Jezebel (16 page)

He spoke first. ‘Listen carefully,’ he said, sounding cold and threatening. ‘If you don’t want to spend every night on the telephone, because I’ll call you continuously, and if you don’t answer, I’ll bang on the door of your house
so hard that you’ll have to open it and let me in, if you don’t want any scandal, if you don’t want me to write to your lover, then come and see me. I live at 6 rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques. It’s a student house. I’ll wait for you every day until six o’clock. Make sure you come.’

‘Do you really think I’ll come?’ she murmured, forcing herself to smile.

‘If you’re smart you will.’

‘Very well. I’ll see, I’ll … Just go now, I’m begging you, just leave me alone! I’m not as reprehensible as you think,’ she added, sounding insistent and fearful.

He didn’t reply, just shook the rain from his hair, closed the top button of his raincoat and walked away.

That night she made Monti stay with her. They dined together in front of the open window. The trees of the Bois were hidden behind a heavy, reddish autumn mist. It was starting to turn cold. Monti stood up to close the window, but she seemed to enjoy the cool air.

‘A young woman would feel cold tonight, half naked as I am,’ she thought, ‘but I …’

She would have braved fire, walked on water, to prove to herself that she was strong, lithe, young …

Paris was damp and as mauve as a ploughed field under a murky sky. Beneath the trees the beams of car headlights appeared, grew larger as they passed, then turned into little golden sparks amid the branches.

Monti shivered. ‘Really? You aren’t cold?’

‘No. You’re so sensitive to the cold, my darling. Shame on you …’

Gladys liked having the window open: that way, the only light came from the Paris sky and a small, shaded lamp at the back of the bedroom. She was afraid of bright light. Monti was smoking. He was nervous; she could sense it; tears welled up in her eyes, adding to her terror.

‘Please don’t let him speak to me harshly the way he sometimes can,’ she thought. ‘I couldn’t bear it tonight …’

She closed her eyes, trying to picture Bernard Martin’s face. Suddenly she shuddered.

‘What’s the matter, Gladys?’ Monti asked.

‘Nothing. Oh, nothing,’ she replied, her voice sounding tearful. ‘Come and sit beside me, Aldo. Do you still love me, even a little? Oh, tell me you do, please, please tell me. Men don’t like talking about love, I know,’ she said, forcing herself to smile. ‘My darling, my beloved … I love you so much, if only you knew how much. My lips quiver whenever I look at you. I’m in love with you the way a girl of fifteen would be, but you, my love, you feel only lukewarm towards me, as if we were an old married couple. I can tell …’

‘Gladys, you’re the one who feels weary and lukewarm towards me because you refuse to do what I’ve been asking you to do for so long. Be my wife. I want to live with you; to be with you all the time; I want to take you back to Italy and give you my name. Why do you refuse?’

She shook her head and looked at him in anguish. ‘No, no, I asked you never to speak to me of that again. It isn’t possible!’

He said nothing. But in spite of what she said, she was thinking that on the contrary, she had never been as tempted to agree, to go away with him, to tell him everything, finally to be relieved of carrying within her the weight of her fear. She had no one else in the world.

For an instant she thought, ‘Why not? What difference is there between forty and fifty and sixty, if you’re no
longer young, no longer truly young? Nothing can replace that.’

She remembered women who were past sixty and were still loved, or so it was said. ‘Yes, and they’re the ones who say it,’ she mused with sad lucidity, ‘but in truth, they’re only loved by gigolos, or former lovers who still love them only because they remind them of their past. If only Dick were still alive. I would never have been old to him. But Monti … To admit to him: “I’m sixty. I have a twenty-year-old grandson …” I’d feel so ashamed. I want him to admire me, to be proud of me. I want to be young. I
was
young until now. No one suspected how old I was. And now … But what can I do for that boy now? The damage has been done. Giving him money is easy enough. But will he be content with money? He must hate me.’

She hid her face in her hands.

‘Darling, what’s wrong with you tonight?’ asked Monti, surprised.

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured in despair. ‘I’m sad. I want to die. Let me sit on your lap. Rock me.’

He held her close; she snuggled up against him, enjoying the wonderful sensation of feeling so small and lithe in his arms. He stroked her hair, calling her ‘my little one, my dear little girl …’ Time no longer existed. Gladys’s heart melted with sweet sadness.

