‘So when the trial was over and Beatrice had nowhere to go, I told her I had a spare room and if she liked she could come and stay there. She came. I imagine she thought she was coming as a housekeeper, for she would clean and tidy the apartment, cook for me… And then she confessed - we were speaking more by then - that what she wanted most in the world was to get through her baccalauréat. She had had to stop her studies, she didn’t tell me why but I could guess so I didn’t pry. We got all the books she needed and she started to work everyday, dutifully, seriously.
‘She must have been seven or eight months pregnant by then and she still wouldn’t acknowledge the pregnancy. At least to me. She wore loose shirts, would never put her hands on her stomach the way pregnant women do, never spoke about the future life of the child, probably never imagined it would be born. I tried to talk to her therapist about this - for she was seeing someone, the court had recommended it, and I wasn’t that madly omnipotent - but he told me with wonderfully bland professionalism that it was frankly none of my business.
‘It occurred to me that given how proper Beatrice seemed to be about everything else, she would acknowledge the child’s existence only once she had a husband. So I offered myself. Oh, it was no great sacrifice. I wanted to live with her. I couldn’t imagine not coming home and seeing that steady serene smile of hers. I remember it distinctly. I had just been to the prison to visit a client and on the way home I picked up a large bunch of marguerites and I handed them to Beatrice and sat her down on the sofa, took her hand and said, just like in the penny romances, “Beatrice, will you marry me?” And she looked at me and looked at me and smiled and said, “Yes.”
‘We didn’t wait very long. I didn’t think we had much time to lose. From somewhere she bought herself one of those loose Indian white cotton dresses and she plaited her hair up on top of her head so that she looked like a Dutch farm girl and we went to the Mairie and got married. It couldn’t have been more than three weeks later that the child was born.’
‘The child?’ I croak.
‘Yes.’ He looks at me oddly.
‘Which child?’
‘Haven’t you guessed? Nicolas. Poor dear Nicolas.’
I stare at him for a long time. And then, I don’t quite know why, I reach over and take his hand and hold it. We sit there quietly for a few minutes, until he asks, ‘More?’
I nod.
‘My mother arrived just after the birth. She had been cheated of a wedding she said and she wouldn’t be cheated of her first grandchild. She came and she reorganized the apartment and made Beatrice’s room into a nursery complete with blue and white cot and musical mobiles and brightly coloured friezes.’
‘And she didn’t know that Nicolas wasn’t your son?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not until later. My father tumbled to it. He liked to keep track of my doings and someone had mentioned to him I’d been involved in this case - it had made the local papers - and he worked it out. Told my mother of course who immediately confronted me. And I couldn’t lie to them so I just told them that it would be best all round if they didn’t make much of it. And they didn’t. They’re sensible people. But they were hardly pleased.’ He chuckles, then stops himself. ‘No one else knows. Not amongst our friends. Not Nicolas.’
I swallow hard. ‘Go on.’
‘The rest is more difficult, but maybe we’d better keep the rest. He gets up edgily, stretches. ‘It’s after one.’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Now please. We won’t be able to sleep in any case.’
He laughs sharply. ‘I think I’d rather not sleep than speak about it.’ He is standing by the window again, looking out as if there were something to be seen and I come up to him and put my arms around him and kiss him. He doesn’t altogether kiss me back, but he holds me.
‘Please,’ I murmur.
He shrugs, ‘Okay, but I have a terrible feeling that you’ll despise me by the end of it. I don’t emerge as a hero.’
I laugh though it doesn’t come out right. ‘I can’t despise you. I’ve tried and it hasn’t worked.’
He gives me a lop-sided smile and starts to talk again, tersely, with something that isn’t quite bitterness. Maybe it’s a veiled disappointment.
