Lovers and Liars Trilogy (120 page)

He closed his eyes and buried his face against her neck, fighting the exhaustion, and the shame.

“Darling, no,” he said again gently. “You should rest, and be calm.”

“I don’t want to rest.” Her voice had risen on that high, imperious note he had come to dread. “I want you to make love to me. Is that so much to ask?
Why
won’t you?
Why
can’t you? I know you love me. I know you want me. So what’s wrong? Jean, you’re not fifty yet. Are you too old?”

That taunt was a new one. She saw the anger come into his face and gave a small cry of triumph.

“That’s it. That’s it. You’re too old. You can’t do it anymore.”

“You’re wrong.” He rose and looked down at her coldly. “When I have the inclination, I can perform.”

“So perform now. Prove it. I don’t believe you.”

“Very well. Since you ask me so charmingly.”

“Jean—”

“Lie still, damn you.”

He undid his belt, loosened his trousers, left his clothes on. When he thrust up inside her, she gave one long, shuddering cry, then began to writhe in his arms. He pressed her down hard with his full weight and trapped her arms. As he moved inside her, he felt and saw nothing. His mind was completely dark. His one intent was to succeed as quickly as possible, to kill pain with pleasure, even if the pleasure was a brief thing that would not last.

Climax eluded him; he thrust on, and then she began to speak and move under him—and this made it worse. She talked a new whore language and made new whore moves—and that, of course, was not what he wanted; that he could purchase—and when desperate these last few years sometimes had purchased—anytime.

He put his hand across her mouth to silence her. He could feel despair just the other side of some screen in his mind, but he refused to look at it. Last night had been a failure. He had to succeed now.

She was murmuring under his hand. He closed his mind to her insinuating words. He summoned back from his memory the lost Maria of their past. He felt the modesty of her hands and saw the trust of her eyes. That Maria he worshiped; to love her had been his only religion, the guiding principle of his entire life. He fixed his mind on this Maria, and even now she did not fail him: just to imagine her was enough. Kissing her breasts, he shuddered and came. The ejaculation felt violent. The instant it was over, he pulled out of her with a gesture of disgust, hating himself, hating the woman his lost Maria had become.

He had not satisfied her, as he had once been able to do so easily. She caught hold of his hand and pressed it hard between her thighs. She closed her eyes and rubbed against him in a frantic way. It took her more than five minutes to achieve satisfaction, but her pleasure seemed intense; she at once released his hand.

“Go to sleep.” He jerked away from her, rose, and began to fasten his clothing. “Go to sleep. You can surely sleep now.”

She made no reply, but lay still, her eyes closed. Lazare sat down on one of the small, uncomfortable, priceless chairs. He felt he hated the chair, the Marie Antoinette bed, all the past years of acquisitions and accumulation. The houses, the cars, the planes, the paintings: he loathed them. He had acquired them believing they could assuage loss, but now he looked down into the emptiness at the heart of his life and felt sick with fear.

He sat there, in hard-faced desperation, for an hour. Maria never moved once during that time. He was afraid to speak or move himself in case she was only pretending to be asleep, but he longed to escape from this room. He wanted to go out into the park and walk beneath the avenues of sweet chestnut. He wanted to breathe clean air, and think, and be alone.

These pills had been his last hope, the last component in a Faustian pact he had made. Now he saw them for the disaster they were. Never mind what happened on the day of the collection, never mind if Maria failed to appear, never mind if her imagination remained barren, never mind if he had to endure another five years as infernal as the last five—he would destroy the remaining White Doves and purchase no more.

The business would suffer eventually—but he no longer cared. He could keep it operating, and by the same means. He would simply continue to employ, at inflated salaries, the two anonymous gifted young men who tried to imitate the inimitable, and who had produced pastiche Cazarèses these past five years. If they could just survive these coming collections, he would reactivate the negotiations begun a year before. In due course he would sell the company, and then he and Maria would—would what? He realized suddenly that he could see no future for them unless some doctor somewhere, some magician he had not already consulted, could find a cure.

On the bed across the room, Maria stirred. She sat up, pushed back her hair, and regarded him calmly.

