by Lily Tuck
“Especially when she was older and could no longer come downstairs,” Monsieur Rossier continues, “she stayed in her room and we would go up and visit her. It was always very pleasant and she was happy there. She died in that room, you know.”
He is not trying to offend you, Ella admonishes herself. He is just an old man with old memories. Just listen and be still.
The maître d’hôtel comes around with the white mounds again, and Ella shakes her head. “Non, merci,” she tells him.
Monsieur Rossier takes another mound of rice, and Ella tries hard not to think of the havoc it will cause to his digestion. “Later, after my wife and I were married, we lived there with our two sons,” Monsieur Rossier continues.
“Your son who lives in London—”
“Yes, two sons.” Monsieur Rossier interrupts. “André who lives in London and another son, Yves. He was younger than André. A wonderful boy, handsome and full of spirit and lively. He was very popular with the people of the village. Everyone admired him and liked him. He loved to ride horses and to hunt, to play golf and tennis. My wife and I thought he could have become a professional athlete, but, of course, we did not want that for him. It was just an idea we had, you understand.”
Ella takes a little more wine. Obviously, Yves was the prodigal son. Probably, he was arrogant and spoilt. She sympathizes with sensible and unathletic André and wants to resist Yves’s facile charm.
Across the table, Monsieur Rossier is quiet. But then he rouses himself and says, “Life is strange, you know.” He looks at Ella while the maître d’hôtel begins to clear the plates and replace them with clean ones. Ella smiles what she hopes is a kind, wise smile and she hopes that Monsieur Rossier will realize that she, too, understands about life and its strangeness. After all, isn’t he aware that she must have been through a lot herself? Here she is alone in a foreign country with her small children. But she sees that he is no longer looking at her. He is playing with his fork.
Ella does not know what to say when Monsieur Rossier suddenly says, “Yves was killed.” In an effort to show grief, she screws up her face—her mouth turned down, her eyes squinted. “I’m so sorry,” she finally says as the maître d’hôtel nudges her elbow with a platter of paupiettes de veau. Surrounding the veal are small peas and little onions, the kind that look as if they came from a can, and Ella serves herself sparingly.
Monsieur Rossier helps himself to peas and onions, but no veal, and continues, “Yes, Yves was killed. No, not in the war, although he wanted very much to enlist with de Gaulle and the Free French. He was only fifteen at the time, and his mother and I were very much against it, of course. We forbade him. André was in the Resistance, and that was bad enough. God knows, we worried about him night and day.”
Monsieur Rossier sighs deeply and takes a mouthful of peas and onions. “It was such a stupid accident, really. So unnecessary. He was on his way to Bordeaux to visit friends and spend the weekend. It was a house party. The plane service had just resumed, and flights were still very infrequent. In any case, the planes were small and I suppose old, and something went wrong with the landing gear. The pilot was not alerted. The plane crashed and burned. All the passengers and crew were killed and Yves was among them. They said they were all killed instantly.”
Ella lowers her head so that he cannot see her face and busies herself cutting up the veal on her plate.
“They telephoned to tell us and it was already late and, of course, I shall never forget it. My wife and I were preparing to go upstairs to bed. We had been out that night, not far from here, to see friends, and we had just gotten home. We were living in Belle Fontaine, I remember it so well, and we had just begun work on the château. The telephone rang and I said to my wife, ‘Good heavens, who could that be calling us at this hour?’ But I knew. And when I went to pick up the receiver, I knew what they were going to tell me. It was the police in Bordeaux.”
Ella can picture it exactly. She can see Monsieur Rossier and his wife as they are about to go upstairs to the bedroom, and then she can see Monsieur Rossier hesitate and look inquiringly at his wife, before he goes to answer the phone, which is in the hallway right next to the landing of the stairs, not far, just a few steps away, but far enough for him to feel a premonition and be afraid.
