Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  Christian shrugged. When he next spoke, his voice was less histrionic. “Yes, I do. Look at this place. Eight hundred acres of farmland; a home farm; nearly ten acres of gardens. This house—this undeniably beautiful house, where generations of harmless, deeply conservative Glendinnings have lived since God knows when. My father bought it from a cousin in 1919, and it was in a mess. None of the garden was here—my mother created that. I was born here. My sisters were born here. And now it’s mine. None of my sisters want it—they all have huge places of their own. So—what am I to do with it?”

  “You could live in it when you’re in this country.”

  “Live in it? Edouard, don’t be absurd. It has something like fifteen bedrooms. It’s not a house for a bachelor. Besides, I like the way I live now. A very pleasant little box in London, a slightly bigger box in Paris, and a slightly smaller one in New York. And look at all this…” He gestured back toward the house. “All that furniture, all those paintings. Accretions. What’s the point? I’ve no one to leave them to. Oh, God. It makes me feel ill just thinking about it.”

  “Well, if you don’t want it, and your sisters don’t want it—you’ll have to sell it, I suppose?”

  “That’s the trouble.” Christian leaned forward and lit another cigarette. “I’d already decided on that. I’d quite made up my mind. The sisters can have what they want, and the rest can go to Sotheby’s or Christie’s, and I’ll sell the house. It seemed perfectly simple. Until today.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I mind.” Christian looked away. “I find I actually mind. I keep imagining, you see, the sort of person who’ll buy it. Some frightful businessman from the City—sorry, Edouard—who’s just made a killing on the market. He’ll have the garden dug up and laid to lawn for ease of maintenance. He’ll put some perfectly ghastly bright blue swimming pool where the rose garden is. His wife—oh, God, I can just see his wife. She’ll fill the kitchen with gleaming units and then never set foot in it. And then she’ll call in someone like Ghislaine Belmont-Laon to give it the English country house look.” He looked at Edouard piteously.

  “They’ll kill it off, do you see? All the things I used to think I wanted killed off. And I shall mind. Most dreadfully.” He paused. “Do you know they’re all still there, in the cellar—my father’s wines? I found them when I went down just now. Not touched since the day he died. His wine book’s there as well. Meticulously filled in. Dates. Comments. Quantities. He was rather good on wine, which was odd, because he was a terrible English puritan about food. His favorite meal was fish pie with runner beans, and treacle tart for pudding. And he liked greengages very much. He always insisted on picking them himself. Oh, hell and damnation—I’m sorry about this, Edouard.”

  Tears had come to his eyes. He rose irritably and turned away. Edouard half-stood, and Christian waved a hand at him angrily. “It’s all right. I’ll be fine in a minute.” He turned and stared fixedly at a shrub border.

  After a pause, Edouard rose also. “I’ll go and make some coffee. Would you like some brandy—something like that? There’s a flask of Armagnac in my car.”

  “Actually that might be quite a good idea.”

  Christian did not turn around, and Edouard quietly left him. He fetched the Armagnac from the car, went down the long flagged passageway to the old-fashioned kitchen, and made coffee.

  Tucked between the coffee tins and the tins of Earl Grey, Lapsang, and Ceylon, were packets of seeds, with dates written on them. On the kitchen table was a shopping list: one lamb cutlet; one packet of oat cakes; half a pound of butter; a quarter of cheese. A widow’s shopping list. Edouard looked at it, and felt his heart move with pity. Christian’s mother had lived here alone for ten years: he felt guilty then, remembering how rarely either of them had come to see her. Even now he found it difficult to imagine the house as it must have been for her: he still saw it as it had been twenty years before, always crowded with people. He imagined it all being sold off, auctioned and altered, and like Christian, he found he hated the idea that something so loved and so preserved should be changed; for a moment he heard Philippe de Belfort’s voice: Don’t you ever imagine them, Edouard, when you’re dead, picking over the spoils?

  He took the coffee and the Armagnac back to the garden. Christian was now sitting down again, smoking another cigarette, and looking more in control of himself.

