Days of Winter (26 page)

“Thank you, Camail. From my heart …”

“From where …?”

“That’s unkind, Camail. I’m sorry you’re still so angry with me. But what really matters is that you’re willing to help. I’m grateful, Camail, even if you find it difficult to believe I’m capable of such an emotion.” And then she quickly told him where to send the portrait and hung up.

On the other end of the phone, Camail, a half smile on his face, shook his head and slowly replaced the phone on its hook. Magda was a difficult woman to forget. One of the very few such in his life. …

Through his chauffeur, a retired private investigator, delighted now with his unofficial though familiar assignment of surveillance, Camail learned that the little Hack girl spent the time with her father in Kensington Gardens on Saturdays and Sundays from about eleven in the morning until mid-afternoon. Camail immediately gave this information to his photographer friend Peter Scott, who the following Saturday provided Camail with a roll of excellent film.

A month later Magda received a large package. When she opened it up and looked at the painting she thought she would faint. The canvas was done in somber grays. A man, slightly bent held the hand of a small girl, their backs to the viewer. The frame and the velvet mat were black. Magda sat down heavily. Camail has done this to punish me. Dear God, when will it stop? The Hacks despise me, and rightly. And this is Camail’s way of telling me. …Oh, Camail, I could kill you … I could kill you for doing this to me.

It took her weeks to recover.

One morning, as she lay in bed, her maid brought a package to her. Somehow without even looking she knew it was from Camail. With trembling hands, she opened it

This time she saw the face of her child, the lovely dark hair framing a tender, innocent face. The colors were soft pastels. And although the eyes were Magda’s … the overall resemblance was to Rubin … the handsome Rubin of past years. Magda took in every light and shadow, every contour of the sweet face. Hugging it, she wept tears of love and longing. …At least she had this.

She went to her desk, propped the painting up against the desk lamp and called Camail to thank him for giving, in a way, a part of her child back to her.

N
OT A DAY WENT
by that Leon didn’t see his brother. With the passing of the years, Rubin seemed to be mostly content. Watching his daughter grow up was the one great joy in his life. If time had any meaning at all, it was on her birthdays. Once a year he could forget himself, seeing her eyes gleam in the candles’ light just before she blew them out. …How many had there been? Eleven? Twelve? Yes, twelve. Childhood’s end. …

Rubin sat in the park on his small canvas chair, his painting before him on an easel, chatting with Leon. From time to time, as he and Leon talked, he glanced at Jeanette. She caught his eye and smiled, then returned to her letter writing.

Dear Tante Solange:

Tomorrow I’ll be thirteen. Papa and I are going to Scarborough. Aunt Deborah and Uncle Leon have given their permission. It will be my birthday gift. I feel quite grown up today. Thank you so much for the presents, especially the pearls. …

As always, Solange called Magda the morning the letter came. Magda stopped in during the afternoon to read it. She sat in Solange’s bedroom. Solange had spent the last few days in bed, her arthritis so painful she could barely walk.

When she finished reading, Magda put the letter back into its envelope. She pressed it to her bosom, as though by doing so she was holding Jeanette close. She looked up, tears in her eyes. “Where have the years gone, Solange? Imagine, our little doll is already thirteen. …She loves the pearls … if only she knew they came from me. …But at least she has something of mine. …”

Magda took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Dearest Solange, I know how proud you are … but please, let me send you on a holiday. …”

“Thank you, Magda. And it isn’t pride. Believe me, I’d accept your generous offer without protest, but I’m afraid this awful arthritis … just makes things too difficult.”

Once again Magda felt the tears, remembering, in spite of her determination not to dwell in the past, the exquisite Solange she’d met at Emile Jonet’s so long ago … the startling red hair … the black toque with egrets … how gracious, how kind she’d been. And now to see the deep lines etched on that lovely face, the gnarled hands, the bent back. …

“All right, dearest friend, but this I do insist on. …You are coming to live with me. I insist—”

“That, I can’t do, Magda. This is home to me—”

“But you can’t go on living as you are, alone … with no help. …You must let me take care of you.”

