When she returned to her guests the perfumed blood under her nails the performance was over. The guests toyed with petits fours. Claude glanced up at her as if to ask where she had been. He looked cheerful. Camille had ceased to contribute to the conversation. He sat with his eyes cast down to the table. His expression, in one of her daughters, she would have called demure. All other faces wore an expression of dislocation and strain. Coffee was served: bitter and black, like chances missed.
NEXT DAY CLAUDE referred to these events. He said what a stimulating occasion it had been, so much better than the usual supper-party trivia. If all their social life were like that, he wouldnt mind it so much, and so would she ask again that young man whose name for the present escaped him? He was so charming, so interested, and a shame about his stutter, but was he perhaps a little slow on the uptake? He hoped he had not carried away any wrong impressions about the workings of the Treasury.
How torturing, she thought, is the situation of fools who know they are fools; and how pleasant is Claudes state, by comparison.
THE NEXT TIME Camille called, he was more discreet in the way he looked at her. It was as if they had reached an agreement that nothing should be precipitated. Interesting, she thought. Interesting.
He told her he did not want a legal career: but what else? He was trapped by the terms of his scholarship. Like Voltaire, he said, he wanted no profession but that of man of letters. Oh, Voltaire, she said. Im sick of the name. Men of letters will be a luxury, let me tell you, in the years to come. We shall all have to work hard, with no diversions. We shall all have to emulate Claude. Camille pushed his hair back a fraction. That was a gesture she liked: rather representative, useless but winning. Youre only saying that. You dont believe it, in your heart. In your heart you think that things will go on as they are.
Allow me, she said, to be the expert on my heart.
As the afternoons passed, the general unsuitability of their friendship was borne in on her. It was not simply a matter of his age, but of his general direction. His friends were out-of-work actors, or they slid inkily from the offices of back-street printers. They had illegitimate children and subversive opinions; they went abroad when the police got on their trail. There was the drawing-room life; then there was this other life. She thought it was best not to ask questions about it.
HE CONTINUED to come to supper. There were no further incidents. Sometimes Claude asked him to spend the weekend with a party at Bourg-la-Reine, where they had some land and a comfortable farmhouse. The girls, she thought, had really taken to him.
FROM QUITE TWO YEARS ago, they had begun to see a great deal of each other. One of her friends, who was supposed to know about these things, had told her that he was a homosexual. She did not believe this, but kept it to hand as a defence, in case her husband complained. But why should he complain? He was just a young man who called at the house. There was nothing between them.
ONE DAY SHE ASKED HIM, Do you know much about wild flowers?
Not especially.
Its just that Lucile picked up a flower at Bourg-la-Reine and asked me what it was, I hadnt the least idea, and I told her confidently that you knew everything, and I pressed it she reached out inside my book, and I said Id ask you.
She moved to sit beside him, holding the large dictionary into which she would cram letters and shopping lists and anything she needed to keep safe. She opened the book carefully, or its contents would have cascaded out. He examined the flower. Delicately with a fingernail he turned up the underside of its papery leaf. He frowned at it. Probably some extremely common noxious weed, he said.
He put an arm around her and tried to kiss her. More out of astonishment than intention, she jumped away. She dropped the dictionary and everything fell out. It would have been quite in order to slap his face, but what a cliché, she thought, and besides she was off balance. She had always wanted to do it to someone, but would have preferred someone more robust; so, between one thing and another, the moment passed. She clutched the sofa and stood up, unsteadily.
Im sorry, he said. That lacked finesse.
He was trembling a little.
How could you?
He raised a hand, palm upwards. Oh, because, Annette, I want you.
Its out of the question, she said. She picked her feet out of the scattered papers. Some verses he had written lay on the carpet folded with a milliners bill she had found it necessary to conceal from Claude. Camille, she thought, would never in a thousand years ask questions about the price of a womans hats. It would be beyond him; beyond, and beneath. She found it necessary to stare out of the window (even though it was a bleak winters day as unpromising as this one) and to bite her lips to stop them from quivering.
This had been going on for a year now.