  Edouard poured him a glass of brandy and some coffee. He sat down, hesitating to speak.

  “You’re sure,” he said finally, “quite sure—that you don’t want to live here yourself? That none of your sisters do?”

  “No, I’ve told you. Absolutely not. We had a family conference, after the funeral. We agreed then. Lock, stock, and barrel. Well, nearly. No sentiment.”

  “Would you let me buy it?”

  “What?” Christian stopped, the glass halfway to his lips.

  “Would you let me buy it?”

  There was a small silence. Christian’s narrow face flushed.

  “Oh—for God’s sake, Edouard. You don’t have to take friendship that far, you know. I didn’t intend—”

  “I know you didn’t. And I’m not asking out of friendship. Well, not exactly.”

  “Then why are you asking?”

  Edouard looked down at the table, and Christian, looking at him suspiciously, saw that he was trying hard to keep his face calm, and was not quite succeeding. Happiness was breaking through.

  “Hélène and I—that is, all the formalities have finally been sorted out. Her divorce is final now, so we can be married. And…”

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Christian lifted his head and gave the most extraordinary war whoop. “When? When? Damn you, Edouard, you never said one word…”

  “Next week.”

  “Next week? Next week? I can’t believe it. This is wonderful. This is absolutely wonderful…”

  Christian leapt to his feet. He gave Edouard an extravagant embrace, nearly knocking the table flying as he did so.

  “Where? How? I’m going to be the best man, I hope? If I’m not best man, I shall never speak to you again. I adore weddings. Are you going to have a madly grand one, or one of those delicious furtive ones where you just nip away somewhere and—”

  “Christian—” Edouard attempted to cut through the tumbling words, but he could not help smiling. “Christian. I’m trying to make you a business proposition.”

  “A business proposition, at a time like this? You’re mad. You’re inhuman. You’re…what?”

  “If you would really like to sell this house, I should very much like to buy it. That’s all.”

  Christian stopped hopping about. He sat down. He looked at Edouard.

  “But why?” he said at last. “I don’t understand. Is there some connection between these two extraordinary statements?”

  “Yes. There is. I want to give Hélène a wedding present. And I thought—if you liked the idea”—Edouard smiled—“I might give her an English house. And an English garden.”

  “When she was a child…” They were driving back to London; Edouard glanced in his sideview mirror, pulled the Aston-Martin out, and overtook three cars and one tractor. Christian shut his eyes.

  “When she was a child—I wouldn’t tell anyone else this, but I know Hélène has talked to you about it a little—she lived in that trailer park in Alabama, you remember?”

  “I remember. She described it to me once.”

  “She lived there with her mother, and her mother used to talk to her about England and the house where she grew up.” He paused. “You remember that house—in Devon?”

  “Who could forget it?”

  “Her mother used to talk about that place, and its garden. Especially its garden. She conjured something up—something Hélène never forgot. An image of a beautiful, tranquil, perfect place. When Hélène was small, her mother used to leave her alone for quite long periods, and do you know what Hélène used to try to do sometimes? She would make a garden. An
English garden. She used to gather up pebbles, and wild flowers and weeds, and then scratch about in the earth, and plant them, so that when her mother came home, she could give her an English garden. Only, of course, it was very hot, and the soil was very dry, and often her mother was late, and by the time she came back, all the plants had withered and died. She told me that once. I’ve never forgotten it.” He paused, his eyes on the road ahead.

  “Then, when she finally came back to England, to her aunt’s, and she saw that dismal place, it was a terrible shock to her. She’d just lost her mother, and her only friend—she came to England, and she saw that place. She finds it difficult to talk about, even now. You see, it was the moment when she saw, with her own eyes, exactly how much of a fantasist her mother was. She knew already, in some ways—she could see that her mother deluded herself. But I think Hélène had always believed in that perfect garden. And then she found it didn’t exist. That was just a delusion too. And it was Hélène’s delusion as well. She’d inherited it from her mother.”

  “Oh, God, that’s sad. I never knew about that.” Christian sighed. “The things we inherit.”

