The Reinvention of Love

Victor has tied around the railing in front of his upstairs room. It is a flag for her, for his mistress, to signal that he is up in the morning. He is up and thinking of her as he sets about his work and he has lashed his underwear to the railing to let her know this.
    It is not just because Guernsey is full of English people that we do not take part in society. It is because society wants no part of a man who goes into exile with his wife and his mistress. They shun us. We are not invited into their homes or to their social functions.
    I don’t blame Juliette Drouet. When we first landed in Jersey, she kept a respectful distance from my family at the docks. She understands discretion. She never comes to the house. I never meet her on the street, or hear a word from her. I know Victor and this means that I cannot hate Juliette. Often I actually feel great sympathy towards her. She is in exile as well, and she doesn’t have any children to comfort her. All she has is Victor, and having had this myself once, I know what it means. And I do believe that I had the younger, better version of the man. She must be a very patient woman to endure all his present-day demands.
    If Victor isn’t working on his biography of an evening, he walks up the street to see Juliette. Sometimes he will have his evening meal there. He doesn’t simply need to have his family around him at the end of a day, he needs to feel loved. And hisfamily cannot give him enough of the love he needs so voraciously – the love he feels entitled to.
    The problem with our situation is not that Victor has a mistress, or even that she has come to join us in exile. The problem with our situation is that it is seemingly endless. Napoleon III is still the Emperor of France. Victor remains in opposition to him. I don’t see how anything will ever change. We will remain here together on Guernsey, in our uneasy alliance, until we all die.
    Charles is lounging on the terrace when I return to the house. He has been sleeping all afternoon, my lazy, fat son. Idleness is destroying him, and a false industry is destroying François-Victor. It is ridiculous to think that he can translate the entire works of Shakespeare! My little Adèle, my poor daughter, is being consumed by spectres. She is giving her life away to ghosts.
    This has to end.
    “Maman,” says Charles, waving in greeting from his supine position, his feet raised up on cushions. “Where did you get to?”
    He should be married, my little Charlot, who is not little at all. He should be married and have a family of his own. It shouldn’t matter to him where his mother was for a few hours on a beautiful day.
    I say nothing for fear I will say something hurtful. I just brush past him and storm into the house.
    My other children must be in their rooms. Good thing, I think grimly, and head for the staircase. I pass the mirror in the front hall and catch a glimpse of myself in the glass. My hair is loose and frayed, like rope ends that have lost their splice. There is a smudge of dirt across my cheek. My eyes startle, the wild eyes of an animal.
    There you are, I think as I pass on by. There you are, Adèle, at last.
    I never go up to Victor’s study when he is working. If not actually forbidden, it has certainly been understood all these years I have lived with him that I am not to disturb him during working hours. His genius is delicate and could easily be ruined by interruption.
    I take the stairs two at a time and am battling for breath by the time I get to the top.
    This room on the third floor was already a generous space before Victor added the glass box. It already had sweeping views of the ocean and sky, but the glass box has the effect of making it seem open to the elements. It is as though Victor stands in the middle of the ether. At night the stars seen through the glass roof must be dazzling, and oh so close.
    Victor writes standing up at a battered, high, wooden desk. When I get to the top of the stairs he has his back to me, and in the moments before he notices that I’m there and turns around to face me, I have a glimpse of what it is like to be Victor.
    The sun through the glass roof is brilliant. It illuminates every detail of the room. There is the low-ceilinged library where my husband keeps his vast collection of books. There is the Raft of the Medusa emergency bedroom where he beds, or attempts to bed, the succession of young maids who come to work in Hauteville House. There is the