Perfect Freedom (13 page)

At first he thought he detected a certain sharpness in her replies when he apologized for having to devote the day to this or that chore, but he soon realized that she had made a happy adjustment to necessity. The nervous intensity that had provoked the small crises in the past seemed to have vanished. She was more tranquil than Stuart had ever known her. She seemed happy with Robbie's companionship and apparently enjoyed whatever work there was for her to do, the cooking and preserving and taking care of the animals and flowers, with which Robbie helped her. Stuart felt no hesitation, therefore, in offering his services to Antonin for the grape harvest at the end of the summer although it meant being away all day while it was going on. Antonin had spent two days helping him gather his modest crop.

Antonin had a real working vineyard and Stuart loved the work, imagining how satisfying it would be when he was the master of such bounty. The men and women and children joked and called out festively as they worked their way through the rows of vines. It was good to handle the grapes, which were beautiful to look at and sweet and cool and sunny in the mouth. It was fine to be accepted by Antonin and his relatives as a friend, an established member of the community. Stuart enjoyed himself even though it added to his heavy schedule of work.

He shared vast boisterous midday meals with the grape-pickers for the ten days the
vendage
lasted and Helene was delighted to have Robbie even more to herself. They had the last of the tomatoes to put up. She watched him proudly as he carried a basket of the fruit around to the front of the house where she was installed with basins of water preparatory to washing them.

“This work isn't too hard for me?” he asked, as he set the basket down in front of her.

“Good heavens, no, darling.” She smoothed his dark hair lovingly. “You're as strong as an ox.”

“But you said I wasn't strong enough to help with the grapes.”

“That's different,” she said easily. “That's all day long in the hot sun, bending and lifting. Besides, you wouldn't want to leave me here all alone, would you?”

“Of course not.” Actually, the grape harvest sounded sort of fun with lots to eat and other children to play with, but he knew she thought he was above that sort of thing. “I like being with you.”

“I'm afraid you won't always think that,” she said with a smile.

“Of course I will, always.” He stood before her sturdily and spoke with passionate conviction. She wiped her hands on her apron and reached out and drew him close.

“Is that a promise?” she murmured, kissing his ear. She felt soft and comfortable and he liked the way she smelled. He let himself be caressed and was sorry when she let him go. “Will you look after me when I'm an old lady?” she said, running her finger over his cheek.

“You're never going to be old.” He stood close to her with his hand on her shoulder. “Why does Daddy help with the grapes when he says he never has enough time to do everything here?”

It would have been easy to explain that Stuart felt heavily indebted to Antonin and was glad of the opportunity to repay him, but instead she said, “Stuart likes a lot of things we don't like. He likes to work with Antonin in the vines.”

“I suppose so,” he said. “I think he even enjoys chopping wood.” It wasn't the first time that she had made him feel the gulf that separated them from his father and this awareness was translated into a unconscious explanation for certain things he didn't dare think of. The long-ago windy night before his illness had faded into a dim, carefully repressed nightmare. It simply seemed right that his mother should be engaged in a constant struggle to protect herself and him from Stuart and he gave free rein to his growing instinct to ally himself always closer with her.

“Everybody has different tastes,” Helene went on. “You mustn't feel you have to like everything Daddy does. And there's no question of your chopping wood for a long time yet. Of course, we all have to do our share of chores but we don't all have to enjoy the same things.”

They had many such moments together but Helene took care that he was always obedient and courteous to his father and she went out of her way to praise him to Stuart for the help he gave her around the house.

As Stuart had expected, the long summer months were a period of easy economy and when he sold his crop of grapes he was able to pay back half of his debt to Odette. The property had actually brought in some money—not much, but the psychological boost was enormous. With the coming of winter, he could see no risk in reducing his income slightly to embark on the second phase of his program, a major expansion of his vineyard. This involved a capital investment and when he wrote to Sir Bennett to explain his needs, he asked for enough extra to pay off Odette entirely.

