Till We Meet Again (20 page)

“Do I look as you hoped, Father?” Bruno asked politely.

“Much better, Bruno, much, much better.”

“Grandmother says I look just like my mother,” Bruno continued calmly, and as he spoke, Paul realized that the small, full mouth was Laure’s mouth. It was oddly shocking to see it on a male face.

“You do, yes, you do indeed. Tell me, Bruno, do you like school?” Even as he asked, Paul cursed himself for the banal question that every child must hear from every adult. Yet Bruno brightened, his grown-up composure becoming suddenly
the enthusiasm of his age. “It’s the best school in the Seventh, you know, and I’m at the head of my class.”

“I’m delighted to hear that, Bruno.”

“Thank you, Father. There are boys who have to study much longer hours than I do, but I get the best marks. I don’t even mind taking exams. What’s there to be afraid of, when you’re really prepared? My two best friends, Geoffrey and Jean-Paul, give me a lot of competition, but so far I’m keeping just ahead of them. One day the three of us together will run France.”

“What!”

“Yes, that’s what Jean-Paul’s father says, and he’s president of the State Council. He says that only boys who start out like us can make it to the top. The future leaders of France are all destined to come from a few schools in Paris, so we’ve got every chance. It’s my ambition to be Prime Minister one day, Father.”

“Isn’t it a little early in life to decide on your career?”

“Not at all. If I hadn’t decided by now, it would almost be too late. Geoffrey and Jean-Paul aren’t any older than I am. We know already how well we must do on the Baccalaureate—that’s only a few years away. Then we have to pass the entrance exams for the Institute for Political Studies. But once we’ve graduated from ‘Sciences Po,’ well … we’ll be in. Then it will just be competition from the other graduates. I’m not going to worry about that now.”

“Good,” Paul said dryly. In his years out of his country, he realized, he had almost forgotten the elitist mind-set of the French ruling class. There was an unquestioning acceptance of a system based on a combination of intellectual superiority and access to the very few select schools. The system effectively eliminated any other kind of person from participating in the government of France. It utterly rejected the outsider, although unquestionably it attracted the most brilliant minds and formed them early. Somehow, Paul had never expected Bruno to be part of this system. Certainly his letters had not indicated the ambition he so obviously felt, but then they had always been short and impersonal.

“Don’t you have any time to have fun, or is it all study, Bruno?” he asked, worried at the image of a child spending all his time on schoolwork.

“All study?” Bruno laughed briefly. “Of course not. I have fencing classes twice a week, Father. My fencing master is
very pleased with my progress, but the most important thing to me is riding. Didn’t Grandfather send you a picture of me on horseback? I’m studying dressage already, because—no, don’t laugh at me, Father, but I want to be on the French Olympic Equestrian Team someday. It’s my biggest ambition.”

“I thought you wanted to be Prime Minister?”

“You are laughing at me!” Bruno said angrily.

“No, Bruno, not at all, just teasing you.” His son didn’t seem to have a sense of humor, Paul thought. He must remember that he was just a child, after all, in spite of his grown-up talk about ambition. “There’s no reason you can’t do both.”

“Exactly. That’s what Grandfather said. I ride every weekend and during the school vacations. I’m too tall for ponies, of course, but my cousin François, Grandmother’s nephew, has many wonderful horses, and he lives near Paris. I go there as often as I can—last Easter I spent the whole vacation at his château, and this summer he’s invited me again, to stay as long as I like. His children all ride well. We intend to follow the hunt next winter, even though we’re too young to join yet. I can’t wait!”

As they walked the next few blocks, Bruno told Paul who lived in each of the great houses, which, to him, were familiar territory. There didn’t seem to be one, except the embassies, which was not the home of one or another of his classmates, not one in which he had not played games in the secluded gardens and explored the attics and cellars. “This is the only part of Paris anyone would want to live in, don’t you agree, Father?”

“I suppose so,” Paul answered.

“I’m certain of it,” Bruno said, with a conciseness that reminded Paul of the Marquis de Saint-Fraycourt. “Everything important is here. Even when I go to ‘Sciences Po,’ it’s just right down that street.”

“Bruno—”

“Yes, Father?”

