There was nothing morally wrong with buying things, she told herself as she walked, shopping was rooted in the human psyche, people waited eagerly at every oasis for the sight of camel trains bearing goods, itinerant peddlers had been sure of a welcome wherever they went, cavemen must have held cave swap meets. When in human history had shopping not been a normal human occupation? But not for her, not today. She had to endure the wait until she heard from Sam without recourse to her old ways of keeping from feeling emotion. She didn’t know why, only that it was necessary. Not for anyone else, but for her. Perhaps it was superstition? A form of test? If she didn’t buy anything, was it a charm to make Sam call the Ritz in the next fifteen minutes?
No, magical thinking of that childish sort didn’t work. Did she honestly believe that if she thought about nothing but Sam reading her letter and rushing to a telephone, she’d send a strong enough psychic message to make it happen?
Billy passed a café and hesitated. How did she know that there was nothing to be said for transmission of thoughts? How many times had she phoned someone and been told that they were just about to phone her? She rushed into the café and bought a pay-phone token at the counter. For minutes she waited behind a skinny teenaged boy who was relating to his girlfriend the plot of the movie he’d seen last night, acting out the role of Gérard Depardieu. There should be a law, Billy thought blackly, a law that a woman waiting for a phone automatically gets priority over any male. How could they call this a civilized country? She jostled the vile little creep with the point of her elbow and begged his pardon loudly, several times, until she finally forced him to end his conversation. At the Ritz there were no messages for her, one of the three concierges reported. But it was not even four, that promising afternoon hour between lunch and tea when, all over Paris, gallery-goers would be sauntering into the new shows. It was far too early to expect anything, Billy told herself, and began to walk more quickly, as if speed could allow her to outdistance her inner turmoil, defang the dread that pierced her stomach, allow a ray of light to penetrate the dark hollows of her thoughts.
Soon she found herself in front of the Rodin Museum. Here was a place she dared enter. The government of France or the city of Paris or whoever owned the Hôtel Biron did not put price tags on the bronzes within.
She paid the entrance fee and then found herself unexpectedly unwilling to go into the museum. She couldn’t confine herself between any four walls, no matter what masterpieces they contained. She took her unrestful spirit into the oasis of the park that lay behind the museum and wandered among the groups of families who had come to let their children run about under the geometric ranks of trees. She tried to distract the unruly leaping of her mind by concentrating on watching French children at play. Each one of them possessed positive differences from the others, each one was a small and definite person, with an agenda of his own, rather than just another one of a bunch of kids. They formed a group of tiny individuals who had consented to join together for a while, not a pack. Many of them played happily by themselves, absorbed in some private project. And yet, thought Billy, she had read that the worst punishment that could be inflicted on a French child who was disruptive in school was to be verbally ostracized by his classmates, to have his words ignored, allowed to participate in school but not addressed or listened to.
As she sat on a bench she noticed that each time a child was frustrated or angry in play with the others, the child, instead of creating a fuss, made an immediate beeline for its parents, who were watching closely from a nearby bench. There the child poured out its grievances, was listened to closely and calmly, reassured and sent back to the group, happy again.
She had been one and a half when her mother died, Billy mused. Her father, that overworked doctor whose free time he dedicated entirely to research, had never had more than a few minutes to spend with her, and even then his mind was visibly far away. Hannah, the housekeeper, had been her only adult connection to the world. Only after she entered first grade had she become aware that she didn’t have a life like other children, just a bunch of snooty cousins who didn’t accept her, and a few bossy aunts. Without having performed any bad action, she had been put in the position of an ostracized child. As she watched a tearful, rosy little girl being dusted off, cuddled, kissed, praised and given words of motherly advice before being sent off to the sandbox again, Billy felt a sharp pain pierce her heart and startling tears come to her eyes.
