Tim located his father and Terry, surrounded by French guests wearing friendly smiles, in animated talk. Tim was pleased to see them having a good time. He never thought of his father as a con versationalist or as particularly gregarious, but he saw these were qualities he must have had less use for since retirement from his job as a foreign rep for a company with, because of some distant connection, the same name. Tim steered Anne-Sophie over to them, embraced his father and stepmother. Anne-Sophie was warmly greeted, Terry’s loud midwestern voice carrying and embarrassing him a little.
“The father is everything one had heard, so amusing and sage,” sighed someone in French to someone else.
“Well, I do speak a little Turk,” his father went back to saying to Madame Wallingforth. “I was for many years in Istanbul.”
“Really?” breathed Madame Wallingforth.
“Richissime, whispered Hervé Donend to his friend Pierre-Marie Sarbert.
“Tiens, ils sont tous richissimes, les Americains. ”
Perhaps it was a worldwide weather pattern; the wind that had brought ice to Oregon, so many thousands of miles away, had brought to Paris a bitter rain, with a heavy snowfall in the Alps. Or perhaps it was a different wind altogether. Tim and Anne-Sophie left the party with Jerry and Terry Nolinger so they could walk them up the rue du Bac toward their hotel, the Duc de Saint-Simon.
“Nice party, Tim. You’ve found some nice people here,” said his father. “I’m just sorry I never learned more French. Though I speak a little Turk.”
“I thought they should make more of an effort to speak English, we’re guests in their country,” Terry complained. “No one talked to me the whole night except the woman whose apartment it was. I guess they all have to live in apartments? It’s like New York. Do the very rich ones have houses? Or what would be the equivalent of the New York brownstone in Paris?”
“Uh—they prefer apartments,” Tim said, seeing it was going to be a rough few days. “Tomorrow night, the rehearsal dinner at the Crays‘—the Crays have a house.”
Suddenly Terry screamed. She had caught sight of what appeared to be a live bear staring at them from the foyer of the taxidermist in the building next to the princess’s. “My God!” They stopped to stare at the vitrine full of foxes, a baby rhino, and other endangered species.
“Imagine living with things like that downstairs.” Terry shivered, deeply pitying the princess. They hurried on.
By the time Tim and Anne-Sophie got to their own apartment, they were soaked. “I’ve had enough of nature,” said Anne-Sophie crossly, meaning, probably, “I’ve had enough of parents” or perhaps “your parents.”
In their new apartment their boxes, mostly still unpacked, what with the dogbite and their trip to America, sat reproachfully in the hall. The heat had been off for several days, and the smell of new paint had stiffened the air to an almost toxic level. The aspect of things was mean and empty. They each felt they perhaps ought not to be living there until the wedding, that some operative superstition counselled against it. But it was too late, and they were too wet, to go elsewhere. They stood there bleakly for a minute, arms around each other, and then went to bed without saying much beyond that it had been a nice party. Anne-Sophie did not say she was surprised that his father had so little conversation, nor ask why his stepmother would expect people in a foreign land to speak in her language, and Tim said nothing about the fucking ice cubes.
Lying awake, Anne-Sophie kept strangely remembering a passage in one of her mother’s books, probably Plusieurs Fois, which had seemed so beautiful at the time and now seemed more baffling than ever. After making love, the heroine’s “heart palpitated like the pulpy labia of the star-medusa, when the velvet-covered little bracket fish made its strangely virile thrusts into the delicate pleasure-chamber of the eager creature’s very heart.” Compared to these lurid descriptions of emotion, her own heart felt flat. It had been—she counted—six days since she and Tim had had sex, and even before that, the velvet surface of love had been strangely showing thin. Why had the manly thrusts become attenuated? Or was it she whose responses were tepid? What was wrong? Whatever it was, it seemed awfully wrong.
