Topaz - Leon Uris [9]
He was what one would define as a charming-looking man in his mid-forties, complete with graying temples. Most women thought him sexy. He had a way with his eyes, with his gestures.
As play resumed, Nicole returned to her deliberate mask of boredom.
Mickey Mantle strode to the plate.
André caught her fixed icy glare from the corner of his eye. Oh, well, he thought, she will only have to suffer two more innings.
The drive home was in silence. André took the long way, past the Capitol and along the Mall. The cherry blossoms were ready to burst and the city was bathed in the full breath of early spring. He looked at the Lincoln Memorial, never tiring of it. It was his city, this Washington, in many ways, even more than Paris.
The Georgetown suburb had been the beneficiary of a large restoration program. They had one of the high-ceilinged period houses near Dumbarton Oaks, which, over time of a decade, Nicole had furnished with taste and distinction.
They entered. The truce was over.
Nicole slammed the door and whirled on him. “A hell of a Frenchman you are! You baseball watcher! You ... you bourbon drinker!”
“Madame Devereaux,” he said, oozing cynicism, “I do not consider these pleasures an affront to the honor of France!”
“But you like everything American, my dear. Particularly their women.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, darling, but I do hear Virginia McHenry is quite a piece.”
“So that’s it. Nicole, when are you going to stop listening to gossip and eating yourself up on rumors?”
“I did not mean to insult you about American women. You’ll jump into bed with anyone.”
“You’re the one who sounds like an American wife! Complaining, jealous, shrewish. No wonder they’ve got a country of rich widows. And you act just like one of them.”
The dogs, Robespierre and Picasso, entered to greet them, but retreated quickly.
“I happen to like baseball,” he said, calming, “and the Yankees are in town.”
“And it also happens that this is your first night off in three weeks.”
“So you want to drag me to New York to sit in a theater ... a drafty theater ... and watch a rotten play and drag me back to Washington in the middle of the night, and you’ll complain about the damned play all the way home. Don’t you know you complain about everything, woman? This house, my position, your social duties, the maids, the car, your clothing.”
They made it to their separate but equal bedrooms.
André Devereaux had explained to his American friends that separate bedrooms was one of the most civilized contributions of the French bourgeoisie.
Tonight, for example, it served as a safe sanctuary.
And, after all, Nicole was only next door, and no matter how serious the argument, the door was never locked.
He flung off his sport shirt and threw it into the chair untidily, knowing this would gall Nicole. She threw the door open.
“My gratitude for the lovely evening, and particularly the hot dogs ... with the works.”
A deliberate thump of his shoe was followed by a long silent stare from one to the other.
“What is the matter with us?” she said, puzzled. “After twenty years some sort of terrible chasm has opened. We can’t even talk to each other anymore. We only seem to want to hurt each other.”
“When one is very young,” André said, “one is able to give and take a fearful beating. But, even with the strongest, time wears them thin. Scar tissues develop over the continued wounds. You see, we don’t have to hit each other very hard anymore. Just a well-directed jab to the scar and the wound breaks open and the blood pours out.”
André was able to twist and punish her with his words and suffocate her into silence. Nicole knew that the way of things allowed him to wear his “gallantry” on his sleeve, a walking martyr, and as he grew more weary from the pressures