Perfect Freedom (65 page)

The struggle within Stuart was intensified. He wanted to hold her against him and find peace. Happiness for her. Peace for him. She offered devotion and hope for the future and peace and it wasn't enough. She couldn't grant him absolution.

“Annie, Annie,” he said brokenly, facing away from her, “everything you've seen here should warn you that love isn't enough.”

“Isn't it? Then what is? Why does it seem enough to me now?” Did he really believe what he was saying? She sensed in him a waiting, a delicate balance, like an avalanche held in check by a single stone.

“I think—” He groped for a truth that seemed to hover almost within his grasp. “Love is only the beginning. It's not the end. It's enough only for the moment it takes to acknowledge it. If you deny it, you have nothing. If you accept it—well, it's a beginning. The chances are it will fail you, but that's a risk you've got to take to live at all. It should carry you on to a greater truth, something more complete. That's where I've stopped. Religion? I believe the world is bigger than myself and that's a religious thought, but I don't believe in a life hereafter. I believe the answer is here, in this world. I don't know. I don't know.”

He leaned back and stretched out on his side, looking down at her. Her eyes flickered open when he said no more, and closed again. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“I'm going to send you home, Annie.” His throat ached with the words. “I don't know what I'll do when you're gone. You're all that's left.”

“Then let me stay,” she interrupted, a new note of urgency in her voice.

“Wait, dear, listen,” he said gently. “You think your happiness is with me. I could tell myself that if I can make you happy at least one of us would be better off, but it isn't as simple as that. You can't offer me happiness. Nobody can. So I haven't the right to attempt to offer it to you. Love can't be unselfish.” He stopped, astonished at what he was saying but drawn on by his glimpse of truth. “Love must be demanding. Otherwise it's charity. It's the demanding that makes the connection. I used to be proud of being undemanding. Freedom. My theme song. I don't know what I was thinking of. There isn't anything in the world worth having that doesn't involve a surrender of freedom. You can't have convictions, ideals, beliefs of any sort without becoming to some extent a prisoner of them. Love is the ultimate prison. That's what I would never recognize. I'd like to be the prisoner now of the people I love but nobody wants me anymore. Except you, Annie. You'd start making demands I couldn't fulfill even if I wanted to. This is something you've got to know, my dear, and accept as one of life's cruelties. Forget me.”

He lay back and they remained side by side, their eyes closed, listening to the beating of their hearts and the wash of the sea on the sand and high above them the faint turning of the sky.

“I feel clean,” Anne said at last. “I feel as if something had burned out of me. It hurts.” Stuart fumbled beside him for her hand and held it. They were silent again for a long moment.

“Did you know Edward was in love with Robbie?” she asked abruptly. She lifted her hand and placed it palm upward across her eyes. Stuart wondered at this unexpected turn in her thoughts as she went on, “I hope you don't mind my talking about it. You see, I was a little bit in love with Edward myself, so I like to talk about him to you. For a little while, when you first went away, he thought it might turn into something important, with Robbie. Poor darling. Everything would've been so much worse if it had. He said that Robbie was really looking for a father but they say that about everybody these days. Am I looking for a father? I doubt it. I've always been rather against fathers. We were all very much against you.”

Instinctively trying to ease her hurt, she had retreated back across the years, so that momentarily Stuart became once again the enemy, the unsympathetic parent bent on repression. Not understanding, he said, “I'm sorry. I just can't think of love as having anything to do with Edward and Robbie.”

“Oh, why can't you just relax and accept life?” she cried. She sat forward and angrily brushed sand off herself. “People are all different but sometimes they can make each other happy. But no, you've got to turn it all upside down and drain all the—the—You're cold and inhuman.”

He looked at her agitated back with longing and regret. “I didn't use to be. I suppose you get that way when nothing seems to matter anymore. I'll never be able to believe that what Robbie calls love matters but it goes much further than that. We're all such masters of self-deception. At dreadful moments, I think I almost understand the communists. We're filled with such nonsense about the individual. All it amounts to is the individual's right to subjugate other individuals for pleasure and profit. Considering where that's got us, there's much to be said for relegating the individual to a back seat in favor of collective welfare.”

