11 Harrowhouse (10 page)

“I've never much liked the way The System does things,” he said.

Watts nodded politely, but didn't comment.

“My last packet, for example,” said Chesser with a short, derisive laugh.

“They're not always as fair as they could be,” said Watts. He looked down, as though The System was there at his feet. “Granted, they've got to have regulations, but there's something to being human as well.”

Chesser agreed. He remained silent, to encourage Watts to talk.

“Take this friend of mine,” said Watts. “Been with The System just short of thirty years. January last the doctors at St. George told him he had cancer. Terminal. Nothing to be done about it. Scheduled to die before the year is up.”

Watts stopped. Evidently that was all. Chesser didn't see how it was pertinent to The System. He put the question.

Watts was reluctant to explain, but he wanted to more than not. “The System has a thirty-year death or retirement benefit for all employees. My friend will die about a year short of the required thirty, but The System won't make an exception. My friend's family needs looking after, and there's not enough insurance. The wife's not well and there's also a daughter depending on him.”

“He explained all that to The System?”

“Yes, of course. They were sympathetic but also said their thirty-year rule meant a full thirty years.”

“The bastards.”

Watts agreed with a thoughtful nod. “It required consideration by the board of directors, who decided to make an exception in this case, a generous compromise is what they called it.”

“That was white of them.”

“Twenty per cent is what they allowed. Perhaps adequate by their lights, but it doesn't seem right, does it? All those years for only twenty per cent of the benefits he was counting on. But I suppose big business must be run to form.”

Chesser reviewed the words he'd just heard, how they'd been said, and was convinced the friend with terminal cancer was Watts. Kindly, Chesser changed the subject. He picked up the diamond. He said, “Wildenstein is going to cut it.”

“That's marvelous, sir.” Watts seemed genuinely pleased.

“He'll probably do an oval. That's what you suggested, isn't it?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Watts modestly.

“I'd like you to see it after it's been cut.”

“I'd enjoy that, sir.”

“Tell you what. Leave me your home phone number. I'll call you when it's finished.”

“When will that be, sir?”

Chesser was glad he didn't have to say next year.

Before nightfall, Chesser was at Wildenstein's workshop on Hoplandstraat in Antwerp. Maren preferred to wait in the limousine, more interested in reading a book entitled
Life Before Life and After Death
, which was a gift from Mildred. Chesser had said he'd be with Wildenstein a half hour, or an hour at most, and suggested Maren might use the time to see some of the city. She'd never been in Antwerp, but she'd already seen enough of it on the way in from the airport. She thought it looked bored stiff with itself. It seemed drab and unhappy. Maren was unaware that less than a hundred feet from where she sat, just around the corner, was the house and studio where the great master Peter Paul Rubens had answered his call to the colors. And Van Dyck, as well, for some time, in that very same house. Maren calculated that Chesser, knowing she was just waiting in the car, would take care of his diamond business more quickly.

Maren needn't have been concerned, for when it came to business Wildenstein was a man of few words. Chesser found him on the second floor of his workshop, sitting on a blue enameled stool beneath a glaring, bare light bulb. He was reading a Hebrew newspaper and sucking the juice from the core of an apple he'd just eaten. He remained seated when he saw Chesser, and, while Chesser introduced himself, Wildenstein calmly folded the newspaper and slid it into his coat pocket. He asked to see the diamond.

He examined the stone under the illumination of a Diamondlite, which provided an artificial light equivalent to northern exposure on a clear day. He studied it for five minutes without saying a word.

“A beauty, isn't it?” asked Chesser.

Wildenstein merely nodded. He placed the diamond on a nearby counter surface.

Chesser brought out a certified check for one hundred thousand dollars. He placed it next to the stone on the counter surface. Wildenstein looked at it. He picked up the diamond and placed it on top of the check.

“Very beautiful,” said Wildenstein. However, Chesser didn't know whether he meant the diamond or the check.

“It has to be finished by the first of next month,” said Chesser.

“Three weeks,” said Wildenstein.

