Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  He’ll pay, she thought. He’ll pay.

  She slipped her finger under the flap of the envelope, lifted it exultantly above her head, and shook it. All Cassie’s carefully saved dollar bills cascaded over her head and fluttered to the ground.

  Not in the next world, she thought. In this.

  When Cassie came back with the coffee, Hélène was sitting at the table quietly. The fat manila envelope was on the table in front of her. She smiled at Cassie, that astonishing smile she had always had, which could light up a whole room. Cassie sighed, and sat down.

  Such a beautiful kid, she thought. That queer intense look had gone now; the blue eyes that met hers were no longer cold, they were open and frank. Cassie relaxed. She’d been upset, that was all, and that was natural enough after what she’d been through. But she was young, she’d get over it. Why, she looked better already. Extraordinary—the kid looked almost happy now.

  “We’ll send your aunt a wire in the morning,” she said. “Tell her what happened. Tell her you’re comin’ home.”

  “Home?” She looked puzzled for a moment, then she nodded quickly. “Oh, yes. Of course. Fine, Cassie.”

  No more argument. That was a relief. The girl was going to be practical, and that always helped.

  Cassie sighed, and began to pour the coffee. It was going to be all right, she thought. It was going to be all right.

  That night, Hélène went to bed on the fold-out couch in Cassie’s small living room. She lay there quietly, listening to the sounds of Cassie moving about in her bedroom next door; the creak of floorboards, then the sigh of springs as she climbed into bed.

  The band of light beneath the door disappeared, and Hélène lay in the dark. Her face felt stiff with the tears she had not cried, and her body ached. She could feel the grief, not just in her mind, which was where she expected it to be, but in her body too—a dull sick ache lodged in her stomach and around her heart. She had never seen death before, and now its images flared in her mind: the quickness of it, the finality of it. She saw Billy, lying in the grass by the roadside; she saw her mother, hands neatly folded across her breast. She’d read once that people who had died looked tranquil, as if they slept. It wasn’t true, she thought. They looked dead; you looked at them, and you knew—they’d gone; they were never coming back.

  The images made the pain tighten in her chest, and she tried to force them away, but she couldn’t control her mind that way. Back they came, vivid as lightning, and after a while, quite suddenly, she began to cry.

  She didn’t want Cassie to hear her and come in, so she turned and buried her face in the pillow until the awful hot choking grief stopped, and she was calmer.

  She pushed the covers back then, and sat on the edge of the bed, holding the manila envelope with Cassie’s money in it clasped tight in her hand. She sat and stared into the dark, listening to the night noises. The occasional car; voices; later—much later—the whistle of the freight train as it went through the Orangeburg crossing. Billy was dead; her mother was dead, and the trains still ran on time. Death, so large to her, was a tiny thing, and she hated the rest of the world then for its calm and its callousness.

  After a while, she tried to pray. She knelt beside the bed and folded her hands, the way her mother had showed her when she was little. But no words would come; she could envisage no God. She stood up again, picked up the envelope, and pressed it tight against her heart. Then, because there was no point in talking to some God she didn’t believe in, she talked to Billy and her mother, silently, the words burned into her mind.

  “Mother. Billy. I won’t forget you. I promise I won’t forget you.”

  She said the words over and over again, and as she did so, her breathing grew steadier, and her mind calmer, and she began to think about the future. She could not see it clearly, and it mixed with words from the past—Billy’s prophecies, all the things her mother had dreamed of achieving—but just to think of it buoyed her up. She felt as if her mother and Billy came to her then, and urged her on: whatever she did, it would be for them, all their ambitions and all their dreams were hers now, that was their legacy.

  “I promise,” she said out loud in a small quiet voice.

  Down the street a cat yowled. Hélène climbed back into the small narrow bed. She did not sleep; she began to make plans.

  Next day, she and Cassie went back to the trailer in the early morning. Cassie looked at the oilcloth on the table, and the red chair and the paisley shawl, and she started to cry.

  “It just don’t seem real,” she kept saying. “So quick. I can’t credit it.”

