for me.
“I am sorry, Mariette,” I said. “I have things on my mind and some correspondence I need to attend to.” It was true in part. Sorting out my feelings about Mariette, Mother’s last words, and assessing what assets to sell.
“Is there something in particular you wish to talk to me about?” I asked.
“You seem in a dark place at the moment, and I don’t like seeing you this way.”
“I’m fine,” I said stoically, though it sounded quite petulant, and anything but sincere.
She looked about her, then noticed the framed drawing of the manor on the wall above my bed and leaned forward to examine the signature at the bottom.
“You did that?”
“Yes.”
“You are talented.”
“It’s just a bit of distraction.”
“Then perhaps you should be more distracted,” she said, throwing me a playful sideways look before moving to pick up a book from a shelf near my bed.
“I’ve actuall
y come to talk to you about the . . .” She frowned and turned the cover of the book toward me so I could read it for her.
“Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages,” I finished for her. I had no idea what it was doing there. A book of Edgar’s I had started curiously to read. I think it had been there for years.
“Yes, Efficiency as a . . . whatever you just said. Anyway, I think we should discuss it.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“I don’t think you do.”
“Oh yes, I’m quite sure it would be fascinating.”
She was attempting to lift my spirits.
I picked up the book and began reading to her.
“Stop, stop!” she said, humorously putting up her hands. “You win!”
It seemed that all my mother’s words evaporated with the appearance of Mariette, and I felt determined that despite my misery, I would not take it out on her.
“That is much better. You are smiling.” She stood up to go. “I shall see you tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Au revoir!” she said, and left a trail of the exotic scent of soap that she had arrived with.
CHAPTER 8
A cool breeze skimmed across the water toward me, ruffling my hair and cooling the dampness at my neck. The lake had captured the image of the downy hills on the other side, mirrored in the water’s silvery-blue surface, and it beckoned to capture me, too. I couldn’t wait a moment longer. The water was too inviting. I prized open the boat-shed doors that faced the lake, which had been jammed from the elements, then using the rusting lever, which had not been oiled in years, rolled the sailing boat on wheel tracks into the water.
The lake was another reminder of why I loved this place, and sailing had been something we had shared as a family, bonding us all briefly.
Mariette appeared at the edge of the lakeside terrace. She was holding on to Samuel, who was excited to see several other boats making the most of the sailing conditions. She wore her long black dress, and I assumed she was saving her new dresses for dinner.
She walked down the gentle slope toward me and took in my appearance as she approached. I had no shoes, and my trousers and sleeves were rolled up. Samuel spoke to her rapidly in French, and we both laughed at his enthusiasm.
“He wants to know if we can go on your sailing boat,” she said. “He has been eagerly watching the boats from the window.”
I remembered the thrill when my father took me out for the first time when I was very small. I could not deny Samuel such excitement, and I was finding it difficult to refuse Mariette anything.
I explained in English the safety of sailing. She would need to keep out of the boom’s swinging path, and the peaceful breeze was deceptive when on land. It would be windy, the sailing fast. She translated for Samuel, who nodded, but he was so eager to climb on board that I doubt he listened to anything. The description, the way I made it sound risky, did not deter either of them.
“He is very excited,” she said.
The bow of the boat parted the water slowly at first until the sail caught the full force of the wind. The lake glinted, and Samuel waved at the other sailors that passed by.
Mariette gripped the seat of the boat at the stern and held on to her hat with the other hand. She smiled back at me, facing the sun, squinting and beaming with exhilaration, and I felt so close to her then as we shared the same breeze. Something happened, I can’t explain exactly, as I sat at the helm, looking down toward her, her face upward to me. In that moment I caught something, a sense, a knowing that things were about to change between us. I began to wonder if she thought of me in some other way. Her expression and pose were demure but beguiling, her smile secretive, if not seductive. Or was it all in my mind?
It was during this time, these moments that I wasn’t very present in the boat, that we both failed to notice that Samuel was leaning too far over the side, and when the boat leaned slightly, he toppled off as easily as a ball from a tilted ledge.
I turned the sail so it was now swaying freely, the boat now stalled but rocking unsteadily. Mariette climbed across to the side where he had fallen, but I was worried about her also and told her to stay still. Edgar had always told me to never leave the boat for any circumstance, but the boy was yards away flapping wildly at the surface of the water.
“He can’t swim!” shouted Mariette frantically. I dived in to reach him before he sank into darker waters, and then to drag him back to the boat, which had already moved several yards away. I lifted him up toward Mariette, who hoisted him from my arms to hold and comfort him. He had begun to howl from shock as I climbed aboard.
I was about to apologize for my failure to prevent his fall, but she did something odd then. She laughed, and the boy looked up at her curiously, the howling ceasing suddenly. Samuel laughed, too, his humiliation and the discomfort forgotten. And the guilt that I felt by not equipping the boy with a life jacket—that Father had never bothered with, either—eased in part.
