Bread Upon the Waters (28 page)

She helped him over to the bed and he fell into it. “Do you want me to call a doctor?”

“No need. I just want to sleep. Please get in beside me and turn out the light and put your arms around me.”

She hesitated for a moment, then put the glass and bottle of pills on the bedside table, switched off the lamp and got into bed with him.

When he awoke in the morning, he felt fine. He put his hand to his chest and was pleased that he could barely make out the orderly small pulse under his ribs.

He was having breakfast with Leslie when the phone rang. She went to pick it up. Standing at the table on which the phone rested, she looked refreshed and young, her hair long, hanging down over the shoulders of her dressing gown in the morning sunlight. Watching her, Strand marveled at the resilience of womankind.

“Of course, Russell,” she was saying, “I understand perfectly. Don’t worry, we’ll be ready in an hour.” She put the instrument down and came back to the table and buttered a piece of croissant. “We’re going back to Paris this morning,” she said. “I imagine the Loire valley has lost some of its charm for our host.”

“How did he sound?”

“Normal. How did he sound when you saw him last night?” She looked over the rim of her coffee cup at him.

“You don’t want to know,” Strand said.

“Bad?”

“As bad as could be. Ugly and sad. If you want the truth, it made me sorry we ever met him.”

“That bad?” Leslie said thoughtfully.

“Worse.”

“Did he attack you?”

“Not personally. Just the whole world.” He stood up from the table. “If we have to be ready in an hour I’d better start getting packed and dressed.”

The trip to Paris was grim. Leslie had turned out not to be as resilient as he had thought. The night had finally taken its toll. After breakfast she had begun coughing and looked feverish, her eyes and nose damp. She complained that she was freezing, although she was bundled up and it was a warm day.

Hazen, impeccably dressed in his business suit and outwardly composed, drove. They had barely passed the outskirts of Tours when Strand found himself regretting Mrs. Harcourt’s midnight flight. Hazen drove like a madman, going slowly at times but weaving the car across the road, then putting his foot down violently on the accelerator to pass trucks on blind curves, cursing under his breath at other drivers as if they were mortal enemies. He doesn’t need pills to commit suicide, Strand thought, holding Leslie’s sweating hand, he’s going to do it with the internal combustion engine. And he’s going to take us all with him. For the entire trip, as their heads snapped with the sudden and unpredictable accelerations of the machine and their bodies rolled from side to side when Hazen swung around turns, Leslie sat with her foot jammed against the foot rest, her legs rigid. Linda, dressed in a smart suit, next to Hazen on the front seat, slept the whole way, as if, knowing she was going to be killed that morning, she had decided to die mercifully unconscious. She had not slept a wink all night, she had told the Strands, and she seemed determined to go to her Maker well rested and looking her best.

Somehow they survived the ride and they drew to an abrupt stop in front of the Crillon with the smell of burning rubber accompanying their arrival and Linda saying, as she opened her eyes, “Oh, we’re here. What a nice ride, Russell. I had such a good nap.”

“French drivers,” Hazen said. “It’s a wonder any of them are still alive.”

“Russell,” Strand said, as they all got out of the car, “that’s the last time I’ll ever ride with you.” Hazen stared blankly at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It was time for lunch, but Hazen said he was sorry, he had to get to his office immediately. He waved to a taxi and jumped into it without saying good-bye. Leslie told Strand that she felt ill and just wanted to lie down for the afternoon. Strand, not willing to face lunch alone with Linda that day, said that he was feeling a bit off-color himself and would have lunch with Leslie up in the room. The morning three days ago when they had set out so gaily from the Place de la Concorde now seemed a foggy memory from a distant age.

When the Strands stopped at the desk to get the key to their room, the concierge gave Strand a cablegram. Feeling that any information it would contain could only be disastrous, Strand hesitated before tearing open the envelope. He was annoyed that his hands trembled as he did so. A death would not surprise him. He read it once. Then again. It was from Eleanor, “
MARRIED THIS MORNING STOP HAVE QUIT JOB STOP AM HONEYMOONING WITH GIUSEPPE STOP ECSTATIC STOP SO FAR STOP BLESS US IN FRENCH LOVE MR. AND MRS. GIANELLI”

Mechanically, without emotion, Strand looked at the date on the cable. It had been sent from Las Vegas and had arrived the night before. It must have come in at just the moment that Mrs. Hazen had come into the dining room in Tours. Marriages end, Stop. Marriages begin, Stop.

