Destiny

by Sally Beauman

  He followed Smith-Kemp into his inner office, from where there was an excellent view of the depredations being practiced upon the City by a new generation of architects. He settled himself in an uncomfortable chair on one side of the desk; Smith-Kemp settled himself on the other. He, too, had a new chair; it was covered in black matte leather, and it rotated. Smith-Kemp seemed to enjoy this novelty, for he swiveled it back and forth a few times, like a child with a new toy, before he got down to business. Smith-Kemp had been educated at Winchester, and he had an arrogance of mind familiar in products of that school, carefully disguised, in his case, by an habitually languid manner. His expression was usually that of a man about to fall asleep; now he propped himself against his desk as if only that support prevented somnolence. When he spoke, however, what he said was always incisive and sharp. This morning, he permitted himself a small smile.

  “We’ve won,” he said without preamble. “Basically, we’ve won. I have the letter here from Angelini’s production company. It arrived via their solicitors this morning, by hand.” He fingered the letterhead of the lawyers in question. “Not an awfully impressive firm.”

  He passed the letter across the desk. Edouard read it quickly.

  “They’re going to back down,” he said. “I’ve read letters like that before.”

  “Oh, indubitably.” Smith-Kemp swallowed what might have been a yawn. “He had trouble raising the backing, in any case, or so I gather. He’s been hawking this particular property all over London, and he wouldn’t have done that if he could have raised backing in the States. This production company isn’t committed—and they won’t commit now. I knew they’d back down at the first hint of litigation. All that remains now is to get all copies of the script withdrawn, and that should be straightforward enough. It constitutes a gross act of libel—counsel had no doubts on that score, and neither had I.” He paused. “The man really does have the most extraordinary nerve. To write it is bad enough, but to assume he could actually persuade Hélène to take part in it—he must be mad.”

  “I would not call him a balanced man.”

  “So, you can tell Hélène not to concern herself. This film will not be made.”

  “You’re sure there are no possible loopholes?”

  “Loopholes? My dear Edouard. Certainly not.”

  “That’s good to know.” Edouard leaned forward; he glanced at his watch. “Now, you said there were one or two other matters…”

  “Only minor ones, Edouard. Signatures, really…”

  Smith-Kemp began to speak again, and Edouard listened, but with only half his attention. His mind drifted away to the past, to those old, oak-paneled offices, and to the day, so many years before, when he had sat in them, trying to explain to Charles Smith-Kemp’s father exactly what he wished done regarding Madame Célestine Bianchon, and the house in which she lived in Maida Vale.

  He had stammered and blushed; he had tried to sound nonchalant; he had tried to sound like Jean-Paul. And Henry Smith-Kemp, presumably primed by Jean-Paul, had been reassurance itself…

  “If you would be good enough to confirm that I have the correct spelling of the name. Bianchon. Célestine. Charming, charming. Three or four weeks I should anticipate. If you would remind Jean-Paul that I shall be needing his signature…”

  Edouard shut his eyes. From outside the plate-glass windows came the steady hum of the City traffic. For a moment the past felt close: he could reach out—he could touch it.

  He opened his eyes again. Charles Smith-Kemp had passed some documents across his desk. Edouard read them quickly, took out his platinum pen, and signed. He glanced at his watch. It was half-past twelve.

  “You mentioned one other matter—concerning my brother?”

  “Ah, yes. Yes indeed.”

  To Edouard’s surprise, Smith-Kemp’s manner became less languid. He came as near as he ever did to looking embarrassed. He turned, opened a cupboard behind him, and drew out an old-fashioned black metal deed box. He placed it in front of him on the desk. Across the front, painted in perfect copper-plate writing, were the words: BARON DE CHAVIGNY.

  “It was discovered during the course of the move.” Charles Smith-Kemp sighed. “It’s occurrences like this that make me realize we should have moved years ago. Those old offices were quite impossible. No room for storage. The most disorderly system—we relied on the older clerks, and when they retired, one by one, I’m afraid things were misplaced. Lost.” He paused. “This should have been handed over to you at the time of your late brother’s death, with all his other papers. It’s a bad oversight on our part. I apologize, Edouard.”

