The Long-Lost Jules

by Jane Elizabeth Hughes

  He tended to speak French when he was angry, I realized. Tight, clipped Oxbridge English was for more formal discussions, and American English was for casual. Hebrew was for warm affection. I wished he would switch to Hebrew. I was beginning to wonder if my suspicions were overblown.

  But then what about Jules?

  Still, we both relaxed as we ate the meal, lulled by the superb wines and subtle, perfectly seasoned food. By the time we got to the tartes aux fraises—luscious strawberry tarts filled with sweet whipped cream on a pastry as light as springtime air—I was feeling positively mellow.

  “Sorry about earlier,” I said to him.

  “Okay,” he said, expressionless.

  “It’s just that . . .” But I couldn’t summon up any more anger, not when I looked at his strong, lean body lounging back in the chair, or his supple hands looking absurdly large around a tiny, fragile, rose-covered teacup.

  “We will forget it, motek,” he said. With relief, I realized we were back to Hebrew.

  Chapter 30

  We made love—first on the deep rug in front of the flickering firelight and then in the huge king bed, Leo tossing small tasseled pillows onto the floor with abandon while I tried to brush aside the rose petals—and talked all night.

  At one point I said to him, “Tell me about your family.”

  “My father was a survivor—”

  I interrupted, “A survivor? How old was he when you were born?” I started calculating backward, but math was never my strong suit.

  “Forty-five. He spent the last two years of the war in Dachau, digging graves for the dead. He was ten when the war ended.”

  Dachau. An eight-year-old boy. I shuddered, and Leo pulled me closer.

  “He and his older brother were the only two survivors of our family. They spent the next twenty years trying to pry their art and antiques from the German and Swiss bastards who had stolen it; then they turned it into a business.”

  Quite a successful business, as I knew now.

  “But my father had his first heart attack when I was only thirteen. That one wasn’t so bad, but the next one, a couple of years later—that was bad. After that he was basically bedridden, and he died when I was nineteen.”

  Almost the same age that I was when my father died, I thought. Yet another coincidence.

  “My uncle and cousins took over the business, thank God, but still, I felt so guilty for wanting to go into academia. . . .” His voice softened. “My father would say to me, ‘Why you not sell art, like your cousins? It’s good, honest work. Why you spend your time with your head in books about dead people? If you’re going to study books all the time, at least you should study the Torah.’

  “I still feel guilty,” Leo said, almost inaudibly.

  This time, it was my turn to hug him tighter, and we clung together for a moment.

  “So that’s why your sisters . . .”

  “Yes. My father married late, and after me, my mother just kept popping out those girls . . . and then he got sick. They thought his time in Dachau might have weakened his heart. . . .”

  I pulled his head down to mine and kissed his lips.

  “So that left me,” he finished.

  Yes, of course. I had no difficulty imagining the teenage boy with a grieving mother and four little sisters, struggling to fill his responsibilities as head of the household. I thought he would be the head of any household he was in. His Hugh Grant mask had never been very good; he was much more alpha male than stammering nerd.

  Then I remembered. “Wait a minute!” I exclaimed. “You told me that your grandparents escaped before the Holocaust, to Switzerland and then Israel. You said—”

  “I know what I said. That’s the story for public consumption.”

  I looked up at him, trying to read his face in the dim light.

  “My father and uncle were ashamed of what they did. Ashamed that they dug graves for the Nazis. So they made up that story and told it enough that I think they came to believe it.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything more to say.

  “It’s not a sad story, motek,” he said. “My father died in peace. And when he died, my sisters couldn’t be down for long, and the youngest ones—the twins—barely even knew Abba. My biggest responsibilities were keeping them from boys as long as humanly possible. You’re the one I feel sorry for, growing up as an only child.”

  “Oh, I loved being my father’s only child!” I could never have shared him.

  “The irony is,” he commented, “that my father survived the worst dangers the world can throw at a man and then died peacefully in his bed, while your father lived a sane, peaceful life and then died a violent death.”

