She hustled him across the square under plane trees that were losing their leaves. They exchanged odds and ends of news to keep from laying hands on each other, then looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  They turned into a side street. He took the precaution of glancing about to see that nobody he knew was in sight before she led him through a doorway that gave on to a narrow stairway. They hurried up it, jostling each other, panting slightly. At the top of three flights of steps, she flung open a door and quickly closed it behind them and they lifted their arms to each other and exchanged their first real kiss. She drew back, giggling breathlessly while she pulled her dress over her head.

  Stuart tossed his clothes aside and looked around him. They were in a large room with sloping ceilings, a bed against one wall, a fireplace with some pots beside it, a table with chairs around it in the middle. It was shabby but immaculately clean. A curtain masked a makeshift bathroom. He caught a glimpse of a tall enamel pitcher on the floor beside a portable bidet. He got his shoes off and freed his legs and straightened to feel her nakedness against him everywhere. He held her away from him and looked at her. She was roundly, prettily naked. He had known her for so many months, had imagined this happening so often that there was no danger of its altering life in any way. Their friendship would simply acquire a new dimension.

  They moved against each other slowly, discovering the secrets of their bodies. He touched at last the firm gentle curves of her breasts. She lowered her hands to his erection and stroked it, her eyes on it.

  “Oh chéri. Ta grosse bitte. It looks even bigger when you having nothing on.” It was a part of a man she had never particularly wanted to look at. It served its purpose but she didn’t think it deserved any prize for design. His was different, long and straight, lifting superbly from his lean, muscular, mostly hairless body. His nakedness was marvelously naked. It made her feel that their bodies could perform miracles of union. They both uttered sounds of delight as they moved in close against each other and tumbled onto the bed. They played together, they kissed, they rolled about on her bumpy mattress. She wriggled out of his embrace so that she could look at him. His big body was more beautiful than she had known a body could be.

  “Chope et fume,” she cried and illustrated her meaning by sliding down over him and drawing his erection into her mouth. He was reminded of Marguerite again. She looked as happy as a child with a lollipop.

  She wanted to take outrageous liberties with him to convince herself that she had him. He was a god. She could have wept with happiness, but was careful not to let him feel the intensity of her worship. There was a carefree boy in him who wanted the girl she had once been. He somehow made it possible for her to recapture her old self. She led them easily from play to the ecstasy of his possession of her. She gave herself unstintingly to the magnificent demands of his body. She was wholly his and was beginning to make the boy in him hers. She had felt from the beginning that it could happen. By taking her, he ennobled her, lifted her out of what she thought of as her class. If she couldn’t have him all to herself, at least she would never give herself to one of the crude uneducated men she had thought of until a few months ago as her lot in life.

  Stuart reveled in her cheerful uncritical adoration of him; it was balm to his beleaguered spirit. Burdens and responsibilities dropped from him. Life could be fun. He felt nothing like it with Helene, nor did he want or expect to. Every moment with Helene was an experience, defining and shaping the future, tempered by the worries and problems that they shared. It was real. Taking Odette was a happy self-indulgence that couldn’t form the basis for an everyday life.

  When they had exhausted their lusty ingenuity, Stuart had a quick wash at the sink behind the curtain and dressed. Odette put on a plain little dressing gown. She looked up at him, sparkling with pride.

  “That was worth waiting for. I’ve never known anything like it.” She turned, taking in the room. “You see what you’ve done for me? I’m a respectable member of the community now. You don’t have to be ashamed of your girl.”

  “I knew I wouldn’t ever be.”

  “The Widow Muguette is pleased with my sewing. I’m going to be making enough to take care of myself now. I don’t need your money.” It was the happiest moment of her life. She was no longer a charity case. She was his girl, his mistress; his equal.

  “You’re sure?” He took her hands with a quick smile of affectionate relief. “I can’t pretend that I haven’t wondered how much longer I could let you have it. Everything’s costing more than I expected.”

  “Don’t wonder. You’ve saved my life. I’ll never be able to repay you.”

  “We have a beautiful time together, don’t we? It’s about time we let ourselves enjoy it.”

  A pattern evolved. He never went into town expressly to see her, but when he had half an hour to spare after he’d finished his errands, thoughts of being naked with her sent him to her room and he usually found her there. She was a warmly loving connection with town, his only recreation as life became more difficult, permissible because it cost nothing. Because desire for her never hit him except when he was within reach of satisfying it, she remained safely compartmentalized, outside the mainstream of his life. If it had been otherwise he wouldn’t have let it happen; his goal was freedom, not the bonds of a demanding mistress.

  Leaving her one afternoon, he ran into Antonin’s wife and offered her a lift home. He nodded toward the bakery two doors away, which he’d known from the beginning might prove useful as an alibi. “I was just going to pick up a loaf of bread.”

  A few days later, the farmer’s wife happened to say in reference to a story she was telling Helene, “Oh, but of course, you know la Veuve Muguette.”

  “No,” Helene said. The Widow Muguette? She had never heard the name.

