All the Ways We Said Goodbye

by Beatriz Williams

  By the time they returned to the grand apartment on avenue Marceau, Daisy was exhausted. Still, she persevered. She poured Pierre some brandy—he had already drunk a bottle and a half of wine at dinner—and curled herself tenderly around him on the sofa. She praised once more all his hard work at the office and teased him about this big secret he was keeping from her.

  “No, no, no!” he said, wagging his finger, loosening his necktie. “It’s all locked up tight in the safe.”

  “Not the safe in your own study! As close as that?”

  “To leave it in the office would be madness,” he told her, in an air of great condescension. “There are spies about, you know!”

  “No! Who would do such a thing?”

  “But never you fear, my dear. They can’t outwit me.”

  “You’re so clever, Pierre. But can’t you show me? I want to see this extraordinary thing you’ve done.”

  Pierre stuck his hand under her dress. “I have much more extraordinary things to show you right now.”

  “Pierre, wait—” The word choked off in a gasp, as Pierre’s finger jabbed between her legs.

  “Ah, ah, look at this! Someone’s a little aroused by her husband’s success, no?”

  Not exactly by that, Daisy thought. She tried to squirm away from the jabbing finger. “Pierre! Not here! The children . . .”

  “The children are in bed,” he said. “Justine’s gone home for the night.”

  Daisy’s dress made a deep V at the neckline. Pierre removed his hand from between her legs, only to jerk down her sleeves, to jerk away her brassiere so her bosom came free. In reflex, her hands came up to cover her naked breasts, but she checked herself. She wasn’t supposed to deny him, was she? She was supposed to submit; she had to soften him up, to make him vulnerable, to give him what he wanted so she could take what she wanted. She made herself cup her breasts instead, to present them to Pierre as a delectable gift. Naturally Pierre didn’t question this bounty, no more than a child questions the sudden appearance of a bag of sweets. He grabbed a breast in each fist and squeezed, he slobbered his tongue all over her skin and pushed her right back on the cushions.

  “Wait, Pierre . . . the diaphragm—”

  He was not going to wait, not for the diaphragm and certainly not for her. His breath stank of brandy, his skin stank of perspiration. Luckily he didn’t expose much of it, just the essentials. Daisy stared at the ceiling while he unbuttoned his trousers. The air in the room was so hot, so close, she couldn’t breathe. She gathered the sofa cushions in her fists as he flopped down on top of her like a large, wet fish. Because he’d drunk so much, it took forever. He made her turn over, and then back again, humping and stopping for breath, humping and stopping until Daisy was ready to scream, was ready to take one of those heavy silver candlesticks from the mantel and bash him over the head. His sweat dripped on her face. At last he came in a howl of relief. He sank on her chest, drooling a little, snoring, and Daisy’s gaze traced the intricate petals of the plaster rose some four meters above her and imagined another body pressing her into the cushions, another pair of arms, another sound, another smell entirely. The scent of pipe tobacco, the sound of a man’s soft chuckle.

  Whatever it takes, she had promised. If only she could have taken her scarf and strangled Pierre instead.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Babs

  Picardy, France

  April 1964

  Precious tied Diana’s Hermès scarf in a provocative bow on the side of my neck, smiling as she stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Well, now, don’t you look prettier than a mess of fried catfish.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I had other concerns as I stared at my reflection. “It’s a little frivolous, isn’t it?” I asked. “A scarf is meant to be useful, I believe. Not decorative.”

  She gave me a knowing smile as she adjusted the extravagant bow. “Whatever it takes, dear. Whatever it takes.”

  I pulled back. “To attract a man, do you mean?”

  With a quick admonishing shake of her head, she said, “Not at all. I want to make you see yourself as a woman who is not only beautiful and stylish, but who knows her own worth. When you’re wearing your new clothes, you stand straighter and walk more confidently. You are an intelligent and strong woman who has survived adversity and who still had enough pluck to agree to come to Paris for an assignation with a man you’d never met before.”

  “It’s not an . . .”