  I said unthinkingly, “My father didn’t live such a peaceful life.”

  “Oh, yes—the adventuring,” Leo said. “What was the most dangerous thing you did together?”

  I closed my eyes and thought hard.

  “Jeez,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was such a tough question.”

  “I think the most dangerous was . . . yes. It was Everest.”

  “Everest?” Leo said, blinking. “You climbed Everest?”

  I couldn’t blame him for sounding dubious, as I remembered my carefully heavy breathing on the climb up to Carcassonne.

  “No, of course not. We planned only to go up to Base Camp. But my father was getting twitchy, the weather was beautiful, and I think he was a little envious of the climbers who were going up to the top. So we decided to go up to Camp Two.”

  “We?”

  “Well, he decided. And of course I was dying to go along.”

  Leo looked at me skeptically.

  I paused.

  In fact, the only personal item in my London flat was a small photo of my father and me at Base Camp. My face was scorched a painful red from cold and windburn; my father was grinning and holding a brimming champagne glass in his hand.

  Now I thought of that picture and could remember only how frozen I was, and how I wished my legs would stop quivering, and how I worried that my father would notice my trembling lips.

  Really, was it so awful to admit fear? My father thought so, of course, but . . .

  For the first time in my life, I confessed, “Actually, I was terrified.”

  “Well, I should think so,” Leo said.

  “Anyway, we got only a few hundred feet higher than Base Camp before the guides made us turn around.”

  “Well, thank God for that. I wouldn’t have liked you as much with a black nose and toes,” Leo said.

  “Oh, you should have seen the frostbite on the climbers who came back from the summit,” I told him, recoiling still from the memory. “It was horrible—black noses and cheeks, and toes practically falling off. Even my father was a little taken aback.”

  “I should think so,” Leo said again.

  And for the first time, the very first time in my entire life, it flitted through my mind that perhaps, just possibly, just maybe, my father wasn’t perfect. He protected me, sometimes, but maybe I was also a little afraid when I was with him too.

  Was it possible that he had been—just a little bit—a bully?

  “Am I the first girl you’ve brought to Carcassonne?” I asked.

  He hesitated, and I sat up sharply, pulling the covers away from him and around my suddenly colder body.

  He pulled me back against him again, and I snuggled into his warmth.

  “Motek, I hate to break this to you, but I wasn’t a virgin when we met.”

  “Thank God,” I said, and he laughed. But still . . . Carcassonne? Already I thought of it as our place, the place where we talked and made love all night.

  “Who was your first, anyway?” he asked.

  “Oh—I thought we weren’t going to talk about that.”

  “Why not? I want to know every little thing about you.”

  You already know too much about me, I thought. Aloud I said, “A guy in college. I was never much of a player, though.
Too involved with my father and then . . . after . . . with my job.”

  “It sounds very lonely,” he said.

  Again, my London apartment came to my mind. The sitting room–kitchen was neat and shining, with nary a thing on the plain white counters. It was decorated in what I liked to call early IKEA—a few white bookcases filled with paperback spy novels, a few white cabinets filled with plain white dishes and cheap glasses (four of each), with two generic blue pillows that my friend Dorcas had insisted upon, and a light blue throw rug left by the previous tenant. Everything was clean, sterile, and anonymous—just as I liked it. If someone broke into my apartment, they would find no clues to my life, my personality, my being.

  Only now did it occur to me that my impersonal flat was not so much neat as empty, not so much cool as frozen. Seeing Leo’s squashy, comfortable family house had brought that home to me with a bang . . . and for the first time, I wondered if I was lonely.

  I shook off these thoughts and asked, “What was your first time?”

  “I was fourteen, maybe thirteen. A girl at school.” He kissed the top of my head. “I was a clumsy oaf.”

  I doubted that. But I said, “Well, then I’m glad you’ve learned some lessons along the way.” Then I thought about what he had said. “You were only fourteen? Seriously?”

