Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (60 page)

“Up to the what?” I was laughing. I was enjoying my second glass of burgundy. “The what?”

“A coomb,” she said patiently, “is a small deep valley, like a basin in the hills.”

I twirled my glass with my fingers. “And what did
cher
William want to do instead?”

“He wanted to go walking for forty miles.”

“How can anyone walk that far in one day?” Caroline asked.

“I put on what I call my ‘woodland dress’ and joined him,” Dorothy said.

“Your legs are about the length of mine,” I said. “Did William walk slowly? I always had to take two steps for his one, and skip beside him.”

“Do you like to skip?” Caroline asked her.

“I kept up,” Dorothy said. “Now when we walk, there are more people, some with longer legs, but I still keep up with them.”

“Whom do you walk with now?” I asked. I thought I knew, but something in me wanted to see if they’d mention Mary.

“Coleridge, of course,” she said. “The miles we put under our feet,” she said, “as those two talked or composed poetry. I don’t know how they memorized it all. They always asked my opinion on lines they had questions about. Then they would change them. They wrote it all down later. That’s the last thing they did. But we haven’t seen as much of Coleridge lately. We walk a lot with Mary.”

“Did I ever send you a translation of that poem about the rainbow?” William said.

It was very curious, a conversation with Dorothy and William.

The
patronne,
a plump woman, came by and filled my glass again from the bottle on the table. Dorothy put her hand over her glass, and William shook his head. I sipped the wine and tasted its subtleties. A good glass of wine was so rare.

“William likes to write about things like rainbows,” Dorothy said.

“They move him, but they are transitory.”

“But that’s not exactly how that poem goes, is it?” I said. “You did send it to me, William. It’s only eight short lines, yes? And at the end you make a little prayer that your feelings will stay the same throughout your life, that you will not lose your joy—”

“That ‘my heart leaps up when I see a rainbow,’” he said, and smiled.

“You’re missing the deeper meaning,” Dorothy said to me. “It’s about
mutability
.”

“I like rainbows,” Caroline said. “I will try not to lose that when I get older.”

“Bravo,” William said to her. “‘The child is father to the man.’”

“What?” she said.

“William, you’re always talking over people’s heads,” Dorothy said. “It’s about how things change, dear,” she said to Caroline.

It was a warm night at the restaurant. We sat outside, and I felt a soft breeze come from the Channel. William stretched out his arms on the table. He put his palms together.

“How is La Rouge?” he said. “Is she still alive?”

“Just this spring I decided to let her retire at the château de Beauregard. It was finally time.” My voice broke unexpectedly. “She changed my life.”

I brushed my eyes and felt embarrassed.

“I thought she was marvelous,” William said. “She saved my life.”

“If it weren’t for La Rouge, I wouldn’t know how to ride,” Caroline said.

“I’m a
walking
person myself,” Dorothy said.

The woman came with the tray of different cheeses, and I chose three, to enjoy the contrasts, Dorothy took none, and William chose one. Caroline took her chocolates from her pocket.

“These French cheeses are too strong for me,” Dorothy said.

“Dear sister, what cheeses do you like in England?” I asked.

“The Stilton, yes, and the cheddar is good. In Germany they have some cheeses that resemble the English ones.”

I remembered a letter that mentioned the trip to Germany. They could not visit France because of the war, but they had been so close.

After dinner we walked again along the pier. It was cool now, and a pale glow shone on the sea.

Caroline ran ahead of us. “How is the little Gérard?” William asked. “I liked him.”

“He wants to be an English admiral,” I said.

William laughed. “The irony is too much.” Then, “That was a good meal. I forgot how agreeable a French meal can be. And the wine.”

“You should sing,” I said. “I’d love to hear you sing again.”

“Here?”

Caroline came suddenly running back down the pier.

“Come, look, look!” she shouted.

“What is it?” I asked. I was afraid it might be the dead body of some sailor, washed ashore. In the bad days of the Vendée, there had been bodies sometimes, along the banks of the Loire.

“Come, you must see.”

