The Reinvention of Love

important people. I can only hide behind the pillar for so long. I am getting looks for my skulking behaviour.
    “Charles.” He sees me immediately.
    “Victor.”
    He is still compact and sprightly, always looking so ridiculously healthy that I feel like an invalid in comparison.
    “What did you think?” he asks.
    There is no point in hiding my honesty. There is nothing left of our friendship to protect.
    “Lady Jane was dreadful,” I say, and I watch as the slightest ripple of pain washes over his face. To someone who didn’t know the man it would not even have been noticeable. I admire his professionalism.
    “Ah. Well, yes. I think she might be retiring after this performance.”
    “Won’t that affect your relations with her?”
    “Not at all, Charles. Not at all.” Victor looks almost sorry for me and I hate him in that moment. “How have you been,my old friend? You do not look well. I hear you have been on the run from the Garde nationale.”
    “I am quite well,” I say, but I do not feel that this is entirely true. “And although I am in hiding, my life is otherwise unaffected.”
    “Really?” Victor regards me quizzically, and I have the sense that he knows Adèle no longer meets with me, that he possesses more information about our affair than I do. “Surely being in hiding would change everything about your life.”
    It is not a question. Once again, as always in our friendship, Victor has simply pronounced and there is no arguing with his version of reality. And, just as in other times when Victor would disregard my feelings, instead of defending myself, I simply offer up something else for him to savage.
    “I’m writing a novel,” I say.
    “What about?”
    “Love.”
    “That’s a very ambitious subject.”
    We are an island amid the sea of people leaving the theatre and we are buffeted by the departing audience. Victor grabs my shoulder to stop his drift away from me. For a moment we look into each other’s eyes, without rancour or pretence or boastfulness. I recognize my old friend, and I see something else in his face. I see his happiness. Juliette Drouet may be a bad actress, but she is undoubtedly a good lover. She has made the great poet very happy.
    “Come and see me, Charles,” says Victor. “Let us talk more about your novel.” For a brief moment it is as it always was between us, as though Victor has forgotten what happened to our friendship, or forgiven it. But then he remembers my trespasses, drops his hand from my shoulder and moves away from me, towards the lobby doors. “Yes,” he says, “come and visit us soon. My wife often asks what has become of you.”

I DO NOT GO TO SEE VICTOR. Adèle comes to see me. Madame Ladame delivers the message with my morning coffee. A hastily scribbled note from my beloved, asking me to meet her in the Jardin du Luxembourg at noon.
    Who sees love arriving? Who can gauge the movements one person makes towards another? Movements so slight, so tentative, that they almost seem to be invisible.
    Who sees love arriving – but who doesn’t see it leaving?
    Adèle is waiting for me when I arrive at the gardens. She is pacing between the statues, staring at the ground, in much the same way Victor’s mistress was studying the stage floor the night I went to see her disastrous performance in
Marie Tudor
.
    I am almost upon Adèle before she notices me. She stops. I stop. It is so long since we’ve seen each other that all the old endearments wither on my tongue.
    “Charles,” she says, “you’ve come.”
    “Of course.”
    She holds out her hand and I take it shyly.
    “Walk with me,” she says. “I am too restless to sit.”
    It is a cool afternoon. The sun disappears behind clouds, peeks out again. Because it isn’t a fine day, we might be the only people in the orchard. Adèle and I walk along the gravel paths, past the ornamental maze, towards the orchard.
    “Victor has a mistress,” says Adèle.
    “I know.”
    “How do you know?”
    “It is the talk of Paris.” I decide not to mention going to see Juliette Drouet in Victor’s play.
    Adèle stops me with a hand on my arm. “Do you think we were ever the talk of Paris?” she asks.
    “I’m not sure. Probably not. I don’t think we’re as…” I search for the right word. “We’re not as blatant as Victor.”
    “Boastful, you mean.”
    “Confident,” I say. “We’re not as confident as Victor.”
    We reach the orchard. I look at the tags on the apple