Well under a year after he had borrowed it, he went one morning to take her the final payment.

“What do you expect me to do with it?” she demanded. As long as he owed her money, she had been able to go on hoping that maybe one day something would happen, something would change. Now she was filled with dismay at the thought that her chance was passing. She didn't even look at the money but left it on the table where he had put it and went on with her ironing.

“What do you mean, what'll you do with it? You'll give it back to the Widow Muguette, won't you?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. She slapped the iron back onto its cradle and carried the finished linen over to her bed. She was indignant. She knew his time wasn't his own but his returning the money in the middle of the day underlined the fact that this wasn't to be an intimate occasion. The last time they had been to bed together was that late-summer afternoon when he had come into town to collect the first money he had earned from his grapes. He had been eager enough to celebrate with her then. Was he planning to dispose of her as easily as he was disposing of his debt? She wished she could think of some way to show him that she was to be taken seriously.

“You've saved my life, you know,” he said in the tender way that completely unmanned her defenses. “I wish I could afford to give you something that's good enough for you. Is there anything you want?”

She straightened and turned to him and looked at him levelly. “You know what that is.”

He smiled affectionately and went to her and took her hands. “I know I haven't been much of a lover recently. Do you realize it's been more than a year since the first time? That means we can count on each other. You know how tied up I am.”

“Oh, I understand,” she said, trying to hold out against him but unable to keep a tremor out of her voice. “Now that we've repaid each other, we have no more obligations. Is that what you mean.”

“No more obligations about money. That's good, isn't it?” She obviously didn't think it was good. He knew he could dispel the odd reproach he felt in her by making love to her but he resisted the impulse. Calculation implied responsibility. He had carefully avoided that sort of tie with her. He added gently, “The important obligations don't change—obligations to the love and generosity and support you've given me. I'll never forget all that.”

“I'll be interested to see how it affects your actions.”

He heard the bitterness in her voice and immediately made allowances for it. She apparently saw the settlement of the debt as some sort of ending. He didn't see why it should be. “I'll be along as usual, next time I'm in town,” he said. He lifted her chin and kissed her lightly on the lips and went. She remained motionless for a moment, tears swimming in her eyes. She shook her head angrily and returned to her ironing.

The winter was mild and by spring Stuart had fifteen acres planted in vines. The new ones wouldn't bear for several years but it was a big step toward making the place self-supporting. Multiply that acreage by five and he would be a prosperous viniculturist. He found time in the midst of his daily labors to make some improvements in line with his original conception of the place as a sort of semi-tropical paradise. He built an outdoor stove of fieldstone so that cooking would be pleasant for Helene during the summer and a palm-frond shelter down in the cove where they could camp out on hot nights.

Their first visitor from the world they'd left behind turned up that summer. Stanley Hilliard wrote that he expected to be driving through their part of the country and asked directions for finding them. Hilliard was no longer the unknown writer whom Stuart had nursed through his first book, but a successful novelist who was turning out things for the magazines as fast as they could print them. Thinking about his arrival, Stuart was very conscious of his own small success with the land. If Stanley had announced himself a year ago, he would've wanted to hide. Now he was ready to show off a bit. Stuart replied, welcoming him, and heard nothing more.

Stanley arrived without further warning in a flashy car on a summer evening when the Coslings were just sitting down to eat out of doors. The headlights of the car picked them out through the olive trees and Stuart advanced toward them, shielding his eyes.

“Yes? What is it?” he demanded as he neared the car. “My God! It's you, Stanley. You've found us.”

