Destiny (18 page)

Celestine looked at the two brothers, one very pale and one very flushed, and said nothing. She knew it was the end. She knew he would never come back to her, her beautiful Edouard. She could see it in the way he stood,

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proud, upright, never looking at her once. She could see it in his eyes, whose anger frightened her, and whose pain cut her to the heart.

She would have liked to explain, she thought sadly. Not now, naturally, but later. She would have liked to tell him the truth: that she loved him, and that because she loved him, she knew a sudden end was easier for her than a slow one. Jean-Paul, arriving on her doorstep very drunk at three in the morning, ready to make love after a brief sleep, had provided the means.

That Jean-Paul hated her for her hold on his brother she had quickly sensed as she lay under him; that this quick violent thrusting into her body was his way of breaking that hold she also knew. She made no attempt to stop him, or to assist him, and it didn't take long. Six or seven angry jabs, and he came, swearing. Her last love affair was over. Cochon, Celestine thought as Jean-Paul rolled off her, grunting. She was just getting up from the bed when the doorbell rang.

Now she looked at Edouard, and she knew she had done the right thing. He was free of her, and even the pain of this was better than the inevitable alternative. To have watched Edouard tire of her, fall out of love, grow up; to have seen him guiltily trying to hide what he felt—no, she thought, she would not have wanted that.

She looked at him, and felt one last temptation, one last hope. She could tell him; she could explain. And if she did . . . She pushed the temptation aside. It would still be over; she knew it as she looked at his face. She had been part of his youth, part of that short sweet time between boyhood and manhood, and that time was over. A man, not a boy, turned back to look at her as his brother left the room. His features were stiff with repressed emotion.

"I apologize for asking this. But does my brother owe you anything?"

"No," she answered quietly.

"I owe you—a great deal." His control almost broke.

"Nothing, Edouard."

He inclined his head, looked at her once more, and left the room.

A month later, Celestine received a short formal note from him, asking her to contact him if she were ever in need. She kept the note but did not answer it.

A month after that, her elderly English protector suffered a stroke and, after a brief illness, died. Some weeks later, when Celestine was daily expecting notice to leave her flat, she received a small parcel from solicitors acting on behalf of Edouard de Chavigny. Inside it was the deed to the house in Maida Vale, made out in her name, and details of an annuity to be paid to her monthly for the duration of her life. She thought of sending

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both back, of writing to Edouard; but she knew he meant well, and besides, she was nearly forty-eight and more than ever a realist.

So she acknowledged the gifts in a letter of formal thanks to the soUci-tors. It was eventually passed on to Edouard; Celestine did not hear from him again.

After a few months, cutting her losses and closing her heart, she took a new lover, and began once more to entertain the brave young men from Free French Headquarters. Occasionally, they gossiped idly about their friends, and the name de Chavigny would be mentioned.

So she learned that the Baronne de Chavigny had been quick to find consolation for the loss of her husband in the arms of an English banker; that—to no one's surprise—the engagement of Jean-Paul to Lady Isobel Herbert was broken off at Lady Isobel's request a respectful two months after the death of his father. And she heard that the younger brother, Edouard, was proving a firebrand, cutting a swath through the women of London society. He and his brother were very close, her informants said with a wink. They were notorious, they hunted in pairs.

Celestine was surprised to hear this. She felt a certain sad pride that her lessons in lovemaking were being put to good use, but the closeness of the two brothers disturbed her slightly. She knew how much Edouard admired his brother, and sometimes, thinking of that, she worried for him. Such fierce loyalty! He would be disillusioned, she thought, before long.

What Celestine could not know was the degree to which grief first drew the two brothers together. They had both loved their father; he had seemed to them indestructible. In the horror and confusion and pain of the days immediately succeeding the news of his death, days in which Louise took to her bed and refused to see anyone, the two turned to each other, and all the barriers between them fell away.

Jean-Paul found it impossible to contain his grief; he wept openly; he turned to Edouard, who could not weep, and sought consolation from him like a bewildered child.