  “Boys grow up fast in Israel.”

  I had been to Israel many times and knew it to be a sophisticated, very twenty-first-century country. “You were in Tel Aviv,” I pointed out, with some asperity. “Not the killing fields of Sudan.”

  “Ah, well.” He stretched briefly and pulled me closer again. “Then I was just a horny teenage boy.”

  That sounded more likely.

  As dawn approached over the ramparts of the medieval town, we fell asleep in each other’s arms. When I woke up, it was close to noon, and Leo was sitting on the sun-splashed balcony, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. “Good morning,” he greeted me. “What a lazy girl you are.”

  I smiled at him. “Good morning to you too.”

  He smiled back. “Get up already, would you? We’re supposed to meet Kali in Cadaqués at three o’clock.”

  I snapped to attention. “Kali? Kali’s going to meet us?” Involuntarily I thought of the gunmen in England. I had sworn to myself that I would not put her in danger again.

  “It’ll be fine,” he said, reading my thoughts. “Anyway, she’s due for a few days off. Those kids of Élodie’s are driving her mad.”

  “But how . . . ?”

  “I bought her a plane ticket to Barcelona and arranged for a car to drive her to Cadaqués.”

  I could just imagine the “car” his Banque de Paris private banker had arranged—probably a Mercedes sedan with a powerful, purring engine and a wine cooler in the back seat. Kali would be thrilled.

  We had time to scramble up the medieval ramparts in Carcassonne for one daylit view of the valley before we left. I had to focus all my attention on my feet because the walkways and stairs were a thousand years old and completely unreconstructed. I appreciated the authenticity and charm but worried about twisting an ankle or knee on the worn, uneven, and slippery gravel.

  In the end, though, it was an older woman climbing ahead of us who twisted her ankle and fell to the ground. Leo, who, I had already realized, had some medical training—presumably from his years in the military—dropped my hand and was at the woman’s side in a flash. He glanced at the ankle, already the size of a baseball and swelling rapidly, and said to her husband, “Let’s help her sit up on this rock.”

  Easily, Leo helped to lift the not slender woman to a sitting position and bent again to look at the ankle. He said to her, “This is just going to keep swelling until you get down and put some ice on it. Do you think you can make it down the stairs?”

  The woman bit her lip and looked at the long, narrow stone staircase we had just climbed, but nodded. I thought she was trying not to cry.

  Leo glanced at her husband. “I could carry her—”

  “No,” the woman said firmly. “I can do it.” And she stood up on what had to be a very painful joint, put her hand on the rocky wall for guidance, and, limping heavily, started the long way down.

  Leo told her admiringly, “You are tough. I’ve seen hardened soldiers cry and refuse to walk at all with ankles less badly sprained than that.”

  The woman straightened her shoulders and continued with a little more spirit in her halting steps.

  As they passed, I said to Leo, “When I was on Denali with my father, I twisted my ankle and walked-slash-slid all the way down on my own.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Well done, you.”

  And suddenly it occurred to me that my father—my own father!—had shown me less respect and compassion than Leo had just shown this stranger.

  Chapter 31

  Having mastered the car, Leo confidently maneuvered the Queen Mary around the tiny, winding streets of Cadaqués, a whitewashed fishing village that perched precariously on the rugged seaside cliffs. Gaily colored boats dotted the harbor, while farther out the blue waters sparkled and glittered in the afternoon sunlight.

  In the center of the town, in a little traffic circle with a statue of Salvador Dalí in the middle, a girl with long blond hair was just getting out of . . . yes! A midnight-blue Mercedes sedan. I would barely have recognized Kali had it not been for the car. Her face was fresh and lightly tanned, with a slight sprinkling of freckles that made her look five years younger than when she had stepped off the plane at Heathrow two months earlier. But the biggest difference was her expression. She looked happy and confident, chattering to the driver in what even I recognized as awful French.