‘After the birth Beatrice was different. It was hard to put one’s finger on it. She still smiled at me in that beautiful way, but it was as if too much of her energy went into denying the things she couldn’t bring herself to see. The doctors said it was a variety of post-natal depression and that it would pass. And she was still seeing the therapist. The difficulty was that she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge Nicolas’s presence, even though he was there now in full flesh and lung. Even when she held him, for she did sometimes, it was as if he wasn’t there, not really. And she would let him cry for too long, forget to sterilize his bottles or change him. I quickly found a woman to look after him, a granny, who was happy to stay with him late - until I got home. Meanwhile Beatrice went off to a special college and in the spring passed her Bac. She was very happy with that and I felt it was going to make the difference.
‘There was another difference to make, of course.’
He looks away from me and I think I know what’s coming and I’m not sure I want to know.
‘Beatrice and I shared a bedroom now. There was only one left in the apartment. We would lie in bed together at night and I would hold her in my arms. But if I made any gesture - well you know what I mean - fear would come into her eyes, her body would stiffen. She didn’t run, or move, or scream, or tell me to leave her alone; she just lay there in a state of panic. Expecting a repetition of whatever it was that had happened to her with her stepfather. And of course, whatever desire I might have felt, shrivelled.’ He laughs a laugh full of pain.
‘It wasn’t as if I had expected it would be easy. Easy was with other people and I was with Beatrice. I had read enough psychology texts at university to know that these things took time. But the reality of that physical panic hurt. It was as if I wasn’t myself, as if she couldn’t see me for who I was, as if all the kindness, the gentleness that passed between us - and that was the tenor of our twosome - was nothing, simply didn’t exist or existed only in a separate space.’ He laughs again. ‘Needless to say, I took to sleeping on the sofa in the living room. The blazing sword was getting a little tarnished. But we had time. I still loved her. Still believed it could work. I had hardly married her for bed, after all. There’d been quite enough bedding before, which had proved only temporarily interesting.’
‘It occurred to me sometime in that first year of Nicolas’s life that it would be a good thing for all of us if we were to move to Paris. Beatrice would be further from the site of her unhappiness. People still occasionally commented on her history. And I needed to earn more money to keep the family adequately. So I found a cabinet that would have me - my father’s name didn’t harm things, but I wasn’t such a terrible lawyer either. We waited out the first year of Beatrice’s teacher training course and moved.’
‘The move did Beatrice good. She started coming out of herself, joining student groups, committees. She’s always been good at those, finds them easier than individuals. And I was happy too. There were more friends, some lucrative clients to help finance the less lucrative ones, challenges at work. We got on well, there were no rows. We were alright. Except for poor Nicolas.’
‘Beatrice still couldn’t see him. She would look at him and look straight through him. It was a little better when he started to speak. She would answer him then, sometimes at least. But she never touched him if she could help it. I began to realise that at some level he was the embodiment for her of everything that had come before and she wanted nothing to do with him. He didn’t exist for her as a separate person. I tried to talk to her about it, but it always ended up as a conversation about practicalities, minders, schools.’
He stops abruptly. ‘That’s enough Maria. You can imagine the rest.’
‘I don’t want to imagine
it. I want you to tell me.’
‘Not now,’ he smiles a little sadly. ‘Another time perhaps.’
He looks so tired that I haven’t the heart to press him. ‘Tomorrow,’ I murmur. ‘Please. I…’
He stretches his hand out to me and I take it, find myself tugged into his lap. I relax into him, feel that stirring between us.
‘I haven’t spoken about all of this to anyone before, Maria,’ he murmurs. ‘It’s not easy. Even to tell it to myself.’
‘Why are you telling me?’
‘You know why I’m telling you. Because I want you to know I don’t lie, I want you to trust me. And I’m gambling.’
He kisses me and I think I know a lot of things. I know I am kissing him to make up for Beatrice. I am kissing him for Nicolas and for the pain. I am kissing him because I like kissing him, perhaps too much. But I don’t really know what he’s gambling on. Sometimes kisses aren’t quite enough.
