The Chateau (8 page)

George Ireland, the American boy who had spent the previous summer at the château and was indirectly responsible for their being here now had said that it was one of his duties to keep Mme Bonenfant's water glass filled. Harold saw that there was a carafe of water in front of him and that her glass was empty.
Though she allowed him to fill it again and again during dinner, she addressed her remarks to M. Carrère.

As the soup gave way to the fish and the fish in turn to the entree, the talk ranged broadly over national and international politics, life in Paris before the war, travel in Spain and Italy, the volcanic formations of Ischia, the national characteristics of the Swiss. In his effort to follow what was being said around the table, Harold forgot to eat, and this slowed up the service. He left his knife and fork on his plate and, too late, saw them being carried out to the pantry. A clean knife and fork were brought to him with the next course. Mme Viénot interrupted the flow of wit and anecdote to inquire if he understood what was being said.

“I understand part of it,” he said eagerly.

A bleak expression crossed her face. Instead of smiling or saying something reassuring to him, she looked down at her plate. He glanced across the table at Barbara and saw, with surprise, that she was her natural self.

After the dessert course, Mme Viénot pushed her chair back and they all rose from the table at once. Mme Carrère, passing the sideboard, lifted the lid of a faïence soup tureen and took out a box of Belgian sugar. The Canadian kept his sugar in a red lacquer cabinet in the drawing room, and Mme Viénot hers and her mother's in the writing desk in the petit salon. Harold excused himself and went upstairs to their room. Strewing the contents of the dufflebag over the bathroom floor, he finally came upon the boxes of cube sugar they had brought with them from America. When he walked into the drawing room, the servant girl had brought the silver coffee service and Mme Viénot was measuring powdered coffee into little white coffee cups.

The Canadian lit a High Life cigarette. Harold, conscious of the fact that their ten cartons had to last them through four months, thought it might be a good idea to wait until he and
Barbara were alone to smoke, but she was looking at him expectantly, and so he took a pack from his coat pocket, ripped the cellophane off, and offered the cigarettes to her and then around the circle. They were refused politely until he came to Mme Viénot, who took one, as if she was not quite sure what it might be for but was always willing to try something new.

“I think the church is in Chartres,” Barbara said, and he knew that she had been talking about the little church at the end of the carline. There were two things that she remembered particularly from that earlier trip to France and that she wanted to see again. One was a church, a beautiful little church at the end of a streetcar line, and the other was a white château with a green lawn in front of it. She had no idea where either of them was.

“You don't mean the cathedral?” Mme Viénot asked.

“Oh, no,” Barbara said.

Though there were matches on the table beside her, Mme Viénot waited for Harold to return and light her cigarette. Her hand touched his as she bent over the lighted match, and this contact—not accidental, he was sure—startled him. What was it? Was she curious? Was she trying to find out whether his marriage was really pink and happy or blue like most marriages?

“There is no tram line at Chartres,” she said, blowing a cloud of smoke through her nostrils. “I ought to know the château, but I'm afraid I don't. There are so many.”

And what about M. Viénot, he wondered. Where was he? Was he dead? Why had his name not come up in the conversation before or during dinner?

“It was like a castle in a fairy tale,” Barbara said.

“Cheverny has a large lawn in front of it. Have you been there?” Mme Viénot asked. Barbara shook her head.

“I have a brochure with some pictures of châteaux. Perhaps you will recognize the one you are looking for.… You are going to be in France how long?”

“Until the beginning of August,” Barbara said. “And then we're going to Switzerland and Austria. We're going to Salzburg for the Festival.”

“And then to Venice,” Harold said, “and down through Italy as far as Florence—”

“You have a great deal in store for you,” Mme Viénot said. “Venice is enchanting. You will adore Venice.”

“—and back through the Italian and French Rivieras to Paris, and then home.”

“It is better not to try to see too much,” Mme Viénot said. “The place one stays in for a week or ten days is likely to be the place one remembers. And how long do you have?… Ah, I envy you. One of the most disagreeable things about the Occupation was that we were not permitted to travel.”

“The luggage is something of a problem,” he said.

“What you do not need you can leave here,” she said.

Tempting though this was, if they left their luggage at the château they would have to come back for it. “Thank you. I will remember if we …” He managed not to commit them to anything.

The Canadian was talking about the Count of Paris, and it occurred to Harold that for the first time in his life he was in the presence of royalists. His defense of democracy was extremely oblique; he said: “Is the Count of Paris an intelligent man?”—having read somewhere that he was not.

“Unfortunately, no,” Mme Viénot said, and smiled. “Such an amusing story is going the round. It seems his wife was quite ill, and the doctors said she must have a transfusion—you say ‘transfusion' in English?—or she would die. But the Count wouldn't give his consent. He kept them waiting for two whole days while he searched through the Almanach de Gotha.”

“It was a question of blue blood?”

She nodded. “He could not find anyone with a sufficient number of royal quarterings in his coat of arms. In the end he had to compromise, I believe, and take what he could get.” She
took a sip of coffee and then said: “Something similar happened in our family recently. My niece has just had her first child, and two days after it was born, she commenced hemorrhaging. They couldn't find her husband—he was playing golf—so the doctor went ahead and arranged for a transfusion, without his consent—and when Eugène walked in and saw this strange man—he was a very common person—sitting beside his wife's bed, he was most upset.”

