Never Leave Me (54 page)

Lisette was scrupulous in making no reference to Luke in her answering letters, but her father continued to document Luke's visits, happily unsuspecting that his information was unwelcome. In 1959 he wrote, jubilant about de Gaulle's return to power, ‘At long last the man destined to govern France is governing her. I can't tell you how happy I am to see
mon cher
General once again in the Elysee Palace. As for Luke, he is to marry a young school teacher from Caen. Her name is Ginette Duboscq and she has been several times to Valmy. She is very pretty and twenty years Luke's junior.'

Lisette put the letter carefully away and hoped that Luke would be happy. She knew now that she never would be. Nothing had changed in her relationship with Greg. There was an unseen barrier between them that was never either scaled or broken down. The memory of the happiness they had known when Melanie had visited them was no longer a comfort to her, but a torment. Her sexual feelings had always been strong. She knew now that it was her own sexuality that had precipitated her affair with Dieter. That had given her the rashness to enter into marriage with a man she barely knew. And that sexuality now had no outlet. She was thirty-four. She was still beautiful, still desirable, but her emotional life was a desert, her inner loneliness absolute.

Very occasionally she received news of Annabel and Melanie. Annabel had continued to keep in sporadic touch with Heloise. Christmas cards were exchanged, postcards sent. A year after Luke remarried, Annabel followed suit. Her new husband was a peer of the realm, a widower, and extremely wealthy. Melanie was fourteen and attending Benenden Girls'School in the depths of the Kent countryside. Lisette's impression was that Melanie was an encumbrance whom Annabel's new husband was quite happy to do without.

Dominic no longer asked about her. He was fifteen, happy in his schoolwork and with a large circle of friends. Despite his disability, Greg's camping trips with him continued. One summer they went as far north as Alaska, another as far south as Oaxaca. There was never any suggestion from Greg that she should accompany them. Those days were over, destroyed by her faithlessness and the death of his love for her.

‘I wish we could go and visit
Grandmére
and
Grandpére
this summer,' Lucy said one afternoon as they sat around the pool. ‘We haven't been back to Valmy for years and years and years, and yet Daddy is always flying to Europe on business trips.'

From a portable transister radio, Connie Francis bemoaned the fact that her lover had lipstick on his collar.

‘Yes, why can't we?' Dominic asked, rolling over on to his stomach, putting down the book he had been reading. ‘We've all got masses of free time in the summer and
Grandmére
and
Grandpére
would love to see us.'

Lisette was grateful for the dark glasses hiding the expression in her eyes. ‘
On verra
,' she said with a slight shrug. ‘We'll see.'

‘Does Daddy visit Valmy when he's in Europe?' Lucy asked interestedly, looking across to the far side of the pool where Greg was asleep.

‘I imagine so,' Lisette said, knowing very well that he did not. Luke's presence so near to Valmy ensured that Greg never paid any visits.

Connie Francis was replaced by a warbling Neil Sedaka.

‘Then it's high time we all went,' Lucy said, stretching her arms high above her head. ‘A lovely, long, lazy summer in Normandy. It will be delicious.'

‘But probably not possible,' Lisette said lightly, trying to keep the strain she was feeling from showing in her voice. ‘
Grandmére
and
Grandpére
go away to Biarritz in the summer.'

Dominic looked at her curiously. ‘But you haven't seen them since we were tiny, Maman. Don't you miss them?'

She flashed him a quick, brilliant smile. ‘
Alors
! Of course I miss them, but we exchange letters nearly every week, and photographs …'

‘
Grandpére
sent me some photographs last week,' Lucy said, delving into the tote bag at her side. ‘I forgot all about them look, here is one of
Grandmére
in the rose garden and here's another of her with Uncle Luke.'

Luke stood with his arm lightly around her mother's shoulders. He was as tall, as dark as ever. He was wearing a turtleneck sweater and jeans, smiling into the camera, an attractive droop of unaffected self-deprecation twisting the corners of his mouth. She put the photograph down quickly and Dominic picked it up.

‘Here's another one,' Lucy was saying. ‘This is one of Uncle Luke's new wife. Doesn't she look pretty? I can't remember what Aunt Annabel looked like. Oh look, here's a dear one of
Grandmére's
two spaniels. Aren't they sweet?'

