Windfallen, Page 29

  George came and stayed; it was only then that Adeline seemed to really come alive, engaging in vehement whispered conversation with him while Lottie tried hard to pretend that she wasn't there. She knew they were talking about Frances.

  Once, drunk, he had looked at Lottie's stomach and made some joke about fruits and seeds, and Adeline had actually hit him.

  "You know, I quite admire you, little Lottie," he told her when Adeline was out of earshot. "You were probably the most dangerous thing ever to happen to Merham."

  Lottie, hiding under the brim of her sun hat, shot him a dark look.

  "I always thought it would be your sister who got herself in trouble."

  "She isn't--wasn't--my sister."

  George didn't appear to hear. He leaned back on the grass, picking at a piece of the moldering, pungent salami that he liked to buy at the market. Around them the crickets kept up their whirring chorus, breaking occasionally in the afternoon heat, as if they were a motor for the day itself.

  "And you the serious one. Doesn't seem quite just, somehow. Were you just curious? Or did he promise that he would be yours forever? The apple of your eye perhaps? A bit of a peach? Gosh, Lottie, I don't suppose Madame Holden ever heard you using language like that . . . very ripe, I should say. . . . All right, all right--now, are you going to eat any of those figs, or can I have them?"

  Whether it was her misery or her detachment from her old life, any life, Lottie found it hard to feel any joy or any sense of tender anticipation toward this baby. Most of the time she found it hard to think of it as a baby. Sometimes, at night, she felt a terrible guilt for the fact that she was bringing it into a world with no father, into a place where it would be eyed distastefully by the Mmes Migot and with suspicion by anyone else. Other times she felt a searing resentment of it, for the fact that its existence meant she would never be free of Guy's presence, of the pain that went with it. She didn't know what frightened her more: the prospect of not loving it because of him or loving it for the same reason.

  She hardly thought about how, practically, she was going to cope. Adeline told her not to worry. "These things sort themselves out, darling," she said, patting Lottie's hand. "Just stay away from the nuns."

  Lottie, huge and weary and tired of just about everything, hoped that Adeline was right. She didn't cry or rage. Since the first few weeks, when she'd discovered her predicament, she hadn't bothered. It wasn't going to change anything. And it felt easier to deaden her emotions, to contain them, rather than have them raw to the touch, as they had been. As the pregnancy progressed, she became dozy, detached, simply sat for hours in the wild garden watching dragonflies and wasps as they hovered around her or, when it became too hot, lay inside on the cold floor, like a kimono-clad walrus sunning itself on the rocks.

  Maybe she would die in childbirth, she thought. And was perversely comforted.

  PERHAPS COGNIZANT OF THE FACT THAT LOTTIE'S DEPRESSION was growing at an inverse rate to the days remaining before the birth, Adeline began forcing her to come out with her on what she called "adventures," even though they rarely contained any more adventurous activity than the ordering of red wine or pastis or the purchase of an apple tart or sweet, custardy Tropezienne. Shunning the sticky, traffic-fumed city heat of nearby Toulon, Adeline made George drive them farther along the coast to Sanary. Lottie missed the sea, Adeline reasoned aloud. The palm-fringed seaside town, with its shaded, cobbled streets and cheerful, pastel-shuttered houses, would be a welcome tonic. It was famous for its artists and artisans, she said, sitting Lottie at a pavement cafe, close to the soothing burble of a stone water fountain. Aldous Huxley had lived here while writing his Brave New World. The whole of the southern coast had provided inspiration for artists over the years. Frances and she had traveled from St.-Tropez to Marseilles one year, and by the end of the trip there had been so many canvases in the boot of the car that they'd been forced to drive with their luggage on their laps.

  George, pleading an appointment inside at the bar, had whispered something to Adeline and left them.

  Lottie, ignoring the black-skirted woman who placed a basket of bread in front of her, said nothing. This was partly because she'd fallen asleep in the car on the way there, and sleeping, along with the heat, left her sluggish and stupid for some time. It was also in part because the baby made her self-absorbed; she had gradually whittled her persona down to a few simple symptoms. Swollen feet. Sore, stretched belly. Itchy legs. Misery. So it was an effort to move beyond these things to notice anyone else or that Adeline, opposite, who had finally left her to her thoughts in order to read a letter, had not changed position for some time.

