Till We Meet Again (39 page)

“It’s not that … not at all … it’s just that I miss my friends … I shouldn’t cry … you’ve been so good to me,” she said with a dolorous droop of her lovely head and a pitiful attempt at a smile.

“It’s easy to be good to you, darling, but I should have realized that you needed friends of your own age. I can’t forgive myself. But here in the country … the young people … frankly I’m not sure where they are. But I’ll call all my
friends and see if their grandchildren … Delphine, I’ll try my best, I promise you.”

“Thank you, Grandmother,” Delphine said gratefully, thinking dourly of what the grandchildren of the neighbors must be like. “But truly, it’s not important. The only thing is … do you think I could have another armoire in my room?”

“Oh, my dear! I’ll have one brought up immediately. All those lovely things on the floor!” Anette de Lancel bustled off, glad to have something practical to do for Delphine. As for the grandchildren of her friends, they too must be produced. Surely there must be many suitable boys and girls, home for the summer. She would alert every family in Champagne, and find them and … and … give a ball! Yes, a young people’s ball, a midsummer ball, such as had rarely been held, if indeed it had ever been held, in Champagne at the height of the growing season.

“Jean-Luc, I’m at my wits’ end,” Anette de Lancel said to her husband after a day on the telephone. “The Chandons’ grandchildren are visiting in England, the Lansons have five, mind you,
five
, grandsons and not one of them expected home for weeks, the Roederers’ children are all in Normandy—you know nothing can keep her away from her trotting-horses—Madame Budin at Perrier-Jouet says that her son is unfortunately too young, Madame Bollinger has two nephews but they’re both away, all the Ruinarts are visiting in Bordeaux—finally I have four girls and two boys and I’ve called everyone I know. Everyone!”

“The proper time for balls is Christmas,” the Vicomte de Lancel answered.

“That’s an enormously helpful reflection, Jean-Luc.”

“Anette, you’re getting upset over nothing. If Delphine is bored, she’s bored. She’s a dear child, but remember that it wasn’t our idea to invite her for the summer.”

“How can you be so heartless? That poor girl, with all her splendid evening clothes … you can just imagine the gaiety to which she’s accustomed.”

“Too much, perhaps? Isn’t that why Eve sent her here? To give her a little time for reflection? I seem to remember something like that in the letter.”

“She’s had six undistracted weeks for reflection. I must give her a party, Jean-Luc, even if it’s not a ball. But four
girls—five, counting Delphine—and two boys … no, that’s just not possible.”

“You could just invite the girls,” he suggested. “The main thing is that she meet someone her own age, isn’t it?”

“Jean-Luc, I wonder about you, I truly do. Do you remember nothing about being young?”

“As much as you do, I daresay, as we both approach our eightieth birthdays.”

“Jean-Luc, it is not necessary to remind me. Anyway, I am a great deal younger than you.”

“Three years and two months.”

“Oh, why did I marry you?”

“I was the catch of the countryside.”

“
I
was the catch of the countryside. Have you forgotten how many
arpents
of vineyard I brought with me?”

“Two hundred and sixty.”

“Two hundred and sixty-one!”

“Your memory is as good as ever, my love. In any case, I telephoned Bruno before dinner. I made him promise to bring some young men whenever you like. Suitable ones. Now perhaps you will give me a kiss?”

“Bruno! How could I not have thought of him?”

“Vision, my dearest, is what makes man different from woman, broadness of vision, the ability to think beyond Champagne, to see an opportunity and to execute the plan with dispatch and … now, now, Anette, you know that I detest being hit with a pillow … calm yourself, act your age.…”

The Parisian visitors, for the dinner the Lancels gave for Delphine, were invited to spend the night at the château. Bruno had brought three of his invariably presentable friends, and among the six young Frenchmen who had been at dinner that evening, five of them had fallen in love with Delphine. Bruno had to admit that his American half sister had unquestionably become a credit to him. None among the five was as hard hit as Guy Marchant, who sat gazing out of the window onto the moonlit night, long after he’d closed the door to his bedroom, so unhinged by love that he hadn’t even loosened his bow tie or slipped off his shoes.

Never had there been such a girl. Never would there be another. He would die if he couldn’t spend the rest of his life with her.