  “So.” Edouard glanced in his mirror again, and seeing the road clear before and behind, accelerated. “So. I had been trying to think. I wanted to give her something special, something that would have a particular meaning for her. And when I was standing in your house this morning, I thought of it then. It’s the most English house I know. And the most perfect of English gardens.” He smiled. “And I promise you, we wouldn’t put a swimming pool in the rose garden.”

  “There you are then.” Christian gave Edouard a sly glance. “And I do take it that I can rely on you not to bring in Ghislaine? I don’t think I’d like to see the scorpion get her pincers on it…”

  “You may certainly rely on that. Ghislaine’s only worked on my showrooms, never my houses—and that was a long time ago.”

  “What happened to her? She did marry that man Nerval, didn’t she?”

  “Indeed she did. She divorced Jean-Jacques, rather scandalously. Then she married Nerval. But I haven’t seen her for several years. There was a little problem with the tax authorities, I think—some rather shady company in the Cayman Islands. Anyway, she and Nerval left France. I hear they’re now carving up what’s left of Marbella—very successfully, I believe.”

  “Marbella. Well, well, well.”

  “Hélène met Nerval once or twice. She bought and sold a house through him. He quite amused her, I think. She said he was so transparently a rogue. A smiling villain. Totally unscrupulous, of course.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad.” Christian smiled. “The scorpion has been given her just deserts then.”

  “As a matter of fact, I hear they’re very happy. They suit each other perhaps.” Edouard glanced across at him. “Just never mention her name in front of my mother. Ghislaine is now her bête noire—has been ever since we were at St. Tropez that time, you remember?” He paused. “She regards Ghislaine as her enemy. And me as well, perhaps.”

  His tone had become less casual, and Christian looked at him curiously.

  “You won’t say why, I suppose?”

  “There’s no point really. It’s a long, complicated story. I did something which I thought was in my mother’s best interests, and my mother has never forgotten it, nor forgiven it, that’s all.” He shrugged. “She’s changed a great deal, Christian. You’d hardly recognize her now. She dresses quite differently. She’s become very religious…”

  “Religious, Louise? I don’t believe it.”

  “Oh, it’s true.” Edouard smiled. “The whole house is redolent of priests. Every time I go there I can hear the swish of soutanes.” He paused, and then, thinking of Christian’s mother, thinking that Louise, however exasperating, might also be lonely, he added, “You should come to see her when you’re next in Paris, Christian. You’ll see what I mean.”

  “I shouldn’t think I’d be madly welcome. Louise could never stand me.”

  Christian lit a cigarette, leaned back in his seat, and let Edouard concentrate on his driving for a while. He turned his head and looked out the window. They had covered the distance fast, and were now approaching the outskirts of London. As the traffic became heavier, and Edouard was forced to slow down, Christian could look at his surroundings properly. The fields were giving way to roads, to line after line of semi-detached mock-Tudor houses, and uninviting pubs. Away to his right, great yellow scars cut through the land; huge earth movers crawled, and dug. They were constructing the new London-Oxford motorway. When it was finished, this trip, which had been so slow and tortuous during his university days, would be reduced to well under an hour—forty minutes, he thought, with Edouard’s driving. And he could remember bowling along this road in an old Morris Minor, his very first car: London to Magdalen College in under two hours! It had seemed an achievement, then.

  “God, how everything changes.” He turned to look at Edouard. “We’re both over forty now. Do you know I used to think that would be quite ghastly? And now it’s come upon me, I find I rather enjoy it. The perspective alters. I like that. People come and go—they drift into one’s life, and then out of it again. One hears stories about them—little snippets of information, like Ghislaine’s marrying Nerval, and zipping off to Marbella—some go up, and others go down. Some alter in the most unexpected ways, and others remain precisely the same. It’s so interesting. Like reading a marvelous novel. Heigh-ho. I wonder how we’ll be in another twenty years—when we’re sixty.”

  “We’ll still be friends.” Edouard glanced across at him with a smile.

