to the millpond.’
I had said it like a person pleading for her life. Somehow Janine found the courage to look at me and touch my cheek again. ‘You really are worried. What is it? Why don’t you tell me?’
Did she really want the truth? ‘It’s nothing. It’s just a feeling I have about this war. Me, I want the weekend to be like it used to be for the two of us.’
‘Then I would like that, too. Yes, I would.’
The breath of her perfume lingered with the lightness of her touch, and as I turned to watch her leave the room, Janine caught sight of me in one of the mirrors that flanked the doorway, and for an instant saw the depth of my desperation.
Then she was gone from the room, her bright skirt swaying in such a businesslike way, and I returned to my gazing into the fire. Pincevent, why had I suggested we go there? It was down in the valley of the Seine, on the river flats just at the bend above where the Seine and the Loing were joined. Thousands and thousands of years ago, it had been a ford in the ancestral Seine, the migratory route of reindeer herds at the close of the last Ice Age. Nomads had hunted them and worked the nearby cliffs of chalk for flint. Now dredges mined the sands creating craters and mountains as if the place had been a battleground, which it had, after a fashion, for the river would have run red with blood and the slaughter would have been terrible.
I could hear the shrillness of our childhood shouts as we had hunted imaginary reindeer much to the delight of our father. I could hear the quiet exclamations as we found, in some discarded ball of clay, the imprint of a long dead leaf, the hard spear point or scraper of Magdalenian man. How beautifully those people had made their stone tools, how clever of them to have done such things. The relics of later ages had been there, too, all churned up by the dredges, and our father, showing as much delight as ourselves, had introduced us to each period of history. Bronze daggers, bits of iron or tile, some coins from late Gallic times, others from the Romans who had conquered them. So much, and in the warmth of a summer’s sun, my sister, having eluded us, sitting proudly atop the highest mountain of sand with delight in her lovely eyes and a great big grin.
There’s a time for tears and a time when one has shed far too many. Dmitry Alexandrov found me all alone by the fireplace and, for a moment, I think he was struck by the way I must have looked like someone out of the past. The suit I wore was of light beige velvet, the needlepoint of a darker shade of brown. Very Russian, very tsarist, worn that evening, but not because of him.
The lace blouse was ruffled, and at the throat, pinning a silk kerchief, was a bit of antique silver. How in keeping I was with that drawing room, with the sumptuousness of it. The furnishings were nearly all from the mid-eighteenth century, some still covered with the original Beauvais tapestry.
Before the soot-blackened grey marble of the fireplace there was a pair of superb gilded bronzes, one of a running stag, the chase, the other of a griffin. Above the mantelpiece, there was an ornate antique clock he couldn’t quite place. Meissen … it might be. If so, a small fortune at any one of several dealers in Paris.
Even at a time of war, such things would have had value.
‘Madame, your apéritif. Janine has asked me to tell you that Jean-Guy has successfully been put to bed. She’s now up there with him.’
‘And Simone?’ I asked, anxiously drying my eyes.
Alexandrov drew in a breath, for the poignant look I’d given must have reminded him of Katerina or of Alyosha, someone out of Dostoevsky at any rate. ‘Madame de Verville’s in the kitchen. Your husband’s with her.’ You need have no fears on that score.
I took the vermouth and swallowed a sip to steady my nerves. As it went down, my eyes began to water again, and I realized that he had deliberately added cognac. What was it with him? He
I had said it like a person pleading for her life. Somehow Janine found the courage to look at me and touch my cheek again. ‘You really are worried. What is it? Why don’t you tell me?’
Did she really want the truth? ‘It’s nothing. It’s just a feeling I have about this war. Me, I want the weekend to be like it used to be for the two of us.’
‘Then I would like that, too. Yes, I would.’
The breath of her perfume lingered with the lightness of her touch, and as I turned to watch her leave the room, Janine caught sight of me in one of the mirrors that flanked the doorway, and for an instant saw the depth of my desperation.
Then she was gone from the room, her bright skirt swaying in such a businesslike way, and I returned to my gazing into the fire. Pincevent, why had I suggested we go there? It was down in the valley of the Seine, on the river flats just at the bend above where the Seine and the Loing were joined. Thousands and thousands of years ago, it had been a ford in the ancestral Seine, the migratory route of reindeer herds at the close of the last Ice Age. Nomads had hunted them and worked the nearby cliffs of chalk for flint. Now dredges mined the sands creating craters and mountains as if the place had been a battleground, which it had, after a fashion, for the river would have run red with blood and the slaughter would have been terrible.
I could hear the shrillness of our childhood shouts as we had hunted imaginary reindeer much to the delight of our father. I could hear the quiet exclamations as we found, in some discarded ball of clay, the imprint of a long dead leaf, the hard spear point or scraper of Magdalenian man. How beautifully those people had made their stone tools, how clever of them to have done such things. The relics of later ages had been there, too, all churned up by the dredges, and our father, showing as much delight as ourselves, had introduced us to each period of history. Bronze daggers, bits of iron or tile, some coins from late Gallic times, others from the Romans who had conquered them. So much, and in the warmth of a summer’s sun, my sister, having eluded us, sitting proudly atop the highest mountain of sand with delight in her lovely eyes and a great big grin.
There’s a time for tears and a time when one has shed far too many. Dmitry Alexandrov found me all alone by the fireplace and, for a moment, I think he was struck by the way I must have looked like someone out of the past. The suit I wore was of light beige velvet, the needlepoint of a darker shade of brown. Very Russian, very tsarist, worn that evening, but not because of him.
The lace blouse was ruffled, and at the throat, pinning a silk kerchief, was a bit of antique silver. How in keeping I was with that drawing room, with the sumptuousness of it. The furnishings were nearly all from the mid-eighteenth century, some still covered with the original Beauvais tapestry.
Before the soot-blackened grey marble of the fireplace there was a pair of superb gilded bronzes, one of a running stag, the chase, the other of a griffin. Above the mantelpiece, there was an ornate antique clock he couldn’t quite place. Meissen … it might be. If so, a small fortune at any one of several dealers in Paris.
Even at a time of war, such things would have had value.
‘Madame, your apéritif. Janine has asked me to tell you that Jean-Guy has successfully been put to bed. She’s now up there with him.’
‘And Simone?’ I asked, anxiously drying my eyes.
Alexandrov drew in a breath, for the poignant look I’d given must have reminded him of Katerina or of Alyosha, someone out of Dostoevsky at any rate. ‘Madame de Verville’s in the kitchen. Your husband’s with her.’ You need have no fears on that score.
I took the vermouth and swallowed a sip to steady my nerves. As it went down, my eyes began to water again, and I realized that he had deliberately added cognac. What was it with him? He
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