One for the Gods (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (2 page)

“Peter went to Paris last week, didn’t he?” Guy asked, abruptly dropping his bantering tone.

“Yes. He’s working on a deal.”

“I know about it. He’s trying to get some things from the de Belleville collection. It will be a triumph if he succeeds. They’ve never parted with so much as a spoon, though God knows they need the money.”

“I hope he manages it. It’s for a very important client.”

“Oh, he’ll doubtless charm them out of everything they possess. He came back Thursday, didn’t he?”

“Did he? Yes, of course. He took the Wednesday night train back.”

“Do you think it at all curious that Jean-Claude was away on Wednesday night? He and Anne were to have dinner with us, but he dropped out at the last minute. He said he had to see some friends in Cannes.”

Charlie’s heart felt suddenly strained and heavy. The muscles of his face were stiff, but he managed a smile. “You
are
a troublemaker, aren’t you? I really don’t see how Peter on a train has any connection with Jean-Claude in Cannes.”

“You’re sure he was on the train?”

“Of course. He called me from Paris on Wednesday and was back Thursday morning.” He was getting angry now, angry with Guy for such outright bitchery, for forcing into the open the agonizing thoughts he had been trying to suppress, angry with himself for permitting suspicions that left all his nerves feeling raw and exposed.

“I’m no doubt imagining things,” Guy said. “I shouldn’t have said anything but all is permitted in love and war,
n’est-ce pas?
”

“Of course,” Charlie said cuttingly. “It’s a familiar story. Some people can’t stand seeing two people living happily together. This whole conversation bores me.”

They were saved further acrimony by a pause ahead; the others had reached the shade of the trees and stood waiting to regroup.

“We remind me of some idyllic Renoir,” Madeleine de Montrécy exclaimed in her chuckling fruity voice as Charlie and Guy approached. “Look at us. I think we’re too lovely for words.”

“None of us is nearly round enough,” Peter objected. They all laughed as they set off once more on a path through the scattered trees. Peter detached himself from the Courtins and fell into step beside Charlie. As he did so, they looked deep into each other’s eyes and told each other, invisibly to anybody else, how pleased they were to be together. Charlie put his hand on Peter’s neck and gave it a squeeze. As he dropped his hand, he allowed it to brush against Peter’s bottom in a discreet caress, reaffirming his possession of his body. The look and the physical contact assured him that his suspicions were absurd. He and Peter existed only for each other.

After a few moments they emerged from the woods onto the broad curve of sand. They straggled across it, blinded, to the water’s edge. The sea was held by two rocky promontories in a still, blue cove, hissing faintly as it rippled up over the gently shelving shore. There was nobody else in sight. In a moment, they had taken possession of their chosen area. Towels were flung out, shirts and shorts were dropped, they all milled about together, nearly naked, copper-brown from the sun, exchanging and applying lotions and oils, settling themselves in. Madeleine had been right; they made a lovely ensemble, with the exception of Harry, who was hairily bullish with a sullen, sensual face, and Madeleine herself, who, being fortyish, required courage to display herself with the others but carried it off with an air. She was the only one who had passed beyond that magical time between the early twenties and the early thirties when age can mercifully be forgotten. Anne Courtin had a sweet, immobile child’s face with staring devouring eyes and a grown child’s body with adorable breasts softly nestling within the meager confines of her bikini top. Jean-Claude Courtin offered a startling contrast to his sister. The tallest of the group, his dark brows swooped dramatically, his eyes were soft and liquid, his mouth ripe. His long-limbed body was sleek and smoothly fleshed with little muscular definition, rich and voluptuous. Genevieve, Madeleine’s friend, had a trim, elegant boy’s body, as did Guy. Charlie and Peter, the two “blond gods” as they had sometimes, embarrassingly, been called, were physically very nearly twins, yet Charlie gave an impression of athletic masculinity that in Peter was somehow converted into delicacy and gentle harmony.