She pulled at our hands again, and led us, straining, as if she were a horse pulling a heavy load, her two small arms outstretched behind her like two reins. We arrived at the end of the pier. “There,” she announced. Her mouth, in the half-dark, had a dark ring of chocolate around it and her hand, in mine, was sticky with it. “There, do you see?”

“What? What is it?” William and I asked.

We were parents, for an instant, asking our daughter a question.

“Do you see anything?” I asked him.

“No.”

“You mean the shining on the water?” Dorothy asked.

“Yes, the shining colors on the water. What is it? Is it not beautiful?”

“William, you were this excited when you told me about a glowworm,” said Dorothy. “She is truly your child.”

I didn’t know whether that was a compliment or not.

“It’s simply phosphorescence,” Dorothy said to Caroline. “Eggshells are phosphorescent.”

“You mean if I take an eggshell into a dark wardrobe, the shell will glow?” asked Caroline.

“For a brief time, yes. And if the temperature of the phosphorescent object is the same as the temperature about it, the light may last a long time. I suppose the warm evening and the warming of the water from the hot day make these lights last.” She paused, and then her tone changed. “They are like streams of glowworm light! Aren’t they beautiful, William!”

Her scientific voice had suddenly become like a little girl’s.

We were all excited then, with the colored lights in the sea, and I took William’s hand and reached up and kissed his cheek. It was dark, with the light only on the water, but I think Dorothy and Caroline saw. I did not mind. They should see. I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek again. He bent his head down and put his arm around me.

For a moment I could feel his breath next to my ear, as if he were going to say something, but he did not.

Then he kissed me briefly on the cheek. My hair was coming undone, and he partly kissed it instead of my cheek.

“Oh, I’m being too excited,” said Dorothy, “I
am
sorry.”

“No, it’s beautiful,” I said.

“Ah, but you are French,” said Dorothy. “You are an excited people.”

William withdrew his arm from around my waist, but he squeezed it briefly first, as if saying he was sorry he had to withdraw it.

The waves broke under us in a greenish fire.

“Maman, I want to sleep here,” Caroline said. “I want to sleep right here.”

“I want to go bathing tomorrow,” said William. “Will anyone join me?”

“The water’s too cold for me, but I’ll wade,” I said.

“William loves cold water,” said Dorothy. “But this is not cold.

You should touch the water of our northern lakes.” Then she paused.

“I have a cold and cannot join you, William,” she said.

“I’ll go!” shouted Caroline.

Back in our lodgings at the rue de la Tête d ’Or, I wondered, Why does it have to be so furtive, our touching? He was never ashamed before. Why did Dorothy apologize after she got excited? My God, I was right to be afraid yesterday. There were moments today more terrifying than entering that old crypt. It
was
like a crypt, with Dorothy there, in black.

Caroline was asleep, and I got up and went to the window. The fort, at the entrance of the harbor, was a shadow lit with lights of the sea occasionally flashing beneath it and with a few of its own lights.

The army still occupied it, now, even though the war had ceased.

I lay down on my bed and wept.

The next day William sent a note chez Madame Avril that asked us to meet them at the pier at one in the afternoon. Dorothy was coming, after all. Caroline was excited that she would get to go bathing.

The tide was low, and we walked along the sands. William went up to a changing cabin, argued a while with a woman at its door about a tip, and then gave her one. Then Dorothy and I watched William, holding Caroline by the hand, walk far out in the low tide. There were more than a hundred people bathing, far out from us.

“It’s a delight to see so many people enjoying themselves again,” I said. Dorothy looked at William and his daughter and didn’t say anything. “You have kept him happy,” I ventured.

“It was not always easy,” she said. “We started walking together.

That helped me keep track of him. We became good friends again.

You know, we had not seen each other for a long time when he came back from France. We had gone out of each other’s lives. I looked after him when we were children; though I am a year younger, when our parents died, I was the mother. Then I had not seen him for so long, and when I saw him again he was strange, distracted. I even feared for his sanity, as well as for his health. France was very hard on him. He believed all those ideals, and they were dashed; then, when he came back, our uncle would not even let him set foot in his house.”

