Destiny (133 page)

There was a silence. In the room, Edouard looked at Helene with sudden consternation. Helene saw comprehension, and then both regret and tenderness come into his face. But Cat, of course, saw none of this. She heard only what he said.

"Not 'we.' You mean I would feel that," he said quietly, and outside, miserably. Cat crept away.

Edouard talked to Helene a little while longer, blaming himself, and then went up to Cat's room to try to talk to her. Cat longed to throw herself in his arms; her throat felt tight and choked with the love and the pain she felt. But somehow she could not do it. Her face scarlet with repressed emotions, she answered Edouard shortly and proudly, and when he tried to put his arm around her, and be gentle, she pushed him away. When, finally, he left her, his face bewildered and sad, she sat alone, hating herself even more. If I had been a boy. If I had been a boy — a son . . . The words went around and around in her head: they would not go away. Sometimes she could hear a little voice crying out, somewhere in her head —but he loves you, you know he does. But she would not hsten to that voice; it was a lying voice. Yes; her father loved her, but not the way he loved Lucien and Alexandre: not as much.

After that, things became worse. She felt ugly and awkward and stupid. She constantly knocked things over; she seemed unable to frame sentences anymore without, in the very middle of them, becoming aware that what she was saying was foolish and inept. At home, she withdrew from her family, and spent hours in her room, reading novels about women who were impossibly beautiful and impossibly clever, for whom men were consumed with passion. She would have liked to resemble those heroines: once or twice, at parties given by school friends, she tried out some of their attitudes on the young brothers who were present, and discovered, with a precarious sense of triumph, that they were a success.

She tried them out again, more flagrantly, that summer, the summer of

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1972, during the weeks she spent in the Loire with her family. She was caught kissing the son of one of the estate managers, in the vineyards, by Edouard. The kiss itself had been a disappointment—Cat did not even hke the boy very much—^but Edouard's subsequent anger was frightening.

"Why shouldn't I kiss him? He wanted to kiss me."

"I'm sure he did. He's sixteen years old. I . . . Cat, his father works for me. It might have gone further. Apart from anything else, you're too young."

"He didn't think so."

"Go to your room."

They left the Loire shortly after that, and went to England, and to Quaires for the rest of her summer holidays. There, Cat knew, she was carefully watched over. She began to feel resentment, she began to feel a certain heady sense of rebellion. But when she returned to school for the fall term, things steadily became worse.

Marie-Therese had found a new way of tormenting her. Her mother— despite her vaunted piety—was an avid reader of gossip columns and women's magazines, and so, from conversations overheard at home, Marie-Therese was supplied with a rich fund of new material. She saw at once that these new weapons struck home.

"Your father's a stinking Jew," she said one day, sidling up to Cat in the playground.

Cat, that morning filled with a sense of martyred rebellion against both her mother and her father, was immediately stung. Rebellion translated itself into loyalty in a second.

"My father is one quarter Jewish, and you're four quarters contemptible," she said fiercely, with a toss of her head.

But Marie-Therese had seen the flush, the moment of blank pain in her eyes: she resolved to try harder.

"Your father used to keep mistresses. He probably still does," she said the next day. This was very daring. No pupil was supposed to discuss anything so impure. It earned her a stinging slap.

The best thing of all, Marie-Therese kept to herself, awaiting the perfect moment, the moment when she dared to say the terrible words, which her mother had only uttered in shaken tones, with a lowered voice. Marie-Therese kept this piece of information to herself. She nursed it for weeks, for months. Then, one winter's day, the following February, when she had been particularly stung by one of Cat's slighting remarks, she decided: now, when Cat was in the playground, surrounded by a group of her stuck-up friends. She approached them.

"I know something about you, Catharine de Chavigny. You think you're

DESTINY • 807

SO pretty. You think you're so clever. I bet your friends don't know what I know."

"So, tell us." Cat shrugged. "Then we'll see."

Her arrogance, her casualness, were unbearable. Red in the face, stammering with pent-up dislike, Marie-Therese finally came out with the word.

"You're—you're a bastard."

Catharine went white. Marie-Therese felt a surge of triumph.