  Lottie took a sip of her water and studied Adeline's face. "Are you all right?"

  Adeline didn't answer.

  Lottie heaved herself upright and glanced around at the people seated at the tables, who seemed content to spend hours just doing almost nothing at all. Lottie tried not to spend any time in the sun; it made her feel nauseous and overheated.

  "Adeline?"

  She was holding the letter, half open in her hand.

  "Adeline?"

  Adeline looked up at her as if she had only just become aware of Lottie's presence. Her face, as ever, was impassive, aided by a pair of neat dark sunglasses. Her raven hair fallen forward on her wet cheek. "She has asked me not to write anymore."

  "Who?"

  "Frances."

  "Why?"

  Adeline paused. Looked out across the cobbled courtyard. Two dogs had started to squabble, snapping at each other over something in the gutter. "She says . . . she says I have nothing new to say."

  "That's a bit harsh," said Lottie grumpily, adjusting her sun hat. "It's hard finding new things to put in letters. Nothing happens here."

  "Frances is not harsh. I don't think she means--oh, Lottie . . ."

  They had never spoken about personal things. When Lottie had arrived, she had begun tearfully, apologetically, to explain about the baby, but Adeline had just waved a pale, impatient hand, and told her that she was always welcome. Adeline had never asked anything about her circumstance, perhaps believing that Lottie would volunteer any information she felt compelled to share, and likewise she revealed little of her own. Adeline chatted pleasantly, ensured that her friend had everything she needed, and, apart from the odd question about Frances, they might have been distantly related, visitors determined to enjoy their stay.

  "What am I to do?"

  She looked so sad, so resigned.

  There was no one else.

  "She should not be by herself. Frances has never been any good by herself. She gets too . . . melancholy. She needs me. Despite herself, she needs me."

  Lottie eased herself back into one of the wicker chairs, knowing it would be imprinted on her thighs within minutes. She raised a hand against the sun and studied Adeline's face, wondering if Adeline had it the right way around.

  "Why is she so cross with you?"

  Adeline looked at her, then down at her hands, still clutching the unwelcome letter. Then she looked up at Lottie again, her gaze unflinching. "Because . . . because I cannot love her in the way that she wants me to."

  Lottie frowned.

  "She does not think I should be with Julian."

  "But he's your husband. You love him."

  "Yes I love him--but as a friend."

  There was a short pause.

  "A friend?" Lottie said tentatively, thinking back to the afternoon she had spent with Guy. "Only a friend?"

  She stared at Adeline. "But . . . but how can he bear it?"

  Adeline reached down and lit herself a cigarette. It was something Lottie had seen her do only in France. She inhaled, looked away from Lottie. "Because Julian loves me as a friend also. He has no passion for me, Lottie, no physical passion. But we suit each other, Julian and I. He needs a base, a certain . . . creative environment . . . a respectability, and I need stability, people around me who can--I don't know--entertain me. We understand each other
like that."

  "But . . . I don't understand. Why did you marry Julian, if you didn't love him?"

  Adeline put the letter down carefully, and refilled her glass. "We have skirted around each other, you and I. Now I shall tell you a story, Lottie. About a girl who fell hopelessly in love with a man she couldn't have, a man she met during the war, when she was . . . living another life. He was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen, with cat's eyes of green and a sad, sad face because of the things he had endured. And they both adored each other and swore that if one died, the other could no longer bear to live, so that they could be joined somewhere else. It was a violent passion, Lottie, a terrible thing."

  Lottie sat, her aching limbs, her encroaching heat rash temporarily forgotten.

  "But, you see, Lottie, this man was not an Englishman. And because of the war he could not stay. And he was sent to Russia, and after two letters this girl never heard from him again. And, dearest Lottie, it drove her mad. She was like a mad thing, tearing her hair and shouting at herself and walking the streets for hours, even when bombs were falling all around.