“I’m sorry, Magda. …”

Magda suspected, but did not say, that there were other compelling reasons for her refusal … her feelings about Magda and Alexis living as they did was perhaps one, but far more important she was sure, was that to do so would, for her, be an act of disloyalty to Rubin. …

The two women looked at each other. Close friends, lifelong antagonists …

Rubin continued to see his child grow closer and closer to him. Her attachment to
him
was almost motherly, their roles seemingly reversed. He was the child, she the parent. Jeanette was becoming a young woman, nearly sixteen now.

She did seem to be happy, which greatly pleased Rubin. If anyone had the right to be morose and disheartened it was Jeanette, but it was not so and he thanked God for that.

Today, though, his heart would have broken had he seen her as Leon sat trying to comfort her in her grief. She had received a letter this morning from Magda though sent anonymously. It ended simply with … “I have been a friend of your Tante Solange.” For Magda it meant the loss of her last contact with her child. For Jeanette it was like the death of her second mother.

Solange, with characteristic grace, had died quietly, without fuss, in her sleep.

On Jeanette’s eighteenth birthday Deborah arranged a small party for just the four of them. When Rubin saw his child sitting across from him at the table, he knew that in spite of his loneliness, in spite of the depressions he suffered, the decision to let her live with Leon and Deborah had surely been the right one. His daughter was cultured … educated … and so accomplished on the piano that she could have become a concert pianist. However, that wasn’t her inclination. She had been given the advantages the daughter of a Hack should have been born to. God had, finally, been merciful and kind. …

Jeanette was pleased to see her father so happy. Since Tante Solange had died, she needed him even more. She tried to spare him her longings … her disappointments. …Life was not nearly as serene as she pretended. She still couldn’t understand why her mother had left her, or her father. Secretly she prayed for only one thing—to graduate from school and take care of her father. She lived for that time. She wanted to make a home for the two of them. …She was well prepared to be a teacher in both French and music. She would make up to her father for all that life had denied him. She loved Deborah and Leon. They could never be her parents, no matter how hard they tried, but she would never let them know her feelings. As Jeanette looked back, she realized that she’d been deprived of the one thing most children take for granted. The house she lived in was not really her home. …Home meant a mother and father. Home also meant being accepted, and the other Hacks had never accepted her. If she happened to be home when the other Hacks came to call, she was completely ignored. …

She had become aware of the stigma in her life when she was eleven. Her cousin Julien, who usually avoided her, had interrupted her piano practice.

“I suppose you’re going to be an actress like your mother,” he had said. Julien’s smirking, arrogant face was filled with hatred; his voice sounded accusing … sinister. Jeanette couldn’t understand why. Still, she felt ashamed. …But ashamed of what?

“There’s nothing wrong with being an actress,” she said.

Julien smiled, a mean glint in his eye. “I’m sorry, I should have said ‘adulteress.’ That’s what your mother was, after all.”

Jeanette had slapped him. Then she left him standing there without shedding a tear, holding her head very high. Julien had called after her, “Like mother, like daughter.” But not until she reached her room did she allow herself to break down and cry. And what was foremost in her mind was … “Poor Papa. She’d take care of him … she’d make up for all the hurt. …”

She was, after all, a grown woman now. In July she’d be nineteen, and soon she’d be able to take Papa away. She had already decided where they would go. She only hoped she would be in time, for recently he seemed to be worse. Much worse.

Rubin sat at the window, watching the torrential rain. For days he had sat in the same chair, in the same place, in the attic which had become his refuge, his exile, his prison. …

Suddenly he turned away from the window. Overpoweringly, he felt the futility of his existence … the failure of his life. He looked at his canvas in progress. …After all these years, any woman he painted still became Magda. The bodies … the forms … were all different, but what did it matter? The face was always Magda’s.

