The Reinvention of Love

glass window cut into the floor in the shape of a porthole, and the mirror positioned above it so Victor can see down into the bowels of the house, can see us walking through the rooms and going about our daily business.
    It must be magnificent to be Victor. Even his very name is triumphant. And here he is, at the top of the house, at the top of the world. He has the machinery of the household below himand the infinite horizon in front of him. The ocean is so flat and blue that it seems as if he could hook a finger under an edge and pull the entire sheet of shimmering fabric towards him.
    Why would he not feel that he can do anything, take anything? He stands at his desk, a conductor in front of an orchestra, moving the music of the world to his whim. I understand Victor better in this moment seeing him at work than I have ever understood him during all the years we have lived together.
    I understand him better, but I still blame him.
    “Adèle.” He greets me with surprise. “Are you all right? Has something happened to one of the children?”
    “The children are fine,” I say.
    He puts down his pen. His fingers are as ink-stained as Dédé’s. I see the lines he has written on the page in front of him as a series of small rivers, spidering delicately across the paper.
    “Well, no, they’re not fine.” I have recovered from the climb up the stairs, but my breath is still catching in my throat and I realize that I am nervous. I have never confronted my husband before. I’m not sure I can do it. But then I think of Charles, lazing like a fat seal on the terrace; and of François-Victor, eagerly searching out each French word for Shakespeare’s plays; and most of all of Adèle, disappearing day by day into the spirit world. “But the boys are men,” I say. “They have chance and choice, even on this island. It is because of Dédé that I have come to see you.”
    “But I am working.” Victor still looks completely surprised at my presence in his study. “Could this not have waited until tonight?”
    The light behind Victor outlines him, makes him look like a sculpture. I notice that he even has ink on his beard, this new white beard he has grown since we’ve been here on Guernsey. He thinks it suits a man in exile to have a beard.

    Victor Hugo

    I suddenly feel exhausted.
    “I have asked for nothing,” I say. “I have done my duty. When you wanted to move to Jersey, I followed you. And when you felt that you had to come to Guernsey, I followed you here. You bought this house without asking me, but I said nothing.I say nothing about the way you decorate it, or about how you spend your time. But, I am not the only one who has done her duty to you. Little Adèle has given away her youth to this exile, to
your
exile. She is languishing here, pining after a sailor she barely knows, wasting her days doing embroidery.”
    “But I have given her a small garden to cultivate,” says Victor. “I have asked her to help collate my pages.”
    “She’s a young woman. That is not enough to fully occupy her. She needs to be out in society. I want to take her back to Paris.”
    “Impossible.”
    He says it so quickly that I am taken aback. “Won’t you even consider what I have said?” I did not say it easily. I have never said such words to my husband, and he knows this.
    “There is nothing to consider. If she leaves this island it will prove that she does not love me. She must prove her love by staying. I will not be abandoned by my family.”
    “Not permanently, Victor. Just for a month or two. I would take her to Paris just for a little while, and then we would return here and continue to do our duty to you.”
    But Victor has already turned back to his desk, to his work. He has finished with our conversation.
    “She is suffering! You don’t know how she has suffered, how she continues to suffer.” My voice is raised and shaking from emotion. I’m glad that Victor has turned away and is no longer looking at me.
    He picks up his pen. “If she really loves me,” he says coldly, “why would she want to leave?”
    I mentioned that Hauteville House was haunted. The former resident, a vicar, apparently ran from the house, left in fear for good because of the ghost. But we Hugos are used to apparitions and we are not worried by the footsteps and the moaning. Theghost is a woman. We have all heard her low keening outside our bedroom doors at night. When we first moved into the house she was very