Perfect Freedom (62 page)

“There's nothing much to tell,” she said, unable to control the impulse to speak of it. “I wrote Carl, naturally. He left me a Swiss address where he said he would always be reached. These people are trying to turn me into a spy. Nothing can possibly come of it.”

“But it seems that writing in itself is some sort of war crime.”

“I have a good lawyer. There's nothing else to be done.” She tried to put confidence into her voice. She would not have him feeling sorry for her.

“That's not true. Influence is all that counts in things like this,” he said with distaste. “If you hadn't kept your French passport, they couldn't do a thing. That's my fault. Even if I have to use my father, I'll get you out of this.” His voice was the voice she knew and she forced herself to look at him to dispel the effect it had on her.

“I've told you, I don't want your help. I'll tell my lawyer to refuse to cooperate with any steps you take.”

It cost her a terrible effort to reject his offer. The thought of going back to the cell, of having to submit to the rough indifference of her jailers made any help seem like the gift of life itself, but she had to head him off. The decision she had made had been her own; its consequences must be her own, too. She was reasonably certain that her present predicament had been brought about by the denunciation of another woman, a woman who had long played an important part in Carl's life and of whose existence she had learned only after she had left Stuart. If he got involved in the case, he might learn of her existence, too. If for no other reason, she had to stop him. There were many things about her life with Carl he mustn't know. And yet there was little about it she regretted. Only by accepting his help now would it all be turned into a tragic error. She had to get through this alone.

“I promise you, I'll hate you if you do anything about it.” She saw him bow his head and she struggled against the pity and tenderness that surged up in her; she struggled against the need she felt for somebody to turn to.

“I don't see really how that would change anything,” he said musingly. She could still hurt him more than he would have believed possible. “I've got to the point where I'd almost prefer hate to nothing. But I haven't got to the point where I can see you here and wash my hands of it. I'm sorry you're against it but, after all, your pride, or your conscience or whatever it is, should be satisfied by having refused. I think it's very brave of you.”

“Leave me alone,” Helene screamed, so that the official jumped and Stuart reached instinctively for the support of the chair.

“Yes, of course I will,” he said with his eyes lowered in the silence that followed. “And don't worry about Robbie. I'll see he's taken care of. Of course, with the war and everything, you'd both probably be better off in the States. Perhaps when you get out, you'd consider going back.” He turned to the official. “I think that's all we have to say to each other. Thank you very much.”

The official, who had been staring glumly at nothing, pressed a button on his desk and the guard entered. He advanced to Helene and touched her on the shoulder. She rose, her dress hanging grotesquely around her, and started toward the door. Stuart took a step forward.

“Helene,” he said. She stopped with her back to him but he realized that if he tried to say another word he wouldn't be able to hold back his tears. And what was there to say? She belonged to Carl, or to herself. He turned abruptly to the wall and his mouth opened in a spasm of silent agony. When he turned back she was gone.

He stayed long enough to ask about conditions at the prison and to learn that he could deposit money to an account which Helene could draw on for small comforts. He also obtained the name and address of her lawyer.

When they were home again, Anne urged him to have a drink. He looked so tired.

“No, I don't think so,” he said. “I don't need it anymore. At least, it doesn't do any good anymore. I'm afraid I'm not an alcoholic by nature.” They wandered around the place while Stuart pulled a weed here, trimmed back a branch there, but the sun had lost its strength and they soon retreated to the living room.

“I better get off to Paris in the morning,” he said when they were settled in front of the open fire.

“I'll go with you.”

“No, not this time, Anne. If you really want to be helpful, you'll stay here and wait for me. It'll be a comfort to know you're here to come back to.” He sighed and looked at her. “It's not much of a life for you, is it?”

She sat with her legs tucked under her and she looked small and young in the high-backed armchair.

“It's a funny time,” she said. “Nothing seems to lead to anything. Do you really think the war's going to last long?”

“I don't see what's to stop it. Russia and the States will get into it eventually, I should think. One of these days, I'm going to have to do something about it.”

“Oh, but you're—”

“Too old? Carl and I are almost exactly the same age and he's apparently valiantly serving the fatherland. I'd have done something before now only I was still a little groggy when it started and then you came along and I wanted to make sure that Helene and Robbie would be all right.”

“I keep trying to think what makes you seem so old-fashioned,” Anne said. “I guess it must be because you seem to care. Everybody I know would have got married again or had quantities of dazzling mistresses, or taken dope or something. Of course, you
did
drink, but you don't seem to have put your heart into it.”

“All the more reason I should go get myself killed. There doesn't seem to be much else left for me to do.” Anne's firm mouth closed more firmly and she looked away. Had he hurt her? She surely couldn't expect him to pretend that she had given him a new purpose in life. He was profoundly grateful to her but his gratitude was tempered by his conviction that there was little left in him worth saving. He rose and leaned against the back of her chair and put his hand on her shoulder.

“I think maybe we'd better have that drink after all.”

He drove to Paris alone the next day and took rooms at the Ritz. He immediately sent for a tailor and offered a stiff premium to have several suits made for him overnight. He intended to play to the hilt his role as the rich and influential son of a rich and powerful father. He knew there was no point in asking for direct aid from his father. He had sneered at Stuart's domestic difficulties when he had seen him more than a year ago.

“We Coslings do badly with our women,” he had said. “You, though, have had the good sense not to get tied up legally.” Stuart was glad now that he had stopped off to see the disagreeable old man. It permitted him to give the impression that they maintained a normal father-son relationship. He was the heir of an English milord.

His game almost worked. Expensively groomed and handsomely tailored, he cut a fine figure. The Cosling name carried even more weight in wartime than in peace. After an initial contact with his father's French lawyers, Stuart had no trouble gaining admittance to ministerial antechambers. For several days he had high hopes.

