Perfect Freedom (17 page)

After lunch Helene left the house to carry a light bundle of laundry up to the well. Robbie was finishing the dishes and Stuart lingered behind with him.

“I guess you'll be pretty glad not to have to do this any more when you're at school,” Stuart said conversationally.

“Am I going to school?”

“Of course. In the fall. You'll be ready to start whatever they call it here. What we call high school. The lycée, I think.”

“I don't see what good it'll do. I like being at home,” he said.

“Well, I don't suppose you'll necessarily get a better education but there's lots besides books to learn at school. It'll be good for you to be with kids your own age.”

“All the kids I've ever known have been silly.”

“That's just it,” Stuart said. “You haven't known very many. It's time you had friends your own age. This is an important period for you. There're so many things to learn. You know, it's not going to be long before you start getting interested in girls.”

“I'm never going to be interested in girls,” Robbie muttered. He had finished putting things away and now spread the dishtowel out to dry like a good little housewife. Yes, he needed roughing up. He turned, pushing the hair back from his forehead with the flat of his hand. Stuart was struck by his resemblance to Helene. His skin was dark, his lips curved like hers to reveal even white teeth. Going to be a hell of a good-looking guy, Stuart thought. He smiled and settled back against the table, preparing to take the plunge.

“Most boys your age think that,” he said, “but they change their minds later. Sex can sometimes seem a big problem at your age. Things like masturbation, for instance—” Stuart got the word out with commendable ease and paused to congratulate himself.

“What's that?” Robbie inquired with the interest he always showed at a new word.

“Well, you know you can get a sexual thrill by yourself. Every boy does it at one time or another. Later on when you grow up, it just stops being interesting.” A pinched look had come into Robbie's face but Stuart admired the steadiness with which the boy looked at him. He was straight. He wasn't all tied up in knots.

“I don't want to go to school,” Robbie said flatly. He was thinking: So it isn't anything special after all.

“School can be more fun than you think. Anything new is apt to seem a little frightening. But I'm sure you'll like it once you're there. You're—”

“I don't want to go to school,” Robbie cut in.

“Now wait a minute.” Stuart stood and straightened the boy's collar. “What is all this?”

Robbie tore himself free and backed away, his eyes wide and fixed on his father. “I won't go. You can't make me. Mother won't let you. You wait and see. She wants me to stay with her.”

Stuart stared at him. This behavior was so unprecedented that he couldn't think what to do. Should he give him a good spanking? At this moment of indecision Helene returned. She came in with a bantering word for Robbie on her lips and then stood stock still. Stuart turned toward her and her eyes traveled swiftly from him to Robbie.

“What's the matter?” she said sharply.

Stuart made a bewildered gesture. “I wish I knew,” he said. “We were just talking about—”

“Don't you tell her,” Robbie screamed. He flung himself savagely on his father. Stuart hadn't realized how big he had grown. He staggered under the attack.

“Why, you little fool,” he cried. He seized the boy by the arms and shook him.

“If you tell her, I'll kill you. I'll kill you. Don't say it.” Tears were beginning to choke his voice but he struggled viciously in Stuart's grip. His only thought was that this new word must not be spoken in front of his mother. He kicked out blindly at Stuart, who shook him so that his head wobbled giddily. Helene was beside them.

“Let him go. Do you hear me? Let him go. You devil, let him go.” Stuart released him with a little shove and he fell to the floor, sobbing hysterically and beating the floor with his fists. Stuart looked at him with astonishment. In an instant a quiet, well-behaved intelligent child—not such a child anymore—had become this crazy little animal. Stuart pulled himself together and straightened his sweater.

“Get up this instant,” he commanded before Helene had time to make a move toward the boy. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” He leaned over and seized Robbie's arm and pulled him to his feet. “Get up like a man and go to your room. I'll deal with you later when you've had time to think things over.” Robbie staggered toward his door and Helene started after him.

“Wait.” Stuart gripped her arm firmly as Robbie's door closed after him. She drew her arm away from him.

“If you have something to say, say it,” she said. “I don't want to leave him alone.”

“I want him left alone until I decide what to do with him,” Stuart said. Had she called him a devil? “I think we'd better talk this over.” He went to the front door.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“We can talk more freely outside.”

“But I can't leave him like this,” she announced. The sound of muffled sobbing came to them from the next room. Stuart held the front door open.

“I tell you I want him left alone for the moment.”

She sighed and preceded him out the door. It was a clear cold sunny afternoon and the sea glittered as coldly as cut diamonds. He directed their steps up the glade past the olive trees.

“What is it he didn't want you to tell me?” she asked when they were out of earshot of the house.

“God knows. I was talking about his going to school next year when he suddenly started snarling at me like a panther. Then you came in. I must say you weren't much help.” In retrospect the episode began to acquire comic overtones and Stuart laughed briefly.

“I wish you'd tell me the whole thing from the beginning,” she said. The sight of him shaking Robbie and hurling him to the floor seemed to her no laughing matter.

“There's not much to tell. I was talking to him in a general sort of way about how being with boys his own age would be a good thing when life's little problems began to crop up, like girls and so forth.” He had no intention of mentioning what he had seen that morning or uttering the dread word. Respect for Robbie's privacy? Male solidarity?

“I might have known it,” she said, almost with a shudder of loathing. It was one of the things she couldn't bear about Robbie's going to school. He would be corrupted, dragged off to bordellos, perhaps get seriously involved with some girl. “Do you have to force your preoccupation with sex on him? Can't you understand that he might have sensibilities that you know nothing about?”

“Oh God, I want him to be a man, not a plaster saint.”