‘If he knew how old I really am, how could he ever say such words? What would happen if a young man of twenty called me “grandmother” in front of him? But I’m young, I’m young, this is all a horrible dream.’

She wrapped her arms round his neck, breathing in the
delicate scent of his cheeks; his eyes were closed, his fine nostrils dilated.

‘I’m too heavy, Aldo. Let me go.’

‘You’re as light as a bird.’

‘Aldo, will you always love me?’

‘You don’t usually want to talk about the future, do you, darling?’

‘That’s right, because it’s frightening. Listen to me; close your eyes and answer me truthfully. This is extremely important. Will you love me when I’m old?’

‘But aren’t you forgetting that we shall grow old together? Aren’t we about the same age?’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If you only knew how frightened I am of getting old …’

‘Darling Gladys, you’re young and beautiful.’

‘No, no, that’s a lie. I’m an old woman,’ she said in a subdued voice.

‘Right now, my darling, you’re nothing more than an illogical child.’

‘How long can a woman be desirable?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Until what age?’

‘What a question, my darling. As long as she is beautiful and feminine. Fifty, fifty-five … That’s so far away yet, Gladys. A lifetime …’

‘Yes, a lifetime,’ she whispered.

‘By then, we’d be an old married couple, believe me. We’d both have white hair. Is that so terrible if we’re together?’

‘And love will have disappeared?’

‘Of course not. It will be a different kind of love, that’s all. You’re talking like a child, Gladys.’

‘When I was very young,’ said Gladys, ‘I promised myself that I’d kill myself if I ever felt I was old. I should have.’

She didn’t even hear the consoling words he was saying to her. She had closed her eyes and kept her face hidden in Monti’s arms.

‘Oh, Aldo, I’m so unhappy!’ she said, bursting into tears.

‘But why, my darling, tell me why so I can help you. Ah! You don’t trust me. You don’t even consider me your friend.’

She put her arms round him and hugged him with extraordinary strength for a woman who appeared so frail. ‘No, no, not a friend! You are my lover, you are everything I love most in the world! Don’t listen to me! I’ve been frustrated by ridiculous things all day, a dress that didn’t fit, a bracelet I lost, who knows?’

‘You’re a spoiled little girl, my darling, too spoiled to be on this earth.’

‘You’re making fun of me, but … I’ve had my share of unhappiness,’ she whispered.

‘You never talk to me about that.’

‘Good Lord, what’s the point? Aldo, I’m not letting you leave tonight.’

He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Whatever you want.’

When he was finally asleep, she got into bed next to him, but she remained awake, unable to close her eyes. Eventually she got out of bed and went quietly into the room next door. She was shivering with the cold now. She paced back and forth in the room, silently. ‘No one in the world, no one …’ She wrung her hands as tears flowed down her cheeks.

‘Dick, oh Dick,’ she whispered in despair, ‘why did you have to die?’

But he’d been dead for so long, buried beneath the ground. She thought of Mark, also dead. And George Canning, killed. There was only one man left: Claude … and that young boy, that stranger who was a grandson to both of them.

She found a sheet of paper and began to write, listening out for Monti’s breathing in the next room. ‘Please come and help me … Don’t be surprised that I am appealing to you for help … I imagine you’ve forgotten all about me? But I have no one else in the world. Everyone else is dead. I am all alone. Sometimes I feel as if I have been buried alive, in a pit of loneliness. You alone can remember the woman I used to be. I am ashamed, desperately ashamed, but I want to have the courage to ask your help, you and only you, because you once loved me …’

‘He’s forgotten all about me,’ she thought in despair. ‘He’s old now, free, free and living in isolation.
I’m
still burning in hell, but he’s calm, he’s detached from everything, of course, and he’s old, old. How could he understand? Ah, I chose to burn in hell until my very last day; I rejected the peacefulness of old age. But I’ll make up for everything; I’ll ask that young boy to forgive me. I’ll do everything for him, everything that a mother can do for a child she has brought into the world, everything that Marie-Thérèse would have done, just as long as he keeps quiet, just as long as Aldo doesn’t find out!’

In the morning she locked the letter in the desk drawer, but she would never send it.

