Eva Trout (29 page)

Eva noticed chiefly that accustomed communications with Jeremy broke down. He no longer obeyed her, not out of rebelliousness but from genuine lack of knowledge of what was wanted. His responses were not less willing, but less ready. To get his attention she had to touch him—though
that
, after all, had been so their first evening after the flight from London, outside the Deux Magots. The look with which he rewarded her, that done, was bright with immediate amicability, no more.

During the hours when he was at the Bonnards’, she pored over French novels, unselectively bought by her, the better to acquaint herself with the language to be his first. Their vocabulary she became able to master, but not their content. When he was not at the Bonnards’, he and she cantered on good horses used to consorting with one another into the heart of the tapestry of the forest, or in balmy weather dozed in the glades, at the roots of trees. Or they circulated, brushing their fingertips together as of old, through the mathematical gardens of the chateau. They went up then down the twin flights, widening apart like reversed antlers, of the exterior staircase. Inside the building, they passed from one to another of the magnetic fantasies in the chains of rooms—the great golden slumbrous Bonaparte bees fascinated Jeremy most; beating his arms, he tried to exacerbate them into swarming. Everywhere indoor was drowned in the green of trees disseminated into a glossy gloom sometimes further varnished by sunshine; underfoot polish became bottomless pools. At every turn they were reflected, or echoed. But his and her universe was over. It had not been shattered; simply, it had ended. It was a thing of the past.

Very early in June, a letter reached Fontainebleau:

You don’t say whether you got my other. If you didn’t, I should be rather glad; but did you? Why do you keep changing about, I thought you said Paris was so pretty? As soon as one pictures you somewhere, you’re somewhere else. Probably you’ve by now left Fontainebleau. Have you read
L’Éducation sentimentale
? I suppose hardly. There’s a Fontainebleau part. I should not half mind being Frederic, going delicious drives in that well-sprung carriage.

Eva, are you annoyed with me? I could say, that would be nothing new—would it? But this time, I should be rather shaken if you were. Did I say anything unforgivable in my letter? If I did, I was simply expressing myself stupidly. I cannot exactly remember what I did say. The thing is, I am thoroughly overstrained, everybody is in a frenzy, and I am not having enough to eat. You have no conception what it is like here. (But of course, you may never have got my letter.) It’s the idea of the horrors of a competitive society waiting ahead for one. But to return to my letter—in case you don’t know the one I’m talking about, so don’t know whether or not you had it, it began about Mother and the patisserie. As a matter of fact, it must be the first I’ve written you for about ninety years, since
I’affaire Jaguar
. Eva, don’t run away with the wrong idea. About you, I’m not so feeble as I make myself seem. You are unlike anything that’s ever happened to me, and not only that (I begin to realise) but unlike anything that
could
. You are, I mean, on a totally different scale. Without you, everything would be an anticlimax. When I let myself think how I may have bungled things, I feel frenzied.

A telegram came the other day, and for I don’t know how long I couldn’t open it. It turned out to be simply from Andrew. Term will be practically over by the time you get
this
—if you get this. In theory, I can then be anywhere I like, though of course still always bowed under my load of guilt and shame in the form of work to be caught up with. I can raise some money, up to a point —one thing I am rich in, that is resourcefulness. Where shall you be then, so far as you know?

Don’t think Father looms too large in my cosmology. He does not really.

How is Jeremy?

I seem to have run out—or run down, like something wound up that gives out. Please do write; there’s no fear of your saying too much. Write soonish, or it will miss me at Cambridge. It would then I suppose eventually be forwarded to home, where I shall be going unless anything arises to the contrary.

Love,

Henry.

In reply:

Dear Henry,

No, I did not have the letter you talk of, but had this one. Am so sorry you say you are unwell. I have not left Fontainebleau, Jeremy is being put right. The people now want him to stay with them and be quite away from me, as an experiment, for 2-3 weeks, so I could come to England, though not for long. Next time, I would advise you to write to Paley’s. I shall be calling there although not staying, so as not to be traced.

Eva.

 

Eric again stormed into the Knightsbridge office. “A nice kettle of fish you have got me into!”

“A thankless task,” said Constantine, to the ceiling. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m just off to lunch.—One thought one had everything lined up the way you wanted. Wobbly about the divorce?”

