Crossings (9 page)

“You won't be able to roll me off the ship in France if I eat all that.”

“You can afford to add a pound or two.” She had a tendency to be too thin, but he had to admit he liked her that way: long, elegant, and lean. It always gave her the look of a young colt, especially when she played games with the girls on their lawn. There was ever something youthful about Liane, especially now as she peeled off the red silk suit, to reveal tiny cascades of satin and lace. He slowly put the menu aside, and with another thought in mind he approached, but just then their doorbell rang. He hesitated for a moment and Liane sighed.

“I'll be right back.” But before she heard his voice, she knew. It was Jacques Perrier, ever devoted to the task at hand. His earnest horn-rimmed, spectacled face, his dark suits, his briefcase always chock-full. Liane knew him only too well. The honeymoon with Armand would end before it ever began, with Jacques Perrier's help. She heard them now, conferring in the living room, and a moment later Armand came back to her.

“Is he gone?” Liane sat up on the bed, her garter belt and stockings and brassiere still in place on her lissome frame.

“No … I'm sorry, Liane … there were some cables that apparently came in just before we left. … I have to … just a moment …” He faltered for a moment, trying to read her eyes. But she only smiled at him.

“It's all right. I understand. Will you work here?”

“No, I thought we'd go to his room. You order something to eat. I'll be back in half an hour.” He came to kiss her quickly on the lips and then was gone, his mind filled with his duties for France, and she glanced at the menu again. But she was not hungry for food, she was hungry for Armand, for more of his time, and there was never enough. She lay down on her bed and then relaxed, listening to the soft murmuring of the ship until she fell asleep, dreaming of Armand and a beach somewhere in the South of France. She was trying to get to him, but she couldn't get past a guard who insisted that she couldn't get through. And the guard wore the face of Jacques Perrier. She slept like that for two hours, while Marie-Ange and Elisabeth escorted their governess to the swimming pool.

In the Deauville Suite, Hillary Burnham stood staring at the wood-paneled bar with an air of exasperation. There were gallons of champagne, but she couldn't find the Scotch.

“Goddamn lousy bar. Stinking French, all they ever think of is their bloody wine.” She slammed the door and turned to stare at Nick, her black eyes shining like shimmering black onyx, her hair like black silk over a spectacularly beautiful dress of white crepe de chine. She had thrown the hat to match on a chair when she walked into the living room of the suite, scarcely noticing the decor, or acknowledging the beauty of her surroundings. All she did was tell her maid to start unpacking her clothes and iron the black satin skirt with the raspberry satin top that she was going to wear that night. “Don't you want to take a look around before you have a drink, Hil?” Nick was watching her as she stalked away from the bar with a shake of her head, and she reminded him, as she had a long time before, of a petulant, desperately unhappy child. He never quite understood why she was that way. One could tell oneself that she had been spoiled when she was young, that marriage chafed her more than it did most, that she was disappointed in her life, but it was still hard to understand why. Underneath the sharp tongue, and the harsh words, there was still a beautiful girl who could still turn his knees to mush. It saddened him that he could never inspire the same in her. For a mad moment or two he had told himself that she might be different on the ship, that away from her friends and her fast life, she might once again become the girl he had first met, but it had been a foolish thought and he knew that now. There had been several clandestine phone calls made from her dressing room the night before, and at eleven o'clock she had gone out for a couple of hours. He didn't ask her where she'd gone. It didn't really matter now. They were leaving for a year, and whatever it was, he knew that she would be leaving it behind. “Would you like some champagne?” His voice was polite now, but less warm than it had been before.

“No, thanks. I think I'll go have a look at the bar.” She glanced at a map of the ship and saw that there was one just beneath where they were, and she ran her lipstick quickly across her lips before heading for the door. Johnny was out on their private deck with his nurse, excitedly watching the skyline of New York as they pulled out of port, and for a moment Nick felt torn, and then made a rapid decision to follow his wife. This was a good place not to fall into old ways, and he wanted to keep an eye on her. Whatever she had done in New York, he was not going to let her do it for the next year. The American community in Paris was not overly large, and he didn't want her creating any scandals there. And if she was going to be as restless as she had been for the last nine years, then he was going to just have to tag along. “Where are you going?” She looked back at him over her shoulder, with a look of surprise.

