Love, Again

chin, let his lower jaw drop, spread his hands, and quivered with sensibility. 'And so,' he announced, having given them all time to get the benefit of his performance, 'all is decided. But without me. Without Belles Rivieres.'

A crisis.

'But of course we haven't decided anything for you. How could we? But since Henry is leaving almost at once and you are losing the two main actors when your two weeks are up, it is obvious you can't prolong your run.'

Jean-Pierre began a spirited speech, in French. It could be seen from Stephen's face and from Sarah's — both of them being, as it is put at school, 'good at' French — that this was a speech to be appreciated as a performance in its own right.

'Now look here, Jean-Pierre old chap,' said Stephen reproachfully, 'any minute now I'll start to believe you actually enjoy meetings.'

At this communication from a past epoch Jean-Pierre only looked puzzled. Benjamin, a man of a thousand committees, signalled to Sarah, and then to Stephen and to Mary, leaning forward and holding them with his commanding look. 'It isn't strictly my business,' he remarked, 'but I do feel the situation would be significantly improved if there was in fact some kind of structured discussion. For instance, surely there must be a decision about finances?'

'Naturally there must be decisions,' said Jean-Pierre, already mollified. 'And if I'd been given a chance to make a statement… it has been decided that we shall have Julie Vairon in Belles Rivieres next year. And very likely every year. Next year we shall have a month's run. Why not two months? It is all a question of the correct publicity.' And he bowed slightly to Mary.

A silence. They were all contemplating a yearly commitment to Julie.

Stephen's head was tilted back, and he was staring at the imperturbable blue of the Mediterranean sky with a stoic look. Sarah was thinking, Over my dead body. That's silly — you'll have forgotten it all by then. You'll probably even be thinking it was funny… well, if you do, it'll be dishonest.

Henry was looking at Sarah as he said, 'I'll be free, I'll guarantee it.' His terrible insecurity made him add, 'I mean, if you want me.'

Everyone laughed at him, and Jean-Pierre said, 'But naturally. I can give you that assurance.'

'And I give you notice,' said Benjamin, 'that I am coming to Oxfordshire for your first night in August. I shall be missing your first night here.'

'Missing the first night,' said Henry to him. A jest, but Benjamin actually said, quickly, 'I'm sorry,' saw it was a joke, went red, but preserved more than ever the look of a man determined not to be undone by seductive and dangerous ways. He said to Jean-Pierre, 'I shall be here next year, I can assure you of that.'

Jean-Pierre understood that this was an important moment, in fact a guarantee of financial support. He got up, leaned across a littered table, put out his hand. Benjamin took it sitting, then stood up, and the two men formally shook hands.

'We can discuss the details in Jean-Pierre's office,' said Benjamin. 'Let's say half an hour.'

'Let's say half an hour,' said Mary.

'I have to catch my plane,' said Benjamin.

'There's plenty of time,' said Sarah.

'There's time, but not plenty,' said Henry.

Here, on cue, the chatter around the tables was blanked out by the screaming roar of three war planes, sinister, black, like some outsize prehistoric hornets out of a science-fiction film, shooting across the sky with the speed which announces, so briefly it is easy to forget they were there at all, that they are from a world of super- technology far from our amateur little lives.

Now the players were appearing, yawning prettily. The circle was enlarged, and enlarged again to include everyone. Bill took a chair beside Sarah and enquired sulkily, 'It is true there will be a run in England?'

'Two weeks,' said Sarah.

'And I can't be there. If only I had known.'

'If only any of us had known.'

'But you will keep in touch, won't you? At least there's two weeks left of this run.' He was speaking to her like a peremptory young lover. Really, they might have spent the night together. Molly watched the two of them, puzzled. As well she might be, thought Sarah. And Stephen too. Because of Bill's closeness to his mother, he felt, as much as he saw, Sarah, but between Molly and Sarah was that gulf only to be filled by experience. Molly did not yet know that always, impalpably, invisibly, through the air rained down ashes that could be seen only when enough had settled — on her, on Stephen, on the older, on the ageing, ashes and dust dimming the colours of skin and hair. Sarah knew that this glossy young animal sitting beside her diminished her, leached colour from her, no matter how he flattered her with his eyes, his smile, enclosing her in streams of sympathy. Sarah saw Molly's serious, thoughtful, honest gaze turn from her to Stephen; the sun was not burnishing him as it did the young ones. He looked bleached, faded.

Sarah said to Bill, knowing her voice was rough, 'I shall be going home in a couple of days.'

'Oh, you can't, you can't do that,' said Bill, really upset. 'You can't leave us.' He might just as well have said 'leave me.'

'Everyone is leaving us,' said Molly. 'Henry… Sarah… ' She hesitated, looking at Stephen. He was again looking into the sky.

'I shall be here,' said Mary. 'And so will Roy. If Sarah is going, then we must be here.'

'I have a month's leave due, remember?' said Sarah.

Here Mary's raised brows remarked direct to Sarah that she couldn't remember Sarah's ever before insisting on due leave.

'No, Sarah,' said Henry. 'Don't forget, I'll have to be over for the new auditions. I can fit it in the second week in July. And you must be there.'

'You mean, no vanishing in July?'

Henry smiled at her, and her heart tripped.

'Such a wild, marvellous, blissful success,' remarked Mary, lazing in her chair in a way that contradicted her briskly efficient linen suit. Uncharacteristically lazed, she put her arms back behind her head, exposing tender patches of damp linen. She had the look of an animal offering vulnerable parts of herself to superior strength. Jean- Pierre sighed; she heard it, blushed, and looked upwards, like Stephen. One by one, they all looked skywards. Quite low down, a single hawk circled. Lower and lower it floated, until some rogue breeze blew it ragged and tilted up a wing. The bird rocked wildly to find balance, steadied, circled once on a thermal, and swerved off to the top of a plane tree, where it sat huffing out its feathers. It looked sulky, offended, and this made them all laugh.

By now the cafe tables were filled with people in some way connected with Julie Vairon.

'We have virtually taken his cafe over, poor Monsieur Denivre,' said Molly.

'Il est desole,' said Jean-Pierre. 'Guillaume,' he called to the proprietor, who was attending to customers a couple of tables away — Andrew, Sally, Richard, George White. 'Les Anglais ont peur que uous les trouviez trop encombrants.' Guillaume smiled, with exactly the shade of urbane scepticism appropriate. He said, 'Ca y est!'

'Why Anglais?' enquired Molly, exaggerating her American voice. 'I'm not Anglais. Who is Anglais here — apart from the Anglais?'

Here Bill said, in the roughest of Tennessee accents, 'I'm English, mesdames, messieurs, I am English to the last little molecule.'

They laughed, but it was one of the moments, hardly uncommon, when Europeans and Americans occupy different geographical and historical space.

The Americans were thinking, Molly — Boston. At least, that was where she lived now. Benjamin — West Coast, even if his accent could only be Harvard. Henry had been born in New York but lived, when he was at home — seldom — in Los Angeles. Andrew had been born, and lived, in Texas.

But the Europeans were thinking, Molly — Ireland. Benjamin's antecedents could only have come from that culturally fertile region, sometimes Russian, sometimes Polish, the shtetl. Henry — the Mediterranean. Andrew? Scottish, of course.

'Our American cousins,' said Mary to Sarah.