Helen Humphreys Three-Book Bundle (51 page)

Victor leans across and alarmingly takes one of my hands in both of his.

“I will conquer this, Charles,” he says.

“You will?”

“Friendship can transcend adultery.”

“It can?”

“We will not let this affect us. We will go on as before.” He slaps me on the shoulder, and I spill some of my wine. “We will speak no more of this. Your affair with my wife will end. You and I will be better friends than ever. I will have words with Adèle.”

The next morning, a package arrives at my house. It is from Adèle. I recognize her handwriting. I slip the string from the parcel, rip open the paper. There is no letter inside, just a folded piece of white lace. For a moment I don’t know what it is, but when I unfold it, I can see that it is a veil. Adèle has sent me her wedding veil.

H
E COMES TO THE HOUSE
. We go to the gardens. We meet in the church. We meet at the hotel. I am always running, always late, skirts in hand and breathless.

I lie to Victor. I lie to the children. I lie to myself. He’s just a friend. It is just a friendship that has blossomed out of season. Unexpected, but a gift, and something to treasure, not cut down.

The lies only go so far. Victor is easy to deceive because he does not believe me capable of adultery. I tell my sister my secret, and I use her as my excuse. Victor does not question my new and fervent interest in spending time with Julie, although he does get annoyed if I leave the children too long in his care.

The children accept whatever I tell them. They do not doubt me. They have no cause. I adore them and they know it, and they have little interest in anything beyond this.

No, it is the lies I tell myself that are the trouble. Because, of course, I know that they are lies.

Once, when I was young, I ran after my sister through the woods. The branches snagged my clothing and caught my hair. The hem of my skirts dragged in the mud. I felt both that I was moving as fast as a bird in the sky and that I was trapped in the forest cage. When I burst out into a clearing, my sister still ahead of me, I threw myself onto the grass with such relief at being both stopped and free and just lay there, face down, until Julie turned back to look for me.

This is how it feels with Charles. My family, my life with Victor, all the demands and expectations of family life feel like those branches tearing at my body, and though I move as quickly as I can, I am always trapped inside them. But Charles—Charles is the secret meadow, fragrant with sweet grass, where I lie for as long as I dare, and when I rise, I am renewed enough to enter my life again.

It is not a friendship. That lie was the first to go.

He keeps me alive. I fear myself without him.

Charles, like Victor, likes talk. He constantly wants to recite poetry, to compare me to a flower or fruit or a hillside at dusk. I couldn’t care less about the words or the romance. I’ve had enough of fancy language. I don’t want language at all, in fact. I want the slap of bodies in the act of love. I want the salt muscle of a kiss.

Charles likes to talk, but with Charlotte I can have my way. She is not so interested in words. Often she seems bewildered by being Charlotte, and has to concentrate on the business of a woman—holding her skirts, walking with dainty steps—all of which, thankfully, takes away her desire to compare me to a rose bush.

Charlotte yields to me, and the pleasure in this is exquisite, addictive. I have never felt such power, and I am greedy for it. The moment she leaves my side, I long for her return.

But I wish that I believed my lies, because I cannot reconcile my desire for my lover with the fact that I have become an adulteress.

When Charlotte and I meet in the church, we arrive and depart separately. I always ask her to leave first, and I sit there in the pew until I can no longer hear her tentative footsteps on the stone. Then I get down on my knees and pray for a forgiveness I don’t deserve.

My husband and I were childhood sweethearts. This was back when I believed that the love poems he wrote me were about me, rather than about his need to write them.

I believed the poetry. I believed the kisses. I believed the sloppy eagerness of my own heart. We married, and for a while I was the happiest I’ve ever been. But when the children came and I, necessarily, turned my attentions to them, Victor felt rebuffed and disappeared into his work—a work that could absorb all of him if he let it.

That’s the simple explanation. But really, it’s another lie.

I lost my desire for Victor. I found his kisses repulsive, and his constant need to be in my bed was not my need.

But I am married to him. I have a duty and a contract, and nothing justifies the betrayal of my wedding vows. It doesn’t matter that I have lost my desire for my husband. This is the natural state of any marriage, and I should just accept it. Why can’t I just accept it?

