Bread Upon the Waters

by Irwin Shaw

  So they all drank happily to themselves.

  Hazen had drunk copiously and by the time they were at their coffee was expansive and jovial. “I have an idea,” he said. “I’ve got three days before I have to fly to Saudi Arabia and I propose we make the most of it. Leslie, have you ever been to the Loire valley?”

  “I’ve barely been to New Haven,” Leslie said, flushed with the wine. She had bought a new dress because Linda had said that a girl couldn’t just pass through Paris but had to have something to show for it, and it was very becoming, deep plum-colored and close-fitting and cut daringly low in front, displaying her Hampton honey-colored skin and the fetching outline of her bosom. “My slinky outfit,” she had described it to Strand as she dressed. “I hope you’re not shocked.”

  “I am ravished,” Strand had said loyally, not exaggerating by much.

  “Why don’t we hire a car tomorrow morning and go take a look at the châteaus and drink some Vouvray?” Hazen said. “And if they’re still putting on the Son et Lumière shows, good old Allen can brush up on his French history.”

  “At Chenonceaux,” Strand said, showing off a little, “Catherine de Medici used to have her prisoners tortured in the courtyard for the delectation of the ladies and gentlemen who happened to be her guests.”

  “The bloody French,” Hazen said.

  “From what I’ve read,” said. Strand, “they’ve stopped the practice. At least as a public amusement.”

  “Now they do it for profit. To Americans. In business and politics. But give them a century or two,” Hazen said, “and they’ll probably get around to prisoners again. Anyway, they won’t be doing it in the next three days, unless the government happens to change or the Communists take over Orléans. What do you say, can we all be ready by ten o’clock in the morning?”

  “Russell,” Linda said, “you’ve been gadding around so much, I think you could stand a day or two of just sitting in one place. Why don’t we all fly down to Nice and go to my place in Mougins? I hear the weather is divine just now and the garden is at its best.”

  Hazen scowled. “Linda,” he said, with surprising harshness, “Leslie and Allen haven’t flown three thousand miles just to sit in a damned garden. They can sit in my garden all they want when they get back. Anyway, I told the pilots they could have three days off. They need the rest.”

  “We could always fly down to Nice on Air France,” Linda said, “like the rest of the human race. And the Loire valley will be jammed with tourists. We’ll be lucky to find hotel rooms.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Hazen said, his voice rising.

  “It’d be a shame if Leslie and Allen went back home without seeing my little place in Mougins,” Linda persisted. “They must be getting tired of hotels by now. I know I am. There’s more to France than hotels.”

  “It’s a shame that they have to go back to America without seeing Verdun and Mont-St.-Michel and the cathedral in Rouen and the Lascaux cave and a million other things,” Hazen said loudly. “But they only have two weeks. Christ, you’re a stubborn woman, Linda.”

  “Leslie, Allen.” Linda turned toward them. “What do you want to do?”

  Leslie glanced quickly at Strand, looking for a signal. Strand would have been happier just to remain in Paris doing exactly what he had done since he had arrived there. But the exasperation in Hazen’s voice was not to be ignored. “I’m sure,” he said tactfully, “that Leslie would love to see your house, Linda. But I know she’d regret missing the chance to see the châteaus.”

  Leslie gave him a quick, grateful smile.

  “There,” Hazen said with satisfaction, “it’s settled. And no more insane arguing, Linda. If there’s one thing I hate it’s arguing when you’re on a holiday. I get enough arguments at the office.”

  “Do you ever lose, Russell?” Linda asked gently.

  “No.” Hazen laughed, his good spirits restored.

  “I’m glad I don’t work for you,” Linda said.

  “So am I.” He reached for her hand and kissed it graciously. “So—ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Country clothes.”

  “Leslie,” Linda said, “you know what we can do when we get rid of this brute—we can let him fly his toy plane back to America and we can stay on and go down to Mougins on our own and fly back home in our own good time.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Leslie said. “But I have to go home and start getting ready to move. We have to be at Dunberry by September tenth. Maybe next year. That would be something to look forward to, wouldn’t it, Allen?”

