It was not the answer Caro had expected. “You are a strange girl,” she said. Her expression said clearly, strangeness doesn’t pay. “You see, you have to be prepared for what lies ahead of you.”
“I try to imagine,” Lucile said. She wished for the door to smash open, and one of Camille’s assistants to come flying in, and start firing off questions and rummaging for a piece of paper that had been mislaid. But the house was quiet for once: only Caro’s well-trained voice, with its tragedienne’s quaver, its suggestion of huskiness.
“Infidelity you can endure,” she said. “In the circles in which we move, these things are understood.” She made a gesture, elegant fingers spread, to indicate the laudable correctness, both aesthetic and social, of a little well- judged adultery. “One finds a
“Just stop there. What does that mean?”
Caro became a little round-eyed. “Camille is an attractive man,” she said. “I know whereof I speak.”
“I don’t see what it has to do with anything,” Lucile muttered, “if you’ve been to bed with him. I could do without that bit of information.”
“Please regard me as your friend,” Caro suggested. She bit her lip. At least she had found out that Lucile was not expecting a child. Whatever the reason for the hurry about the marriage, it was not that. It must be something even more interesting, if she could only make it out. She patted her curls back into place and slid from the
I don’t think you need any rehearsal, Lucile said under her breath. I think you’re quite perfect.
When Caro had gone, Lucile leaned back in her chair, and tried to take deep breaths, and tried to be calm. The housekeeper, Jeanette, came in, and looked her over. “Try a small omelette,” she advised.
“Leave me alone,” Lucile said. “I don’t know why you think that food solves everything.”
“I could step around and fetch your mother.”
“I should just think,” Lucile said, “that I can do without my mother at my age.”
She agreed to a glass of iced water. It made her hand ache, froze her deep inside. Camille came in at a quarter-past five, and ran around snatching up pen and ink. “I have to be at the Jacobins,” he said. That meant six o’clock. She stood over him watching his scruffy handwriting loop itself across the page. “No time ever to correct …” He scribbled. “Lolotte … what’s wrong?”
She sat down and laughed feebly: nothing’s wrong.
“You’re a terrible liar.” He was making deletions. “I mean, you’re no good at it.”
“Caroline Remy called.”
“Oh.” His expression, in passing, was faintly contemptuous.
“I want to ask you a question. I appreciate it might be rather difficult.”
“Try.” He didn’t look up.
“Have you had an affair with her?”
He frowned at the paper. “That doesn’t sound right.” He sighed and wrote down the side of the page. “I’ve had an affair with everybody, don’t you know that by now?”
“But I’d like to know.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Why would you like to know?”
“I can’t think why, really.”
He tore the sheet once across and began immediately on another. “Not the most intelligent of conversations, this.” He wrote for a minute. “Did she say that I did?”
“Not in so many words.”
“What gave you the idea then?” He looked up at the ceiling for a synonym, and as he tipped his head back, the flat, red winter light touched his hair.
“She implied it.”
“Perhaps you mistook her.”
“Would you mind just denying it?”
“I think it’s quite probable that at some time I spent a night with her, but I’ve no clear memory of it.” He had found the word, and reached for another sheet of paper.
“How could you not have a clear memory? A person couldn’t just not remember.”
“Why shouldn’t a person not remember? Not everybody thinks it’s the highest human activity, like you do.”
“I suppose not remembering is the ultimate snub.”
“I suppose so. Have you seen Brissot’s latest issue?”
“There. You’ve got your paper on it.”
“Oh, yes.”
“What, you mean you really can’t remember?”
“I’m very absentminded, anyone will tell you. It needn’t have been so much as a night. Could have been an
