Beyond the Green Hills (27 page)

‘I love strawberries,’ she said, smiling.

After all this time, she was still amused by his total absorption in any decision involving what they should eat or drink.

The waiter served the dessert, then brought two delicate, engraved wine glasses lying on a bed of ice. He picked up each glass in turn with a white napkin, placed one before each of them, and poured a small measure of the pale yellow liquid into Robert’s glass.

Robert picked it up, sniffed gently, took a tiny sip. Clare waited patiently. Nothing in the world would prevent Robert from giving the wine his fullest attention.

‘Yes,’ he said, positively, turning to me waiter. ‘You have not disappointed me. You may tell the maître I said so.’

The young man’s face remained impassive. Clare saw a flicker of anxiety as he stepped back from Robert’s chair to pour the delicate wine into her glass before returning to fill Robert’s.

‘Monsieur says you have not disappointed him. He is pleased,’ she said softly, speaking Italian. ‘You may tell your boss he said so.’

‘Si, signorina,’ he said, a broad smile spreading across his face. He bowed to them both and retired.

‘Another willing slave,’ said Robert dryly. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I didn’t. I had to guess.’

‘Well, we shall certainly have exceptional service henceforth,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘To you, my dear. Happy Birthday.’

The Sauterne tasted as she imagined nectar ought to taste. Smooth and sweet and rich, yet not at all cloying. She wondered if that was because the wine was so well chilled that beads of moisture formed on her glass.

‘What do you think?’

‘Wonderful. How can it be so rich and yet not be sickly?’

He smiled, delighted.

‘You could ask them yourself next week when we go down to the Gironde. On the other hand, you’ve probably started reading it up already and will know more about it than the people sent to impress us.’

She smiled, and wondered if he would return to the subject of Christian Moreau. It no longer hurt to speak about him, but there was still something about the whole affair that evaded her, some thought that teased on the edge of consciousness, like a word you can’t remember.

‘I dined with Emile last week,’ Robert began, as he picked up his fork and sliced into the dry,
crumbly texture of the strawberry gâteau. ‘He sends you his best regards. I think he is sad not to be able to welcome you as a niece, but he wasn’t surprised when I told him that it was not to be.’

The gâteau was superb. It was some moments before Robert went on.

‘It seems Charles Moreau had a heart attack some two years ago. Not a major one, but a warning. Christian has been under some pressure to settle down. Emile thinks Christian has not given any thought to his relationships with women. He has seen them mainly as a source of companionship and pleasure. It has not yet occurred to him that a woman of any spirit might have thoughts and ambitions of her own.’

Clare nodded, a slow smile lighting up her face.

‘A blessing on dear Emile. He’s put his finger on it. Christian has just never thought about a woman as a person. And it would never occur to him that such a creature might have “thoughts and ambitions of her own”. That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Robert?’

‘Yes, I did,’ he said, looking pleased.

‘That’s the bit I was looking for,’ she began, taking a deep breath. ‘If ever I marry anyone, he’ll have to be aware of my “thoughts and ambitions”. It’s not that I wouldn’t compromise, or change my life, or do something different from what I do now. It’s the being thought about that counts. Unless a man can get beyond his own wishes, I’d rather make my own life with my dear friends and a job I love doing,’ she said, much more firmly than she had intended.

‘Bravo, Clare. I shall drink to that,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Not many young women would have turned down one of the wealthiest young men in France. I think Emile was rather pleased. And, of course, so am I,’ he added, smiling broadly.

She looked at him closely. All evening, there had been a kind of suppressed excitement about him, as if he were enjoying a secret known only to him. It was something he intended to share with her, of that she was sure, but it would most certainly be in his own good time.

They finished the delectable gâteau and drained their glasses.

‘May I pour you another glass, or do you wish to practise abstemiousness?’ he said severely.

‘Good heavens no.’

She laughed as he refilled her glass. The more severe he was, the more he was enjoying teasing her. ‘I really can’t see how you can call me abstemious, even if my housekeeping is modest,’ she said, picking up her glass. ‘Have I ever said no to any of the wonderful food you’ve chosen for me? Or the wines you have offered me?’

‘No, that’s true,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘You don’t play with your food like some young women do. And you enjoy good wine. But I see no jewellery. You buy your jewellery like you buy scarves, or handbags, simply to complete an outfit. Madame Japolsky has no cause for complaint. You always look perfectly turned out. But I see no diamond brooches or gold necklaces. Not a thing from Cartier,’ he said, with a shrug of his shoulders.

