Leon Uris (21 page)

“You’ve had enough,” Brigitte said. “Now, shut it off for a while.” She unbuttoned her coat, deliberately. “I’ll make you something to eat.”

“No, you go home.”

“Please....”

“No, you worry too much about me as it is.”

“I’ll take your daughter’s room,” she insisted. “I want to be nearby if you wish to talk or need something. There are times when a man should not be left alone.”

T
HE DOOR BUZZER SOUNDED
in the Devereaux apartment on Rue de Rennes. Nicole let in François Picard, led him to the living room, and poured him a Pernod and herself a bourbon, a carry-over of her Americanization.

“Michele will be ready shortly.”

François was piqued. “Why the devil isn’t she ever ready on time? I’ve never seen a woman who is always, always so late.”

“You’ve been spoiled, François. But for a girl like Michele, one has to pay small prices.”

He grunted, she laughed. Nicole liked this testy young man. He was in his late twenties, dressed nicely but in an unconcerned way, and sometimes in mid-conversation his mind drifted to something far away. He was as a dreamer should be.

“I read your article in this week’s
Moniteur.
You have a very barbed pen. I’m sure you made President La Croix quite unhappy.”

“Unfortunately, he does not read me.”

“I rather think your opinion will get back to him.”

François let out a deep sigh that reeked of frustration. “It’s not only La Croix and the people around him. The worst of it is the French people are deaf to what he is doing. A nation of fools. Eternal parade-ground soldiers. But we must go on trying, mustn’t we, Madame Devereaux?”

Nicole lowered her eyes and tucked her legs beneath her on the couch. “Yes, I know someone like that.”

François carried out the smoking of a cigarette with the same intensity that he did everything else. François Picard was a rebel in a futile cause ... quite like someone she knew. But there was a light side to him and Michele was able to bring it out.

“Are you and Michele serious?” Nicole asked abruptly.

“Would you mind if we were?”

“I never object to anything Michele does, but I will give my opinion.”

“Please.”

“She’s lived her life a certain way. Michele is very sheltered and conscious of ... well, the emphasis has been on the social side of life.”

“I understand what you’re saying.”

“Don’t be offended, François, but this sudden new change of climate may not work out as easily as you think.”

“I’m not offended, Madame. I’m without station in life or what you call station. Moreover, I suspect that my anti-La Croix attitudes will eventually get me fired from Télévision Nationale. Then I’ll really be a struggling journalist. One does not live well on a column a week in
Moniteur.
”

“Enter Bohemia?”

“As long as Michele sticks, I’ll try.”

“But you’ve only known each other such a short while.”

“She does something that no else can make me do. She makes me laugh. When I come into the room, she looks at me in a certain way and always smiles and gives me the feeling she is happy because I am alive. I’ve had my share of girls. Michele is very young, but she is more of a woman than I’ve ever known. She dresses like a woman, looks like a woman, smells like a woman. She is a total woman, like her mother.”

Michele made her entrance with a weekend bag. They would drive to the coast to a place he knew near Dieppe. More than likely the Channel weather would be too foul for bathing or sunning, but there would be long soulful walks on the beach and a pleasant cottage and fireplace. They would listen to music and talk. They seemed to be able to talk endlessly.

François and Michele exchanged smiles.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“We’d better be off to beat the traffic out of Paris.”

“Have a nice weekend. I’ll look for you Sunday night.”

François assured Nicole he would not speed his sports car recklessly through the countryside, and left.

“I hate to leave you alone, Mamma.”

“Nonsense.”

“Why don’t you go down to Montrichard?”

“I’m not up to Grandfather Devereaux this week. Go on, don’t keep your young man waiting.”

They touched cheeks. Nicole turned at the door. “Is he wonderful, or am I mad?”

“Yes, he’s wonderful, and he’ll give you a life of ...” She stopped before saying “loneliness and pain.”

“Don’t, Mamma. I’m so happy.”

Nicole looked out of the window down to the pavement and watched them drive off into a world they were now able to create just for themselves. They would be oblivious for a while of that other world that would gobble them up and shatter the bliss.

