The Eleventh Year (34 page)

Alex sat in his study, playing with the silver letter opener, and tried to rationalize away his fear. The Cartel des Gauches— the Leftist merger of parties now in the majority—was basically weak, like the Bloc. The Socialists still refused to participate in a common venture, in order that the workers of France not give into bourgeois power, even a Leftist bourgeois power. And without the Socialists . . .

There was a light knock, and Lesley came in. He smiled briefly. She said, and he noticed that as she spoke, her tongue kept passing over her front teeth: “I've been thinking of redecorating the salon.”

“Oh?”

She saw the doubt on his face and hesitated. “You don't agree?”

“Darling, it's up to you. I've always liked our living room.”

“Then I shan't change it much. I'll call Franchot in the morning.”

He stared at her and wondered why she sounded so abrupt, and nervous. “I didn't think you liked his work,” he commented. “And since you've been taking lessons from Gontcharova, wouldn't it be more fun to try to make some changes yourself?”

“Myself?” She gave him a blank look. “No. Set design isn't remotely like furnishing a house people live in. I'll call Franchot.”

“All right.”

His pleasant tone of voice set her on edge. She opened her mouth, shut it, shrugged, and turned away. He wondered what he had said wrong. She'd had an idea, he'd given her the go-ahead. Why was it that he felt that his quick acceptance had been…
too
quick? He should have spoken to her about the elections. But she'd startled him with this request for a new living room.

Outside, Lesley felt the rush of blood to her forehead. It had been so easy. Only one tiny, inventive objection. She wished he'd opposed her. What Paul and Elena were doing was so terribly wrong. They didn't deserve to win.

Oh, my God, she thought. But if they
hadn't
won,
I
would have lost! And a flood of relief passed over her. She rushed upstairs to call Franchot. She would order two new Ming vases and tell Alex she had ordered four. By the time the two were delivered, he'd have forgotten—and paid the decorator. A very small lie. She could handle that without feeling too guilty.

T
he night of the election
, Alexandre sat at the dinner table for a long time, brooding. He moved the roast duckling around on his plate, but Lesley, seated across from him, noticed that his fork rarely touched his lips. She wasn't quite sure what to say to make him feel better.

In truth, the Bloc National had disappointed the people. She had gone to enough dinners at Marie-Laure de Noailles's sumptuous hotel, Place des États-Unis, to realize that. Marie-Laure exhibited her originality by rounding up the most extreme Leftists that she could find, much, Lesley had thought with irony, as a rich collector of oddities displaying his treasures no matter how outrageous. But Lesley listened to these impassioned men.

Now she examined him on the night of his defeat and knew that he took it as a personal blow. But she thought: His party accomplished nothing it had set out to do. Yet it wasn't
his
fault. She cleared her throat and said, timidly: “It won't be so bad, darling, to head your own law firm again. You're certain to have some interesting, landmark cases that will affect the economy—maybe even more than political office could do.”

He raised his gray eyes to meet hers. She was stunned by the pain in them. “Really,” she stated more strongly. “Poincaré wasn't a good leader.”

“And Herriot will be better?”

She looked down at her empty plate, then grasped the stem of her wineglass. “He might be. And Leon Blum is a brilliant man. You can't say the same about Poincaré. He's mediocre.”

“But he believed in our country. He did his honest best.”

“It wasn't enough. France…was due for a change.” She said these last words very gently, aware that they would hit him hard. “Not you,” she added. “You've just suffered along with the rest of the party.”

His eyes wouldn't leave her face. She met them slowly. Had he simply been swept away in a political tidal wave, or had he deserved to be replaced, just like Poincaré? She tried to answer herself honestly but couldn't. “I did the best I could,” he said.

“I know.”

She rose, came silently to his side of the table. She laid her hands on the back of his shoulders, pressed them, massaged. She put her face into the crook of his neck. Abruptly he said: “Don't, Lesley. Just don't.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is the worst day of my life.”

It was so unlike him to overdramatize that she was more stunned by this than by his earlier words. Her fingers stopped moving. She asked tentatively: “But—your childhood—surely that was worse.”

“My childhood was something dull and painful, lived every day. I wasn't happy. But today is a singular defeat. I had reached a goal, and now I've been dismissed like a guilty child. This, Lesley, is failure.”