“You've given up more completely than I thought you had,” she said sharply without turning to him. “I don't think you've ever stopped to consider what a terrible thing you did to Robbie when you sent Toni away. Was that in the name of collective welfare? Something appalling happened afterward. Robbie could never talk about it but I know it had to do with the three of them—Carl and Helene and Robbie. You know of course that Carl was Robbie's lover as well as Helene's.”

“No.” He lay still, waiting for the shock waves to pass. He felt them more acutely than he thought he could feel anything. He finally risked speech. “Knowing that everything I'd lived for culminated in that, you can still believe that there's something in me to love? I suppose that's why you told me—to rouse me from the dead. You've got to learn that just because you're in love with someone, he won't necessarily fall in love with you.” He said it to hurt her. It was the first act of real self-abnegation he had ever performed. She sat for another moment and then stood.

“Good. Thank you. I think that makes things clear enough. I'll arrange to go right away.”

He knew anger would help her. In silence he watched her walk firmly down to the water's edge and slide in.

After a few telephone calls after lunch, she found out that the complicated process of her repatriation could most easily be arranged through the consular authorities in Marseilles. Stuart wanted to take her there but he didn't want to soften her anger against him and when she refused he didn't insist. He made sure she was adequately supplied with funds and let her hire a car. She avoided him the rest of the day.

The next morning, just before her car was due, she came out to the terrace where he was waiting for her. She was wearing a light summer dress and looked as if she were just running into town on an errand. She stood straight and still in the doorway and looked at him. “I wanted to go away being angry but it wouldn't be true.” She laughed and gave a swipe at her hair and then looked at him gravely. “Being angry is no better than laughing.” She paused and made a little motion with her hands, which hung at her sides. “Will you kiss me?”

“I hoped you'd let me,” he said. He walked slowly over to her, keeping his eyes on hers, and took her in his arms. She lifted her arms and put them around his neck. She felt incredibly small and frail. He kissed her tenderly and then she buried her face against his chest.

“Oh, God, are you going to be all right?” she whispered.

“Yes, of course,” he said, stroking her hair. “Are you?”

“Would you've made me go anyway if I hadn't said anything?”

“Of course. I told you it was the only thing to do.”

“Stuart,” she whispered, and looked up at him. Her eyes were dry, her mouth firm. “Will you kiss me once more?” He did so and they clung to each other for a moment. Then they broke apart and took a few aimless steps away from each other.

The rest was all hurried and anticlimactic. There was her luggage to brought out. There were Agnes and the Boldonis to say good-bye to. The car arrived. Before he knew it, she was gone.…

That summer Boldoni had a stroke. He was sure he was going to die and he wanted to die in his own house and Stuart had no choice but to let him go. With only Agnes to serve him, he shut up most of the house for the duration.

The pinch of war began to be felt. Certain foodstuffs grew scarce. Coal would certainly be scarce that winter. Stuart found an old man in the neighborhood to help him plant some of the upper terraces in vegetables and he began clearing trees in the wood along the drive. It was slow going and the exercise, instead of slimming him down, had the opposite effect. He put on weight steadily. In addition to the familiar chores, Helene's case kept him busy. That was slow going, too. The Vichy government was in the process of organization. The lawyer was confident that not too much time would pass before her trial was reviewed and the sentence reversed, but he reported that the prison regime had been hard on her. Meanwhile, Stuart received another uncommunicative note from Robbie saying that he was well and that Carl was doing what he could to arrange Helene's liberation. In spite of Stuart's loathing for the German, the news was encouraging. He could come to no decision about his own future until Helene was free.

Then, on a hot September morning as the vintage was approaching, Robbie telephoned. He wanted to know if Stuart had meant what he'd said about the house being his home.