‘But Robert, even if I were terribly rich I don’t think I’d buy jewellery from Cartier.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You have a silver pendant you sometimes wear with your plum dress. It is very attractive.’

‘Oh, that
is
precious,’ she said quickly. ‘Michelle and Philippe gave me that last Christmas.’

He grinned broadly and sipped his wine.

Clare was perfectly aware that the wine had made her face glow and she probably needed to apply powder to the end of her nose, but Robert was in such very good spirits she decided not to bother. He seemed to be enjoying himself even more than usual.

‘I did not send you a birthday card, Clare. I am too discreet,’ he said, teasing once again. ‘But I have allowed myself the indulgence of a gift. If you are abstemious, I see no reason why I should be.’

He slipped a hand in his pocket and brought out the kind of black velvet box that can only contain jewellery. He slid it across the table to her.

‘Robert!’ she gasped, as she opened it.

‘Don’t be alarmed. They’re not emeralds. If they were, you’d probably keep them in the bank. But they’ve been designed specially for you. I once did the accounts for a goldsmith. And I learnt a thing or two, like you learnt at your friend’s gallery.’

Clare sat gazing down at the silk-lined box. A necklace, a bracelet and a pair of matching clip-on earrings winked and gleamed in the light, sparkling with cut green stones set in a delicate gold tracery
that reminded her of lace.

‘They are so beautiful,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t think I have ever seen anything so beautiful in my life.’

‘But will you wear them?’

‘Immediately,’ she said, standing up. ‘If you will excuse me.’

The powder room was empty. From each gleaming mirror, she saw herself reflected back a dozen times, her fingers shaking as she fastened first the necklace, then the bracelet. Finally she clipped on the earrings. No wonder he’d been pleased at her choice of dress. She would always have to have an emerald-green evening dress. It made the perfect foil for the brilliant sparkle and pale gleam of the first jewellery she’d ever possessed.

‘Wonderful,’ he said, ‘wonderful,’ as she slipped back into her seat. ‘Some day you will wear them for my friend. He is nearly blind now, but his hands are so practised. Shall I tell him you are pleased?’

‘That, Robert, would be an understatement such as only the English use,’ she said firmly. ‘I shall treasure them all my life,’ she went on, much less steadily, as his worn face blurred with the mist of her welling tears.

T
he visit to the Gironde was a delight. The warm autumn sunshine glanced off the fading vine leaves, making their shades of bronze and gold more vivid; the waysides were fresh with new growth, the sky a rain-washed blue with small, white clouds moving rapidly in the breeze. Their tour of the vineyards was far more like a pleasurable outing than a necessary part of the job.

Clare enjoyed this new countryside, but what pleased her most as she stood again on the fringes of a vineyard, long harvested and now being pruned, was that the sadness of giving up Christian had faded away. She’d even been able to use all she’d learnt from Charles Moreau on that morning at Chirey without thinking yet once again about the events of the following day.

Among the proposed investors in this particular project were a number of Americans, quite unlike the slow-speaking and good-natured mid-Westerners she’d encountered so far. At times, she could almost imagine that this strangely assorted group with their briefcases and clipboards were deliberately trying to unnerve the château staff with their sharply aggressive questions. They didn’t seem
to appreciate that those who made the wine knew perfectly well what they did and how they did it, but found great difficulty in explaining
why
they did it.

Clare worked hard to smooth over some of the difficulties and take the edge out of the hostile questions, but she made sure never to look at Robert while she was doing it. She knew he was enjoying himself hugely. Only when they were left to themselves did she berate him for trying to catch her eye when he knew she was taking considerable liberties with the translation.

‘At least now I can answer Keith Harvey’s question,’ she said, as they relaxed over coffee in their hotel.

‘Which particular question was that?’

‘He asked me if I always translated exactly and what I did if someone was rude or unpleasant.’

‘You may tell him from me that you always defend the less articulate. At the same time, you impose a considerable control over those who should know better. I quite enjoyed hearing everything twice this time round.’

‘Why do you think these Americans were so unfriendly? Particularly the tall one with the sharp face. Surely one can tell when people are competent by the quality of what they produce rather than by asking awkward technical questions.’

Robert poured himself more coffee and grunted.

‘I can’t answer that. Something about
amour
propre
perhaps. If the Americans were trying to maintain face in an area where they’re not very knowledgeable, hostile questioning might be their way of doing it. Don’t forget you have a gift they
certainly do not have. You know who you can trust. I think I’ve said that to you more than once before. Certainly I’ve had no cause to change my mind.’

