Kingdom of Shadows

Matignon. “When you first think about it, it should be easy. But then you start to work, and it turns out to be very difficult.”

There were forty wash drawings set out around the office-pinned to the walls, propped up on chairs. French life. Peasant couples in the fields, or in the doorways of farmhouses, or sitting on wagons. Like Millet, perhaps, a benign, optimistic sort of Millet. Then there were Parisian papas and mamans out for a Sunday stroll, by a carousel, at the Arc de Triomphe. A pair of lovers on a bridge over the Seine, holding hands, she with bouquet, he in courting suit-facing the future. A soldier, home from the front, seated at the kitchen table, his good wife setting a tureen in front of him. This one wasn’t so bad, Morath thought.

“Too gentle,” Courtmain said. “The ministry will want something with a little more clenched fist in it.”

“Any text?”

“A word or two-Mary’s going to join us in a minute. Something like, ‘In a dangerous world, France remains strong.’ It’s meant to dispel defeatism, especially after what happened at Munich.”

“Exhibited where?”

“The usual places. Metro, street kiosk, post office.”

“Hard to dispel defeatism in a French post office.”

Morath sat down in a chair across from Courtmain. Mary Day knocked lightly on the frame of the open door. “Hello, Nicholas,” she said. She pulled up a chair, lit a Gitane, and handed Courtmain a sheet of paper.

” ‘France will win,’ ” he read. Then, to Morath, “That’s not poor Mary’s line.” From Courtmain, an affectionate grin. Mary Day had the smart person’s horror of the fatuous phrase.

“It’s the little man at the interior ministry,” she explained. “He, had an idea.”

“I hope they’re paying.”

Courtmain made a face. Not much. “Advertising goes to war-you can’t say no to them.”

Mary Day took the paper back from Courtmain. ” ‘France forever.’ “

“Bon Dieu,” Courtmain said.

” ‘Our France.’ “

Morath said, “Why not just ‘La France’?”

“Yes,” Mary Day said. “The Vive understood. That was my first try. They didn’t care for it.”

“Too subtle,” Courtmain said. He looked at his watch. “I have to be at RCA at five.” He stood, opened his briefcase and made sure he had what he needed, then adjusted the knot of his tie. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” he said to Morath.

“About ten,” Morath said.

“Good,” Courtmain said. He liked having Morath around and wanted him to know it. He said good-bye to each of them and went out the door.

Which left Morath alone in the room with Mary Day.

He pretended to look at the drawings and tried to think of something clever to say. She glanced at him, read over her notes. She was the daughter of an Irish officer in the Royal Navy and the French artist Marie d’Aumonville-an extraordinary combination, if you asked Morath, or anybody. A light sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of the nose; long, loose brown hair; and pleading brown eyes. She was flat-chested, amused, impish, absentminded, awkward. “Mary’s a certain type,” Courtmain had once told him. When she was sixteen, he suspected, all the boys wanted to die for her, but they were afraid to ask her to go to the movies.

She sat back in the chair and said, “Well, I suppose we have to go back to work.”

Morath agreed.

“And then, you’ll take me for a drink.” She started to gather up her papers. “Right?”

Morath stared, did she mean it? “With pleasure,” he said, retreating into formality. “At seven?”

Her smile was, as always, rueful. “You don’t have to, Nicholas.” She was just teasing him.

“I want to,” he said. “Fouquet, if you like.”

“Well,” she said. “That would be nice. Or the place around the corner.”

“Fouquet,” he announced. “Why not?”

A comic shrug-don’t know why not. “Seven,” she said, a little startled at what she’d done.

They hurried through the crowds, up the Champs Elysees, a few flakes of snow in the night air. She walked with big strides, shoulders hunched over, hands thrust in the pockets of what Morath thought was a very odd coat- three-quarter length, maroon wool with big buttons covered in brown fabric.

Fouquet was packed and noisy, throbbing with life, they had to wait for a table. Mary Day rubbed her hands to get warm. Morath gave a waiter ten francs and he found them a table in the corner. “What would you like?” Morath said.

She thought it over.

“Garcon, champagne!”

She grinned. “A vermouth, maybe. Martini rouge.”

Morath ordered a gentiane, Mary Day changed her mind and decided to have the same thing. “I like it, I just never remember to ask for it.” She spent a long moment watching the people around them-Parisian theatre of the night-and from the look on her face took great pleasure in it. “I wrote something about this place, back when, a piece for the Paris Herald. Restaurants with private rooms-what really goes on?”

“What does?”

“Balzac. But not as much as you’d like to think. Little anniversary parties. Birthday. First Communion.”

“You worked for the Herald?”

“Freelance. Anything and everything, as long as they’d pay for it.”

“Such as …”

“Wine festival in Anjou! Turkish foreign minister feted at the Lumpingtons!”

“Not so easy.”

“Not hard. You need stamina, mostly.”

“Somebody at the office said you wrote books.”

She answered in the tough-guy voice from American gangster movies. “Oh, so you found out about that, did ya?”

“Yes, you’re a novelist.”

“Oh, sort of, maybe. Naughty books, but they pay the rent. I got tired of wine festivals in Anjou, believe it or not, and somebody introduced me to an English publisher-he’s got a little office up in the place Vendome. The kindest man in the world. A Jew, I think, from Birmingham. He was in the textile business, came to France to fight in the war, discovered Paree, and just couldn’t bear to go home. So he started to publish books. Some of them famous, in a certain set, but most of them come in plain brown wrappers, if you know what I mean. A friend of mine calls them ‘books one reads with one hand.’ “

Morath laughed.

“Not so bad, the best of them. There’s one called Tropic of Cancer.”

“Actually, I think the woman I used to live with read it.”

“Pretty salty.”

“That was her.”

“Then maybe she read Suzette. Or the sequel, Suzette Goes Boating.”

“Are those yours?”

“D. E. Cameron, is what the jacket says.”

“What are they like?”

” ‘She slipped the straps from her white shoulders and let the shift fall to her waist. The handsome lieutenant …’ “

“Yes? What did he do?”

Mary Day laughed and shook her hair back. “Not much. Mostly it’s about underwear.”

The gentianes arrived, with a dish of salted almonds.