Free Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan Page B

shoulder all the responsibility: this was something I could never face. For once I was thankful that my immaturity made it unlikely.
    But Elsa was growing impatient. She plied me with questions. I was always afraid of being seen with her or Cyril. She lay in wait for my father at every corner, and fondly imagined that he had difficulty in keeping away from her. I was surprised that someone who hovered so precariously between love and money should get romantic ideas, and be excited by a look or movement, when such things must otherwise have been merely routine for her. The rôle she was playing evidently seemed to her the height of psychological subtlety.
    Even if my father was becoming gradually obsessed with the thought of Elsa, Anne did not seem to notice it. He was more affectionate and demonstrative than ever with her, which frightened me, because I attributed it to his subconscious remorse. In three weeks we should be back in Paris, and the main thing was that nothing should happen before then. Elsa would be out of our way, and my father and Anne would get married if by then they had not changed their minds. In Paris I would have Cyril, and just as Anne had been unable to keep us apart here, so she would find it impossible to stop me from seeing him once we were home. Cyril had a room of his own away from his mother's house. I could already picture ourselves there together, the window wide open to the wonderful pink and blue sky of Paris, pigeons cooing on the bars outside, and Cyril with me on the narrow bed.
     
     
    7
    A few days later my father received a message from one of our friends asking us to meet him in St. Raphael for a drink. He was so pleased at the thought of escaping for a while from the unnatural seclusion in which we were living that he could hardly wait to tell us the news. I mentioned to Elsa and Cyril that we would be at the Bar du Soleil at seven o'clock and if they liked to come, they would see us there. Unfortunately Elsa happened to know our friend, which made her all the more keen to go, I realised that there might he complications, and tried in vain to put her off,
    "Charles Webb simply adores me," she said with childlike simplicity. "If he sees me, he's sure to make Raymond want to come back to me."
    Cyril did not care whether he went to St. Raphael or not. I saw by the way he looked at me that he only wanted to be near me, and I felt proud.
    At six o'clock we drove off in Anne's car. It was a huge American 'convertible', which she kept more for publicity than to suit her own taste, but it suited mine down to the ground, with all its shining gadgets. Another advantage was that we could all three sit in front, and I never feel so friendly as when I am in a car, sharing the same pleasures, and perhaps even the same death. Anne was at the wheel, as if symbolising her future place in the family. This was the first time I had been in her car since the evening we went to Cannes.
    We met Charles Webb and his wife at the Bar du Soleil. He was concerned with theatrical publicity, while his wife spent all his earnings on entertaining young men. Money was an obsession with him, he thought of nothing else in his unceasing effort to make ends meet, hence his restless impatience. he had been Elsa's lover for a long time, and she had suited him quite well, because, though very pretty, she was not particularly grasping,
    His wife was a malicious woman. Anne had never met her, and I noticed that, her lovely face quickly assumed the disdainful, mocking expression that was habitual to her in society. As usual Charles Webb talked all the time, now and then giving Anne an inquisitive look, He evidently wondered what she was doing with that Don Juan Raymond and his daughter I was glad to think he would soon find out. Just then my father leant forward and said abruptly:
    "I have news for you, old chap; Anne and I are getting married on the 5th of October."
    Webb looked from one to the other in amazement; his wife,