“The blood from a transfusion only lasts forty-eight hours,” Harold said, in his own peculiar way every bit as much of a snob as the Count of Paris.

“My niece's husband did not know that,” Mme Viénot said. “And he did not want his children to have this person's blood in their veins. My sister and the doctor had a very difficult time with him.”

On the other side of the circle of chairs, M. Carrère said that he didn't like Germans, to Mme Bonenfant, who was not defending them.

Mme Viénot took his empty cup and put it on the tray. Turning back to Harold and Barbara, she said: “France was not ready for the war, and when the Germans came we could do nothing. It was like a nightmare.… Now, of course, we are living in another; we are deathly afraid of war between your country and the Union of Soviet Republics. You think it will happen soon?… I blame your President Roosevelt. He didn't understand the Russian temperament and so he was taken in by promises that mean nothing. The Slav is not like other Europeans.… Some years ago I became acquainted with a Russian woman. She was delightful to be with. She was responsive and intelligent. She had all the qualities one looks for in a friend. And yet, as time went on, I realized that I did not really know her. I was always conscious of something held back.”

She was looking directly at Harold's face but he was not sure she even saw him. He studied her, while she took a sip of coffee, trying to see her as her friend the Russian woman saw her—the
pale-blue eyes, the too-black hair, the rouged cheeks. She must be somewhere in Proust, he thought.

“Never trust a Slav,” she said solemnly.

And what about the variations, he wondered. There must be variations, such as never trust an Englishman; never trust a Swede. And maybe even never trust an American?

“Are French people always kind and helpful to foreigners?” he asked. “Because that has been our experience so far.”

“I can't say that they are, always,” Mme Viénot said. She put her cup and saucer on the tray. “You have perhaps been fortunate.”

She got up and moved away, leaving him with the feeling that he had said something untactful. His own cup was empty, but he continued to hold it, though the table was within reach.

M. Gagny was talking about the British royal family. He knew the Duke of Connaught, he said, and he had danced with the Princess Elizabeth, but he was partial to the Princess Margaret Rose.

Mme Viénot sat down beside her mother, patted her dry mottled hand, and smiled at her and then around at the company, lightly and publicly admitting her fondness.

M. Carrère explained to Barbara that he could speak English, but that it tired him, and he preferred his native tongue. Mme Carrère's English was better than his, but on the other hand he talked and she didn't. Mme Bonenfant did not know English at all, though she spoke German. And the Canadian was so conspicuously bilingual that his presence in the circle of chairs was a reproach rather than a help to the Americans. Harold told himself that it was foolish—that it was senseless, in fact—to make the effort, but nevertheless he couldn't help feeling that he must live up to his success before dinner or he would surrender too much ground. A remark, a question addressed directly to him, he understood sufficiently to answer, but then the conversation became general again and he was lost. He sat balancing the empty cup and saucer in his two hands, looked at whoever was speaking,
and tried to catch from the others' faces whether the remark was serious or amusing, so that he could smile at the right time. This tightrope performance and fatigue (they had got up early to catch the train, and it had already been a long day) combined to deprive him of the last hope of understanding what was said.

Watching him, Barbara saw the glazed look she knew so well—the film that came over his eyes whenever he was bored or ill-at-ease. As she got ready to deliver him from his misery, it occurred to her suddenly how odd it was that neither of them had ever stopped to think what it might be like staying with a French family, or that there might be more to it than an opportunity to improve their French.

“C
OULD YOU UNDERSTAND THEM
?” he asked, as soon as they were behind the closed door of their room.

She nodded.

“I couldn't.”

“But you talked. I was afraid to open my mouth.”

This made him feel better.

“There's a toilet on this floor, at the far end of the attic corridor. I asked Mme Bonenfant.”

“Behind one of the doors I was afraid to open,” he said, nodding.

“But it's out of order. It's going to be fixed in a day or two. Meanwhile, we're to use the toilet on the second floor.

They undressed and got into their damp beds and talked drowsily for a few minutes—about the house, about the other guests, about the food, which was the best they had had in France—and then fell into a deep sleep. When they woke, the afternoon was gone and it was raining softly. He got into her bed, and she put her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

“I wish this room was all there was,” he said, “and we lived in it. I wish it was ours.”

“You wouldn't get tired of the red wallpaper?”

“No.”

“Neither would I. Or of anything else,” she said.

“It's not like any room that I've ever seen.”

“It's very French.”

“What is?” he asked.

“Everything.… Why isn't she here?”

“Who?”

“The French girl. If this was my room, I'd be living in it.”

“She's probably having a much better time in Paris,” he said, and looked at his wrist watch. “Come on,” he said, tossing the cover back. “We're late.”

After dinner, Mme Viénot led her guests into the family parlor across the hall. The coffee that Harold was waiting for did not appear. He and Barbara smoked one cigarette, to be sociable, and then wandered outside. It had stopped raining. They walked up and down the gravel terrace, admiring the house and the old trees and the view, which was gilded with the evening light. They were happy to be by themselves, and pleased with the way they had managed things—for they might, at this very moment, have been walking the streets of Le Mans, or freezing to death at the seashore, and instead they were here. They would be able to include this interesting place among the places they had seen and could tell people about when they got home.

From the terrace they went directly to their room, their beautiful red room, whose history they had no way of knowing.