His tone was cold, almost detached, and she blushed. She knew what he was going through. Yet she couldn't stop herself from exclaiming: “You don't know anything about real defeat, Alex! This is only one event, and you've still got a successful law practice and supporters who know your worth!”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Her arms fell by her sides. “It means that you're still somebody.”

“And?”

“And I'm just your wife. I've never reached a single one of my goals.
I'm
a nothing, Alexandre.”

He pushed back his chair, stared at her. His intensity unnerved her. “We—we all want to become immortal,” she stammered. “You, through politics. I, with my art.”

He looked at her, perfectly still. Hesitantly, she laid a hand on his cheek, stroked it. “Gontcharova spoke to Edith de Beaumont,” she said. “About my helping with the set designs and costumes for one of their
Soirées de Paris.
But—that's so little, compared with what you're doing. One evening's worth of ballet decor…What a small portion of immortality!”

“Jamie's achieving immortality,” he murmured in a strange voice.

“Yes.
Rosebuds
is selling by the thousands in the States.
McCalls
is running an excerpt….”

“That wasn't what I meant. There are other kinds of immortality, Lesley.”

She parted her lips, caught her breath. Her heart pounded and she could feel the blood in her ears, hurting. Alex said: “Lesley. Please.”

“No.”

“Later it might be too late. You're twenty-six. I'm thirty-four.”

“Surely,” she interrupted quickly, “you don't condone what Jamie's doing. Or whose child she's going to have!” The blood still raced through her body.

He looked away. “I'm not proud of my brother,” he whispered. “But if Jamie wanted a child that badly—”

“It was ridiculous! Think of her future! Who'll marry her now?” She was speaking so rapidly that the words came tumbling out. Her mouth was dry.

“We're married, Lesley.”

“No!”
She knew she was beginning to shake, that the perspiration must have been obvious. She walked away from him, to the window of the dining room. The last thing she wanted to discuss right now was having a baby. She wished she were permanently infertile, that there could be an assurance of her never becoming pregnant. If it hadn't been for that first pregnancy.…She refused to think about Paul and Elena. But the anguish—she'd have forgotten Justin a long time before. Yes, it hurt to know a man didn't share one's feelings. But it was not the same kind of pain as having a knife cut into your flesh, performing murder….

“What is it?” he was asking softly. “Is it childbearing you're afraid of?”

“I'm going to do the ballet. That's as much immortality as I want right now. Let it go, Alex. You don't really understand what it means to a woman to be saddled with unwanted children.”

“I do know what it means to be an unwanted child.”

“Then think again! The sort of mother you had, I would be, if you forced me into this!”

“I can't believe it.”

“Believe it!” Then she added: “Look, just because it's election day and you've lost your seat doesn't mean you have the right to make me feel guilty about this issue.”

He didn't bat an eyelash. But the color drained from his cheeks. He took a pensive swallow of wine. She wanted to cry, yet at the same time a numbness had taken hold of her. She felt completely trapped.

He stood up shakily, and she saw him walk out of the room, eyes on the floor. Then Bouchard came in and handed her a folded note on a salver. “Madame,” he announced in his perfect, cadenced tones, “this was delivered by the maid of Princess Egorova.”

Lesley heard the name reverberate inside her. It felt like a dagger. The butler was waiting, the salver held out in front of her with the note on it. Tainted bait. Lesley didn't want to reach out for it. She was still trembling from her discussion with Alexandre, from the bitterness of his defeat. She'd felt so ineffectual in front of his sorrow, and later so frightened by his new sally into the domain she tried so hard not to think about: having children. Elena was the most dangerous element of her life. But maybe this was just a “thank you” for the five thousand francs she'd sent a few days ago….

“Madame?” Bouchard pressed politely.

Her fingers took the note, unfolded it. She held it to the light of the chandelier, felt her hand unsteady. “We appreciate your thoughtful gift,” Elena had written in her bold, masculine scrawl. “And of course we are ever more grateful for the promise of your continued help at the start of every month. Yours ever, E.S.E.”

Stunned, Lesley reread the letter. It made perfect sense. They wanted more money. Other payments. Blood money. She'd thought she'd paid, by bleeding on that table in Poughkeepsie, but the score, apparently, had not yet been settled. She couldn't breathe, and her face ached from her sinuses down to the middle of her cheeks, like a throbbing paralysis. She put the note back on the salver, then thought better of it and retrieved it. “Thank you,” she said to the maître d'hôtel. He bowed and slowly—how slowly he moved!—his small, penguin's feet retraced his steps across the vast Aubusson rug.