It isn’t Anne-Sophie, Tim was thinking, it’s France, it’s a bad fit, France and me. France is evolved, it has no need of me and no place for me. Marriage and it are a mistake and I ought to get out, in a dignified and apologetic but firm way, just say—
Yet how could he? Yet he belonged in America. It was a dilemma worth lying awake brooding about, but Tim had seldom in his life lain awake and did not now.
In Etang-la-Reine, the Crays had been sitting in the kitchen, to be near the Aga stove. The rest of the house was hard to heat. The day was over, and Senhora Alvares was making them some dinner. Serge, sounding uncharacteristically sentimental, asked Clara if she missed him. Of course, she said. But she was startled. He’d never asked anything like this before, maybe because he’d rarely been anywhere without her, not for a long time. She told him about their—that is, her—immediate problem, which she had saved until they could sit down and talk, the decision of the magistrate to find them—that is, her—guilty of defacing a national treasure.
“Do you think I could escape?” she said, her voice becoming tremulous when she thought of the horror of the prison again. “I could get away in the Monday Brothers’ plane.”
“They’re ready with the appeal. There have to be procedures ...”
Clara had a certain amount of confidence in Serge’s influence, even after he was unable to prevent her spending a week in prison, enough confidence to value his reassurances now. Yet, how bitter, just now when she had somehow got in touch with life, to be confined in a place away from life and light, just thrown away, a disposable human being, for no reason. With part of her mind, she just could not believe she could be put in prison, even though it did happen once and furnished her imagination with a very precise knowledge of what it was like there.
“What did you do while I was gone?” Serge asked, mildly.
“Do? I don’t know. I was very worried, of course. About Mother, about you, about this court thing.” Something inside her quailed, as if he were looking in.
“Yes, I imagined you worrying. It must have been hard not being back there.” There was something odd in his voice, but his expression was kindly. It had, truly, been kind of him to go all that way and deal with the Oregon problems. She was surrounded by so much kindness and love, it made tears come to her eyes, or something did—fear and desire, a mortal sense of having spoiled her life at the minute she had begun to care about it. She embarrassed herself by beginning to sob, and excused herself and went up to her room, heart ablaze with a strange, unfocused despair.
56
Rehearsal Afternoon
The caterer came early in the day, hired to relieve Senhora Alvares of the need to prepare the rehearsal dinner for forty that the Crays were giving that night for Anne-Sophie and Tim. The Crays themselves spent the morning with the lawyers from Biggs, Rigby, Denby, Fox, who somberly advised them among other things to immediately retire the Rottweilers, and not to impede any shooting in their woods until further notice; the hunting season in any case was nearly at an end, and a conciliatory stance was essential.
In the early afternoon Clara was obliged to attend the magistrate, to be told officially that she was sentenced to three months in prison ferme for she could not prove she did not sell the boiseries, and no one else could be proved to have done so, and she was responsible. Serge put her into the long car hired by Biggs, Rigby, Denby, Fox to carry her to the tribunal, but did not go with her. There was nothing unusual in that per se, since Serge so rarely left the place, though the attending lawyer, Bradley Dunne, thought this behavior cold beyond belief and would try to comfort her himself if he could.
“If we let the locals come shooting today, won’t that make a difference? Would they relent about the boiseries?” Serge asked the lawyer.
“The two issues are no longer li
nked,” said Bradley Dunne regretfully. “Once the charges were made and proven, or not dis proven, they were out of the mayor’s hands.”
“Then why do we have to let the hunters in now?” she cried.
“It’s still illegal to keep them out. The thing is escalating. Your husband could end up in jail too.”
“We ought to have the courage of our convictions. We’ve been firm until now.”
“Yes. With money, people can indulge their convictions,” said the cynical Dunne. “But only up to a point.”
“Do people—does the ordinary person, I wonder, act according to his convictions more often than not, or does he act against them? When these convictions go against the rules, for instance?” Here she thought not only of the hunting standoff but of making love to Antoine, and of her newfound principle of being true to the heart.
“If principles are optional, what use are they?” said Bradley Dunne.
“And yet we are stuck with them, and believe, yes, we believe in our convictions, by definition. Ha ha, and alas, for some of them are most dysfunctional....” she said.
