Dangerous to Know (29 page)

Charles came to Paris last week for my birthday. “You look so very, very beautiful,” he said to me that night, lifting his crystal flute of champagne to me, toasting my birthday. Well, beauty ts in the eye of the beholder. chores. My son. My pride. My joy. Ma raison d’etre.

He came from Normandy with his wife Marguerite and they took me for a celebration dinner at Tour d’Argent, my favorite restaurant. I have always been entranced by the views from its many floor4oceiling windows, breathtaking views of the River Seine and the bateaux mouche, Notre Dame Cathedral and the glittering sky, panoramic vistas of this city that I made my own long ago. Forty-five years ago this month.

I came to Paris in April of 1950.

The chestnuts were in bloom in the Bois de Boulogne, gaiety filled the air, and Paris was still rejoicing that the war was over. Love, laughter , life lived to the fullest-those were the things we cared ah9ut then.

Five years after I had chosen this city to be my home I met Edouard.

I fell in love. I loved him so much, I loved him until the day he died.

I would have done anything for him. Anything at all. And I did.

When we are grown old and horrendous things happen to destroy the fabric of one’s existence, age makes it easier to cope in so many ways.

We have acquired understanding, wisdom is ours, and we have life’s experiences to draw on and sustain us.

But in our youth when trouble comes to plague us we have few weapons with which to combat it, no ready references, no old knowledge stored in our bones, no inner resources to see us through. It overwhelms; it can destroy us.

I know this and I know it well.

It was in my early life that great trouble came to me. My life was difficult, terrible. Unconscionable things were done to me when I was young, destructive acts were perpetrated against me.

I suffered alone. I had no one to help me. No one to rescue me.

No one to ease the pain. No one to console me. I sank low in my despair. I did not want to live. I thought that death was my only means of escape.

I wanted to end my pain. But I did not take my life. I found courage and strength within myself. I lived again. I came back up.

Slowly. I rose higher. I soared.

And ultimately I became the incomparable Zo.

The woman all men wanted. The woman with the world at her feet.

Edouard wanted me from the first moment he set eyes on me. He was not solely driven by lust, although he lusted after my beautiful body, that is the truth. He wanted love from me as well. Love and devotion.

I gave them to him willingly. He accepted them and returned my feelings in full measure. He adored me. He placed me on a pedes tai.

He made me his wife.

He gave me dignity, my husband.

Edouard died nine years ago at the age of eighty-nine. He never looked his age, nor was he senile in his latter years, but quite strong and robust to the very end. He died peacefully in his sleep, went gently out into the dark night, as gently as he had lived.

The king is dead. Long live the king, the saying goes.

Charles inherited it all. The ancient title, the chateau and estates in Normandy, the bulk of the family fortune. Charles hardly seemed to care about these material trappings of life. Heartbroken, he long grieved for his father. They had been close, inseparable, the best of friends since he had been a small boy.

Charles had his own son now, my grandson Gerard, who was six and would one day inherit the title. I had ensured the line, at what great cost no one would ever know. Nor should they.

The morning after my birthday last week, we had taken breakfast together, my son and I. He had looked at me at one moment, and said, “Maman, you are a great lady. Une femme avec grand courage.”

I had smiled faintly as I had thanked him for his compliment.

Yes, I was of good courage, he was correct in that, and if I was a great lady, une grande dame, then it was because I had made myself one.

I had not been born great. Nor had I been born a lady. But I had been born with courage.

Life is hard. It is meant to be hard. To test us, to test our mettle, to break us, or make us. And the lessons of life are equally hard. Yet if we are astute and qukk then we only have to learn those lessons once.

When I was first married to him, Edouard told me that I had the face of a madonna. I had smiled and thanked him and kissed his cheek.

Later, when I was alone, I had peered at myself in the looking glass, searching my face. There was not a line, not a blemish, not a sign of pain nor a mark of sorrow on that face. How could it be that all the anguish I had suffered did not show?