She tore the note up and put it in an ashtray. Then she lit a match to it, watched it char. She poured some of the table wine on the flames and watched them die in the red puddle. Mesmerized, she stared at the mess.

It might never end. In ragged despair, she looked around the room and thought: The rug will have to go. Franchot could exchange it for a less expensive one.…Or I could go the route of clothes. A new wardrobe. Alex would notice but wouldn't care. Women were always ordering new dresses.

She sat down at the dinner table and closed her eyes, but the pain in her face persisted. She would have to take a pill. She thought: Jamie is on the Riviera, and besides, I don't want to involve her. I'm going to have to resolve this one by myself. If only Daddy hadn't left the money for Alex to manage….

She felt bitter then, for being a woman, and against the father who had not trusted her judgment to run her own trust fund. And against the husband who was administering it for her, and who had to be prevented from learning the truth.

T
he small town
of Louveciennes wound down from its main square, much like the Italian villages of Tuscany. Except that Italy was ochre, sunny, and redolent of the vineyard, with constant reminders of a rich medieval and Renaissance past. Louveciennes was all winding paths shaded by old trees and stone houses hidden for privacy by crumbling, picturesque gray walls.

In the early part of 1925, Jamie Lynne Stewart fell in love with a magnificent property with its own small wood that had been the hunting lodge of Madame Du Barry, the favorite mistress of Louis XV. The pavilion itself was white, Grecian, with Doric pillars in the front. Twin paths led from the house, bordered on each side by Grecian statues, to a lily pond with a white stone bench. The loveliness and the fact that this house stood far back from the town itself made it appeal to Jamie. In a fit of impulse, she sent a letter to Harold Ober: How much of an advance would Scribner's give her on her new work in progress, so that she might purchase the Du Barry pavilion?

The realtor she was using could see how much work the place needed. Inside the beams were chewed away, the parquet floors badly in need of repairs. While the negotiations went on, she sat tensely in Lesley's house on Place d'Ièna. She didn't belong there. The house itself was too grand, too formal.

She didn't regret Paul—not consciously. She told herself again and again that he'd been wrong for her. Writers possessed that unusual quality of being able to distill their pain into words. She was writing her second book from a man's point of view. It was the story of a Frenchman, ill at ease in this postwar society, like Paul, unable to find out how he fit, how to be happy. Her character, Jean-Pierre, came from nowhere. Like Paul, like Willy, he had been born out of wedlock, and this idea pursued and tormented him through every move, through every affair. Sometimes she thought: And I'm going to give birth to a child without a father. Am I being fair?

She'd never had parents as she'd wanted them. Ned had been a father. John Stewart hadn't. Locked in his sermons and old books, he hadn't known how to relate to his small, chubby daughter. And Margaret, judgmental of everything and everyone around her, had been a perfect example of the cold middle class, a scent of beeswax where there should have been the gentle odor of human flesh, enveloping arms, tenderness.

And so, homeless myself, I have attracted men who were also homeless: Willy. Paul. I made a home for Paul on Boulevard Montparnasse. He was happier there than ever before in his life. He stayed with me because of that. But in the end, I didn't want to be somebody's warm blanket. I want to be somebody's prize rose.

She thought of the relationships around her and wondered. Were no married couples ever happy? The Polignacs were both homosexual. Theirs, therefore, was an entente rather than a union. Lesley and Alex? She was too close to judge them, but she felt the odd tensions growing between them, and Lesley's nervousness. The Hemingways…on the rocks. The Fitzgeralds, brawling, drinking, fighting. Yes, they were “in love.” But did one have to destroy and be forever jealous of one's partner to call that “love”? The Steins, Gertrude and Alice, were happy. But Natalie Barney made Romaine miserable with her roving eye. So even among the Lesbian world, chaos could reign.

Paris abounded with infidelities, with betrayals. A woman slipped off her chemise dress at the drop of a pin. The next day she would bed down another man and a third, both of them together, in a
ménage á trois.
Jamie found this all rather revolting. How could someone respond to two lovers at once? Love was not a game. And Parisians played at everything these days.