“That’s without foundation!”

“You found Iseult in good spirits—well, on the whole?”

“That’s my business, isn’t it?”

“Largely. She sounded well on the telephone, but I’ve not yet had the pleasure of setting eyes on her.” Aside, Constantine said to the intercom: “The car.”

“Don’t let
me
interfere with your habits,” said sarcastic Eric, seating himself firmly. He flicked open the perpetual onyx cigarette box, satisfied himself its contents still were Egyptian, snorted. The whole set-up reeked of expense-accounts. “Can you wonder,” he declaimed, in a general way, “this country is in the state it is in?”

“No. But one must eat, you realise—don’t you in Luton? You know, you time your visits infernally; this happened before.”

“What do you think I do all day?”

“I believe you told me.—Twice round the block, tell it,” said Constantine to the intercom, “I should then be down.— Now, what is your trouble, Arble, other than indecision? How is Miss Norway standing up to this, by the way?”

“I won’t have you drag
her
in. That’s no way to speak of her.”

“As you wish. You engaged one’s sympathies for her, last time, so very thoroughly, one might say deeply, I admit I don’t yet find it easy to leave her out. This is a combustible situation? Frankly, then, take it away; I want none of it. Aren’t you being staggeringly incompetent?”

“It upset me again, seeing Izzy.”

“Yes, so I gather.—I’m sorry, but I have enough on my hands, and have had for some time. Eva’s bolted again.”

“Eva’s done what?”

“Gone.”

Eric said: “Can you wonder?”

“You interest me. Why?—or rather, why not?”

“Look what she got herself back into. Thieves’ kitchen.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me,” asserted Eric—dauntless if nervous.

Constantine leaned back. With a middle finger, he softly rubbed the site of an eyebrow, meditating. He then whetted his lips. “Look here,” he advised, “less of that from you. May one recall facts? Eva’s demoralisation began at Larkins, with
your
advances. She was morally horrified. Her distressed perturbation wrings my heart, now I have come to know of it. You abused a trust. Your offence against her simplicity does, I must say, sicken me when I think of it. I was blind at the time. She came to me and desired me to remove her—unwilling (perhaps unable?) to say why. I acted too slowly: can I ever forgive myself? She fled, to that, er, tenement in the, er, swamps near Broadstairs. She believed herself safe. You came after her. She was alone. I surprised you there in the house. Followed, the scandal of her presumed pregnancy, the panic driving her to America. Since then, the irreclaimable loss, to her, of any hope of stability, any power to feel or repose confidence. Those who love her have had to face this; we have suffered accordingly … No, your, er, oily solicitude for her becomes you oddly. You have also come with it to the wrong shop. Grotesque?—it’s worse; it’s blatant hypocrisy. And don’t act stupid at me, you are stupid enough. What have you to say —if anything?”

Eric said, after consideration: “You beat the band.”

Constantine inclined to agree. One had not done badly. He pouted out his lips and blew through them slowly.

“Twisting everything round. You be careful, someday.”

“Ah. When?”

“Someday, anybody could kill you.—I
could,
” pondered Eric, not unenjoyably, picking up and weighing the onyx box.

“I must be going, anyhow,” said the other, sliding his chair back over the carpet, rising. “I am meeting a clergyman.— And next time, pull your own chestnuts out of the fire, will you?”

“Bloody well twisting everything upside down,” re-indicted Eric, though putting down the box.

“And by the way, keep an eye on your wife. She could be in danger of criminal proceedings, I’m beginning to fear.—I’m not offering you a lift, if you don’t mind.”

“I wouldn’t want one. I have the children with me.”

“You take the cake. Where?”

“Where I left them, with the lady attendant. Well, I had to give their mother some reason for me coming to London again, didn’t I? ‘Business’ I said last time. So I said, ‘I’m taking those two to the Zoo,’ and so I shall be, shortly. Any objection?”

“None whatsoever, from me. Whipsnade is nearer Luton, it might occur to her.”

