She drove fast then, and recklessly, taking the winding road at high speed. Half a mile from her own house, she slammed on the brakes; the car skidded to a halt.
She sat there, her breath coming quickly, on the narrow empty road, under an unreal Technicolor-blue sky. Then, lifting her hand, she looked at the engagement ring she still wore, the famous diamond. She took it off. She took her wedding ring off. She held them both for a moment, glinting between her fingers, and then, reaching back her arm, she hurled them away from her with all her force. They spun up, glittering, and then tumbled out of sight in the undergrowth of the hillside.
Without a second look, she pulled away again, and drove the rest of the way more slowly.
The house, when she reached it, was quiet. She hurried inside, calling to Cat, and then stopped, remembering. Of course, Cat was not there, nor Cassie; they would not be back for a while. She stopped in the middle of the hall, feeling, through the succession of contrary emotions, a sudden and acute loneliness. Wave after wave of it eddied through her body, and because she would not give in to it, she did as she had done as a child—she stood still, fighting it, bleakly willing it to go away.
When she was sure she was in control of herself once more, she crossed to the door of the living room. The heels of her shoes tapped and echoed on the old tile floor. She turned the handle, and pushed the door back, thinking, as she did so, that she and Cat would leave this house, live somewhere else: it was too full of ghosts now, not only Ingrid Nilsson’s, but also her own.
Across the room, directly facing her, a man was sitting in a chair. He must have heard her footsteps, because his attitude was listening and intent. He was leaning forward, his hands gripping the arms of the chair, his face lifted toward the door. Hélène stopped. Across the room, Edouard rose silently to his feet.
They both stood still, looking at each other. The shock was so acute that Hélène could not have moved, or spoken. She stared at him, and the silence seemed to her clamorous, full of energy. Edouard lifted his hand, and then let it fall.
A tall, dark-haired man, in a black suit; the hand he had lifted was not steady. With the clarity of shock, she saw him for a moment distantly and with great precision, someone she had always known, someone she had never met before. She noted the features of his face as she might have done a stranger’s: the hair, so; the planes of nose and cheek, so; the line of the mouth, so.
Words, phrases, and sentences moved into her mind, and out of it, leaving a vacancy. The room blurred, and then came sharply into focus, and as it did so she felt an absolute joy, more powerful than any words. It made her thoughts grow still; it made the room grow still. She felt it arc across the space that divided them, and touch him, a current of astonishing force. It was so powerful, this irresistible, this crazy and idiotic joy which she felt, that she began to smile—she had to smile—and it seemed to affect him in the same way also, because at the same instant his eyes lit, and he smiled back at her.
He took one step forward, and then stopped, his face growing still once more. The directness, the reticence, the desire to disguise strong emotion, and the negligent ease of manner he adopted to do so—she saw all those qualities which she had loved, and recognized them, at that instant.
Edouard’s face was not calm, but when he spoke, his voice was perfectly level.
“I told myself that you would write, one day. Or that I would pick up a telephone and hear your voice. Or walk into a room and find you waiting for me. I told myself that, every day, for five years…”
“But I wrote. Edouard—I did write…” She started toward him, and then stopped.
“I know you did. And as soon as I received the letter, I came. You must have known that I would. You can’t have doubted that—not for one second.” He stopped. “Tell me you knew that—tell me…”
“Oh, I knew. I always knew.” She lifted her eyes to his, though she could hardly see him for a sudden dazzle and blindness. “I knew—and then I thought…”
“I know about the thoughts,” he said, and a note of self-mockery entered his voice, quite at odds with the expression in his eyes. “And they don’t count. They don’t matter.” He stopped. “Do you think you could come a little closer?” Hélène moved.
“Closer still?”
She took one more step. They stood very close, looking at each other. Time stopped; the world stopped; then he put his arms around her, and held her, tightly, against the beating of his heart.
“Did you know that I searched for you? Did you know that?” It was later, much later, and Edouard, who had spent the long flight from Paris planning all the things he would say, and in what order, now found that he could remember none of them. They flew into his mind with feverish speed, and then out again, and he knew that what he was saying, all the things he was trying to tell her, were coming out in all the wrong way, backward, and were probably bewildering her—but he did not care in the least. One moment he was talking about last week, the next about last year. He had told her about Madeleine, and Anne Kneale—yes, he had—but he had not yet told her about the photographs of Cat, or the presents he had stored away for the day when Hélène and his daughter came back; and he had not told her about the times when he had returned to the little church of St. Julien le Pauvre; or the time at St. Tropez, when he had stood there on the beach, looking out to sea, so close to losing all hope, and then had felt it come back to him. They had been sitting side by side; then he had leapt to his feet, and begun pacing back and forth, the words tumbling out confusingly and passionately. Now, because he found it impossible, intolerable, not to be close to her, he came back again, and sat down again, and took her hands in his.
Hélène was looking at him, her eyes alight with happiness. She, too, had been trying to speak, and to explain—and her account was no more ordered than his own: they both began, broke off, began again, and—realizing this at the same moment—they both smiled. Hélène pressed her hands over her ears.
