Betrayals

by Carla Neggers

  “Grandfather, I want to go to Saigon to visit Tam,” Rebecca announced.

  Thomas had hold of her grubby, sturdy hand as they negotiated a steep incline, to the spot under a lemon tree where the view of the Mediterranean was heart-stopping.

  “I hope you can one day,” he told his granddaughter.

  “Tam’s sad about going.”

  “I understand. She’s lived in France most of her life, but Saigon’s her home.”

  “Maybe she can come visit me in Boston, Massachusetts, and we can ride our bikes.”

  Thomas smiled at the way his irrepressible granddaughter always said “Boston, Massachusetts” as if she were the only one who knew where it was. Jenny’s doing. “Not everyone knows or gives a damn where Boston is, you know,” she always told Thomas.

  “Tam was crying,” Rebecca said, chattering as they picked a spot from which they could sit and watch the sailboats. “She wouldn’t come worm-digging. She just wanted to stay up in Aunt Annette’s room and cry.”

  Quite an offense to a nonsulker like Rebecca. She went on, “But she felt better after I showed her Aunt Annette’s pretty marbles.”

  Thomas stared at the little girl. “And what were they?”

  “Her pretty marbles,” Rebecca repeated impatiently. “I found them.”

  “How big?”

  She made a highly unreliable boulder-size circle with her thumb and forefinger. “That big. Some were bigger.”

  “They were different colors?”

  “Uh-huh.” Pleased with her grandfather’s interest, she wrinkled up her face and began reciting: “Blue, red, purple, white, yellow, green—ummm, black…umm, I can’t remember.”

  “And what did you do with them?”

  “Oh,” she said solemnly, “we put them back.” She jumped up suddenly, squealing and pointing. “Look, Grandfather, a big boat!”

  Thomas nodded, distracted. His granddaughter had just described Gisela’s Jupiter Stones. Real or fake, that they were in Annette’s possession proved what he had begun to suspect in the past twenty-four hours: she and the dashing Jean-Paul Gerard had had an affair. Jean-Paul must have swiped the stones from his own mother to give to his lover. No wonder poor Gisela had had enough. Her son was a thief willing to steal his mother’s most cherished possessions so he could give them to a wealthy, self-indulgent woman like Annette Winston Reed.

  For her part, upon discovering her young French lover was the notorious Le Chat, Annette had turned him in—without mentioning their relationship to the authorities. Thomas supposed he couldn’t blame her for that.

  He did, however, blame her for not getting Gisela’s stones back to her. What did Annette intend to do with them now that Gisela had committed suicide and Jean-Paul was dead?

  Thomas watched boats with Rebecca for nearly an hour before they made their way back to the mas.

  The next morning, they left for Paris. Two days later they were back in Boston, and within the week, Thomas was on his way back to his quiet apartment in Saigon.

  It was another two years before he saw Annette again.

  And another three years before he fell into bed with her.

  It happened because he was tired of being alone; because his young company was doing moderately well helping American businesses understand the South Vietnamese system enough to start making money, and poorly in helping them, or anyone else in Washington or Saigon, understand the seriousness of the mistakes they were making. His hopes and dreams for this haunting, troubled country to find its place in the world as a free and independent nation were fading with the increasing corruption and isolation of the Diem government, with the quiet arrival of thousands more American military advisors, war materials, helicopters, planes and promises too easily made. Even as he dashed off persuasive letters to the Kennedy administration, the rumors had begun to circulate that President Kennedy was going to shut up Thomas Blackburn by naming him his new ambassador to Saigon.

  Meanwhile, strategic hamlets went up, President Diem continued to resist needed political and economic reforms and antagonized the people he was supposed to serve, and the pot, as Thomas liked to say, began to stink. Then on January 2, 1963, there was the debacle at Ap Bac, where a small group of Vietcong routed a far superior—on paper, at least—American-advised ARVN division. Not only was the government suspect and corrupt, but so was much of the South Vietnamese military. Thomas could see the whole thing falling apart, and through it all, the Vietcong went about their business under the cover of the steamy Vietnam night.

