Dark Angel (104 page)

“Just what did you have in common with Montague Stern, Constance?”

“We
thought
the same way!”

“Maybe Frank and I think the same way—has that occurred to you?”

“Of course—and at first I thought you did. Now I’m not so sure. He’s very wrapped up in his work, and he’s very clever. Now you’re clever, too, in your way—not everyone may see that, but I do! But it’s a
different
way. He’s analytic; you’re intuitive. Maybe what he really needs is someone who
does
understand his work, someone with the same background, the same training. There! I knew it! That idea has passed through your mind, hasn’t it? I can tell from your face. Oh, darling, don’t look sad—it makes me so
angry. I
know how talented and gifted you are, and if he can’t see that …”

And so it went on, day after day, month after month. Once, when I could no longer face the thought of that apartment, and those suggestions, I stayed away for almost a week. When I returned, Constance wept. She said she had known this would happen. Frank Gerhard hated her; he
wanted
us to quarrel.

“That’s not true, Constance,” I said. “He never speaks against you. You’re getting stupid and paranoid. I stayed away because I’m sick of this. I won’t listen to it anymore. Either you mind your own business and stop talking about Frank, or I’ll move out altogether.”

“No, no—you mustn’t do that! He’ll think you’re trying to force his hand, make him marry you—”

“Constance, I’m warning you. From now on, we don’t talk about him. Anything else, but not Frank. This is making me miserable, and you miserable, and it must stop. I love him. I won’t listen to him spoken of in that way. Not once more. I mean it, Constance.”

“Very well. I won’t mention him at all.” Constance drew herself up. “But I will tell you one last thing. I love you, and I think of you as my daughter. I loved your father, too, very much, and I’ve been trying—yes, trying—to take his place. I keep asking myself, what would Acland do now? What would happen if you had a father to protect you? I’ve been trying … to be that father; and all the things I’ve said to you I’ve considered very carefully. I’m not a fool. I know you don’t want to hear them. I know they may turn you against me. Even so, I say them—because I have your best interests at heart. And because I know, if Acland were here now, he would say the very same things. The
very same
things. I’d like you to remember that, Victoria.”

It was Constance’s great gift: her instinct for the Achilles’ heel of others. Did I reject out of hand all those things she said? Some of them, yes—but not others. They seeped into my mind; I hated the way they stained my thinking.

That spring I finally met Montague Stern. It was during what Constance called our “cold war” period, in which all comments on Frank Gerhard were banned and an uneasy truce was being observed between us. It was May 15; I can remember the date, just as I can remember every other detail about that evening.

I met Frank at his apartment. He was late arriving, held up at the Institute, where he was completing a report to be published in a medical journal. One of the assistants had been late in assembling certain data.

“Darling, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t get away—and I may have to go back later. We’ll be working on this half the night by the look of it. I may have to leave you with Stern—”

“Would it be better if we called it off?”

“No, no.” He seemed abstracted. “It’s too late. It would be rude. Besides, we’ve put this off several times before, and his health is poor. If we cancel now … No, we must go. I want you to meet him.”

“Is he seriously ill?”

“Darling, he’s over eighty. Come on, we should leave.”

I noticed, as I had noticed before, a slight evasion in his manner, and also a tension. I might have been more concerned with this had it not been for the fact that I, too, had worries. During the past month Constance had coolly doubled my workload. That afternoon, equally coolly, she had announced a new commission, one we had been hoping for, for months: the restoration of a large chateau in the Loire owned by a family with one of the finest collections of furniture in Europe. “Darling,” she said, kissing me, “it’s ours. We’ve got it. More precisely, it’s yours. I want you to do it, Victoria—you deserve it. Do that and you’ll be made. Oh, I’m so glad, darling.”

I was not glad. The commission was tempting indeed; it would also involve at least three months away in France.

“Frank,” I began as we walked along. “Frank, would you mind if I asked you something? It’s about my work—”

“Ask away, darling, but do hurry. Damn these cabs—we’re going to be late—”

“Does my work seem very stupid to you? I think it must, sometimes. After all, you go down to the Institute, you study disease, you try to find a cure—and what do I do? I choose shades of paint. Select fabrics. Fiddle about with colors.”