The next day the telephone rang every fifteen minutes. Bernard asked for nothing. All he did was hang up when he heard the chambermaid’s voice. Finally, Gladys had the telephone brought into her room and, trembling, she answered it. ‘It’s me, Bernard.’

‘Hello!’ said the familiar voice. ‘Is that you, Grandmother?’

‘I gave you a thousand francs yesterday. Can’t you leave me in peace for a few days?’

‘Did you really think that would settle the score?’ said the voice.

‘Will you just tell me exactly what you want?’

‘Over the phone?’

‘No, no,’ murmured Gladys; she could hear noises in the next room. ‘I’ll call you back.’

‘No, you’ll come and see me.’

‘No!’

‘As you please. By the way, what’s the name of your fiancé, my future grandfather? It’s Count Monti, isn’t it?’

‘Listen to me,’ said Gladys in anguish, ‘you’re playing a dangerous game. This is nothing short of blackmail.’

‘And you know very well that it is a very specific kind of blackmail.’

She went to see him. He lived in a stuffy, dark little room with a low, dirty ceiling. A deep crack ran across the marble sink; the bedclothes were worn out and yellowish; a thick lace curtain covered the windows.

‘What a horrible room,’ murmured Gladys. ‘You can leave here whenever you like, my dear boy.’

He looked at her and smiled. ‘No, that’s not what I need. You don’t understand. I can assure you, you don’t understand.’

Some books were open on the table, others covered the floor; a plate of oranges sat on the bed.

‘Listen,’ said Gladys. ‘What do you want from me? There’s just so much I can do to make amends for the past, but …’

She fell silent, expecting him to say something, but he just stared at her.

‘Go on, Madame, I’m listening. Would you like to sit down?’

She obeyed mechanically; when she realised that her hands were shaking, she hid them beneath her fur coat.

‘Why do you want a scandal?’

‘But, Madame, you misunderstand me. You persist in believing that I wish to prove I have rights, and I do not, because I’m illegitimate, I know that. But that’s not what this is about. At least, I haven’t properly considered that part yet. I simply feel a need that will seem strange to you: the need to make my presence felt in your life, the need to disturb your magnificent peace of mind. Look at yourself in the mirror. At this moment, you don’t look
like the woman you were yesterday, only yesterday, when you so graciously spoke to the strange young man who was following you in the street. You look your age now, my darling Grandmother. Come now, don’t be annoyed. Don’t disown me. After all, I’m your flesh and blood. The only reminder left of a daughter whom you adored, judging by the magnificent white marble mausoleum you had placed in the cemetery in Nice. I’ve seen the grave. I’ve seen the Gonzales woman. Charming creature. How well I understand that my mother chose to die rather than have that woman at her bedside.’

‘Who brought you up? Was it Jeanne?’

‘No. She took a job, so she could continue earning her living and supporting me. She entrusted me to her cousin, a former cook who lived with Martial Martin, a retired butler. He was a stupid but honest man who agreed to claim I was his so I could have an official status that was honourable, if not exactly lofty. He died when I was still a child. I was raised by Berthe Souprosse, Jeanne’s cousin. Mama Berthe, I called her.’

Gladys hid her face in her hands.

‘They told you everything?’

He shrugged his shoulders and didn’t reply. In fact, the two women had never forgotten a single detail of what had happened the night he was born; they barely spoke of anything else, nor did they think of anything else, which is what happens when ordinary people witness a tragedy whose protagonists are richer and more powerful than they are. At the beginning they didn’t talk about it in front of the child, but he used all his passionate, hungry, patient intelligence to piece together the truth from bits of their
conversations, their sighs, the knowing looks the women gave each other. Their memories from the night he was born, Marie-Thérèse’s death, Gladys’s attitude, her character, to him, all those things took on the curious fascination of a work of art. At night, after they’d put him in the large bed where he slept next to Mama Berthe, they would sit in front of the lit stove in the dining room and knit while tirelessly retelling the same story.

Through the half-open door, the boy could see Berthe hunched over, her triangular black shawl over her shoulders, the long steel hairpin that held up her white hair beneath the fluted frill hat she still wore. Jeanne would mend Bernard’s shirts and his velvet short trousers. The child would be half asleep, but even in his dreams he would hear Jeanne telling the story over and over again. Certain phrases were repeated night after night, so Bernard knew them by heart.