  Precious cut me off. “How you present yourself to the world should alert people that you’re a force to be reckoned with. Not someone who should be overlooked because she still dresses like a refugee despite the war being over for two decades.” She leaned close to my ear. “You are a formidable woman, Barbara Langford, and your beauty and style should reflect it. Never forget that.”

  I swallowed, not exactly sure I agreed with her but wanting to try. I met her eyes in the mirror’s reflection. “How did you get to be so clever?”

  A secretive smile crept across her lovely face. “Life. I refused to let fate dictate my future. I reinvented myself as many times as I needed to succeed.” She spun me around so that we were face-to-face. “Every day you learn, Babs. You learn, and learn, and learn. And the day that the universe has nothing left to teach you, you can stop.”

  She turned quickly away and began organizing the cosmetics on the dressing table while I returned to my reflection. The peacock blue in the silk scarf matched the skirt ensemble Precious had selected for me, making me feel more scandalous than confident. The skirt was too short and if I reached my arms up, my bare midriff would peek out from over the waistband. You are a formidable woman. I would keep repeating that to myself until I could almost believe it.

  “Are you ready?” she asked, pausing by the door. “I hope you don’t mind but I took the liberty of ordering a few extras for your picnic basket.”

  “Like what?” I asked, beginning to worry. Her idea of picnic items was most likely far different than mine.

  She opened the door, looking innocently up at the ceiling. “Oh, just my favorite champagne. And a few of my favorite foods. Like oysters—on ice, of course. Strawberries. And chocolate. Chocolate is always a good choice.”

  “Thank you,” I said slowly. “Although that really wasn’t necessary. I’d already ordered baguettes and cheese. It’s just the two of us.”

  “Exactly,” she said with a smile I could only describe as wicked.

  She exited the room first, allowing me to snag my trusty jumper off the back of the desk chair when she wasn’t looking. I was bound to be chilly with all of the exposed skin.

  As we exited the lift downstairs we heard the unmistakable sound of a typewriter as Prunella Schuyler typed away at her memoirs. She’d taken my suggestion to heart and even though we were now subjected to the constant clacking whenever we were entering or exiting the hotel, at least she wasn’t accosting us and shouting out the story of how she’d survived the sinking of the Lusitania. If I didn’t think she’d corner me for an entire day, I might have mentioned that my husband’s parents had both been survivors, too, and that they hadn’t felt the need to talk about it every waking moment.

  I spotted Drew before he saw me, and I felt a momentary surprise at the interruption of my breathing as I watched him leaning against a wall with his hands stuffed into his pockets, his feet casually crossed at the ankles. His hair was damp, sending improper thoughts about him showering, and I couldn’t help but admire his broad shoulders under a knit long-sleeved shirt in a lovely shade of green that I knew matched his eyes. Assuming I remembered the color of his eyes. Which I did.

  “That man is fine,” Precious whispered in my ear. “Now you two go on and have fun. I’ll go see what Prunella is up to.” With a kiss on each cheek and a wave in Drew’s direction she was off.

  “Good morning,” Drew said as he approached, an appreciative smile on his face. “I’ve already put the picnic basket in the car, so I’m ready if
you are.”

  “Yes, of course. Let’s go play detective, shall we?” I sounded so much like a schoolmarm that I hoped that Precious hadn’t heard me. I followed him out of the hotel and into the beautifully sunny spring day.

  A dark green sporty-looking coupe—borrowed from a friend at the office—sat at the curb, a valet holding open the passenger side door. As Drew slid into his seat next to me, he said, “I’ll keep the windows up if you don’t want to mess up your hair.”

  I was prepared with my automatic response, which would have been yes, but stopped myself. Why shouldn’t I be driven through the French countryside on a beautiful day with a handsome man with the sun on my face and the wind in my hair? A formidable woman certainly would, and she wouldn’t worry about her hair, either. “Absolutely not. Please keep them down. Just allow me to put on my jumper because I’m sure the wind will feel chilly.” I should have put the scarf over my head, but the bow had been so beautiful that I didn’t want to undo it, knowing I couldn’t recreate it later.