When I’m down on my knees in the church, worrying a line of prayer from my lips, I feel disgust for my actions and a desperation to remedy them. But I never feel that God hears me or understands. I never know what to do to absolve my sins. I just rise and go back to my family.

Each time I meet with Charles, my situation becomes more intolerable, and I become more miserable because of it.

As a girl I ran after my sister through the woods. I climbed trees. I made a lance out of a sapling and speared a grouse. I was as tall and strong as any boy. This is what Victor and I had in common when we were young, a longing to express ourselves physically, a need to be active and in the world.

I am still that same being, and it is clear to me that I must do something about my situation. God is not going to help me. Charles cannot do anything. He has asked me to leave my marriage. That is the most he can do. The choice is mine to make. I must leave Charles, or I must leave Victor.

There is no point in lying to myself anymore.

But to leave Victor, I will probably have to leave my children, because how could I afford to support them? My sister is sympathetic, and she might take us in for a while, but I have four children. She will not be able to house us for long. And really, how can I leave my children? How will God forgive that sin? Demanding as they sometimes are, I love them absolutely.

Most nights, after my little ones are in bed, I walk through each of their rooms, watching them sleep. They are all so beautiful. And when one of them has a dream and twitches or cries out, I run to comfort him without thinking, as I run to comfort them through every day. It is impossible to imagine not being attached to them, not being available to respond to their every need.

But I do imagine this. I lie in my bed after I have visited my children’s rooms. Victor likes to work late, is always working late, and so I lie in my bed alone, imagining Charles there beside me. There could be no sweeter pleasure than waking up with him every morning, than turning over in the night to touch his soft skin.

So slowly, over time, I make myself believe the impossible: to be with my lover, I have to abandon my children.

I tell myself that they are my husband’s children as well. He has formed a special bond with Léopoldine, and Charles and François-Victor will learn to be men from him. They need to remain with him. I could leave them in his care, and he would look after them. He does love them.

So that is what I will do. I will take my baby, Dédé, with me, and I will leave the older children with their father. One child I can manage. One child I can bring with me to Charles. Dédé is much too young to abandon. She still has such need of me. The others are more independent, and they become more independent with every day.

I make this decision, and I tell no one about it. Not Charles. Not even Julie. It sickens me to think that this is what I will do, but I know I will do it, just as I plunged the sharpened stick into the breast of the grouse. Feeling badly about it didn’t stop me from killing the bird. I have the sort of courage that a soldier has, and mostly it is useless to me. I would be good in a duel—better than Charles, who is constantly being challenged—but of course no woman is ever required to fight a duel. No, my courage will never be offered up to heroics, but only to the reprehensible act of forsaking my children.

I make my decision and I await my opportunity to act, and as it turns out, I do not have to wait long.

Victor comes home one evening and announces that we are moving. The landlord is evicting us because of all the controversy surrounding
Hernani
.

“I’ve found us an apartment,” says Victor after supper. “On rue Jean Goujon. It’s very spacious and bright. You’ll love it.”

“That’s the other side of the river.”

“I have to be near the theatre. Now more than ever. It’s very important. You know that.”

Victor is always telling me what I know. Once I used to argue with him about this, but now I can’t be bothered. He’s clearly made up his mind. The apartment is already rented. He’s had packing cases delivered and had told the children that we’re moving.

It will be very difficult to rendezvous with Charles if we live across the river. It’s difficult now, when we live two doors apart.

“When?” I say.

“The beginning of the month.”

That’s in just over a week.

“Why didn’t you tell me before this?”

“It happened so quickly. I didn’t know before this.”

We are standing by the window in the sitting room, the window that overlooks the garden. Outside, the children are playing some game that involves racing at top speed around the pond. It is time to call them in for bed, which is why I went over to the window in the first place.

Victor is standing beside me. He’s not looking out into the garden, but rather is staring down at his hands resting on the window ledge. I look down as well. His hands are broad, ink-stained, the nails chipped and dirty. These hands write the words that keep us all alive. They are also the hands that wrote the play that is forcing us to move across the river.

Victor slides his right hand towards my left hand, tentatively, like a cat slinking up on a bird.

“It will be an adventure, my darling,” he says.

