The Reinvention of Love

about her waist. “Come, child. Bring your embroidery out to the terrace. I will help you with your stitches.”
    Having first been expelled from France, Victor was then expelled from Jersey in the autumn of 1855 for organizing a protest against a visit the English queen paid to his enemy, Napoleon III. Because Victor was expelled, we were all expelled, and so we came here, to Guernsey.
    I had thought that prolonged exile might dull Victor’s loathing of the Emperor, but it has sharpened it instead. When he wrote his scathing pamphlet,
Napoleon le Petit
, he thought up many ingenious ways of smuggling it into France so that it might be read. It was stuffed into raw chickens, into carriage clocks, into bales of hay, into trunks with false bottoms, into shoes with false heels, into hollowed-out walking sticks and cigars. It was towed in sealed boxes below the waterline of fishing boats and thrown at night onto empty beaches. There was even an attempt to launch the pamphlet in balloons from the back of our house in Jersey, when the wind was blowing towards France.
    The second exile has just confirmed everything Victor wasconvinced of when we first left Paris. He remains absolute in the righteousness of his convictions. I do not believe that we will ever see France again.
    Adèle’s fingers are jumpy. They will not hold the stitches. I put my hand over hers to steady them.
    “You are nervous today,” I say. “You need some exercise. Come with me for a walk along the cliff.”
    Adèle puts the embroidery down beside her and leans into me. “Don’t leave me, Maman,” she whispers, and I put my arms around her and hold her close.
    “I won’t leave you, Dédé,” I say. “You never have to worry about that.”
    I am blessed to have my children with me. I am blessed to have their company long past my entitlement to it.
    We have bought this house here on Guernsey – Hauteville House, halfway up the steep hill from the town. It is the first house we have ever owned. Victor means to stay. He has been redecorating it since we moved in. He has built on the top of the house a glass box where he works. He has constructed a fireplace in the shape of a giant letter H, and made a large candelabra entirely of old cotton reels. He is so clever, my husband! There are tapestries on the walls. The rooms are painted rich, deep colours. One of the rooms is entirely devoted to the display of decorative plates. The ceiling itself is formed of plates. Victor insists on doing all the work himself. I think that if he weren’t a famous author he would be a famous decorator. He has such a gift for it! But I will admit to not liking the Latin mottos he has burned into many of the ceiling beams. He does this with a red-hot poker, often late at night. I sometimes wake to the smell of burning wood and imagine that the house is on fire. But instead, in the morning, I will find a new, mysterious saying. Last week there was one added to the small downstairs lavatory. Victor had already decorated this lavatory with painted peacock feathers, and I do not understand why he felt the need to burn the words “ErrorTerror” into the room as well.

    Hauteville House

    But the phrase I mind the most is the one carved into the wall just outside the dining room.
Ede I Ora
. It is what you see on your way into the dining room, and I think it would be much more appropriately placed within the room itself, so that you might see it on your way out. Eat. Go. Pray. The way it is positioned now makes it seem as though you will enter our dining room and be poisoned, and I feel embarrassed on those evenings when we have guests.
    Tonight, mercifully, there are no dinner guests. It is just the family sitting round the massive oak table.
    “Did the work go well today?” I ask Victor. I ask him this every evening. Every morning I ask him if he slept well. Thesetwo questions, and the corresponding answers, are sometimes all we have in the way of a day’s conversation. We know each other so well, there is no need to talk at length! If Victor is feeling uncommunicative, he will answer simply
yes
or
no
. If he is feeling generous, he will elaborate.
    “Very well,” he says tonight. “In fact,” he puts down his soup spoon, “I feel magnificently inspired from my walk today, and I think I would like to work on the biography this evening.”
    Victor’s work is constant and self-generating. He could happily remain at his desk day and night, but the rest of us