"You are! You are! My mother read it in a paper. You were seven years old before your father married your mother. She was married to someone else. She made horrible films, and took off" all her clothes. She's immoral, my mother said so. You might not even be Catharine de Chavigny. You might be Catharine Anybody. . . ."

"That's a filthy lie!"

Cat had been sitting on a wall. Now she leapt down, fists bunched.

Marie-Therese was scared, but she held her ground.

"Your mother's divorced—"

"So what, you httle bourgeoise?"

"Your mother's divorced, and your father's a playboy, and you're a bastard, so there, Catharine de Chavigny. ..."

Cat sprang at her. She knocked Marie-Therese to the ground. They rolled over and over, screaming and kicking and punching until they rolled against the long black skirt of a nun's habit. After that, the end was swift.

The two of them stood in front of the Reverend Mother, Marie-Therese with her head bent, Catharine staring defiantly at the wall.

"Catharine. I should hke an explanation."

Cat continued to stare at the wall. She said nothing.

"Marie-Therese. Perhaps you would give me one."

Marie-Therese did. She had plenty to say, and all of it exonerated her. The Reverend Mother heard her out, and then, alone with Cat, made one last attempt to secure an explanation. When Cat obstinately refused to give her one, the Reverend Mother sighed. She explained, quietly, that this kind of insubordination left her with no choice. She was not necessarily prepared to accept Marie-Therese's account, but when she asked for an explanation from Cat, in a matter as serious as this, she expected obedience; she expected a reply.

She did not receive one; neither did Edouard or Helene. Later the same day, after a flurry of meetings. Cat was expelled.

She was tutored at home for the remainder of the school year, and then it was explained to her, gently and carefully by Helene and by Edouard, that they had decided to send her to boarding school in England. She

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would go to a very famous school next September. Meanwhile, the summer would be spent in England, at Quaires.

Cat listened to all this in silence. She could not bear to look at her father for the pain and love and indignation she felt. She almost told them then; she longed to tell them, but she knew the words would hurt them as much as they had hurt her when Marie-Therese spoke them. So she said nothing.

"You do understand. Cat?" Helene said gently. "We felt it would be best for you to begin again, somewhere else." She paused, and Cat, who could see how hard she was trying, felt worse.

"We'll go to Quaires," Edouard said. "We'll spend the summer there. It will be a marvelous summer. And then you can put all this behind you, Cat. It will be in the past."

It would never be in the past. Cat knew that, but she did not say so.

"I understand," she answered stiffly.

And she did, she thought. One summer at Quaires, and then banishment. They left for England in the middle of July.

The croquet lawn at Quaires lay to the southeast of the house, and was bathed by the morning sun. It was almost eleven o'clock, a perfect summer's day. Christian, standing in the center of the lawn, in a crumpled white linen suit, swung his mallet back and forth meditatively, and surveyed the disposition of the croquet balls. Helene, whom he had taught, watched him carefully; she had just played, she felt, an extremely crafty shot. From the terrace behind them, Edouard sat watching them contentedly, stretched out in the sun, the morning's newspapers tossed to one side.

Christian frowned. Though he was capable of gallantry, it did not extend to the strategy of games, which he liked to win. He gave Helene an amiable smile; he lined up his shot. There was a sharp click as mallet connected with ball. Christian ambled across to look at the damage done. He squatted down on his heels, and then, as Helene approached, looked up with a lazy grin.

"I rather think that's done for you. I rather think I've won."

"Damn you. Christian." Helene looked down at her ball, which had been knocked smartly to one side, and at Christian's, which had traveled smartly through the final hoop. Hers was now virtually unplayable. She sighed.

"Oh, all right. I concede. You're a fiend at this game. Christian. I'm never going to beat you. ..."

Christian laughed, and put an arm around her shoulders. Together they strolled back across the grass to Edouard.

DESTINY • 809

"Darling, you never had a prayer. He was determined to finish you off, and I know why. It's time for the cricket to begin at Lords. You want to hsten to the test match—admit it, Christian."

"I confess." Christian threw himself down in a chair.

