Perfect Freedom (54 page)

“You will, my dear, when you come to realize what I've helped you escape.”

“Really, Carl. I don't want to continue this conversation.” She gathered up her book and the other odds and ends she had with her and rose. He noticed that her hands were trembling slightly. He admired her elegant carriage as she left. He had planted the seeds. He would nurture them to a fine flowering. He was resigned to the fact that it was impossible to get along in the world without, however inadvertently, trampling on others, but for once he didn't think anybody was going to get seriously hurt. Even Stuart might end by thanking him.

Helene felt anything but thankful to Carl. He had set up a train of thought that seemed to have no end. She couldn't deny that she had felt odd stirrings recently in Robbie's presence. She had dreamed of seeing him naked in all his thrilling young virility. He was part of her. It was natural to want to know her own creation. The thought of any real physical intimacy with him repelled her. She wouldn't dream of allowing him to see her naked. How could anybody say she was falling in love with him?

When she returned to the beach before lunch, Robbie and Toni had joined Carl. As beautifully developed physiques, there was little to choose between them except for a sort of raw power that was distinctively Carl's. Youth endowed Toni and Robbie with a special shining grace. Since Toni had stopped working, there had been small differences in the way they treated each other that were growing more pronounced. Their constant touching was filled with hidden caresses. When he looked at Robbie, Toni eyes were filled with gloating tenderness.

She observed them closely now. Robbie was practicing handstands under Toni's tutelage. Toni placed his hand very near Robbie's crotch as he supported his legs in the air. His hand moved and they laughed as Robbie dropped down and sprang to his feet. Boys could touch each other there without thinking anything of it. She didn't need Carl to tell her that Toni wasn't a homosexual. He hadn't said it about Robbie, as if there were no need to state the obvious. The boys sparred playfully with each other and jostled each other into the sea. She felt not the slightest trace of jealousy. A woman falling in love with either of them would be automatically jealous of their happiness with each other.

She turned to her tormentor and resumed her seat beside him. She must face up to him once and for all. If he had talked about her falling in love with Robbie in order to make her question everything she had been and everything she had become, he had succeeded. She had sacrificed passion for peace and contentment. Was her life the poorer for it? He had yet to convince her that it was but she hadn't wondered for years.

“Has Stuart come back?” he asked unexpectedly, lying out with his eyes closed.

“Yes. He's going over some bills in his study. Did you want to see him?”

“No, no. I have been wondering about privacy. He has been gone most of the morning. Do you know where he's been?”

“As much as I need to know. This house has to be kept running. Are you suggesting that he's been with a girl?” She said it witheringly but was reminded that that was where he
had
been once upon a time when he went off on errands.

“I'm suggesting that people who have been together for many years don't usually check up on each other every minute of the day and night. If you think of your days, I'm sure you would find many hours when neither of you has the slightest idea what the other is doing.”

“So you're thinking of a clandestine affair after all.”

“No, no, but we must have each other sooner or later so that we will know where we wish to go from there. I'm accustomed to a nap in the afternoon in hot climates. I will be waiting. Half an hour can alter a whole life.”

She looked at his body again and at his handsome face in repose. With his lively eyes closed, it was curiously peaceful. She allowed herself to imagine being held in his powerful arms and her heart accelerated. She took a quick breath and shook her head to dispel the thought.

“I'm afraid I'll have to avoid any private conversation with you,” she said, resuming her grandest manner. “I decided to ignore what you said about Robbie. Now this. You have the effrontery to suggest that I'd come sneaking to your room like some common trollop.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her and winked. He threw his head back with full-throated laughter and sprang up and went racing down into the sea after the two boys.

She was left seething with frustrated indignation. It didn't matter what she said to him or how she treated him. Everything bounced off his self-confident air of knowing her better than she knew herself. She could at least retain enough poise and dignity to let him make all the moves in whatever game he thought they were playing.

He had arrived in a racy little convertible that he'd bought in Marseilles. Several times when they went out in the evening she rode with him. It would have been easy for him to take the wrong turning, to stop on a deserted road, to make love to her, not in a real sense but enough to break down her guard. He was always a model of gentlemanly deportment. They always arrived at their destination just ahead, or on the heels, of the others. In spite of herself, she wished increasingly that he would do something that she could come to grips with. Did he really think she was going to fling herself on him?

When he'd been there a week, he announced to the assembled family that he'd decided to rent a house of his own. There was a chorus of protests.

“We're losing our customers,” Stuart commented. “We'd better fire the staff.”

“I can't live with you for the rest of my life, my friend. I like it here. I haven't settled anywhere for quite a long time. A year or so here should be most agreeable. Who knows? It might become permanent.”

“Well, it'll be one more house where we'll be invited to parties,” Robbie said. “Do you know where it'll be?”

“Somebody told me last night of a farmhouse that is just remodeled. Not on the sea but close. Furnished, of course. I am not so domesticated that I want to start buying curtains. That may come.” Carl glanced at Helene.

She remained silent. She saw the move as his answer to the problem of privacy and it alarmed her. Did he know that she would come to him once the danger of discovery had been removed? He had been right about their days. There were many hours when Stuart wouldn't notice her absence and there were many easy explanations to offer him if he did. She caught herself thinking about Robbie. What if Robbie, with his quick perception, felt a change in her relationship with Carl? Was there something unnatural about not wanting her son to suspect her of an involvement with another man? Must she force herself to give in to Carl in order to prove that her feelings for Robbie were purely maternal?

Carl's decision continued to trouble her and nag at her nerves for the rest of the day. She awoke the next morning with it still on her mind. She and Stuart had breakfast in bed as usual. Could he help her? Perhaps she could lead him to take some stand that would eliminate Carl. The old grateful feeling of utter dependence on him revived in her.