I turn from the window before he can touch me.

“I must call the children in for bed.”

I sit on the edge of Dédé’s bed after she is tucked in and ready for sleep. She is excited about the move, keeps wanting to ask me questions, to talk about it.

“Will there be flowers over there?” she asks. “Will there be cats?”

“It’s the other side of the river, not the other side of the world,” I say.

“Will there be apples?”

“Of course.”

“Will I have a bed?”

“You will have this bed. We will load it into a cart, and it will travel across the river and be set down in your new room.”

Dédé laughs delightedly and clutches my hand. “Can I lie in it when it is on the cart?” she asks.

“Shall we pretend?” I say. “Move over.” I slide down beside her on the narrow bed and she rolls into my arms. “There would be stars above us. Bright stars. Close your eyes and tell me when you see them.”

Dédé squirms in my arms. “I see them! I see them!”

“And the cart would be bumpy over the cobblestones.” I gently rock her in my arms, back and forth, back and forth. “The night air might be chill, but you would be tucked up so warm in your bed.” I tighten my arms around her. “You would be so safe and warm.” I continue to rock my daughter, closing my eyes as well, imagining the sharp stars above us and the dank smell of the river, the yellow lick of lamplight on the bridges.

Dédé’s breath opens into sleep, but I stay with her on the bed, keep her in my arms. She is so light and small, more like a bird than a child. My little one. My treasure.

I am a selfish woman to want more than my children. It should be enough to care for them, to love them like this. For every other woman, it would be enough. Why isn’t it enough for me?

I open my jewellery box and shove its contents into a carpet bag. I put the letters from Charles in there as well, and some of the gifts my children have given me—drawings, a swan feather, dried flowers. I take the pencil portraits I have made of the children, and some of the first poems Victor wrote to me, when we were newly in love.

I will send for my dresses. I will send for my cloaks. I will send for the carpets and tapestries that belonged to my family. I will send for the few sticks of furniture that are my own. I will send for my books and paintings.

Downstairs, Victor packs for the family. I can hear him crashing things into the packing crates. Upstairs, I take only what I can’t bear to be parted from tonight, for I have made up my mind that I will leave after Victor has gone to bed. I will carry Dédé from her slumber and we will walk the short distance to Charles’s house. She has fallen asleep on the story of moving, and she will wake up to find that it is true, although it will not be the move she had imagined. Still, I will make sure that there are flowers and apples and cats for her in her new life.

I will send for her bed.

I don’t hear the door, but I do hear the voices. Victor’s booming voice and then the fainter, more feminine voice of Charles. I stiffen, and my breath comes fast and shallow. I can’t hear what they’re saying, so I drop the carpet bag on my bed and creep from my bedroom into the hallway. I move slowly down the corridor, my feet finding the boards that don’t creak, until I am standing near the top of the stairs. From this spot I can hear everything perfectly.

At first I think that they are talking about the play, because this is what they often talk about—Victor is always enlisting Charles to give an opinion on his writing—but I realize quite quickly that they are not discussing literature. No, Charles is telling Victor that he and I are having an affair.

My legs buckle. I lean against the wall. I can’t believe he is doing this. Why is he doing this?

The voices float up to me, as though Charles and Victor are in a play and I am sitting in the balcony, having paid handsomely for a ticket to this theatre.

Charles is boasting. Victor is scornful. Charles offers proof. Victor is confused and bewildered. Charles is penitent. Victor is outraged. Charles tries to take back what he has said. Victor won’t let him.

It has all the heightened emotion of any good drama, all the elements of a drama that Victor might have written himself.

I remember the first time I met Charles. He came to visit Victor and me on rue de Vaugirard, when we lived above a joiner’s shop. Victor had invited him round, was ecstatic about his visit because Charles had given his poems a wonderful review in the
Globe
. Victor felt that he’d found a champion in the press, someone to review his work favourably and advance his reputation. He practically threw himself down the stairs when he heard the knock at the apartment door.

I don’t remember what we ate, or the time of year, or whether I was pregnant yet with my first child. I don’t remember where we sat, whether there was a fire, if there was rain at the window, what I was wearing, how much wine we drank. It is strange how the details can fall away and yet the feelings remain.