She began a nervous pacing accompanied by a cigarette and a bourbon. She stopped before the record player and read the album covers. Somehow, every damned bit of music these days reminded her of André.

She looked toward the phone. Call a girl friend and have lunch and gossip? Nicole had become bored with this waste in just a few weeks.

Dinner and theater? There were standing offers from the many friends they had in Paris.
They.
She was a third wheel now, and the invitations were predicated on friends feeling sorry for her. She would stand no more of that.

The walls of loneliness closed in on her.

A good book. Hell, there aren’t any good books anymore.

Loneliness was the plague. You drift to second-rate company and seat yourself with a known bore in order to evade being alone.

But you cannot escape that fear that comes when the lights must finally be turned off, or that emptiness when you awaken fitfully and the bed is empty.

The void is there all the time, even in a crowd.

She lit another cigarette and tried to thumb through a magazine. It went into the wastebasket.

The decision that Nicole had hoped to reach by the separation had not been reached. Things were more confused than ever. Once, when she and André were young, she had felt he could not live without her. Now, with each passing day, she knew that just the opposite was true. He would continue his work ... perhaps a bit sadder and wearier, but he would go on as a living, vital human being.

Nicole had reduced herself to a static, cigarette-smoking stone, totally consumed by her own problems and misery.

The sound of the phone had a blessed ring.

“Hello.”

“Nicole darling, this is Jacques.”

It was Granville, the oldest and closest friend of hers and André’s.

“I’m a bastard,” he said.

“Of course you are, darling. That’s nothing new.”

“No, no. You see, I knew it was a weekend and if you weren’t going to Montrichard you’d be booked up. I really hesitated to call.”

“As a matter of fact, I planned a quiet couple of days of records and catching up on some back reading.”

“You must do me a enormous favor. Do you remember Guy de Crécy?”

“Yes, we’ve met here and there. Ambassador to Egypt, isn’t he?”

“Right ... or he was until last week. We’ve recalled him to Paris. Poor devil only arrived yesterday and I’m shooting him out to the Far East on some special business in a few days. I’m throwing a little dinner party for him at my apartment. Intimate, you know, just five or six couples.”

“Isn’t he still married?”

“Widower. Lost his wife about a year ago.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“Be a dear, Nicole. Please come.”

“Just for you, Jacques.”

“I love you, I love you. De Crécy will call for you around eight.”

Nicole hung up with a great sense of relief that the loneliness would be reprieved for an evening. Then strangely she felt herself pleasantly anxious at the idea of meeting Guy de Crécy again.

N
ICOLE WAS READY WELL
in advance of Guy de Crécy’s arrival and kept him waiting for only a few judicious moments. She had made herself utterly radiant and was pleased that he was pleased at the sight of her.

He was a man of fifty, not in the least handsome, but with that kind of strong face often more desirable in a male. De Crécy carried himself with the suave assurance of a man at ease, seasoned by years of fencing on the diplomatic fields of honor.

Conversation on the way to Granville’s apartment was easy between them. He had a grown son and daughter. Life was quite lonely after his wife’s death. He was happy to get out of Egypt and damned mad to be hustled off to the Far East after only a few days. Oh, well, there would be a few months in Paris, later.

She did not talk of the separation with André. She had returned to Paris to get her daughter started at the Sorbonne, and catch up with things in France. Love Washington, she lied.

When André was in one of his pointed moods, he had told her more than once that a Guy de Crécy was the kind of man she should have married in the first place. He would never die from overwork, would always be on the correct side of the political fence, never allow himself to get cornered into making a crucial or unpopular decision, and he thrived on the round of parties and pomp of officialdom and adored all the outward signs of success.

Jacques Granville’s apartment was in the Meurice Hotel. As Deputy Aide to the Presidential Executive, who ran the offices of the President, Jacques Granville had risen from a lowly office during the war to one of the most influential positions in France.

