Jezebel (11 page)

In October Gladys received a letter from Beauchamp telling her that Olivier was dead, killed at the front. Gladys was alone that night. She sat on the little terrace for a long time, holding the letter. It was a calm evening with not a breath of wind. Finally she got up with a sigh and went and knocked on her daughter’s door. Marie-Thérèse was in bed. Gladys walked over to her and gently stroked her hair.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘are you asleep? I saw you switch off the light as I was coming in.’

‘I’m not asleep,’ said Marie-Thérèse.

She had pulled herself up on to her elbow and leaned against the pillow; she looked anxiously at her mother, pushing back the dishevelled hair that fell over her forehead.

‘Darling, my darling little girl, I have terribly sad news for you and I know you’ll feel so much pain that you’ll
think it will never end, that you’ll never forget, but it will pass, my darling, you’ll see, it will pass. Poor dear Olivier is dead.’

Without a word, without a tear, Marie-Thérèse grabbed the letter her mother held out to her, read it, then hid her hands beneath the sheet; she wrung her hands so violently that blood rushed to her fingernails. But she didn’t say a word; it seemed to take every ounce of her strength to hold back the words that tried desperately to escape her lips.

‘My darling,’ Gladys whispered with pity, ‘I can’t bear to see you looking so sad. But it will pass. I swear to you that it will pass. A woman’s first love, you know, seems so strong, but it’s forgotten so quickly. I know you think I don’t understand, that I don’t know, that I’ve forgotten such feelings, but I remember them as if it were yesterday, if you only knew … You loved him, I know. But there will be others, Marie-Thérèse. Love is not just a few kisses, a few meetings and lovely plans for the future. You’ll only know what love truly is later on, when you’re a woman, when it is too late, perhaps,’ she said with a strange little passionate but weary sigh. ‘You see, I sensed something would happen,’ she murmured sincerely. ‘I’m so happy now that I didn’t give in to your tears, your pleading. A little love affair can be forgotten. But a husband …’

‘Please, Mama,’ said Marie-Thérèse quietly, ‘please go away and let me be alone.’

‘I can’t, my darling, that would make me feel so sad. Don’t pull away like that. Cry. Listen to me. You will forget, Marie-Thérèse. You trusted me in the past. I swear to you that one day you’ll forget, do you understand?’

She wanted to hold Marie-Thérèse’s pale, silent face close to hers; she lightly kissed her.

‘Look at me …’

Marie-Thérèse looked up slowly. ‘I was Olivier’s mistress, Mama,’ she said. ‘I’m pregnant.’

‘What?’ whispered Gladys.

She leaned forward and looked at her daughter’s face: with her plaits half undone, her slim neck and childlike features, she still looked so young that Gladys thought, ‘She’s lying! It isn’t possible …’

With a sudden movement she lifted Marie-Thérèse’s nightdress over her chest; her breasts were heavy and the colour of white marble that is a sign of early pregnancy.

‘You poor child,’ Gladys said softly, ‘you have caused your own unhappiness.’

‘No,’ said Marie-Thérèse, shaking her head. ‘You’re the one who has caused my unhappiness, you and you alone. Why wouldn’t you let me marry Olivier? We were young, we loved each other, we could have been happy. Why did you do that? Why?’

‘I didn’t stop you from doing anything,’ cried Gladys angrily. ‘You have no right to say that to me! I asked you to wait. You were both so young!’

‘And we did wait,’ said Marie-Thérèse in despair, ‘we waited until death came and took him from me. We waited like good little foolish children, so that you,
you
could be happy, find love, feel passion, while we had to be satisfied with a few kisses, a few lovely plans for the future, as you put it! Oh, I can’t forgive myself. You were quite right to say that the young are foolish. Yes, foolish, cowardly
and weak, weak when in your hands. What else could we do but wait? When the war started I begged you to let me marry Olivier. You wouldn’t even listen. You told me it wasn’t possible to allow a marriage with a boy who might soon be killed … that your duty as a mother forbade it! Ah, how pleased you were finally to have maternal duty on your side! My goodness, how sincere you were. That was when we realised we’d been duped, realised we had to seize at least a few moments of love, a little happiness. I was the one who wanted to, me,’ she said, finally letting the tears flow down her cheeks. ‘Poor dear Olivier, he took pity on me. He sensed he would never come back. And so did I,’ she whispered. ‘I kissed him but in my heart I could hear a voice saying, “He’ll never come back.” It was a voice I tried to block out, but couldn’t. So I begged him to take me, so that for one night I could sleep in his arms and be his wife, and I begged him to give me a child, because I thought, “God will want him to come back if we have a child.” But he’s dead … he’s dead … It’s all over for me now …’

‘When did you sleep with him?’ asked Gladys, grabbing Marie-Thérèse’s burning hot hands. ‘You haven’t seen him since last May!’