  Edouard looked at the box. It had a squat and malignant appearance.

  “Is it important?”

  “I haven’t opened it, of course.” Smith-Kemp looked offended at the very suggestion. “It is marked, you see, on the rear.”

  He turned the box around. On the other side, also in neat copperplate, it was inscribed: PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.

  Edouard smiled. “Goodness knows when I last saw one of those. I thought they were extinct.”

  “They served a purpose, I suppose.” Smith-Kemp looked at the box with distaste. “We don’t use them now, of course. Quite soon, I intend all our material to be computerized. Then we shan’t even need files.” His eyes lit. “Microfilm, Edouard. Tapes. Efficient—and remarkably discreet. I was looking into it only the other day. It seems you can use coding systems, quite ingenious. Of course, the initial outlay is very high, and—”

  “Do you have the key?” Edouard, who did not want a further lecture on the advances of technology, cut him off.

  Smith-Kemp looked faintly wounded. “Oh, yes. It was filed in the appropriate place. Once we had discovered the box, the key was simplicity itself.”

  He passed the key across the desk. Edouard stood up.

  “It’s not likely to be of any consequence anyway,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. If it were anything of importance, I should have known it was missing years ago.”

  “Do you want to take it with you?” Smith-Kemp looked at the box with dislike.

  “Why not? Since I’m here, I may as well…”

  Smith-Kemp escorted him as far as the elevator. Outside, Edouard walked the few blocks to his car, swinging the case by its metal handle. The sun was strong, and his spirits lifted: down Bury Court, into St. Mary Axe, along Houndsditch: he liked the names of streets in the City.

  He looked at his watch, debated whether to go back to Eaton Square for the gardening books, which could easily be sent on, and finally decided that he would. It was not far out of his way.

  He drove across London impatiently. The traffic was bad, and no matter which route he took, he seemed unable to escape it. Once or twice, he glanced down at the box on the seat beside him, feeling that he might have preferred it to remain unfound. It made him think of Jean-Paul; it made him think of Algeria.

  He slotted a tape into the car stereo. The Beethoven piano pieces, Seven Bagatelles. This music, which he had played so often before, when he was less happy than he was now, soothed him, as always. He forgot the box, and listened to the tumbling notes, the ease of transition to the cadence.

  He was approaching the end of the Mall, and turning into Constitution Hill with Green Park on his right, when he saw her. There was no car close behind him, and he slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt, staring after the small dark figure on the far side of the road: a woman—she was just turning into the park.

  Pauline Simonescu: he was almost certain of it. The woman had been tiny, old, wearing black, and something about her walk, a certain imperiousness in the angle of the head…He leapt out of the car, and ran across the street, dodging the passing traffic. It couldn’t be possible, surely? And yet—why not? She had left Paris, she might be here, she might still be alive—he had no reason to believe she was dead.

  He ran across to the entrance of the park, looking for the small figure eagerly. He would like to tell her, he thought, wh
at had happened to him, how the future she had claimed to see had turned out. He would like to see her; like to assure himself that she was alive, was well…

  He came to a stop at the entrance to the park. Here, one path proceeded a short way, and then divided. She was not in sight.

  He ran to the place where the path forked; he looked to the left, and then to the right. From here, at the intersection, he had a clear view into the distance. The figure of the old woman—whether Pauline Simonescu or some other—was nowhere to be seen.

  He stood, frowning and perplexed, unable to understand how he could have lost sight of her. Then, with a shrug of disappointment, he turned back. When he was crossing the street, he thought—then—he must have missed her.

  At the exit from the park he paused, looking back one last time. The sun beat down on his head; the leaves of the trees whispered and shifted; for a moment the traffic of the City seemed to lull, and the air, heavy with exhaust fumes, was silent.

  He returned to Eaton Square and collected the gardening books. Then, just as he was about to leave, he turned back. He looked at the deed box, which he had left carelessly on his desk. He felt the small key in his pocket.