  "And eventually, a long time after, she decided that she had to live, and that to live she had to feel a little less, suffer a little less. She could not die, much as she wanted to, because somewhere out there he might just still have been living. And she knew that, if the fates intended it, she and her man would find each other again."

  "And did they?"

  Adeline looked away and exhaled. The smoke, in the still air, came out as a long, even whisper. "Not yet, Lottie. Not yet. But then I don't expect it to be in this lifetime."

  They sat in silence for a while, listening to the lazy buzzing of the bees, the low hum of conversation around them, the distant, dull ringing of some church bell. Adeline had poured Lottie a watered-down glass of wine, and Lottie sipped at it, trying not to look as nonplussed as she felt.

  "I still don't understand. Why did Frances paint you as that Greek woman?"

  "Laodamia? She was accusing me of hanging on to something false--an image of love. She knew I would rather live within the safety of marriage to Julian than to risk loving again. Seeing Julian always used to upset her. She said it was a reminder of my ability to lie to myself."

  She turned to face Lottie, her eyes wide and wet. She smiled, a slow, sweet smile.

  "Frances is so . . . She believes I have killed off my capacity to love, that I find it safer to be with Julian and love something that cannot be there. She thinks that because she loves me so much, she can bring me back to life, that by sheer force of her will she can make me love her, too. And you know, Lottie, I do love Frances. I love her more than any other woman I know, anyone but him. Once, when I was feeling very low, I did--she was so sweet--but . . ."

  She turned to face the cafe.

  "It would not be enough for her. She is not like Julian. She could not live with a half love. In art, in life, she demands honesty. And I can never love anyone, not man, nor woman, as I loved Konstantin. . . ."

  Are you sure you don't love her? Lottie wanted to ask, thinking back to Adeline's numerous letters, her uncharacteristic desperation at Frances's continued absence. But Adeline interrupted her.

  "This is why I knew, you see, Lottie?"

  Adeline reached out and held her wrist, an insistent hold. Lottie found herself shivering, despite the heat.

  "When I saw you and Guy together, I knew." Her eyes burned into Lottie's. "I saw myself and Konstantin."

  Dear Joe,

  Excuse me if this letter is short, but I am very tired and do not have much time to write. I had my baby yesterday, and she is a little girl, very beautiful. In fact, she is the most darling thing you can imagine. I will get some pictures done and send you one, if you are interested. Perhaps when you are less sore with me.

  I just wanted to tell you I am sorry you had to find out about my condition from Virginia. I did want to tell you, really, but it was all a bit complicated. And no, it is not Dr. Holden's baby, whatever that spiteful cow says. Please believe that, Joe. And make sure everyone else knows it, too. I don't mind what you say.

  Will write soon.

  Lottie

  It had not been a good night to have a baby. Not that, Lottie thought afterward, there would ever be a good night to have a baby. She had not known that pain that great could be endured and still lived through; she felt corrupted by it, as if there were innocent Lottie and then Lottie who had known something so terrible that she'd been rent out of shape, warped forever after.

  She had not started the evening rent out of shape, merely irascible, as Adeline had fondly put it. Fed up with heaving her bulk around in the heat, lumpy and exhausted, unable any longer to fit comfortably into anything but Adeline's bizarre, floating dressing gowns and George's forgotten shirts. Adeline, by contrast, had been in a better mood the previous three days. She had sent George to find Frances. Not just to hand her a letter but to find her and bring her back to France. Adeline believed she had found a way to restore Frances to them, a way to make her feel loved without compromising Adeline's own immutable love for Konstantin. But you have to talk to me, Adeline wrote. You may leave forever if you still feel I have nothing to say, but you have to talk to me. "George will not take no for an answer," she exclaimed, satisfied. "He can be a very persuasive man." Lottie, thinking of Celia, muttered sourly, "I know."

  George hadn't particularly wanted to return to England. He had wanted to stay for the Bastille celebrations. But, unable to refuse Adeline anything, he had determined that he should at least have a vicarious presence at the festival; he had eyed Lottie for some minutes, then, perhaps deterred by her sticking out her tongue, asked Si the Beat poet to take photographs for him with his new Zeiss Ikon camera. ("Cool," said Si.) "It will be worth it," said Adeline, kissing George good-bye. Lottie had been slightly taken aback to note that it was full on his lips.