The elegance of his Paris place in the Meurice testified to both his position and personal wealth. Paulette Granville, his fourth and youngest wife, greeted them in the foyer. And Jacques, a charming silver-haired fox, warmed the welcome with a Gallic outburst.

The sitting room was soon filled with gossip, larded with the special wit of diplomats and exquisite champagne. All of those present were men high in the La Croix entourage except Henri Jarré, one of NATO’s top economists.

The conversation quite naturally drifted into an anti-American dissertation.

Henri Jarré, with a great shock of black hair, thick eyebrows, thin bony pale face, pursed his lips like the cynical intellectual he was and was most vocal and venomous. “I say damn the Americans. It’s not the diplomatic blunders or even their total lack of diplomacy. It’s the Americans holding the trigger of the atomic gun. I’ll be damned if I want these upstarts to call a move that can destroy France without France’s consent. Well, we can all be thankful President La Croix is in the Élysée Palace. By God, he gave them a jolt with his demand on the gold payment.”

Guy de Crécy was what one might call a total diplomat, without strong feelings on any subject. Other than Nicole Devereaux, who remained properly silent, the room was without a champion for the maligned Americans.

She drank her champagne, a few glasses too many, and quelled the temptation to throw out one of André’s assorted barbs just to see the stupid expressions that would envelop their faces. Jarré, in particular, needed some cutting up.

How strange it was that in this room she fully shared André’s views. It annoyed her. It annoyed her, too, that she had loathed Washington but could not find happiness in Paris or Montrichard.

Nicole was pleased by Guy de Crécy’s attention. While others around him raged, his gestures and mannerisms were refined and his voice smooth, his words carefully chosen and properly spoken.

Paulette Granville mercifully seated them together during the dinner, and the sympathy between them heightened. He showed he was aware of her with the slightest hint of a smile, a brushing touch, a lingering look.

Nicole wondered as she flushed, Is he playing the subtle art of seduction or am I reading him wrong? Is he merely being polite? What if I am mistaken and rejected? The word “rejected” stayed with her. Am I desirable enough for him? I’m not ... I’m too old....

“More wine?”

“Yes, please.”

No, damn it, she thought. Don’t be like an American woman and drink yourself into a justification! She covered her wine glass, changing her mind.

In the car on the way home, Guy de Crécy took her hand in both of his in a most innocent manner and spoke of how nice the evening had been and how grateful he was to Granville for making his short stay pleasant.

In this game they were playing and in the way they played it, there was no such thing as a man taking the woman. Mauling before the door and empty words were for children. In the end it would have to be her choice. And the man who played the game well, as Guy de Crécy did, would have presented himself and his case, as he had, with great charm and now would have to await a sign from her.

Nicole, too, had played the game, to a point. She played it as long as no one became offended. Others had waited for the sign as Guy de Crécy waited now. She had never given it because Nicole never wanted or needed more than her husband.

The car pulled to a stop at 176 Rue de Rennes. The chauffeur came around to open the rear door.

“Thank you for a lovely evening,” she blurted as though she had no control of the words leaving her mouth.

He showed no trace of displeasure as he walked her to the lobby door. Nicole handed him the key, avoiding his eyes. He unlocked the door, shoved it open. She gave him her hand.

“Please forgive me,” she said.

“I quite understand, Madame Devereaux,” Guy de Crécy said. He kissed her hand and left.

Nicole closed her apartment door behind her and leaned against it breathing erratically. She took off her wrap slowly and let it fall over the back of a chair. The room was so horribly quiet. As she heard the motor drive off she damned herself.

Down the hall, into the bedroom ... the empty bed. She sat before the dressing mirror for a timeless period looking at herself as though through a veil, seeing a diffused stranger in the half-light. And tears fell down her cheeks until none were left.

J
ACQUES
G
RANVILLE ENTERED
N
ICOLE’S
apartment drenched from the driving rain. He had found no parking space closer than two blocks away.

“Poor dear,” Nicole said taking his coat. She hung it over the heater in the entry to dry.

Jacques rubbed his icy hands together, shook his head like a dripping dog, and made straight for the liquor cabinet in the living room.