She had been a neglected child, Billy realized. She had never thought of herself in that light before, but the sight of the little girl informed her clearly and absolutely that at an age she couldn’t remember, she had not been properly valued. She had not been loved in the only way that would have given her the inner sense of selfhood she was still struggling to find.
If you didn’t grow up with that sense of selfhood, how could you ever get it? Not from all the Burmese rubies in the world. Not from being given your weight in diamonds on your birthday. She pondered the question fruitlessly until it sent her rushing out of the park. Happy children were not what she needed to see on this endless Saturday afternoon.
At the exit to the museum, Billy found herself on the Rue de Varenne. It wasn’t a coincidence, she realized, that if she turned right and followed the one-way street for another ten minutes past the Rue Barbet de Jouy, she’d be standing on the corner of the Rue Vaneau, only steps from her house. The key to the gate was safely in her handbag. Again no coincidence. She had been headed here since she left the Ritz, Billy realized.
Before she turned to the permissible refuge of her house, Billy sought another café. There the pay phone was guarded by a “Madame Pipi,” one of the legion of dour Frenchwomen who expect to be tipped by anyone using the rest rooms or the phone. This Madame Pipi was a direct descendant of the women who sat knitting and counting heads at the foot of the guillotine, Billy decided, as the woman bestirred herself grudgingly to condescend to connect her to the Ritz. There were three messages that she asked to have read to her. None of them was from Sam. He must be incredibly distracted, she told herself, quickly tamping down on her alarm, or else he hadn’t received the letter. She asked to speak to Monsieur Georges, who assured her that the letter had been delivered as promised and that he was in possession of a receipt from Monsieur Jamison.
Billy fled along the narrow sidewalk, chilled as the afternoon light failed quickly, blocked out by gray stone townhouses. In mad haste she unlocked the gates to her house and closed them behind her, waved a greeting at the surprised guardien, crossed the cobbled courtyard and opened the front door by pressing the buttons of the new burglar alarm that responded only to a code.
Finally safe, she pressed her back to the front door and let herself sag forward, bent almost in half, hugging herself for comfort, sobbing bitterly. He could not have read the letter yet, that was the only possible explanation. And she couldn’t call the gallery, she couldn’t go to the gallery, she could do nothing but wait. Billy wept harshly, knowing that there was nobody to hear her, keening in an agony of disappointment that nevertheless still contained every last stubborn bit of hope that had sustained her all day long.
What if Sam had called and not left a message? Billy was electrified as she asked herself the sudden question. Why would he ask to be put through to the concierge when her phone didn’t answer? Why would he think of leaving a message? Why had she made that assumption? When the phone rang in her empty room, he would have simply hung up in frustration! That must be it! Even now he might be on his way to the Ritz—or waiting for her in the lobby. But no, of course he couldn’t leave the gallery. It was vitally important for him to be there until it closed, and only Daniel could decide that.
Billy dried her eyes as hope returned, and wandered distractedly to the back of the house, where a new winter garden had been built. A long window seat stretched along the three sides of the double-glazed windows, looking out on the evergreen garden behind the house. The new central heating was turned as low as possibl
e, but the room conserved the warmth of today’s sun and she was able to take off her coat and fold it into a comfortable pillow that she arranged on the window seat. She leaned on the pile of mink and pressed her nose to the window, trying to decide what to do. The trees in the Prime Minister’s park still had sunlight flicking in their top branches, but a fat, full, low winter moon hung in the hyacinth sky over the top of the Hôtel Matignon. From the nearby cathedral of Saint Clotilde came the first clear call of the many church bells of the quarter, each tolling five o’clock in its own time, occasionally achieving a ravishing, unplanned harmony.