  I wiggled forward in my seat, trying to fit my long arms into the sleeves of the jumper, only realizing that my top was baring my midriff when my hands were no longer free to pull it down.

  “May I help?” Drew asked, his face looking as stricken as I felt.

  “No thank you. I’m quite all right.” It was only after failing to wiggle my arms free that I felt Drew gently tugging on the shoulders of the jumper and pulling them over my arms.

  “There,” he said, patting me gently as if I were a dog.

  I pulled down my top and nodded without looking at him. “Ready.”

  Drew was a careful driver, expertly maneuvering the car through Paris traffic and then north toward the motorway, following signs to Amiens. The wind made conversation difficult, and I was happy to sit back and enjoy the scenery, reminding myself more than once that the driver wasn’t part of it and I should stop staring.

  “Have you been to Picardy before?” Drew asked, his voice loud enough to be heard over the wind.

  “No, I haven’t.” I shook my head to emphasize my words. “I’ve never been to the French countryside—only Paris with my mother and sister. But that was a very long time ago. All I know is that it’s where the great Battle of the Somme was fought.” I didn’t add that I only knew that because of my dear brother Charles, who had loved to play with his toy soldiers as a boy and reenact battles. He loved the strategizing and the organization of armies, the bright uniforms and shiny cannons, and I suppose it should have consoled me to know that he’d died doing something he loved.

  “I hope we have time to drive around a bit, then. It’s not one of the big tourist spots but it should be. It’s the birthplace of Gothic architecture and has six of the world’s greatest examples of Gothic cathedrals, which span the entire history of Gothic architecture. Imagine that! Amiens Cathedral is the largest cathedral in Europe and two Notre-Dames could fit inside. Hard to believe, isn’t it? If you climb up in the cathedral you get amazing views of the city and the river Somme.”

  I found myself smiling and not just because I was truly interested in what he was telling me—I was—but because of the boyish exuberance he exhibited in the telling. I was thoroughly charmed and not a little surprised.

  He caught me looking at him and frowned. “What? Did I pronounce something wrong? Should it really be ‘Sommay’?”

  I let out an unexpected bark of laughter, quickly covering my mouth with my hand, then allowed myself to laugh when he grinned back at me. “Yes, well, I hope we have time today, and if not, then we’ll have to come back.” I don’t know what had possessed me to add that last part, unless Precious’s words had made more of an impact on me than I’d thought, but I was glad I’d said them. I was just too embarrassed to look at him to catch his reaction.

  We drove in a comfortable silence for another quarter of an hour or so when the car began slowing and Drew signaled a turn off the motorway and onto a narrow road marked only with a sign indicating a village called Piscop.

  “Are we here?” I asked, looking for a grand château and seeing nothing but green fields.

  “Sorry, no. I’m starving. I thought we should go ahead and stop for lunch.”

  I looked at my watch. “But it’s only half past eleven.”

  He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, I know. But my stomach tells me it’s lunchtime. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not. Do you know this place?”

  His face seemed to close and darken for a moment, so briefly that I thought I might have imagined it. “Yes, I’ve been here before. Just once. But I remember how pretty it was and that it might be a good place for a picnic.” He continued to drive along the curving road that seemed to be carved into a hill before stopping in a small inset, the wheels of the car just barely off the roadway.

  Drew opened my door and we stood in the middle of the road, surveying the rolling green hills interspersed with fat leafy trees dotting the landscape. A flock of sheep grazed happily in a neighboring field, seemingly the only living creatures besides us for miles. It wasn’t too terribly different from Devon, yet despite the same blue sky and bright sun that hovered over both places, it felt foreign to me. And not just because of the large American I’d arrived with. There was just something about the scent of the fields, or the sounds of the insects, or maybe the birds sang in a foreign language. Or maybe what Dorothy had said in Diana’s favorite film, that there really is no place like home, was true.

  Drew took the picnic basket from the boot and then crossed the road to the field of green grass, where he carefully set the basket. “I think this is about as perfect as we can get,” he said confidently as he opened the lid and pulled out a red plaid blanket.