“We should go back,” I said, relieved, and not feeling the same level of joy shown by Mariette.
“Why?” she asked. “It is over now. We have all learned from that. I never make the same mistake twice. Do you want to stop, Samuel?”
“No,” he said, his hair plastered across his eyes.
“Good. He will dry in the sun. We will be fine. Children are much more resilient than we think. They need to learn the hard lessons, and that life can change in an instant. Mistakes are the only way to learn.”
She was strange and wild, I thought. She did not fuss about the wet clothes of the boy, something my mother and Peggy would have done. She held the boy a little longer, but he was suddenly eager to return to his place opposite Mariette.
As I finished fitting the boy with a life jacket, which had been in the boat all the time, she reached over to touch my hand. “This is wonderful!” she said, and I found that I could only look at the boy else give my heart away, not that I would avert my eyes from him again. I, too, would not make the same mistake twice.
We sailed for a time, and though I was soaked, it was strangely soothing to have the cold wind against my wet clothes, a way to slow my fast-beating heart. Mariette kept asking for longer each time I suggested we return, and by the time we disembarked, we were nearly dry. Peggy took the boy by the hand as we approached the rear doorway and rushed him through to the warm kitchen as we followed, recounting the event. She tut-tutted me for allowing it, but she had seen many boyhood scrapes before. I went to my room to change, dizzy with visions of Mariette.
At dinner that night, Mother couldn’t join us, and Peggy had set Mariette’s place as the hostess in my mother’s absence at the opposite end of the table. Mariette and I talked, seemingly uninhibited for the first time. She spoke something more of her time in France, each time a little piece of her past slipping through, of her father who had died, whom she had adored. Of their orchard and animals. It was one of the last places Edgar had seen, and in a strange sort of way, I was envious that he’d seen it. I wondered what he would make of my feelings toward his wife. I felt confused, conflicted, but even more certain that she was telling the truth.
Just as I was having those feelings, Mariette picked up her plate and walked to the head of the table to sit near me.
“I don’t know why I have to sit so far away from you. It is a strange custom, don’t you think?”
I laughed then, and she did, too. “Yes, I have to agree.”
She reached across and put her hand over mine, and I thought how beautiful she was, how both loud and sweet was her laughter. And I wondered about her childhood, how much she must have been loved to have so much lightness in her heart.
“Has Mariette always been your name?”
She appeared caught off guard briefly before she slid her hand away, the back of my own still warm from where it had lain. I said it during a moment of incaution, remembering Roland’s investigation, and feared now I had given something away.
&
nbsp; “It is a strange question. Is that a question you ask everyone that you meet?”
“I-I-I’m sorry. I-I—” My stammering and difficulty to produce anything further seemed to highlight my guilt and crime. She relaxed suddenly, recognizing my struggle, and she moved again to cover my hand with hers. I focused hard on the exercises I’d been taught to slow my breathing and return my speech.
“It’s all right, Rudy,” she said warmly. “It is not a crime to be curious, and I realize under the circumstances you are right to query everything.”
“I’m sorry if I sounded distrustful,” I said, once more finding my voice. “It w-was not meant that way. It is such a beautiful name. I had not heard it before.”
“I should go,” she said, releasing my hand. “It has been a wonderful day.”
She rose and left me with regret and reflecting on the insult I had perhaps caused. My question suggested that I still did not believe her. I was so consumed with want that I failed to contemplate the fact that she never answered the question. And I was angry with myself for drawing out the snake, which had been mostly asleep for some time now, to remind me that I was far from perfect, perhaps even unworthy of her attentions.
The next morning I left early and drove to town to check on the estate’s bank accounts, deposit several checks, and withdraw some of my personal funds. Returning to the car, I passed a watchmaker and jeweler. In the window was a set of costume pink-and-black chandelier earrings; imitation stones had become much the fashion. Though relatively inexpensive, it was still a frivolous, fanciful spend, and a portion of my own savings. My mind, some might speculate, was no longer rational, and I wanted desperately to atone for the previous evening.
I returned to find that Mariette had taken Samuel for a walk in the woods and she had not yet returned. I took the opportunity to sneak into her room and leave the gift box on her pillow.
As I was leaving the room, I noticed the book that I had seen in Mariette’s bag, sitting on the desk near the window. It looked exactly like the journals that Edgar always received at Christmas. I put my hand on top of the cover but was distracted by movement in the rear gardens. Mariette was collecting handfuls of flowers, soon to wither, and placing them carefully inside a basket that Samuel carried beside her. She had put color back into the darkened halls, with flowers and foliage already arranged in vases around the house. I looked once more at the book, with its dark-green cover and red binding that resembled Edgar’s, with tattered edges and papers loosened. We were told that all his personal possessions were destroyed with him, so I had to assume the book cover was a likeness only. I looked up to see that Mariette was returning, and I quickly left the room.
In a Field of Blue Page 8