“What does it say?” Leslie asked, worried.

Strand gave her the cable. The print on the flimsy page was pale and Leslie had to hold it close to her eyes to read it.

“Oh, my,” she said in a low voice, sinking into one of the lobby chairs. “Las Vegas. What could they have been thinking of? It doesn’t sound like Eleanor at all. It’s so t
acky.
And why did they have to run off like that? Do you think that boy has something to hide?”

“I doubt it.”

“Why didn’t they at least wait until we got home? Good Lord, it’s only a few days.”

“Maybe they wanted to do it while we were away,” Strand said. “So they wouldn’t be under any pressure from us to make a big fuss. Marriage is different from what it was in our day.” Leslie’s parents had insisted on a church wedding and a wedding luncheon and he still remembered the whole day as an ordeal. For days after his face had seemed stiff from the effort of smiling falsely at a hundred people he hoped never to see again. Still, he was a little disappointed in his daughter and he could see that Leslie was hurt. She had been an open and forthright girl and there was something secretive and mistrustful in what she had done. And he shared Leslie’s dismay at the idea of the garish marriage mills of Las Vegas.

“And we don’t even know where she is,” Leslie said, her eyes, already red from her cold, filling with tears, “so that at least we could call them to congratulate them. And no word about Caroline or Jimmy. It’s as though she’d completely forgotten she had any family at all.”

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Strand said. “And they’ll undoubtedly explain what it was all about when we get home. Let’s go upstairs. You look as though you’ve got something more than a cold. I’ll call for a doctor.”

“It must have been a premonition,” Leslie said, as she stood up and they started toward the elevators. “Every time something upsetting is going to happen I come down with something.” Usually, Strand smiled when she talked about her premonitions. He didn’t smile today. “We should never have come on this trip,” Leslie said. “Things would’ve been different if we’d been there.”

Upstairs, he helped her out of her clothes and into a robe, and shivering now, she got into bed.

Just as the doctor was leaving, after telling them he thought Leslie was suffering from a severe bronchial infection and advising that she stay in bed for a few days and take the medicine he was going to prescribe, the telephone rang. It was Linda. “Allen,” she said, “I’m flying down to Mougins this afternoon. Do you think Leslie is well enough for the two of you to come with me? The sun would do her good.”

“I’m sorry,” Strand said. “The doctor’s ordered her to stay put.”

“Oh, isn’t that too bad.” But from the tone of her voice, Strand guessed that she was relieved. He felt that way, too. It was almost as though what they had been through had left ugly scars on them that would remind them too vividly of a scene that all of them were trying to forget. “I’ll stay,” Linda said, “if you think it will do any good.” But from the way she spoke he was sure that she wanted to get away—alone.

“Thanks, Linda. That won’t be necessary. Have a nice peaceful time down south.”

“I’ll keep in touch,” she said. “If you see Russell before he leaves for Saudi Arabia, tell him where I am and that he’s not to worry, I’ll be in Paris in plenty of time to fly back to the States with all of you.”

As Strand hung up, he was sorry that the airplane had ever been invented. As a fitting end to the holiday he would not be surprised if they wound up in the middle of the Atlantic.

The medicine the doctor had ordered seemed to be working and the fits of coughing became fewer and fewer and after twenty-four hours Leslie’s fever had abated and her temperature had returned to normal. Hazen did not call to say good-bye. Strand tried to call Jimmy in New York and Caroline on Long Island, but there was no answer at their apartment even though, with the time difference, he had called Jimmy at seven in the morning, New York time. Mr. Ketley answered the phone at the beach house and said that Caroline had been gone all day and had told him that she was invited out to dinner. If Mr. Ketley knew about Eleanor’s marriage, he said nothing about it.

Strand stayed in the room with Leslie most of the time, content to read quietly and listen to the little portable radio Hazen had bought for them during the stopover at Shannon Airport. The chain that carried
France Musique
played fine music hour after hour—Beethoven and Bach and Schubert, remedies from other centuries, made the days pleasant for both of them. Leslie asked him if he thought they ought to try to get in touch with Mrs. Harcourt, but Strand said it would be wiser to give her time to let the wounds heal and wrote her a short note that he hoped was warm and friendly but feared was stilted. It was not an easy letter to write. Somehow, just from being at the table when the woman was attacked by Mrs. Hazen, he felt guilty. He sent the letter to Hazen’s Paris office, although it was possible that Mrs. Harcourt had already left it and would never put foot in it again.