“Jean,” she said, “where is my paper? Where are my pencils? My special pens?”

“They’re over there, darling,” he replied wearily. “On the table, where they always are.”

To his astonishment, she said nothing further, but crossed to the table, drew the paper toward her, and began sketching. She was still half naked. He rose, fetched a robe, and draped it around her. She shrugged him aside irritably.

“Don’t fuss over me, Jean. Turn the light on. Go away.”

He switched on the lamp beside her and moved a few paces away, watching her with painful concern. It was the first time she had attempted to draw in more than a year. How long would it be before she tore up the papers, tossed them aside—an hour? Half an hour?

For the moment she seemed completely absorbed. He moved to the far side of the room, where she need not be aware of his presence, and sat down. There were books on a table next to him. He picked up one of them and began to turn its pages quietly, though the content did not register with him at all. In this way, her pencil strokes and the ticking of a small elaborate gilded clock the only sounds, one hour passed, and then two.

Late in the afternoon he rose and moved to the windows. He looked out at the dark. Behind him he heard a sudden movement; the scattering of papers; one long, high, thin cry of utter despair.

He crossed to her quickly and crouched down, encircling her with his arms. Her drawings were tossed down on the floor all around him. At first, trying to soothe her with his embrace, he scarcely noticed them. Gradually first one, then another, swam into his vision. He tensed, then bent down to pick them up. He looked carefully at the washes of color, the quickly sketched lines. To an outsider they would have been almost meaningless, and perhaps unimpressive, but these sketches were a private language he and Maria shared. He could read assurance in a stroke of the pen, and it was assurance he read now.

He looked up at her, his face blank with astonishment and with the effort of suppressing hope. He thought: they work, those White Doves do work, after all.

Maria’s head was buried in her arms. She was weeping bitterly, her body racked with sobs.

“Darling, don’t cry,” he said in a low voice. “These are beautiful—the most beautiful drawings you’ve done for years. You see? I always told you, darling…”

She was not listening. She lifted her face; tears spilled from her eyes.

“I want my baby back,” she said. “Jean—please. I want my son. I have to see him. I need him. Jean, it’s breaking my heart.”

He felt the pain knife through him, as he always did when she began on this plea. Putting his arms around her again, he explained quietly and gently, as he always did, that this was the one thing he could not give her.

“The baby’s
dead,
Maria,” he said. “Darling, you have to accept that. The doctors explained—”

“You’re lying. The doctors know nothing. You took him away, Jean. You
banished
him, the same way you banished Mathilde. You were ashamed of my baby.” She buried her face in her hands. “I want to see him. I want to see him
now
.”

Lazare fought to control himself. This refrain had first begun at the time of her operation, five years before. Once she realized she could no longer have children, something snapped in her heart and her brain. Before that he had always believed she had accepted her loss and left her grief behind. Then it had resurfaced; this past year and particularly these past few months, wild scenes of pain and accusation had become more frequent. She was now half choking with tears. He found the grief and the intransigence unbearable. In a sudden rage he swung around and slammed his fist down hard on the table. The lamp fell and the pens scattered.

“Stop this,” he shouted. “For the love of God, stop this. The baby’s
dead,
Maria—he’s been dead for over twenty-five
years.
I can take you to his grave. I can take you to the church where the funeral was held.”

“What funeral? I never went to a funeral.”

“Maria—you were too ill. I went. I organized everything. I can tell you the name of the priest. I have the death certificate. Do you want me to fetch it? Do you want me to make you read it? Dear God, how many times do I have to prove this to you?”

She was still not listening to him. The tears had stopped, and her face had set in an obstinate mask. She lowered her eyes, then gave him a sidelong glance he found almost sly. Bending down, she began to pick up her papers and pencils and pens.

“Go away,” she said in a flat, sullen tone. “I don’t love you when you shout at me. You’re lying. I won’t listen. Go away.”

He left her then, in a fury with himself and with her. When he returned, an hour later, Maria was sleeping deeply, and the new maid was just leaving her. With an apologetic look, she informed him that Mademoiselle Cazarès had been telephoning; she had summoned Mathilde.