  Into this depressing mess came, in mid-January, Annette Winston Reed to see for herself, she said with a broad smile, what her husband was doing with Winston & Reed, the company he’d founded on her money. Thomas had long since stopped expecting Annette and Benjamin to talk in terms of what was theirs, together. It wasn’t her first trip to Indochina. She’d visited in the fall for two weeks, but Thomas had been too busy to see her.

  This time, he made a point of seeing her.

  They had dinner together one night on the colonial-style terrace of the Continental Palace Hotel. Annette was impressed with the beauty of Saigon, especially its tree-lined streets and washed pastel provincial buildings that reminded her of her beloved southern France. Thomas encouraged her to see Hue, the old imperial city on the Song Huong—the Perfume River—that was the religious and intellectual seat of the country. And he wanted her to see the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, the extraordinary beauty of the beaches of the South China Sea. He had come to love this picturesque, dangerous, divided country since his own first visit not long after losing Emily.

  Annette, however, was content with Saigon. “I’m not about to go wandering around,” she said, “and get shot by a Vietcong sniper.”

  Thomas asked her why she’d made this trip to Saigon alone.

  She lit a cigarette, a recent habit she’d acquired. “Benjamin had meetings in Boston. He says he’ll join me as soon as he can, but I’m not going to hold my breath.”

  She sounded petulant, and Thomas automatically sought to reassure her—patronizing on his part, he supposed, but he couldn’t resist. And it was what she seemed to want. He said, “I’m sure Benjamin doesn’t want to leave you here alone.”

  “I’m almost thirty-four—hardly a baby.” She smiled suddenly and reached across the linen-covered table, brushing a long, manicured finger over the top of Thomas’s hand. “Besides, you’ll take care of me, won’t you, Thomas? You always have.”

  She had deliberately misconstrued his comment. He had only meant that Benjamin, being her husband and caring about her, wouldn’t want to be apart from his wife any longer than necessary—not that Annette required protection from him or anyone else. Still, Thomas was amused and flattered that a woman nineteen years his junior—who’d called him a “proper prig” often enough—was bored enough to flirt with him. He’d been too busy and too angered and far too depressed by the developments in Southeast Asia to indulge in flirtations. And this one was harmless enough. Situated between Stephen and Thomas Blackburn in age, Benjamin had become friends to both men. In any event, Thomas could remember Annette when he was first married and she barely toilet-trained.

  After dinner they went for a long walk, up to the basilica of Our Lady of Peace at the top of Tu Do Street and over to the French Embassy, then back to his apartment. The evening was quiet and warm, relentlessly romantic. Thomas felt a familiar loneliness stinging at him.

  Annette’s hotel was just across the street, but he relented when she wanted to come up for a nightcap. It wasn’t much of an apartment, he explained, not apologizing, just a couple of rooms, a balcony, simple furnishings and hundreds of books. She loved it.

  “I get so sick of Boston,” she said, running her fingers along the spines of a row of books. “All the meaningless cocktail parties, the agonizingly boring luncheons, Friday afternoons at the symphony—sometimes I could just scream. I want to do something with my life, Thomas, not just drop dead in a plate of crabmeat
salad.”

  “So—do something.”

  “Like what?”

  He laughed and poured two glasses of brandy. “Annette, that’s up to you.”

  She grinned at him. “Maybe I’ll become a nun.”

  “What would Benjamin say?”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t care.” She spun away from the books and took the offered brandy. “He doesn’t want me anymore.”

  Thomas felt awkward. “Annette—”

  “We haven’t had sex in over six months.” Sipping her brandy, she looked at him dead-on over the rim of her glass, not even blushing as she enjoyed his obvious discomfort. “Does my language offend you?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “I just never know what to make of you, Annette—what you’ll say or do next. Even when you were a little girl, you were unfathomable. Totally unpredictable.”

