Thomas and Beal in the Midi

by Christopher Tilghman

  She walked across the street to the arched entrance. The dogs were asleep, and there was no one in the courtyard, no sounds of cooking or laundry or cleaning. There was a dead rat in one corner. She walked up the three flights and knocked. Okay, she had to admit it now, her heart was pounding; she ran a hand from her chest down to her belly. There was no response from inside. Come to me. She knocked again and then tried the door, which was unlocked. She walked in and, not sure she comprehended what she was seeing, went through the kitchen to Touré’s room, hesitated at the closed door in case she could hear him inside, breathing, talking, with a woman. When there was no sound, she opened it and found it empty. The cot was there, the cot where she had felt the first real sexual bliss of her life, the washstand, but nothing else, no pajamas on the hook, no spare white shirt on a hanger. No books about Senegal.

  She had not imagined this. Her legs gave out, and she aimed herself at the cot as she fell. Slowly, like a wave building far at sea, she felt the crushing approach of breathtaking despair; her saliva was milky, and her hands and feet tingled. She waited for all this to subside, and when it did, Beal Terrell Bayly was the loneliest person on earth. The morning Randall’s body had been found; the night she was spirited off the Retreat after she and Thomas had sworn their love; the day of her wedding, when she got into Colonel Murphy’s carriage and had the last glimpse of her mother and father and sisters through the hazy glass—in every way this felt worse because, obviously, this was all her own doing. Being unfaithful to her husband, being in this shabby and now empty flat, no one but herself to be blamed for all that. She started to weep, and once the first shudder heaved in her chest, she began to sob, to cry inconsolably, when the only consolation is the goodness of crying itself. She had her handkerchief opened across her face, and she caught glimpses of this place through the holes in the lace, which made the grime on the walls and the streaky glass seem ancient and unchanging. She cried for a while, stopped, and then cried again. Come to me, he had written, probably on the day he departed, something one would do surrendering a hotel key before catching a train. His last ploy. Come to me. And now she had come to him, only to realize—as he knew she would—that he didn’t mean come to this apartment in Les Halles, in France, in Europe, but to Senegal. Follow me to Africa, Mademoiselle Beal, where you belong.

  When she could not possibly cry anymore, she stopped and then lay on the bed breathing deeply. The idea slowly began to come to her that she actually was feeling refreshed, liberated maybe. Relieved, of course, that she was not just now in a sweaty state of recent sin, but more than that: this was all completely over. Tout est fini. She straightened her hat and walked down the stairs, recalling the times she had been there; there had been more to this than she could ever admit to anyone, more conscious deciding, more subterfuge, but now that it was over, she didn’t have to.

  When she got to the street, the eerie calm in the markets had passed; they seemed now to be bustling with tradespeople closing down their stalls, loud conversations and laughter from the cafés at the edges. Perhaps she had simply not noticed all this when she came in. She walked down to the Île de la Cité. It was a hot day, airless and sunbaked, and she looked for a piece of shade to rest in, spying the bell towers of Notre-Dame. She and Thomas had popped in there one day, but neither of them felt any pull, any draw to prayer or contemplation in this vast hulk; this was religion of an entirely different sort from any they could ever possibly need. They had not been going to Mass, to Madame Bernault’s dismay, but so few French people actually worshipped on Sundays that it seemed okay to skip. Now, with a child coming, they might have to rethink this, as during her conversion she had learned about Purgatory, an unlikely and mean story to her, but others seemed to believe it, even welcome it as consolation for having lived a boring but blameless life. Beal knew she had not lived a blameless life, but it was not a boring one either.

  The cathedral looked cool and inviting, so she crossed the square and let herself in. The heavy door boomed behind her, and she stood for a minute or two while her eyes adjusted. In the dark, surrounded by the odors of frankincense and candle wax, she heard a murmur echoing from far away and then a single, piercing smash from an organ, as if someone had accidentally backed into the keys. When she could see clearly, she found her way to the chairs and sat down. The sun shining through the windows at her back sent a rose-colored beam through the dust particles and smoke; two young men, priests, she supposed, were praying at one of the chapels at her side, and then from much deeper, beyond the altar, she heard a baby wailing. She dropped her hand to her stomach and leaned back a little, astonished by all this—herself, little Beal Terrell, little pregnant Beal, sitting in this ancient monument just waiting, it seemed, to find out the real story of her life.