Lazare was beyond caring: let the damned woman come, he thought, and turned to examine the scattered drawings left on the table.

During his absence, he saw, Maria had not been sketching clothes. She had covered page after page with random hieroglyphs, random words. Interspersed with these, and drawn with the utmost delicacy, were little pictures from their past. A crucifix, a cradle, and row upon row of vaulted graves.

One drawing in particular caught his attention: on the largest of the tombs, she had printed the name of her son, Christophe, and his age at death, which was three months. Perhaps she was at last beginning to accept what he told her, he thought, forcing back the tears that started to his eyes as he read this boy’s name.

Other details of this drawing puzzled him, however. There seemed to him to be a meaning in it which he could not grasp. To the right of Christophe’s tomb, Maria had drawn a sun; to the left, a crescent moon. Above his grave, drawn as boldly as if it were some biblical sign, there was a large multipointed star. The rest of the drawing was in black and white: as if to emphasize the star, and proclaim its significance, Maria had colored it gold.

A
PPROACHING NOTTING HILL GATE
that Sunday evening, Lindsay was beset with nerves. She signaled right, turned left, and narrowly missed a post. She stole a glance at Rowland, who sat beside her, his long legs stretched out as far as the confines of her small car permitted. He looked unperturbed.

She slammed on the brakes outside her own house and peered up at its façade. The couple who lived on the lower floor appeared to be out, but lights burned at the windows of her own apartment: Tom might be home, and Louise would certainly be in, she thought with a sinking heart.

“I’ll just run up and find that photograph and my article,” she said. “I can’t explain properly about Lazare until you see that picture. So I’ll just grab it, then I’ll run you home—where did you say you lived?”

“In Spitalfields,” said Rowland. “It’s in the East End. It’s miles away. Why don’t I just take the tube? Anyway, you can’t park here, you’re blocking the street.”

“Nonsense,” said Lindsay, who was only half listening, and whose knowledge of London’s East End was vague in the extreme. “It’ll take us—what? Fifteen minutes? I told you—this is
exciting,
Rowland, wait until I explain.”

“What about our lunch tomorrow? Why can’t you explain then?”

“Because this could be important—urgent. Besides, I’m—I’m not going to have time for lunch tomorrow, I realize now. It’s too much of a rush. I have to pack for Paris, and—Look, Rowland, just wait in the car, will you? Then if someone wants to get past, you can move it.”

She leapt out before Rowland could argue further, ran inside, and began charging up the four flights of stairs. Halfway there, she paused; she realized she might have sounded rude, inhospitable. Too bad, she decided. She had had the entire journey from Max’s house to make up her mind, and she was determined on two things: first, she was going to see Rowland McGuire’s home at all costs, and second, Rowland McGuire was not, under any circumstances, to encounter Louise.

She flung open the door of her apartment to a rich smell of frying onions and hamburgers. She could see Tom at the kitchen stove, and a sink piled high with unwashed dishes. She could see Louise on the living room sofa, her feet up. She was dressed to kill, and drinking a glass of wine.

“Hi, Mum,” said Tom.

“Where is he?” said Louise.

“He’s outside in the car, I
told
you,” Lindsay said, hugging Tom, then moving through the room at top speed. “I told you when I called. I just need to pick up a couple of things, then I’m giving him a quick lift home.”

“Darling, how dreadfully rude. What can you be thinking of?” Louise, who was fast on her feet when she wanted to be, was already at the window. “Look. The poor man’s parked the car for you. Goodness—he’s
devastating,
darling. Why didn’t you say? And now he’s standing down there like a lost soul—and it’s freezing cold.”

“Louise…”

“Coooeee…” Louise was leaning out the window and waving her glass. “Hello, Rowland,” she called in siren tones. “Lindsay can’t find those papers. Come up and have a glass of wine.”

“Please, God, don’t do this to me,” Lindsay muttered under her breath. Louise closed the window and turned around.

“What was that, darling?”

“I was praying,” Lindsay said. “I was praying my life might change. I was praying
you
might change. Never mind…”