Free Jezebel by Irène Némirovsky Page B

admire how she looked. How she loved doing that. Was there anything better in life, was there anything more sensual than being attractive? The desire to be alluring, to be loved – a commonplace pleasure that all women felt – to her became an obsession, similar to the profound way men felt about power or money, a thirst that increased with each passing year and that nothing could ever completely satisfy.
    At last she was ready. She went into Marie-Thérèse’s room and affectionately kissed her beautiful, pale cheeks; beneath the soft skin there was evidence of a passionate nature. She looked at her daughter lovingly. Marie-Thérèse remained so delightfully childlike, at least in her mother’s eyes. Gladys dressed her in a way that made her more than an adolescent; she was the very symbol of adolescence: flat shoes, a long, straight, plain skirt, long hair that came down to her shoulders, a delicate gold chain round her neck; she was innocent and graceful.
    ‘She only likes books, her dogs, running through the gardens,’ thought Gladys. ‘She’s still so inexperienced andshy. I’ll give it two or three more years and then I’ll teach her. She’ll dance and have fun. Oh! I won’t be a cold, harsh mother. I’ll be her friend; she’ll tell me everything. She’ll be happy. But it’s too soon. She’s still too young. She’s shy, fragile. She mustn’t be vain and frivolous, like me …’
    To Marie-Thérèse she said, ‘I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had a daughter who was one of those unbearable little creatures who smoke and wear make-up and want to be like older women. But you, even the awkward phase hasn’t spoiled you. You’re still such an even-tempered little girl.’
    Marie-Thérèse let her talk: she retained the great generosity of youth that so often and so oddly is combined with harshness. She realised how much her ageing mother was suffering. She had sensed it, understood it, even before Gladys herself became aware of it. She felt sorry for her. But, most especially, she felt so young, she could imagine such a long road before her, that she did not yet feel there was any rush to live.
    She kissed her mother. ‘How beautiful you look,’ she said. ‘You have a really lovely dress, my dear Mama. You are as beautiful as a fairy.’
    And Gladys left for the ball, radiant and happy as in the past. She’d been to many other balls, the most brilliant in London and Paris, but she feared more than anything the unchanging social circle in England and France; every night you saw the same faces, you trotted out the same words, and for fifteen, twenty years at that …
    Here, at least every summer brought a flood of new people.
    That evening she had been invited to the Middletons in Cannes. She made her entrance; she smiled at the women who looked at her enviously. She sweetly nodded her divine little head with its ash-blonde hair. She basked in the kind of tranquillity that comes when passion is satisfied, that moment when the body reacts to excitement, its poison coursing through the body. She lowered her eyes with pity at the sight of the old women, those Fates dressed in velvet, their necks covered in diamond yokes; they pursed their lips and stared at her. She spotted Sir Mark Forbes. Not far from him sat his wife.
    Lady Forbes was the daughter of the Duchess of Hereford; her great wealth and family name had served Sir Mark’s political career well. She knew about her husband’s affair, suffered because of it and fought it with all the redoubtable weapons of the betrayed wife, the most terrifying of which was the constant threat of divorce: it would have ruined Sir Mark. Caught between his wife and Gladys, Sir Mark’s life was not a happy one. For several months, now, Gladys could sense within him an almost imperceptible resistance to her will, a coolness that worried and irritated her.
    ‘He’s sulking,’ she thought, seeing that he did not rush up to greet her. ‘Take your