“All men don't feel they have to run around having sordid little affairs to prove their virility.” The words were out before she could stop herself. They implied a reproach and it was by not reproaching him that she denied him the opportunity of making amends. She added more mildly, “I don't see why you need harp so on sex. It's nothing he's worried about.”

They had reached a sunny spot on the rocks and they stood facing each other. He touched her arm and sat down but she remained standing in front of him, her hands plunged into the pockets of her short leather coat.

“Let's talk about it,” he began. “Of course he's beginning to think about sex. Whether we like it or not, in another four or five years he'll be grown up. I think you've been wonderful with him up until now. I wish I'd had the same sort of home life he's had. It would have given me some roots. But I don't think we have any more to offer him. We can't let anything stand in the way of his school in the fall.” Stuart paused, surprised at himself. He had always valued his rootlessness. The last months had tried him more severely than he had realized. He felt a new uncertainty, a wistful sense of homelessness, of being excluded.

“How can we afford it?”

“We'll have to, even if it means cutting down still more.”

“Why do you make everything so difficult for us?” she burst out. She was ready to be poor if it meant keeping Robbie with her, but to go on struggling without him seemed more than she could bear. Stuart looked up. Standing above him in her worn leather jacket and her shabby tweed skirt, she looked like some peasant spirit of vengeance. “Why don't you sell that damn land everybody seems to want so much? We'd have a little money. We'd be able to stay somewhere in Cannes where we could look after him.”

“But that's just the point,” Stuart said reasonably. “He should be completely on his own.”

“Oh, it's easy for you. You have your work, something to keep you busy all day long. But what about me? What kind of a life is it for me? Look at my hands.” She wrenched her hands from her pockets and held them before him. Stuart was astonished to see that they were trembling. The nails were cut short, the skin over the knuckles was rough. They looked strong and capable. She thrust them back into her pockets. “This is what you've done to me. You love it. But what about me?”

His first reaction was embarrassment at having to see her like this. The way people said “me” when they were distraught was so lacking in dignity. He looked at the house beyond the olive trees. It looked as if it had been there forever, snug and solid, with smoke curling out of the two chimneys. He looked down at the cove below him, at the hut boarded over for the winter, and then out at the sparkling sea. He thought of all the good times they had had here. She didn't like it? She couldn't mean it. How could she even talk about selling it?

Here were the roots he had struck down into life. Sun, sea, this land and its reluctant abundance, freedom—what wouldn't most people give to possess it? And above all, love. He looked across the water. In the distance the blue coast thrust out to meet the sea. The farthest lavender ridge must look down into Italy. He loved Helene. He loved Robbie.

“What's the matter?” he asked. “We're here. Everything's the way it should be. Since when don't you like it?” He heard her sigh.

She was abashed at the appeal in his voice. It was an appeal to something that no longer existed between them, something that she could not permit to exist. Nevertheless, it put an end to her brief tirade. She couldn't change anything by direct conflict. She must wait. She must prepare herself. Robbie would be hers when the time came. “I don't know. I don't suppose I meant it,” she said. She looked across at the house and thought of Robbie and of her being here next year without him. It was unimaginable. “I suppose everything will work out. As far as Robbie's concerned there's still lots of time between now and next autumn. I think the less we talk about it in front of him the better.”

“That's all right so long as
we
know what we're doing,” he agreed.

“Yes, of course. Shouldn't we go in now? I'm getting cold.”

“You go ahead but please leave him alone. He's got to be punished.”

He heard the scrape of her shoes against the rocks and she was gone. He watched a little fishing boat crawling up the bay and he thought how pleasant it would be to go somewhere alone with her in a boat. It was all they needed. A complete change from the grueling work on the land, from the strain of legal complications, from the increasing demands of a growing boy. For the moment, there were simply too many conflicting preoccupations. They must win the suit. They must send Robbie to school. After that, they would be together again. What else was there to believe in?

The case, scheduled to be heard in April, was deferred until autumn. An additional problem was thus created, for the legal contest had made the disputed area a sort of no-man's-land. The vines it bore belonged to nobody until a settlement was made. An order was issued forbidding Stuart to touch the grapes; violation made him liable to criminal action for theft.

Stuart decided to ignore this order and to take his crop. On the second day the
huissier
came out from St. Tropez and witnessed what was taking place, refusing in the performance of his official function to speak to Stuart although they knew each other well. It was a frightening experience. He had to keep telling himself that even if worse came to worst no court could seriously regard him as a thief. Besides, he was a foreigner—he, who had been so proud to feel himself part of the community.

At least Robbie would soon be at school. When they received a list of books he would need, Stuart went with him to the new bookshop just off the port while he self-importantly made his purchases.

Stuart followed at a little distance, idly flipping through books until he came to one with a lurid sunset and a multicolored
tartane
tied to a quai on its cover and the title
St. Tropez: Port of Dreams.
He felt like tearing it up in protest. That was the St. Tropez Dunan and company were trying to sell, this synthetic sunset and picturesque quai. Port of dreams, indeed. Port of thieves was more like it. Robbie called him and Stuart slapped down the book and went back to pay the bill.

“I really ought to have one of those fountain pens,” Robbie suggested, and Stuart bought it, too.

Even when they were driving him, all dressed up in his new school clothes, over to Cannes, Helene couldn't believe that she would be going home without him. As for Robbie, he was ready to believe that school might be all right, since his mother seemed resigned to his going. She had always protected him from things he didn't like. There was no denying his pleasure in having such a fuss made over him, in the new clothes, in the adult suitcase, in the feeling of acquiring a new identity. They left him at the school looking solemn and covering his bewilderment with a disdainful manner.

“Well, here we are,” Stuart said as he turned the car back onto the road for home. “It's like starting out all over again.” He reached over and touched her hand.