“I thought I'd join you at the bar.” He kept his voice even and their eyes met and held. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” They spoke to each other like strangers, and a moment later he followed her down the hall. She descended to the Grillroom on the boat deck, where the buffet ran all day and all night, and the walls were of the varnished pigskin that had so intrigued Liane. It was an enormous airy-looking room that looked out on the first-class promenade, where many of the passengers had gathered as the ship set sail. And now, in couples and small groups, they wandered into the grill, their faces animated, their voices filled with chatter and laughter, excited about the trip. Only Hillary and Nick seemed to sit in total silence, or so he felt as he watched the people come in and sit at tables. He felt odd not saying anything to his wife, but then he realized that they scarcely knew each other anymore. She was almost a stranger to him. All he knew about her was that she went to parties constantly, bought new clothes, and disappeared to Newport and Boston whenever she could. It was more than a little odd to be sitting here together, and he wondered suddenly, as she ordered a Scotch and water, if she felt trapped, being there with him. He couldn't even imagine what to say. What do you say to a woman who has been avoiding you for almost nine years? “Hi, how's your life? Where have you been for the past decade? … Hello, my name is …” He began to smile to himself at the absurdity of what he was feeling, and when he looked up, he saw her eyeing him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.

“What's funny, Nick?”

He was about to say something pacifying and vague, but then he decided not to. “We are, I guess. I was trying to remember the last time we sat at a table like this, all by ourselves, with no place to go, nowhere to rush off to. It's funny, that's all. I was wondering what to say to you.” It was so easy to send her into a rage and he really didn't want to. He almost hoped that they could make friends again. Maybe the year in Paris would do them good. Maybe without her little circle in Boston to run off to she'd make an effort. He smiled again at the thought and covered one of her long, beautiful hands with his, feeling beneath his fingers the tencarat diamond he had bought her. He had bought her a lot of jewelry at first, but she rarely seemed as pleased to receive it as he was to give it, and in recent years his gifts to her had stopped. He knew though that there had been gifts from others, like the fox jacket the winter before, and a large emerald brooch she had worn often, as though to flaunt it at him … a ruby ring … He forced his mind back from his thoughts. They would do no one any good now. He looked into the big black eyes and smiled at her. “Hello, Hillary. It's nice to see you here.”

“Is it?” The anger seemed to fade, replaced by something sad. “I don't know why it should be, Nick. I haven't been much of a wife.” There was no apology in her voice, only a tinge of bitterness in the statement.

“We've become strangers in the last few years, Hil, but it doesn't have to be that way forever.”

“It's already been that way forever, Nick. I'm all grown up and someone you barely know, and to tell you the truth, most of the time I can't even remember who you are. I have these distant memories of the parties we went to long ago, of how handsome you were, and how exciting, and I look at you, and you look the same….” Her eyes grew too bright and she looked away. “But you're not.”

“Have I changed that much in all these years?” He looked sad too. These were words they should have said long before, and never had, and suddenly here they were in a bar on a ship that had just set sail, beginning to open up their hearts. “Am I so different now, Hil?”

She nodded, her eyes bright with tears, and then she looked up at him again. “Yes, you're my husband.” She said it as though it were a terrible word, and he could see the old restlessness in the way she moved her shoulders and suddenly moved back from the table in her seat, as though to escape him.

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“I think—” She almost choked on the words, but for once she decided to go ahead and say it. He might as well know how she felt. Why not? “I think for me it is. I don't think I was ever meant to be married, Nick.” This time it was said in a voice of confession, the bitterness was gone, and she looked like a beautiful young debutante again, the debutante he had “raped,” in her words once, and got pregnant, and “kidnapped” from her home, and “forced” into marriage. She had rewritten the screenplay long since, and she believed what she said. There was no point arguing with her, or reminding her that she had wanted to go to bed with him, that it was as much her fault as his that she had got pregnant, and that he had tried to make the best of it with her, but she had never even wanted to try. “I feel … I feel so trapped being married … as though I'm a bird that can't fly, but can only flap its wings, hobbling around the ground, going nowhere, being made fun of by its friends. It makes—” She hesitated for a moment and then went on. “It makes me feel ugly … like I'm not what I used to be anymore.”

