L'Affaire (48 page)

Authors: Diane Johnson

Almost silently the big boat pulled out of the yacht basin and cruised along the banks of the Seine, headed under the first of the beautiful bridges. The guests stayed on deck a few minutes, but it was cold, and they soon consented to go down to be seated for dinner. In the central cabin, tables were set along the windows so that from either side the diners could see the marvelous sights. Amy regretted the mariachis; though they played delightfully – ‘Cielito Lindo,’ ‘La Cucaracha’ – the music didn’t seem to go with the ghostly splendor of the buttresses of Notre Dame as the lights played over them, invoking the medieval bones interred within. However, the guests seemed to enjoy the pudgy Mexicans, or pretended to, and their spangled costumes and sombreros certainly accomplished the mood of New World ebulliance with which Amy had hoped to signify her mood at leaving. Of course it was a lie; her heart became heavier and heavier as she looked at Emile, and thought of Palo Alto. Like Pamela Venn, she had in some way become homeless, fitting neither here, nor, she had a suspicion, there, if ever she had.

She saw she should have put place cards on the small
tables. She would have liked to have Emile, Kip, and Géraldine at her table, but as people shuffled around and paired off to sit down, she was only able to organize for herself Géraldine, Victoire, Joe Daggart, the awful Dolly, and another woman she had never seen in her life. Kip sat at the next table with his sister, Emile, Géraldine’s husband, and a French couple whose name Amy had forgotten.

Amy could not be with Victoire without suffering a pang; but Victoire’s simple sweetness, pretty blue eyes, and unsuspecting nature ensured forgiveness. Amy told herself she respected Emile for not leaving his wife and children, and that respect was almost as important, and much less mysterious, than love. She tried not to be sorry that the day-to-day disappointments of life with Emile would be left to Victoire. But it was hard.

She was glad to talk to Joe Daggart, though, for he had a bit of news: in the midst of escalating tensions between the U.S. and France, though the United States had officially denied its role in causing an avalanche in the French Alps, it was compensating certain of the victims nonetheless. Nothing to do with airplanes, he said. Someone had seen American snowmobiles on the ridge above the place the Venns had been swept away, and had come forward with accusations. He himself had been with the snowmobile party, Daggart said.

‘No damn way we caused the avalanche, but they were right that it was a woman who called the rescue patrol on her cell phone. It was someone called the baroness von Schteussel, who was skiing opposite. We saw the avalanche from above, where we were, on the
ridge in our snowmobiles. We couldn’t get down there, and we ourselves didn’t have the equipment to search for victims, but I confirmed what she had already told them, exactly where to look – two people under the snow, relatively shallowly buried, as it turned out.

‘You didn’t go to help?’ asked Amy, very shocked.

‘Well – no, we had no gear, we’d have had little chance of finding them. The professionals found them much sooner. I’m certain we didn’t actually dislodge the snow, though. Up where we were, the cornice was intact. They must have done it themselves.’

‘Why were you there?’ Victoire asked.

‘We were looking for a bit of wreckage, something belonging to our satellite program that was thought to have landed just about there.’

‘Will Kerry and Harry get compensation?’ Amy wondered. He was negotiating it now, Daggart said. The widow would get something, but he didn’t think it would make a difference to her plan to go to England. She had decided Harry should be brought up an Englishman, like his father. On the other hand, she was under a lot of pressure from the Joan of Arc votaries to remain as their symbol and treasured, important presence in France, so maybe she would change her mind.

‘I’m glad they’re getting some money. America always does the right thing eventually,’ Amy said, though she was less sure of this than she had once been.

‘I like to think so,’ said Joe Daggart, without irony, it seemed.

After the dessert – chocolate sundaes – the tables were pushed back and people began to dance. Amy observed
Rupert and Posy Venn, with their mother and Kerry Venn, leave the dining room together.

‘Let Kerry do it,’ said Posy, helping Kerry undo the parcel.

‘We should read something, or say something, I suppose, Posy?’ said Rupert.

‘I could say Robin’s poem “Go to the Dark Starling,”’ she said. Goodbye, Father, she said to herself.

‘Let’s do it silently, each with our thoughts,’ Kerry said. After a moment, she opened the box and abruptly dumped the contents into the starboard breeze. Little stinging grains flying back at them made them blink painfully, but tears soon washed them away. Rupert looked around to see Pamela, withdrawn at a distance, watching them, making a little sign to say that she was with them. Goodbye, Father, said Rupert in his heart.

‘All right?’ Kerry asked, turning to Posy and Rupert.

‘Fine,’ they said. Posy wished Robin had been there, he had such a sense of occasion; but he had been deep in conversation with Emile.

Under cover of the music and dancing, Emile and Amy found a furtive sexual opportunity in what looked like a chart room, their passion proving to them it was not going to be so easy to say an absolute goodbye forever. ‘Kip and I leave Thursday,’ Amy sighed. They smiled insouciantly, neither feeling reassured, but neither quite believing in the entire unkindness of fate, to part two lovers so perfectly suited in every way, and both so generally favored by fortune. Was this to be the punishment after all, to miss the love of their lives? If so, it would not
be without a struggle, a fortune spent on airfares, tears, a Hoover fellowship for Emile, silent financial backing from Amy for some of his projects, torrid lovemaking in San Jose motels or Provençal hotels – or in Amy’s new house in Tahoe, not far from Kip’s school – they saw it in prospect, probably underestimating the ways in which it would preoccupy them for years to come, desire increasing with the trouble they had to go to to gratify it. It would not be so bad.

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