Bread Upon the Waters (25 page)

He lay in his bed watching Leslie, in her nightgown, brushing her hair in front of the dressing table mirror. “It was a nice evening,” he said, “wasn’t it?”

“Better than nice,” she said. “Like all the evenings. Except for that little clash of wills between Russell and Linda.”

He lay in silence for a moment. “Tell me,” he said, “was I right in saying that you’d prefer going down to the Loire instead of to Linda’s place?”

“You were right in saying it,” she said, her arm rising and falling in smooth even strokes, “but it wasn’t the truth. I’m gorged for the moment with sightseeing. A few days in a garden in the south would have made a perfect ending to our trip.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

Leslie laughed softly. “Darling,” she said, “it’s his holiday.”

“I guess we really didn’t have any choice.”

“Not for a minute.” She stopped brushing her hair and stared at herself in the mirror. “Do you think I look younger than I did two weeks ago?”

“Years,” he said.

“I think so, too.” She resumed brushing her hair. “Still,” she said, “I would like to look at least once at the Mediterranean.”

“Next time we come to Europe,” he said, “we pay our own way.”

“Next time,” she said softly. “Who knows if there’ll be a next time?”

He was disturbed by the echo of his own thought. Vaguely, he felt that somehow tonight they both needed comforting and he almost asked her to come into his bed so that he could sleep with his arms around her. But he didn’t speak. He didn’t know whether he should be proud of his prudence or despise himself for his cowardice. He closed his eyes and went to sleep to the silken sound of his wife brushing her hair in the shadowy room.

There was a surprise for Strand and Leslie and Linda Roberts when they came down from their adjoining rooms to the lobby the next morning at ten o’clock. Hazen was waiting for them with a striking-looking blonde, who was holding a smart black attaché case. She was dressed severely in a simple tweed suit and low-heeled shoes. “This is Madame Harcourt.” He said the name in the French manner, leaving off the final
t.
“She’s from our office here and she’s driving us down. She’s going to Saudi Arabia with me and we have some business to work out before we leave. Don’t worry, you don’t have to talk French to her. Her mother’s English.” He spoke hurriedly, as though a little embarrassed by Mrs. Harcourt’s unannounced appearance.

“Mr. Hazen always says that right off, whenever he introduces me to Americans,” the woman said, smiling. The businesslike severity of her face disappeared, and her voice was low, pleasant, easy, and her accent was clipped but not obnoxiously British. “It’s as though he doesn’t want to be accused, even for an instant, of favoring the French.”

“She’s a lawyer,” Hazen said. “I deal with French lawyers only out of dire necessity. Well, the luggage is in the car. Shall we take off?” He started out of the lobby with Mrs. Harcourt and the others following.

“Quite an improvement on good old Conroy, wouldn’t you say?” Strand whispered.

“Cosmetically, anyway,” Leslie said.

A big black Cadillac was waiting for them at the door and Mrs. Harcourt got in on the driver’s side, with Hazen beside her. “Mrs. Harcourt will drive,” Hazen said. “I hate to drive and I’d have to jump out of the car before we reached the Pont St.-Cloud if I let Linda behind the wheel and I know Allen hasn’t a license and Leslie’s too new at the sport for French roads. You all comfortable back there?” Although he had said country clothes, he was dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt, tight around the collar, and a sober tie, making Strand wonder what Hazen would wear to a funeral. Even with the weight he had put on in Paris, his own collar, Strand felt uncomfortably, left an unfashionable gap at his Adam’s apple.

“We’re fine,” Strand said. “Couldn’t be better.”

Mrs. Harcourt turned on the ignition and the car started off. She drove deftly and confidently through the light traffic.

It was a beautiful morning, sunny but not too warm, and Strand leaned back contentedly, enjoying looking at the buildings of Paris and then at the green rolling country they were in when they passed through the tunnel under the Seine and sped south.

They stopped in Chartres and went into the cathedral. Strand would have liked years of slow study to absorb it, but Hazen was visibly annoyed at a loud group of German tourists who were being addressed, in their own language, at a decibel count suitable for a political meeting, by their guide.

“Let’s get out of here,” Hazen growled, after they had been there for only ten minutes. “I’m hungry.” He refused to have lunch in Chartres, though. “I recommend the cathedral, but not the food.” He said there was a wonderful place just off the highway about a half hour away.

