The Pursuit of Love (21 page)

Fabrice gave his great bellow of laughter.

‘Oh,’ he said, shaking helplessly, ‘how funny you are. What a phrase,
femme sérieuse
, where did you find it? And if so serious, how do you explain the second husband?’

‘Yes, I admit that I did wrong, very wrong indeed, and made a great mistake. But that is no reason for losing control, for sliding down the hill altogether, for being picked up by strange gentlemen at the Gare du Nord and then immediately going with them to see their flat. And please, if you will be so kind as to lend me some money, I want to catch the London train to-morrow morning.’

‘Of course, by all means,’ said Fabrice.

He thrust a roll of banknotes into her hand, and drove her to the Hotel Montalembert. He seemed quite unmoved by her speech, and announced he would come back at eight o’clock to take her out to dinner.

Linda’s bedroom was full of roses, it reminded her of when Moira was born.

‘Really,’ she thought with a giggle, ‘this is a very penny-novelettish seduction, how can I be taken in by it?’

But she was filled with a strange, wild, unfamiliar happiness, and knew that this was love. Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can’t imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening. She tried to remember how she had felt when she had first loved her two husbands. There must have been strong and impelling emotion; in both cases she had disrupted her own life, upset her parents and friends remorselessly, in order to marry them, but she could not recall it. Only she knew that never before, not even in dreams, and she was a great dreamer of love, had she felt anything remotely like this. She told herself, over and over again, that to-morrow she must go back to
London, but she had no intention of going back, and she knew it.

Fabrice took her out to dinner and then to a night club, where they did not dance, but chatted endlessly. She told him about Uncle Matthew, Aunt Sadie and Louisa and Jassy and Matt, and he could not hear enough, and egged her on to excesses of exaggeration about her family and all their various idiosyncrasies.

‘Et Jassy – et Matt – alors, racontez’

And she recounted, for hours.

In the taxi on their way home she refused again to go back with him or to let him come into the hotel with her. He did not insist, he did not try to hold her hand, or touch her at all. He merely said:

‘C’est ure résistance magnifique, je vous félicite de tout mon cœur, madame.’

Outside the hotel she gave him her hand to say good night. He took it in both of his and really kissed it.

‘A demain,’
he said, and got into the taxi.

*

‘
Allô – allô.’

‘Hullo.’

‘Good morning. Are you having breakfast?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought I heard a coffee-cup clattering. Is it good?’

It’s so delicious that I have to keep stopping, for fear of finishing it too quickly. Are you having yours?’

‘Had it. I must tell you that I like very long conversations in the morning, and I shall expect you to
raconter des histoires.’

‘Like Schéhérazade?’

‘Yes, just like. And you’re not to get that note in your voice of “now I’m going to ring off”, as English people always do.’

‘What English people do you know?’

I know some. I was at school in England, and at Oxford.’

‘No! When?’

‘1920.’

‘When I was nine. Fancy, perhaps I saw you in the street – we used to do all our shopping in Oxford.’

‘Elliston Cavell?’

‘Oh, yes, and Webbers.’

There was a silence.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Go on, what?’

‘I mean don’t ring off. Go on telling.’

‘I shan’t ring off. As a matter of fact I adore chatting. It’s my favourite thing, and I expect you will want to ring off ages before I do.’

They had a long and very silly conversation, and, at the end of it, Fabrice said:

‘Now get up, and in an hour I will fetch you and we will go to Versailles.’

At Versailles, which was an enchantment to Linda, she was reminded of a story she had once read about two English ladies who had seen the ghost of Marie Antoinette sitting in her garden at the Little Trianon. Fabrice found this intensely boring, and said so.

‘Histoires,’
he said, ‘are only of interest when they are true, or when you have made them up specially to amuse me.
Histoires de revenants
, made up by some dim old English virgins, are neither true nor interesting.
Donc plus d’histoires de revenants, madame, s’il vous plaît.’

‘All right,’ said Linda, crossly. ‘I’m doing my best to please – you tell me a story.’

‘Yes, I will – and this story is true. My grandmother was very beautiful and had many lovers all her life, even when she was quite old. A short time before she died she was in Venice with my mother, her daughter, and one day, floating up some canal in their gondola, they saw a little palazzo of pink marble, very exquisite. They stopped the gondola to look at it, and my mother said: “I don’t believe anybody lives there, what about trying to see the inside?”

‘So they rang the bell, and an old servant came and said that nobody had lived there for many, many years, and he would show it to them if they liked. So they went in and upstairs to the
salone
, which had three windows looking over the canal and was decorated with fifteenth-century plaster work, white on a
pale blue background. It was a perfect room. My grandmother seemed strangely moved, and stood for a long time in silence. At last she said to my mother:

‘ “If, in the third drawer of that bureau there is a filigree box containing a small gold key on a black velvet ribbon, this house belongs to me.”

‘And my mother looked, and there was, and it did. One of my grandmother’s lovers had given it to her years and years before, when she was quite young, and she had forgotten all about it.’

‘Goodness,’ said Linda, ‘what fascinating lives you foreigners do lead.’

‘And it belongs to me now.’

He put up his hand to Linda’s forehead and stroked back a strand of hair which was loose:

‘And I would take you there to-morrow if –’

‘If what?’

‘One must wait here now, you see, for the war.’

‘Oh, I keep forgetting the war,’ said Linda.

