Those Harper Women (25 page)

“Jimmy, bless his heart,” Arch repeats. “Well, that story tells me some more about Jimmy and Gordon, but still not much about Edouardo.”

“Perhaps that's intentional,” she says quietly. “Perhaps I really don't want to talk about Edouardo.”

“Fine,” he says, grinning at her. “We'll delete his name from the conversation then.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. “He's gone. So long, Mr. Paradise.”

Leona laughs. “You're really very funny in a funny way.”

He lifts his glass to her and winks. “Thanks. I've always been funny in a funny way, buddy.”

“I'm trying to decide. Do I like you calling me buddy all the time?”

“If you don't like it, say so, and I'll quit.”

“No,” she says, still laughing, “I don't mind it. Don't quit.”

“Okay, buddy.”

“Arch,” she says, leaning forward, “can we be serious for just a minute? You said you liked the painters I have lined up. Do you think you might be interested in putting some money into my gallery? I'm trying to raise fifty thousand dollars, Arch. It would be a good investment. I'd love it if you'd do it, Arch. If not the whole fifty thousand, at least a share of it. You're a businessman, and a smart one too from all I hear. And I can show you all the details, all the plans, the things I've—” She stops, seeing that he is looking at her in a very odd, appraising, even hostile way. “I can demonstrate that it's a very sound business proposition for you,” she adds lamely.

He continues to gaze at her in that unfathomable way, not unsmiling and yet not smiling either. He makes a thoughtful steeple of his fingers. “Did I know this was coming?” he asks. “Never mind. First let me ask you a—a
business
question. Why do you want to run an art gallery?”

“For only one reason,” she says, looking directly into his eyes. “To make money.”

“Good answer. I take it, then, that while the rest of your family is loaded with dough, you yourself are not quite so loaded. Right?”

“That,” she says, “is absolutely correct. I also want to do something worthwhile. But that's only a secondary reason.”

“I see,” he says.

“If you're not interested, please say so and I promise you I won't bring it up again.”

“Now wait a minute. I didn't say I wasn't interested.
You
interest me. Now tell me another thing. How badly do you want this gallery?”

“Terribly badly. Des—”

“Desperately. You're a lady in distress, as I said before.”

“Desperately badly.”

He leans toward her and covers her hand with his. “Look,” he says, “fifty thousand is a lot of money, even from a—okay, call me a multimillionaire. I've been called that before. In print—by your friend Winslow, among others. I made a million dollars before I was twenty-five, and I'm proud of that. But fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

“I'm trying to recruit
various
investors,” Leona says in a voice that was intended to sound matter-of-fact and businesslike, but which she is suddenly afraid sounded childlike and frightened.

“I like you,” he says, still looking steadily at her. “I'd like to know you better. Much better. I could advance you the money, sure, just because I like you. But I'm still a businessman. Do you understand? If I let you have the money, I think I'm entitled to ask what's in it for me?”

“Part ownership of an art gallery!”

Smiling, he says, “I mean besides that. I said I like you. One good turn deserves another, doesn't it? You see? The battle lines are now drawn, buddy. I'm putting my cards on the table. I'm setting my terms. I want to go to bed with you. Desperately badly.”

She disengages her hand from his grip, and stands up. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I misjudged you. I thought you were a nice person. But you're a miserable bastard. Will you take me home, or shall I call a taxi?”

Still seated, still smiling at her, he says, “Call a taxi.”

Ten

“There must be an end to these walks with the Frenchman, Edith,” her mother said. “It will not do.”

Edith had discovered the pattern of his afternoons, and would meet him in the middle of his walks. His walks were circular. From the gatehouse he would begin along the edge of the lawn, across the drive, keeping to the edge where the mowers stopped, where the tall field grass began, and the pine trees and poplars that surrounded the house. “Why do you always walk next to the trees, but not under them?” she had asked him.

“Afraid of hailstorms,” he had said.

“You're a curious man.”