“Oh, Edouard, you go too fast. I can’t think. It’s so much time, and now it feels like no time at all. I feel as if you were here always…”
“I was here always, in a sense…”
“I feel as if I left the Loire yesterday.” She sighed, and reached for his hand. “Edouard—I went creeping out of your house, and it was hateful. I wanted to stop. I wanted to write you a note. I wanted to explain, and I was too frightened to explain…”
“My darling. I wish you hadn’t felt that. Even if it had not been my child—what did you think I would have done if you’d told me?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Edouard—I don’t know. I thought you would stop loving me, I suppose.”
“Never think that.” He drew her into his arms. “It wasn’t possible then. It never will be…” He paused, and tilted her face gently to his. “You didn’t know that I looked for you—then?”
Her eyes widened.
“You looked for me? Then, when I left the Loire? But…”
Taking her hands, Edouard explained. He told her how he had traced her, how he had traveled to Rome. He told her about the conversation with Thad.
She listened quietly, her face growing still. When he had finished, the color rushed into her face, and she sprang to her feet.
“I hate Thad,” she cried with sudden agitation. “I hate him. He’s evil. He never once told me that. He tries to manipulate people—he tries to make up their lives for them, as if they were part of one of his films…”
She stopped, and looked at Edouard, and her face grew calmer. She turned back to him, and sat down again, and reached for his hand.
“Thad is a fool,” she said simply. “All those things he said to you—he was so wrong. You see—Thad’s right about all the little things of life, and wrong about all the large ones. I realized that in the end. You can see it in his work, it’s there, in his films.”
Edouard looked at her steadily.
“Was he wrong—about you?”
“H
e was wrong. I promise you he was wrong.” She hesitated. “Do you remember the first night you took me back with you to St. Cloud?”
“I think I recall it, yes.” Edouard smiled.
“I was very earnest, I know. But do you remember—I said I would have stayed with you right away, the moment we met?”
“I remember.”
“Well, that was always true.” She leaned toward him. “If you had found me in Rome, and asked me to come back—if you had come to me at any time in the past five years, and had asked me—I would have come. I couldn’t have refused you—not if I’d known you wanted me. There it is.” She hesitated.
“Edouard—I tried not to love you. I tried very hard. I was trying to be Lewis’s wife, and it seemed so wrong and so treacherous to go on thinking of you.” She shook her head sadly. “I used to set myself stupid goals. I would say—I will not think of Edouard for a whole day. For two days…”
“And did you succeed?” Edouard asked gently.
“No. I didn’t succeed. I thought I wanted to, because I could see Lewis knew, and I could see it made him unhappy. But the truth of it was—even when I tried to drive it out, like an exorcism, it wouldn’t go. Because I didn’t want it to go, not really. I wanted it there. I felt that if—if I killed that love off, I would have killed myself off too—” She broke off, and with a little cry, clasped his hand more tightly.
“Oh, Edouard—why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you write, or telephone, or—”
“I wanted to do that more than anything in the world, Hélène, I promise you. But I thought…I must wait. You see, sometimes I was so certain that you couldn’t forget. And I thought then, that if I left you free, if you achieved all the things you seemed to want to achieve, then—one day—as a free choice, you would come to me, or write to me…” He paused. “Those were the better times. When I believed that.”
“And the other times—what about those?”
“Ah, those. I’d prefer to forget those. There were so many reasons—it could all have been a delusion. I knew that. You were married to someone else—you might have been perfectly happy. I was even told once, by someone who met you both, that you were. I couldn’t understand about Cat—how you could do that. Unless you wanted to turn your back on me, unless it had been just a trivial thing, an episode you’d forgotten.” He paused. “Unless you were not you, but a quite different woman. And whenever I was about to convince myself of that, with a thousand arguments, all of them very sensible, very rational—I would stop. Because I could not believe…I knew I had not been wrong.” He stopped.
Hélène, who had seen the pain in his eyes, had bent her head. He lifted her face to his.
“You telephoned me, didn’t you?” he said gently. “I knew that it was you. Three rings and then silence. Only—once, you did not hang up. Did you hear me say your name?”
“Yes.”
“And did you know that I once did the same thing?”
“Oh, Edouard. I knew. And then I persuaded myself I was wrong…”
“And when you were in Paris—did you ever go back, to the place where we met?”
“Yes, once. I could feel you there.”
“I felt you there too. Many times.”
They looked at each other. Edouard lifted his hand, and gently traced the lines of her face. With a sudden swift gesture, Hélène caught his hand, and pressed her lips against it.
“All that time. Five whole years.” She hesitated, and then looked up at him with a quick vehemence. “Edouard—I was such a child. Younger than I had told you. There was such a gap of experience between us then—not age, that doesn’t matter—but experience. Think of all the things you had done, all the things you had been. And I—I hardly knew who I was. I hadn’t the courage to be myself then. I told lies—I lied to you. It hurts me to think how I lied…”
“My darling, I understand the reasons for that.”