  Leo reached her first and swept her into a great bear hug. “Kali! You look magnifique!” he told her.

  Kali blushed.

  “And your French sounds amazing,” he said mendaciously.

  “Well, you know,” she said seriously, “it’s important to speak to the children in their own language. Though I am trying to teach them English too.”

  “Élodie says you’re wonderful with them,” he added, and her face turned up to his in pleasure.

  “Really?”

  “Absolument,” he said.

  Leo took her backpack and turned, pointing to one of the steep hills leading out of town. “Salvador Moscardo lives up there,” he said. “It’s only a ten-minute walk.”

  Thirty minutes later, Kali was huffing and puffing, and even I felt my cheeks warm with exertion. I stood beside Leo as he rang the doorbell. He glanced down at me. “God,” he said fervently, “I hope he has the household account books.”

  He couldn’t be faking this passion either, I thought. I pressed his hand tightly, and Kali’s gaze sharpened. “Are you two . . . ,” she began. But fortunately the door swung open, and she closed her mouth again.

  “Señor Moscardo?” Leo asked. And he was off in a flood of Spanish. The man answered and then nodded, and Leo talked some more.

  I watched the men’s faces, praying Leo would find what he wanted here. Both nodded and shook hands, and the door closed again.

  “What?” I asked. “What did he say? What happened?”

  “We have an appointment to meet him at his studio tomorrow morning,” Leo explained.

  “But does he . . .” I trailed off, unable to finish my question. It was so important to Leo. I couldn’t bear it if he were disappointed again. I felt guilty enough about my inability to help him.

  Then Leo took off his sunglasses and looked down at me, and I realized his eyes were shining. “I think he has them,” he said.

  We had dinner at a café on the harbor that evening, watching the sun set over the blue, blue ocean and the white sails bobbing in the distance. “This is beautiful,” Kali said.

  “I have to say,” I told Leo, “you do take me to the best places.”

  “That reminds me,” Kali said. “Are you two—”

  “Why do you think Father Ramon Moscardo may have written
about Baby Mary in his papers?” I asked Leo, cutting her off. I wasn’t ready to discuss Leo and me yet.

  “Because of this letter, which he sent in 1549 to his brother,” he said. Pulling out his cell phone, he clicked open a document and read aloud, “‘The babe is unlov’d and unwanted; such wee ones often pass into a better place ere long.’” Leo looked up. “Now, why would he write this? Baby Mary was still alive and presumably well when he sent this letter. The following month, Catherine Willoughby sent another of her infuriated letters to the Lord Protector, demanding money for the baby’s upkeep.”

  “Maybe he was issuing a warning—or a prediction,” I suggested.

  “But to whom? Who cared about the poor little thing?”

  Kali asked, “Where did you find that letter?”

  “He wrote the letter to his brother, who was steward of another house in England,” Leo said. He seemed distracted, his thoughts turned inward.

  Kali said stubbornly, “I can’t believe that Catherine Willoughby didn’t care about the baby. She was such a delicious age when the father wrote that letter. Nine months old, right?” At Leo’s nod, she went on, “That’s the same age as Élodie’s baby, Benji, and he’s absolutely”—she paused, searching for the right word—“enchanting. Besides, she was the baby of Catherine’s best friend.”

  “Remember, people couldn’t afford to be too sentimental about children then,” Leo reminded her. “As many as one-third would die before they reached their teens—”

  I cut in, “But that’s not what you said at Prague Castle!”

  Two sets of eyes focused on me. “What?” Kali asked.

  He glanced at me blankly.

  “Leo, when we were at Prague Castle and we saw the funerary goods for that little boy, you said his parents were clearly heartbroken. Look what they put into the grave for him. Remember?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what? Are you telling me that Mother Nature upended herself in the sixteenth century and mothers didn’t care about their babies?” I badly wanted Baby Mary to have grown up and lived a long, happy life.

  “Catherine Willoughby wasn’t Mary’s mother,” Leo said quietly.