The photographs were thrust into her hand. Ginette Duboscq was petite and slender with dark hair curling softly around her face and a wide, curving smile.

‘Does Mel ever visit Valmy'? Dominic asked, his brows pulling together in a frown so reminiscent of Dieter that Lisette's heart jerked in her chest.

‘I don't think so,' she said unsteadily, and then, as his eyes sharpened with concern at the tone of her voice, added with a smile and a laugh, ‘But,
on ne sais jamais, mon cher.
One never knows.'

Lucy began to chatter about school and girlfriends and the photographs were put away. Lisette felt inexpressible relief. There were times when she wondered if Luke's removal to Normandy had been executed with the same callousness which had prompted him to tell Annabel not only that he no longer loved her, but that he had never loved her. While he was a regular visitor to Valmy, visits by herself were impossible. He had ensured, either intentionally or unintentionally, that she could not return home.

A maid came out to inform Lucy that there was a caller for her. ‘Oh gosh, that'll be Rod,' she said, scrambling to her feet. ‘We're going to the movies, to see Charlton Heston in
Ben Hur.
'Bye mom. See you later.' She gave Lisette a hurried kiss and dashed into the house.

‘My siesta is over as well,' Dominic said, rising to his feet. ‘I promised Alec I'd play baseball this afternoon.'

‘Will you be in for dinner,
chéri
?' she asked, looking at him with pride as he picked up his book. At fifteen he was already six foot tall, with broad shoulders, and the same air of utter assurance that his father had possessed.

‘Maybe. I'll give you a ring later this afternoon.' He grinned down at her as he passed her sun-lounger. He adored her, and had never considered it a threat to his masculinity to show how much. His Fingers squeezed her shoulder affectionately and then he was gone, and Greg said quietly, ‘You won't, of course, allow them to go.'

She had known that he had overheard. That he had simply been waiting for Dominic and Lucy to leave before speaking.

‘To Valmy?' she said with the cool lack of expression that had become a habit over the years. ‘No, of course not.'

He looked across at her, his eyes narrow, the lines of his face harsh. A moment ago Lucy had unwittingly shown Dominic photographs of his father and Lisette had watched her do so and had not even flinched. He wondered what her feelings had been, and he wondered if Henri had sent other photographs of Luke. Photographs that had never been shown.

‘If Lucy and Dominic want to visit Heloise and Henri, it might be possible for them to do so,' he said, watching her carefully. ‘Not at Valmy, of course, but perhaps they could join Heloise and Henri at Biarritz.'

She was wearing a one-piece swimming costume of kingfisher blue, the sun golden on her skin, her hair falling softly to her shoulders. It was impossible to imagine that she had a son of fifteen. In the merciless afternoon sunlight she didn't look a day over twenty-five.

Her eyes widened, the irises almost purple, the thick sweep of her lashes lustrous. ‘But that would be a wonderful idea, Greg!'

He knew if he suggested that she accompany them that she could quite easily see Luke. Biarritz was only a day's hard drive from Bayeux. He could see the homesickness in her eyes, hear it in her voice.

‘Why don't you go with them?' he said, hating to see her unhappiness, knowing that a reunion between herself and Luke was a risk he must take.

Her eyes shone and she sprang instinctively to her feet, crossing to his side as if about to give him a kiss of thanks. He moved swiftly, picking up the portable telephone at the side of his sun-lounger, freezing her spontaneous gesture almost the instant it was made.

‘I want a Toronto number,' he said tersely to the operator.

She halted a few feet away from him and he knew he had only to raise his eyes to hers and that she would step forward again. He didn't do so. Only by freezing all his desire for her could he continue to live with her in the travesty of their marriage. His sexual energies were expended elsewhere. With women he knew were not motivated by pity. Women who had no guilt to purge, or a sense of duty to fulfil.

‘Thank you,
chéri
,' she said hesitantly, and then, as he continued with his telephone call, she turned on her heel and walked disconsolately away.

For two consecutive years she spent July and August in Biarritz in the company of her children and her parents. She spoke nothing but French from the moment she set foot on French soil to the moment she left, much to the exasperation of Lucy who spoke hardly a word. Dominic loved Biarritz because he could surf to his heart's delight. Lisette loved it because, if she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself on the beach below Valmy. Imagine that she was at home again.