She could do nothing better, Billy realized finally, than to rest here for a while. Her long walk and her tormented phone calls had left her exhausted. Gradually she let herself be lulled by the comforting bells, the comforting warmth, the comforting realization that drifted into her head that one word to Jean-François would ensure that within a week she could be living here. Here, right here, next Saturday at this time, she and Sam could inhabit this house, Billy thought dreamily.… the installation wouldn’t take longer than that … down to the first cases of wine in the cellar. There was a perfectly symmetrical fir tree in the garden that they would hang with hundreds of tiny white lights for Christmas. Every night they’d ask for fruitwood fires to be lit in each room; they’d burn dozens of candles as soon as darkness fell; every day, while Sam worked, she’d wander around, shifting and rearranging things on the tables and chests and walls until they found their right places, for objects in a house took their own good time to discover their one predestined location. Her lovely low manor house would glow with firelight through the darkness of this entire winter, a reminder of the past come back to life.
Billy slipped back, exhausted, on the mink and let her mind drift deeper into this vision until the moon rose higher and the sound of bells roused her again. She was hungry, no, starving. And terribly cold. How much time had passed? Was it possible that she could have dozed without realizing it, thinking she was awake while she phased out for an hour? She couldn’t see her watch in the darkness. Billy unfolded her coat, wrapped it around her and buttoned it tightly. Should she call the Ritz again? No, damn it, damn it to hell, that wouldn’t do any good, she’d figured that out earlier. She should have forced herself to spend the day waiting in her suite by the phone, no matter what state her nerves had been in. One thing was sure, whether Sam had read her letter yet or not, he couldn’t communicate with her while she stood irresolutely in a dark house he didn’t know existed.
The only sensible thing she could do now was to get something to eat before she fainted from hunger. She didn’t need Burmese rubies, but, by God, she needed food, Billy thought as she locked the gate carefully behind her. Shivering from the damp, deep chill in the air, she ran as quickly as she could down the Rue du Bac to the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where she turned right in the direction of the Brasserie Lipp. She had never been to the world-famous restaurant, but it was close to the house and offered the two things she needed, warmth and food.
Singlemindedly, Billy entered the crowded, informal brasserie near the crossroads of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and strode hastily through a mass of people who milled about right inside the door, holding drinks. Her cheeks were bright pink with the cold, her dark eyes deeply refreshed from the sleep she hadn’t realized had overcome her, her hair whipped in every direction by the wind. Her mink collar stood straight up, framing the vivid drama of her beauty, which was heightened by the pounding mixture of hope and panic she had been carrying all day. The skirt of her coat flared out as she hurried in on a breath of winter air like a Russian princess who had crossed the steppes with a pack of wolves behind her. She headed straight toward a middle-aged, stern, unsmiling man with a mustache who was clearly in charge.
“Good evening, Monsieur,” she said, smiling into his eyes, which were level with her own, “I hope you have room for just one.”
The man with the mustache, Roger Cazes, the most courted and fawned-over restaurant owner in France, looked at this stranger in his usual expressionless way and made up his mind that there must be room, even at the most crowded time of the most crowded day of the year. All the people seated outside at the jammed, covered café in front of the restaurant as well as the folk inside, standing up with drinks, had already asked him humbly for the benediction of a table and been told to expect to wait for as long as an hour, but this woman by herself, this sublime, wide-eyed unknown who had just asked for the impossible, with unquestioning faith that she would receive it, would be seated at once. Filling such an innocent, lunatic request made owning a restaurant a daily adventure for Monsieur Cazes.
Faithful customers had been coming weekly to chez Lipp for ten, even twenty years, thinking one day to finally find themselves seated at one of the best tables, until they finally resigned themselves to the good but lesser tables decreed by his iron rule. However, Billy was led immediately around a glass partition to the narrow room on the far left of the front of the brasserie, the holy of holies, a small, mirrored, noisy nook that was always filled with Monsieur Cazes’s pets—politicians, writers, and actresses. No reservations were ever taken chez Lipp, no one, not the most powerful men in France, was allowed to occupy the same table twice in a row for fear that they might dare to think that they had established a toehold on it; men took their sons there to eat as soon as they were old enough to hold a knife and fork, in a futile attempt to ensure a table in the boy’s future.