The start of that year felt strange to Jamie. Edouard Herriot was teetering on the brink of retiring, because the franc had fallen again and too many notes were being circulated for his government to prove itself creditworthy. Jamie, feeling the life inside her ready to burst forth, felt set apart, as if politics hardly mattered. She didn't go out much, waiting for the baby to be born, for her house to be legally hers and ready to inhabit. Lesley, nerves taut, brush in hand, spent hours in the new atelier, experimenting with pastels and fuchsias, with dots and cubes and odd shapes and contours. She worked with a frenzy that somewhat baffled her friend.

At night they avoided the interminable parties with the American writers, the parties that went from bar to bar, accumulating people. Lesley and Jamie sometimes went to Montparnasse and had dinner at the Closerie des Lilas, where they'd be joined by any number of colorful people who kept them up till dawn, discussing the fate of the world. They drank absinthes and talked about art, about love—and both felt their own loss of innocence, though neither mentioned it.

Jamie watched her best friend, the sister she'd never possessed. It was the first time since the Ritz days that they had lived together. But there was a difference in Lesley that reminded Jamie of the time when she'd come home from England and hidden the fact of her pregnancy. Lesley worked, but her paintings were bizarre, like living nightmares. Jamie wasn't even sure she liked them. She worked and talked about her ambitions, but what kept recurring were material worries. She wanted to sell her work, she wanted to buy new clothes, she wanted to add a touch here and a touch there to an already complete household.

Lesley even went to see Bertrand de la Paume with some of her paintings. He promised to sell them for her, and for a few days she appeared relieved. She had a gaunt look about her that worried Jamie. Lesley talked rapidly, in a flow of words, when they were surrounded by other people. But when the two of them were alone, she busied herself so that Jamie wouldn't ask questions.

And so Jamie began, out of tactfulness, to stay away. Instead of knocking on the door to Lesley's boudoir, holding her cup of morning coffee, she took it instead to Alex's study. He was always glad to see her, and the gratitude she felt toward him was more than just friendship. He had the protective family instincts that Paul did not have, and he seemed to look forward to the birth of her baby. She'd thought him a rather cold, punctilious man and had been afraid of his reaction to her constant presence in the house, reminding him of his brother and her own immorality in having this child out of wedlock. But, unexpectedly, Alex put her completely at ease. She realized after a few weeks that he welcomed her being there, because Lesley was forever going this way and that and rarely touching base with him at all. He wanted a companion, a sympathetic female.

Some evenings when Lesley was out, they met in the living room and sipped brandy together, quietly. He seemed preoccupied. Once she asked: “Tell me what's on your mind. How do you pass your days now that you're not… ?”

“Legal work. Many days in court. But most of my days I act as an advisor. My principal client is the Banque de France.”

She was impressed. She knew that this conservative institution advised the government, a government with which it was at odds except for their common concern, of assuaging the enormous national debt of more than forty billion francs. The Dawes Plan, yet another American move of intervention in European affairs, had made the French back down to a more moderate expectation of reparations from Germany.

She would lay her hand on his, and then his eyes—such sad, mournful eyes these days—would rest on her face. Then he smiled. “How beautiful you look,” he said. “Like a Madonna.” He found her pregnancy becoming.

Only once did he sigh when he looked at her. And then, when her brow shot up with a question, he shrugged, in a gesture of defeat. “I don't understand,” he murmured. “You've sacrificed so much for the child you're going to have. We wouldn't have to sacrifice anything.”

Jamie felt his pain and was uncomfortable. He looked at her directly. “Do you know what the problem is?” he asked.

She laced her fingers together on top of her stomach. Then she shook her head. “Give her time,” she said softly.

“I thought that having you in the house would…you know…give her ideas. Instead…”

Jamie felt a pang of guilt. Her presence had hurt more than it had helped. She wanted to say something but knew she couldn't. Alex held up a sheet of paper he had plucked from a pile that had been lying beside him on the sofa. “I was looking these over when you came in,” he said. “They're household bills.”

Trying for levity, she chided him: “You can't work all the time, Alex.”

“I'm beginning to think I'm really going to have to—to make ends meet. Lesley's spending habits are getting out of hand.” His voice tensed, he looked away. “My mother was that way,” he added, almost to himself.

“But Lesley's not like her at all. Talk to her.”