  “Then your husband does. I ran into him at her house the other day. No, no. I’m forgetting. He was going to the bakery next door.” Mme. Antonin went on with her story while Helene made a mental note to ask Stuart who the woman was.

  When Stuart was finishing his work in the vineyard that afternoon, the sky cleared after several dull days and a wind sprang up. He was aware of it as he started back to the house and saw, toward Italy, range upon range of mountains he had never noticed before. The weather was about to spring another surprise on them. Everything had become hard and brilliant in the late-afternoon light. When he got to the house he called Helene out to look.

  “How superb,” she exclaimed. “It must be the mistral.”

  “I suppose.” Stuart had heard the local people speak with awe of the wind. There was a legend that it blew always in multiples of three, for three, six, or nine days. They stood for a moment, hand in hand, looking at the mountains and at the waves that were beginning to dash up on the rocks below them.

  “It looks almost like a real ocean,” Stuart said.

  They knew they were in for trouble when Helene tried to light the stove to cook dinner. In a few minutes the room was filled with smoke and when Stuart opened the door to clear it out, he was almost knocked over by the force of the wind. It swept through the room, extinguishing all the lamps.

  “What’s the matter with that damned stove?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” she replied with exasperation. “It just won’t start. Why don’t you light the lamps?”

  “Easy does it. Don’t get excited.” He found a lamp and struck a match.

  “How’re we going to cook dinner?” Robbie inquired anxiously. Helene frowned at the boy, confident that Stuart would set things right. He relighted the lamps and went to the stove and jiggled the draft to make sure it was adjusted properly.

  “Shall I try more paper?” she asked. “We don’t want to go without dinner.”

  “Try a pine cone. If that doesn’t burn, nothing will.” She did as he suggested and together they peered at the stove as the wind forced the smoke out into the room once more. He looked at her and shrugged. “Experiment concluded. I’ll have to ask Antonin if there’s anything to be done about it.” Unlikely, he thought. Even Antonin would be powerless against the elements.

  “Let’s think,” Helene said. “Isn’t there something we could do? We should have one of those kerosene stoves.”

  “We should have but we don’t,” he said, groaning inwardly at the thought of additional expense.

  “What about Robbie? The child needs a hot meal at night.”

  “The child will survive.” He cocked an eye at Robbie, who was sitting on the foot of the bed, watching them intently and wondering how he could draw some advantage from the situation.

  “Come on, old love. Throw us a bone. Don’t you have something we could roast over the fire?”

  She laughed, ready to take her cue from him in a crisis. “No suckling pigs in the larder, but we’ll manage.” She put odds and ends and leftovers on the table. They ate in enforced speechlessness. The wind made a steady roar around the house. Before they had finished, the room began to fill with smoke again.

  “Oh damn,” Stuart shouted. “I suppose the fireplace’s going to act up now.” It was. He struggled with logs but stood back finally, his eyes closed to ease their smarting. “I’ll have to get these logs out of here. Robbie, put the lamps over there in the corner.” He posted Helene at the door, seized a log with the tongs, and rushed it out. Showers of sparks were caught by the wind and thrown into the air. “Quick. Get some water,” he shouted. There were a few moments of chaos as the logs were removed one by one and extinguished. By the time the fire was out, the room was icy. Stuart pushed the door to, breathing heavily. “Well, I guess that puts an end to the evening. We all better go to bed.”

  The thought of going alone to his dark room with the wind howling around him frightened Robbie. “I’m so hungry I won’t be able to sleep,” he suggested piteously.

  “Now, none of that nonsense.” Stuart saw the boy looking to his mother for support and was pleased that she offered him no more than a dutiful kiss.

  “You poor darling,” she said with marked irony.

  “All right. Run along. Skip,” he said sharply. Robbie disentangled himself from her embrace, kissed his father, and departed with dragging feet.

  “We can’t have any of that,” Stuart said when the boy was gone.

  “Of what?”

  “We mustn’t baby the kid. I don’t want him to be a softie.”

  She was aware that the wind had keyed them both up to the snapping point. Having to raise their voices to make themselves heard distorted everything they said. Stuart might not have meant to speak so harshly to the boy but Robbie probably deserved it. She suspected that he tried to cause trouble between them when it suited his purpose. The thought made her feel like an unnatural mother. How could Stuart accuse her of being soft with the child? “Do you think I baby him?” she shouted.

  “Not particularly.” He approached so that they could speak in more normal tones. “It’s something we’re both apt to do with an only child.”

  “Speak for yourself,” she burst out. His proximity made her skin crawl with desire. The wind dinned at her nerves. She wanted him to tear her clothes off and take her violently. “At times, I can’t bear him. It’s all very well for you. He worships you because you only see him when you’re ready to give him your full attention. I have him underfoot all the time.”

  “Come on, my dearest. You sound as if you were jealous of him.”

  “Jealous? Maybe I am.” The word reminded her of Mme. Antonin’s reference to an unknown woman and fanned an ember of suspicion. “You see people when you go out. I’m always here. Who’s the Widow Muguette?”

