Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan Read Free Book Online Page B

her a knockout blow. On no account must she be allowed to realise that after all he was of an age to marry, and could not be expected to spend his life with women of her sort. I leant forward and suddenly lowered my voice to make a stronger impression on her:
    "It simply mustn't happen, Elsa. He's suffering already. It's an impossible state of affairs, as you can very well imagine."
    "Yes," she said. She seemed fascinated.
    "You're just the person I've been waiting for," I went on, "because you are the only one who is a match for Anne. You alone are up to her standard."
    She seemed to swallow the bait.
    "But if he's marrying her it must be because he loves her?" she objected.
    "But look here, Elsa, it's you he loves! Do you want to make me believe that you don't know it?"
    I saw her bat her eyelids, and she turned away to hide her pleasure, and the hope my words had given her. I was prompted by a sort of infallible instinct, and I knew just how to continue.
    "Don't you see? Anne kept harping on the bliss of married life, morality, and all that, and in the end she caught him."
    I was surprised at my own words. For even though I had expressed myself somewhat crudely, that was just what I felt.
    "If they get married, our lives will be ruined, Elsa! My father must be protected, he's nothing but a big baby ..."
    I repeated 'a big baby' with stronger emphasis. It seemed to me that I was being rather too melodramatic, but I saw Elsa's beautiful green eyes fill with pity, and I ended up, like in a canticle:
    "Help me, Elsa! It's for your own sake, for my father, and for the love between you."
    I added to myself: 'and for Johnny Chinaman!'
    "But what can I do?" asked Elsa. "It seems an impossible situation."
    "If you think it's impossible, then give up the idea," I said sadly.
    "What a bitch!" murmured Elsa.
    "You've hit the nail on the head," I said, turning away to hide my expression.
    Elsa visibly brightened up. She had been jilted, and now she was going to show that adventuress just what she, Elsa Mackenbourg, could do. And my father loved her, as she had always known he did. Even while she had been with Juan she hadn't been able to put Raymond out of her mind. She'd never as much as mentioned the word marriage to him, and she had never bored him either, and she'd never tried ... but by now I could endure her no longer:
    "Elsa," I said, "go and ask Cyril from me if you could possibly stay with his mother; say you are in need of hospitality. Tomorrow morning I'll come and see him, and we'll all three discuss the situation."
    On the doorstep I added for a joke: "You are fighting for your own future, Elsa!"
    She gravely acquiesced as if there were not fifteen or twenty 'futures' in store for her, in the shape of men who would keep her. I watched her walking away in the sunshine with her mincing steps. I thought it would not be a week before my father wanted her back.
    It was half past three; I imagined my father asleep in Anne's arms. I began to formulate plans one after another without pausing to think of myself. I walked up and down in my room between the door and the window, looking out from time to time at the calm sea flattening out along the beach. I calculated risks, estimated possibilities, and gradually I broke down every objection. I felt dangerously clever, and the wave of self-disgust which had swept over me from the moment I had begun to talk to Elsa now gave place to a feeling of pride in my own capabilities.
    I need hardly say that all this collapsed when we went down to bathe. As soon as I saw Anne, I was overcome by remorse and did my utmost to atone for my past behaviour. I carried her bag, I rushed forward with her wrap when she came out of the water. I smothered her with attention and said the nicest things. This sudden change after my silence of the past few days was naturally a surprise to her. My father was delighted, Anne smiled at me. I thought of the words I had used in speaking of her to Elsa. How could I