‘Yes, let’s forget it.
Comme vous êtes mal coiffée, ma cbère
’

‘If you don’t like my clothes and don’t like my hair and think my eyes are so small, I don’t know what you see in me.’

‘Quand même j’avoue qu’il y a quelquechose,’
said Fabrice.

Again they dined together.

Linda said: ‘Haven’t you any other engagements?’

‘Yes, of course. I have cancelled them.’

‘Who are your friends?’

‘Les gens du monde
. And yours?’

‘When I was married to Tony, that is, my first husband, I used to go out in the
monde
, it was my life. In those days I loved it. But then Christian didn’t approve of it, he stopped me going to parties and frightened away my friends, whom he considered frivolous and idiotic, and we saw nothing but serious people trying to put the world right. I used to laugh at them, and rather long for my other friends, but now I don’t know. Since I was at Perpignan perhaps I have become more serious myself.’

‘Everybody is getting more serious, that’s the way things are
going. But, whatever one may be in politics, right, left, Fascist, Communist,
les gens du monde
are the only possible ones for friends. You see, they have made a fine art of personal relationships and of all that pertains to them – manners, clothes, beautiful houses, good food, everything that makes life agreeable. It would be silly not to take advantage of that. Friendship is something to be built up carefully, by people with leisure, it is an art, nature does not enter into it. You should never despise social life –
de la haute société
– I mean, it can be a very satisfying one, entirely artificial of course, but absorbing. Apart from the life of the intellect and the contemplative religious life, which few people are qualified to enjoy, what else is there to distinguish man from the animals but his social life? And who understand it so well and who can make it so smooth and so amusing as
les gens du monde
But one cannot have it at the same time as a love affair, one must be whole-hearted to enjoy it, so I have cancelled all my engagements.’

‘What a pity,’ said Linda, ‘because I’m going back to London to-morrow morning.’

‘Ah yes, I had forgotten. What a pity.’

*

‘Allô – allô:

‘Hullo.’

‘Were you asleep?’

‘Yes, of course. What’s the time?’

‘About two. Shall I come round and see you?’

‘Do you mean now?’

‘Yes.’

‘I must say it would be very nice, but the only thing is, what would the night porter think?’

‘Ma chère
, how English you are.
Eb bien, je vais vous le dire – il ne se fera aucune illusion.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘But I don’t imagine he’s under any illusion as it is. After all, I come here for you three times every day – you’ve seen nobody else, and French people are quite quick at noticing these things, you know.’

‘Yes – I see –’

‘Alors, c’est entendu – à tout à I’heure.’

*

The next day Fabrice installed her in a flat, he said it was
plus commode
. He said, ‘When I was young I liked to be very romantic and run all kinds of risks. I used to hide in wardrobes, be brought into the house in a trunk, disguise myself as a footman, and climb in at the windows. How I used to climb! I remember once, half-way up a creeper mere was a wasps’ nest – oh the agony – I wore a Kestos
soutien-gorge
for a week afterwards. But now I prefer to be comfortable, to follow a certain routine, and have my own key.’

Indeed, Linda thought, nobody could be less romantic and more practical than Fabrice, no nonsense about him. A little nonsense, she thought, would have been rather nice.

It was a beautiful flat, large and sunny, and decorated in the most expensive kind of modem taste. It faced south and west over the Bois de Boulogne, and was on a level with the tree-tops. Tree-tops and sky made up the view. The enormous windows worked like the windows of a motor-car, the whole of the glass disappearing into the wall. This was a great joy to Linda, who loved the open air and loved to sunbathe for hours with no clothes on, until she was hot and brown and sleepy and happy. Belonging to the flat, belonging, it was evident, to Fabrice, was a charming elderly
femme de ménage
called Germaine. She was assisted by various other elderly women who came and went in a bewildering succession. She was obviously most efficient, she had all Linda’s things out of her suitcase, ironed and folded away, in a moment, and then went off to the kitchen, where she began to prepare dinner. Linda could not help wondering how many other people Fabrice had kept in this flat; however, as she was unlikely to find out, and, indeed, had no wish to know, she put the thought from her. There was no trace of any former occupant, not so much as a scribbled telephone number or the mark of a lipstick anywhere to be seen; the flat might have been done up yesterday.

In her bath, before dinner, Linda thought rather wistfully
of Aunt Sadie. She, Linda, was now a kept woman and an adulteress, and Aunt Sadie, she knew, wouldn’t like that. She hadn’t liked it when Linda had committed adultery with Christian, but he, at least, was English, and Linda had been properly introduced to him and knew his surname. Also, Christian had all along intended to marry her. But how much less would Aunt Sadie like her daughter to pick up an unknown, nameless foreigner and go off to live with him in luxury. It was a long step from lunching in Oxford to this, though Uncle Matthew would, no doubt, have considered it a step down the same road if he knew her situation, and he would disown her for ever, throw her out into the snow, shoot Fabrice, or take any other violent action which might occur to him. Then something would happen to make him laugh, and all would be well again. Aunt Sadie was a different matter. She would not say very much, but she would brood over it and take it to heart, and wonder if there had not been something wrong about her method of bringing up Linda which had led to this; Linda most profoundly hoped that she would never find out

In the middle of this reverie the telephone bell rang. Germaine answered it, tapped on the bathroom door, and said:

‘M. le duc sera légèrement en retard, madame.’

‘All right – thank you,’ said Linda.