Time for Silence

“Well, now you know what happened, and I am placing my trust in you. The incident must be forgotten. I shall make sure that the child is well cared for…educated when the time comes. There is no need to fear for his future. And what I ask of you, dear Lucinda, is never to divulge to any person what you have learned. I have a high respect for your integrity, I know I can rely on you. Annabelinda is wayward…a little irresponsible. It is part of her charm. Do not let her know that you are aware of what happened. Help her to keep up the myth. And please…I beg of you…do not tell her that the child who is being brought up by the Plantains is hers. I can rely on you, can I not, Lucinda?”

“I shall tell no one,” I said.

He put his hand over mine and pressed it.

“I place my trust in you,” he said.

Then we sat silently for a few moments, watching the white swans gliding gracefully on the lake.

After the summer holidays, in September, we returned to La Pinière. It was a year since I had first seen it and I felt that I had grown a long way from the naive girl I had been then. I had learned much; and although the dramatic events had not happened to me, I had been close enough to them to be deeply affected.

I thought of Jean Pascal Bourdon as some powerful god who arranged people’s lives—cynically, yet benignly…amorally in a way. And yet what would Annabelinda have done without him?

I thought often of the child in the care of Marguerite Plantain. He would never know his mother and what trouble had been caused by his coming into the world. He would be well cared for, educated when the time came. Checks would arrive regularly for the Plantains and they would have no idea from whom they came. By one powerful stroke, Jean Pascal had changed their lives even more than Annabelinda’s, because I was sure that, in time, Annabelinda would convince herself that this episode in her life had never happened, while the Plantains would have Edouard, the constant reminder.

Caroline said I had changed since the holidays.

“You look so serious. Do you know, sometimes when I speak to you, you don’t answer. Was it such a wonderful holiday?”

“Wonderful,” I told her.

Annabelinda was received at school with a sort of awe. They were all convinced that she had been, as one of them remarked, “snatched from the jaws of death.” And any to whom that had happened must be of very special interest.

Annabelinda exploited the situation, as I expected. She was quite a figure at school now. She had her own room, and although Madame Rochère was a little cool toward her—and, I believe, watchful—Annabelinda shrugged that aside. She was enjoying school. “The wages of sin,” I told myself, feeling it was the sort of comment Jean Pascal might have made.

Oddly, Annabelinda seemed to have forgotten the episode more easily than I. But I supposed she wanted to, and Annabelinda always did what she wanted. I could not forget, and there was the baby to remind me.

I became fascinated by the child and could not resist taking walks past the cottage. Whereas before I had been fond of the company of my fellow pupils, I now wanted to escape from them and make my way to the cottage…alone. On warm days, the perambulator would almost always be in the Plantain garden.

Marguerite was recovering from her tragedy, and I think this was largely due to little Edouard. She doted on the child. She told me, “Jacques is beginning to love him. It was hard for him at first. It was his own he wanted. But Edouard has such winning ways. Just look at the little angel.”

Sometimes I would hold Edouard on my lap. I would look for a likeness to his parents. There was none. He was just like any other baby.

Sometimes I would go into the Plantain garden and sit by him. I would watch him and think of Annabelinda and Carl together…clandestinely meeting in that cottage of his which would be rather like the Plantains’…creeping out of school at night. How daring she was! This would be the first of many adventures in her life, I imagined. This was just a beginning. And what a beginning—bringing another life into the world. I supposed she had not given this possibility a thought when she was with Carl. And Carl himself? The man of mystery. He would not even know he had a son. Would he care? What sort of man was he? I had only seen him twice. Yet he was the father of this child. He was the reason why all this had happened, the reason why Jean Pascal Bourdon had had to be called in to come with his cynical knowledge of the world and its foibles, to manipulate everyone so that this child’s birth would not spoil Annabelinda’s prospects of making a brilliant marriage.

It was no wonder that I felt older, a little blasé. I had been shown such a new light on worldly affairs. I had grown only one year in time but many in experience.

School life continued as usual. I was in a higher class, and even more time was given to social pursuits. There were more dancing lessons, more piano lessons, singing lessons and deportment.