He thought it quite natural that she be overwrought. He saw that she was frightened, and would have liked to hold her. She looked especially adorable, which would probably have a negative effect on the female juge.
Anne-Sophie and Tim had a busy day in front of them. Tim had promised to show some of the American visitors some of the sights of Paris. Anne-Sophie and Estelle had to receive photographers from Mademoiselle Decor who wanted in advance to get Anne-Sophie in her going-away dress, the flowers, the table of presents, and other stills that the wedding day itself might be too busy to allow.
Then, Tim and Anne-Sophie had invited their two mothers to lunch. Tim hoped this would go some way toward placating Cécile, who had got the idea that last night’s party chez la princesse was probably grander than the one she attended at Estelle‘s, and had made barbed remarks about the glamorous time Terry was having in Paris.
“Désolée that Maman’s efforts weren’t up to her standards,” Anne-Sophie snapped. Tim correctly took this snapping as a symptom of strain, for he and Anne-Sophie would usually have protected each other, not their respective mothers. He shrugged mildly, but felt that Anne-Sophie ought to be more understanding of Cécile’s awkward position as the discarded wife.
Cécile, however, was immensely cheerful at lunch (at Ré camier). They all had the ragout of cèpes. “So happy to be here during cèpe season, we don’t have them at all in Michigan. People don’t gather wild mushrooms much in Michigan. Though wonderful blueberries-myrtilles-growing wild not far from my house ...”
Estelle rose to this food talk, but Tim and Anne-Sophie both were glum and taciturn, making only perfunctory responses and looking at their watches in a way the two mothers founds exceptionally rude, if understandable.
Anne-Sophie, Estelle, and Cécile would drive out to Val-Saint-Rémy later in Anne-Sophie’s Mini, install Cécile at the inn, and then help at Anne-Sophie’s grandmother’s house, where the dinner would be after the wedding tomorrow. Tim had mostly consecrated the afternoon to ferrying various American guests out to Val-Saint-Rémy to the small hotels they had booked, and helping them with arrangements that had broken down. There were hotel problems, “Paris tummy” problems he had not known existed, return ticket problems. Once installed in these hotels, the Americans would be nearby for the ceremony tomorrow and had only to walk over to the Crays‘tonight, or, if they didn’t have raincoats, come in taxis. It had been civil, most amiable of the Crays to invite everyone who had foregathered, since most of them had come long distances. Cray had planned a sit-down dinner with music and entertainment, a true gala to celebrate Tim and Anne-Sophie’s taking the Big Step.
Tim had arranged to pick up Cees and his wife Marta, and two other guests, at six-thirty at the little station. The party was to begin at seven, early for the French and late for all the jet-lagged Americans. The weather did not improve, but this had few implications for the rehearsal dinner, because the main reception rooms in the château were adequate to entertain the large gathering indoors.
“Hello, dear old man,” cried Cees, helping the pregnant Marta off the Saint-Lazare train. The other guests had missed the train, but another was expected in fourteen minutes, so the three sat on the platform to wait, and talked.
Cees was smiling oddly, pleased with the droll development he would announce. “The Driad manuscript has been returned to the Morgan Library,” he said, as if it were a delicious practical joke on them all. “My office just called me here. It was airmailed from a suburb of Portland, Oregon.”
Tim thought about this. Did it mean the manuscript had never left the U.S., or that someone had brought it back to Oregon, presumably in their plane, or that it was a coincidence?
“Delia? But that doesn’t make any sense. What about Gabriel? Was Delia his accomplice? Then why didn’t she sell it to someone else while he was in custody? Or to Serge? If she meant to just give it back, why let her friend cool his heels in jail in Amsterdam? And what about the murder?”
“The murder, just as it seemed. His colleague killed Boudherbe and stole the half million dollars he was going to pay Gabriel for the manuscript. We are pursuing the connection of Boudherbe to other manuscript thefts of course.”