Night after night, they stayed up late, talking and talking, going over the past. Jean-Paul drank a good deal on these occasions—it helped him, he said—and as it grew late, so he grew lachrymose and self-pitying.

"I feel such guilt," he said one night, clutching Edouard's arm. "Using his title—that very night. How could I have done that? God, I hate myself, Edouard."

"It made no difference. Not then. And anyway—as it happened—you had the right."

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"I know. I know. But it doesn't make me feel any better. And to have gone to that bitch Simonescu's—to have been there, when . . . God in heaven, I can't bear to think of it." He bent his flushed face, and wiped his eyes, and gripped Edouard's arm more tightly.

"I hate myself, Edouard—yes, I do, I mean it. I'm ashamed of the way I've behaved. Drinking—women—I'm going to give it all up, you know. Reform. I feel I owe it to Papa—I have to do it for him. I don't know why I do it in any case—women, what do they mean to me? Nothing. You can't talk to them—I'd rather talk to a man any day. You can't trust them. Look at Celestine—I feel terrible about that, Edouard, but perhaps it's done some good. If it's opened your eyes, it will have been worth it. She didn't hesitate, you know. Straight into bed. Couldn't wait to get it. They're all the same, women. Bitches. Liars. Every one of them. . . ."

"Jean-Paul . . ."

"Say you'll never let that happen again, Edouard. Tell me. Never let a woman come between us again. . . ." He lifted his face to Edouard's, his eyes watering. "They do that, you know. They try it every time. And I can't stand it. I need you, little brother. I need you now, more than ever. This terrible grief, this pain—thinking about all the responsibilities Papa has left me. It makes me afraid, Edouard. I can't cope with it, not without you. . . ."

He bent his head and sobbed. Edouard knew that the tears came from brandy as well as from grief, but he was touched. He thought of Celestine, and felt only a cold anger; she had betrayed him, she had perhaps lied to him all along. What did such a woman matter compared to the love he felt for his brother?

"Jean-Paul." He put his arm around his brother's shaking shoulders, and attempted to calm him. "Don't say those things. Don't think them. I'm your brother. We have to think about the future now. We have to think about Papa, and all the things he worked for. When the war is over, we can go back to France. We can begin again. Papa laid the foundations. We can build on them, you and I. It's what he would have wanted."

"I suppose so." Jean-Paul wiped his tears away with the back of his hand. He straightened up and blew his nose.

"Think of it, Jean-Paul. All those companies. They're our legacy. We can build them up—it will be a memorial to Papa."

"Yes. Yes." Jean-Paul sounded irritable. "But I can't talk about that now. I can't think about it. I'm a soldier—I have other responsibilities. There's a war on. Edouard—be a little realistic. . . ."

Edouard sighed. Each time they returned to this topic, Jean-Paul's reaction was the same. So, come to that, was the response of Louise. When, one afternoon, thinking it might console her to speak of Xavier and his

work, Edouard asked her what she thought his father would have wanted to happen in the future, Louise turned pettishly away.

"With his companies? Edouard, how should I know? What extraordinary questions you do ask."

"I just thought ..."

"Well, don't. You will meddle. Jean-Paul is the Baron, not you. When the war is over, he will take care of these things. There's no need for you to concern yourself at all. And it's most unfeeling of you to ask me at such a time! Really, you can be so insensitive. How can you discuss his business affairs at a time like this?"

"His work, Maman." Edouard's mouth set obstinately. "It mattered to him very much. I want to feel we're carrying it on—that we're doing what he would have wished. ..."

"What you want to feel is entirely irrelevant. And you have no right to bother me at such a time. I never concerned myself with Xavi's business affairs. In fact, I always thought that he paid far too much attention to them himself. It was an eccentricity—all his friends said so. He could perfectly well have devoted himself to his estates, just as they did. This obsession with finance, with commerce—I never understood it at all. . . ."

She gave a little haughty toss of the head; Edouard felt suddenly very angry. He stood up.

"Really, Maman?" He looked at her coldly. "You surprise me. After all, you grew up with commerce, I thought. It was steel—not estates—that provided your father with a fortune."

