But it is real. I can see it in my mind’s eye. I can feel and taste it. We are the same height, Caro and I. We hit Randolph at the same place when he pulls us close, me as a friend, her as a lover. We each nestle perfectly within the hollow beneath his shoulder. I imagine he dips a girl well. He’s always been strong. Then I feel that kiss, and taste those peppermints he loves, and an emptiness beyond anguish engulfs me.
He didn’t visit Parkley, as he said he would this summer. He wrote me a short note about being busy with work and travel, yet he mentioned nothing about Paris. He has always told me before when he visited Caro, but not this time. He must feel it—lovers need their secrets.
Father has heard from Payne that Randolph is in love. Father smiles indulgently and says Caro is fickle and that her “infatuation” with Randolph cannot last—much to his dismay, for he’d love to have a “Payne Boy” for one of his daughters.
He’s wrong. Father has misjudged Caro so completely I wonder if he ever saw her at all—if he sees either of us. Caro is loyal. She endures and has strength beyond imagining. When we were young, I was the fickle one, always changing my mind, acting out, and getting us into trouble. Never Caro.
If he looked closely, he would recognize it now. All that loyalty and capacity for love and sacrifice is still there. It is simply directed elsewhere. She is loyal to Elsa Schiaparelli, to France, to her George, and—still—to me.
Blind loyalty can also go too far. She quoted Prime Minister Chamberlain in her letter and his inane “peace in our time” comment following the Munich Agreement last month. Did she not hear Sir Churchill’s retort? Could his voice not break through her notions of what the present looks like and what the future holds? How could she dismiss someone who knows so much, and who has taught us so much at our own table over the years?
Sir Churchill was almost frightening in his disdain and adamance. “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” Sir Churchill didn’t mince his words. He never does.
War is in the air. It is a specter that grows strong, dark, and heavy. I pray it doesn’t pounce before Caro wakes.
I need to write her now. It’s time.
Thank you, Beatrice, for helping me settle my thoughts—and my loyalties.
Twenty-Two
“It’s not enough.” Mat laid down his last letter. “I’ll give you she is no hard-core Fascist, but she is drinking the Kool-Aid.” He raised his brows in reply to my glare. “Come on, she dismisses obvious German armament and encroachment; her worldview has changed dramatically, and she has no problems with Elsa Schiaparelli’s politics and mercenary nature. She admires, even romanticizes, Paul Arnim. I suspect she’s a little in love with him.”
“And his wife?” I leaned forward.
“She helps the case. Watching their interactions, Caro sees a man who she thinks loves well. You said George had trust issues . . . It only takes a heartbeat for a woman to believe she can be the object of that kind of ardent devotion. It’s almost cliché.”
My eyes widened before I could bank my expression. This was an unexpected insight into Mat, inconsistent with the man I once knew.
“Bitter?” I quipped. He shot me a dark look. “Come on.” I mimicked his earlier exasperation. “You pick. Nineteenth-century novelist? Misogynist? Or that little tirade was born from experience.”
His face flushed and he focused on his hands. “Experience, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“It does mean you can’t be objective. Your preconceived notions, your lived experience, affect everything.” I echoed his tone and delivery, as well as his theory.
“Remind me to stop talking to you.” Mat refused to look up.
“I wasn’t being serious. Hey—” I stalled.
I had pushed him. In my nervousness to smooth over whatever had derailed us in the car, my distressing lunch with Dad, and the tiny bubbles I felt sitting here, I had hurt his feelings.
Mat had said nothing was easy with me all those years ago. It wasn’t the words, those could be taken any number of ways—some not good at all—but it was the way he’d said it. Soft. Nostalgic. Warm. His voice had held an undertone of longing that pulled at me—as if “nothing easy” had been the highlight of his freshman year just as listening to him laugh and tease with his family had been mine. It led me to wonder what I had missed all those years ago. While I looked for ways to be close to him—study, research, grab a snack, meet at a party, start a debate—had he been looking for ways to draw close to me?
Back then, I’d felt alone in that odd push-pull feeling. I had wanted him near. I craved it. Yet sometimes he felt too close, like he could see through me. And his eyes . . . What had Caro written? Treacle. Mat’s were a deep golden brown that, from the moment we met, invited my confidence and my trust. It was often that alluring pull that drove me to push back. It was both exhilarating and terrifying to feel so transparent and known to him. “Nothing was ever simple with you.”
I watched the top of Mat’s head, unsure what to do or what to say to make things right again. The air in the room took on a sharp and discordant charge. To apologize felt like it would only highlight his embarrassment and my insensitivity.
Instead I pushed the letter I’d just finished in front of him. “Have you read about George? For yourself?”
“He just visited her in Paris.” Mat still didn’t look up.
“You can’t think there’s anything romantic with Arnim.”
Mat bit back, “Yes . . . they’ve got true love.” He raised his head and stared at me. “We should quit.”
Something needed to be said.
“I’m sorry about just now, but you have to admit”—I lifted my hand to stop his rebuttal—“what you say isn’t uncommon, but it’s not a given.”
“You’re right. It’s not a given. But—” He climbed off his stool to stretch. “We need more. None of this is getting us anywhere. I had a good article, Caroline, and it’s gone. There aren’t answers here, merely holes. Tons of them. I can’t submit what I wrote now. This is worse than if I never proposed that article in the first place.”
He stepped back to the table. Letters, diaries, our notebooks and laptops covered every available inch. “The information I found in the Archives during my first research visit? These contradict most of it. According to the Arnim family and the German records I’ve searched, he sent his family to the States in early ’40. He stayed in France with his companies. Did he go with them? Then return? Did he even love Caro? There’s no affair hinted at in these letters. And, I’ll concede, she seems to love George . . . I thought I was better than this.”
“You are. In fact, this is what you posited all along. Nothing is simple.” I used the same words he’d given me. He had meant them as a form of comfort and I hoped he’d take them the same way now. “Humans are messy. Their history is going to be messy.”
“True, but inconvenient when you’re ready to publish.”
“Do you want to stop?”