Topaz - Leon Uris [68]
François and Michele exchanged smiles.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“We’d better be off to beat the traffic out of Paris.”
“Have a nice weekend. I’ll look for you Sunday night.”
François assured Nicole he would not speed his sports car recklessly through the countryside, and left.
“I hate to leave you alone, Mamma.”
“Nonsense.”
“Why don’t you go down to Montrichard?”
“I’m not up to Grandfather Devereaux this week. Go on, don’t keep your young man waiting.”
They touched cheeks. Nicole turned at the door. “Is he wonderful, or am I mad?”
“Yes, he’s wonderful, and he’ll give you a life of ...” She stopped before saying “loneliness and pain.”
“Don’t, Mamma. I’m so happy.”
Nicole looked out of the window down to the pavement and watched them drive off into a world they were now able to create just for themselves. They would be oblivious for a while of that other world that would gobble them up and shatter the bliss.
She began a nervous pacing accompanied by a cigarette and a bourbon. She stopped before the record player and read the album covers. Somehow, every damned bit of music these days reminded her of André.
She looked toward the phone. Call a girl friend and have lunch and gossip? Nicole had become bored with this waste in just a few weeks.
Dinner and theater? There were standing offers from the many friends they had in Paris. They. She was a third wheel now, and the invitations were predicated on friends feeling sorry for her. She would stand no more of that.
The walls of loneliness closed in on her.
A good book. Hell, there aren’t any good books anymore.
Loneliness was the plague. You drift to second-rate company and seat yourself with a known bore in order to evade being alone.
But you cannot escape that fear that comes when the lights must finally be turned off, or that emptiness when you awaken fitfully and the bed is empty.
The void is there all the time, even in a crowd.
She lit another cigarette and tried to thumb through a magazine. It went into the wastebasket.
The decision that Nicole had hoped to reach by the separation had not been reached. Things were more confused than ever. Once, when she and André were young, she had felt he could not live without her. Now, with each passing day, she knew that just the opposite was true. He would continue his work ... perhaps a bit sadder and wearier, but he would go on as a living, vital human being.
Nicole had reduced herself to a static, cigarette-smoking stone, totally consumed by her own problems and misery.
The sound of the phone had a blessed ring.
“Hello.”
“Nicole darling, this is Jacques.”
It was Granville, the oldest and closest friend of hers and André’s.
“I’m a bastard,” he said.
“Of course you are, darling. That’s nothing new.”
“No, no. You see, I knew it was a weekend and if you weren’t going to Montrichard you’d be booked up. I really hesitated to call.”
“As a matter of fact, I planned a quiet couple of days of records and catching up on some back reading.”
“You must do me a enormous favor. Do you remember Guy de Crécy?”
“Yes, we’ve met here and there. Ambassador to Egypt, isn’t he?”
“Right ... or he was until last week. We’ve recalled him to Paris. Poor devil only arrived yesterday and I’m shooting him out to the Far East on some special business in a few days. I’m throwing a little dinner party for him at my apartment. Intimate, you know, just five or six couples.”
“Isn’t he still married?”
“Widower. Lost his wife about a year ago.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Be a dear, Nicole. Please come.”
“Just for you, Jacques.”
“I love you, I love you. De Crécy will call for you around eight.”
Nicole hung up with a great sense of relief that the loneliness would be reprieved for an evening. Then strangely she felt herself pleasantly anxious at the idea of meeting Guy de Crécy again.
4
NICOLE WAS READY WELL in advance of Guy de Crécy’s arrival and kept him waiting for only a few judicious moments. She had made herself utterly radiant and was pleased that he was pleased at the sight of her.
He was a man of fifty, not in the least