‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘My fiancée died.’
‘Oh, how sad – what was she like?’
‘Very pretty.’
‘Prettier than me?’
‘Much prettier. Very correct.’
‘More correct than me?’
‘Vous – vous êtes une folle, madame, aucune correction. Et elle était gentille – mais d’une gentillesse, la pauvre.’
For the first time since she knew him, Fabrice had become infinitely sentimental, and Linda was suddenly shaken by the pangs of a terrible jealousy, so terrible that she felt quite faint. If she had not already recognized the fact, she would have known now, for certain and always, that this was to be the great love of her life.
‘Five years,’ she said, ‘is quite a long time when it’s all in front of you.’
But Fabrice was still thinking of the fiancée.
‘She died much more than five years ago – fifteen years in the autumn. I always go and put late roses on her grave, those little tight roses with very dark green leaves that never open properly – they remind me of her. Dieu, que c’est triste.’
‘And what was her name?’ said Linda.
‘Louise. Enfant unique du dernier Rancé. I often go and see her mother, who is still alive, a remarkable old woman. She was brought up in England at the court of the Empress Eugénie, and Rancé married her in spite of that, for love. You can imagine how strange everybody found it.’
A deep melancholy settled on them both. Linda saw too clearly that she could not hope to compete with a fiancée who was not only prettier and more correct than she was, but also dead. It seemed most unfair. Had she remained alive her prettiness would surely, after fifteen years of marriage, have faded away, her correctness have become a bore; dead, she was embalmed for ever in her youth, her beauty, and her gentillesse.
After dinner, however, Linda was restored to happiness. Being made love to by Fabrice was an intoxication, quite different from anything she had hitherto experienced.
(‘I was forced to the conclusion,’ she said, when telling me about this time, ‘that neither Tony nor Christian had an inkling of what we used to call the facts of life. But I suppose all Englishmen are hopeless as lovers.’
‘Not all,’ I said, ‘the trouble with most of them is that their minds are not on it, and it happens to require a very great deal of application. Alfred,’ I told her, ‘is wonderful.’
‘Oh, good,’ she said, but she sounded unconvinced I thought.)
They sat until late looking out of the open window. It was a hot evening, and, when the sun had gone, a green light lingered behind the black bunches of the trees until complete darkness fell.
‘Do you always laugh when you make love?’ said Fabrice.
‘I hadn’t thought about it, but I suppose I do. I generally laugh when I’m happy and cry when I’m not, I am a simple character, you know. Do you find it odd?’
‘Very disconcerting at first, I must say.’
‘But why – don’t most women laugh?’
‘Indeed they do not. More often they cry.’
‘How extraordinary – don’t they enjoy it?’
‘It is nothing to do with enjoyment. If they are young they call on their mothers, if they are religious they call on the Virgin to forgive them. But I have never known one who laughed except you. Mais qu’est-ce que vous voulez, vous êtes une folle.’
Linda was fascinated.
‘What else do they do?’
‘What they all do, except you, is to say: “Comme vous devez me mépriser.”’
‘But why should you despise them?’
‘Oh, really, my dear, one does, that’s all.’
‘Well, I call that most unfair. First you seduce them, then you despise them, poor things. What a monster you are.’
‘They like it. They like grovelling about and saying “Qu’est-ce que j’ai fait? Mon Dieu, hélas Fabrice, que pouvez-vous bien penser de moi? O, que j’ai honte.” It’s all part of the thing to them. But you, you seem unaware of your shame, you just roar with laughter. It is very strange. Pas désagréable, il faut avouer.’
‘Then what about the fiancée,’ said Linda, ‘didn’t you despise her?’
‘Mais non, voyons, of course not. She was a virtuous woman.’
‘Do you mean to say you never went to bed with her?’
‘Never. Never would such a thing have crossed my mind in a thousand thousand years.’
‘Goodness,’ said Linda. ‘In England we always do.’
‘Ma chère, c’est bien connu, le côté animal des anglais. The English are a drunken and an incontinent race, it is well known.’
‘They don’t know it. They think it’s foreigners who are all those things.’
‘French women are the most virtuous in the world,’ said Fabrice, in the tones of exaggerated pride with which Frenchmen always talk about their women.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Linda, sadly. ‘I was so virtuous once. I wonder what happened to me. I went wrong when I married my first husband, but how was I to know? I thought he was a god and that I should love him for ever. Then I went wrong again when I ran away with Christian, but I thought I loved him, and I did too, much much more than Tony, but he never really loved me, and very soon I bored him, I wasn’t serious enough, I suppose. Anyhow, if I hadn’t done these things, I shouldn’t have ended up on a suitcase at the Gare du Nord and I would never have met you, so, really, I’m glad. And in my next life, wherever I happen to be born, I must remember to fly to the boulevards as soon as I’m of marriageable age, and find a husband there.’
‘Comme c’est gentil,’ said Fabrice, ‘et, en effet, French marriages are generally very very happy you know. My father and mother had a cloudless life together, they loved each other so much that they hardly went out in society at all. My mother still lives in a sort of afterglow of happiness from it. What a good woman she is!’
‘I must tell you,’ Linda went on, ‘that my mother and one of my aunts, one of my sisters and