The Kennedys were in the White House and on her visits to France she felt proud of both the country of her birth and America. Ever since the presidential visit to Paris in 1961, France had taken Jacqueline Kennedy to its heart.

‘She is marvellous,' her father said to her as they strolled together on the promenade, ‘so dark-haired and pretty and chic. Just like you.' She had laughed and told him not to be silly, but she, too, admired Jacqueline Kennedy enormously and when she went back to America she involved herself more and more in Democratic fund-raising activities.

In 1963 her father wrote to her saying that they would not be vacationing in Biarritz that year. He had suffered ill health all through the winter and Heloise was taking the unprecedented step of closing her apartment in Paris and joining him at Valmy. He hoped that she and the children would join them there for the summer.

‘No,' Greg said tightly when she showed him the letter. ‘Under no circumstances.'

She had not argued with him, but she was aware of an increasing sense of bewilderment. It had been nine years since that hideous day at the cottage in Carmel. She had neither seen nor corresponded with Luke since. Greg's nature was not a vindictive one. He was a generous man. A compassionate man. Yet there was an almost frightening glitter in his eyes whenever Valmy was mentioned, and she knew it was because he was thinking of Luke. Of Luke's nearness to Valmy. Of his frequent bi-weekly visits there.

‘If we're not going to Biarritz, can I go with the Morgans to Hawaii?' Lucy asked, applying amethyst-blue shadow to her eyelids and studying the result with interest.

‘I imagine so,' Lisette said equably, watching as Lucy applied more eye shadow, knowing that interference would be unwelcome.

‘Dominic is going back-packing in Europe. He's going to travel through Belgium and into Germany and then go down into Italy. He says he may even cross over into Africa.'

‘I thought he wanted to go through France and into Spain,' Lisette said as generous applications of eye-liner and mascara completed Lucy's toilette.

‘He's changed his mind. He wants to practise his German and he wants to see the Alps and drink red Chianti in the Tuscany hills.' She surveyed her handiwork in the mirror and then looked up at her mother, a slight frown puckering her brows. ‘Why are you looking so pensive, Mom? Are you envying him Rome and Venice and Florence?'

Lisette gave her a quick smile. ‘Yes,' she lied. ‘Of course I am.' But she wasn't. She was thinking of him visiting his father's country. She was remembering Dieter telling her about his childhood. About walks in the Schoneberger Volkspark, iced lemonade at the Hotel Adlon, chocolate cake at Sacher's. For days there had been no escaping thoughts of Berlin. The newspapers had been full of accounts of President Kennedy's visit there. He had stood, looking out over the wall that divided the city, and proclaimed ‘
Ich bin ein Berliner
!' ‘I am a Berliner.' Lisette had felt the tears burn the backs of her eyes. Dieter would not have resented John F. Kennedy's presence in Berlin. And he would have applauded his words.

‘Why don't you make a trip to Italy this summer, Mom?' Lucy asked her, swinging round on her dressing-table stool, her honey-brown eyes so like Greg's, concerned. ‘You're going to be very lonely in San Francisco this summer. Daddy is going to London to receive treatment from this new neurosurgeon that he has found. Dominic will be in Europe. I shall be in Hawaii. What on earth will you do with yourself until we return?'

‘I shall be very busy,' Lisette said firmly. ‘I'm on so many charity and Democratic fund-raising committees that I've lost count. I have a series of talks to give to women's groups on French art and literature. I have the French classes I give to deprived children. My diary is exceptionally full and I doubt if I will have time to miss any of you.'

Lucy grinned. ‘Of course you'll miss us,' she said, rising to her feet and picking up her purse. ‘See you later, Mom. I'll be in by ten. 'Bye.'

‘
Au revoir chérie
,' Lisette said, her smile fading as her daughter whirled from the room. She stared at her reflection in Lucy's dressing-table mirror. She would be busy as she always was. And she would be lonely. In all her years in America she had made no real friends of her own. The friends that she lunched with and played bridge with, the friends she visited the theatre and the art galleries with, were Greg's friends as well as hers. There was no one else she could talk to. No one with whom she could be herself. Lisette de Valmy, unhappily married to a man she loved too much to leave.