She had also, through a bit of questioning here and there, found out certain things about his wife. Mary Miles, it turned out was an expert on Monique Bertin.

“She's a hussy, that one,” Mary had said. “Light on in the house at night? Why it's him waiting up for her, of course! When the light stays on all night, it means she hasn't come home at all. In any civilized country, he'd divorce her. But that's the Roman Catholic of it I suppose, and the French of it as well.”

“Where does she go, do you think, when she's out?”

“Well, now I don't know, Edith. But I can guess. Poor chap, I feel sorry for him. He's got his cross to bear.”

“Is she pretty, Mary?”

Mary Miles had sniffed. “Pretty? Well, I suppose some might call her pretty. Pretty in a tarty way.”

To Edith, Monique Bertin had been only a distant flutter of bright dress once or twice, glimpsed through the trees, and always—as Mary Miles had said—departing. On their walks, Louis Bertin had never specifically mentioned his wife—which, of course, merely confirmed Edith's growing opinion of the woman and their marriage.

Now, to her mother, she said, “Why won't it do, Mama? I enjoy talking to him. He's a gentleman, and he's offered to give me a tennis lesson.”

“Really? I hardly think your father will approve of that, Edith, and I'm sure Mr. Bertin realizes it. He's a paid tennis player, and he has been hired only to play tennis with your father.”

“What does his wife do?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, I still don't see why I can't talk to him.”

“Because he is an employee of your father's. He is a married man. And he is
not
a gentleman. Do you want to get yourself gossiped about? No, you are forbidden to speak to him again.”

“Forbidden?”

Her mother had paused. “I am sure your father would be most annoyed if he found out about it,” she said. “If he found out, I promise you the consequences would be quite unpleasant.”

“I liked you better when you were drunk, Mama.”

Dolly Harper sat very stiffly, her hands folded tightly in her lap. “Don't think you can hurt me with a remark like that,” she said. “That remark doesn't hurt me. It doesn't hurt me at all.”

And Edith had continued to meet him on his walks, but from then on she was more careful, planning the meetings only when she knew her mother was out of the house or napping in her room. It was awful, but she had begun to wish that her mother would have more of her relapses. There had been only one since the “cure” that Mary Miles had begun in Paris. And so great had been Mary Miles' wrath at finding Dolly Harper drunk in her bed, that, literally, Mary Miles seemed to have frightened her out of trying it again. “You want to get yourself a place in society, don't you?” Edith had heard Mary screaming at her. “You want to help your daughter find a nice husband, don't you? What society would ever take a second look at
you
in the state you're in? What man would ever take a wife whose mother gets herself in a state like this? Take a look at yourself in your mirror, lady! Drink that coffee, lady! Sit up straight, lady, and drink that coffee! Lady! Oh, I have half a mind to bring your two little boys in here to look at their mother in the state she's in!”

On her walks with the Frenchman, their talk was oddly impersonal. Edith was never sure, when she met him, whether he was happy to see her or not, though he always smiled with those heavy-lidded eyes and said, “Well, here is Edith. What have you been up to since I saw you last?”

“Trying to figure out what to do with a young man my mother has invited for the weekend.”

“Is this a young man you like?”

“I don't care about him one way or the other. But my mother makes such a fool of herself trying to pair me off with people.”

He shrugged, either in agreement or disagreement. Once she had tried speaking to him in French, but he had interrupted her rather curtly, and said, “Speak English. Your English is better than your French.”

“Are you going with us to St. Thomas?” she had asked him.

“I imagine so. Travel is one of the benefits of this job of mine.”

She had started to describe St. Thomas to him, but he had cut her off, saying, “I'll see it when I get there.”

“Some day I'm going to run away from home, Louis,” she had told him.

But he had not seemed particularly impressed. “We all have to run away from home some day. ‘Adventure begins when you run away from home.' Thomas Carlyle.”

“You're well-read.”

“Not really.”

“I might even run away today.”

“Today? I doubt you will.”

“I might.”

