Destiny (13 page)

The truth was that Jean-Paul resented Edouard's seeing Celestine, and never lost an opportunity to tease his brother about it. At first, the teasing had been quite casual: coarsely put questions as to Edouard's progress, which Edouard had carefully avoided answering. Then Jean-Paul had started plying him with other addresses and telephone numbers, and had been noticeably irritated when he discovered Edouard had used none of them.

"You're not still seeing her?" he had said about two months after Edouard's first visit. "Little brother—I'm beginning to think you didn't listen to all those things I said. . . ."

So, to protect himself and Celestine, Edouard would he. When the lies

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made him uneasy, he tried simply to be evasive. He didn't deny he was seeing Celestine, but he didn't volunteer the information either. It made no difference. Somehow, Jean-Paul knew. His latest tactic was to refer to Edouard's involvement in public, at every opportunity.

"My little brother's in love," he had said the previous night, when he and Edouard and Isobel were alone. "Head over heels. Bouleverse. What do you think, Isobel—sweet, isn't it?"

The emerald eyes flashed across the room at Edouard. Isobel smiled a slow secretive smile.

"Charming. Edouard has a heart."

"And with a tart too. The original tart with a heart of gold. Forty-six, forty-seven maybe. And very experienced ... So they say."

Edouard clenched his fists; the desire to hit his brother was almost overwhelming. He moved quickly to the door, aware, even through his anger, that he was being used. Jean-Paul seemed to want to hurt him, but his remarks were also being directed at Isobel in some way. Hostility was sharp in the air. Isobel stood up.

"What do you understand of experience?" Her voice was icy.

"More than you, evidently." Jean-Paul shrugged.

"Fumblings in taxis. Gropings. Darling, you really are a terrible peasant sometimes. I think I'll go home."

She reached for her furs. Jean-Paul's face took on a mulish look. He sat down and put his feet up with conscious rudeness.

"As you wish. I have plans for this evening. They don't depend upon you."

Isobel swept out. On the stairs she clasped Edouard's arm.

"Darling Edouard. My car's outside, but I don't want to drive. Be an angel. Take me home, will you?"

The car was a Derby Bentley. They drove through the silence of the blacked-out streets, past shelters and roadblocks, past the great darkness of the park, to the gray bulk of Conway House at the foot of Park Lane. Isobel lit a cigarette; she said nothing until Edouard pulled up. Then she flicked the glowing stub of the cigarette carelessly out the window.

"When the war ends. If it ever ends—" She paused. "That's what we're waiting for. The end of the war. Then we'll get married." She glanced down at the emerald on her finger and twisted it. Then she looked up at Edouard over the collar of her furs and smiled.

"I won't sleep with him. That's the thing, you see. It wounds his vanity terribly. He says I'm cold. Heartless." She gave a low laugh. "I don't think I am. Do you, Edouard?"

Edouard had no chance to answer her. She leaned across and kissed him

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on the lips. A slow kiss. He smelled her expensive scent, tasted her lipstick, felt the furs brush his cheek. Then she drew back.

"Darling Edouard. I'm so glad you're in love. I hope you're terribly happy."

Edouard walked back. He skirted the closed park and walked north to Maida Vale. He stood in the street and stared up at the window of Celes-tine's bedroom. It was one of the nights when the gentleman from Hove visited London. According to Celestine, the old man wasn't capable of making love anymore. He liked to talk, very occasionally to kiss a httle. It was nothing. It meant nothing. Edouard stared at the blacked-out window in an agony of doubt. Then he slowly walked home to Eaton Square. That had been a few weeks before. The incident had not been referred to again, and since then Edouard had avoided his brother. So he had not talked to him about Celestine, or Jean-Paul's engagement, or the infidehties of their mother.

Once he would have done so. Not now.

0

^unday, December 7, 1941, was the day the course of the war changed k/decisively. It was the day before Edouard's sixteenth birthday. He knew that on the actual day of his anniversaire there would be no escape from his family. There would be a luncheon at Eaton Square, and in the evening Jean-Paul and some of his cronies were taking him out. Jean-Paul had planned the expedition, with many accompanying winks and nudges, for months. Edouard knew he could not refuse.