Paul hesitated, drawing back for a moment from telling Bruno that next year he would be living in Cape Town. “I brought some photographs for you.” He stopped on the street and took out the pictures he had taken of Eve and the girls in the garden of their house. “This one, these are your sisters.” Bruno glanced at the picture of the two laughing little girls.

“They look nice,” he said politely. “How old are they now?”

“Delphine is seven and Marie-Frédérique—she insists that we call her Freddy now—is five and a half. They were a little younger when this picture was taken.”

“They are pretty children,” Bruno said. “I don’t know much about little girls.”

“And this is my wife.”

Bruno’s eyes slid quickly away from the photo of Eve.

“Your stepmother is very anxious to grow to know you, Bruno.”

“She is your wife, Father. But not my stepmother.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Paul demanded.

“I don’t like the word
stepmother
. I had a mother, I have two grandmothers, but I do not need a stepmother.”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“It is not an idea, it is a feeling. I didn’t ‘get it’ anywhere—I have always felt it, for as long as I can remember.” For the first time, Bruno’s voice trembled with emotion.

“That’s only because you don’t know her, Bruno. You wouldn’t feel that way if you did, I assure you.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” Bruno’s brief, withdrawing words put the subject away on a distant shelf. Paul looked at his son’s half-averted face, his features even more distinct and formed in profile than they were in full face, and put the photos back in the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Look, Bruno. I think that it is time for you to come and live with me,” he said firmly.

“No!” The boy stepped back and his head snapped up.

“I understand your reaction, Bruno. I expected it. It’s a new idea for you, but not for me. I’m your father, Bruno. Your grandparents have been the finest of grandparents, but they can’t take the place of a father. You should be with me as you grow up.”

“I am grown up!”

“No, Bruno, you’re not. You’re not even eleven years old.”

“What does my age have to do with it?”

“Years matter, Bruno. You’re mature for your age, but ‘grown up’ is something else. ‘Grown up’ means having a wider experience of life, so that you’ll know more about yourself and other people than you do now.”

“But
I have no time
! Surely you can see that if I went to
live with you, even for a single year, I’d fall out of the race! Geoffrey and Jean-Paul would be ahead of me, and I could never get that lost year back. It would ruin my life! You don’t think that they’d wait for me, do you?”

“I’m not talking about a single year. I’m talking about a different way of life.”

“I don’t want a different way of life!” Bruno said, his voice suddenly reaching a passionate pitch. “I have the best life in the world—my friends, my school, my plans for the future, my cousins, my grandparents—and you want to take me away from everything, just so that I can live with you. I’d lose everything I have! I’ll never have a chance to lead my country,” he cried hysterically. “I’ll never even be able to ride in the Olympics for France, because suddenly you want me with you, as if you own me. I won’t do it! I refuse to do it! You can’t make me! You have no right!”

“Bruno …”

“Don’t you care what it would mean to me?”

“I do, of course I do—it’s only for your own good.…” Paul stopped, unable to continue. He heard his own words and he realized how unconvincing they sounded. What
did
he have to offer Bruno that could replace what the boy already had, aside from a father Bruno had apparently never missed? He would be tearing him away from the one place he belonged, from the one kind of life he knew, from all the ties and values and beliefs he had formed since he was born, from a world that existed nowhere else on earth. It would be like taking an animal out of a zoo and returning him to the wild. He would be miserably unhappy outside of the rarefied air of the Seventh Arrondissement.

“Bruno, we won’t talk about it anymore now. I’ll think over everything you’ve said. But this summer you must come and visit, for at least a month. I insist on that, at least. You may like it—who knows?”

“Of course, Father,” Bruno murmured, suddenly subdued.

“Good,” Paul said. A month of family life—that might make all the difference. He should have proposed that first. He should never have shocked the boy with such a new idea. He should … he should …

“Father, here’s the house. Will you come in for tea? Grandfather will be there.”

“Thank you, Bruno, but I have to get back to my hotel now. I’ll come tomorrow, if I may.”

“Of course you may—I’ll take you to my fencing lesson if you like.”

“Yes, I’d enjoy that,” Paul said sadly.

“Well?” the Marquis de Saint-Fraycourt asked Bruno as the boy entered the salon.