  “I’m looking forward to it already,” Strand said. If there will be a next year, he thought, as he said it.

  He lay in his bed watching Leslie, in her nightgown, brushing her hair in front of the dressing table mirror. “It was a nice evening,” he said, “wasn’t it?”

  “Better than nice,” she said. “Like all the evenings. Except for that little clash of wills between Russell and Linda.”

  He lay in silence for a moment. “Tell me,” he said, “was I right in saying that you’d prefer going down to the Loire instead of to Linda’s place?”

  “You were right in saying it,” she said, her arm rising and falling in smooth even strokes, “but it wasn’t the truth. I’m gorged for the moment with sightseeing. A few days in a garden in the south would have made a perfect ending to our trip.”

  “Then why didn’t you say so?”

  Leslie laughed softly. “Darling,” she said, “it’s his holiday.”

  “I guess we really didn’t have any choice.”

  “Not for a minute.” She stopped brushing her hair and stared at herself in the mirror. “Do you think I look younger than I did two weeks ago?”

  “Years,” he said.

  “I think so, too.” She resumed brushing her hair. “Still,” she said, “I would like to look at least once at the Mediterranean.”

  “Next time we come to Europe,” he said, “we pay our own way.”

  “Next time,” she said softly. “Who knows if there’ll be a next time?”

  He was disturbed by the echo of his own thought. Vaguely, he felt that somehow tonight they both needed comforting and he almost asked her to come into his bed so that he could sleep with his arms around her. But he didn’t speak. He didn’t know whether he should be proud of his prudence or despise himself for his cowardice. He closed his eyes and went to sleep to the silken sound of his wife brushing her hair in the shadowy room.

  There was a surprise for Strand and Leslie and Linda Roberts when they came down from their adjoining rooms to the lobby the next morning at ten o’clock. Hazen was waiting for them with a striking-looking blonde, who was holding a smart black attaché case. She was dressed severely in a simple tweed suit and low-heeled shoes. “This is Madame Harcourt.” He said the name in the French manner, leaving off the final t. “She’s from our office here and she’s driving us down. She’s going to Saudi Arabia with me and we have some business to work out before we leave. Don’t worry, you don’t have to talk French to her. Her mother’s English.” He spoke hurriedly, as though a little embarrassed by Mrs. Harcourt’s unannounced appearance.

  “Mr. Hazen always says that right off, whenever he introduces me to Americans,” the woman said, smiling. The businesslike severity of her face disappeared, and her voice was low, pleasant, easy, and her accent was clipped but not obnoxiously British. “It’s as though he doesn’t want to be accused, even for an instant, of favoring the French.”

  “She’s a lawyer,” Hazen said. “I deal with French lawyers only out of dire necessity. Well, the luggage is in the car. Shall we take off?” He started out of the lobby with Mrs. Harcourt and the others following.

  “Quite an improvement on good old Conroy, wouldn’t you say?” Strand whispered.

  “Cosmetically, anyway,” Leslie said.

  A big black Cadillac was waiting for them at the door and Mrs. Harcourt got in on the driver’s side, with Hazen beside her. “Mrs. Harcourt w
ill drive,” Hazen said. “I hate to drive and I’d have to jump out of the car before we reached the Pont St.-Cloud if I let Linda behind the wheel and I know Allen hasn’t a license and Leslie’s too new at the sport for French roads. You all comfortable back there?” Although he had said country clothes, he was dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt, tight around the collar, and a sober tie, making Strand wonder what Hazen would wear to a funeral. Even with the weight he had put on in Paris, his own collar, Strand felt uncomfortably, left an unfashionable gap at his Adam’s apple.

  “We’re fine,” Strand said. “Couldn’t be better.”

  Mrs. Harcourt turned on the ignition and the car started off. She drove deftly and confidently through the light traffic.

  It was a beautiful morning, sunny but not too warm, and Strand leaned back contentedly, enjoying looking at the buildings of Paris and then at the green rolling country they were in when they passed through the tunnel under the Seine and sped south.

