Paris: The Novel (109 page)

She did not see him again for over a month. She was sure he was back from Amsterdam, and several times she was on the point of going around to the family restaurant to ask after him. But her pride held her back. He had told her she wouldn’t need him. She’d show him he was right.

And finally, it was he who came to her. He turned up at her door one evening.

“I came to see how you were.”

“I am well,” she said calmly, but she didn’t invite him in. If he was hoping to crawl back to her, she was going to make him crawl a long way for a long time.

“Is there anything you need?”

“No, thank you.”

“Would you like to make some money?”

“Why? How?”

He shrugged.

“Let me give you a meal and I will tell you. It’s an opportunity that came my way. It may be of no interest to you. It’s something … diplomatic.”

And because she was curious, she agreed to meet him that evening at a brasserie nearby.

It was interesting to observe him because, after a number of inquiries about her welfare which were practical and thoughtful, he became rather businesslike.

“There is an ambassador I know. He’s from a small country, he’s rich, and unusually for a diplomat in that position, he’s unmarried.”

“How do you come to know such people, Luc?”

“It does not matter. He is a nice man, he knows everybody of importance in Paris, he is very cultivated, and he is … fastidious.”

“And so?”

“I think you should get to know him. He would like you.”

“And do you propose to introduce me to this person?”

“I have told him all about you. He’s quite interested to meet you. In fact, he’d like to take you out to dinner.”

“Let me understand. Is he looking for a wife?”

“No.”

“A mistress?”

“Let us say, an occasional mistress.”

“Luc, are you asking me to be a prostitute?”

“He would not be interested in most prostitutes. He is very fastidious, as I have told you. You would see if you liked each other over dinner. If not, there is no obligation whatever. But if you liked each other, then perhaps …”

“He would pay me?”

“Certainly. He would pay fifteen hundred francs each time. You would give me half. If you had any difficulties, I would take care of them. But I am quite certain that you would not. This is a very civilized man. You are the only person I have ever known who I should dream of recommending to him, and he is the only person I should think of recommending to you. But as well as the money, he might be a good friend for you to have.”

“I can’t believe you would treat me in this way.”

“One must be practical.”

“This makes me a prostitute and you a pimp.”

“The situation is more specialized. As for the money … Why don’t you think about it for a little while? Remember, he has offered you dinner without any obligation at all. You might like him.”

She was silent for a little while.

“What you are really thinking,” she said quietly, “is that I might like the money.”

When Marie had a problem, she often liked to walk in the Luxembourg Gardens to work it out. The gardens were classical in their outlines, but they were simple, and friendly, and sensible. By ten o’clock on the Saturday morning after her brother Marc’s party, she was walking there.

It was still quiet. A few children were already sailing their model ships in the big basin. Some elderly men had begun a game of boules on the gravel beside one of the statues. Marie walked to the bottom of the park and back, thinking hard. For today she had a very big problem indeed.

What was she going to do about Frank Hadley Jr.? They were going to meet later that morning.

Marc had started the business by inviting them all to join him at the Ballets Russes that evening. Young Frank Hadley and Claire had wanted to go. She couldn’t herself, she’d explained, because she’d agreed to go to the opera.

Then Frank had asked if anyone would like to accompany him to the Olympics. “I’m going to watch the boxing with an American friend and his wife on Saturday afternoon,” he’d explained. Claire had wanted to go, Marc could not.

Was Claire attracted to the young American? It had looked as if she was, and it would hardly be surprising. In any case, Marie had told herself that she couldn’t possibly leave her daughter alone with a young man who had such a glint in his eye, so she’d declared firmly that she and Claire would both accompany him.

And now she considered the day ahead. It was one thing for the young American to flirt with her, seriously or otherwise. She was a widow, after all, who could certainly take care of herself. Claire, however, was another matter. Her daughter might be grown up, and the world might not be the same as it was before the war. But the rules of society hadn’t changed so
much; and the human heart, not at all. Claire still had to be protected. She didn’t want her daughter being compromised, and she didn’t want her being hurt.

So she was going to be practical. Very practical. If necessary, she supposed, she might have to send Frank Hadley Jr. away with a flea in his ear. Unless, of course, she decided to take the young man in hand herself.

The bookshop where they were to meet Frank’s friends was only a short walk from their apartment. They arrived there punctually at noon.

If the area from the Seine into the Quartier Latin had been the home of the bookstall for centuries, it was the recent arrival of two eccentric bookshops on the rue de l’Odéon, both run by women, that had turned that little area into the literary capital of the world. The first was the French literary bookshop of the warmhearted Adrienne Monnier. The second, almost across the street, had been named Shakespeare and Company by its owner, Sylvia Beach.

Claire was better acquainted with the bookstores than her mother.

“The French writers go to Monnier and walk across the street to Sylvia Beach, and the English and Americans start with Sylvia and then explore Monnier as well. They’re both such nice women. Best of all, they fell in love with each other. They actually live together now.”

