Authors: Diane Johnson
‘We are also hard on ourselves,’ said Emile.
‘France began by swearing eternal friendship to us,’ Amy reminded them. ‘Lafayette named his child after George Washington even. He was helping our revolution.’
‘If you like, the French helped out the American revolutionaries in order to inconvenience the British, not from fellow feeling. Oh, I don’t deny the friendship between Washington and Lafayette, but by all accounts, Washington was a remarkable man. France has been unfaithful recently, perhaps, but there are always reasons, as in a marriage. Misunderstandings, collisions of temperament,’ said Emile. ‘Who is to say which of the couple is at fault? We blame you, of course, for your banalities, your vulgarities, your successful movies…’
To be reproached for vulgarity was more than Amy could bear. ‘We saved you twice!’
‘There is the fault,’ smiled Emile. ‘That is what we cannot forgive.’
‘Do you think there’s something between them?’ Robin Crumley whispered to Emile when the guests had moved on.
‘Who?’
‘The Teutonic fellow and Amy.’
‘I don’t see anything special. Why?’
‘A sort of intimacy?’
‘Do you care?’
‘Intensely. Girls like that should not be allowed out for people to feed on. She arouses all my chivalrous impulses. He is a fortune-hunting lout.’
‘I think you must be wrong about her money, Crumley. There is no aura of that. Look at Madame Renan, there, or the Croatian beauty over there, their jewelry, the afternoons spent at the coiffeur. Those are the
poules de luxe
.
L’Américaine
has none of that. She’s a single girl on the lookout for men is all.’
‘Millions, my dear, look again.’
Emile, looking again, shrugged. ‘I’m no expert,’ he said. But perhaps he was suggestible, he admitted to himself, for he did begin to detect something in her indifference to fashion or adornment that could mean money – or it could be the hopeless American lack of chic. Either way, it mattered not at all to him. Yet he kept thinking about her. He tried to brush aside these stirrings of interest.
He looked around for Victoire, ready to go in to
dinner. She had been standing at his elbow during the conversation, and now had fled.
Victoire looked pale. She had received a bolt of understanding. Somehow she had intercepted Emile’s glance at, or with, Posy, and knew unmistakably in her blood that something had happened between them. Since she first arrived, Victoire had observed that Posy was always gazing at Emile, but she was used to people gazing at Emile, men and women both. His beauty was a part of the reason for her own adoration, not the essential, of course, but a part, and just a little bit because it is nice to have something that others desire. She had learned there was a price – nobody could resist the constant blandishments the world seemed to offer Emile, not just sexual but in all kinds of things, posts, contacts, and she was proud of the fact that he never connived and never exerted himself for money, wasn’t mercenary or corrupt. He didn’t have to be. But now the price was too high. The look he had exchanged with Posy was Emile’s look for someone he had been to bed with, where he had put his fingers, his
sexe
– oh, she couldn’t think of it.
The first effect of this intuition was physical, a chill that swept across her skin and clutched at her throat, her gorge rose. She drew her scarf around her shoulders, icy as a person in shock. Luckily the constriction in her throat prevented her from crying out in some indignant protest, so that the desire to scream and throw herself at Posy was replaced by a silent hot flare on her cheeks. No one seemed to notice the change in her.
It was unbearable that fate should trick her affections in the space of a few days, should bring her a new sister while giving her as a husband a man who would betray her with her own sister. No, that was thinking backward: she’d been given a sister, but a sister who would prey on her husband. All that she had ever thought and known, including that Emile, like all men, she supposed, was not always faithful, was now stood on end. Bitter to think that fortune had sent her an unknown parent, money even, and two siblings she had been prepared to love, and with it the poison gift of a heart broken, and a future entwined with them.
Her heart raced. Perfidious Albion. This was what the English were like, the horrible English with their poor personal hygiene, slippery morals, sleazy business practices, hopeless engineering… To find herself half-sister to a monster, conspiring against her and discussing her. Rage boiled up like steam in a kettle, whistled in her ears, and escaped, replaced by heartbreak. Certain that everyone could read on her face what she had seen, she murmured something and stumbled off to the ladies’ lounge, telling herself that maybe it had been her imagination. Maybe Emile, after all an only child, had a brotherly feeling for the buxom bright-cheeked Posy. But she knew better. It was the look he had had for her, and now for Posy, affectionate to his women, like some Mormon patriarch or African chieftain – though maybe there was some cultural influence from his parents living all that time in Senegal, something not entirely his fault.