“Fiddle about?” He frowned. “You don’t fiddle about. It’s interesting, what you do. I may not understand it very well, but I’m trying to learn. Do you remember that time in the workshop, when you were mixing those glazes, experimenting with the colors? That was very interesting.”

I thought about that time: I had been trying to create for a client a red room—not the same red Constance used so often, the one she called Etruscan, but another. It could be achieved only by a base color overlaid with many tinted glazes. Each glaze, transparent and glowing, modified the color beneath: vermilion over carmine; rose madder over magenta; Venetian red; then a final wash of raw umber, to knock the color back and to age it. It was slow and, to me, fascinating, experimenting with these glazes on the sample boards; the capacity of color to modulate I saw as magic.

“Like truth, you see?” I had said, looking up at Frank as I completed the final layer. “That’s what Constance says. There’s always another layer. You could go on adding to it, and each time it would change the layer beneath.”

“Like truth?” Frank frowned. “I don’t agree. Truth cannot be changed. Truth is—one and indivisible, isn’t it? I’ve always thought that truth was very simple.”

He had spoken with a certain impatience then, that closed look returning to his face. Seeing that it had been a mistake to quote Constance again, I said no more. I would have liked what he said to be right, but I did not agree with him.

Now, walking south, still with no free cabs in sight, I took his arm. I thought of that commission in France; of his work in a laboratory.

“It’s just that I think sometimes,” I went on. “I think that there’re so many differences between us. Your work is vital, and mine is a luxury. I know that. I do it because I like it—and because it’s the only thing I can do well. But it must seem trivial to you. And sometimes … sometimes I think …”

Frank stopped. He turned me toward him and cradled my face in his hands. He forced me to look at him. “Is this serious? Darling, tell me what you sometimes think.”

“Well, I think … that you must want someone who understands your work better than I do. Someone with whom you could discuss it. Look at me. I never went to school. As far as science is concerned, I know nothing. I can’t play chess. I’m lousy at bridge. I’m not even a good cook—what can I cook, except spaghetti? What can I do? Decorate a room. It’s not an awful lot, is it?”

“Anything else that you can’t do?” He looked at me with gentle amusement.

“Give me time. I’m sure I’ll think of a few other things—”

“No, you won’t. Instead, I will tell you a few of the other things you do well. You can be kind—well. You can show understanding—well. You can talk, and think—well. You can touch—well. And you can love—well.” He kissed my forehead. “Not so very many people have those gifts, especially the last. Don’t you know that?”

“Frank, you do mean that? You are sure?”

“Sure about what?”

“Sure about me. I mean, I would understand. In time, if you found that what you needed was, well, a different kind of woman. A scientist, say, someone like that—”

“Oh, you would understand that, would you?”

“No. Well, I might understand it. I’d bloody well hate it, but—”

“That’s better. Now. Take my arm, and as we walk along I shall tell you about my ideal woman, yes?” He turned. “Now, let me see … Well, she is a nuclear physicist, I think. She explains where Einstein went wrong while she cooks my breakfast eggs. Eggs Benedict perhaps—she cooks them very well, but then she is a
cordon bleu
chef. She took lessons, when she was also learning Russian—”

“Russian?”

“Oh, of course. Also Chinese, I think. Such a woman! Bobby Fischer learned from her, at chess. And then she is very beautiful….”

“She is?”

“She looks like … Let me think, what does she look like? One of those very strange women you see on the covers of magazines. She has skin like china and an expression of haughty surprise. In bed she is a tiger and a seductress—”

“Will you stop this?”

“—famed on three continents for her charm. In fact, there is only one thing wrong with this woman, with this ridiculous woman.” He stopped and turned me once more to look at him. We were, I saw, outside the Pierre Hotel at last. Frank’s manner was now absolutely serious.

“She is not you—you understand? And it is you that I love. Never say that to me again—never, you hear? I know who put those thoughts in your head. I know who it is who likes to make you think you are inadequate—and it is going to stop. We draw the line, you see, here, outside this hotel. Now, come in. It’s time you met your godmother’s husband.”

