The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles (45 page)

Joséphine lowered her eyes and blushed.

“He’s very attractive, so thank you. Seeing the number of pages you devote to him, I must have been in your good graces at the time.”

He paused.

“I probably shouldn’t say this, Joséphine, but you made me so happy, I was floating on a cloud.”

“Then why did you ignore me when we saw each other at the
Jean-Paul Gaultier show? Why didn’t you answer when I called out to you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“At the Intercontinental Hotel the other day. On the runway, when you looked so coldly at me. I was so hurt, I almost died!”

Joséphine could feel herself tearing up. Luca was staring at her, perplexed.

“Jean-Paul Gaultier?” he muttered. “The Intercontinental?”

Suddenly he sat bolt upright. “Vittorio! That was Vittorio you saw, not me!”

“Who’s Vittorio?”

“He’s my brother, my twin brother. He’s a fashion model. He’s the one you saw.”

“A twin brother?”

“Yeah. We’re almost identical, at least physically, because I get the feeling that psychologically, Vittorio’s like your sister Iris. He uses me. I’m always running around after him, cleaning up his messes. He once got busted for cocaine possession, and I had to bail him out. He’ll call me up from some bar, drunk out of his mind, and want me to come pick him up. Soon he’ll be too old for modeling. He hasn’t saved any money, and he thinks I’ll take care of him. But I don’t have any money either. You were smart to turn me down. I’m no prize!”

Joséphine stared at him. A twin brother! Then, as the silence between them grew longer and heavier, she mustered her courage.

“I turned you down for just one reason,” she said. “Because you’re so handsome, and I’m so plain. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but since we’re baring our souls—”

“You don’t think you’re good-looking?”

Joséphine shrugged shyly.

“I’ve been taking care of myself. I’m improving.”

He reached out and stroked her cheek. Then he leaned across the table and gently kissed her.

Leaning close, he whispered, “If you only knew how happy I was to meet you! To talk to you, to walk with you, to take you to the movies. And you never asked me for anything, never pressured me in any way. I felt I was reinventing the whole concept of romance.”

“Because women throw themselves at you, do they?” Joséphine asked, smiling.

“They’re always in a hurry, they’re eager . . . And then there’s always Vittorio in the background.”

“Do they mistake you for him?”

“All the time. And when I tell them I’m his twin, they ask, ‘What’s your brother like? Can you introduce me? Do you think I could be a model, too?’ But you don’t know a thing about that world, Joséphine. It’s like you’re from another planet. A wonderful apparition.”

“Like Saint Bernadette of Lourdes?”

He smiled and kissed her again.

“Y
ou know how I was telling you that life is like a dance partner, and that if you just relax and let go, you’ll find yourself waltzing?” Joséphine asked. “Well, Luca came back to me.”

The two women were lying by the pool at Shirley’s place in Mustique, a strikingly modern house overlooking the Caribbean. The living room had white sofas, white rugs, and low coffee tables with magazines and photography books. Abstract paintings hung on the walls. Quiet, refined luxury.
My apartment would fit into any one of these rooms
, Joséphine thought that morning, when she climbed out of a bed with satin sheets and walked into the light-filled dining room for breakfast.

“You’ll wind up convincing me, Jo,” said Shirley, who was dangling a hand in the blue water of the pool. “Soon I’ll be talking to the stars, too.”

It was early, and the children were still asleep: Hortense, Zoé, Gary, and Alexandre, whom Joséphine had brought along as well. When Iris returned from New York she seemed disillusioned and bitter, and spent whole days locked in her study. Joséphine didn’t
know what happened in New York, and she didn’t pry. And when Philippe asked if she could take Alex for the Christmas holidays, she agreed without questioning him. She felt it was none of her business. Iris had distanced herself, and Jo had distanced herself in turn.

Jo now glanced at the huge bay window above the terrace where they were sitting.

“Having all this, how could you stand living in Courbevoie, Shirley?”

“I was happy there. It was a change, a new life. I’m used to changing lives. I’ve had so many of them.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes, and Joséphine fell silent. She was dying of curiosity, but she knew that Shirley would only talk when she felt like it.

The days went by, light and gay. Zoé and Alexandre spent all their time in the pool or the sea, turning into small golden fishes. Hortense worked on her tan poolside, leafing through luxury magazines. Joséphine found a box of birth control pills in her daughter’s things while looking for an aspirin, but said nothing. She didn’t want any more confrontations. Hortense wasn’t being hostile to her anymore, but she wasn’t exactly cuddly, either.

They celebrated Christmas out on the terrace under a warm, starry night. Shirley had put a present by each plate. Joséphine got a Cartier bracelet, as did Hortense and Zoé. Alexandre and Gary were given brand-new computers.

“This way,” said Shirley, “you can send me photos and e-mail when we’re apart.”

Gary gave his mom a big kiss, and she stroked his hair.

There was a party at a house down the road, and Gary and Hortense asked if they could go. After a glance at Joséphine, Shirley said yes, and the two teens left after the cake. Zoé took a piece of it to bed with her, soon followed by Alexandre.