Vicious imaginings seeped into her mind. How horrible Posy must look naked, big blubbery breasts, great purple
nipples, probably strong English smell of – of sheep, fish and chips, soot, trains, the vomit she had once smelled in the British Museum as a child taken to Londres, hating the cold rooms, the flannel sheets, the unstrained tea, the greasy chops, the too sweet chocolate, the brown teeth, the tooting voices… what did they have, really,
les Anglais,
besides Shakespeare?
She sat on the dressing stool and gasped for breath. She saw the other woman there look at her in alarm – it was the American, Amy, dressed for cocktails, who had come in for a Kleenex. She looked concerned, saying ‘Is everything okay?’ Victoire leapt up and smiled brightly and rummaged for her lip gloss.
Amy, who had been inclined to like Posy better than Victoire, now included the so obviously upset Victoire in the range of her sympathy. She had liked Posy because she was English and endearingly ramshackle, had admired her mop of tousled curls, while Victoire’s perfection was slightly daunting, with her blond hair, good English, and radiance bespeaking some level of spiritual attainment. Now she saw that Victoire was suffering too – it was the death of their father, she was sure, and she was moved to touch her arm reassuringly, and murmur sympathy.
‘Oh, yes, it’s so sad about poor Papa. I never knew him,’ Victoire said. ‘That is so sad. It just came over me – never mind. I didn’t want Rupert and Posy to see me like this, it makes it harder for them.’ We will leave the hotel, of course, tomorrow morning, she thought. Emile would come with her, of that she was determined. She would not speak of this horrible intimation, would say they had to get back to the children, period. She need
not decide now whether she would ever mention it, ever.
Amy hugged her, thinking how sad it was, truly, and how brave all these survivors were. Now she watched Victoire, she who seemed so natural looking, having mastered her tears, reapply a slight gloss to her lips, smooth her brows and lashes with a little brush, fluff up her hair, fold and refold her scarf, and dab perfume on her temples, earlobes, wrists, and between her last and fourth fingers on each hand, all this while turning brightly to the subject of the excellent local carp the dining room had served last night. Amy carefully noted each detail of the Frenchwoman’s toilette.
Kip was waiting with Harry at their table when Amy came in to dine. Harry had grown to enjoy Amy’s arrivals and count on them, and signalled approval by beating his spoon on his high-chair tray. Amy rather dreaded telling Kip that she had decided to leave Valméri a little early, for a variety of reasons, none of which she could exactly name. Madame Chastine had said that though her apartment was far from ready, it was habitable, and part of her sudden need to get to Paris, she told herself, was a wish to be in on the process of furnishing and choosing for it. Each day had brought a phone call, sometimes two, from Géraldine or the decorators, the Americans named Tammy and Wendi, with questions: Did she have strong aversions to any color, for instance robin’s-egg blue, in the version found in the Grand Trianon? How resolutely faithful did she want to be to the style of the seventeenth century? Transitional to Louis XVI? Some people found Louis XIV a little somber – what were her views?
She didn’t have answers for these questions, but she didn’t want other people to decide for her either. She wanted to examine the alternatives and discuss them. Nor had she said, ‘Spare no expense,’ though they seemed to have inferred something of the sort. Expenses were being run up with a confidence that she would agree that made her uneasy. She didn’t exactly know how to communicate this to Madame Chastine without seeming mistrustful or quibbling. Without indulging her uneasiness, she had gone so far as to read the real estate ads in the
International Herald Tribune
to get an idea of what things should cost, and had been interested to see that these employed expressions that would be thought politically incorrect in America. ‘Close to churches,’ or ‘walk to shopping’ (or even ‘dumb waiter’). The local consciousness was obviously not raised about the fact that not all people attend church, not everyone can walk, and that working in a restaurant is not to be sneered at. Perhaps their historical disruptions had rendered them less sensitive.