Ella finishes her food slowly. Yes, the peas and onions are most certainly from a can. How strange, she thinks, remembering the large vegetable garden Monsieur Rossier cultivates in the summer. From her bedroom window, Ella had watched how the gardener worked all day among the neat rows of lettuce, spinach, onions and, no doubt, peas. She refuses a second helping.
“Who would guess that something like that would happen to us? We were so happy, so . . .”—Monsieur Rossier searches for a word—“so united. And life never seemed quite the same after that, for my wife and me.”
Ella is reminded of the young Japanese woman and her child in the yellow slicker, and she tries to imagine how their lives have changed. She is tempted to say something about the recent plane crash—surely Monsieur Rossier would remember it—but she decides not to.
“Yves would be a grown man by now, in his forties, with children of his own, like André. Still, I can’t help thinking about it and how different things would perhaps be if he were alive. He would be living in Belle Fontaine, and he would be here tonight for dinner.”
But I wouldn’t be, Ella is tempted to say, but she knows perfectly well that she cannot, even for an instant, risk such a lighthearted comment. She is nothing to Monsieur Rossier and although, at the moment, she would like to try to be, she also knows that never, never, can she be of comfort to Monsieur Rossier.
“I always watch the Saturday night show on the television,” Monsieur Rossier says as, obediently, Ella follows him back into the sitting room, where two straight-back chairs have been placed directly in front of the large brilliant television already turned on too loud. Pointing to one of the chairs, Monsieur Rossier excuses himself and leaves Ella alone in the room. The fire has nearly gone out and the room no longer feels cozy and warm. Ella wishes she could get a cigarette from her purse, but Monsieur Rossier, she guesses, would not approve of her smoking. The soufflé that she had looked forward to was a disappointment—it tasted of egg whites and vanilla extract. Looking over again at the photograph of the four grandsons, she idly wonders which of the four is Yves and whether he is like the uncle he was named after. Probably the opposite—studious and quiet—she decides. Overhead, she hears water running, then Monsieur Rossier’s heavy step, on the stairs, and Ella wishes there was something she could do for him.
Monsieur Rossier turns off the light and settles into the chair next to her. The room now, except for the light from the television, is completely dark; Ella can just make out the outline of Monsieur Rossier’s profile. It is a variety show and a young man wearing a frilly shirt and a medal around his neck is singing. It is hard for Ella to tell if Monsieur Rossier is enjoying the show—his profile seems alert enough.
There is a discreet knock, and the maître d’hôtel pushes open the door with a tray full of bottles and glasses—enough, Ella thinks, for twenty people. Putting the tray down on a table near their chairs, he bids them good night. “Help yourself,” Monsieur Rossier tells Ella. “There’s brandy, liqueur, fruit juices, everything, I think.”
Why not? she thinks as she gets up from her chair and fumbles among the bottles and glasses in the dark. She finally takes a bottle that feels like a brandy bottle and pours herself almost a full glass. It is not brandy but a liqueur, a pear liqueur. The liqueur is very strong and tastes like fire going down her throat.
Sitting in the chair next to Monsieur Rossier, the glass in her hand, Ella tries to concentrate on the television but cannot, and she starts to think again about what she is doing here—in this foreign country, in this ugly château, on a Saturday night with an old man who is nothing to her and to who
m she is nothing. She shivers. Hadn’t Monsieur Rossier told her more than once how, in order to economize, the maître d’hôtel turned off the heat at night? Outside, it must be even colder. She should be in a city, in a brightly lit restaurant or a nightclub, warm and intimate, with a handsome young man who is holding her hand and with whom she is going to dance. The young man in the nightclub looks like one of Monsieur Rossier’s grandsons. Again, Ella is reminded of Yves. Perhaps she would have liked him after all, perhaps even loved him, and who knows, they might have gotten married and it would not matter that he was so much older than Ella, he was so extraordinarily good-looking and athletic. He would have loved her back, too, and, of course, they would be living at Belle Fontaine, only it would be different. She would not be paying rent and she would feel close to this old man; she would be his daughter-in-law, and perhaps there would be children, his grandchildren. And life would be filled with excitement and pleasure, parties and trips, riding, tennis and skiing, and always handsome Yves at her side and in her bed. Ella imagines making love to Yves.