  Seventy-two hours later Lottie thought she would never be taken aback by anything again in her life.

  Now she lay in her bed, dimly aware of the heat, the mosquitoes attracted by the animal scents of blood and pain still lingering in the room, her eyes fixed on the tiny, perfectly formed face in front of her. Her daughter looked like she was sleeping--her eyes were closed--but her mouth shaped small secrets into the night air.

  Lottie had never known anything like this: the wrenching joy that came from indescribable pain, the disbelief that she, plain old Lottie Swift, a girl who no longer even existed, could have created anything this perfect, this beautiful. A reason, far greater than anything she could have imagined, to live.

  She looked like Guy.

  She looked like Guy.

  Lottie bent her head to her daughter's and spoke so quietly that only she could hear. "I will be everything to you," she said. "You will miss nothing. You will feel the lack of nothing. I promise I will make sure I am enough for you."

  "She has skin the color of camellias," Adeline had said, her eyes filled with tears. And Lottie, who had never fancied Jane or Mary or any of the other names suggested by Adeline's magazines, had named her daughter.

  Adeline didn't go to bed. Mme Migot had left only after midnight, George was coming in the morning, perhaps with Frances, and she would not be able to sleep. They sat together through that first long night, Lottie wide-eyed and wondrous, Adeline napping gently in the chair beside her, occasionally waking to stroke either the baby's impossibly soft head or Lottie's arm, in congratulation.

  At sunrise Adeline raised herself stiffly from the armchair and announced that she would make tea. Lottie, still holding her baby in her arms and craving a hot, sweet drink, was grateful; every time she moved, her body ached and bled, new, obscene pains shooting through her, cramps an echo of the terrifying hours before. Bleary and blissful despite everything, she thought she might as well stay in this bed forever.

  Adeline opened the shutters, letting in the luminous blue glow of the dawn and stretching in front of it, both arms raised in salute. The roo
m was subtly filled with the gentle lights and sounds of their surroundings, cattle making their way slowly up a hillside, a cockerel crowing, and, underlying them all, the crickets whirring like tiny clockwork toys.

  "It is cooler, Lottie. Can you feel the breeze?"

  Lottie closed her eyes and felt it caress her face. It felt, briefly, like Merham.

  "Things will be better now, you'll see."

  Adeline turned to her, and for a moment, perhaps weakened by childbirth and exhaustion, Lottie thought her the most exquisite thing she had ever seen. Adeline's face was bathed in a phosphorescent glow, her sharp green eyes softened and made uncharacteristically vulnerable by what she had just witnessed. Lottie's own eyes filled with tears; unable to express the love she suddenly felt, she could only reach out a trembling hand.

  Adeline took it and kissed it, holding it to her cool, smooth cheek. "You are lucky, dearest Lottie. You have not had to wait your lifetime."

  Lottie glanced down at her sleeping daughter and nodded, allowing the tears of grief and gratitude to drop heavily onto the pale silk shawl.

  They were interrupted by the sound of an approaching car, their heads rising like startled, feral animals. As the door slammed, Adeline was already upright and alert.

  "Frances!" she said, and, Lottie temporarily forgotten, she abruptly stood and made a brief attempt to straighten her crumpled silk dress, to smooth her unruffled hair. "Oh, my goodness, we have no food, Lottie! What will we give them for breakfast?"

  "I . . . I'm sure she won't mind waiting a bit . . . once she knows. . . ." Lottie couldn't have cared less about breakfast. Her baby stirred, a tiny hand briefly curling around the air.

  "No, no, of course you are right. We have coffee and some fruit from yesterday. And the boulangerie will be open soon--I can walk down once they are settled. Perhaps they will want to sleep, if they have traveled all night. . . ."

  Lottie watched Adeline whirling around the room, her customary stillness abandoned for a kind of childish nervousness, an inability either to sit or to focus on any task at hand.

  "Do you think I am fair to ask this of her?" said Adeline, suddenly turning to Lottie. "Do you think I am selfish to make her come back to me?"