‘What about Christian Moreau?’ she said, wryly.

‘Including Christian Moreau,’ he replied firmly. ‘That young man was perfectly trustworthy as far as your relationship went. Beyond that, you did not go. Your intuitions warned you something was wrong. So it does with these edgy Americans. Alternatively, it guides you with diffident Englishmen.’

‘Charles Langley?’

‘Yes. I told you at the time I was confused by him. You saw through his difficulty to the man himself.’

Clare smiled. ‘He’s a dear man, quite incapable of deceit, but he hasn’t begun to understand himself.’

‘So that is why you rejected him?’

‘Oh, no. I couldn’t possibly
reject
Charles Langley. He’s had too much of that already. No, I explained I wasn’t the right person for him. He wasn’t very happy about it, but at least it means we can be friends. We keep in touch and I shall certainly see him if he comes to Paris.’

Robert raised an eyebrow in a very Gallic manner.

‘Perhaps it’s a little early to speak of this, but our conversation makes it relevant. You have been a great success as a translator. But I think you might consider going beyond translation and moving to the financial side. Another year or so and you would be quite ready to take on some of the smaller accounts. I’d have to part with you, which would be a pity, but that has always been a possibility. You’d still be based in Paris, unless you wanted to move
elsewhere.’

‘Robert!’

He stood up and smiled down at her.

‘There’s no need to make any sort of decision. Just think about it. And perhaps you ought also to think about going to bed. You want to be on form for the gentleman of the sharp face and sharp questions tomorrow morning, don’t you?’

When Clare arrived back in Paris, two days later, she was so glad to be home, weary after the intensity of the work and the long train journey, but buoyed up by the lovely autumn weather, the success of the negotiations and Robert’s unexpected suggestions about her future.

Sitting in the Metro with only a few stops to go, she closed her book, put it in her handbag and sat back in her seat with her eyes closed. ‘Could I be anywhere else in the world but Paris?’ she asked herself, with that glow of pleasure that came to her so often when she was in the city. She focused on the sounds all around her, the noise of the rackety doors as they closed, the chatter of students, the sharpness of children’s voices, the unfamiliar tones of two young Algerian men sitting opposite.

She’d loved this city since she was a little girl, far away in another country, listening to the wireless her father had reconditioned for Granda Scott. Now it was her home. What Robert said about moving to the financial side reminded her once more that it was Paris that spoke to her. However much she enjoyed travelling round this huge and varied
country, however exciting the possibilities might be were she to move to a regional branch, she’d no intention of doing so. Paris was where she wanted to be.

‘It might be the right thing for me, it might not. What matters is that Robert thinks I have the option. I can make a life of my own,’ she said to herself, as she came up the steps of the Metro, put down her case and studied Madame Givrey’s flowers.

‘How are you, mam’selle? Where was it this time?’

‘Bordeaux and the Gironde.’

‘Oh, la la, so far away.’

‘Yes, Madame. I’m glad to be home. I have a few days’ holiday, so I shall be able to look after my flowers properly,’ she said, choosing a mixed bouquet of pink and mauve stocks with Shasta daisies and sprays of gypsophila and maidenhair fern.

‘These are lovely, Madame. They will keep me company when I sit by my window and read. I intend to be very lazy.’

Madame laughed heartily. Being lazy was not something she associated with this young woman who appeared early in the morning, often to return only late at night.

There was no sign of Madame Dubois as Clare let herself in to her apartment. To her surprise, there was an envelope face down on the carpet as she opened the door.

‘Good gracious,’ she said, amused that anyone could have managed to by-pass Madame.

She took her suitcase to the bedroom, changed and left her bouquet to soak in the kitchen before she came back into the sitting room to study the envelope. The writing looked familiar but she couldn’t place it. Clearly a late birthday card, but the postmark was London. With a sudden spurt of anxiety, she ripped it open, took out the pretty floral card and glanced at the signature. ‘Love, Ginny,’ it said, in large, bold handwriting.

A sheet of lined paper folded inside fell on the carpet. She picked it up, her fingers trembling as she tried to open it out.

‘My dearest Clare,’ she read aloud, still standing in the middle of the room.

‘Love, Ginny,’ Clare repeated, and promptly burst into tears.