So he intended to spend the day before his birthday with Celestine: he would celebrate it then, in the way he wanted, with the one person in London who mattered to him.

He wanted to take Celestine out to dinner, but she firmly refused. They might be seen; it would not be prudent; no, no. So, in the end, they agreed to spend the afternoon together. They would not stay in her flat, Edouard insisted; they would go out; they would go to Hampstead Heath. To Edouard, who dreamed of walking with Celestine through the parks of Paris, or—better still—through the chestnut woods and water meadows of his father's estates in the Loire, this expedition, long planned, took on the prospect of an idyll. When he woke that morning and saw the sun shone, he was not surprised. On such a day, what else could it do?

He met Celestine at her flat, and in her small sitting room she pirouetted for him shyly.

"You like it? You hke my new costume? It took so many coupons—say you like it, Edouard! I chose it for you."

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Edouard looked at her. It was one of the very few occasions on which he had seen Celestine dressed, and with a lurchingly painful sense of guilt and betrayal, he knew he was disappointed. Celestine's body was made for undress; in lingerie, half-revealed, half-hidden with wisps of silk and ribbons and lace, she looked entrancing. Dressed, her mysteries were dulled.

The new suit was bright blue—too blue, and of a cheap shiny utility material. It was a little too tight over her full breasts and wonderful hips; the seams of her black market stockings were not straight; the blouse was fussy and ill cut, and her hat, perched jauntily on the pile of reddish-gold curls, was too young for her. In the same second Edouard felt disappointment—and self-hatred for his own disloyalty. Quickly he kissed her, and at the touch of her lips he felt instantly reassured.

"Celestine—my darUng. It's lovely. You are lovely. . . ."

He shut his eyes and buried his face against her neck. When he took her back to Paris it would be different. It was just that she was poor, that was all, which made his disloyalty all the worse. When she was in France with him, she would dress like a queen. He would take her to the collections, teach her; she would quickly learn.

On the heath it was windy, and Edouard's spirits soared. It was hke being in the country—almost like being in the country. There was a shght mist, and from here the desolation wrought by the bombing was almost invisible; they climbed the hill beyond the lakes and stood looking out over the city; they could see through the mist the clusters of barrage balloons and the dome of St. Paul's. Edouard wanted to run and jump and shout and make the rooks rise from the bare branches, but Celestine's shoes had heels that sank into the mud, and so they had to keep to the paths. By the time they reached the top of the slope, she was out of breath.

"Mow dieu. " She pressed her little hand to her heart. "Edouard, do you always walk so fast?"

"Never. Only today. Because today I'm so happy." He put his arms around her and kissed her. Celestine smiled.

"Then in future I shall walk with you only when you are sad . . . Edouard. Stop that. Someone may see us. ..."

"I don't care. Let them. I want the world to see us, so there." He kissed her again.

"Sois tranquille. Tu es mechant, tu sais?" She reproved him, but she smiled. Eventually Edouard took off his cashmere overcoat and persuaded her to sit on it with him on the grass. They sat quietly, looking out over London. After a little while Celestine opened her handbag and took out a small parcel. It was tied with pink ribbon.

"For you." She pressed it into his hands, blushing. "For your birthday. I hope you hke it. It was very difficult—I wanted to find you something you

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would like, and . . . well, it is the color of your eyes. Not quite perhaps, but nearly."

Edouard unwrapped the parcel. Inside was a tie of very bright blue imitation silk. Quickly he pressed her to him.

"Darling—it's beautiful. How clever you are. You shouldn't have . . . look. I shall put it on at once."

He quickly pulled off the hand-stitched foulard silk bought by the dozen from Jermyn Street, and stuffed it into his pocket.

Celestine helped him fasten the new tie around his neck. Then she looked at it doubtfully; against the pale gray of his Prince of Wales check suit, the blue looked brighter than ever.

"Oh, Edouard. I'm not sure. In the shop the color looked very pretty. But now ..."

"It's beautiful. Whenever I wear it I shall think of you. Thank you, Celestine."

Celestine smiled. She rested her head happily against his shoulder.

"It's nice here," she said at last. "I'm glad we came, Edouard."