  “Let me help,” I said, grabbing two corners of the blanket. We spent the next few minutes setting out the food while neither one of us commented on the vast amounts of it, or the curious items. He may have raised his eyes at the oysters packed in ice or the bottle of champagne, but I made myself busy breaking the baguette in half and preparing plates of bread, cheese, and fruit.

  The sound of a cork popping brought my attention back to Drew. Holding up the frothing bottle he grinned. “I didn’t want it to get warm. If you’ll hold the glasses, I’ll pour.”

  I wanted to say no, because women like me didn’t drink champagne in the afternoon. I didn’t drink champagne at all, really. Before that disastrous night in the bar with Drew, the last sip of alcohol I’d had was at my own wedding, and that was in the evening. But I thought of Diana and Precious, and I knew that they wouldn’t have hesitated. And if I were to be a formidable woman, I’d drink champagne in the afternoon. With a man. On a hillside in France while eating oysters and chocolate. I picked up the two champagne glasses and held them while Drew poured generous amounts into each.

  Drew held his up in a toast. “To finding the answers we seek.”

  I raised my glass then took a sip, the bubbles filling my nose and causing my eyes to water. I hesitated a moment before I swallowed, not sure I really wanted to know those answers anymore.

  We began to eat, the warm sun and the champagne loosening my bones and allowing me to breathe deeply for the first time in a very long while. I was reminded of Diana’s last words to me, at the train station seeing me off. Recklessness might be the thing we need sometimes to see our lives anew. As I looked across the blanket at Drew and took another sip of my champagne, I wondered if this had been what she’d meant.

  Feeling warm, I rolled up the sleeves of my jumper. “You said you’ve been here before,” I broached as I spread brie on my baguette with a tiny silver cheese knife so thoughtfully supplied by the Ritz. “When was that?”

  His face darkened again, and it took him so long to respond that I was already thinking of a change in topic before he spoke. “I was on my honeymoon.”

  I choked on the bread and cheese and had to take a gulp of the champagne to wash it all down. “You’re married?”

  “Oh no. No, I’m sorry. I did
n’t mean to imply . . .” He stopped, looked embarrassed. “I’m divorced. I was married eight years ago and have been divorced for three.” He grimaced. “I found out after we were married that she didn’t want children. And since I do, well . . .” He reached for the bottle and refilled our glasses.

  “That’s awful.” I closed my eyes, the memory of our conversation in the Ritz bar filling me with mortification. “And that night we met, I kept going on and on about my children. I even forced you to look at their photographs. How perfectly dreadful you must have thought me.”

  “Not at all. I actually liked hearing about them. Since I will most likely never be a father, I live vicariously listening to other people telling me about their kids.”

  “What do you mean you’ll never have children? You’re still quite young. What are you, thirty?”

  He grinned that toothy grin of his that I was beginning to find quite irresistible. “Either you’re trying to flatter me, or you’re a terrible judge of people’s ages. I’m actually thirty-five.”

  “Oh, I assumed you were so much younger than me . . .” I quickly took another sip of champagne to hide my blush. “Sorry, it’s just that I have always felt I was the oldest person in the room, even when I was a child. I think I have an old soul or something. Or maybe I’m not sure how old I’m supposed to feel because I didn’t have the girlhood I was meant to have had. I was never a debutante because of the war, and then I was a wife at nineteen, a mother at twenty, and running the Women’s Institute at twenty-one. I went from pinafores into tweeds it seems and skipped all that middle part of being a girl.”

  He nodded slowly, his brow furrowed in concentration. “I’m not sure exactly what you mean, but it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. However, it’s not really my age that makes me reluctant to think of future fatherhood.” He slowly slid an oyster into his mouth and I couldn’t avert my eyes from his lips as they moved around the bivalve. After chewing slowly and deliberately, then swallowing, he continued. “About a year after we divorced, my ex-wife remarried and now has two children. So it wasn’t that she didn’t want children, she just didn’t want any with me.”