Mavis Gallant - Overhead in a Balloon

“How did he write his other books?” said Roger.

“In the minstrel he had a private office and secretary. Two, in fact. He expected to write even more, once he was free, but he obviously won’t. If he were alone, I could look after him.” That was unexpected. Perhaps Luc knew just how unexpected Cassandra could be, and that was why he stayed away from her. “I don’t mean I imagine my mother not there,” she said. “I only meant that I could look after him, if I had to.”

Half a mile before the village stood Cousin Henri’s house. Roger told Cassandra why he and Henri were not speaking, except through lawyers. Henri had been grossly favoured by their mutual grandparents, thanks to the trickery of an aunt by marriage, who was Henri’s godmother. The aunt, who was very rich as well as mad and childless, had acquired the grandparents’ domain, in their lifetime, by offering more money than it was worth. She had done this wicked thing in order to hand it over, intact, unshared, undivided, to Henri, whom she worshipped. The transaction had been brought off on the wrong side of the law, thanks to a clan of Protestants and Freemasons.

Cassandra looked puzzled and pained. “You see, the government of that time …” said Roger, but he fell silent, seeing that Cassandra had stopped understanding. When he was overwrought he sounded like his wife. It was hardly surprising: he was simply repeating, word for word, everything Simone had been saying since they were married. In his own voice, which was ironic and diffident, he told Cassandra why Cousin Henri had never married. At the age of twenty Henri had been made trustee of a family secret. Henri’s mother was illegitimate — at any rate, hatched from a cuckoo’s egg. Henri’s father was not his mother’s husband but a country neighbour. Henri had been warned never to marry any of the such-and-such girls, because he might be marrying his own half sister. Henri might not have wanted to: the such-and-suches were ugly and poor. He had used the secret as good reason not to marry anyone, had settled down in the handsomest house in the Yonne (half of which should have been Roger’s), and had peopled the neighbourhood with his random children.

They slowed walking, and Cassandra looked at a brick-and-stucco box, and some dirty-faced children playing on the steps.

“There, behind the farmhouse,” said Roger, showing a dark, severe manor house at the top of a straight drive.

“It looks more like a monastery, don’t you think?” said Cassandra. Although Roger seemed to be waiting, she could think of nothing more to say. They walked on, towards Cassandra’s breakfast.

On the road back, Roger neither looked at Cousin Henri’s house nor mentioned it. They were still at some distance from home when they began to hear Simone: “Marry her! Marry Katia! Live with Katia! I don’t care what you do. Anything, anything, so long as you pass your exam.” Roger pushed open the gate and there was Simone, still in her dressing gown, standing on a lawn strewn with Luc’s clothes, and Luc at the window, still in pajamas. Luc heaved a chair over the sill, then a couple of pillows and a whole armful of books. Having yelled something vile about the family (they were in disagreement later about what it was), he jumped out, too, and landed easily in a flower bed. He paused to pick up shoes he had flung out earlier, ran awkwardly across the lawn, pushed through a gap in the hedge, and vanished.

“He’ll be back,” said Simone, gathering books. “He’ll want his breakfast. He really is a remarkable athlete. With proper guidance, Luc could have done anything. But Roger never took much interest.”

“What was that last thing he said?” said Cassandra.

“Fools,” said Simone. “But a common word for it. Never repeat that word, if you want people to think well of you.”

“Spies,” Roger had heard. In Luc’s room he found a pair of sunglasses on the floor. He had noticed Luc limping as he made for the hedge; perhaps he had sprained an ankle. He remembered how Luc had been too tired to walk a dog, too worn out to feed a goldfish. Roger imagined him, now, wandering in muddy farmyards, in shoes and pajamas, children giggling at him — the Clairevoies’ mooncalf son. Perhaps he had gone to tell his troubles to that other eccentric, Cousin Henri.

Tears came easily since Roger’s last attack. He had been told they were caused by the depressant effect of the pills he had to take. He leaned on the window frame, in the hope of seeing Luc, and wept quietly in the shelter of Luc’s glasses.

“It’s awfully curious of me,” said Cassandra, helping Simone, “but what’s got into Luc? When he stayed with us, in England, he was angelic. Your husband seems upset, too.”

“The Baron,” said Simone, letting it be known she had read the diary and was ready for combat, “the Baron is too sensible. Today is his birthday. He is forty-eight — nearly fifty.”

Roger supposed she meant “sensitive.” To correct Simone might create a diversion, but he could not be sure of what kind. To let it stand might bewilder the English girl; but, then, Cassandra was born bewildered.

Luc came home in time for dinner, dressed in a shirt and corduroys belonging to Cousin Henri. His silence, Roger thought, challenged them for questions; none came. He accepted a portion of Roger’s birthday cake, which, of course, Roger could not touch, and left half on his plate. “Even as a small child, Luc never cared for chocolate,” Simone explained to Cassandra.

The next day, only food favoured by Luc was served. Simone turned over a letter from Katia. It was brief and cool in tone: Katia had been exercising horses in a riding school, helping a friend.

The Clairevoies, preceded by Luc on the Honda, packed up and drove back to Paris. This time Cassandra was allowed to sit in front, next to Simone. Roger and the dog shared the back seat with Luc’s books and a number of parcels.

They saw Cassandra off at the Gare du Nord. Roger was careful not to take her arm, brush against her, or otherwise inspire a mention in her diary. She wore a T-shirt decorated with a grinning mouth. “It’s been really lovely,” she said. Roger bowed.

Her letter of thanks arrived promptly. She was planning to help her father with his book on Stalin, Cromwell, and Torquemada. He wanted to include a woman on the list, to bring the work in line with trends of the day. Cassandra had suggested Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni. Boadicea stood for feminine rectitude, firmness, and true love of one’s native culture. So Cassandra felt.

“Cassandra has written a most learned and affectionate letter,” said Simone, who would never have to see Cassandra again. “I only hope Luc was as polite to the Brunts.” Her voice held a new tone of maternal grievance and maternal threat.

Luc, who no longer found threats alarming, packed his books and took the train for Rennes. Katia’s letters seemed to have stopped. Searching Luc’s room, Simone found nothing to read except a paperback on private ownership. “I believe he is taking an interest in things,” she told Roger.

It was late in May when the Clairevoies made their final trip to Rennes. Suspecting what awaited them, Simone wore mourning — a dark linen suit, black sandals, sunglasses. Father Rousseau had on a dark suit and black tie. After some hesitation he said what Roger was waiting to hear: it was useless to make Luc sit for an examination he had not even a remote chance of passing. Luc was unprepared, now and forever. He had, in fact, disappeared, though he had promised to come back once the talk with his parents was over. Luc had confided that he would be content to live like Cousin Henri, without a degree to his name, and with a reliable tenant farmer to keep things running.