  She shrugged. “I’m selfish and like to have my own way.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “And I want to be loved, Thomas,” she said, her voice cracking.

  He cleared his throat. “A human predicament, I’m afraid.”

  She sniffed and suddenly said, “What would you do if I stripped myself naked right now?”

  Thomas was too shocked to speak.

  She laughed, delighted with his reaction. And she put down her brandy and began to unbutton her blouse, slowly.

  “Annette, don’t.”

  “When I was about fourteen or fifteen,” she said, “I used to walk past your house and think about what it would be like to have you touch my breasts. Then as I got older, I wanted to feel your tongue on my nipples. Does that horrify you, Thomas?” She had her blouse completely unbuttoned and pulled it out of her skirt, so that it fell open. She had on a full slip and a lacy bra, but he could see the dark peaks of her nipples straining under the double layers of thin fabric. She smiled, her impossibly blue eyes shining with tears. “I’m awful, I know.”

  “No, you’re not, Annette. You’re in a strange country, you’re confused—”

  “I’m not confused. I know exactly what I want.”

  “Annette…”

  She peeled the straps of her slip off her smooth shoulders and down to her elbows, then wriggled free so that the bodice of the slip fell to her waist. A light film of perspiration shone on her bare midriff and arms. Her bra was lacy and expensive, and she unclasped it before Thomas had a decent chance to work up another protest.

  Her breasts were full and well-shaped, her nipples very dark and erect. She dropped the bra onto the floor.

  “Benjamin’s asking me for a divorce.”

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks. It was so quiet in the warm, humid apartment Thomas could hear himself breathing.

  “Make love to me, Thomas,” Annette whispered. “Please don’t turn me away.”

  Distressed by his own evident arousal, Thomas nonetheless put down his brandy, swept up her bra and handed it back to her. “I’ll take you back to your hotel.”

  “No!”

  With a suddenness and fierceness that surprised him, she grabbed his hand and jerked him toward her, placing his palm on the soft swell of one breast.

  “Love me,” she begged. “Please…Thomas, please!”

  He tore his hand away. “Not like this, Annette. I’d hate myself for taking advantage of you. And you’d hate yourself.” His eyes bored through her. “We’ll forget this happened.”

  She calmly put on her bra. “I won’t forget.”

  She didn’t. The next night she was back in his apartment, and the next. Not stripping herself or begging, but telling him how her marriage had crumbled in the last year, how lonely she was, how determined to be a good mother to Quentin despite the impending divorce.

  “I’ll get custody, of course,” she said. “And we’ll try to keep the publicity to a minimum. Benjamin and I just aren’t temperamentally suited to each other. There’s no point in preserving a bankrupt relationship.”

  “I’m sorry, Annette. I like both you and Benjamin very much.”

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s for the best—really.” She gave him a brave smile that faltered after a few seconds. “I’m just afraid men won’t be attracted to me anymore. I know I’m not a ravishing beauty—”

  “Don’t. You’re a lovely woman.”

  She raised her eyes to him. “Then why did you reject me?”

  He smiled. “Not because I wasn’t tempted, I assure you.”

  It was all she needed to hear.

  The next night, she brought Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington records, and they played them on his old record player and danced in his living room until midnight…and made love until dawn.

  They were together every night for the rest of her ten-day visit to Saigon, and as much as Thomas was infatuated with her youth and optimism and smart-alecky ways, he couldn’t shake the feeling that what they were doing was wrong. Annette was still a married woman. There’d been no formal separation, much less a divorce. He felt she should extricate herself from one relationship before launching another, but remembering Jean-Paul Gerard, realized the idea of adultery wasn’t one that troubled her.

  It was with both relief and sorrow that Thomas saw her off.

  She promised she’d be back. “I adore you, Thomas,” she said, kissing him at the airport, opening her mouth even as he struggled to pull away.

  But it wasn’t Annette who returned two weeks later; it was Benjamin Reed. He announced that his wife was now vice president of their company, and Winston & Reed had just landed a lucrative contract with the American government.

