Paris: The Novel (118 page)

“I haven’t got one,” said Hadley. “I know your family.”

“All too well,” said Marc drily.

“I’ve also had a chance to get to know Claire a little, and I like her very much.”

“Your son’s a good boy too,” said Marc. “None of us has anything against him.”

“Your son does you credit,” Marie agreed.

“The point is this,” said Hadley. “If my son wants to propose, and if Claire wants to accept him—which it seems none of us knows—what are we all going to do? Are we going to forbid it?”

Marc indicated that he wasn’t worried personally. Marie was silent.

“You know,” Hadley added quietly, “I can stop it. I could put my son on a boat to America tomorrow if it’s necessary.”

“You realize, don’t you, that if they marry, your son will probably take my only child three thousand miles away across the ocean, where I shall never see her, or my grandchildren. Quite apart from the fact that I need her at the store.”

“Then perhaps I should act,” said Hadley.

Marie shrugged.

“Let her decide for herself,” she said miserably.

The next few days were not easy for Marie. It was as though a spell had been cast over the last three months. The shock of the first encounter with Frank Hadley Jr., then the excitement of his father’s arrival, had blinded her to the cold, grim reality that if her daughter fell in love with young Frank, he would take her away forever and she would be alone for the rest of her life. And when she thought of that, she cursed the young man’s coming.

She asked Claire what she thought of young Frank the next evening, when Claire was reading a magazine, and Claire looked up and said he was nice enough, which was clearly an evasion.

“Well, don’t go falling in love with him, unless you want to find yourself cut off from everything you love, in America—which all the Americans seem to be trying to get away from,” she said, as though she were joking, but they both knew she wasn’t.

“I’d like to see New York,” said Claire, casually, turning back to her magazine. And Marie wanted to continue the conversation, but realized that it was no good, and silently cursed the fact that the little scene in the garden at Fontainebleau had left her, forever, in a false position with her daughter.

She wished there was someone to comfort her, but Marc was no real support, and she didn’t want to share her thoughts with de Cygne. And Hadley didn’t call.

It was three days after the meeting that she went to Hadley’s apartment. She really hadn’t meant to. She hadn’t planned it at all.

She’d had a lunchtime meeting with a designer who had a little studio on the rue de Chazelles, just above the Parc Monceau. As she came out, she saw that despite the fact that it was November, it was a bright afternoon with a wintry sun in the sky, so she decided to walk through the park, as she had done so many times as a child, and continue down to the boulevard Haussmann and across to her office.

And having decided that, it was only a very small detour to ring the bell of Hadley’s apartment, in case he’d like to walk with her in the park.

He was in. He came straight down.

The park was such an elegant little place, with curling walks, and statues discreetly placed upon lawns or under trees. In the morning, nannies wheeled prams there, and rich little children played, but it was nearly deserted now. There were still golden leaves on many of the trees.

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “I almost called you. I realized afterward what a terrible thing it must be for you that my son might take your daughter away, and I wasn’t sure what to do.”

“I shall feel very lonely. But … It’s her life, not mine.”

He offered his arm. She took it. They walked a little way.

“Our families have seen a few things together,” he said.

“Have we?”

“I was thinking of the time, all those years ago, when Marc got in trouble with that girl about the baby …”

“The baby was adopted in England by a very good family, so she’s all right,” Marie remarked. “She’s probably a happily married Englishwoman by now.” She smiled. “That’s one bit of the past that can be left to rest in peace. I never even knew her name.” She sighed. “It’s amazing what we don’t know.” She walked on with him in silence for a little way. “Talking of the past, did you know I was in love with you in those days?”

He hesitated.

“I thought that, maybe a little.”

“It was more than that.”

“Oh.”

“Do you mind?” She looked up at him.

“No. I’m very flattered.” He paused. “You probably didn’t know that Gérard warned me off.”

“He what?”

“Well, you know, wrong religion, America not where the family wanted their only daughter, and all the rest. He was perfectly nice about it. I never
liked him much, but he didn’t accuse me of seducing you or anything. Well, not quite. He found us in the grotto in the Buttes-Chaumont, if you remember.”

