“I am glad. I am sure that Monsieur Dubois, like most of his countrymen, would drink only the best.”
He told me a great deal about Bordeaux and how he came to Paris on business, marketing his wines.
“We have an office here, you see.”
“So I suppose you travel back and forth to Bordeaux frequently,” I said.
“That is so.”
“I thought you must be an artist when you first came.”
“Oh, do I look like one?”
“No … I don’t think so. How does an artist look? One imagines them in flowing smocks, splashed with paint—but I have found them not like that at all.”
“This is the Latin Quarter. This is where they abound.”
“I suppose the days of La Bohème are no more.”
“I expect things have changed now. There is the art of commerce. What do you say, commercial art? This is more now to employ the artists. They are not so poor. It is not a matter of exchanging a picture for a meal, if you understand.”
“I do.”
He stayed for two hours and I felt elated by his visit.
When Jacques returned and I told him Georges Mansard had called, he received the news nonchalantly.
“He’s a charming man,” I commented. “We got on very well.”
“I am sure you did. I knew he would be enchanted by my little cabbage.”
He seized me and swung me round. We danced. Our steps, like everything else, fitted perfectly.
He stopped suddenly, kissed me intensely and said: “It seems years since I saw you.”
That was how it was with Jacques.
Georges Mansard called the next day and went up to the attic where he remained with Jacques for a long time. He greeted me like an old friend before he went up. I guessed they were talking about wine and Georges was going to get an order. He had talked very enthusiastically about his products during our conversation the previous day and had betrayed his pride in them.
“I hope you got a good order,” I said to him as he was leaving.
Georges Mansard smiled broadly.
“Very good,” he said. “Very good indeed.”
He came fairly frequently. I gathered that he was a friend of Jacques besides being his wine merchant, but I met him often in the streets, so often, in fact, that I began to think he sought me out.
Violetta always said that I changed when I was in the company of men. I opened out, she said, like a flower does in the sun or when it is given needed water. She is right, of course. I am frivolous and susceptible to admiration, but I do pride myself in knowing my weaknesses.
When we met he would suggest we take a glass of wine together; he knew the right place to take me. It was a kind of wine bar with secluded corners where people could talk in peace. He told me a great deal about his family’s winery and was quite eulogistic describing the gathering of grapes; then he would tell me about the pests, the inclement weather, and all the hazards that had to be watched.
He knew, of course, that I had left my home to go off with Jacques. He talked often of Jacques and the people who called at the studio; he was one of those people who is very interested in others and in what is going on.
When I was alone I liked to stroll in and out of the secondhand book shops which abound on the Left Bank. I constantly thought how much Violetta would like to have been there. Then I would grow morbid, wishing that she were with me and thinking how different it would have been if she were and we were on holiday together, carefree, eventually to return to our real home in Caddington. Then the enormity of what I had done would be brought home to me. I thought of them all mourning me.
If I had known then that Violetta would become engaged to Jowan Jermyn and in the course of events would become my neighbor, I might never have left Tregarland. But what was the use? It was done now. Characteristically, I had plunged into this adventure. It was the sort of thing I had been doing all my life—but never so irrevocably as I had now.
I had realized it was a mistake—perhaps the greatest of my life. What I had felt for Jacques was slowly slipping away. Not only for me, but for him. I recognized the signs. As for myself, here I was, in a foreign land, dead to all I had known in the past … my sister … my beloved family … my husband, who, after all, had cared for me, and my child.
It was no use. I deserved whatever was coming to me. I knew I did. But that did not make it any easier to bear—in fact, it only made it harder because of the knowledge that it was my own actions which had brought it about.
One day when I was wandering rather aimlessly round the secondhand bookshops, I met the Baileys. It was one of those encounters which happens simply because one meets fellow countrymen abroad, like that other occasion when we had met Dermot. He had heard us speaking English in the cafe near the schloss and had stopped. Then he noticed me. I believe that he would have found some way of getting to know me, but it was the language which had first attracted his attention.
I had paused by a shelf to look at a book—a very old one called Castles of France. As I stood there, a middle-aged man standing close to me reached out to take a book from a shelf and, as he did so, another book was dislodged. It was a heavy one and it fell, grazing my arm as it dropped to the floor.
The man turned to me in dismay. “Mademoiselle,” he stammered, “Pardonnez-moi.”
The accent was unmistakably English and I replied in our tongue. “That’s all right. It hardly touched me.”
“You’re English,” he said with a delighted smile.
The woman who was obviously with him was beaming at me. I guessed that they were in their late forties. Their look of pleasure at finding a compatriot amused me.
“And you knew that we were,” added the man.
“As soon as you spoke,” I said.
He grimaced. “Was it so obvious?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
We all laughed. We might have passed on and that would have been an end of it, but the man showed concern about the book which had hit me. He picked it up and said: “It’s rather heavy.”
He replaced it on the shelf while the woman said: “Are you on holiday?”
“No. I’m staying with a friend.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“I hope the book didn’t hurt you,” said the man. “Look. Why don’t we sit down for a bit? Have a coffee. There’s a nice place a step or two away.”
“I do like those little cafes,” said the woman. “And isn’t it a relief not to have to think how to say what you want to for a little while? And if you do get it out fairly well, they rush back at you so fast that I for one am completely lost.”
I was thinking: Why shouldn’t I have a coffee with them? It will be something to do.
So I found myself sitting with them in the cafe near the bookshop. They told me they were Geoffrey and Janet Bailey. He was working in the Paris branch of an insurance company and they had been here for six months or so. They were not sure how long they would stay. They had a house at home near Watford, convenient for the City, and they had a married daughter who lived close by who was keeping an eye on things for them.
They asked where my home was.
“Well … er …” I said. “It’s in Cornwall.”
“Cornwall! A delightful place. Geoff and I thought of having a cottage there. In fact, we might retire down there, mightn’t we, Geoff?”
He nodded.
“Looe,” she went on. “Fowey … somewhere like that. We have had many a holiday there. Are you near there?”
“Not very far …” I was getting a little embarrassed. I could not tell them then that I used to live there before I ran away with my lover.
I felt a sudden insecurity. I had really thought of Tregarland’s as my home. But I had abandoned all that. Their mention of their home and retirement had had an effect on me. They could see ahead. I could not.