“No, listen. Look, Edouard, I’m different now. You can even see it in my face. See—I have lines. Here, and here, and here.” She touched her face, her expression very serious, and Edouard, who remembered these moments of grave and impassioned earnestness, and who loved her for them, bent forward, and gently kissed the lines.
“I’m proud of those lines, Edouard. I’m glad they’re there. Because now—I’m not a child anymore. I’m closer to you. I feel closer to you…”
She broke off, and Edouard took her two hands between his. He began speaking very carefully.
“In two day’s time—listen—the SS France sails from New York. I’ve made reservations for you, for me, for Cat and for Madeleine, and also for Cassie, if she would like to come.”
“Edouard…”
“They were made as soon as I read your letter. Well, as soon as the shipping office opened the next day…” He smiled. “If you don’t want to come back to France, we’ll go somewhere else. I don’t care where. Anywhere. But I will not live without you again. I cannot live without you again. And—” He paused.
“You cannot remain married to Lewis.”
“I never was married to Lewis. I couldn’t be.” She looked away. “Edouard…”
“You are not going to argue. You are going to choose. Hélène…” He broke off, his calm deserting him. “We have this one life. We’ve lost five years of it.”
“I’ve already chosen.” She spoke so quietly, her head bent, that for an instant Edouard did not catch her words. Then she looked up, and he saw the affirmation in her eyes.
“Yes?”
“Yes. I love you, Edouard. Oh, I love you so much…”
She put her arms around his neck, with that quick impulsiveness which he had always loved. Edouard bent his head and kissed her.
It was only later, when her mind was filled with a thousand things she wanted to say to him, that she suddenly remembered one that was less pleasant to recall. She stood up, opened a drawer, and took out from it a bundle of newspaper clippings.
“I had forgotten. You’ve been away. You won’t have seen these. You have to see them. Oh, Edouard—I want you to know that I wrote to you before this happened, before any of it began. But I can’t let you decide now, not without looking at these.”
“Give them to me.”
He stood up and held out his hand. Hélène passed the newspapers to him. Edouard did not look at them.
“I’ve already seen them—some of them. I know precisely how little is true. I know when you wrote, and I know when this began. Hélène, stop this.” He turned and threw the newspapers into the fireplace, then bent and set a match to them. He straightened up, and looked at her, a smile beginning on his lips.
“I’m perfectly used to scandal. And no doubt when we sail together from New York, we shall create a great deal more.”
“Edouard…”
“Forget all that. None of it is important. Here.”
She had moved toward him. Now he reached into his pocket and drew something out.
“You forgot this once.”
He opened his hand; lying in his palm was a square-cut diamond ring, the ring he had once given her.
Hélène looked at it silently.
Edouard took her hand.
“Put it on.”
She hesitated only for a moment, then she picked up the ring and slid it on her finger.
Edouard took her hand in his. Their eyes met.
“I knew,” she said just as she had said to him once before.
“We knew,” he corrected her.
Hélène lifted her hand, and the diamond struck the light. She began to say something, stopped because there was no need for words, stopped for the quick bright certainty in her mind, and stopped because Edouard, impatient with words, had caught her to him.
Edouard met his daughter for the first time, later that day. The little girl of the photographs, whose face was a tiny mirror-image of his own. She burst into the room in which they were sitting, full of excitement about her expedition that afternoon.
&nbs
p; She came to a halt when she saw the stranger; Edouard got to his feet gravely and courteously. An introduction was performed. Cat shook hands; she retreated to a chair, sat down quietly, and for some while said nothing. She swung her legs back and forth, occasionally glancing across at her mother, then turning back to look at the man again with that still careful gaze.
Edouard was reminded of Grégoire; he felt that he was being judged, which made him tense, and Hélène, who could sense this, watched him with admiration—no one else would have known. He talked to Cat seriously, as he might have to another grown-up, as he had to Grégoire. She listened; she answered him, hesitantly at first, then more spontaneously. Then, suddenly, as children do, she decided to accept him. She stood up and looked at him.
“Have you seen the garden? Would you like to see the garden? I’ll show you if you like. And then, I’ll show you my room. I have a French book in my room. Madeleine gave it to me.”
“I should like that very much.”
Edouard rose; he and Hélène followed her. They toured the garden exhaustively; they followed Cat up the stairs to her room. There, Edouard sat down on the small bed. He was shown the French book, and all the English books. Hélène stood a little way off, and watched them quietly, two dark heads, bent over the pages.
“I know some French words.” Cat looked up. “Madeleine taught me them. And how to say a French r, like a growl. I can do that sometimes.” She paused, looking at him. “Do you know Madeleine too, or just my mother?”
“Yes. I do. I knew Madeleine—oh, a long time ago. Before she was grown up. And I knew her family.”
This seemed to please Cat. She smiled, as if quite sure now that Edouard’s credentials were in order.
“And do you live in France all the time, when you’re not traveling?”
“I have a house near Paris. And one in the country, near where Madeleine used to live. And one by the sea.” He paused. “If you liked, you could come and visit them.”
“Could I?” Two round patches of pink appeared in her cheeks. “With my mother?”
“But of course. And Madeleine and Cassie if you liked.”
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