By the third day, Leslie was well enough to go out and they splurged and had lunch at Maxim’s, around the corner from the hotel, and after that went into the Jeu de Paume Museum and were cheered by the sunshine of the Impressionists. Leslie said that it would be nice if they could bring the couple a wedding present from France. They looked in some of the shops but everything they saw was wildly expensive and they had to settle on going to Bloomingdale’s as soon as they reached New York.

When they got back to the hotel they found a message from Russell Hazen. He had phoned while they were out and wanted them to call him at his office. He had left the number.

Strand called from their room. Hazen sounded brusque and hurried. His business voice, Strand thought. “I got back a little earlier than I expected, Allen,” Hazen said. “I’d like to leave for New York no later than noon tomorrow. I’ll have to stay late tonight at the office but if you and Leslie and Linda don’t mind waiting, I’d like us all to have dinner together at the hotel.”

“That’s fine with us,” Strand said. “But Linda is down in Mougins.”

“That flighty woman.” Hazen was annoyed. “There’s no keeping her in one place. I’ll get her on the phone and tell her to get her ass back up here by noon if she wants a free ride home.” Hazen’s vocabulary, Strand noticed, had been affected, Strand hoped not permanently, by the flood of profanity, both his own and that of his wife, the night in Tours. “And I’ll call Conroy and tell him to tell your kids our estimated time of arrival, so they can be there to greet you.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Strand said. “But tell Conroy not to bother trying to reach Eleanor. She got married a few days ago in Las Vegas and she’s on her honeymoon and she didn’t give us any address.”

“Las Vegas, for Jesus’ sake,” Hazen said. “Kids will do anything for a kick these days. How do you feel about it?”

“Dazed.”

Hazen laughed. “I can understand why. I hope she’s happy.”

“Ecstatic, she said in her cable. So far.”

Hazen laughed again. “Well, anyway, give my felicitations to the mother of the bride. I’ll try to get to the hotel about nine tonight. That okay with you?”

“Nine,” Strand said.

“How is he?” Leslie asked, when Strand hung up.

“The Master’s back,” he said. “Taking charge.”

When Hazen came into the hotel dining room fifteen minutes late, he looked haggard, with hollows under his eyes. His clothes were badly creased, as if he had flown back from Asia Minor in them and had not had time to change. He hadn’t shaved, either, and there was a gray stubble on his cheeks and chin, which gave him an oddly disreputable appearance, as though a family portrait of a distinguished ancestor had been defaced by childish vandals. I wonder, Strand thought as he stood up to greet him, how many years an ordinary man could bear up under a timetable like his. But Hazen smiled warmly, baring his even strong teeth. He shook Strand’s hand vigorously and bent over to kiss Leslie’s cheek before falling back heavily into a chair facing them. “What I need is a drink.”

“Did you get hold of Linda?”

“She’ll meet us at the airport tomorrow. She dithered, but she’ll be there. A martini, please,” he said to the waiter.

“How was Saudi Arabia?” Strand asked.

“A waste of time,” Hazen scowled. “They’re even worse to do business with than the French. They may have clocks, but they don’t seem to be able to tell the time. And there’re dozens of relatives of various desert princes you have to go through, handing out money left and right, if you want to get anything settled. I’d’ve done just as well going down to the south with Linda. And how about you? How’re you taking the news about Eleanor?”

“Shakily.”

Hazen laughed. “He’s a nice young fellow.”

“That’s what I thought,” Leslie said. “Up to Las Vegas.”

“It’s not how a marriage starts that counts,” Hazen said sententiously. “It’s how it ends up.” He scowled again, as though remembering the end of his own marriage. He sipped gratefully at the martini the waiter had put before him. “I needed that. In Saudi Arabia they put you in jail or scourge you or cut off your hand, whatever little pleasantry occurs to them at the moment, for a single cocktail. Try and do business with people like that. And everybody from the so-called civilized world—Americans, English, French, Japanese—are falling all over themselves to get in on the act. When the thing finally happens there it’ll make what happened in Iran look like a church bazaar. Mark my words.” He drank again, morosely. “I’ve already warned my clients to lay off and invest their money in something safe, like a patent for a perpetual motion machine.” He laughed at his own conceit. “Enough about my affairs. Have you any idea what the newlyweds plan to do, where they’re going to live, etcetera?”