“They’ve had Whipsnade,” said Eric shortly. He heaved himself up—but his visit was not over. Inching open the door, he took a dekko into the outer office: all clear: now was the hour! Homicide abandoned, if ever likely, he let himself go vocally—more satisfyingly. “You old shocker, telling anyone else off! Look at you and what you are, for God’s sake! No, you give me the creeps, you and your sort—and so you ought, let me tell you! There are limits, or would you not think so? What do you think everyone else is, born yesterday? One day you go too far, eh? You old so-and-so, you and your fancy ways—•”

“You are out of date,” beamed the retired sinner. Opening a drawer, he extracted an additional handkerchief: monogrammed. “Still, nothing like the wrath of an honest man. It also does good to the system, doesn’t one find?” During the diatribe, he’d been checking on jottings made on a memo pad: he now pushed the eye-catching pad into position. “For my secretary,” he vouchsafed. “One might not be back.— Now, come along, if you don’t mind: had you a hat?”

They were under way—or were, till Constantine blundered. In sight of the highly-burnished doors of the lift, he remarked, with a frivolous infelicity: “Yet, one misses Eva!”

That brought Eric violently to a stop. He rooted his heels into the wealthy carpet. A more virulent anger surfaced, from deeper sources. Blood raced to his temples, contusing them; an adrenal all but visible throbbing started behind his ears. His face enflamed as if over a furnace. “Miss
her
?” he chanted. “ ‘Sorry’ for Eva? She did me in. Who else is at the bottom of all this mess? Who lost me Izzy? I was my own man; now they’re all round me like every she-bat in Hell. All was O.K. till
she
bust everything up—deliberately! No, I could have her blood!”

Constantine, stepping ahead, touched the “down” bell. He then made a deprecating gesture. “Wha—at?”

“You heard me.”

“I hoped I didn’t.”

The lift came. In it, Eric calmed down. Within the few seconds of downward suction, he changed his tune. “I say—” he began, in a man-to-man tone.

“Well, what?”

“That time at Cathay when you crashed the party—had Izzy by any chance tipped you off?”

“Since you ask, yes. Your wife, after all.”

“That’s all I wanted to know. She’s a great girl!”

The situation of Eva was as apparent to the intelligent French doctor as that of Jeremy. Doubting it to be as clear to herself, he believed he should make her try to define it for him—there could be gain in at least trying. On the eve of her departure for England, Gerard Bonnard accordingly came to see her, taking the short cut through the forest. The hour was sympathetically well-chosen: Jeremy had that day been transferred to the Bonnards’, Eva’s might be a solitude made less bearable by the Cytherean beauty of this June evening. Finding her, he suggested they stroll in the park, open after the chateau closed. He was a carelessly-jointed big man, with a baggy-skinned face boyish in outline and a manner sometimes eager, sometimes abstracted, showing no particular signs of nationality—or of age, for that matter. He had been a figure in the Resistance. He was happy and better than happy with his wife and also partner, Thérèse—now helping the newcomer to bed in a room overlooking the dovecote. Tomorrow, Jeremy would be fending for himself: that was the
règime
. Mme Bonnard had had to school herself to one kind of abstinence: as to “mothering.” The Bonnards had no children.

Gerard Bonnard began by thanking Eva for her confidence. They spoke English. “Also,” he said, “you are showing courage.” Eva, watching the spokes of sunset shortening over the lawns, said, “In two weeks, it will be the longest day. Or at least, in England.”

“You have not felt in exile while you were here?”

She shook her head. “No. I think I was brought here.”

“Are you
croyante
, madame?”

“Sometimes. This evening.”

“May I ask you one thing we have never touched on? You were honest with us, making no secret of the reason why the child’s heredity cannot be known. We have not been greatly hampered by this lacuna—as you know, we are environmentalists, the horrible doctrine of Predestination seeming to us too closely linked with acceptance of the dominance of heredity. It would be irresponsible to ignore, altogether, the physical incidences and recurrences which are part of the physical composition of a heredity—to have known something of Jeremy’s could have been to a point helpful, but that we have been able to do without. What is important, and what we are taking into account, is what you have supplied him with instead—the character of what you have given him. From his demeanour, from his assurance, one would take him to be a child in the main line of a powerful family. You are bringing him up to be your father’s son—conventionally, one should say grandson. Now we come to what I should like to ask you: had you or had you been given reason to think you could not give birth to a child? Otherwise, what made you prefer mimicry to what could have been the actual continuance of a flesh-and-blood? You were young eight years ago, you are young still. You shrank from something?”