On the television, a tall woman in a long white dress has replaced the singer, and Monsieur Rossier leans forward in his chair to take a closer look at her. Monsieur Rossier, Ella has heard, was once one of the leading businessmen in France. He made a name for himself and a fortune as well. Actually, he had always had the name, for his family was an old and distinguished one, but when he took over the family business, he raised the name to a new and glorious height. Probably, he was ruthless and forced smaller companies out or bought them up. Probably, too, families went bankrupt or lost their fortunes as Monsieur Rossier cornered the market and became enormously rich. But he was quietly rich, discreetly rich. He did not own yachts and racehorses, or spend his free time in Monte Carlo gambling with movie stars. Mainly he owned land. He bought vast forests in the north of France, thousands of hectares, which he supervised himself and on which he grew fir trees that were sold to paper mills. He built the ugly château and he owned a large apartment in Paris in the Eighth Arrondissement, near the Étoile. In the winter, he took his family to Saint-Moritz to ski, where he had gone as a small boy with his own parents. They had gone in sleds, with trunks full of monogrammed linen and personal servants to look after them in the hotel; in the summer he and his family went to Deauville for the sea air. And he had been content, for he had always stood for what was decent and honest and never mind that some people had criticized him for being too severe and for being a bit heartless. He had a clear conscience. One had to have high standards; otherwise one never got anywhere. And had he not always worked hard for everything he got?
The dancer on the television is quite beautiful, Monsieur Rossier decides, but not as beautiful as his wife. Mostly, if he thinks about the years before Yves’s death, he thinks about his wife and how they really did not spend enough time together, and he regrets it now. It seemed as if there was always something they had to do, someplace they had to be, a reception, a ball, a weekend. She, in particular, had liked the receptions. She liked to dress well and she had lovely clothes and, it is true, she looked beautiful in them. He thinks about how she looked in the long gowns with the jewelry he had given her and he feels sad. But he has had a good life—with a few exceptions, of course. Yves’s death. The war, too, although that had its advantages for his business. Yes, he has had a good life and he cannot complain even if he can no longer eat properly and his bowels do not move, but all that is minor. After all, he will be ninety-three this year. And sometimes he feels lonely but not always. Tonight he has the tenant from Belle Fontaine sitting in the chair next to him. She is not bad looking for an American and she is polite. You never know about tenants, especially women, single women, and the children. He had been very worried at first that they would destroy his mother’s old furniture. Children nowadays have no discipline, and there is no one but a fat Spanish girl to look after them, and each time he has gone to the house, the Spanish girl is sitting in the living room dressed in strange clothes and smoking and the children are nowhere to be seen. Surely, there is something she could be doing, but of course it isn’t any of his business and the house is kept clean and orderly. There are flowers, and it looks almost the way it did when he and his wife lived there. And the maître d’hôtel tells him that as yet nothing has been broken and they are looking after his things, which shows that you can never tell about people. Perhaps, it will work out after all. She is really quite nice—not energetic enough perhaps, and too timid—but on the whole that is better than the other way around. The dancer on the television is pirouetting in her long white dress, and the music is familiar. He cannot remember right away what it is. . . . Oh, yes, he thinks, The Skaters’ Waltz. How many times has he waltzed to it with his wife.
Ella also recognizes the waltz. When she was first married and before the children were born, she and her husband took ballroom lessons. They enjoyed dancing together and got fairly proficient at the fox-trot, the two- step, even the tango, but for some reason, they never quite mastered the waltz. She can still hear how her husband would groan out loud when they had to practice it—one, two, three, one, two, three—then, how, suddenly clumsy, he stepped on her feet and bumped her into the other couples. Unapologetic, he laughed and, as a joke, she remembers, he called her “Ginger.” In the dark, sitting next to Monsieur Rossier, Ella smiles to herself at the memory. Abruptly, the music comes to an end and the screen changes color. A voice announces something else, a tumbling act.