In the days that followed, Clare read and reread Ginny’s letter many times. She knew perfectly well she was searching for something that wasn’t there. Only Ginny herself could answer the questions that came crowding into her mind.

She sat by her window, staring across the waters of the Seine, swollen after the autumn rains, and suddenly saw a deep, narrow river flowing alongside a narrow, overgrown track leading to the shores of Lough Neagh. She closed her eyes and went back to that lovely summer day. Four young people having a picnic. Ginny and Teddy, Clare and Andrew. She felt the tears spill out under her closed lids. Within the year Teddy was dead, Ginny’s face was scarred
across her cheeks and forehead, and Clare and Andrew had parted, all their bright hopes ending in disappointment and despair.

She wept, longer and more bitterly than she had wept at the time. She wept for Teddy, for the boy he had been when she first knew him, for the hours they’d spent sitting by the tennis court talking history. She saw that pale, unmarked figure, unmoving on the high hospital bed, felt again Helen cling to her, knowing she was about to lose her only son.

‘Loss and more loss,’ she said, sobbing. ‘Is that all life is about?’ Losing those you love? Losing them to disease, like her parents, to age, like Robert, to accident, like Teddy, to circumstance, like Andrew. How could she bear to live with such a catalogue of loss?

‘All those hopes and dreams,’ she wept, shaking her head, thinking of the evening the four of them went up to the obelisk on Cannon Hill and sat in the dusk talking about their future. Teddy hadn’t even a year of future. She and Andrew only a few days more than he had.

‘And Jessie, too,’ she added, sniffing. ‘She’s never been the same since Andrew and I parted.’

She thought of the empty house on the Malone Road, the room where they kept the paint, the smell of ancient wallpaper when you soaked it before you scraped it off. She remembered the night they dined for the first time, the four of them, Jessie a few months’ pregnant and still her lively self.

‘All gone,’ she said. ‘All gone.’

She tried to distract herself. Went for long walks, hardly noticing where she was going. Twice she found herself in parts of the city quite unknown to her, tired out and hungry, and had to find the nearest Metro to take her home. She went to the Louvre, determined to revisit pictures she’d not had time to enjoy when she went with Christian, and found herself standing looking at some tiny detail, a flower, or a tree, or some tangled grass, quite oblivious to the subject of the picture itself.

It was some time before she owned up to herself that she’d been thinking particularly about Andrew. His life had been disrupted too, just as her own had been. He’d lost a beloved cousin, inherited massive financial problems that she’d only just begun to grasp. He too had lost someone he’d loved and, with her, his hope of making a new life.

‘He’s better now,’ were the only words in Ginny’s letter to give her any comfort. And comfort was what she badly needed, for on top of Edward’s death there was now the unbearable heartache of knowing Andrew had been ‘sad and hurt’.

Time and time again, she went through the events of their last weeks together. She tried to see how anything could have been different. Whichever way she looked at it, she could see no alternative. Even so, she could not stop her tears whenever she thought of him facing up to the legal mess he’d inherited, disillusioned with the law and utterly distressed by her loss.

Only after Clare telephoned Marie-Claude to invite her to a long-delayed lunch, did she ask herself
why she hadn’t rung her as soon as Ginny’s letter arrived. If she’d had the sense to talk to her wise friend, she might have fared much better these last, sad days.

‘You look wonderful, Marie-Claude. The academic life suits you,’ she said, greeting her friend under the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens. ‘Sometimes I’d just love to sit and read a book, not just search for the bits I need.’

Marie-Claude took a long look at her young friend. She seemed thinner and a little drawn, but her eyes were sparkling and she was beautifully dressed. She’d been a model pupil, but in learning to dress like a Frenchwoman she had brought to the enterprise something special of her own, a way of moving, a light and warmth in her eyes.

She was not beautiful, but there was a liveliness about her, a mobility of face, figure and mood, that was more appealing than beauty itself, a liveliness that did not wholly disappear even when she was sad.

‘Gerard sends you his love. He hasn’t asked how the lovers are since you turned down one of the most eligible young men in France. But he’ll get over it,’ she said wryly. ‘You seem to me to be quite content with your decision,’ she added, hugging her.

Clare smiled as they began to walk together, the gentle motion encouraging their thought processes as they strolled along, side by side.

‘My concierge despairs of me still,’ she began. ‘Not even the sign of a lover when she comes to collect my laundry. Christian never came to the apartment.
Robert sometimes sends me flowers when we dine. I know she tries to see the card, but even when it shows, he never signs it,’ she said, laughing.