‘That’s what you wanted to believe. You thought I would obey you as I always have, did you? Before leaving for the front he came to Paris. He took a room at the Ritz, on the same floor as us, and I spent one night with him. At least we’ve had that,’ she said more quietly, remembering that night – so brief – the blue curtains, the early dawn light on the bed and that unforgettable sensation of rushing down into an abyss, eyes wide open …

‘But what are you going to do now?’ said Gladys, her voice shaking. ‘You’re not going to keep the child, are you?’

‘What are you saying!’

‘Marie-Thérèse, don’t you know … Don’t you know that you can prevent it from being born, if you want to? It’s only two months, it’s still possible, quite easy, in fact. You do understand that you cannot keep this child? Just think of the scandal. If people found out … But you understand that yourself, don’t you? Answer me; talk to me; say something. You’re not a child any more, sadly, you’re a woman, you knew what you were risking, you wanted this. Well, now you have to be brave. You must get rid of the child, all right? You must, Marie-Thérèse! Listen to me, I know a woman … Carmen Gonzales … She sells make-up but she’s also a masseuse and a midwife, and I know that … she’s done this more than once. It’s nothing, Marie-Thérèse, nothing at all. Do you remember my friend Clara Mackay? Her husband was away and she was expecting a baby and she just couldn’t have it. She went to see Carmen, in the maternity hospital where she works, near here, in Beix. The next evening she came back and no one ever knew anything. Not ever. Her husband would have killed her. For you, there will be a few moments of pain and then it will be over, this nightmare will end. Say something,’ she said, nervously grabbing hold of her bare, slim shoulders. ‘You have to do this for the child, for the child as much as for yourself. You can’t keep it, let it be born. You don’t have the right to inflict life on a child who will be poor, abandoned, unhappy and alone!’

‘Do you actually believe I would abandon my child?’
Marie-Thérèse said quietly. ‘Quite apart from the unspeakable crime you are suggesting, which is basically the same as smothering him with a pillow the way pregnant servants do. Do you really believe that I’d be ashamed of him, that I’d hide? How little you know me.’

‘You’re mad,’ shouted Gladys. ‘You think you’re a woman? You … You’re nothing but an ignorant child. How could you, you, a rich girl from a respected family, want to keep this child? Do you really think I’d allow you to raise this child? Because, in the end, I have some say in this you know.’

‘You have no say in it. You shouldn’t have prevented us from getting married!’

‘And you shouldn’t have been that boy’s mistress!’

‘I’ll put up with the consequences, Mama.’

‘You’re forgetting that you’re only nineteen, my girl. For the next two years I have absolute power over you and your future.’

‘Well, then, what will you do? You can’t kill him.’

Gladys pressed her hands to her face; they were shaking. ‘One day, you’ll fall in love with another man. You’re not going to spend your whole life mourning a lover you spent one night with, are you? What will you do then? Who will marry you with an illegitimate child? Marie-Thérèse, it’s not maternal love speaking in you. It’s too early for that. You just want revenge. You know that the idea of seeing you a mother, a woman, and doing it this way, hideously, shamefully, is unbearable to me, and that it is to punish me for having made you wait to get married that you are determined to make me suffer. Because you are making me suffer! You’ll see that later.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Marie-Thérèse, lowering her head, ‘but I’m not thinking of myself. Does it seem odd to you that it’s possible not to think about yourself? Does it? I want my child to live and be happy, and as for me, I’m not afraid of anything, I’ll put up with everything …’

‘You think you will. But you’ll see later on …’

‘Do you think I’ll become like you? Well, never, never. You talk to me so sweetly, but you only ever think of yourself … and that people might say that you, Gladys Eysenach, are old enough to have grandchildren, to be a grandmother. That’s really what you can’t bear! You can’t even hear the word without shuddering.’

She looked at Gladys.