I could not answer that. Perhaps if they cut me open all the suffering I had endured would be visible on my heart.

It was Edouard who made my life livable. He gave me the greatest of all gifts, the gift of happiness. And slowly, and with infinite love, he erased much of my pain.

I missed him. I was lost without him. Mane. Lonely. Devastated by his death, I lived on because I had taught myself to survive years ago

198Barbara Taylor Bradford - -.

when I was a young girl. I knew no other way to be. But I was only marking time, waiting for the day I died, when we would be reunited in another life, the afterlife.

The antique ormolu clock on the white marble mantlepiece began to chime, startling me out of my reverie. I glanced across at it, saw that the golden hands were sitting at three o’clock on the white enamel face.

Then I looked down at the document on the desk. I placed it in the envelope, put that in the small letter case, and locked it. I sighed to myself, returned the case to the drawer of the desk.

I had frequently wondered at different times if there was a grand design, as Edouard had believed, a preordained reason for all the things that happen to a person in the span of a life.

Was I part of some great cosmic pattern? Had Edouard been inter woven into it? Were he and I simply pawns of fate, pawns who fulfilled their destinies when they came together, were joined as man and wife?

Once Edouard had said that what must happen will happen. Nothing can stop it. “Fate rolls along inexorably,” he had said to me. “And you Zoe are my fate. And I am yours, don’t ever doubt that.”

My eyes settled on his photograph in the gold frame on my desk.

It had been taken forty years ago, the year we met and married. He had been fifty-eight then, twenty-five years older than I, but so vital and alive.

I looked into his eyes and my own filled. Oh Edouard, I said to him silently, help me, give me strength.

I have lived in this house for forty years. I came here as a bride, and when I leave it finally, for the last time, it will be in a coffin.

It is then that the house will pass to my son Charles. He will live in it when he visits Paris from Normandy, just as his father and his ances tars did, and one day it will pass to my grandson Gerard.

Our family home has always been regarded as one of the most beautiful houses in the city, the finest hotel particulier, as this type of -grand Parisian house was called. It was located on an elegant street, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, in the fashionable seventh arrondissement on the Left Bank, a district I have always liked.

Those many years ago when I came to live in Paris, I found myself drawn to the Left Bank, preferring it to the Right, for it seemed to have more gaiety and spirit, a marvelous sense of joie de vivre that made me feel buoyant and full of life.

And I am still captivated by its quaint streets and wide boulevards, the small, enticing tree-shaded squares, the little cars, the antique shops, and art galleries.

Now, as it was then, the area is a haven for writers, artists, and the students of the Sorbonne, who all roam around the quartier, gather at the Car Flare and the Cafe’ Deux Magots, to while away the time and watch the world go by, as I once did when I was young.

In contrast, the seventh arrondissement also has an historic faade, visible in the architecture of gracious old houses like mine, the muse urns and the public buildings. Whenever I wish, I can easily walk to the Rodin Museum or the Hotel des Invalides, which houses Napoleon’s tomb.

It was Edouard who first took me there, who explained so much about the Emperor, and gave me my first lesson in French history. I constantly learned from him, and knowledge was yet another of the gifts he gave me.

Or if I feel like it, I can stroll leisurely across to the Luxembourg Palace, to meander for a while through its beautiful gardens, sifting through my memories as I walk. For it is here that I brought my children when they were young, to run and play and be with other children. Those were the truly joyous days of my life, the golden days of their youth.

There is so much life, so much excitement out there on the streets of the Rive Gauche. Yet here, behind the high garden walls, my house is quiet, grown still, now that I am widowed and my children are raised and gone.

When children are small, one never thinks about the day they will spread their fledgling wings and try to fly. No mother ever thinks that day will really come. But it does, and they go with hardly a back ward once. There was no real surprise in this for me. I had always told Edouard that children are only ever lent to us. When the time comes they must be given to the world.

