Time for Silence (10 page)

“You have gone to a great deal of trouble to do this for Annabelinda,” I said.

“For her and the honor of the family,” he said. “That means a great deal to people such as I. Perhaps we are too proud, a little arrogant.
Mon Dieu
, we should have learned our lessons, should we not, all those years ago. But does one ever learn lessons? A little perhaps, but rarely entirely.

“Well, now you know what happened, and I am placing my trust in you. The incident must be forgotten. I shall make sure that the child is well cared for…educated when the time comes. There is no need to fear for his future. And what I ask of you, dear Lucinda, is never to divulge to any person what you have learned. I have a high respect for your integrity, I know I can rely on you. Annabelinda is wayward…a little irresponsible. It is part of her charm. Do not let her know that you are aware of what happened. Help her to keep up the myth. And please…I beg of you…do not tell her that the child who is being brought up by the Plantains is hers. I can rely on you, can I not, Lucinda?”

“I shall tell no one,” I said.

He put his hand over mine and pressed it.

“I place my trust in you,” he said.

Then we sat silently for a few moments, watching the white swans gliding gracefully on the lake.

After the summer holidays, in September, we returned to
La Pinière
. It was a year since I had first seen it and I felt that I had grown a long way from the naive girl I had been then. I had learned much; and although the dramatic events had not happened to me, I had been close enough to them to be deeply affected.

I thought of Jean Pascal Bourdon as some powerful god who arranged people’s lives—cynically, yet benignly…amorally in a way. And yet what would Annabelinda have done without him?

I thought often of the child in the care of Marguerite Plantain. He would never know his mother and what trouble had been caused by his coming into the world. He would be well cared for, educated when the time came. Checks would arrive regularly for the Plantains and they would have no idea from whom they came. By one powerful stroke, Jean Pascal had changed their lives even more than Annabelinda’s, because I was sure that, in time, Annabelinda would convince herself that this episode in her life had never happened, while the Plantains would have Edouard, the constant reminder.

Caroline said I had changed since the holidays.

“You look so serious. Do you know, sometimes when I speak to you, you don’t answer. Was it such a wonderful holiday?”

“Wonderful,” I told her.

Annabelinda was received at school with a sort of awe. They were all convinced that she had been, as one of them remarked, “snatched from the jaws of death.” And any to whom that had happened must be of very special interest.

Annabelinda exploited the situation, as I expected. She was quite a figure at school now. She had her own room, and although Madame Rochère was a little cool toward her—and, I believe, watchful—Annabelinda shrugged that aside. She was enjoying school. “The wages of sin,” I told myself, feeling it was the sort of comment Jean Pascal might have made.

Oddly, Annabelinda seemed to have forgotten the episode more easily than I. But I supposed she wanted to, and Annabelinda always did what she wanted.
I
could not forget, and there was the baby to remind me.

I became fascinated by the child and could not resist taking walks past the cottage. Whereas before I had been fond of the company of my fellow pupils, I now wanted to escape from them and make my way to the cottage…alone. On warm days, the perambulator would almost always be in the Plantain garden.

Marguerite was recovering from her tragedy, and I think this was largely due to little Edouard. She doted on the child. She told me, “Jacques is beginning to love him. It was hard for him at first. It was his own he wanted. But Edouard has such winning ways. Just look at the little angel.”

Sometimes I would hold Edouard on my lap. I would look for a likeness to his parents. There was none. He was just like any other baby.

Sometimes I would go into the Plantain garden and sit by him. I would watch him and think of Annabelinda and Carl together…clandestinely meeting in that cottage of his which would be rather like the Plantains’…creeping out of school at night. How daring she was! This would be the first of many adventures in her life, I imagined. This was just a beginning. And what a beginning—bringing another life into the world. I supposed she had not given this possibility a thought when she was with Carl. And Carl himself? The man of mystery. He would not even know he had a son. Would he care? What sort of man was he? I had only seen him twice. Yet he was the father of this child. He was the reason why all this had happened, the reason why Jean Pascal Bourdon had had to be called in to come with his cynical knowledge of the world and its foibles, to manipulate everyone so that this child’s birth would not spoil Annabelinda’s prospects of making a brilliant marriage.