Why was he fooling himself? He couldn’t paint. …The occasional pieces he sold were bought out of charity. Nobody really wanted his work … except Jeanette. His daughter. Who would destroy her life to take care of him, to take the place of her mother. …That, by God, he would not allow. Not that too, Magda. …

He searched out a piece of paper, took up a pencil, sat down at the wooden table, and wrote:

My dearest daughter,

Without you my life would already have ended … I have nothing to give you except a trade … my unfortunate life for the promise of yours. I can’t allow you to sacrifice your youth and your beauty on a man who is already dead. I cannot let you do this. I want you to get away from London. You’ve suffered enough for all of us. You can’t have a decent life here. Please go away before we all destroy you. Please believe in my love … it is everlasting. …

Papa

Leon found him the next day, hanging by a cord. For a long, stricken moment, Leon could not move. Then, without thought, he got a chair and cut the cord, and Rubin’s body fell to the floor. He called out to the landlord, who, when he saw Rubin, turned ashen white. “Oh, bloody hell, what a sight,” and he fled from the room. Bending over his brother’s body, so cold, so thin, Leon wept. …

The most difficult part was telling Jeanette. She kept repeating over and over again, “Why …?
Why
…? I would have given him the love he needed. He lived his life without a moment’s peace … oh, why …?”

Leon and Deborah couldn’t console her. There were no words. When Phillip came by to pay his respects, Jeanette refused to see him. In fact, she told Leon that Phillip was not to attend the funeral. She knew the other Hacks wouldn’t even want to be there.

The next day Rubin was put to rest in the family tomb, with just the three of them standing by, watching the coffin reach its final resting place.

At long last Papa was home. Sleep well, Papa, near your mother and father, who loved you as I did. Sleep well.

It was not until that evening that Leon could bring himself to show Jeanette her father’s letter, and he turned away so not to intrude on the awful pain and shock in her eyes as she read, and reread, the words that had earlier torn out his heart as well.

Finally, tears on her cheeks, shaking her head to deny the reality of what she’d just read, she asked her uncle to at long last tell her about her mother.

“Darling, why pain yourself needlessly … especially now. …”

“No, this
is
the time. All I know is what I’ve gathered for myself, bits and pieces … partial truths. I think I have a right to know what happened.”

Leon looked at this lovely girl who already wore such deep scars. He hesitated.

“Uncle Leon, I must know. I don’t want to be protected any longer.”

He started from the beginning, leaving nothing out that he was aware of. When he had finished, Jeanette stood up, went to the window and looked out. “Uncle Leon,” she said, “do you think traits are inherited?”

“No,” he answered quickly. “Have no fear on that score. You’re in no way like your mother—”

“I wonder. …You know what I want now more than anything else in the world? I want to be loved … at least to be accepted … for what I am or am not—not for what my mother may have done. When I was very young, I never understood why all my relatives didn’t like me. Well, I hope the other Hacks rest easy. I’ll no longer be an embarrassment to them. I’m leaving London. That’s what my father wanted, what he gave his life for … so I could find a place where
I
belong. …”

“Jeanette, dearest, please listen to me. Try to understand. Your father’s mind was confused, I truly don’t believe he realized what he was saying—”

“I’m sorry, Uncle, but I believe he did. I ask you, what chance do I have here? Who would marry me? I love you and Aunt Deborah, you’ve both sacrificed enough because of me”—she shook her head energetically to cut off his protest—“I’ve been responsible for the breach in the family. It’s been years since you have accepted an invitation. When Elise married you didn’t even go to the wedding because of me.”

“That’s not true. Aunt Deborah was not up to it—”

“Thank you, but that’s not all of it. I remember how your brother Maurice said I was responsible for your offending him by not accepting the invitation—”

“How in the world do you know that?”

“How? Julien was very kind and kept me posted on all important details. Perhaps I am like my mother … but I truly despise them beyond words. I thank you for your love and goodness to me, but I will no longer live here. I want to go to Paris.”

“But why Paris?”

“Because in a way I think I am a child of two worlds. …I don’t ever want to see my mother, not as long as I live. I’m sorry, but I just can’t forgive her for what she did, even though I think I understand some of it. It may be that she lives there, she did once before … but I will make no attempt to find her. Still, something draws me there. Perhaps because of the brief happiness my father had there before the war. I remember times when we were together, he would look back to the Paris of his youth with real fondness. And
Tante
Solange lived there. …I’ve kept all her letters and the postcards she sent me. She kept her promises.”