"We'll come here again. Lots of times." He pressed her hand tight. "And to other places too. Oh, Celestine, when the war ends . . . think, just think, of all the places I can take you then. . . ."

He paused, wondering if now was the moment, wondering whether he dared tell her about Paris, the little flat, the furniture he planned to buy. But Celestine sat up.

"Don't. Please, Edouard, don't. Don't talk about the future, not now. I just want to think about today, and being here, and feeling so happy. . . ."

"Why? Why, Celestine?" He turned to her impulsively. "Can't you see I want to talk about the future, and you always stop me? It makes me happy to think ahead, to plan, to . . ."

"To dream." Very slowly she turned to him, and to his dismay he saw the contentment had left her face, and her eyes were full of tears.

"Celestine—don't. Please don't. I can't bear to see you cry—my darling, don't." He tried to kiss the tears away, tried to kiss her lips, but Celestine stopped him gently.

"Dearest Edouard." Her voice was very soft. "You know it can't go on. Not hke this. It just can't. If you think about it, you'll know I am right."

Edouard stared at her, then quickly bent and buried his face against her breasts.

"Don't say that. Don't. I love you. You know I love you. If you left me, if it ended, I'd die. . . ."

His voice shook with passion, and Celestine sighed. She put her arms around him and held him tight. She thought that she loved him, yes, she, a

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woman of her experience, forty-seven years old, loved a boy of sixteen, and she had known it for months, months. Last love and first love: both equally painful. She dried her eyes. It was important, she thought, that Edouard never know.

"People don't die of love." She lifted his face to hers and smiled, her voice growing brisker. "You think so now—but they don't. Old age, sickness, rifle shots—but not broken hearts. You'll see one day. Look! I shall make you a prediction!" Her voice became almost gay. "One day—some years from now maybe—you'll have to think quite hard to remember my name. And then it will come to you, and you'll say, 'Ah, yes, Celestine, that was it. I was fond of her once. I wonder what's become of her now?' And by the time you do that ..." Her lips curved. "By that time I shall be a very old lady, extremely respectable—a little ill-tempered perhaps, especially first thing in the morning. With gray hair. And some memories —memories I shall discuss with no one, naturally, of when I was perhaps a little less respectable, a little less straightlaced." She stood up, took his hand, and drew him to his feet. Edouard looked at her sulkily, and Celestine laughed and tucked his arm through hers.

"Now. Stop looking so sad. I am happy again—you see? This is our special afternoon, and already you are cross with me. Come, Edouard. I have had enough of your fresh air. Take me home. ..."

In her flat, in bed, Edouard made love to her feverishly, as if he could force the memory of her words away with every thrust into her flesh. When they both lay back, exhausted, he turned to her fiercely. He looked down into her flushed face; he looked at the red-gold hair tumbled across the pillow; he thought of his mother in Hugo Glendinning's arms. He gripped Celestine's shoulders very tightly.

"Tell me. Tell me, Celestine. Tell me there is no one else."

Celestine looked up into his blazing eyes, into that fierce young face. The visits from other gentlemen she had terminated some months previously; her protector did not count. It was not a state of affairs she could allow to continue; she knew that in her heart.

She pressed her lips gently against his throat. "There is no one else now."

"For how long? How long, Celestine?"

"I don't know. Cheri, I don't know. . . ."

He started to pull away from her angrily, and she clasped his wrist. "Edouard, please, don't be angry. Don't you see? I don't want to lie to you."

He got up from the bed and stood for a moment looking down at her, his brows drawn together in an angry scowl. "I wish you would then, at

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least sometimes. It might be easier." Then he pulled on his clothes and flung out of the flat. It was their first serious quarrel.

Edouard caught a cab home, slammed the front door savagely before the startled Parsons could reach it, and stormed up the stairs to the drawing room. He flung open the door and found a crowd of people: his mother; Lady Isobel; Hugo; the French ambassador and his wife; a group of French officers; Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul advanced on him, his face flushed, a champagne bottle held aloft.

"He's back just in time. Little brother, come and join us. We're celebrating . . . you haven't heard the news? The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor this morning. They bombed the American fleet. . . ."