“I'm not sure I'm pleased about Carl moving quite so firmly into our lives,” she said experimentally. “I mean, taking a house and so forth. Don't you think he's rather rushing it?”

He looked at her over the top of the morning paper. “I don't see that it makes much difference what we think. The whole peninsula is open to the public. We have only ourselves to blame.”

“Yes, but you might be able to discourage him. You could point out the drawbacks. It's awfully quiet here during the winter. Perhaps he doesn't know how beastly the weather can get. You could make it clear that we're planning to spend some time in Paris. It's a bit odd his deciding to settle in so quickly.”

“Is it?” He put the paper aside, astonished. He'd thought she was as pleased as everybody else to have him here. He heard an incomprehensible note of anxiety in her voice and gave her his full attention. “I have the impression that that's the sort of life he's led—moving in wherever it strikes his fancy. He has friends here and there along the coast. People take to the life here very easily. Why not Carl?”

“I'm simply not sure we want to make such a friend of him. Jane Cumberleigh told me a story that I haven't wanted to repeat. It—”

“About blackmail in Egypt? The admiral told me and Carl told me about it himself. There's not much to it.”

“Perhaps not, but that's not the only thing. Alex asked me not to say anything, but he thinks the statue is a fake. Something about the marble. He seems to know a lot about such things.”

“A fake what? It's a statue. Carl told us himself that it's probably a Hellenistic copy. I can't see what the statue has to do with him.”

“He arranged it all. You handed over quite a large sum of money. Maybe nobody cared whether we took it.” Faced with slightly amused indifference, she felt increasingly cornered. In the old days he would have taken charge by now, explaining to her what she was trying to say. Couldn't he understand that she felt threatened or had they both reached the point of not caring what the other did? She tried again. “The point is, where does he get his money?”

“Where does anybody get their money, old dear? Where does Alex get his? For quite a small community, there's an amazing number of people with no visible means of support. Carl fits in very nicely.”

“You can say what you like but there's one bothersome little thing after another. I just don't feel we can trust him.”

He pushed his tray aside. Something was wrong; it didn't hang together. He'd seen how much she enjoyed herself in his company. If she was getting bored with him, why make a point about trusting him? It would be easy to start seeing less of him once he was out of the house. He felt a sudden hard kick of jealousy in the pit of his stomach. Unlike the little flutters of jealousy he'd felt in Greece, it carried the dread weight of certainty. She was making a case of him. It was unlike her unless he had really got under her skin. Perhaps she had already committed herself in some way and was trying to back out.

He pulled himself out of bed and went to the low table in front of the window to get a cigarette. He lighted it and puffed on it, taking time to compose himself. He turned back to her. “I'm ready to believe that he might be a dubious character, but what do you expect us to do about it in a practical way?”

“I leave that up to you. Men know how to deal with each other.” He was wearing a white toweling robe that made him look very tan and added bulk to his spare frame. His physical charm was undiminished. He hadn't lost the weather-beaten look he had acquired in the vineyards but it didn't detract from his distinction. He looked like the gentleman farmer he had been, fit and capable. She wanted him to take command as he had in the past. He would have been eloquent in defense or condemnation of their guest and would have somehow made the situation manageable. She realized how much of their life had been built on his words. Whatever she had hoped for this morning wasn't going to happen. Everything in him seemed dimmed. She had failed to ignite him. “You might at least persuade him to postpone his decision about the house. Tell him you'd be offended if he refuses our hospitality so abruptly.”

He was puzzled. Was it possible that she had succumbed so completely that she couldn't bear to think of him under a separate roof? He watched her realign her forces and close herself to him. She had expected something more of him but he couldn't intervene. Freedom had always been the basis of their relationship, to the point of not providing it with a legal seal. Even if there had been no Odette in his past, she had the right to find in another man whatever she needed. Jealousy afflicted him like a sickness, making his throat and chest and limbs ache. “That seems an odd approach to a man we can't trust,” he said, steeling himself to present the smooth surface of ordinary intercourse. “I should think the sooner he's out of the house the better.”

“Suit yourself,” she said as if she were already thinking of something else. She felt totally alone. He hadn't picked up her plea for help. Should she have waited till later when he would've recovered from his usual hangover? If things came to a visible crisis with Carl, he would probably have a few extra drinks and ignore it. She would have to save them single-handedly.

He watched, despite his determination to give her her head. By the end of the day, he was convinced that he had lost her, if not permanently, at least for as long as it took for whatever it was with Carl to run its course. Although he couldn't imagine how they'd managed it, numerous small signs suggested that they were already lovers—the way they sat together with easy familiarity, the smiles and looks of complicity they exchanged, Carl's masterful domination of her. They never touched, even when they thought they were unobserved, which might be significant. People who were merely fond of each other, without any sexual undertones, found constant ways of expressing it, in the way Robbie and Toni did. Above all, Helene's manner was so completely at odds with her behavior this morning that he could only believe that she had been motivated by guilt.

He wished he could find out something about Carl that would discredit him and send him running. For all anybody knew, he might be a Nazi. He invented a satisfying fantasy in which the French intelligence authorities came and took him away for espionage. Why not? There were probably things going on here that the Germans would like to know about.

Carl was undoubtedly an adventurer. Was he also a fortune hunter? Did his ambition go beyond a pleasant affair? Did he know what a catch she was? Because of their marital status, or non-status, he had invested everything equally in both their names. Helene could walk out tomorrow without the nuisance of signing a single paper. Apart, they might not be able to live so comfortably in the States, for instance, but here they were both rich.