  Hélène sat her down at the table and made her some tea. Then she pulled out an old cardboard suitcase and began to pack. After a while, Cassie dried her tears, and watched her silently. The girl’s face was tight and set; she packed quickly and methodically. A few clothes, some books. She reached under the bed and pulled out an old black tin box, and knelt back on her heels, looking at it.

  “We used to keep our money in here.” Her voice was flat.

  “Our savings. To go back to England. It’s all gone now.”

  “Hélène…”

  Cassie rose awkwardly to her feet, and Hélène swung around. She lifted her pale face, and the blue eyes blazed.

  “I’m going to be someone, Cassie. You’ll hear of me. Everyone in Orangeburg will—you wait and see. You’ll read about me in magazines. I’m going away, and I’ll never come back to this place—not until—” She broke off, biting her lip, as if angry with herself for this outburst. Cassie was taken aback, and then touched. She shook her head sadly; she knew that feeling—everyone did. She’d had it herself, years ago, when she was a kid, when she still believed fairy tales came true. She walked over and rested her hand gently on Hélène’s shoulder.

  “Sure you will, honey,” she said. “Sure you will.” The girl looked up at her; Cassie could tell from her face that she knew Cassie didn’t believe her, but Hélène said nothing. She just turned back to the suitcase and pushed a few more things into it: a bundle of old photographs and papers; two dark blue passports with a gold crest on them—her mother’s and her own. Cassie bent forward and picked up the one that had belonged to Violet. A small faded photograph; under “Profession,” Violet had written “Actress.” Cassie sighed and handed the passport back. She turned away.

  “What about all these, honey?” She pulled back a thin cotton curtain and gestured hopelessly at Violet’s dresses. “These. Your mother did so love clothes. And she was so clever with her needle—you can’t leave these…”

  Hélène got up. She looked at the dresses, pushed the hangers back and forth. A pink dress; a navy one; they were all a little shabby, all carefully pressed, protected from the wooden hangers with paddings of tissue paper. At the end of the row was a gray dress, a smudgy pattern, silky material. Cassie could see the label, and it said “Bergdorf Goodman.” Hélène pushed the dresses to one side.

  “I don’t want them. I’m not taking them. I’m starting from scratch.”

  She turned away and fastened the small cardboard suitcase. “Shall we go now, Cassie? I don’t want to miss the train.”

  Cassie shrugged, and sighed, and led the way back to the car. She knew better than to argue. Grief affected people oddly, she knew that: some folks wanted to hang on to everything, others just wanted to get rid of it all. She’d come back later, she thought, and pack up all those things. Hélène might change her mind later, and then she’d be glad Cassie had kept them.

  The girl’s composure alarmed Cassie a little. All the way into Montgomery, she kept glancing across at her. But there was no sign of tears; Hélène just sat there, with that tight set look on her face; she hardly said one single word. In Montgomery, they sent a telegram to Violet’s sister, Elizabeth, and made the plane reservations; then Cassie drove Hélène to the station.

  It was very hot again, and they waited for the train in the shade. Hélène was swinging her cardboard suitcase and staring down the
line.

  “You made your plans, honey?” Cassie said at last, a little anxiously.

  “Oh, yes. Lots of plans.”

  “I mean—you’ve thought what you’re going to do, when you get to England and all?”

  “I don’t know exactly, I’ll begin somewhere. Find a job. Learn to type, perhaps. Or train for the stage…” Hélène turned her head slightly.

  “What—like Violet?” Cassie was surprised, and also touched.

  Her question seemed to disconcert Hélène slightly; she glanced away again.

  “I suppose so.”

  Cassie frowned. “It’s a hard life, I reckon. Getting work. Starting out. Looks aren’t everything. I mean, for something like that, you’d have to know the right people maybe. I don’t know. Violet always said—”

  “The train’s coming.” Hélène interrupted her, and pointed. Looking down the line, Cassie saw the signal change to green. She sighed. Better not say any more. There wasn’t time, and anyway, Hélène probably wouldn’t listen. It was a comfort to her, maybe, spinning daydreams like that—something to cling to, something to keep her going. She smiled, and gave Hélène a quick affectionate squeeze.