“I can't. She's never home. Fittings, galleries, meetings with decorators. I telephoned Franchot today, to ask him about his last bill. He informed me that he'd only replaced one armchair. He said it was a Mayfair copy, not an original Louis Sixteen. That one, over there. You'd never know the difference.” He motioned to a delicate upholstered damask chair, with frail armrests. “And from what he charged us, you'd never know it either!”

She was surprised at the vehemence, the bitterness of his tone. He composed himself and looked back at her. “I'm sorry, Jamie. This isn't your problem. Would you like another cognac?”

She shook her head, overwhelmed with sadness for this man who had become almost like a brother.

Alex decided to take Jamie's advice. A few days later he caught up with his wife in the hallway. She was already in her coat of light-gray Breitchwanz fur, its high collar bordered with mink. “Lesley,” he said, “could we talk for a few moments? In the study?”

She didn't meet his eye. Although it was strange, he found it customary for the last few months. He touched her arm, and she seemed to tense from the contact. “I'm late,” she whispered. “Don't you have to go to the office?”

“Not until later. We need to discuss some problems.”

Now she looked up at him, and there was a crease between her eyes, an intense worry that made him feel boorish about having brought up something to concern her. After all, he argued
in petto,
it was only money. But he couldn't simply brush it aside. He led the way and when she had closed the door on herself, he went behind his desk. She remained standing, her neck muscles tense, her face taut.

“Darling,” he started. “There's nothing fatal in what I have to tell you. But I've encountered some discrepancies in the latest series of bills. I guess I simply can't make them tally.”

Her lips parted, and he could see the blue vein beating in her throat. She sat down, and he noticed that her nails, once perfect buffed ovals, were chewed to the quick. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, first of all, the Mayfair armchair. I—”

“What
Mayfair? We don't own any copies! Alex, I wanted our home to be perfect. I wanted the very best, something fine, for you, for your guests….”

“But Franchot told me it was a Mayfair. The armchair.”

She flexed and unflexed her fingers, then unclasped the top of her coat. It fell open over a dress of soft dove-gray silk. “
You
called
Franchot?”

“Yes. I was bewildered. I thought he might have cheated us—”

She stood up, leaned forward, incredulous. “How
could
you have done that? Why didn't you simply ask me about it?”

He was taken aback by the outrage in her pinched white face. He held his hands out, palms up. “Lesley, you're never here! I called him from the office. Surely you aren't going to take this as a personal betrayal….”

“Yes!” she cried. “That's exactly what it is! You went behind my back to question what I did with a tradesman. You discussed matters of intimate concern with somebody I'd hired to do a job! Alex—how could you so humiliate me?”

“But it was just a business conversation,” he replied. Then he felt insulted. She was taking such a small matter and putting him in a role of personal, Machiavellian enmity. He looked at her and controlled his anger. “I didn't know you'd think I was prying,” he stated.

“Don't you trust me?”

He kept his eyes on her levelly. “Explain to me,” he said quietly, “why Franchot told me it was a Mayfair, and you said it was an original. If the man's a liar, we should fire him.” He paused, swallowed. “Or you might have made an error. In which case he's still wrong, although not actually dishonest.”

“Wrong?”

“Yes. Doesn't it strike you as bizarre that he's charged us for a real Louis Sixteen when he actually sold us a Mayfair reproduction?”

She turned her back on him, began to pace the room. “I wish to God you were still in public office!” she exclaimed. “Then you wouldn't have to meddle in such petty problems as our household budget. You'd be up to your ears in the national debt instead of our own!”

“Lesley,” he stated, and his words rang cold and clear. “I spend hours of every day with the president of the Banque de France. I'm more involved than ever in France's affairs. But someone has to watch our own nevertheless. I can't let everything go to pieces here.”

“What are you accusing me of?” she asked, her voice low and trembling. “Being a liar?”

“God damn it! I simply want to know what to do about Franchot!” He was really angry now too, and rose. Coming around his desk, he confronted her, putting his hands on her arms. “What's going on, Lesley? Why aren't you ever home? I spend all my mornings and evenings alone with Jamie!”

“That's fine!” she cried. “You two can talk about how marvelous it is that she's going to have a baby! I'm trying to sell my art work. I have places to go, people to meet. I'm going to do the decor for one of the
Soirées de Paris,
and I'm very busy!”