The variety show finishes at eleven and they sit and watch the news. Monsieur Rossier falls asleep and snores during the report of the mine explosion in the Pas-de-Calais, the threat of strikes, the rain and cold forecast for the morrow. Ella has to touch his arm to wake him when it is over. Startled, Monsieur Rossier shakes himself, embarrassed; then, slowly he gets up to turn off the television. In the dark, Monsieur Rossier gropes for the switch by the door. When he finds it, the room is filled with bright, white light that makes Ella squint. She glances over at Monsieur Rossier, who is standing by the door, and he looks tired and ill. His face is gray and his eyes are hidden behind a film of water, age and grief. Ella walks past him to the hall, where her coat is neatly folded on a chair. She puts it on while Monsieur Rossier undoes the bolts on the front door and opens it for her.
She thanks him and says, “Good night.”
Looking out past Ella into the night, Monsieur Rossier merely nods.
The cold air catches Ella as the door shuts behind her. She hardly dares breathe, and when she looks up at the sky, there are no stars. She turns back toward the château as it goes dark, and everything is suddenly black. She remembers the dog and prays that he is inside with the gatekeeper. But she is frightened of other things as well—nameless things—as, her heart pounding, she begins to run past the field. “Don’t be a fool,” she tells herself. “What can possibly happen to you?” and she makes herself slow down. In the distance, she can see a faint light coming from the drawing room window in the house.
The telephone is ringing when she opens the door to Belle Fontaine. It is very late and she cannot imagine who might be calling her at this hour. For a few seconds, she stands there in the hallway right by the stairs that lead up to her bedroom, unable to move and also, in the same spot where, so many years ago, Monsieur Rossier stood. The children, Ella thinks, then, an accident. In spite of herself, she pictures the plane going down. The phone continues to ring and, still a little out of breath from hurrying in the cold, she finally picks up the receiver. It takes her a moment to recognize Monsieur Rossier’s voice. “Yes, thank you, I’m home,” Ella tells him, relieved, but immediately she remembers how duped she had felt when she discovered that the person on the television in the long white dress dancing to The Skaters’ Waltz was a man and not a woman. A man impersonating a woman. Not sure whether Monsieur Rossier had realized that, Ella had started to tell him but changed her mind.
Ice
On board the Caledonia
Star, sailing through the Beagle Channel and past the city of Ushuaia on the way to Antarctica, Maud’s husband says, “Those lights will probably be the last we’ll see for a while.”
Mountains rise stark and desolate on both sides of the channel; already there does not look to be room for people. Above, the evening sky, a sleety gray, shifts to show a little patch of the lightest blue. Standing on deck next to her husband, Maud takes it for a good omen—the ship will not founder, they will not get seasick, they will survive the journey, their marriage more or less still intact.
Also, Maud spots her first whale, another omen; she spots two.
In the morning, early, the ship’s siren sounds a fire drill. Maud and Peter quickly put on waterproof pants, boots, sweaters, parkas, hats, gloves—in the event of an emergency, they have been told to wear their warmest clothes. They strap on the life jackets that are hanging from a hook on the back of their cabin door and follow their fellow passengers up the stairs. The first officer directs them to the ship’s saloon; they are at Station 2, he tells them. On deck, Maud can see the lifeboats being lowered smoothly and efficiently and not, Maud can’t help but think, how it must have been on board the Andrea Doria—a woman who survived the ship’s collision once told Maud how undisciplined and negligent the Italian crew was. The first officer is French—the captain and most of the other officers are Norwegian—and he is darkly handsome. As he explains the drill, he looks steadily and impassively above the passengers’ heads as if, Maud thinks, the passengers are cattle; in vain, she tries to catch his eye. When one of the passengers tries to interrupt with a joke, the first officer rebukes him with a sharp shake of the head and continues speaking.
