“Maybe that’s best. It’s best if we don’t see each other right away.”
“I’m due for a week next month. But I’ve got to run up to Cornwall to see my family. To speak to Lydia. To London, to speak to the solicitor. Go through this ridiculous pantomime for the lawyers.”
I turned my head away. “Are you certain she wants this?”
“I think she will. I’m sure she will. She knows what it’s like, after all. Being in love, I mean, and unable to do anything about it.”
“And you. You did a noble thing for her sake.”
He sighed and turned to the horizon, shading his face with one hand. We sat there for long moments, watching the sun descend. The taste of his kiss still lay on my tongue, rich and faintly exotic. His shoulder rested near my chin, close enough to touch, and the water dripped down my calves and around the knobs of my ankles, and the sun was so hot and abundant on my face that, for a single minute, I thought we would never have to move again, that the sun alone would nourish us, and we would graft onto each other like a pair of hardy plants, Simon and I, growing and blooming and dying together.
“There was this gardener we had, when I was a boy,” Simon said suddenly. “Trevellyn. My parents—well, they were like most parents I knew, not altogether interested in children, leaving us mostly with nannies and governesses until we went off to school. We weren’t awfully close. So I used to wander about the gardens—we had tremendous gardens, back home, though I expect they’re suffering badly at the moment—and I struck up a friendship with old Trevellyn. He used to show me what he was doing. Teach me the names of the plants, that sort of thing. And one day he was grafting a new seedling, and he made me plant it for him. Stick my hands in all that rich, loamy earth. Place the new tree inside, carefully cut from the old. And I thought, my God, I can make things grow. I can make things live and thrive. And for a time I wanted to be a gardener, just like Trevellyn, and when I was old enough to realize that was impossible—impossible, I mean, in a professional capacity, for a chap from a family like mine—I decided I was going to be a doctor.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. How could he have known what I was thinking? It was impossible, and yet still more impossible that two such singular thoughts could have arisen at the same time, independent of each other. A few more people walked by. A woman, dressed in black—all the women of France were dressed in black, it was the national color—glanced at us and looked quickly away, as if she couldn’t bear the sight. The sun touched the sharp tips of the trees before us and glinted. Simon, squeezing my hand, said that we’d better head into town for dinner, before the last train left for Paris.
In those days before I became a mother myself, I often wondered what it was like to have one. A mother. And what kind of mother mine would have been, if someone hadn’t murdered her.
I never discussed sex with my father. Well, my goodness, that hardly needs to be said, does it? I knew the bare mechanics of the act of procreation—the fact that sex existed, somewhere in the world, given the rampant evidence of humanity around me—but I didn’t know what sex meant. Why you did it, and when, and what it was like. The string of smaller acts that led to this culmination. I thought I would never know. If you engaged in sexual intercourse, you must of course be married, and the subject of marriage never arose in my father’s house. You might have thought we were a convent, governed by a grave and distant monk instead of an abbess. No young men, and certainly no marriage, and so—until the second evening of my visit to Paris in the summer of 1917—I had never given thought to what might happen if I fell in love.
In the end, it came down to the trains.
“Damn,” said Simon, staring at the empty platform. He nudged his cuff aside to examine his wristwatch. “Five minutes past. How the devil? I thought we had bags of time.”
“Are you sure that was the last train?”
“Yes. The damned curfew. What a nuisance. And no taxis to be had for love or money, of course. There’s war for you.”
I stared in shock at the deserted station, outlined in the vibrant indigo of deepest twilight. At the empty trough where the train should exist, if it hadn’t already left. The last train to Paris until morning.
“Damn it all. It’s my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t. I was the one who wanted to see Versailles.”
“No, it was my idea to begin with. You only agreed out of kindness.”
“It wasn’t kindness. I did want to see Versailles.”
“Well, at least it meant we shrugged off your Hazel and her damned pipsqueak—”
“Oh, he’s a very nice fellow—”
“But all I really wanted to see was you. And now look what I’ve done.” He checked his wristwatch again. Gave his forearm a little shake, as if that might change the result. “Well, there’s nothing else for it. I shall have to find us a hotel of some kind.”
“A hotel!”
“I’m sure there’s one about. Come along.” He took my hand and turned us both down the steps and into the motionless street, taking the pavement in quick, long strides that I struggled to match. I think I was too shocked to object. My God, a hotel! What did it mean? I might have known nothing about sex, but I knew you didn’t just walk into a hotel with a man who wasn’t your husband.
Particularly when that man was married to someone else.
My legs were long, and I kept up well enough as we hurried along the sidewalk, borne by some sort of urgency I didn’t understand. Simon didn’t say anything. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, as if Versailles were his second home. When we came to the next street, he made a sharp left: so hard, in fact, that I stumbled on a crack in the paving stones.
“Careful!” He reached out and caught me at the last instant. The action brought us both to a stop. “My God! Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. These shoes . . .”
“Good Lord. I’m so sorry. Charging along without thinking. I just wanted to make sure we found a room before the doors start shutting. You know these suburban towns.”
I nodded. He took my other arm and held me at the elbows. The night air swarmed around us, thick and August hot.
“Virginia. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! It’s just a rather—a turn of events—”
“Are you angry with me?”
“Angry! No, of course not! It’s just that I’ve never—of course, there’s nothing else to be done, but—well, what will Hazel think?”
“What will Hazel think? About what?”
“About—this. That we’ve—missed the train.”
There was just enough light that I could detect a smile. “I see. You mean that we’re going to spend the night together in a shameful hotel? Is that what you’re worried about?”
“I’m not worried. But Hazel will wonder what’s happened to us.”
“Who gives a damn about that?”
“I do,” I said pugnaciously.