The lovely, gracious rooms in my house are still the same, filled with priceless antiques, paintings and objet d’art, extraordinary possessions my husband’s family accumulated over the centuries, and to which he added throughout his lifetime.

Once these rooms rang with voices and laughter, but they have now been silent for some years. I no longer entertain anymore as Edouard and I once did so brilliantly.

For many years I was considered to be one of the great Parisienne hostesses, renowned for my table and my distinguished guests.

Only the finest quality in food and wines were acceptable to Edouard, who was a perfectionist, and our guests were of the highest quality tooministers from the French Assembly, politicians, and prizewinning writers. And the upper crust of Parisian society, le gratin the most closed and impenetrable circle of the elite, a circle open only to those of the same ilk.

I was in mourning for Edouard for several years, but eventually I put away my widow’s weeds and began to entertain once more but on a smaller scale.

Without him by my side I soon lost the taste for it. There was no purpose in it anymore. I had always done it for him, to please him. I brought the world to him, to entertain him, and he had applauded me for it, loved every moment of it. Once he was no longer here to share them, the luncheons and dinners palled on me, became meaningless, irrelevant.

The back of the house opened onto a large garden, one of the few left in Paris.

Now I stood in the small salon looking out toward that garden on this glorious April afternoon. The gardener had turned on the antique fountains, five of them in all, each one placed in a different part of the garden. From where I was standing I could see them all easily.

Jets of water spraying upward, into the air caught the sunlight, and yet again I realized how clever Edouard had been to add those found tams years ago. They looked so cool, refreshing and pretty in the bright air, and the sound of water was never far from my ears when I was outside.

He had kept the rest of the garden simple. Green lawns were edged by wide borders of perennials in the palest of colors, and encircling the entire garden were tall trees that stood just in front of the high stone walls.

The trees were very old, had been planted by Edouard’s grandfather in 1850. They were mostly horse chestnuts. Their wide and spreading green canopies were cool and inviting on hot summer afternoons or sultry evenings.

Edouard had made the garden beautiful for me, because he knew what it meant to me. I enjoyed sitting out there under the chestnut trees reading. I was a voracious reader and it was Edouard who had encouraged in me the love of books, which I had harbored since being a child. But there were no books available to me in those grim days and no time at all to read. They had worked me too hard and taken away my privacy, and much else beside.

This afternoon there was no time either for reading or going out -into the garden. I had a job to do; I must do it well, in order to protect those things that I held dear. -Turning away from the window, I moved back into the room. The -small salon was decorated in the palest shade of watery green, with a marvelous Aubusson on the floor and eighteenth-century French fumi ture placed in intimate groupings.

In the two large, gilded mirrors above the console tables on either side of the fireplace, I caught sight of myself in one of them as I crossed the salon.

I paused to sroupings.

In the two large, gilded mirrors above the console tables on either side of the fireplace, I caught sight of myself in one of them as I crossed the salon.

I paused to stare.

And to assess.

Earlier, I had changed into a tailored suit of navy blue wool and a -white silk shirt. A pearl choker encircled my throat and pearl studs shone at my ears. My only other jewelry was my plain gold wedding ring and a watch.

202Barbara Taylor Bmord I decided that I looked rather austere but businesslike, which was exactly how I wished to appear.

I nodded, satisfied.

There was a light tap on the door and Hubert came in quickly.

Inclining his head, he said, “Comtesse?”

“Yes, Hubert, what is it?”

“Do you wish tea to be served in here, Madame? Or in the grand salon?”

“I think in here would be preferable, Hubert. Thank you.”

He nodded again and, disappeared as quickly as he had arrived, gliding off on silent feet. Edouard had hired him as a junior houseman twenty-five years ago and he was still here. But now he was the senior butler and in charge of my household.

I sat down on a straight-backed chair to wait for my guest, who was due to arrive momentarily. And as I waited I asked myself how properly to deal with a loose cannon. I had no idea. I pondered this.