Billy found herself squeezed in between two big, laughing groups on a long, black leather banquette, barricaded by a tiny table draped in white linen that had materialized in the magical way that can only happen in certain of the most desirable restaurants in the world. She glanced at the short, unchanging menu printed on a small card.
“Smoked salmon, roast lamb, and a carafe of red wine,” Billy told the ancient waiter, unconscious of the glances of the other diners. She drank a glass of wine thirstily while she waited for the salmon to arrive. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Billy felt herself relax into the coziness and the roaring vitality of the restaurant, a relaxation she needed desperately. She sat back into the small space that had been miraculously carved out for her, snuggling into the soothing ambiance that is created in a small room in which strangers eat and drink in convivial anonymity. She drank more wine and felt the fearful tension of agitation and apprehension that she had carried all day diminish slightly.
She sipped wine while around her Frenchwomen with short hair were deciding to let their hair grow and tumble over their faces, and Frenchwomen with long hair were resolving to cut their hair to her careless, unnameable length and brush it with their fingers as she must have done. People measured her with their eyes, and dark green became the fashionable color and velvet became the fashionable fabric of the winter of 1982 as Billy sat with her eyes casually surveying the people visible through the glass partition in front of her.
A woman is at her most distinguished when she dines alone in a chic restaurant, if her attitude shows that she feels perfectly at home and is unconscious of any embarrassment in being by herself. Billy had never been more distinguished than that Saturday night chez Lipp, as she concentrated on her almost-white Norwegian salmon and rare lamb, eating with a sharply focused appetite.
There was a woman sitting opposite her who reminded Billy slightly of Jessica Thorpe, and her lips curved in private amusement in a way that made half the men in the room sit up straight in a jolt of curiosity. She tried to remember the ridiculous shopping list of future plans she’d announced to Jessie way back in East Hampton. Hadn’t she said, Billy asked herself, with an abrupt sense of wine-inspired comedy, that since she was a woman who could buy anything in the world, she intended to own houses in the right places, meet the right people, give the right parties, be photographed at the right places at the right time of the year, and fuck the right men?
Billy shook her head slightly in rueful disbelief. Jessie would have every right to be disappointed in her. She had manag
ed to meet many of the right people, but she had found most of them boring; although she had been invited to a host of the right parties, she had found many of them tedious. She had at least managed to buy one wonderful house, but, true to form, she had failed to fuck the right men. She had fallen in love—but that hadn’t been on the list.
Billy wrenched her mind away from Sam, determined to finish her meal without a leap of anxiety. Yes, Billy thought, concentrating as hard as she could on those right men she had neglected to fuck, yes, in retrospect, now that it was too late, there was one kind of man who was stunningly appropriate for a woman like her, the most logical solution to the problem of being a woman with money. No one had ever accused her of intelligent premeditation, but now she saw that she should have cast her net wide and caught a charming, cultivated, elegant, worldly European, brought up to marry money, a man whose wife’s riches would be as gratifying and necessary an ornament to him as his title would be an ornament to her. She didn’t even have to find a European, Billy mused, an Englishman would have done perfectly. More than a hundred years of British fiction had been devoted to the well-regarded, highly traditional and totally serious occupation of marrying an heiress; no English duke would consider her fortune anything more than his due, and right now she could be busily decorating the castle for a grand, old-fashioned Christmas if she’d only had some common sense. But might not this imaginary nobleman have proved to be as disappointing as the right people and the right parties? Wouldn’t he have turned out to be shallow and unfulfilling, a bright bauble, a possession rather than a man? Billy distracted herself with these questions as she paid her bill.
She decided to return to the Ritz immediately, but first she had to visit the ladies’ room. Her waiter informed her that it was to be found by descending a staircase halfway toward the back of the main restaurant. Billy’s way was momentarily blocked by a parade of overburdened waiters coming out of the kitchen.
Scruples Two Page 37