“Does it have enough depth for an oval?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Whatever is best.”

Wildenstein scratched the side of his nose. He blinked several times, as though to clear his eyes. He squeezed the fingers of his left hand with those of his right. He returned to his stool and sat. Out came the newspaper.

Chesser had hoped for more enthusiasm, at least more discussion. He wanted to hear Wildenstein say the stone was going to cut into the most exquisite jewel he'd ever touched. But, evidently, all that was going to be said had been said. Except good-bye. Chesser said that, along with a reminder that he would return on the first.

As he was leaving, Chesser felt the need to turn for a final look at Wildenstein. When he did, he found the old cutter's eyes were on him.

“Don't worry,” advised Wildenstein, and resumed his reading, right to left.

During the next three weeks, Chesser thought as little as possible about the diamond. At times he was almost able to forget it completely. The town of Chantilly, old and small and easy, made that other world of Meechams and Masseys seem no more than a residue of memory.

Maren's house was not in the town proper but a short distance out, situated on its own private acres of land off the north road to Senlis. Jean Marc had left other houses to Maren. Those in Paris, Antibes, and Deauville, for instance, were larger and more luxurious. However, whenever Maren mentioned home, Chesser knew she meant the house at Chantilly. Built in the late seventeenth century as a royal hunting lodge, the house was actually used by certain members of the royal court less for the pursuit of game than for personal fun and games. Accordingly, what they in their style categorized as a lodge was by no means rustic. Rather, the structure had the pleasing lines and proportions of a relatively small château, and its twenty rooms were planned and decorated in a manner that verified its hypothetical purpose without sacrificing any creature comforts.

It was not difficult to picture the past: the carriages arriving from Paris with the necessary provisions, which were, of course, the most desirable choices of the court. Some of these young ladies had already been measured and found to be of adequate spirit. The others were indeed ready to experience initiation. All anticipated the delights of the chase. On the first pleasant afternoon, according to the rules, the pretty young things were sent scurrying into the woods in various directions, disrobing as they ran, leaving a trail of silks and laces and linens for the royal hunters. High hairpieces were knocked awry by low-hanging branches. Dainty slippers were left in the crotches of trees. Stockings streamed from the tips of saplings. And when the last, the most intimate of their female attire was left to mark the way, they themselves prevented the possibility of escape by revealing their locations with little cries of despair. Finally, feigning fatigue, each collapsed upon some carefully selected bed of moss or leaves, and waited to be overtaken. The stalkers were soon upon their quarry, whose ecstatic shrieks often frightened away such guileless creatures as birds, rabbits, and, sometimes, a doe.

Maren contended that some of these merrymakers still inhabited the house and its grounds. In their spiritual forms, of course. She claimed she could literally feel their presence. Once she found a length of pink ribbon in the woods and considered it to be a supernatural confirmation. The girls were still playing around, she claimed.

It was a provocative thought, that those lovely libertines and their gallant counterparts were scampering about the place. Certainly the premise was inspiring enough to make one want to believe. It didn't matter, really, that the ribbon found by Maren had actually been left there unintentionally just a few days before by a young girl of the town, who, while lovemaking, had released her long hair to please her partner. Maren did not know that, and even if she had, she would have said the girl had been prompted by the pervasive spirits.

Maren called London and asked Mildred's opinion. Mildred heard the facts and promised to ask around. An hour later, the little medium called back collect and confirmed Maren's perception. Yes, the spirits were there in considerable number. Mildred had communicated directly with several, particularly one named Simone who revisited every year from April to late September. Not more than a hundred yards from the house was a mossy glade where Simone had, with delightful compliance, taken and given her first with none other than the Monarch himself. An experience Simone could not repeat, naturally, but one so exquisite that she was irrepressibly drawn back to the place. Said Mildred.

The following day, without explaining to Chesser, Maren arbitrarily chose a direction and made him count off a hundred paces into the woods. Coincidentally or not, it brought them to a moss-covered spot. Maren was overjoyed. She circled the small area, respectfully. She transmitted some silent, sisterly communion to Simone, and received feelings she translated as invitation more than impulse.