He got up and paced around the room, ending up, after
several circuits, back at the window, looking at the stars. Guy Marchant took an intelligent amateur’s interest in astronomy, and on the drive to Valmont he had entertained Bruno with a philosophical reflection on the ups and downs of the state of the world, culled from a book he had read by the Englishman Sir James Hopwood Jeans. “Jeans,” he had told Bruno, “estimates that, based on what can be seen of the universe from the great telescope at Mount Wilson, there are so many stars out there that if they were grains of sand and were spread over England, they would create a layer hundreds of yards in depth.
Hundreds
of yards, Bruno. Now then, our own earth is one millionth of a part of one of those grains of sand, only
one millionth
. Bruno, do you understand? One millionth of just
one
of the grains of sand that are hundreds of yards deep over England—which would be just as deep if it were in France—so you see, Bruno, nothing we do really much matters, does it, in that context? After all, aren’t we basically ridiculous?”

But that was before he’d met Delphine. Now the size of the universe was not only forgotten, but utterly immaterial and irrelevant, and his own emotions were of the most essential and immediate importance to him.

As the hours wore on, he grew able to begin to think like the clever businessman he was. Clearly, he thought, he couldn’t expect the Lancels to invite him to spend the rest of the summer with them. Clearly, he had to marry Delphine before she went back to the United States, where there must be hundreds of men trying to get her to marry them. Clearly, in order to win her, he had to get Delphine to himself without wasting any time, for he knew, with the sure instinct of a man in love, that the other four males at dinner had fallen under her spell.

What did he have that they did not, he asked himself, trying to be as rational as possible. Had she smiled at him more often than at the others? Had she danced with him after dinner more frequently? Had she told him anything about her interests on which he could build? No, she had been evenhanded with her smiles and dances, flirting with all of them in a way that was as frustrating as if she hadn’t flirted with any of them.

But … but … she was from Hollywood. To be from Los Angeles was to be from Hollywood, no matter where in Los Angeles you lived—the worldwide newsreel business had
taught him that. And of all the people at Valmont tonight, only he had even the dimmest knowledge of what it meant to be from Hollywood. Only he was aware that if you were from Hollywood you had to be fascinated by films, because, in some way or another, even the most remote, you considered yourself to be part of the world of films. Would Delphine be more interested in visiting Max’s parents’ celebrated château in the Loire or Henri’s father’s famous stables, or in Victor’s family’s yacht—or his own studios? And all the other studios, the big cinema studios he could show her at Billancourt and Boulogne? Yes, he had an advantage! Now all he had to do was to arrange it, he thought, finally calm enough to begin to get undressed. Tomorrow he would get it settled. At breakfast.

No, before breakfast, before the others got a chance.

Within days, the visit to stay with Monsieur and Madame Marchant in Paris had been confirmed, properly preceded by a long and persuasive discussion Bruno had with his grandmother and a letter from Madame Marchant to the Vicomtesse.

“No, Jean-Luc, I certainly do not think that Eve intended Delphine to remain here every single day until she returned to the United States, that’s nonsense. She is not our prisoner, and you are far too Victorian, my dear,” Anette de Lancel said tartly, delighted that Delphine was to have a bit of a whirl and a glimpse of the life of the capital. “In any case, what did you expect when you asked Bruno to bring young men for dinner?”

“You’re convinced that she’ll be well chaperoned?”

“Madame Marchant assured me that she would watch over her as carefully as she does over her own daughter, and, in any case, Bruno will be with her as well. Really, Jean-Luc, you amaze me.”

“You don’t even know Madame Marchant,” the Vicomte grumbled, annoyed that he was to be deprived of the pleasure of telling Delphine more about the culture of grapes, with which he had spent many pleasant hours distracting her.

“Bruno says she’s a delightful, cultivated woman, and entirely reliable.”

“And is Bruno always right?” he asked sharply.

“What kind of question is that?”

“A foolish one, my dear. Perhaps I really am getting old. In which case I must take the only possible preventative that
nature allows us, and have another glass of champagne. May I offer you some?”

“By all means, my darling, by all means.”