-34-
It is late afternoon and we are sitting in the train again, making our way back to Paris this time, just the two of us.
The morning was bright and warm and when I saw Nicolas I wanted to put my arms around him and cry, so I asked him if he was ready for his life-saving lesson and a little reluctantly he agreed. He can swim. It’s just the waves he doesn’t like, but the sea was relatively calm and we paddled out to where it was calmest and I put my arms through his and around his neck and told him to pretend he was floating in the bath and I would tug him. He closed his eyes and relaxed after a while and I pulled him along and when a wave came over us and he started to thrash I just kept on swimming and when it had passed he relaxed again and eventually gave me his awkward smile. Then I asked him whether he’d like to try it on me and he did a little fearfully and I laughed and told him he musn’t let go or I’d drown. And he didn’t let go, not even after a wave immersed us. He tugged me back to shore and I told him another few tugs like that and he’d get a medal and I kissed him on the cheek and he blushed terribly and then threatened Marie-Françoise that he was going to practice on her. And then Paul said once he had done that, he could try a really big fish like himself and we all laughed.
We are still joking, Paul and I, neither of us certain whether we want to confront heavier matters, yet both knowing that at some point we must. I can’t really think of anything but that, so finally I say, ‘Now. Take me up to the present.’
He doesn’t pretend not to know what I’m talking about. Instead he says, ‘Can I put my arm round your shoulder?’
‘If you’re discreet,’ I’m still joking.
‘Have I ever been anything else?’ he mumbles and pulls me closer to him. ‘What do you think comes next?’ he asks.
‘The making of Marie-Françoise,’ I am blithe.
‘Despite your occasional flashes of fatalism, Maria, you’re a determined optimist. That must be another thing I like about you.’ His laugh is too harsh. ‘But we’ll start with Nicolas, because of this morning, because of what you did. It was important.’ He squeezes my shoulder. ‘Though it’s not an episode I like to recall.’
‘Remember you said to me that Beatrice didn’t come to Brittany because of my mother? Well that’s only part of the reason. The other reason has to do with Nicolas. It was when he was almost three I guess. We were on the beach, the three of us, and I went off for a swim, leaving Beatrice with him on the shore. I looked back after a while and I saw a small crowd gathered round where I had left them. I was suddenly afraid and I swam back as quickly as I could. Nicolas was stretched out on the ground and a man was pumping his chest. He was alright after a moment. He opened his eyes and cried, but he was alright. Everyone started to tell me at once what had happened and I still don’t really know except that Nicolas must have gone a little too deep and been tumbled by a wave and then another and another until a boy noticed and dragged him back.
‘Beatrice was standing away from the crowd and I went up to her with Nicolas under my arm and she looked at him and then at me with an expression I can’t describe and said, “Too bad,” in a cold little unfamiliar voice. And I hit her then, slapped her across the face. The only time I ever have.’
He stops. His face is contorted.
‘But she probably only meant too bad it had happened,’ I say softly.
‘I know. That’s what I thought too the next day. But at the time … her face… I don’t know.’ He looks into the distance. ‘Anyhow, all that was just to say thank-you for Nicolas today.’
‘Go on,’ I murmur.
‘Don’t really know where to go. She never came back up to Brittany after that. It was an unspoken agreement. And I think it was around that time that I realized I’d stopped loving her, had given up hope or at least my sense of omnipotence. That I could somehow provide reparation for the past. Maybe they were the same.’
‘You still weren’t sleeping together.’
He shakes his head. ‘We had separate rooms now and I stopped trying.’
‘Why didn’t you split up?’
‘It never occurred to me. I guess I felt responsible for her. She didn’t really have friends of her own. And we got on fairly well in a day-to-day way. We’d chat about this and that, her teaching mostly, I think she’d started by then, and her committees. Occasionally we had people over. We led structured and fairly separate lives. I was working hard. She was working hard. I had a friend then. A woman,’ he glances at me. ‘I don’t know if Beatrice realized. But I don’t think it would have mattered to her. She preferred me not to try.’
