Paris: The Novel

more. Nothing at all.
    Sometimes she observed him while he was working in the afternoons. As long as he could be observed he would sit there looking quite contented, and making a note or two, apparently just as casually as if he were reading a newspaper. But sometimes the veranda would be empty, or the people there would be dozing; and if she looked out through a window, or watched him from the small arbor at the side of the garden where the roses grew, and where he could not see her, his face would become concentrated, and intense, and she would know that he was on some questthat he kept hidden from the world, and that there was a force driving him, and that behind the handsome young man with the sometimes flirtatious manner there lay a man who was very fine, and serious. And she wished that she could share his private world.
    She wasn’t going to throw herself at him. Sometimes she would say something to make him laugh. At other times she would engage him in a conversation that would show him she could be serious, and that she thought about the world. But it didn’t seem to do her any good.

    They were all going back to Paris in two days. The August afternoon was hot, the long garden filled with sun, dappled here and there by shade from the trees along its edges. There was scarcely a breath of wind and, apart from the occasional creak of a cart easing its way along the street, the only sound was the quiet hum of the bees visiting the roses and the warm, dry lavender bushes beside the lawn.
    Uncle Marc had put a record on the gramophone in the salon, leaving the French doors open so that the sound of Debussy’s “String Quartet” wafted out onto the veranda where he was sitting with a book.
    He was pleased with the record. “It’s played by the Capet Quartet. They’re just starting a whole series of recordings. I got it from a friend,” he added with some pride. “It’s not even on sale yet.”
    Apart from her grandfather, who was dozing, Marc was the only one on the veranda when Claire came out.
    “Where’s everybody?” she asked her uncle.
    “Frank wandered down the garden. I think your mother’s somewhere in the house. Don’t know about the others,” he replied.
    She was going to sit down, but then she thought she’d take a turn round the garden herself, so she started to walk along the lawn.
    The music followed after her. The quartet had just reached its slow movement. How soft and sensuous it was, like the faint hum of the bees in the sun. She felt a bar of shade steal across her face, and then the sun touched her hair again.
    The music was just rising to its first small climax, like a sudden, urgent whisper in that lazy afternoon, as she came to the hedge at the end of the lawn where one passed through an arch of privet into the green space beyond where there was a small tree, and roses, and red poppies, and blue cornflowers grew in a bed beside the grass.
    And there she saw her mother standing with Frank. They were standing close. Her mother’s face was turned up to his, and he was looking down, and there could be no doubt, she was sure there was no doubt, that Frank was about to kiss her mother, and that her mother wanted him to, the way she was smiling, with her face turned up.
    And then they saw her, and they did not spring apart, but Frank half turned toward her to make it look as if they had just paused for a moment while they were talking, and he said something to her but she did not seem to hear what it was he said.
    “I just wondered where everybody was,” she said, and looked at the flowers for a moment as though nothing had happened. “Don’t you love Uncle Marc’s record?” she said, and then she went back through the privet hedge and made her way down the lawn. Uncle Marc glanced up at her, then down at his book. And when she was getting closer she saw him glance behind her and guessed that her mother and Frank were walking down the lawn too, talking as though nothing had happened. She didn’t stop on the veranda, but went into the house. She would have gone to her room, but it was Frank’s room at the moment, so she went into the courtyard instead, and out through the iron gateway into the street, and walked in the street for ten minutes before returning.

    When Marc suggested to Frank that they go for a stroll the following morning, Frank was quite agreeable. They walked along to the château, talking of this and that, and Marc remarked that despite all the long royal