It was no wonder that I felt older, a little blasé. I had been shown such a new light on worldly affairs. I had grown only one year in time but many in experience.

School life continued as usual. I was in a higher class, and even more time was given to social pursuits. There were more dancing lessons, more piano lessons, singing lessons and deportment.

I was realizing that fourteen was quite a mature age—a time when I would have to think of the future.

Annabelinda, with her sixteen years and aura of mystery, was far above me. We did not see a great deal of each other during school hours, and when I had a little time to myself I liked to wander off to the Plantain cottage.

Annabelinda was unaware of the cottage; she certainly knew nothing of the baby who lay in his perambulator in the garden on warm days. I thought it all very strange and mysterious, but it did give a certain flavor to life.

Christmas came. Aunt Celeste collected us as usual and we stayed a night in Valenciennes and then went home. Everything was according to plan, and in due course we were back again for the January term. We would not go home again until the summer, for the journey was too long to be undertaken at midterm, so we went down to spend the brief holiday at Château Bourdon.

“It won’t be long,” my mother wrote, “until you are coming home again. How time flies!”

I knew that she was not very happy about my going to school in Belgium, although Aunt Celeste assured her that the education I was getting was excellent and the fact that I should have several languages when it was completed would be a real asset.

My mother understood this, but said she wished it were nearer.

At midterm, when we went to the château, Annabelinda was her merry self. I marveled that she could be so. Did she never wonder what had happened to her child? It occurred to me that, in his infinite wisdom, Jean Pascal might have told her that her baby had died at his birth. In any case, I could not ask her.

At the château we rode a good deal; we inspected the vineyards; we dined with distinguished guests whom Jean Pascal and the
Princesse
gathered about them; and I often sat by the lake and thought of all that had happened over the last year.

Jean Pascal did not mention it. This was part of his policy. One forgot unpleasant things, and in time it seemed as though they had never happened.

I was glad to get back to school.

During conversazione a still frequent topic was the Balkan War, which had ended in the previous August.

As well-educated young ladies, we were expected to be able to discuss world affairs, especially those that were happening fairly close to us. This was the reason for so much emphasis being laid on the conversazione.

Most of the other girls found the subject of the Balkans exceptionally boring. We learned that the first war was between the Balkan States—which had included Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro—on one side, and the Ottoman Empire on the other.

In May of last year, the Balkan States had been victorious and a treaty was signed in London, the result of which was that the Ottoman Empire lost most of its territory in Europe.

“Thank goodness that’s over,” Caroline had said. “Now we can forget the wretched lot of them.”

“My dear Caroline,” said Miss Carruthers, “you are extremely thoughtless. These matters can be of the greatest importance to us. I know the Balkans seem remote to you, but we are part of Europe and anything that happens there could have its effect on us. Wars are good for no one, and when one’s neighbors indulge in them, events must be closely watched. One never knows when one’s country might be brought in.”

However, it had been pleasant to be able to forget the war and discuss the capital cities of Europe such as Paris, Brussels and Rome, all of which we read about and talked of with a certain amount of aplomb—the Bois de Boulogne, Les Invalides, the Colosseum of Rome, the art galleries of Florence—just as though we knew them well. This made us feel very sophisticated, knowledgeable and much-traveled—in our minds at least.

But that summer there had been moans of dismay when war broke out again. Serbia, Greece, Turkey and Rumania were quarreling with Bulgaria over the division of the spoils gained from the last war. We were delighted when Bulgaria was quickly defeated and peace returned.