  “Annette says we’ll make a fortune if there’s war in Indochina,” Benjamin remarked blithely.

  Stephen warned his father not to take Benjamin’s hawkish talk too seriously. “Annette came back from her trip filled with all kinds of ideas of how Winston & Reed can make money over here, and they’re all predicated on an escalation of direct American involvement. She’s probably writing her congressman now. Benjamin’s total mush around her. A few days back among the Blackburns, and we’ll have him talking sense again.”

  But stricken by her betrayal, Thomas was no longer one to trust Annette Reed. “From something she said while she was over here, I got the impression Benjamin wanted a divorce—”

  “Benjamin?” Stephen laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. He worships Annette. Myself, I wouldn’t trust her to watch my kids while I poured coffee in the next room.”

  Thomas nodded. What a stupid jackass he’d been.

  He set out to forget Annette, and the deteriorating conditions in South Vietnam were enough to preoccupy his mind.

  Then, on a warm, pleasant evening, his son brought Jean-Paul Gerard to dinner.

  They’d never actually met, the Brahmin intellectual and the French race-car driver. Gisela was all they had in common, and she had spoken fondly of each to the other. Thomas was her high-minded friend whose seriousness she both admired and found amusing. They had met in Paris in 1931, when he was so hopelessly in love with Emily, and Gisela and several of her lovers—sometimes individually, often all together—showed them around their city. This was, of course, before Gisela decided to become a displaced Hungarian baroness. Then she was just Gisela Gerard, an impishly pretty young woman who loved to dance and laugh and be in love. When Emily died, Gisela didn’t send flowers or a morbidly proper card, but a note telling Thomas she’d sent money to a convent orphanage in Provence in his wife’s memory, and the nuns there had promised to name their next orphan girl Emily. Thomas had no idea if any of this was true, for Gisela was much better at coming up with ideas and making plans than she was at executing them. But he appreciated the gesture.

  Jean-Paul was her beautiful son—her “whim,” she called him, conceived in a sudden longing to have a baby. She made no demands on the father, and she herself was unconcerned about societal conventions like marriage and monogamy. World War II sobered her up some, but she retained her zest for life and was delighted when Jean-Paul set o
ff on his own at age sixteen and became a popular and successful Grand Prix driver. It didn’t bother her at all that he never acknowledged her as his mother. She’d set herself up on the Riviera as Baroness Gisela Majlath and was enjoying this new phase in her life.

  Thomas had often wondered if she’d discovered Jean-Paul had amused himself by becoming Le Chat. Had that disappointment precipitated her suicide, or was her grief over the Jupiter Stones?

  It wasn’t the sort of question one put to a guest, however, and Thomas graciously pretended not to recognize his son’s friend as the fugitive French jewel thief. Obviously, he’d either had to leave France without his collection of stolen jewels or had squandered their “earnings” long before now. His years in the Foreign Legion had hardened him. He was just twenty-eight, but there were lines at the corners of his eyes and a leatheriness to his skin that belied his years. His muscles were stringy and tough—he had a tested soldier’s body. Thomas wondered if scores of adoring women would gather around him now, or if they’d recognize Jean-Paul Gerard as a man who’d seen too much, done too much and had very little left to lose. He had discharged from the legion, he said, to come to Vietnam, where his skills with French and soldiering could be put to use.

  Thomas wondered if the young Frenchman’s reasons for choosing Indochina didn’t also include himself and Winston & Reed.

  “You want to kill people?” Thomas asked.

  Gisela’s soft eyes looked back at him from the man’s weathered face. “I just want to survive.”

  Stephen was embarrassed by his father’s harsh question, but Thomas behaved himself the rest of the evening. He could see the two young men liked each other. Well, what of it? Nearly four years in the Légion étrangère were enough punishment for any man’s crimes.

  But in another week, Annette returned to Saigon, and Thomas worried about what would happen if she and Gerard bumped into each other. It was bad enough Thomas had to confront her himself.