“I am sorry,” I said.

“I had to fight hard to have William even half accepted back into the family. He was supposed to go into the ministry, you understand. And for him to have an illegitimate child, and by a
Catholic
and a
French
girl—” She broke off. It was as if she were talking about someone else, not me. I thought I saw her eyes glisten with water. Then she took command of herself. “When I started to take care of him again,” she said, “we realized what good friends we were. We were all we had in the world. Now we have made a happy home. And I see that he is now, and will become even more, a great poet. It is worthwhile to make sacrifices for that.”

She paused, and in the heat I put my hand on the back of my neck and wiped away some sweat. Caroline, out in the waves, held William’s hand. He was lifting her over a small wave. I wanted to be out there, with them, laughing with the striking of the cold water against one’s skin. Anything but talking to this woman who had taken my beloved and who spoke with such composure about her conquest. I wanted to shake her complacency, but didn’t know if that was possible.

“William was almost dead inside,” Dorothy went on, “from disappointment, from heartache, from guilt. I gave him his life back. He is an amazing man,” she said carefully, “but he must, he
must
, have the proper conditions to show his genius to the world.”

“‘True knowledge leads to love.’ That’s a beautiful line he translated for me.”

“It is hard to appreciate his poems fully in translation, though,” said Dorothy, “and I am afraid our French is not good enough for you.”

“On the contrary, your French is very good. I can understand everything you say, without straining in the least.”

I understood that Dorothy was asking me—no,
telling
me—that I must give William up once and for all. But what did she know, what
could
she know, of William’s and my life together?

“William always prized his independent mind,” I said, “his freedom of spirit.”

“I think what he most values now is his tranquility,” she said. “He needs peace to write. Peace and his long walks.” She had a tight black bonnet that shielded her face from the glare, and she pulled on one of its long strings with her hand. It tightened the bonnet even further.

“He was happy with me,” I said. “You didn’t hear him laugh or sing or—” I summoned up my courage as if I were on an intrigue. I must face this little woman. “Love like his doesn’t go away,” I said.

“If you knew anything about him, you’d know that. It can be covered up by new friends and the tranquility of your cold hills, but it doesn’t pass. He has had just as fine walks along our river as along your lakes. He has said so. You didn’t hear him, but he said so. He needs peace to write, sure, but he needs something else that you or your friend Mary can never give him as I can—he needs passion, Mademoiselle. Do you know what I am saying? Can you understand me? Is your French good enough?”

“You will never take him away from me again,” she said. “He was carried away by the emotions excited by the Revolution. Everyone knows that. That is why it is forgivable. He wasn’t in England. He was in a world gone insane. That never would have happened in England. William is a man of self-control.” Her chin was trembling, and she pulled at her bonnet string again.

Suddenly I laughed. “You’ve got a poet whose spirit ranges beyond the mountains in control, you think, but you don’t. You control him through fear. If he leaves you, he will fall into the abyss again. If he leaves you, you yourself will fall apart, so he will stay. But his spirit is beyond you, beyond both of us. You don’t know what it is like to face uncontrollable forces, Mademoiselle. And you’ll never, never know what William and I shared. What we still share, if we could walk alone. Have him walk alone with me, this evening. Or are you afraid?”

“I understand William, and you do not. That is clear. You may walk unchaperoned if you like. He has things to say to you.”

“Very well.”

“But Mademoiselle Vallon—we know in England about French girls. We know that—what
happened
—was not William’s fault. We know that, most likely, William was not your first, and will not be your last. William is beyond French temptation now.”

“It sounds to me,” I said, “as if the war between our nations is still ensuing. I think it is time to enjoy the peace, Mademoiselle, that you so highly extol.”

I looked toward the sea and saw William lifting Caroline, effortlessly, high over a wave, and dipping her feet down into its foam. I heard her scream with delight, over the happy screams of the other bathers. “Everyone is enjoying the peace out there. I’m going to wade now, dear sister. It is getting far too hot here.”