Maren removed her shoes and placed them precisely on the peak of a jutting rock.

Chesser asked what she was doing. She didn't reply, so he shrugged and leaned against a tree to watch.

Next, she took off her skirt and blouse and, with some care for arrangement, draped them over a dipped bough. All that remained were her bikini panties. She got quickly out of those, bent a young, pliant tree and placed them on its highest point. She released the tree and the panties were swished up out of reach, high, like a guiding pennant.

Then she lay face down on the spread of moss, motionless for a long moment, pressed by her weight against the natural cushion. There was the sensation of countless tiny curls of touch. And her own of nutmeg color at her intersection coiled among those of the green.

She rolled over slowly, her eyes and her mouth open. From her came a prolonged sound of helpless submission. Her Viking hair fanned out around her head. Her legs arched up left and right and relaxed apart.

It was time for Chesser to get into the act. And he did. With appropriate spirit.

If the sybaritic Simone was observing them from her invisible vantage on the other side, no doubt she approved. For, naturally, it was quite exceptional.

Almost daily thereafter Maren made long-distance calls to Mildred, who soon got the picture and relayed directions. It seemed there were a great many mossy beds and grassy bowers within easy pacing distance from the house; ideal, lovely places, just waiting to again be put to use with the permission of a Geneviève, a Dominique, a Françoise, a Beatrice, a Sylvie, or Danielle.

After a dozen days of such renascent behavior, including one twilight in a chill rain, Chesser looked forward to the more customary comforts of sheets and man-made bed. He didn't mention that to Maren. However, she shared that feeling because the previous time out, in the nice lap of an open field, she just happened to catch sight of a pair of farm boys peeking and ducking over a bordering rock wall. By then, of course, it was a bit late to feel self-conscious. Actually, much later than either Maren or Chesser realized, for there had also been another, more deliberate eyewitness to all their outdoor intimacies, an expertly quiet little man with a powerful longdistance lens on his 35-mm. Nikon camera.

From then on Maren and Chesser did their lovemaking indoors. Mildred validated that decision, conveying a message from the spirits, who said they were bored with the whole thing anyway. They were, after all, the type of souls prone to ennui. Said Mildred.

One night Chesser and Maren went into Paris for a soiree at the home of an acquaintance. They both had secretly looked forward to it as a sort of relief, but, after less than an hour of exposure to all the practiced remarks and thinly camouflaged unhappiness, they were eager to escape and went rushing back to Chantilly feeling even more grateful for one another.

Another morning, two Citroen-loads of lawyers arrived at the house with documents requiring Maren's signature. Chesser thought the lawyers all resembled rodents cautiously eyeing a big hunk of cheese and trying to devise some way of snapping it out of the trap. They were cordial to him, for he was, after all, their most promising means to a very lucrative end. Maren invited them to stay for lunch and, when they expressed polite hesitation, she abruptly accepted that as their refusal and suggested a vague “some other time.”

After the lawyers had departed, Maren and Chesser walked into town, down rue du Connetable to the Relais Conde, where they enjoyed double helpings of cold tiny crawfish taken from the local canal. They sipped Cassis and discussed such things as the universal need for contraception and the merits of various sports cars. Maren informed Chesser that she'd ordered a special Ferrari 365 GTB and asked him to remind her to call and inquire why it hadn't been delivered as promised. From the Conde they went home the long way, around the Château de Chantilly, paying a franc each for entrance, and it was worth every sou because, as they walked by the moat, they witnessed the splashing, flapping, beaking mating of a pair of swans, one black and one white. It appeared more combative than amorous.

Nearly every night Chesser and Maren played backgammon. She threw many pairs but misjudged her advantages and doubled carelessly. As a result her gambling debt to Chesser increased to nearly two million dollars. Quite earnestly, she told Chesser she was going to have the lawyers issue him a check, because it was as valid an obligation as her account at Cardin or Saint Laurent. She was serious at the time but, apparently, it slipped her mind.