  9

  Many times since he had returned to Paris, Thomas had intended to go see Eileen. If his trip had been a triumph, it was largely her triumph. He would have no trouble saying that, telling her that come what may in this perhaps foolhardy venture, anything good that came out of it was due to her. He would have loved to say that to her, in the hope that it would give her pleasure, that she would smile, that she’d know how much he cared for her without his having to say it. Anything bad that came out of it would have nothing to do with her, a blameless librarian simply showing a patron through the collections. Notice that agriculture is divided into crops shelved alphabetically, and then into products. Here, see: grapes, and here, see: wine. But if he told her anything about his discoveries, about St. Adelelmus, he’d have to, or want to, tell her the rest: that if much of what he had done was driven by his fear of losing Beal, it was Eileen’s good cheer that gave him hope. Maybe it hadn’t taken so much, a month or so of friendly encouragement, shared teas; maybe that wasn’t so much, except that it was everything. Until the day he died, Thomas could not reimagine his life, could make none of it happen without her—and later, her father—in the picture.

  But he delayed, and as the weeks went by, it got worse and worse and meaner and meaner; he had long since realized that mere guilt wasn’t all that was going on, that this final visit with her would be the end of this affair. So three days before he and Beal were to leave Paris, he looked up from his work, dropped his pen on his desk, and marched to Galignani’s. The director, M. Vaucluse, treated him with no more or no less displeasure than usual, but Thomas was not looking at him. Over his shoulder, through the gaps of a full bookshelf, he saw her hair. He greeted the director loudly enough to make sure she could hear his voice, and she turned in a jolt and their eyes met over the tops of the volumes.

  “Ah,” he said to M. Vaucluse, “there’s Mademoiselle Hardy. I had a question for her.”

  The director was clearly not fooled by this, and he might well have had cause to fire her on the spot, but instead he shrugged. It was not a cold and indifferent shrug; the man had a heart. “Perhaps it is time for her to take tea,” he said.

  In Thomas’s mind there was every chance that she would not want to take tea with him, would not want to talk to him at all; a chilly And what was the question, M. Bayly? would not have surprised him. But she told him to wait while she got her hat and gloves, and as he was waiting for her at the door, it occurred to him that she was doing this because she had something she wanted to say. He’d deserve anything, he figured, especially because he had committed no real crime, that he was blameless but also guilty as sin.

  “So. You’re back,” she said when they got onto the sidewalk under the arcade. It was high tourist season, and from each side sellers of postcards and panorama albums thrust their products into Thomas’s face. They recognized Eileen and didn’t bother.

  “Yes,” he said. Neither of them had to make reference to what was obvious, that he had been back for weeks without coming to see her.

  “I trust it was a successful trip.”

  He answered that it was, that he had bought a beautiful but neglected winery in Languedoc. “Domaine de St. Adelelmus,” he said.


  “Who was he?”

  “I guess I don’t know. I don’t know what he did.”

  “Whatever, it probably ended badly for him.”

  They passed into the tearoom and said nothing while they were being seated. The headwaiter welcomed them, and Thomas tried to recall how many times he had been there with Eileen. Ten times? More? Twenty, more likely. He settled in his seat and began to prepare himself either to apologize for waiting so long or to tell her that he had been thinking of her, had planned to send her a postcard but didn’t know her address. But no rehearsed lines were necessary.

  “Your wife came in while you were gone,” she said. “It explained a lot. It explained everything. Married, all along. You live a complicated life. It must be exhausting, being you.”

  Thomas heard this with a shock and a gulp of air; for the moment, all he could do was dissemble. “I’ve never really thought of my life that way. I just did what I had to do.”