  “Well, you be sure and write to me now. Let me know how things are. How you’re getting on in England…”

  She helped Hélène onto the train with the suitcase, and found her a seat. At the last moment, just before Cassie climbed down again onto the platform, Hélène turned back to her, put her arms around her, and hugged her tight. Cassie caught the glint of tears in her eyes then, before she buried her face in Cassie’s breast. But she said nothing, and Cassie climbed down and slammed the door.

  The whistle blew, the train jerked, and gathered speed. Cassie stood and watched it pull out of the station; she could see Hélène’s face at the window, and she looked so defiant and so brave that Cassie was touched. She had always been easily moved, and now tears came to her eyes.

  She waved until the train rounded a curve and went out of sight; then she turned to go. She smiled to herself, and shook her head. Hélène was a good girl, but she was just a child still, and kids were all the same. How easy they thought life was, how simple. You wanted something, and you got it: how many girls left small towns, thinking they were going to be famous, thinking they were going to be rich? Hélène was a dreamer, she decided, looking back down the track. A dreamer, like her mother. Poor Violet, she thought, and decided to go back by way of the cemetery.

  On the train it was hot and airless; the coach she was in was almost empty. Hélène pulled down the shade as far as it would go and closed her eyes. The rhythm of the train, and the sound of its wheels, lulled her. She listened to the wheels, and it seemed to her they whispered a new message: famous and rich, they said, and—sometimes—powerful and free. The heat in the coach was making her sleepy, so she was no longer quite certain whether the images in her mind came to her awake, or sleeping. She saw herself doing something impossibly well, so well that Billy and her mother were proud of her, and her mother kissed her, and pressed her lips against her ear, and said in her soft low voice: You have done it, Hélène, all the things I dreamed of doing.

  She saw herself wrapped in furs, holding a bouquet of white roses; she saw herself slipping into the back of a long black limousine; she saw herself coming into a room, and Ned Calvert rising to his feet, afraid of her and afraid of the things she had the power to do to him.

  When she opened her eyes again, the air was cooler, and it was growing dark. Some of the images seemed foolish then—white roses, limousines!—and she blushed, remembering then what she had said to Cassie, and wishing she had kept silent. Cassie hadn’t believed her, she had seen that; she’d thought it was a daydream, a fantasy; she had looked the way Priscilla-Anne used to look when Hélène talked about going back to England. She wouldn’t make that mistake again, she thought. It was the way people had looked at her mother; it was hateful to be pitied; she wanted to be invulnerable.

  She discovered a way the next day, on the last leg of the train journey. The coaches were fuller now, as they went farther north. The landscape outside the window was different; the people were different; their voices were quicker, and their accents sharper. She knew no one, she thought, as at each station more people joined the train; and none of them knew her. She found that idea extraordinarily freeing. Suddenly, she saw, she could leave it all behind: Orangeburg and the trailer park; being poor; being ashamed. No one on this train knew about her mother, they hadn’t listened to gossip about how she came by her dresses; no one on the train knew about Ned Calvert, and how Hélène had deceived herself into believing she loved him; no one even knew she was Hélène Craig, unless she chose to tell them.

  During the morning, she fell into conversation with a plump middle-aged woman who was traveling to New York City to see her grandchildren. She produced photographs; she told Hélène her life story, and that of half her family. Then, clearly intrigued by Hélène’s accent, she settled back to hear Hélène’s in return.

  She was knitting; as Hélène spoke, her needles never stopped moving. Hélène told her that she was English, and visiting America for the first time; she had been staying with distant cousins in the South, and was now returning home to London. Hélène spoke, she waited for the needles to stop moving, and for the woman to look up, and stare, and accuse her of lying. But nothing happened. The woman nodded and smiled, and said it must be exciting, traveling such a long way, and she surely hoped Hélène had enjoyed seeing America.