  They stopped in Chartres and went into the cathedral. Strand would have liked years of slow study to absorb it, but Hazen was visibly annoyed at a loud group of German tourists who were being addressed, in their own language, at a decibel count suitable for a political meeting, by their guide.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Hazen growled, after they had been there for only ten minutes. “I’m hungry.” He refused to have lunch in Chartres, though. “I recommend the cathedral, but not the food.” He said there was a wonderful place just off the highway about a half hour away.

  They had a fine lunch out in the open air at a table set in a garden and Hazen was jovial again and ordered two bottles of Montrachet to go with the trout, while making a good-humored point of not allowing Mrs. Harcourt to drink any of it because she was doing the driving and the cargo of the Cadillac was precious. She listened politely but hardly spoke while the others talked. She sat quietly, erectly, almost stiffly, as though the holiday atmosphere did not include her and she remained conscious that she was an employee and her employer was present. She locked the car carefully because she had left the attaché case on the front seat

  But as Strand and Leslie were walking back to the car after the others, Leslie said, “It’s a fake.”

  “What’s a fake?” Strand asked, puzzled.

  “The junior employee and the big boss act,” Leslie said. “For our benefit.”

  “Oh, Leslie.”

  “You don’t have to be a detective to guess what business they have to work out in the Loire valley before they take off for Saudi Arabia.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Strand said, slightly shocked by the hostility he sensed in his wife’s voice. “And even if you’re right, it’s no business of ours.”

  “I just don’t like people to think they can pull the wool over my eyes, that’s all,” Leslie said, her lips tight. “Madame Harcourt! They’re a cool pair, those two.”

  Strand was glad when they reached the car. It was a conversation he had no wish to continue.

  They all had rooms on the same floor in the hotel in Tours and Strand noticed the malicious gleam in Leslie’s eyes when she saw that their room and Linda’s were at one end of the corridor and Hazen’s and that of Mrs. Harcourt, again carrying the attaché case, at the other.

  “What do you think she’s got in that case she lugs around everywhere?” Leslie asked.

  “Industrial secrets,” Strand said. “Russell told me he’s negotiating for a company that’s putting in a bid to construct an atomic plant in Saudi Arabia.”

  “My guess is that it’s a douche bag,” Leslie said.

  “Good Lord, Leslie!”

  Leslie merely giggled as she went through the doorway of their room.

  Leslie continued to be reserved and cool toward the woman the next day when they visited Chambord and Chenonceaux, but if either Hazen or Mrs. Harcourt noticed it, they didn’t show it. But Leslie made no secret of her delight in the glorious piles of masonry and told Hazen, as they stood in the formal garden looking at the gallery of Chenonceaux built on stone columns over the Cher River, “This moment alone is worth the trip.” Then she kissed his cheek.

  Hazen smiled happily. “I told you this would beat sitting and sweating in a garden while being eaten up by mosquitoes.” He glared at Linda. “Next time I hope you’ll go where I tell you to without my having to get out a subpoena for you.”

  “The mosquitoes only come out after it rains,” Linda said with dignity, “and it hasn’t rained all summer.”

  “There it starts again. You know you’re lying.” Hazen appealed to the others. “Will you listen to that? Only after it rains!”

  “Please,” Leslie said, “please. Let peace and harmony reign. Stop teasing the poor man, Linda.”

  “He has such a low boiling point,” Linda said, smiling, “sometimes I can’t resist, just to see how fast the steam starts to spout.”

  “Low boiling point! Mrs. Harcourt, you’ve known me for many years and you’ve seen me tried in important matters, sorely tried in important matters, sorely tried, by low dealing and gross incompetence, and outright chicanery. Have you ever seen me blow up?” By now Hazen, too, was amused.

  “You have always been a model of decorum, Mr. Hazen,” Mrs. Harcourt said demurely, “in my presence.”

  “Now you’re doing it, too,” Hazen said and then joined in the general laughter.

  But back in the room in the hotel, getting ready for dinner, Leslie had forgotten the comradely laughter of the afternoon. “I heard something about that Madame Harcourt this afternoon,” she said.

  “What?” Strand sighed inwardly. He had grown to like the woman. She seemed modest and intelligent and cheerful and her presence seemed to lighten Hazen’s moods and make him a more agreeable companion.