“Ah, and Gabriel hung around the flea market hoping to get a line on the half million ‘missing money.’ ”
“Very natural.”
“And Delia?”
“Maybe she was just enjoying her French vacation. I don’t know. But regarding jail, we now have no reason to hold the man. From our point of view there’s nothing for us to charge him with. We’ll probably let him go; let the New York authorities find him if they want him.
“But I wonder, was it really the girl who sent it back?” Cees went on. “It doesn’t matter except as a matter of curiosity. There were to be no questions asked about its return. Still I wonder, could it have been Cray himself? Did he buy it from Gabriel, use it, look at it, copy it, whatever, and return it? He always said he would return it if he got it.”
“I don’t see him spending half a million-or whatever the price turned out to be—and then giving it up secretly. Why would he do that? Anyhow, I think I’d know,” Tim said.
“I think we should ask him,” Cees said. “Who else could it be? And how are you holding up, my friend? At this time tomorrow you will be married.”
“I’ve begun to think we’re making a big mistake,” Tim said, hoping by his light tone to indicate he really didn’t mean this, though he did. He had a compulsion to mention it, in hopes someone would say something helpful.
“Ha ha, normal enough,” said Cees.
Estelle looked forward to transacting a matter of practical import at the rehearsal dinner later. One of the reasons she had been interested in the general solvency of Jerry Nolinger was her concern about the cost of the wedding. Though Anne-Sophie and Tim had insisted that, as responsible adults with jobs, they would be paying for everything, still Estelle had taken the traditional view. This, in France, was that the families of bride and groom often split the expense, and now she had been told that this was by no means the situation in America, where she, Estelle, the family of the bride, would be expected to pay it all.
“La famille de la mariée, ” she had said scornfully. “How primitive. It must be like that in India and Afghanistan too, as an inducement to take female children off their hands.”
She knew she should have written to Monsieur Nolinger, but her insecurity about her English had led her to procrastinate, and now here they were. She wished enormously that Tim would offer to bring this subject up with his father, who presumably could with one flourish of the checkbook wipe out the whole mounting debt—the fleurs alone more than eight thousand francs, as flowers were the one expense, along with the food of course, she couldn’t countenance stinting on. But Tim was too distracted or insensitive to pick up on her hints, and she would have to mention the matter to Monsi
eur Nolinger herself.
57
The Crays Entertain
People would expect flair from a great auteur and metteur en scène, and Cray had not disappointed. He had caused the lighting of the twelve sumptuous candelabras, each with eighteen branches, the same that had been used in Queen Caroline, and had massed what seemed a half ton of greenery of pine and holly on the chimney breasts and over the doorways, so that the big rooms blazed with candles, and the scent of pine needles gave a festive, nuptial, and seasonal mood that was nearly overwhelming. Guests, arriving by car or on foot from the village, stood dazzled in the entrance hall to take in the scene while Senhora Alvares, in black dress and apron, took their coats.
One of the guests, uninvited, was the mayor, Monsieur Briac.
Some did not notice or understand the drama of this arrival, among them Anne-Sophie. Seeing the number of guests, the lavish decoration, the general air of heightened emotion, she was thinking as they arrived that Monsieur Cray was nice after all, and genuinely fond of Tim. She was also thinking that, in the merriment, she might have trouble speaking alone to Tim.
She had found the perfect wedding present for him. Though he might not yet appreciate the rarity of such things, he would come to when she had explained it—these were a pair of extremely rare faience horses, Delft, from Lampetkan, maybe 1750, the pair rearing up so delicately, their lacy reins intact, not a chip anywhere on them, truly fabulous and sprightly. She did rather well on the price, and they were worth twice as much. A London dealer, seeing them when she had them sitting on her desk, offered her nearly twice what she had paid a few minutes before. Moreover, they would look charming in the Passage de la Visitation. She thought it would be suitable to present them tonight, but she and Tim should be alone; perhaps they could steal away a few minutes after dinner; if not, she’d have to wait until after the dinner tomorrow.
Le Mariage Page 31