“You and I know that anybody connected with the Coslings is above reproach,” the dignitaries he interviewed said in substance. “But there is this tiresome matter of public opinion.”

For Helene's sake, he was ready to make the most of the distasteful fact of privilege, but in the end it failed him. “It would change everything if she were your wife,” an under-minister explained. “As your wife she wouldn't be a French citizen. As it is, think what the press would make of it. Government corruption. The mistress of a highly connected person. Espionage. National security. We simply cannot afford any scandal. Couldn't you marry the lady in question? We could manage it secretly perhaps and after that it would be easy.”

Of course, there was no hope of persuading Helene to accept such a solution. He could do no more.

It hadn't been all wasted. His efforts had assured Helene of special attention. He had been practically guaranteed that she would be tried by sympathetic judges who would deal with her lightly. Of course, if they'd been married—The knife was being turned in the wound.

He waited to get in touch with Robbie until he knew what success he was going to have. He wrote him a note now and asked him to call. He telephoned Anne, too, and found that it helped enormously to listen to her hard young voice. When Robbie phoned the next day, they arranged to dine together at the Ritz that evening. Stuart could draw no conclusions from the boy's manner on the phone except that he didn't sound actively hostile.

Robbie hung up in a quandary. There was no point in seeing his father unless it might help his mother in some way. He no longer dreaded facing him; he just didn't think they would ever have anything to say to each other. He had survived the worst period of his life without his father's or anybody else's guidance, and had found that he wasn't totally without character. His father's disapproval had become irrelevant.

The few weeks he had spent with Edward after the collapse of his parents' life, those few weeks leading up to his last year at school, had cured him of his hunger for promiscuous sex. He had done the rounds of the bars for the first time, and under Edward's disapproving eyes had gathered together groups of attractive young men and taken them home and given himself to anybody who wanted him. Group sex. Exhibitionistic sex. Voyeuristic sex. He had learned the limits of purely physical satisfaction. When his head count (cock count?) passed fifty he stopped keeping track. He was no longer interested. He wished that Edward could fill the strange terrible emptiness that he felt in himself but they couldn't quite connect. Anyway, they were about to be separated by the normal course of events.

School meant Maurice. When he was once more seeing him daily, he wondered why he had pinned all his hopes on him. He was everything Robbie remembered him to be—attractive, reserved but charming, quietly humorous—but never by the slightest glance or word or gesture did he betray any hint that he might be romantically or sexually interested in Robbie or any other boy. The only thing that Robbie had to go on was that in his middle thirties he was still a bachelor, one of only two bachelors among the teachers.

The only classmate he had felt close to was gone so there was nothing to distract him from his preoccupation with Maurice. A handsome new boy looked at him with suspect interest but he had chosen celibacy until he had arrived at some resolution with Maurice.

As was usual among the masters and the senior students, some small social life developed between the art teacher and his favorite pupil. They took a few trips along the coast to museums and exhibitions. Maurice proposed dinner in town on a couple of Saturday nights. Robbie pressed himself against him, let his hands stray as intimately as he dared, tried to engage his eyes flirtatiously, but if Maurice was aware of it, he made no sign of responding. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, some irrational conviction persisted in Robbie that his elder was playing a game with both of them.

There was a moment of panic during the fall when there was talk of the school being closed by a threatened general mobilization, but an elderly British statesman returned from Munich announcing “peace in our time” and life resumed. Christmas approached. Robbie began to get desperate. He had heard from his mother that his father had returned and gone away again. He didn't feel emotionally stable enough to face her and her companion in the dangerous confinement of Carl's rented house. The situation was too explosive; anything might happen. The prospect so unnerved him that he began to wake up sobbing in the night. His personal life needed some direction. Only Maurice could provide it.

He knew that he wasn't in love in the blind headlong way he had been with Toni but he thought that if they were lovers something deeper, surer, more rewarding would come of it. He had admired Maurice's trim fit body on the tennis court. Although his manner and personality denied his sexuality, Robbie found him intensely desirable. The thought of arousing him from his rather British diffidence thrilled him. He wanted to find peace in the tranquil enclosure of Maurice's arms. More immediately, he was desperate for somewhere to go for the Christmas holiday.

None of his wiles succeeded. He even showed him, among others of his recent drawings, a full-length sketch of himself, naked, in which he had subtly emphasized his partially erect sex without exaggerating its dimensions despite the temptation to do so. Maurice barely glanced at it and reproved him for wasting his time on such literal figurative work.

He seized on what he thought of as a final attempt at seduction when Maurice told him he was going away for the weekend. The master had a collection of very expensive art books that he never allowed out of his apartment. Robbie asked him if he would leave his key with him while he was gone. He improvised a project for which the books would be useful references. Maurice hesitated.

“I suppose there'd be no harm if you don't let any of the other boys know. I don't want them to think I'm playing favorites.”

Once Maurice was gone, Robbie hurried into town and had a copy of the key made. The next step was simply to get into Maurice's bed as soon as Maurice was in it. If that didn't work, he would know that there was nothing to hope for. At worst, Maurice could have him expelled, but he thought it more likely that he would be given a severe lecture and be made to promise to mend his ways.

As Sunday evening approached, when he was due to return Maurice's key, Robbie's nerve began to falter. Would he be able to go through with it? Circumstances turned out to be in his favor; Maurice was late and in a hurry and collected his key amid the usual bustle before dinner. Knowing he was back, Robbie had to fight the temptation to go to him that night, but for some reason he had settled on Monday night, when the routine of school would have resumed, and he decided to stick to his original plan for luck.