They were all wearing the minimal garment that the French call straightforwardly a
cache-sexe,
a sex-hider. It performed its function with reasonable discretion except in the case of Charlie, whose prodigious parts seemed to strain at the scrap of cloth at his loins, emphasized and magnified by it. Eyes roved, were held, dutifully dropped, returned to it. They all reacted in their various ways. Madeleine, after a long and detailed scrutiny, decided that it was vulgar and typically American; the Americans were always guilty of excess. Guy lusted to see it in action. Anne, knowing her brother’s tastes, wondered how he could have chosen Peter. Harry angrily envied it; with a thing like that he wouldn’t have to go on hanging around Guy. He could have the whole world. Peter felt his usual twinge of proud jealousy at its exposure, Genevieve stared with fascinated horror, seeing in it all that she loathed and feared in men. Jean-Claude had earlier abandoned any hope of possessing it and resented it now for its hold over Peter.

Charlie was so accustomed to the attention he was attracting that he was scarcely aware of it and in due course stretched out on his stomach on a towel. Others dropped into supine positions. Madeleine finished unfolding an object she had been carrying, which turned out to be a backrest with a small parasol attached. Jean-Claude and Anne stood in front of each other, painstakingly applying oil to every available inch of themselves. Peter picked up a shell lying at his feet and studied it for a moment before dropping it in front of Charlie.

“Pretty,” he said. He wandered off, studying the sand. He was an inveterate beachcomber.

Madeleine engaged Charlie in conversation about painting. Names rolled off her lips with impressive familiarity; she knew everybody who had ever made a mark in the Paris art world. She implied that she was prepared to take Charlie under her wing. He didn’t bother to point out that Peter was a highly qualified dealer, which she knew, and had always handled the business side of his work. He didn’t believe in blurring the line between work and social contact. Just because they had been properly introduced, how did Madeleine know he was worth being taken under her wing? She had probably seen the two things Peter had allowed him to sell to Guy, but they were little more than quick working studies. He sensed here among the people he had met a self-satisfied cliquishness he didn’t like; if one knew the right people, one would be launched. He took pride in his independent solitary struggle; he had found in it a solid core of self-respect. As he chatted, his eyes roamed, watching the others.

Harry had plunged into the sea. Peter was halfway down to the western promontory, moving slowly, crouching frequently and digging about in the sand. Jean-Claude and Anne were nearby, still oiling each other. He heard them murmuring together and then they set off, arms draped around each other, in Peter’s direction. He felt the clogging around his heart again and his muscles tensed. Should he follow? Jesus. Didn’t Peter have the right to stroll on the beach without being spied on? Anyway, Anne was there. He breathed deeply and slowly relaxed, but he remained watchful as he responded politely to Madeleine. He saw the brother and sister slowly overtake Peter, who gave no sign that he was aware of their approach. When they joined him, Peter suspended his search long enough to show them something he had found; they stood close together as they passed it around among themselves. The grouping dissolved and the Courtins moved on ahead, pausing frequently and turning back as Peter crouched over another find. They were nearing the end of the promontory. Before they reached it, Peter stopped and straightened and stood alone for a moment before making a running dive into the sea. Jean-Claude and Anne turned back and waved, but continued on their way. Charlie’s eye was caught by a rock formation behind them and for some minutes he forgot his surveillance as he explored its forms and colors, making compositions in his mind. When he returned with a mental jolt to the world around him, he immediately scanned the empty sea. Out there where the beach ended and the shore became a tumble of rocks, Peter’s bobbing head would blend into the landscape. Anne was clearly visible perched out on the very end of the promontory. Jean-Claude wasn’t with her. In one swift movement, Charlie was on his feet, brushing sand off his arms. Guy was immediately at his side.

“
C’est magnifique,”
he said, his eyes fixed on Charlie’s crotch. “
Mes hommages
. Why don’t we all take everything off? We can be naked here. I don’t believe in exercising my imagination needlessly.”