  “Oh, yes.” Christian smiled back. “I’ve no doubts on that score. That’s one of the better things. And I know just how we’ll be, actually, now that I come to think of it. You’ll be even more powerful and distinguished—you’ll serve on a million committees. You’ll be a paterfamilias. God, Cat will probably be married, you’ll be a grandfather by then. And I—I shall be an aging enfant terrible. People will be rather rude about me, and say I’m old hat. And then, when I get to seventy, they’ll all discover me again, and turn me into a national monument. The Cecil Beaton of the gallery world. That’s the thing—to hang on until you’re seventy. You can’t go wrong then. You become a sage, and everyone says what perfectly marvelous style you have. Then we sell our memoirs to the Sunday newspapers, and all our friends publish their diaries and letters, and we become an industry—like the Bloomsbury Group. I can’t wait. That’s when the past really begins to pay off.” He gave Edouard a provocative glance.

  “So—I hope you’re keeping a record of everything. Otherwise all those academics and research students are going to be awfully disappointed. Diaries. Letters. Notebooks…”

  “Absolutely not.” Edouard saw a small space in the flow of traffic, eased through it, and accelerated. “I hate that kind of thing. As you know perfectly well. I rarely even keep photographs.”

  “No, you don’t, do you?” Christian frowned. “I remember. When we were looking for Hélène—you didn’t even have a photograph of her—just that one your groom brought. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know, really. I prefer not to document my past, that’s all. I prefer just to think about it. Letters, photographs—I don’t know. I think they distort.”

  “Doesn’t memory?” Christian glanced at him sharply.

  “Perhaps.”

  “After all, everyone remembers the past differently. It isn’t a fixed thing. Even one’s own perceptions of it change all the time.”

  “It doesn’t stay still, you mean?”

  “God, no. My past is constantly popping up. It manifests itself in the most surprising ways.”

  “That’s because you have an extremely disreputable past.”

  “Oh, I know.” Christian gave a smile of self-satisfaction. “And so do you, I might point out.”

  “That—all that—is over,” Edouard said firmly.

  “I wouldn’t count on it. You never can. You can’t
even count on the present. Just when you think it’s marvelously calm and placid, there’s something else going on, just out of your field of vision. Down the street, ’round the corner, in another country: you’re perfectly happy, and meanwhile…”

  “I know that. I learned that lesson the night of my sixteenth birthday.” Edouard spoke rather abruptly. Then, regretting that, for he enjoyed Christian when he was in a talkative mood, he turned back with a smile.

  “You know Hélène’s in London? And Cat. We’re staying at Eaton Square overnight—why don’t you come back and have dinner?”

  “Marvelous. I’d like that.”

  “If you want to, we could go and see my solicitors in the morning. Then we could make all the arrangements about the house—unless you want to think it over?”

  “Absolutely not. And I’d love to visit your solicitors. Smith-Kemp, isn’t it? My father used them. Do they still have those deliciously Dickensian offices?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And a glass of sherry, when you’ve come to the end of the meeting?”

  “Invariably.”

  “Too wonderful. I shall certainly come. It’s pleasant to know some things don’t change.”

  “And not a word to Hélène about the house. You promise? I want it to be a surprise.”

  “Edouard—would I?” Christian sounded wounded. “You know I adore secrets. I shall be as silent as the grave.”

  “Don’t promise the impossible. If you could just refrain from your usual little hints…”

  “Hints? Hints? You do me an injustice there, Edouard.”

  “Do I?” said Edouard dryly, and accelerated into the city.

  A secret. A surprise. Hélène loved surprises, and she loved to give presents, especially to Edouard. This present, which was still a secret, and would be a surprise, her wedding present to him, filled her with great excitement. She felt as if she were walking on air. She still felt that—although she had been walking a long way. All the way up Bond Street where she had been shopping; across Oxford Street; through the narrow winding Marylebone Lane; into the High Street, parallel with Harley Street, where Mr. Foxworth still had his consulting rooms; north past the church where Robert Browning had married Elizabeth Barrett, and north again, heading for St. John’s Wood, where Anne Kneale now had her studio, across Regents Park.