“Gérard.” She shook her head in mystery. Gérard, who’d been betraying her since she was a child. She might have cried out, “May he rot in hell!” though she did not. But she stopped walking for a moment, and stared at the ground. Hadley put his arm around her to comfort her, and neither of them moved. Then she indicated that they should walk on, and he offered his arm again, and this time she clung to it so that her head rested against his shoulder.

“You know,” she said, “I always felt that I missed my chance. So if Claire wants to go away to America with Frank, I can’t stand in her way. I don’t want her to miss hers.”

“I’m sorry I caused you pain,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if I would have proposed. But I might have.”

“It’s nice of you to say so.”

“It’s true,” he said simply.

They had crossed the park now, to its eastern corner, where there was a pond, partly enclosed on one side by a charming Roman colonnade. It was a romantic place.

Marie straightened herself and turned her face up to him.

“You know,” she said with a smile, “we could make up for lost time. While you are here in Paris.”

He stared at her.

“Are you suggesting …?”

“It’s nice to close unfinished history.”

“No doubt.”

She could tell from the way he said it that the idea was not at all unattractive to him. That was something, at least.

“I’m a married man.”

“You’re in Paris. Nobody will know.”

“There are things to think of,” he said.

“One can think too much.”

“One can think too little. And what about my son and your daughter? If they were to marry?”

She shrugged.

“It’s good to keep these things in the family.”

“Only a French person could say that.”

“We’re in France.”

He sighed and shook his head.

“Marie, I swear to God I’d like to. But I can’t.”

“Let me know,” she said, “if you change your mind.”

But he never did.

In May 1925, Mr. Frank Hadley Jr. and Mademoiselle Claire Fox were married in Fontainebleau. The bridegroom’s father came across the Atlantic to attend the wedding. He could stay only a few days. But everything went off very well.

The following week, Marie received a visit from her friend the Vicomte de Cygne. He was looking very spruce and handsome in a pale gray suit, with a flower in his buttonhole.

He asked her to marry him. She asked for a little time to consider.

•  1936  •

All sons are wiser than their fathers. And as Max Le Sourd looked at his father, Jacques, he felt concern. Max wasn’t thirty yet, his father was past seventy. But there were things his father did not understand.

And Max was wondering: Was he going to have to tell him?

Early afternoon. A weekday in June, in a fateful year.

From all over the world, athletes had already started making their way toward a new Olympic Games, to be held in Berlin, and hosted by Germany’s Nazi regime. Russia was not attending, but despite individual protests, other nations were.

In Spain, the election of a Popular Front of leftist parties had left the old conservative forces furious, and summer arrived, and left- and right-wing forces eyed each other tensely, there was danger in the air.

And in France …

On any normal day, there should have been cars in the Champs-Élysées, and people crowding the broad walkways under the small trees. But there were almost no cars, and few people. It was eerily quiet. As they gazed down toward the distant Louvre, it seemed that all Paris had fallen strangely silent.

Jacques Le Sourd turned to his son.

“I thought I wouldn’t live to see it,” he confessed.

Once before, he’d thought it had begun. There had been that moment during the war, when the army had mutinied. He’d thought it was starting then. But he’d been premature. France had not been ready.

Russia had been ready, though. The Russian Revolution had succeeded. And with that massive example before all Europe, it had seemed inevitable to Jacques Le Sourd that now it would spread. The question had been: Where next?

By the mid-twenties, all eyes had fallen on Britain. France might be the cradle of revolution, but Britain was also a logical choice. Wasn’t Britain the first home of capitalism, colonial empire and exploitation? Wasn’t London where Karl Marx had written
Das Kapital
?

The Zinoviev letter of 1924, forgery or not, might have frightened the British middle classes into electing a Conservative government, but the Labour Party and the unions were soon ready to show their power. And in 1926, a huge general strike had brought Britain to a standstill.

Was it the beginning of a revolution? All Europe had waited. If the British Empire fell to the workers, then the rest of the capitalist world could crumble.

But once again, the phlegmatic British had displayed their lack of interest in ideas, their endless capacity to muddle through and compromise. The British bourgeoisie had come out, manned the buses, taken over the essential union jobs. Professional people, students, retired army officers were found driving trains. And they’d been allowed to get away with it. Jacques had even heard stories of an opposing line of strikers and British policemen organizing a football game between each other. He sighed whenever he thought of it. What could you do with people like that?