Something seemed to explode in Charlie’s mind. Revulsion shook him. All these people were vile. He wanted to find Peter and take him away from here. He wasn’t worried about Jean-Claude. Peter would be no more interested in his advances than Charlie was in Guy’s, but the atmosphere made him feel dirty, dirty for Peter as well as for himself. It seethed with sex; these people had nothing else to think about. He was tempted to tear off his trunks in an act of provocation and defiance. His hand went to the fastening as he looked at Guy with a dangerous smile. The thought of Peter restrained him; Peter would hate for him to expose himself, even without any sexual connotation.

“I think I’m in favor of the imagination,” he said.

Guy laughed. “You lead me on. Very well. I’m very clever and very persistent. It will make the summer exciting.”

Will it now? Charlie thought. He should have made more of the opportunity to get away when it presented itself a week or two ago, but he hadn’t known how to without hurting Peter’s feelings. The summer had been Peter’s idea. When they had come to Europe before, it had been on Peter’s business and they hadn’t had time to really absorb it. It had been Peter’s idea to give Charlie a chance to work in new surroundings, in a new light, surrounded by new forms. He had found the house and made all the arrangements. It would have been unkind to suggest so soon that it wasn’t working out. Still, he could invite the Kingsleys for dinner and encourage them to talk to Peter about Greece. It might work.

As Peter rounded the promontory and headed into the next bay, he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Jean-Claude climbing along the rocks after him. His heart accelerated so that it became difficult to swim. He let his legs drop and eased over onto his back and floated, waiting for the excitement to subside. He could still turn around and go back to the others. There was no point in a brief encounter with Jean-Claude out here; it would only add to the weight of guilt and frustration that had been accumulating in him for the last few days.

Frustration, really, more than guilt, frustration at being able to have only brief secret moments with Jean-Claude. He supposed he ought to feel more guilty but he knew he wasn’t really doing anything bad to Charlie, given the circumstances. He could even imagine making a case for himself in the inconceivable event that he had the opportunity to do so. It had nothing to do with their life together. He was as much in love with Charlie as ever. He hadn’t asked to be struck by a sudden uncontrollable infatuation with Jean-Claude. It had happened, and surely it was better to do something about it and get over it than to let it eat away at everything that was most precious to them both. It had been getting so that he couldn’t make love successfully with Charlie without thinking of Jean-Claude. If that trick had failed—it was too appalling to think about.

Of course, he couldn’t hope for Charlie to accept any of this, any more than he would, if the situation were reversed. If he caught Charlie doing what he’d been doing, he would kill him, or kill himself, or both probably. Then why was he doing it?

In the past, when he had been violently attracted to someome, the normal complications of life had always given him time to reason himself out of it. Meeting places had to be arranged. Stories had to be invented. By the time you did all that, you realized it wasn’t worth it. Here, living as they did, practically naked all day long, a look was almost as complete a commitment as an embrace, and the final step was such a small one that it seemed idiotic not to take it, like a swimmer up to his waist in water making a big fuss about getting wet all over. He had as good as been to bed with Jean-Claude before they had even touched each other. That was the only thing that had made it possible to take the vast and almost unimaginable step of being unfaithful after all these years. He had fought it and resisted it and had been terrified by what he had sensed it was doing to him. Life without loving Charlie was a contradiction in terms.

Life
was
Charlie and always had been since he had first set eyes on him, not even knowing that passion between two men was possible. Even after Charlie had banished him from his life and got married, even when he was more or less doing the streets of New York, changing bedmates every night and sometimes a couple of times during the day, too, it had never changed, even though he had longed and prayed for it to. Charlie had only to say the word to get him back. Always Charlie, so that he had been quite unprepared to cope with the predicament of Jean-Claude.

He had been tempted to extricate himself by advocating the Kingsleys’ Greek project, but he was afraid Charlie would suspect something after all the trouble he had taken to arrange the St. Tropez summer. Besides, he had looked into Jean-Claude’s eyes once too often; the commitment had been made.