Hilliard had had a good deal to drink. Helene cooked a few more eggs and he stayed for supper. He had been one of Stuart's editorial discoveries but he hadn't seen him since his success. It sat oddly on him. He had been a serious youth, and drunken attempts at cleverness seemed to suit him as little as his expensive sports clothes. It turned out that he had left a girl at Boldoni's to wait for him but seemed disinclined to hurry back to her. He wanted to talk about Franklin Roosevelt, whose presidential campaign he was going to join in the fall. Socialism was going to save the country. Stuart had met Roosevelt a few times and thought him an unlikely socialist. He talked about the local winegrowers' cooperatives, which were a form of socialism. Hilliard dismissed winegrowing as irrelevant to an industrial society. The disjointed discussion ended with his staying the night. Stuart and Helene led him down over the rocks to the shack on the beach.

“God, I feel like Gauguin or Willie Maugham or whoever it was,” he declared as they left him perched on the edge of a bunk.

The next morning he wanted a drink with his coffee but Stuart had nothing but wine to offer and persuaded him to make a brief tour of the place instead. Having experienced the primitive sanitary arrangements and looked at the vegetables and the vines, the pigeons and the rabbits and the chickens, Hilliard collapsed in the shade of a tree.

“It's very pretty but, Jesus, you're nothing but a dirt farmer,” he protested as Stuart squatted beside him.

“That's about the size of it,” Stuart agreed with a chuckle. They were sitting on the edge of the area under cultivation, in back of the long beach and out of sight of the house.

“I thought you were coming over here to lead the good life.”

“This is it.” Stuart made a slight gesture around him.

“Do you travel? Do you get to Paris much?”

“Lord, no, I have to be here to make this place pay.”

“And to think I've been envying you all this time. You're nothing but a slave.”

“I'm my own master, I'm as free as air,” Stuart said.

“Nonsense. You're stuck with your goddam vegetable plot, just like me. I've got to turn put three more fairy tales between now and the end of September if I want to keep up my insurance and pay the rent. Not to mention dear old Mother and the ancestral hut.”

“Why do you do it? Why don't you take all the money you've made and write what you want to write?”

“And live on spinach? That
is
spinach I see before me, isn't it? No, thanks. We're all goddam slaves one way or another. That being the case, I shall slave in the greatest comfort I can possibly buy.”

Stuart plucked at a clump of thyme and crumpled a sprig under his nose. He loved this land. He loved the vines spreading their tendrils across the field. This was his. He was creating it. Hilliard was such a cliché of success gone wrong that he was almost embarrassed to feel so much better off than he.

“People want different things. This is what I want,” Stuart said, standing up. They started toward the house.

“I really must get back and see what's become of Peaches,” Hilliard said.

“Good God, is your girl friend called Peaches?”

“I doubt it. She's French. I call her Peaches.”

“I shouldn't think you'd be much in favor this morning.”

“I'm afraid not. However, she likes the car so she'll probably forgive me.” They talked a bit about his plans and Helene came up from the beach where she'd been with Robbie and together they saw him off.

“I'm glad he came,” she said, “even if he was drunk most of the time. We mustn't let ourselves get too out of touch.”

“If only to remind ourselves how good it is here? Old Stanley isn't going to be in touch much longer if he doesn't cut down on the booze. I want to get in touch with the sea.” He took her hand in his. She let him hold it until they came within sight of Robbie lying on the sand below when she made an excuse of adjusting a sandal to free herself.…

Two more years flew by, vanished into the smooth stream of their well regulated lives. It was with a sense of wonder at where the time had gone that they found themselves celebrating Robbie's thirteenth birthday and a few months afterward the fourth anniversary of their purchase of the place. They had a son in his teens. Another five years would see him fully grown.

If these years had been uneventful for the Coslings, they hadn't been for all the inhabitants of St. Tropez. Because the Coslings went into the village only for shopping and never in the evening, it meant little to them that the Café de la Mer had changed hands and been transformed into a smart bar. When they heard that Boldoni's had been discovered by the fashionable world and that he had extended his Saturday night festivities into the whole week, that Mistinguett appeared there frequently surrounded by a bevy of boys and performed when the spirit seized her, they congratulated themselves that it hadn't been like that in their day.