Delphine’s innate charm and tender beauty, potent though they were in combination, were amplified a thousandfold by a basic inner lack of effort. The French, accustomed throughout history to foreigners who tried to compensate for not being French, who labored to produce something from their personal bags of tricks that would make the French admit them to membership in the human race, were immediately entranced by the attitude she projected. She truly did not notice, or care, if the French in France approved of her or not.

Delphine had grown up in three countries in which Frenchness was merely something about her parents that made them distinctly different from the natives, but not necessarily better. Frenchness had to do with her father’s job and the language they spoke at home, and the way her mother trained a new cook, but it was hardly sacred. Being a Lancel meant nothing to her if it were compared to being a Selznick or a Goldwyn or a Zanuck, and ten years of tutoring in the proud traditions of Champagne would not have changed that.

The Marchants were delighted by what they perceived as her lack of the stiffness that was only to be expected in members of the old aristocracy. They would never have believed that the only aristocracy Delphine was impressed by was a handful of families who had made their millions in the last few decades, and the actors and actresses who were to be found photographed in the pages of American movie magazines.

They were puzzled by Guy’s plans for Delphine’s visit. Surely she would prefer to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, to Napoleon’s tomb, to the Place Vendôme, to the Louvre? What was this talk of Gaumont, Pathé-Cinema and Kodak-Pathé? Tourists never went out to Billancourt, surely? Why would she want to visit places just like those she must be familiar with in Hollywood?

“No, Madame Marchant, I assure you, I’m really anxious to see them,” Delphine said quickly. Several times while she was still in high school, some of her parents’ movie-making friends had invited the family out to a studio, and the quick peeks she had at the sound stages—almost spoiled by her terror of getting in the way of all the important people
rushing around so confidently, with jobs to do—had given Delphine a glimpse of the paradise she was condemned to only know as a stranger.

“As you like, then,” Madame Marchant said with resignation. “Just give me a minute to put on my hat.” She patted her blue hair with well-cared-for hands on which diamonds flashed.

“Maman, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. Bruno is going to meet us there,” Guy told her.

“As a matter of fact, in that case … I do have a number of things I could be doing,” Guy’s mother said, relief plain in her kind eyes. The prospect of a day spent watching people make films was boring beyond words. Once, years ago, she too had thought it would be amusing to observe the process, but several hours of it had cured her of that delusion.

In any case, the notion of herself acting as a chaperone was too utterly absurd. Guy, her youngest and favorite child, was a perfect gentleman and could be trusted with any girl … particularly one with whom he was so painfully in love. The Vicomtesse de Lancel’s unnecessary concern for her perfectly self-reliant granddaughter came from another century. Provincial aristocrats were behind the times, although charmingly so. More important, if she did not have her third fitting on most of her new suits from Chanel today, they would never be ready for the beginning of the season. She saw them off with a vaguely benevolent smile, lost in happy reveries of tweeds, buttons and linings.

The drive from the Marchants’ huge apartment on the Avenue Foch, out to the Gaumont Studio at Billancourt, seemed to Delphine to take forever. She said little, but Guy could sense that she was simmering with emotion as she sat beside him, and he dared to hope that it might be because she was glad to be alone with him. From time to time he stole a look at her profile, but although she felt his eyes on her face, Delphine decided not to notice. Today she could have been with Max, Victor or Henri, for they had all telephoned with tempting invitations after the dinner, but Guy’s plan had worked, and she had chosen to take the bait he had set for her. Surely that was quite enough to keep him happy for the time being.

Bruno joined them at the studio, out of curiosity rather than from any sense of obligation to keep an eye on Delphine. The Marchants still had not become clients of La Banque
Duvivier Frères, and after the enormous favors he had done for Guy, he found such a lack of gratitude utterly unacceptable. He had invited him to the home of his grandparents for dinner; he had interceded with his grandmother to allow Delphine’s visit—did Guy not realize how much he owed Bruno? Or perhaps did he not have enough influence in his father’s business to suggest a placement of funds? Either possibility was equally unforgivable. Perhaps he had been too quick to encourage Guy’s friendship, quite possibly he had let himself be taken for granted. Guy was an upstart, he thought angrily. Bruno did not easily permit himself to be guilty of misjudgment.