  It was so simple! Hélène felt exhilarated…free. She was no longer Hélène Craig, trapped in Orangeburg; she was a new person, a new woman—and that woman could be anything she chose to make her.

  When the train pulled into Pennsylvania Station and her companion said good-bye to her, Hélène felt a moment of compunction. The woman had been kind, and she had lied to her…The next moment, the guilt had gone. It had not felt like a lie after all; it had felt like a rehearsal.

  Before she went out to the airport, there was one thing she had to do, and she did it, clutching the cardboard suitcase tightly, pushing through the throng of people. She walked up Fifth Avenue, for Violet’s sake, and looked carefully in all the store windows.

  It was very hot, and the air eddied. She lifted her face and looked at the buildings towering into the sky. She looked down, and the mica in the sidewalks glittered like diamonds. People:—so many people; the smell of pretzels being sold on a cross street; cars, nose to tail, right along the length of the avenue. The air smelled of bustle and purpose, so she felt she wanted to run, to shout. She looked at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and stared at the entrance to the Plaza hotel, and watched the people come and go.

  She could feel the heart of the city beating through the soles of her feet, and pounding in the air she breathed, and she longed to ride the buses, ride the subway, explore the city, and make it her own.

  But she did not have enough time, or enough money, so, in the end she crossed the street, and stood for Violet’s sake outside the windows of Bergdorf Goodman.

  On the sidewalk the temperature was well into the eighties. Bergdorf’s windows were full of winter furs.

  Hélène and Edouard

  France, 1959

  “I DESIGNED THIS ONE FOR your wife. For your late wife…” Floryan Wyspianski, a great bear of a man, spoke awkwardly, unable to disguise his emotion. He gestured to a brooch at the far end of the long table on which the collection of his work was displayed. Edouard looked at it. A cabochon emerald, mounted in gold, and surrounded by rubies—a splendid thing, something a czarina might have worn, or a maharaja—or a woman who disliked reticent jewelry.

  Edouard smiled. “Isobel would have loved that. It’s her taste exactly.”

  “I’m glad. I hoped I was right. People spoke of her, and I listened…”

  “Thank you, Floryan.” Edouard pressed his arm.

  He walked back down the table, looking at the pieces which had been laid out for his inspecti
on, and which he had watched over at every stage from the earliest drawings. The collection was almost finished; there were just a few pieces still to be completed. They would be launched, and exhibited, first in Paris, then in London, then in New York, that November. Months of planning, and the jewelry was everything he had hoped for, and more. He would have liked Isobel to see this—she, after all, had made it possible. Edouard looked at the necklaces, and the tiaras and the bracelets, moonstones and lapis, black pearls and rose-cut diamonds, opals and rubies; he closed his eyes to their beauty and saw Isobel, in the drawing room at Eaton Square, holding out her hand, showing off her emerald, mocking and celebrating her “sweet” ring.

  He left Floryan Wyspianski shortly after that, and spent the night with a woman at Pauline Simonescu’s.

  Usually, when he went there, he stayed only a few hours. But that night the need was very great, and the despair was very strong, and he remained with the woman, burying the past in her flesh, until the morning. She was, like all the women there, young, beautiful, skilled, and obliging. She had long black hair, which she drew silkily across his skin, and—perhaps because she sensed his need, she attempted to fake her orgasm.

  Edouard pressed his hand against her throat. “Don’t pretend…”

  She grew still, and her dark eyes flew open. He moved within her strongly, slowly, moving toward the black place he sought, and the brief extinction in the beat of sensation. And, perhaps because of the way he held her, perhaps because of what he said, perhaps because of something in him, an urgency which communicated itself, he felt her begin to respond truly. Her eyelids fluttered and closed; her neck arched back; her breath came in quick short pants, and she turned her head from side to side, moaning.

  He waited, pushed again, waited once more—sure in these last moments as he pushed them both closer to the edge. His hands gripped her more tightly; he was aware of no emotion. When he felt the pulsing of her climax begin, it was easy to push deeper and harder this time, because it meant nothing, it was merely a question of timing. She cried out; Edouard pressed his hand across her mouth, and came.