“You were right, Grandfather.”

“How did it go?”

“More or less as you expected. I said everything, just the way we decided. He wanted me to look at a picture of that person … that was the only part I didn’t expect. I never thought he would dare to show me her photo. But I made him understand … I told you I could. There was no need for worry.”

“I’m proud of you, my boy. Go tell your grandmother that she can get out of bed and join us now. We didn’t know if he’d be coming back to tea, so we took no chances, eh? And, Bruno …”

“Yes, Grandfather?”

“Don’t you think you should try to work harder at school, now that you are planning to lead your country?”

“France is led by functionaries and bureaucrats,” Bruno said scornfully. “Not aristocrats. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”

“So it is, my boy.”

“But I really do intend to ride in the Olympics,” Bruno said with a coaxing smile on his small, full mouth. “I was hoping that you might be thinking about giving me my own horse. My cousins each have one.”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Thank you, Grandfather.”

6

“O
UR new posting might have been to Ulan Bator, think of it that way, darling,” Paul said to Eve, to distract her from the view of the endless desert outside of the compartment window. Their train was the best that existed in this country in 1930, but its progress seemed imperceptible.

“Ulan Bator?” she asked, turning to him from the window.

“The capital of Outer Mongolia.”

“Outer or Inner? Never mind, don’t answer that. On the other hand, it could have been Godthaab,” Eve retorted.

“Greenland? No, I would never have expected that—much too close to Europe,” Paul answered with sardonic good humor.

“What about Fiji?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you have liked that? It’s so green, especially compared to this” She waved in dismissal at the glare of the desert sand.

“Suva has a nice climate, I understand, but it’s a bit limited from the cultural point of view.”

“Still, it is their capital. You would have been
Monsieur l’Ambassadeur.
”

“Ambassador? I’m only forty-five. Still too young, don’t you think?”

“Entirely too young. And much too good looking. It would have been unfair to the ladies of Fiji. I’m told they can’t resist Frenchmen,” Eve answered, squeezing his hand.

“What does that mean, ‘can’t resist Frenchmen’?” Freddy asked abruptly, her eyes, which she had closed in weariness only a few minutes before, popping wide open in interest.

“Ah … it means that they think Frenchmen are so charming that they will, oh, do anything a Frenchman wants them to do,” Paul said laughingly, as he looked at Eve.

“Like what?” Freddy insisted.

“Like … well, I’m a Frenchman and that’s why you’re a good girl and do whatever I tell you to do.”

“Daddy,” Freddy said, giggling, “don’t be silly.”

“It wasn’t a good example,” Delphine said primly. “Freddy never does anything right, Daddy. I’m the one who can’t resist Frenchmen.” She gave Paul the smile of a female who had been born to the uses of enchantment.

“I do so do things right,” Freddy flashed. “Remember when you dared me to dive off the high diving board at the club and I did it and hit the water perfectly? Remember when you said I couldn’t get on the new pony and ride him without a saddle, and I did and he didn’t even try to bite me? Remember when you bet me that I couldn’t win a fìstfight with that big old bully, Jimmy Albright, and I jumped him and beat him up? Remember when you dared me to drive the car and …”

“Freddy! Delphine! Stop it, this minute,” Eve said warningly. “It’s almost time to arrive. There are bound to be some people waiting to greet us. Freddy, you have to wash your hands and wash your face and wash your knees and, oh, look at your elbows! How did you get your elbows dirty on a train? Good Lord, what happened to your dress? How did you get it so rumpled? No, no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’ll try to do something about your hair myself. Delphine, let me look at you. Well, I suppose you could wash your hands, but it’s not really necessary.”

“They’re clean.”

“That’s what I meant. How did you keep them so clean on a train all afternoon—no, don’t tell me, I already know.” Delphine was capable of sitting for hours, motionless and content, with only daydreams to occupy her, while Freddy rarely sat still for more than a minute. Eve looked at Paul, rolled her eyes and sighed.

The trip from Cape Town to Paul’s new posting had taken them more than halfway around the world. Now, on the last lap of the weeks-long journey, they were confined in a train compartment where she and Paul had been exposed to more of their daughters than ever before since they had been small.