‘You will walk over to your mirror, look at your beautiful face, your blonde hair, and then you will remember that you’re a grandmother and life will no longer seem worthwhile. I know you, oh, I know you so well. If I had married Olivier and had a child with my husband, it would have caused you the same unbearable suffering. Only then you wouldn’t have dared say a word. But now there’s nothing to hold you back. And to avoid becoming a grandmother you’re prepared to murder my child.’

‘He isn’t alive yet,’ said Gladys quietly. ‘He isn’t suffering and that type of crime is committed every day …’

‘Well, it’s not going to happen to me,’ said Marie-Thérèse, sounding almost wild, thinking that the child she was defending this way, and who existed only to her, was more precious that anything else in the world.

Gladys started pleading again. ‘All right then, it’s what you want; he’s yours and you have the right … But don’t
you owe anything to me? To yourself? To me,’ she said again in despair. ‘Can you imagine the scandal …’

‘Yes, I can,’ said Marie-Thérèse, smiling slightly.

‘So you don’t have any pity for me?’ said Gladys hopelessly. ‘What have I ever done to you? It isn’t my fault … Could I possibly have foreseen the war? It happens every day that parents oppose a marriage that isn’t suitable. What else have I done?’

‘Other parents mistakenly believe they’re doing the best thing. Their children might suffer, but they don’t have the right to hold their mistakes against them. But you, you thought only about yourself. You didn’t want to have a married daughter. You didn’t want to be “the mother of the young Madame Beauchamp”,’ she murmured, sobbing hoarsely. ‘You wanted to snatch away a part of my life, my share of happiness, the way you always have.’

‘That isn’t true,’ said Gladys. ‘I’ve always loved you.’

‘Yes, when I was a child, when I was a good excuse to make people think well of you,’ said Marie-Thérèse bitterly. ‘You sat me on your knee and let people admire you. And I, idiot that I was, loved you so much; I admired you so much; I thought you were so beautiful! I used to talk to you as if you were the child, I, your daughter, as if you were my child. Now I hate you; I hate your blonde hair and your face that looks younger than mine. What right do you have to be beautiful, happy and loved, while I …’

‘That’s not my fault …’

‘Yes it is,’ shouted Marie-Thérèse. ‘You should have been thinking of me and only me, the way that I think only of him,’ she said, wrapping her weak arms round her body. ‘Leave me alone! Go away; get out!’

‘You will not keep this child, Marie-Thérèse. He’ll live, he’ll be well looked after, I’ll give him all the money he needs, but you will not keep him, not that … you won’t show him off. That’s impossible. Oh, I can tell very well what you want, you know. You want me to suffer, don’t you? If I ever hear you say the word “grandmother”, I’ll want to kill myself,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m in pain! You can’t understand that. You think I’m a monster. But I’m right, I am, because I see life as it truly is, so short, so sad without love, without men desiring you, with its long, horrible old age! But you, you’re young. You’ll forget your Olivier. I wasn’t asking for an eternity, you know! Just two or three more years. But no, you’d fix things so that everyone would know the truth, so that at every moment I’d be expecting someone to look at me oddly or whisper with pity, “Is it possible? She seems so young, but …” And what about all the women? The way other women, my enemies, my friends would laugh at me? Just wait a while, wait two or three years and you’ll see, you’ll see, I’ll be a good mother, you’ll have nothing to complain about, and as for the child, well, perhaps I’ll even love him then. So tell me you won’t keep this child?’

‘I
will
keep him, I
will
know him, I
will
bring him up,’ Marie-Thérèse said harshly. ‘Now get out.’

She threw herself back on to the bed and lay there without moving, without a word, without a tear. Gladys kept talking to her for a long time, but she bit into the sheets and remained silent. Finally, Gladys left.

Gladys forced herself to accept that the child would be born; she resigned herself to it but life had a bitter taste. Whenever she saw a man smile as a pretty young woman passed by, she felt her heart being ripped apart. Sometimes, the man would look at her first, but that had no effect on her, she was used to that. What she couldn’t bear was that he looked away, looked at someone else …

One evening, at Lily’s house, she met a woman who was blonde, like her, and whose fragile, triumphant beauty was similar to hers, but she was young … she was young … Gladys smiled at her, spoke to her, but the woman’s flawless skin, her youthful eyes were a living insult to her. For weeks she avoided going back to Lily’s, so as not to see her rival again.