Now, a year later, Madame Rochère still seemed rather grave—and so did some of the other teachers. The atmosphere had become a little uneasy. All the same it was a delightful summer; the weather was perfect and the days sped by. Soon the term would be at an end and we should be on our way home once more for the summer holidays. Aunt Celeste would come for us on the first day of August. School broke up on the last day of July.

We were coming toward the end of June. There was just over a month to go and Annabelinda and I were already making plans.

“This time next year, I shall be thinking of leaving,” she said. “I shall have a season. Do they have seasons in France? I must ask Grandpère. Of course, they haven’t got a king and queen. It wouldn’t be the same. I suppose my season will be in London. I shall see the King and Queen. Queen Mary looks a little stern, doesn’t she?”

How can she talk so lightly of such things? I thought. Does she ever give a thought to the baby?

Little Edouard was now nearly a year old. He was beginning to take notice. He could crawl and was learning to stand up. Sometimes he would take a few tentative steps. I would sit opposite Marguerite and he would stand between us, his face alight with pleasure. It was a game to him, to totter from Marguerite’s arms to mine without falling. She would stand behind, ready to catch him should the need arise. Then he would take his faltering steps and fall into my arms, which were waiting to receive him. We would clap, applauding his triumph, and he would put his hands together and do the same, beaming with pride in his achievement.

It was amazing what pleasure I found in that child. Perhaps he was so important to me because I knew he was Annabelinda’s. I felt that he belonged to our family. One day I should have to leave him. When my days at
La Pinière
were over, that would be the end. No. I would come back. I would pay a visit now and then…so that I could see how he was growing up. Marguerite would welcome me. She understood my feelings for the child. She shared them.

Edouard had done so much for her. He had assuaged her grief. I sometimes believed she could not have loved her own child more than she loved Edouard.

One day when I returned from the cottage and went up to the dormitory, Caroline was waiting there with Helga.

“You’re late,” said Caroline. “Why do you always go off on your own?”

“Because I like it.”

“To get away from us. That’s not very polite.”

“It’s to get away from school. I like…to walk around.”

“You haven’t got a secret lover, have you?”

I flushed a little, thinking of Annabelinda creeping out to meet Carl.

“You have! You have!” shrieked Caroline.

“Don’t be silly! How could I?”

“There are ways. Some do.”

Again that feeling of unease. Did they guess about Annabelinda? Why should I feel guilty because of her?

“I’d better get ready,” I said. “I’ll be late for conversazione.”

When we reached the hall, Madame Rochère was already there. She looked as though she had an important announcement to make. She had. She stood up and waited until we were seated, then she began.

“Something has happened, girls,” she said. “Yesterday in Sarajevo, which as you know is the capital of Bosnia in Yugoslavia, the heir apparent to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, with his wife, was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip.”

It was obvious that the girls were not greatly impressed by the news. Most of us were thinking, Oh, dear, we thought we had finished with those tiresome people. Now it will all be brought up again, and there will be little talk of the new dances and fashions, and those great cities of the world and all the delightful things one can do in them. Haven’t we had enough of those people with their two wars? And now they go around assassinating royalty!

“This is grave news,” Madame Rochère was saying. “It has happened far away, it is true, but it may have an effect on us. We must wait and see, and be prepared.”

July was with us. We were all preoccupied with plans for going home.

I said to Marguerite, “I shall be away for about two months.”

“You will see a change in Edouard when you come back,” she commented.

Aunt Celeste wrote that she would be coming to Valenciennes as usual. She would arrive at the school on the first of August. I wondered if Jean Pascal and the
Princesse
would be at Valenciennes. We always spent a day at the house there before beginning our journey home.

We had no notion at that time that this was going to be any different from our usual homecoming.

Then on the twenty-eighth of July, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Relations between the two countries had been deteriorating since the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and this was the result.

Madame Rochère was looking worried. It was clear that she thought this was happening at an unfortunate time. A month later and all the girls would have been at their respective homes and not her responsibility. Although the enormity of the situation was not apparent to us at that time, it was only a matter of days before this became clear to us.