They had a fine lunch out in the open air at a table set in a garden and Hazen was jovial again and ordered two bottles of Montrachet to go with the trout, while making a good-humored point of not allowing Mrs. Harcourt to drink any of it because she was doing the driving and the cargo of the Cadillac was precious. She listened politely but hardly spoke while the others talked. She sat quietly, erectly, almost stiffly, as though the holiday atmosphere did not include her and she remained conscious that she was an employee and her employer was present. She locked the car carefully because she had left the attaché case on the front seat

But as Strand and Leslie were walking back to the car after the others, Leslie said, “It’s a fake.”

“What’s a fake?” Strand asked, puzzled.

“The junior employee and the big boss act,” Leslie said. “For our benefit.”

“Oh, Leslie.”

“You don’t have to be a detective to guess what business they have to work out in the Loire valley before they take off for Saudi Arabia.”

“I don’t believe you,” Strand said, slightly shocked by the hostility he sensed in his wife’s voice. “And even if you’re right, it’s no business of ours.”

“I just don’t like people to think they can pull the wool over my eyes, that’s all,” Leslie said, her lips tight. “Madame Harcourt! They’re a cool pair, those two.”

Strand was glad when they reached the car. It was a conversation he had no wish to continue.

They all had rooms on the same floor in the hotel in Tours and Strand noticed the malicious gleam in Leslie’s eyes when she saw that their room and Linda’s were at one end of the corridor and Hazen’s and that of Mrs. Harcourt, again carrying the attaché case, at the other.

“What do you think she’s got in that case she lugs around everywhere?” Leslie asked.

“Industrial secrets,” Strand said. “Russell told me he’s negotiating for a company that’s putting in a bid to construct an atomic plant in Saudi Arabia.”

“My guess is that it’s a douche bag,” Leslie said.

“Good Lord, Leslie!”

Leslie merely giggled as she went through the doorway of their room.

Leslie continued to be reserved and cool toward the woman the next day when they visited Chambord and Chenonceaux, but if either Hazen or Mrs. Harcourt noticed it, they didn’t show it. But Leslie made no secret of her delight in the glorious piles of masonry and told Hazen, as they stood in the formal garden looking at the gallery of Chenonceaux built on stone columns over the Cher River, “This moment alone is worth the trip.” Then she kissed his cheek.

Hazen smiled happily. “I told you this would beat sitting and sweating in a garden while being eaten up by mosquitoes.” He glared at Linda. “Next time I hope you’ll go where I tell you to without my having to get out a subpoena for you.”

“The mosquitoes only come out after it rains,” Linda said with dignity, “and it hasn’t rained all summer.”

“There it starts again. You know you’re lying.” Hazen appealed to the others. “Will you listen to that? Only after it rains!”

“Please,” Leslie said, “please. Let peace and harmony reign. Stop teasing the poor man, Linda.”

“He has such a low boiling point,” Linda said, smiling, “sometimes I can’t resist, just to see how fast the steam starts to spout.”

“Low boiling point! Mrs. Harcourt, you’ve known me for many years and you’ve seen me tried in important matters, sorely tried in important matters, sorely tried, by low dealing and gross incompetence, and outright chicanery. Have you ever seen me blow up?” By now Hazen, too, was amused.

“You have always been a model of decorum, Mr. Hazen,” Mrs. Harcourt said demurely, “in my presence.”

“Now you’re doing it, too,” Hazen said and then joined in the general laughter.

But back in the room in the hotel, getting ready for dinner, Leslie had forgotten the comradely laughter of the afternoon. “I heard something about that Madame Harcourt this afternoon,” she said.

“What?” Strand sighed inwardly. He had grown to like the woman. She seemed modest and intelligent and cheerful and her presence seemed to lighten Hazen’s moods and make him a more agreeable companion.

“There is no Monsieur Harcourt,” Leslie said. “She’s divorced.”

“How did you find out?”

“Linda told me. The last time she and Russell were in Paris together the junior attorney was there all the time, too. Divorced.”

“Divorce isn’t a crime. Most of the people anyone knows are divorced.”

“I just thought you’d be interested, that’s all. You seem so interested in the lady I thought you might be interested in her marital status, too.”

“Oh, come on, now, Leslie,” Strand said, annoyed, “I’m just decently polite.”