  She showed no reaction to this disavowal. “I am not so angry at you as I was. She’s very lovely.”

  Eileen’s hurt and anger had not been part of their parting these months ago; she’d made it so easy on him that he probably overstepped. “I’m sorry,” he said. He looked across the tiny round tea table between them; their knees were practically touching. “You don’t know how much—”

  She headed him off. “Please. No more. There’s no point.”

  Thomas understood that there was no point for her; the point for him was to be allowed to express something, to say it. But it wasn’t going to happen. He took a sip of tea. All those American voices around him, these ladies; how far from them he felt, how he loathed them. They wouldn’t last a day in the garrigue.

  He got back on track. “Beal didn’t mention it. Probably she was curious to see where I spent all that time.”

  “Beal,” said Eileen. “That’s her name? Very sweet. A family name?”

  “Yes,” said Thomas. “I guess so.”

  Eileen looked at him with a little surprise, as if he should have known better where her name came from, and then, with some irritation, she said, “It wasn’t like that.”

  “What do you mean? What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything. We didn’t talk. She was there for perhaps five minutes. Maybe less.”

  This whole episode was beginning to seem very odd to Thomas, but he knew, as with the story of St. Adelelmus, that this was probably not going to end well. Still, he allowed his confusion to take the lead. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How did you know she had anything to do with me? How did you know she was my wife?”

  “I didn’t. Maybe not until this very moment. But I believed you wouldn’t hurt me for no reason. You’re too kind, too damn polite to do that. I told myself that it wasn’t because you didn’t like me that you just stopped coming here. Then she walked in with such presence—so, well, indelible. The moment I saw her, I knew she was the cause.”

  Thomas was trying to think of something to say, to give the story of himself and Beal in the fewest possible words, but the idea of having to go through it all was unbearably fatiguing to him. Eileen’s not knowing anything about it was one of the reasons, a big reason perhaps, that he loved her; he’d recognized that months ago. Fortunately—he thought, for a second, that it was fortunate—he didn’t need to offer anything, because she kept talking.

  “Besides—” she said.

  “Besides what?”

  She had been canted slightly to the side of the table, but now she seemed to intuit how little of this Thomas was grasping, and in a mode of warning she shifted her chair to face him straight on. Their knees brushed. “Thomas. She didn’t come in to look at our reading room. She came in to see me. Do you understand what I am saying? She came looking for me. That’s how I knew she was your wife.”

  The details were beginning to close around him like irons. “How did she know to come looking for you?” he asked stupidly.

  “How would I know that, Thomas? I assumed you had told her about me, that in some way you had done the honorable thing.”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t.” He pushed his teacup slightly away and leaned back. Two young women, probably British, were staring at them, hungry for the drama that was taking place next door. There’s no drama when there are no secrets, so yes, there had been a drama going on in his marriage ever since he got back, an act he knew nothing about. “Then what?” he said at last.

  “She came in, and I noticed her because she is so striking, and she surveyed the room, and when her gaze got to me, she stopped and our eyes met. We looked at each other, and then she was out the door. She had a tiny smile. I won’t tell you what I thought it meant.”

  Thomas could barely breathe. “Please,” he whispered. “Please tell me.”

  Eileen raised her eyebrows, as if telling herself that none of this mattered anymore, that there was nothing to be lost or gained, that she could admit something to Thomas that she would never, ever breathe to anyone else. “Well. I thought it meant that she found me pretty. That I might have been worthy of her husband. It was that kind of smile, a smile of approval.”

  Thomas would not disgrace himself enough to say that she was worthy of him. Or to say that he wasn’t worthy of her, or of Beal. That he was unworthy. Anything he thought to say had the rote hollowness of catechism for him, so he said nothing, which she seemed to appreciate very much. She had certain things she wanted to get said, had perhaps rehearsed this talk in case she ever saw him again, and she moved forward.

  “I thought I should tell you that I have decided to reconcile with my father. You took over the whole arc of my time here, and when you left, I realized that I was being…” She stopped, searching for the word. “Careless,” she said. “I have been so sheltered, I didn’t see that I was being careless about a part of my life that mattered to me. That I was risking something.”