THEY TALKED about the theatre, about books and about people they knew; really though, they were only ever talking about one thing, and that was whether she would go to bed with him. She said the usual things. He said that her arguments were stale and that these were the things people always said, because they were afraid of themselves and afraid of trying to be happy in case God smote them and because they were choked up with puritanism and guilt.
She thought (privately) that he was more afraid of himself than anyone she had ever known: and that he had reason to be.
She said that she was not going to change her mind, but that the argument could be prolonged indefinitely. Not indefinitely, Camille said, not strictly speaking: but until they were both so old that they were no longer interested. The English do it, he said, in the House of Commons. She raised a shocked face. No, not what she had so clearly on her mind: but if someone proposes a measure you dont like, you can just stand up and start spinning out the pros and cons until everybody goes home, or the session ends and theres no more time. Its called talking a measure out. It can go on for years. Considered in one way, he said, since I like talking to you, it might be a pleasant way to spend my life. But in fact I want you now.
AFTER THAT FIRST OCCASION she had always been cool, fended him off rather expertly. Not that he had ever touched her again. He had seldom allowed her to touch him. If he had brushed against her, even accidentally, he had apologized. It was better like this, he said. Human nature being what it is, and the afternoons so long; the girls visiting friends, the streets deserted, no sound in the room except the ticking of clocks, the beating of hearts.
It had been her intention to end this non-affair smoothly, in her own good time; considered as a non-affair, it had had its moments. But then, obviously, Camille had started talking to somebody, or one of her husbands friends had been observant: and everybody knew. Claude had a host of interested acquaintances. The question was contended for in robing rooms (scouted at the Châtelet but proposed in the civil courts as the scandal of the year, in the middle-class scandals division); it was circulated around the more select cafés, and mulled over at the ministry. In the gossips minds there were no debates, no delicately balanced temptations and counter-temptations, no moral anguish, no scruples. She was attractive, bored, not a girl any more. He was young and persistent. Of course they were well, what would you think? Since when, is the question? And when will Duplessis decide to know?
AFTER THAT FIRST OCCASION she had always been cool, fended him off rather expertly. Not that he had ever touched her again. He had seldom allowed her to touch him. If he had brushed against her, even accidentally, he had apologized. It was better like this, he said. Human nature being what it is, and the afternoons so long; the girls visiting friends, the streets deserted, no sound in the room except the ticking of clocks, the beating of hearts.
It had been her intention to end this non-affair smoothly, in her own good time; considered as a non-affair, it had had its moments. But then, obviously, Camille had started talking to somebody, or one of her husbands friends had been observant: and everybody knew. Claude had a host of interested acquaintances. The question was contended for in robing rooms (scouted at the Châtelet but proposed in the civil courts as the scandal of the year, in the middle-class scandals division); it was circulated around the more select cafés, and mulled over at the ministry. In the gossips minds there were no debates, no delicately balanced temptations and counter-temptations, no moral anguish, no scruples. She was attractive, bored, not a girl any more. He was young and persistent. Of course they were well, what would you think? Since when, is the question? And when will Duplessis decide to know?
Now Claude may be deaf, he may be blind, he may be dumb, but he is not a saint, he is not a martyr. Adultery is an ugly word. Time to end it, Annette thought; time to end what has never begun.
She remembered, for some reason, a couple of occasions when shed thought she might be pregnant again, in the years before she and Claude had separate rooms. You thought you might be, you had those strange feelings, but then you bled and you knew you werent. A week, a fortnight out of your life had gone by, a certain life had been considered, a certain steady flow of love had begun, from the mind to the body and into the world and the years to come. Then it was over, or had never been: a miscarriage of love. The child went on in your mind. Would it have had blue eyes? What would its character have been?
AND NOW THE DAY HAD COME. Annette sat at her dressing-table. Her maid fussed about, tweaking and pulling at her hair. Not like that, Annette said. I dont like it like that. Makes me look older.
No! said the maid, with a pretence at horror. Not a day over thirty-eight.
I dont like thirty-eight, Annette said. I like a nice round number. Say, thirty-five.
Fortys a nice round number.