  “There is no Monsieur Harcourt,” Leslie said. “She’s divorced.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Linda told me. The last time she and Russell were in Paris together the junior attorney was there all the time, too. Divorced.”

  “Divorce isn’t a crime. Most of the people anyone knows are divorced.”

  “I just thought you’d be interested, that’s all. You seem so interested in the lady I thought you might be interested in her marital status, too.”

  “Oh, come on, now, Leslie,” Strand said, annoyed, “I’m just decently polite.”

  “Everybody is so decently polite.” Leslie’s voice had a dangerous edge to it. “‘You have always been a model of decorum, Mr. Hazen’”—she mimicked Mrs. Harcourt’s English accent—“‘in my presence.’ Mr. Hazen! Do you think she calls him Mr. Hazen in bed, too?”

  “Oh, cut it out, Leslie,” Strand said sharply. “You’re being absurd.”

  “Don’t you snap at me!” she shouted. Then she bent over in her chair, raised her hands to cover her face and sobbed.

  Strand was too astonished to do anything for a moment. Then he went over to Leslie and knelt and put his arms around her. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “I guess we walked around too much in the sun today and we’re both a little tired.”

  She pushed his arms away from her violently, still sobbing, her mascara running. “Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”

  He stood up slowly and went to the door. “I’m going downstairs,” he said quietly. “When you come down, look for me in the bar.”

  He closed the door silently behind him.

  When the others found him in the bar, Leslie had not yet appeared. He had spent a half hour alone trying to figure out what was wrong with her and had come to no conclusion. She was an emotional woman but not an irrational one and her outburst was mysterious to him. He had never given her reason for jealousy and the times when he had openly admired a pretty woman she had joked with him mildly about it. Too many new and different experiences, he decided, crowded into too short a period. He told the others that Leslie was tired and lying down for a while and that they should begin dinner without her.

  They were only on the
ir first course when Leslie came into the dining room. She had redone her face and was smiling and looked serene. “Forgive me for being late,” she said as she took the chair that Hazen was holding for her. “It’s been a long day. I’m starving. Everything looks and smells delicious. Thank you, Russell. What are you having, Mrs. Harcourt? That looks especially good.”

  “Hot local sausage and hot potato salad,” Mrs. Harcourt said.

  “I heard men do like women with hearty appetites,” Leslie said and Strand began to worry about her again. “I’ll have the same. I’d be much obliged if you’d order it for me. With my French I never know what I’m getting until I taste it.”

  The dinner progressed normally with a great deal of talk about wine on the part of Hazen and Linda, who defended the wines of Provence, although Leslie put in a few good words for several bottles of California white wines.

  “Tomorrow,” Hazen announced as they were served their dessert, “we’re through with sightseeing. Mrs. Harcourt has a friend in the neighborhood who has a vineyard and cellars where he bottles Vouvrays, and she tells me they’re very good indeed and we’re going out to his place in the morning and taste a few of them. Everybody agreed?”

  Everybody agreed. Strand decided that tomorrow he was going to call Mrs. Harcourt by her first name, if he ever discovered what it was.

  “His name is Larimmendi,” Mrs. Harcourt said. “The wine man, I mean. He’s a Basque, but he fell in love with Touraine. I went to law school with him, but he decided to give up the law for the grape. A wise man. I nearly married him after I saw all those beautiful bottles in the cellars. He’s a charming man but he drinks so much of his product himself, I doubt that he’d be much use as a husband…”

  As she was speaking, Strand saw a tall woman in a gray wool coat that exactly matched the silvery color of her hair enter the dining room and stand at the door looking as though she were searching for someone. Then she started toward their table. As she moved toward Hazen, who was sitting with his back to the room, Strand saw that she was an impressive looking woman, with a bony, fine face and a long sharp nose, like the paintings of eighteenth-century beauties in English portraits. She stopped behind Hazen, stared down at him for a moment and then bent over and kissed the top of his head. “Good evening, dear Russell,” she said. Her voice was sharp and the emphasis on the “dear” was ironic.