“I can't talk. I just want to make sure I can come there no matter what.”

Stuart felt a twinge of alarm. “Are you all right? Are you in—”

“Is Boldoni there?” Robbie interrupted.

“No, he's not here anymore. He's been sick. There's only Agnes now. Not very luxurious.”

“Good. Will you send her away?”

“Look, what is all this?”

“I just want to know. If you'd rather, I won't come.”

“Of course not. This place is as much yours as it is mine. Of course I'll send her away.”

“Good. Then we'll be there in about an hour. Is that all right?”

“Sure. But who's—?” Before he had a chance to ask who “we” was, Robbie had hung up. Troubled and perplexed, he told Agnes he was going away for a while and offered to drive her to her family in town. He hurried her off and hurried out again. He hadn't been back long before he heard a car in the drive and nervously went to meet his son. Carl was with him, looking if possible more buoyant, more self-assured, more radiant than ever. He sprang out of the little black car and greeted Stuart enthusiastically.

“At last, old friend, after all these months. It seems a long time,” he exclaimed, advancing with outstretched arms. “Who would have thought I would be returning with a victorious army, eh?”

Stuart watched stolidly as Carl approached. Should he hit him? Should he simply turn his back on him and order him off the place? Perhaps he was here for Helene's case. He had promised Robbie that his welcome would be unconditional. For their sakes he must make one more supreme effort at self-control. To shake hands was out of the question. He nodded and turned as the German reached him and took Robbie's hand and patted him on the shoulder.

“It's good to see you,” he said. “Come in. There's so much to talk about.”

“Nobody's here?” Robbie asked quickly.

“No. But why all the secrecy? What's the matter?”

“But
Carl
,” Robbie said, his eyes widening with surprise. “Don't you understand? He's not supposed to be here.”

In his confusion, Stuart had forgotten. In his white shirt and shorts, Carl fitted so naturally into the setting that he had forgotten that his presence in Unoccupied France was illegal, subject to severe penalties. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Carl put a finger to his lips and then he heard him laugh with boyish playfulness.

“Behold M. Sernas, wine merchant,” he said, with a bow to Stuart's back.

“I see,” Stuart said thoughtfully. He took Robbie's arm and led him through the gates toward the house.

“So beautiful. So beautiful,” Carl cried ecstatically behind them as they came within view of the Apollo. He stopped and cried out, “Ah so, this is what I've been waiting to see.”

“Would you excuse us a minute?” Stuart said over his shoulder. So long as he didn't look at him, Stuart could just manage to address him. “I want to speak to Robbie.”

“Yes, of course. I must unpack the car.”

Stuart and Robbie continued on across the terrace and into the living room. Stuart gestured at a chair and sat down himself. Alone, he was able to look at Robbie for the first time. He was tanned and healthy-looking but there was another change since he'd seen him in Paris. He studied him an instant and realized that his hair was shorter than it had been before. It gave him a manly, clean-cut look. Stuart smiled his approval.

“Well, tell me everything,” he demanded. “He's here to help your mother?”

“Mother's out. Didn't you know? Day before yesterday.”

Stuart jerked forward in his chair. “Oh, thank God. How wonderful.” He sat back with a sigh and looked out across the terrace. He felt as if he he been freed, too. “Is she all right? I haven't heard a thing. The mail's uncertain these days.”

“Yes, she's fine,” Robbie said. “Of course, it wasn't easy. She's lost a lot of weight. It makes her look older.”

“And he arranged it?”

“He did what he could. He had influence but the pardon had to come from Vichy.”

“I see, but then—” Stuart hesitated, puzzled. “I'm very pleased to see you, but why did he come? You can understand it's not very pleasant for me to see him. Isn't it dangerous for him to be here where he's known?”

Robbie moved around uncomfortably in his chair. “That's why I asked you if Boldoni was here. Carl can't stay at hotels. The risk's too great. He has some things he has to do along the coast.”