Louise's lovely face flushed crimson. All references to the source of her own family's money had long been forbidden.

"You may leave me," Louise said. "And send Jean-Paul up," she added as he reached the door.

It was from the day of that conversation that Edouard found his attitude to his mother changing. Before, she had dazzled and perplexed him; her coldness to him, which he had never understood, had made him all the more eager to win her affection. But now, and he knew this, he began to draw back a httle, and to judge her. The grief he felt for his father sharpened his vision; he looked at his mother in a new cooler dispassionate way; he no longer made so many excuses for her. When, some months after his father's death, he realized that she had begun a new affair, something in his heart closed to her forever.

Tliat, he knew, he would never forgive.

He began to feel as if, with Xavier's death, all the certainties in his world had disappeared, and he lived in a state of flux and change, in which there

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were no longer any sureties. His loyalties, to his mother and his mistress, had been misplaced; the patterns he had seen in the world were all broken.

"That happens," Hugo said to him kindly, when Edouard tried to explain his feelings. "It passes. Don't clutch at beliefs. Wait, and let them come to you."

"Wait?" Edouard looked up. "For what? What do you believe in, Hugo?"

"I?" Hugo smiled dryly. "Well now. I believe in good claret. And Sobranie cigarettes ..."

"Don't joke. The English always joke."

"Very well." Hugo smiled at his earnestness. "I believe in some of the things we have read together. I believe in hard work." He hesitated. "I believe in certain people. Sometimes."

"Not God?"

"Not really, I'm afraid, no."

"Politics?"

"Ah, politics. Well, I believe in certain creeds—as you may have gathered. I don't have a great deal of faith that they will substantially alter the world. I did once perhaps. Less now."

"What about love?" Edouard fixed him with his gaze, and Hugo, after a pause, let his eyes drop.

"Edouard." He sighed. "We should have read less poetry."

"But you said you believed in the things we read. How can you believe the words if you don't believe the things the words are about?"

"I believe in them while I read."

"And afterward?"

"Ah, afterward—I waver."

Edouard pushed his books across his desk. "It's not a great deal," he said at last in a bleak voice, and Hugo, paying him the compliment he felt was his due, spoke seriously.

"No, it isn't."

"But don't you mind, Hugo?" He turned to him passionately. "Don't you want things to believe in? Don't you want to feel a sense of purpose?"

"Certainly not. A terrible heresy. A delusion and a snare. Much better see the world as it is." Hugo turned away. "Very httle endures. Much of life is random. We invent ideals and beliefs to give shape to the shapeless. Love. Honor. Faith. Truth. They're words, Edouard. ..."

"I don't think you really believe that."

Edouard lifted his face stubbornly, and Hugo turned back. He looked at the boy's face and gave a little shrug.

"Maybe not. You could be right." He paused. "If I sound bitter and cynical, and I probably do, there are reasons for it just now."

"My mother?"

"Partly that. Yes. I told you I should find it difficult to stop. However, that's something we ought not to discuss. Shall we return to the Virgil now? If you intend to sit Oxford entrance, you have a considerable amount of work to do."

"Hugo . . ."

"What?"

"I hke you."

"Excellent. I find that reassuring. Now, turn to page fourteen."

Edouard bent his head; he applied his mind to the words, and he found they calmed him.

Afterward, he was grateful to Hugo. Dryness and irony helped; they gave him a new detachment, a different perspective on life. Time passed; he discovered that he was able to compartmentalize his feelings and his thoughts in a way he had not done before.

It was, after all, perfectly possible to contain the grief he felt for his father. He locked it away in the part of his mind that made plans for the future; it did not need, anymore, to affect his behavior every moment of each day. He could grieve and get drunk with Jean-Paul, he discovered; he could grieve, and still work with Hugo.

When, one night, after weeks of melancholy abstinence, Jean-Paul turned to him with a groan and said, "The hell with it, little brother. What we need is a woman," he made another discovery. He could make love, too, perfectly pleasurably, without feeling any emotion at all, without any desire ever to see the woman again. When he confided this discovery to Jean-Paul, his brother seemed pleased.