They had come to the end of their walk, to the path that led between the posts of the iron fence and, behind the fence, a boxwood hedge, to the gatehouse. It was four o'clock, and the sun slanted through the leaves of the trees overhead. They stood in a green pool of mixed shade and sunlight. A soft breeze stirred the leaves and the grass.

“I've never been inside the gatehouse,” she said. “What is it like?”

He leaned back against the iron fence, folded his arms, and smiled.

Remembering the brazenness of that remark, she is astonished that she was ever able to utter it. Certainly these are two different women, the woman remembered and the woman remembering. Yet they are one and the same, though they no longer look alike, and they greet each other, as differing reflections in the dark room and recognize, and accuse each other.…

His rooms in the gatehouse had appalled her. She does not know now what she had expected, but it was not what she found. Up a narrow flight of stairs and through a stained-wood door which he opened with a key. They were in a small, dark sitting-room that was clearly a kitchen also. A primus stove stood on a table in one corner and, next to it, a deep wooden sink was draped with dishtowels and filled with dirty crockery. There was a single window, its panes filmed, its shade torn, and from the shade on a wooden hanger hung a woman's shift, freshly laundered but still seeming soiled. The room also contained a very worn-looking sofa and two straight chairs. There was an odor in the air of stove-oil and cooking and dust. He smiled at her and shrugged. “The place needs cleaning,” he said.

“Would you like me to come and clean it for you some day?” she had asked, which was hardly the most tactful rejoinder.

He laughed. “You American girls. Always wanting things clean. What do you know about cleaning a house?”

“I used to help my mother clean. I'm not that pampered,” she said. And then, stepping to the window, “Oh, and it has a lovely view.” Standing there, in his denim trousers and blue shirt, he followed her with his eyes. She stood in silence, looking out. The view was of her house. When she turned back to him, he was still smiling.

“The view,” he said, “I never look at it.”

Then they were both silent again. The air in the room was penetrating, heavy and still.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” he asked her.

“I thought only Englishmen took tea.”

“I'll heat some water.”

A fat tortoiseshell cat with pink-rimmed eyes lay on the sofa. As she sat, it stretched its paws, yawned, and kneaded its claws into the sofa cushion. “It's name is Clemenceau,” Louis said. “You know—the Tiger of France.” Stooping over the table, he was heating water in a saucepan and putting teacups in saucers, whistling under his breath as he set out the dishes.

“Hello, Clemenceau.”

The cat washed itself.

He took the water from the stove and filled two cups over a tea-strainer. “Sugar?” he asked her.

“No thank you. Just plain.”

“No milk?”

“No.”

With a spoon, he ladled two helpings of sugar into his cup. Then he took a pitcher of milk, poured a little into the spoon, and, kneeling on his haunches by the sofa, he offered the spoon of milk to the tortoiseshell cat. When the cat had licked the spoon clean, Louis put the spoon into his cup and stirred his tea. Again the air was heavy and still. The cat purred. And Louis Bertin-sat on his haunches in front of her, a questioning look in his deep eyes. Over the teacup, those eyes studied her.

“So,” Louis said, “you came to see me.” He sipped his tea. “Does your mother know you're here?”

“No.”

“Nor your father, of course. How long before someone goes out looking for you?”

“I'm independent,” she had said. “I can come and go as I please.”

“Can you? And now you've come to the gatehouse. My house.”

“Yes.”

The cat hopped off the sofa, stood for a moment surveying its surroundings, then jumped up on the wooden sink.

Edith sat there and, simply because he was smiling at her in such an odd way, she felt she had to smile back. But her smile was a stiff and frozen-feeling smile. At least it's a smile, she thought.

“How old are you, Edith?”

“Nearly twenty.”

“Nearly twenty,” he repeated. “And very grown up. What do you know about men?” In the bottomless silence that followed this question, he rose and sat on the sofa beside her. Finally he said, “Not very much, I guess.”

“No …” And suddenly, in a burst, she started to tell him about Andreas. She told him the beginning to the end.