“Oh. Is anyone shocked?”

“I don’t think anyone cares.” She smiled. “Shakespeare and Company’s like a sort of club. As well as selling books, Sylvia also has a lending library. She supports authors, too. About a year ago, she even published
Ulysses
for James Joyce, the Irish writer, at her own expense, when the manuscript was virtually banned in Ireland and England. She even lets people sleep at the place. Everyone loves her.”

And indeed, when they arrived, Frank introduced them at once to the owner, who turned out to be a bright, friendly woman in her mid-thirties, who soon remarked to Marie that around the time she and James Fox had left Paris for London, she’d been arriving in Paris for the first time with her father, who was taking up an appointment as assistant minister at the American Church.

“I’ve hardly a single ancestor in a century who wasn’t either a pastor or a missionary,” she informed Marie with a wry smile, before she left them to attend to business.

Frank’s friends were an American journalist who wrote articles for a Canadian newspaper, and his wife. The wife was the first to arrive, a broad-faced woman in her early thirties with intelligent eyes.

“This is Hadley,” Frank explained, and grinned. “We’re not related. Hadley’s her first name. The match with my family name is pure coincidence.”

“And here comes my husband,” said Hadley, indicating an approaching figure.

He was a muscular-looking fellow, somewhat younger than his wife, but his impressive appearance seemed to make up for the difference. He was six feet tall, with a broad regular face and a mustache, and eyes set wide apart and square. Despite the warm July weather, he was wearing a sturdy tweed suit which, Marie guessed, served him for all occasions, and a pair of equally sturdy brown shoes—that let one know at once that he was a sportsman and an outdoorsman. She thought he looked like a young Theodore Roosevelt, without the politics or the glasses. From the way he carried himself, she guessed that he wrote fine, clean prose about where he’d been and what he’d done, and how it felt.

“This is Hemingway,” said Frank.

To Marie’s surprise, Hemingway turned to her at once and said that he’d seen her before.

“You like to walk in the Luxembourg Gardens,” he explained. “We live just south of there, beside a sawmill in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs on the edge of Montparnasse.” He grinned. “The poor district. Sometimes I sit quietly in the Luxembourg Gardens, and I see you. But I’m usually keeping my head down, and when no one’s looking I grab a pigeon.”

“Whatever for?”

“To eat, madame. I kill it quick, tuck it under my coat, and head for home. The Luxembourg pigeons are well fed, so they cook up nicely.”

“I don’t believe you are so poor, monsieur,” said Marie.

“Sometimes we are,” he said.

“None of the French can believe that any American is short of money,” Frank remarked with a laugh. “Especially in the last couple of years, with the French franc falling like a stone against the dollar. That’s why so many of us are flocking over here. They say there are thirty thousand Americans in Paris now.” He looked at his friend, who was shaking his head. Then, excusing himself, Hemingway and his wife stepped outside for a moment to look at the shop window.

“Actually,” Frank continued quietly to Marie, “Hadley has a small income from a trust fund, but they lost some of it recently, and Hemingway quit his job with the newspaper to write his fiction. So they’re sometimes a little short. Hemingway can write articles to make money if he has to, but his short stories are already attracting notice. Ford Madox Ford has started publishing them in the
Tribune
.”

As they went out to rejoin Hemingway, it was Claire who spotted the volume in the window.

“Look,” she said to her mother. The volume was very slim and its cover was very simple. It was titled, in lowercase letters,
in our time
.”

“Those are Hemingway’s,” said Frank, with almost as much pride as if they had been his own. “Short stories. How many has Sylvia sold?” he asked the author.

“Nearly twenty already.”

“Not bad,” said Frank cheerfully. “It’s not just the numbers, but the quality of the readers.” He grinned. “A novel or two and you’ll be rich.”

“Come on,” said Marie.

The boxing was taking place in the covered winter cycling track, the Vélodrome d’hiver, that lay on the Left Bank just downstream from the Eiffel Tower. They walked westward along the boulevard Saint-Germain until, at the intersection with the boulevard Raspail, they found a taxi and all piled into it.

During their walk, Marie discovered from Hemingway’s wife that they already had a baby boy, not yet a year old. They also learned that Frank had been out at the open stadium outside the city during the track events ten days before.

“The British did very well,” he informed them. “Their man Abrahams even beat our Charley Paddock to take the hundred-meter gold. But the finest thing I ever saw was the Scotsman Liddell. He’d pulled out of the hundred meters months before the games because the heats were being run on the Sabbath. So he trained for the four hundred instead, although nobody thought he had a chance. Then he ran like a man inspired. Covered the first two hundred at a speed no one thought he could possibly keep up, and just kept going. Running for God. And God gave him the gold. Almost a whole second faster that our man Fitch. It was a magnificent sight.”