  On impulse, he closed the door, went back to the desk, lifted the box, and opened it. Inside was one bulky envelope, which felt as if it contained a folder. It was tied with string, and sealed with red wax. On the outside of the envelope, again in perfect copperplate, the ink brown and faded, were the words: MRS. VIOLET CRAIG, FORMERLY FORTESCUE.

  Underneath the file there was a photograph, the only other object in the box. A studio portrait. From it stared back at him the face of a young woman, a face he had forgotten until now, a face he had neither seen nor thought of for over thirty years. The face of a born victim. She was wearing a chic little hat: she was smiling.

  “It’s impossible to hide things. In the end they always come out.”

  Thad seemed to find this fact satisfying. He leaned back against flowered chintz, and smiled. He waited, watching Hélène.

  “He didn’t tell you, did he?” he said quietly. “He didn’t tell you about Partex and Sphere, or the money that backed our movies, or Simon Scher. Nothing. I knew he hadn’t.”

  Hélène hesitated. She was very tempted to lie, to say that of course Edouard had told her, she had known for years. But it was not something she could brazen out, and Thad would know at once that she was not telling the truth. She looked away.

  “No,” she said finally. “No. Edouard didn’t tell me.”

  Thad said nothing. He continued to look at her, as if he judged that at this particular moment her own thoughts could do Edouard more harm than any words of his. Hélène could feel his satisfaction, and his triumph, and also the manipulation of his will. It sucked at her, across the space that divided them, winding her into some space where Thad was in control. She needed strength to resist that pull, and just then she felt weak, for what he had said had come as a great shock to her. All these years—and Edouard had said nothing. His silence was inexplicable to her; to have kept something so central a secret from her for so long. Did he not trust her? How could he have lied?

  She had had such an absolute faith in Edouard, such certainty that there was no deceit between them, that this revelation hurt her very much. It also frightened her. As her mind darted back and forth, trying to account for it, trying to understand it, she felt a hundred little doors at once open up on other suspicions: if he had deceived her over this, in what other ways might he have lied?

  Forcing her mind away from such thoughts, and despising herself for entertaining them, she turned slowly back to Thad and looked at him levelly. She had no reason to trust him, after all.

  “How did you find out?” she said coldly.

  “Oh, it was easy.” He smiled, and she heard the conceit creep back into his voice. “I first heard about it a long time ago. I met a girl who used to be Simon Scher’s secretary. He fired her, so she wasn’t exactly well-disposed toward him. She told me. But she was dumb—neurotic. She might have been making it up. I tried to check with Lewis, though I don’t think he knew. It was just about a month before he died. That was hopeless. I mean, really hopeless. Lewis couldn’t remember the days of the week.” He paused. There was not a shadow of regret in his voice, nor of pity. He spoke of Lewis as if they both hardly knew him.

  “I forgot about it for a while after that. I was busy. Then—I met you in Paris, after Gettysburg, you remember? I watched him then—your husband. He looked like he thought he owned you. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like what he said about my movie. It wasn’t true. So—I decided to find out. I knew it was no good trying to get Scher to talk; he’d gone back to Paris by then anyway. So, I went to the top. I saw that guy at Partex. Johnson. He told me.”

  “You saw Drew Johnson?”

  “Sure.” Thad gave a little giggle. “It wasn’t difficult. I’m famous. Your husband had just pulled out of Partex, Johnson bought his stock, and it took a big dive. Partex had a lot of problems right then. They’re okay now. Anyway, I asked, and he told me. Johnson didn’t know why he’d done it, of course. But I did.”

  Hélène turned away to the window. Her mind was beginning to function again; two years ago—that had all happened more than two years ago. Why had Thad waited until now to give her this piece of information? She knew the answer to that, of course. It was lying inside a blue binder in the drawer of her desk.

  She at once felt calmer. Through the window, across the lawns, she could see Lucien and Alexandre climbing the rope ladder to their tree house; Cassie was handing up the picnic things. Hélène touched the diamond ring on her finger; she thought of Edouard’s many gifts, the most important of which was his love. She knew why he had done this, she thought, and her heart lifted.