“Everybody is so decently polite.” Leslie’s voice had a dangerous edge to it. “‘You have always been a model of decorum, Mr. Hazen’”—she mimicked Mrs. Harcourt’s English accent—“‘in my presence.’
Mr.
Hazen! Do you think she calls him Mr. Hazen in bed, too?”

“Oh, cut it out, Leslie,” Strand said sharply. “You’re being absurd.”

“Don’t you snap at me!” she shouted. Then she bent over in her chair, raised her hands to cover her face and sobbed.

Strand was too astonished to do anything for a moment. Then he went over to Leslie and knelt and put his arms around her. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “I guess we walked around too much in the sun today and we’re both a little tired.”

She pushed his arms away from her violently, still sobbing, her mascara running. “Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”

He stood up slowly and went to the door. “I’m going downstairs,” he said quietly. “When you come down, look for me in the bar.”

He closed the door silently behind him.

When the others found him in the bar, Leslie had not yet appeared. He had spent a half hour alone trying to figure out what was wrong with her and had come to no conclusion. She was an emotional woman but not an irrational one and her outburst was mysterious to him. He had never given her reason for jealousy and the times when he had openly admired a pretty woman she had joked with him mildly about it. Too many new and different experiences, he decided, crowded into too short a period. He told the others that Leslie was tired and lying down for a while and that they should begin dinner without her.

They were only on their first course when Leslie came into the dining room. She had redone her face and was smiling and looked serene. “Forgive me for being late,” she said as she took the chair that Hazen was holding for her. “It’s been a long day. I’m starving. Everything looks and smells delicious. Thank you, Russell. What are you having, Mrs. Harcourt? That looks especially good.”

“Hot local sausage and hot potato salad,” Mrs. Harcourt said.

“I heard men do like women with hearty appetites,” Leslie said and Strand began to worry about her again. “I’ll have the same. I’d be much obliged if you’d order it for me. With my French I never know what I’m getting until I taste it.”

The dinner progressed normally with a great deal of talk about wine on the part of Hazen and Linda, who defended the wines of Provence, although Leslie put in a few good words for several bottles of California white wines.

“Tomorrow,” Hazen announced as they were served their dessert, “we’re through with sightseeing. Mrs. Harcourt has a friend in the neighborhood who has a vineyard and cellars where he bottles Vouvrays, and she tells me they’re very good indeed and we’re going out to his place in the morning and taste a few of them. Everybody agreed?”

Everybody agreed. Strand decided that tomorrow he was going to call Mrs. Harcourt by her first name, if he ever discovered what it was.

“His name is Larimmendi,” Mrs. Harcourt said. “The wine man, I mean. He’s a Basque, but he fell in love with Touraine. I went to law school with him, but he decided to give up the law for the grape. A wise man. I nearly married him after I saw all those beautiful bottles in the cellars. He’s a charming man but he drinks so much of his product himself, I doubt that he’d be much use as a husband…”

As she was speaking, Strand saw a tall woman in a gray wool coat that exactly matched the silvery color of her hair enter the dining room and stand at the door looking as though she were searching for someone. Then she started toward their table. As she moved toward Hazen, who was sitting with his back to the room, Strand saw that she was an impressive looking woman, with a bony, fine face and a long sharp nose, like the paintings of eighteenth-century beauties in English portraits. She stopped behind Hazen, stared down at him for a moment and then bent over and kissed the top of his head. “Good evening, dear Russell,” she said. Her voice was sharp and the emphasis on the “dear” was ironic.

Hazen pivoted in his chair, looked up. “Good God, Katherine, what are you doing here?” He stood up, hastily, dropping the spoon he was holding onto his plate with a clatter, his napkin falling to the floor.

“I came to see how my husband was faring,” she said evenly. “In case you’ve forgotten, that’s you, Russell.”

The silence after these words was oppressive around the table. Mrs. Hazen’s eyes were blank and the pupils curiously dilated and Strand wondered if the lady was drugged.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Hazen’s tone was aggressive.

“Not through any fault of yours, dear. Your communications are few and far between, aren’t they? Your office was kind enough to tell me. And of course friends in America are quick to let me know of your activities. Legions of friends.” She looked deliberately around the table, fixing each of them for a moment with an appraising glance. “Ah,” she said, “I see you have your portable harem with you. And this handsome couple must be the Strands, of whom I’ve heard so much.”