"You could watch it on the television, if you'd prefer, Christian," He-Idne began.

"Watch it? Watch it? Certainly not. That wouldn't be the right way to go about it at all. Far too modem. Quite un-English. No, I shall sit here, if I may, and listen to it on the wireless. I shall be entirely occupied until this evening. And if Edouard had any sense, he would do the same. Going up to London, on a day hke this. You're insane, Edouard. ..."

"What he means is, he'll hsten with great attention for half an hour, and then he'll fall asleep. ..." Edouard stood up with a smile, and a glance at Helene. "And I don't want to go to London either, but it won't take long." He glanced at his watch. "An hour with Smith-Kemp at most, then I want to stop in at Eaton Square to pick up some gardening books. ... If the traffic's not too bad, I should be back by three. Round about the time Australia bowls England out, I should imagine . . ."

Christian picked up a cushion and threw it at him. Edouard caught it.

"Absolute rubbish. I anticipate an heroic stand." Christian yawned. "Give Charles Smith-Kemp my regards. Tell him not to forget the regulation glass of sherry. He ought to be in an Agatha Christie novel—have you ever told him that? The absolute model of the family solicitor, who might —just possibly—have been the very man who did the wicked deed in the late colonel's library . . ."

"Not anymore." Edouard smiled. "Charles has a new passion. He's fallen in love with the modem world—high technology. Well, technology anyway. They've moved offices. Plate glass and mbber plants and the very latest thing in what he still caUs typing machines. I'm to be given a tour of inspection. ..."

"Oh, God. Is nothing sacred?" Christian opened one eye. "What's happened to the old offices?"

"They're being pulled down. An insurance company is going to build a tower block on the site. Sorry about that, Christian—I don't hke it either."

"Well, at least nothing changes here, " Christian said m a disgruntled voice. He Ufted his hand in a lazy salute. "See you later."

He reached across and switched on his transistor radio, one of his few concessions to modemity. As Helene and Edouard tumed back into the cool rooms of the house, the soothing tones of the cricket commentary drifted in the air behind them.

Edouard put his arm around Helene's waist; she rested her head against his shoulder.

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"Will it be all right, Edouard?"

"Perfectly all right, I promise you. If necessary, we'll take out an injunction, but I don't think it will even come to that. Don't worry about it, darhng. I'm not worrying, and neithei is Smith-Kemp. He says it's open and shut: that film will never be made." He bent his head, and kissed her. "Now—tell me—what are you going to do? You don't want to change your mind and come with me?"

"Oh, Edouard—I'd like to. But I'd better not. I promised Floryan I'd finish going over the new designs—I need to look at those provisional figures. If I start now, I'll be finished by the time you're back. . . ."

Edouard smiled. "You work too hard."

This was a customary joke between them, and Helene gave him a little push. The push turned into an embrace.

"And the children?" Edouard said eventually.

"They'll be well occupied. Lucien and Alexandre are going to have a picnic lunch in the treehouse—to which I'm invited." She smiled. "And Cat said she might go riding. If I finish in time, I'll go with her."

"Well, just don't let her go near Khan, that's all. I know she's longing to ride him, and she mustn't. It's not safe."

"Edouard, she won't. Cat's very sensible about things like that. Stop worrying. You must go—you'll be late. . . ."

"Oh damn—having to do this on such a perfect day. Damn Angelini . . ."He paused, and his arms tightened around her waist. "We did do the right thing to come here for the summer, didn't we?"

"Absolutely the right thing. I knew it would work—there's something about this place. A curious magic. It makes people restful, and calm. It makes them happy. Even Cat. She's much better, Edouard, you can see that. I think she's beginning to accept the school thing. This last week, she's almost been like her old self. She loves it here. ..." She lifted her face to his. "Don't you feel that?"

"Yes. I do. I'm certain of it. It was just a phase, perhaps, as you said. . . ."He glanced down at his watch. "God, you're right. I must go. Don't forget Christian's wine—he likes the Montrachet. There's some in the fridge. Oh, and if you could persuade Cassie not to iron my shirts. George regards that as his province, he mentioned it again this morning. ..."