‘How do you know?’ I am suddenly angry for Beatrice. I move away from him.
‘I know,’ he grunts. ‘She’s not you, Maria.’
I glare at him and he says, ‘Alright, this is how I know.’ He has his bitter tone now, all cynicism and malevolent irony directed mostly at himself. ‘When Nicolas was about five I got this sudden notion in my head that his unhappiness - for he was unhappy, too quiet, withdrawn, sometimes I thought even a little slow - would be solved if he had a sibling, someone smaller than him to love and to hate, to tumble around with. So I put it to Beatrice, stupid really, but that’s how I did it. The bane of the French rationalist education. I said to her that I knew she didn’t like going to bed with me, probably because of all the ghastly things that had happened to her in her own home, but I really thought it would be a good idea if we had a child together, for Nicolas’s sake, for our own too. She looked at me with that gentle smile of hers and didn’t say anything, so I took the smile for agreement.’
I must look at him dubiously for he laughs and mutters, ‘No, don’t worry. I didn’t take out my tarnished tool on the spot and overpower her. I started to woo her. I would bring her little presents, stroke her, proffer kisses. We’d go out for dinner. We even went dancing once, though that wasn’t an all out success. Beatrice had never been dancing. Anyhow I told her all the things men tell women, you know them by rote, and one night I went to her room and tried to kiss her properly. The fear was in her eyes and the stiffness. I pretended not to notice. I turned out the lights and I started to stroke her and she started to thrash and I went as limp as a wet dishcloth.’ He pauses. ‘And that my lady of much experience is the entire story of Beatrice and my love life.’
I don’t like his tone and I want to argue, so I start to say, ‘But Beatrice told me…’ and I stop and wonder exactly what Beatrice told me.
‘Told you what? That we enjoyed nightly sexual bliss?’ he laughs harshly. ‘Good for her. I don’t think I’d like to have been her talking to you and saying anything different.’
‘But she said…’
‘Fine. Believe her. But if you think men go around casually making up stories about their limp dicks to beautiful women just for the hell of it, then you have less intelligence than I’ve always given you credit for.’
We sit in sullen silence for a few minutes and I try to reconstruct my conversation with Beatrice. I remember her separate room in their apartment, the fluffy maidenly feel of it, and I
say, ‘Maybe there’s someone else.’
He gives me a startled look. ‘You mean Beatrice has someone else? I don’t think so,’ he murmurs. ‘But if she did, I’d be supremely happy.’ He pauses reflectively, ‘I care for her you know. It’s not that I don’t care for her. She’s come a long way.’
‘I know you care for her. I’ve seen you together. You forget.’
‘I don’t forget,’ he looks at me and seems to be about to say something then changes his mind. Instead, he muses for a moment, ‘She has been paying a lot of attention to herself of late, but I thought that was to do with you. Maybe… No, I don’t think so. ‘
I shrug. We are quiet again. Countryside speeds by, villages. He puts his hand on my arm. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t like this part of my life.’
I nod. ‘And Marie-Françoise?’
‘We decided to adopt. I think we both did. I don’t know anymore. But she’s a nice little soul.’
‘And Beatrice is better with her?’
‘Yes. She doesn’t quite warm to her, but she doesn’t mind her. She treats her like one of her schoolchildren, a little stern, a little distant. But fine. Maybe it’s just that she has no models from her own childhood about how one is with children.’ He frowns.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Does Marie-Françoise know?’
‘That she’s adopted? I told her, in a manner of speaking, when she was about five. Because of Nicolas really. I had told him. I didn’t want him to have strange ideas about where babies came from. I told him and then later her that we had chosen an extra special sister for him from an agency that found homes for babies that didn’t have any.’
He must think that I am being critical for he adds hastily, ‘And it has been good for him. He’s come out of himself a little and they get on. You’ve seen.’
A Good Woman Page 37