  “The love of family,” said Thomas. He didn’t know much about it, but he thought of Beal, of her one great sorrow, the loss of her family.

  “Yes. That’s right. I have cut myself off, living with my former French governess, who I think is a spy for my mother. I was forced to choose between them, and I chose my father. I have been much happier since I came to that. I’m not really a woman of the world.”

  Thomas screwed his face into a scowl, the kind of disapproving look a brother might give to a sister who was selling herself short, but it was intimate all the same. He didn’t need to say anything more, and they sat drinking their tea across a tiny circle of black marble. Finally he asked her what she was planning, when she would be seeing her father. “In Bordeaux?” he asked.

  “Yes. Isn’t that funny? Me in Bordeaux. But at least it’s Fronsac,” she said.

  “At least what?”

  “Fronsac. It’s the region he’s in. A poor relation. It’s not the Médoc, but it’s very lovely.”

  “Well, then Languedoc is an even poorer relation. The girl who was sent away pregnant when she was twenty and has been living on the streets ever since.”

  “No. It’s the second son who had to go out and make his own way. It suits you. I always knew it would. And Fronsac suits my father.”

  Thomas almost blurted out that he would like to meet him someday; imagine what she might have said in response to that: And I’ll introduce you to him as exactly what? He took a safer road. “He’s still with Mme de Bose?”

  She tipped back her head sharply at the name, but then smiled. She put her hand on his forearm. “Yes. She’s the one who got in touch with me. It was brave of her, really. I liked her a great deal before she became my father’s mistress. It’s sweet of you to remember her name.”

  “A kind of obscure sweetness,” he said, and she laughed. They sat in the slow parting of this better moment. Soon they would have to stand up and he would have to say goodbye. With a handshake, he supposed, which would be better than a kiss on the cheek, when what he would want to do was hug her, a good, old-fashioned,
feel-good-on-the-arms hug. He’d have some words at the ready, and so would she, but what he wouldn’t say was that he couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her again, of never having some strange set of circumstances where they could meet again in a perfectly seemly manner—Beal at his side, her husband and one or two children at hers, something like that, a chance meeting that would belie an immense possible world that did not need to be, could not be, spoken of, a testimony to the value of making the right choices. He could look beyond, now, and see the pleasure that was waiting for him, this delicate moment in the future, as a reward for making the right choices, as proof that as full as one’s life can feel, there is always room for more. Perhaps this would happen in Bordeaux, in the wine business, something like that. Yes, Thomas could easily imagine it, and because it was so plausible, he could be certain that it would happen.

  * * *

  Beal had been out all that day, her last day in Paris, and with each errand she felt she was saying goodbye to a place or a person she’d known for much longer than just a few months. She felt that it was fine to be making these rounds—lingering for the last time on the Pont de la Concorde, tea with her friend Denise in the Bon Marché employee tearoom—fine also getting all these sights and memories in mind, as if the next time she was in Paris, if there was a next time, all would be different. For one thing, if she survived the delivery—these days Beal was regarding almost everything in her life, including her mortality, with an odd dispassion—she would have a child and thus could hardly be considered a tourist. Not that she had ever thought of herself that way. But it didn’t matter very much. They were leaving, finally, and she was glad the moment had come.

  In these weeks Beal had become accustomed to seeing Thomas at work at the table she had brought over from the hotel. He hadn’t asked if he could take it over, but she did not mind: she was not writing anything in her journals these days. She figured that this writing was something she did only in Paris, and that years later she might come upon these notebooks and feel how silly they were. Where would she be at that moment? On their farm, she figured, even if living there was impossible for her to imagine. In fact, imagining anything—conjuring any alternate reality or possible future from her own thoughts—had seemed quite impossible to her ever since she found herself crying on Diallo Touré’s vacant bed. For her, there was no surplus of life out of which to fashion dreams—or nightmares. All winter she had seemed to be floating outside of time, but now the only reality seemed to lie in the ticking of the clock.