  Thad made a small contemplative humming noise. He said, “He did it to thwart me. He hates me. It was a way of destroying Lewis, too, indirectly—giving him enough rope to hang himself. But that wasn’t the main reason. The main reason was me.”

  Hélène turned around. “It seems an odd way of thwarting you, Thad. That financing enabled you to make your best films.”

  “I haven’t made my best films, not yet.” Thad glanced up irritably. “He wanted to own me, that’s all. Buy me up. Let me think I was free, and all the time he was pulling the strings. Manipulating me. It was a power game. I had the vision. I had the genius. And he had the money. He was playing with me, all that time. He let me make the first part of Ellis, and then, when it came to the second part, when he saw how good it was, he canceled, he pulled out…”

  His voice had risen. He stood up in sudden agitation, shifting from foot to foot.

  “I hate those movies we made now. I can’t look at them. He’s spoiled them…”

  “Thad, none of that is true.” Hélène looked at him coldly. “If you remember, you took Ellis II to Joe Stein at A.I. For more money.”

  “He took you away…” Thad appeared not to have heard her; his face was now tight and intent, and he was speaking rapidly. “He came back, and he took you away. He did it deliberately, so I couldn’t finish the trilogy. He wanted to destroy my work—he knew I needed you. So he bought you up. He took you back to France and buried you with money and houses and children. I know what he thought—he thought if he did that, you’d never break free…”

  “Thad—stop this.” Hélène turned on him angrily. “Your egotism is monstrous—do you know that? I won’t have you stand there and say those things. I told you not to come. I don’t want you here. I’d like you to go, now.”

  “We haven’t talked about the script. I have to talk about the script. Now that you know all this, now that you see what he’s like, how he lies, how he manipulated you as well as me—well, you must see things differently, that’s all…”

  He had become very agitated. His small pink hands described circles in the air. Flecks of spittle flew as he spoke, and lodged in his beard. He wiped at them absentmindedly, his eyes glinting and win
king behind their glasses, never leaving her face.

  “I can’t wait any longer. You’re getting too old. You’re thirty.” He took a step forward. “But if we did this film, this year, we could do Ellis next year. I’d have to be very careful how I shot it, but I could manage it, Hélène, I know I could.” He peered nearsightedly at her face. “There are some lines, but I’ll never let them show, Hélène, you don’t need to worry. And then, for the third part, Lise is older then, so it’ll be all right. And after that…Five years, we’ve got five at least, maybe a bit more. With the right lighting, the right makeup—maybe a little plastic surgery, not much. We could still be filming ten years from now—when you’re forty. Think of that, Hélène…”

  There was a silence. She looked at Thad, sublimely unaware of how mad he sounded. Then, with a quick decisive gesture, she turned away, opened the drawer of her desk, and took out his script. “Thad. Go away, and take this with you.” She thrust it into his hands. “I’m not making this film, or Ellis, or any other film. I will never work with you again.”

  There was a silence. Thad looked down at the script in his hands, and then back up to her face.

  “I wrote this for you…”

  “You should not have written it at all. You had no right.”

  “I wrote it for you. I sent it to you. And you didn’t even reply. You just went to your lawyer. Or he did.” His voice shook slightly. “Are you going to drop that action?”

  “No, I’m not. You’re going to drop that film. You’re going to stop writing scripts about me and my life. You’ve done it once, and I’m not going to let you do it again. That’s all. And if you thought you’d change my mind by coming here and telling me about Edouard and Sphere, you were wrong. It makes no difference at all. Now, will you please go?”

  Thad did not move. He stood absolutely still, his feet planted slightly apart, breathing quickly. As Hélène looked at him, she saw the color begin to seep up over his neck, and into his face, a dull, livid flush.

  “I need you.” He said it flatly and obstinately. “I need you for my work. You don’t mean this. You can’t mean it. You have to come back. I’ve always known you’d come back.” He stopped, began again. “I’ve finished nearly all the rooms now, do you know that? There’s only one left.” He swallowed. “If you were there, all the time, I think I could stop doing that. I wouldn’t need the photographs anymore. Maybe.”