Stern’s rooms were much as Frank had described them. They were paneled, dimly lit, their quiet atmosphere that of a gentleman’s club. Looking at the worn leather chairs, the gleam of leather bindings, the fine rugs, at the masculinity of them, at the elderly manservant, I felt that Frank had been wrong about only one thing. Yes, the clock had stopped here, but long before 1930.

I was wrong—I know that now. Frank had been accurate in the date he selected. Then, I felt I had been transported back to the time of my grandfather, and that the room I entered, like the man who rose courteously to greet me, was Edwardian.

Stern’s figure was now a little stooped. He moved slowly. Constance had once described his loud taste in waistcoats, but he wore nothing of that kind; his clothes, including a dark velvet smoking jacket, were dated but not vulgar. Approaching me, he bowed over my hand; when he spoke I could still hear that accent I remembered: English, but with traces of central Europe.

“My dear. I am so glad you were able to come. I have looked forward to meeting you. I must apologize—I regretted the postponements. At my age they are a fact of life, I am afraid. I cannot always plan ahead, as I used to.” It was said in a dry way, almost as if the thought amused him.

With urbanity he took command of the situation; he seemed to be playing the role of the practiced host, conducting two much younger people on a journey back to a former era. There, conversation proceeded at a measured pace, gently steered by Stern so that each person in turn should have the opportunity both to speak and to listen. Indeed, there was only one thing odd about this conversation: It was entirely impersonal.

Neither before dinner, nor during it, was my godmother mentioned. Whenever the conversation might have ventured in her direction—when there was mention of shared friends or of my work as a decorator—Stern would give it, I noticed, the gentlest of tugs: The subject would be changed, and the reins of the conversation remained in his hands.

Frank did not attempt to forestall this polite evasion—indeed, I sometimes thought he assisted it. This surprised me. I had expected that Stern would speak of Constance, at least ask after her; I had even assumed that it was because of my connection with her that he had wished us to meet.

Toward eleven, when the meal was over, Frank took his leave. The problems at the Institute had been explained earlier, and Stern showed no sign of disappointment that his dinner was being curtailed in this way. Thinking he might be tiring, I suggested that I, too, might leave, but Stern insisted I remain a short while longer.

“Please, my dear. I hate to take my coffee alone—and it is very excellent coffee. Won’t you stay and keep me company? I generally allow myself a cigar after dinner. You wouldn’t object? My doctors do, I fear—but then, that is the function of doctors, don’t you find? To make objections long after they are useful.”

It was clear to me that this invitation, made with some charm, was not to be refused. I could feel the force of Stern’s will, palpable across the table.

We remained there while the manservant brought us coffee. Stern lit a cigar and drew upon it with evident pleasure.

“Such a pity,” he said, “that Frank had to leave us. I admire him—I would like you to know that. There was a time, once …” He paused. “I would have liked to have had a son. Unfortunately, that never happened. Had I done so, I would have liked a son like Frank Gerhard.”

There was a pause. “However,” he continued smoothly, “I’m sure I have no need to recount his qualities to you. I know you will be aware of them. I am very glad, my dear—very glad that he has found you. There was a time, some years ago, when I first met him, when I feared he would not be so fortunate. However, that is past. You must tell me about yourself. What has happened to Winterscombe? I have the very happiest memories of Winterscombe.”

I told him what had happened to the house; I mentioned my uncles Steenie and Freddie. As I talked I noticed that Stern’s marked reserve was diminishing. He became more inclined to match story with story, anecdote with anecdote; he relaxed, I thought, and it seemed to give him pleasure to speak of the distant past. He encouraged me to speak of my childhood, and even of my parents.

“So you see,” I said. “I feel that in some ways I almost know you. Aunt Maud often spoke of you, and of course—” I stopped just in time. I had been about to add that Constance, too, often spoke of him. That admission, I felt sure, would have brought a swift curtailment to the evening.

“Yes?” Stern said. “Do continue.”

“Oh, nothing. I was just about to say: it is so curious, when you know someone at second hand, via others. After all, it might have been so very different. If it hadn’t been for the quarrel with my parents, I should have met you long ago, at Winterscombe, and—”