Another reason she thought she ought to leave was the tenderness with which the baron had said, in a low voice, as she left the cocktail party, ‘Unfortunately I am expected at a dinner tonight,’ as if she would be wanting him to account for his movements. She feared entanglement. She remembered the bouquet. So she must tell Kip she was going. He would be disappointed, she knew, but at least his sister was on the mend and things would soon be back to normal. He didn’t respond to this bracing view of it; he looked horrified.
*
Any of the guests passing through the lobby at the end of dinner would have noticed the tall, balding, imposing Frenchman registering. With him was a very beautiful, extremely pregnant woman, something not often seen in ski resorts. The man filled out little message forms for the Jaffe daughter to stuff in several mailboxes. Posy, coming by, noticed that her box now contained a message, which she hoped would be from Emile, who was set to leave in the morning, as they were themselves. Instead it said succinctly:
M. Antoine de Persand, de la part de Madame Chastine and Madame Crawford Venn, voudrait parler avec Mlle. Posy Venn. Téléphonez ch. 40, s’il vous plaît
.
Posy went straight to look for Rupert, to discuss what this new person could want. The newcomers had gone directly to the dining room, apparently quite delighted with the snowy Alpine ambience and the prospect of a delicious dinner, and their eyes never left each other.
A candlelight memorial service for the victims of the avalanches was to be held tonight after dinner, in the village church, and Amy, who hadn’t planned to go, changed her mind and duly went along to it, as a cooperative gesture, out of loyalty to Kip and because of her acquaintance with the Venns. The little church with its picturesque steeple had been remodelled inside in a modern style at the time of the building of the tourist center, with a gaunt Christ on a cross of blond wood against a brick wall behind the altar, tasteful pews the color of ash, and abstract stained-glass windows influenced
by someone like Mondrian. People tiptoeing in and ranging along both sides of the center aisle were each given a candle. Amy gathered that there would be a signal, she hoped internationally comprehensible, to light them at a given moment. She supposed this was a Catholic church, the first she had ever been in.
Many hotel guests were recognizable among the crowd thronging in, all in après-ski boots and warm coats, bringing the smell of wool and damp. There were Otto and his wife. She carefully sat well behind them. The Venn siblings filed in and sat in the second and third rows behind what appeared to be the entitled mourners of others lost in the slides, Victoire sitting with Harry, Kip, and Mr Abboud, behind Posy and Rupert. Amy was pleased to see that they had included Harry and Kip, a sign of accord among the Venn family, yet it was somewhat strange they didn’t sit all together.
It seemed a long wait and it was rather chilly in the church. You were apparently meant to keep your coat on, though Amy saw Posy Venn throw hers off. Eventually, a priest in his robes entered, nodded, and began to speak in a grave voice. She could imagine what he was saying: prayers for the souls of the lost, thanks for preserving the rest of us. There were responses from the people, but only the name of Adrian Venn leapt out for Amy from among the names of the people in behalf of whom they had gathered. Despite her general disapproval of religion (following Prince Kropotkin) and incomprehension of the language, she was seized with the general reverence, and meditated sincerely on the issues of danger and death, and felt gratitude for having personally escaped the
self-invited perils of the mountains. She knew she had made the right decision to leave before tempting fate any further. When the moment came to light the candles, she, like other nonsmokers (all Americans?), was obliged to turn to others for a light. It was Paul-Louis who reached over her shoulder with a lighter.
‘Pay, pay, pay,’ people said all around her, a stark litany, but not an unrealistic analysis, of life’s guilty feelings of obligation.
‘Peace,’ said Paul-Louis to Amy. Oh.
Paix, paix, paix
. How embarrassing to have heard their word for ‘peace’ as ‘pay.’
‘You haven’t seen my place,’ he said to her as they shuffled out of the church. ‘If you aren’t doing anything now?’ Amy sighed. She felt a little frisson of temptation, but it was too late. Why had he waited so long?
‘Tonight I have to get back,’ she said. ‘My office is calling me at ten. But I have time for a drink. My treat!’ Then, not wanting to foreclose any options, she touched his arm and said, ‘I’ll be coming back a lot to Valméri.’