Annette took a sip of her cider vinegar. She grimaced. Your visitors here, the maid said.
The rain blew in gusts against the window.
IN ANOTHER ROOM, Annettes daughter Lucile opened her new journal. Now for a fresh start. Red binding. White paper with a satin sheen. A ribbon to mark her place.
Anne Lucile Philippa Duplessis, she wrote. She was in the process of changing her handwriting again. The Journal of Lucile Duplessis, born 1770, died? Volume III. The year 1786.
At this time in my life, she wrote, I think a lot about what it would be like to be a Queen. Not our Queen; some more tragic one. I think about Mary Tudor: When I am dead and opened they will find Calais written on my heart. If I, Lucile, were dead and opened, what they would find written is Ennui.
Actually, I prefer Maria Stuart. She is my favourite Queen by a long way. I think of her dazzling beauty among the barbarian Scots. I think of the walls of Fotheringay, closing in like the sides of a grave. Its a pity really that she didnt die young. Its always better when people die young, they stay radiant, you dont have to think of them getting rheumatics or growing stout.
Lucile left a line. She took a breath, then began again.
She spent her last night writing letters. She sent a diamond to Mendoza, and one to the King of Spain. When all was under seal, she sat with open eyes while her women prayed.
At eight oclock the Provost Marshal came for her. At her priedieu, she read in a calm voice the prayers for the dying. Members of her household knelt as she swept into the Great Hall, dressed all in black, an ivory crucifix in her ivory hand.
Three hundred people had assembled to watch her die. She entered through a small side door, surprising them; her face was composed. The scaffold was draped in black. There was a black cushion for her to kneel upon. But when her attendants stepped forward, and they slipped the black robe from her shoulders, it was seen that she was clothed entirely in scarlet. She had dressed in the colour of blood.
Here Lucile put down her pen. She began to think of synonyms. Vermilion. Flame. Cardinal. Sanguine. Phrases occurred to her: caught red-handed. In the red. Red-letter day.
She picked up her pen again.
What did she think, as she rested her head on the block? As she waited: as the executioner took his stance? Seconds passed; and those seconds went by like years.
The first blow of the axe gashed the back of the Queens head. The second failed to sever her neck, but carpeted the stage with royal blood. The third blow rolled her head across the scaffold. The executioner retrieved it and held it up to the onlookers. It could be seen that the lips were moving; and they continued to move for a quarter of an hour.
Though who stood over the sodden relic with a fob-watch, I really could not say.
ADÈLE, HER SISTER, came in. Doing your diary? Can I read it?
Yes; but you may not.
Oh, Lucile, her sister said; and laughed.
Adèle dumped herself into a chair. With some difficulty, Lucile dragged her mind back into the present day, and brought her eyes around to focus on her sisters face. She is regressing, Lucile thought. If I had been a married woman, however briefly, I would not be spending the afternoons in my parents house.
Im lonely, Adèle said. Im bored. I cant go out anywhere because its too soon and I have to wear this disgusting mourning.
Heres boring, Lucile said.
Heres just as usual. Isnt it?
Except that Claude is at home less than ever. And this gives Annette more opportunity to be with her Friend.
It was their impertinent habit, when they were alone, to call their parents by their Christian names.
And how is that Friend? Adèle inquired. Does he still do your Latin for you?
I dont have to do Latin any more.
What a shame. No more pretext to put your heads together, then.
I hate you, Adèle.
Of course you do, her sister said good-naturedly. Think how grown-up I am. Think of all the lovely money my poor husband left me. Think of all the things I know, that you dont. Think of all the fun Im going to have, when Im out of mourning. Think of all the men there are in the world! But no. You only think of one.
I do not think of him, Lucile said.
Does Claude even suspect whats germinating here, what with him and Annette, and him and you?
Theres nothing germinating. Cant you see? The whole point is that nothings going on.
Well, maybe not in the crude technical sense, Adèle said. But I cant see Annette holding out for much longer, I mean, even through sheer fatigue. And you you were twelve when you first saw him. I remember the occasion. Your piggy eyes lit up.
I have not got piggy eyes. They did not light up.