“You're even more beautiful than you were.” He said it, looking into her eyes, and taking in the creamy skin, the silky hair, the delicate shoulders, and graceful arms. There was nothing ugly about Hillary Burnham, except at times the way she behaved, but he didn't say that now. “You've grown up to be an exceptionally beautiful woman. But that's not surprising. You were always an exceptionally beautiful girl.”

“But I'm not a girl anymore, Nick. I'm not even a woman.” She paused as though groping for words. “You don't know what it's like for a woman to be married. It's like you become someone's possession, their
thing
, no one sees you as yourself anymore.” It was something he had never thought of, and it sounded a little crazy to him now. Was that what she had been fighting all these years? Was that what all the affairs were all about? Her fight to make herself separate, to be someone and something on her own? It was a novel thought to him.

“I don't think of you as a possession. I think of you as my wife.”

“What does that mean?” For the first time in half an hour there was anger in her voice again, and she signaled for another Scotch as a waiter drifted by. “My wife. It sounds like ‘my chair, my table, my car.’ My wife. So what? Who am I when I'm with you? I'm Mrs. Nicholas Burnham. I don't even have a name of my own, for chrissake. Johnny's mother … it's like being someone's dog. I want to be
me. Hillary!”

“Just Hillary?” He looked at her with a sad smile.

“Just Hillary.” She looked back at him for a long time and took a sip of her drink.

“Is that who you are to your friends, Hil?”

“Some of them. At least the people I know don't give a damn about who you are. I'm sick to death of hearing about Nick Burnham—Nick Burnham this … Nick Burnham that … Oh, you must be Mrs. Nicholas Burnham … Nick Burnham's wife … Nick Burnham … Nick Burnham … Nick Burnham!!” She raised her voice as he shushed her.“Don't tell me to shut up, damn it. You don't know what it's like.” It felt good to confront him. That was something new in their totally separate lives. Now perhaps he could understand what lay behind her ferocious independence. But the funny thing was that it was precisely that that had drawn her to him originally and he knew it. She had liked the fact that he was Nicholas Burnham, with all the weight that carried with it. “And I'll tell you something else. No one in Boston gives a damn about who you are, Nick.” That wasn't entirely true and they both knew it, but it made her feel better to say it. “I have my own friends there, and they knew me before I married you.” He had never realized that that was so desperately important to her. He wondered suddenly if there was some way he could ease the burden of this anger she felt. And just as the thought entered his mind a steward approached them.

“Mr. Burnham?”

“Yes?” He thought instantly of Johnny. That he had got hurt somewhere on the ship, and they had come to find him.

“You have a message from the captain.” Nick glanced at Hillary and saw her eyes blaze, and he suddenly knew something more, that she hadn't told him in the past hour over drinks. She was jealous of him.

“Thank you.” He accepted the gold-banded envelope with a nod, and the steward disappeared as Nick took out the single engraved sheet with the formal wording. “Captain Thoreux … requests the pleasure of your company at dinner … in the Grande Salle à Manger at nine o'clock this evening.” It was what was referred to as the Second Sitting, and the most elegant of the two, the first one being at seven.

“What's that all about? Are they already kissing your ass, Nick?” She had finished the second drink, and her eyes were too bright, but not with tears now.

“Shhh, Hil, please.” He looked around to see if anyone had heard her. The idea that anyone kissed his ass embarrassed him. But there was no escaping the fact that he was a very important man, and it was inevitable that he would be pursued. He wore his mantle of importance well, albeit at times almost too humbly, which made it all the more insane that his wife resented who he was. He was the last human being on earth to cram it down her throat. But she had heard it all too often. “The captain is inviting us to dinner.”