Shirley brought out a bottle of champagne and suggested they go down to the private beach below the house. They settled into hammocks and gazed up at the stars. Champagne flute in hand, Shirley covered her feet with her pareo and started to talk.

“Do you know Queen Victoria’s story, Jo?”

“Sure. Queen of England, empress of India, grandmother of Europe, with children and grandchildren on every throne. She reigned for fifty years.”

“The very one.” Shirley paused. “Then you also may know that Victoria had two great loves in her life: Prince Albert, whom everybody knows about, and John Brown.”

“Who was that?”

“Her Scottish gamekeeper. Victoria adored Albert, who died in December 1861 after twenty-one years of marriage. She was forty-two, the mother of nine children, the youngest of whom was four. She was also a grandmother; her oldest daughter’s son Wilhelm would become kaiser of Germany.

“Victoria hated being a queen, though she played the part to perfection. She was a short, stocky woman with a mean streak, and after Albert’s death, she found herself very alone. Albert had always been at her side to advise her, help her, even reprimand her at times. She didn’t know how to live on her own. Fortunately, John Brown was there, loyal and attentive. Soon Victoria
couldn’t manage without him. He went everywhere with her. He watched over her, took care of her, even saved her from an attempt on her life.

“Their friendship soon became a scandal. People took to calling her ‘Mrs. Brown.’ She gave Brown a title, and bought him houses emblazoned with the royal coat of arms. She publicly called him ‘the greatest treasure of my heart.’ Notes written to him turned up that she’d signed ‘I can’t live without you. Your loving one.’ People were horrified.”

“You make it sound like Princess Di!” Joséphine exclaimed. She had stopped her hammock rocking so as not to miss a word.

“When Brown died in 1883, Victoria was as heartbroken as she’d been when Albert died. She had his room kept exactly as it had been, with his big kilt spread out on an armchair, and a fresh flower put on his pillow every day. She wrote a two-hundred-page book about him, and it was only with great effort that she was persuaded not to publish it. More than three hundred highly compromising letters from Victoria to Brown turned up in an attic recently. They were discreetly bought—and burned. Victoria’s personal diary was entirely rewritten.”

“I didn’t know anything about this!”

“That’s not surprising. There’s the official story and the private truth. The great and good of this world are people just like us—weak, vulnerable, and most of all, very lonely.”

“Even queens,” Joséphine murmured.

“Especially queens.”

They poured themselves a last glass of champagne.

“You’ve probably guessed I’m not telling you all this as a history lesson,” said Shirley.

“You’ll laugh, but I was just thinking about Albert of Monaco and his illegitimate son.”

“I’m not going to laugh at all, Jo. I’m an illegitimate daughter.”

“My God! Whose?”

“A queen’s. A wonderful queen who had a beautiful love affair with her high chamberlain. That was my father. He was Scottish, too, but his name wasn’t John Brown; it was Patrick. And unlike Brown, he was very discreet. No one ever knew. When he died two years ago, the queen kept up appearances. For a long time she seemed sad and distracted, but no one ever knew why.”

“I remember how subdued you were when you came back from that vacation two years ago.”

“It all started in late 1967. The queen found out she was pregnant, and even though she was past forty, she decided to keep the baby—me. She’s a very determined woman. She loved my father, loved his gentle, attentive presence. He treated her like a woman and respected her as his queen. She was also an excellent rider, and you know that women who ride develop strong stomach muscles. Three weeks before giving birth, my mother had tea with General de Gaulle at the Elysée. From the photos, no one could tell she was about to have a baby!

“I was born in Buckingham Palace late one night. My father had his own mother come to assist in the birth, and she took me away that night. A year later, he introduced me to the palace,
explaining that I was his daughter and that he was bringing me up on his own. I was happy there. And to tell you the truth, when Dad told me everything on my seventh birthday, I wasn’t surprised. My mother’s behavior in public and private showed how much she loved me.

“I was in the charge of a governess, Miss Barton. I loved her, but I played a million horrid pranks on her. It was when I turned fifteen that things got complicated. I started kissing boys, drinking in pubs, sneaking out at night. One morning my father said he was sending me to a posh boarding school in Scotland. I didn’t understand why he was sending me away, and I resented it.

“I became a real rebel overnight. I started sleeping with every boy I met, taking drugs, even shoplifting. At twenty-one, I found myself pregnant by a fellow student. He was very handsome and charming, but when I told him he was going to be a father, he pretty much said, ‘That’s your problem, dear.’

“Gary’s birth was a real wake-up call. For the first time in my life I was responsible for someone. I asked Dad to bring me back to London, and he found me a flat there. And then one day I went to the palace to introduce little Gary. My mother was both concerned and moved. She was angry at me for misbehaving, and upset to see me with Gary in tow. She asked me why I’d done this. I told her that I couldn’t bear being sent away from her. The separation had been too hard. That’s when she came up with the idea of hiring me as a bodyguard and passing me off as one of her servants.”