  “The Widow Muguette? What an absurd name. I don’t know her.” He was prepared for it to come up sooner or later. He couldn’t feel guilty about Odette. She was completely extraneous to their life. The only wrong was to be found out. “Wait a minute. La Veuve Muguette. Of course. That’s the name of the woman Odette works for. It didn’t sound right in English.”

  “She lives near a bakery?” Helene demanded while her suspicions died.

  “Does she? Possibly. She lives somewhere around the square. That’s where I always run into her. Odette, I mean. As far as I know, I’ve never laid eyes on la Veuve Muguette.”

  The careless humor in his voice almost brought her to her knees before him to beg his forgiveness for something she couldn’t define. She covered her eyes with a hand and tried to collect her thoughts.

  “I don’t know what this is all about,” he said lightly. “I better take a look around outside before we turn in.” He put on his leather jacket and picked up a flashlight without looking at her again. He needed air. It hadn’t been a close call exactly but it had given him a slight jolt. Eventually Mme. Antonin or somebody else was bound to mention seeing him near the bakery. He would get Odette to introduce him to her widow so that he could tell Helene that she had shown him her room. Keep it as open and truthful as possible. He couldn’t allow his harmless fun to assume any importance between them.

  It was bitterly cold outside. It seemed as if a hole had been torn in the universe. Everything was in an uproar. The wind screamed in the trees and the sea crashed against the rocks and under the beam of his flashlight the world was pitching in violent motion around him. He discovered that one of the supports of the outhouse had given way. He tried to do something to secure it but found it was hopeless in the face of the gale.

  He struggled against the wind up to the garage and was relieved to find it still standing, but as he played his light on the cane roof a strip flew up into the air and slapped down on top of the car. He leaped up onto the hood and pulled himself up onto the crossbeam, tearing his hands. He managed to pull it into place across its supports and lay on it. He yelled for Helene and the act of calling for her strengthened the bond between them like an embrace. The cane roof rattled beneath him. If he wanted to save it, he would have to wait here until she grew uneasy and came to look for him.

  She sat with her head propped in her hand, her eyes closed, fighting a sudden inexplicable despair. She had driven him from her. It was so senseless. When he was with her, she was happy. It was simple but it didn’t include Robbie. At times, I can’t bear him. She couldn’t believe she had said it but it was true. His constant presence inhibited her. Even when she and Stuart were making love, she felt Robbie near. She was appalled that she could think of her son as a barrier to her happiness. It was enough to plunge any mother into despair. What of the satisfactions of maternity?

  She lifted her head and her emergence from the protection afforded her by her closed eyes made her feel as if she were coming out of a sort of madness. She forced herself to think of Robbie’s difficult birth and how she had prayed for his survival. She had made him with Stuart. He was an extension of their love. If she thought of him as an intruder at times it was an aberration she would get over. She hadn’t yet adjusted to their altered life.

  She pushed her hair into place with her hands and held them pressed against her cheeks, absorbed in thoughts of welcoming Stuart in a way that would make him forget everything she had said. She rose and went to a chest and pulled out an extra blanket. Aware of how cold it was in the house, she wrapped it around her and sat on the end of the bed. What had he said? He was going to look around outside. Why was he taking so long? She stood up and threw aside the blanket and went out.

  It took all her strength to close the door behind her and she clung to it for a moment, hunched against the wind. She could see nothing. She called and the wind almost choked her. She called again and then pushed herself out from the shelter of the door and stumbled up the glade.

  He heard her call and bellowed in reply. He fumbled for his light. He had put it on the roof beside him and couldn’t find it.

  “Where are you?” she called.

  “Up here, on the roof,” he yelled. He could see her dim shape moving in front of the garage. “Up here. Up here,” he shouted with all his strength. His hand found the light at last and he switched it on quickly. She stumbled in under the shelter of the garage and peered up at the light.

  “What are you doing up there?” she asked. Out of relief, she burst into laughter, hysterically at first, but as he responded, it deepened and became real.

  “For God’s sake, get me the hammer and some nails and that wire in the bottom of the cupboard,” he blurted out between her paroxysms.

  “Oh, darling, you look so funny up there.” She doubled up with renewed giggles and then pulled herself together and let herself be blown back to the house, happy again and at peace with being useful to him. Together they reinforced the roof, Stuart hammering and wiring while Helene held the light, perched on the hood of the car. They returned to the house, tingling with cold but closely joined by their shared effort. They undressed hastily and plunged into bed, moving close to each other for warmth.

  He took her to him with a fierce abandon generated by the fury of the wind and his need to reaffirm the transcendent bond that joined them. She knew that only he could offer her the whole sensation of love and she listened to the wind beating at the house as if it were an exultant beating in her veins.

  Robbie had trouble sleeping. He heard his mother’s voice raised angrily although the roar of the wind was so great that he wasn’t able to hear the words. He must have dozed but he woke again and there was no sound but the sound of the storm. He was terrified by its violence. He got out of bed and tiptoed to the door and peeked out for reassurance. The lights were on but the room was empty. His parents sometimes went for a stroll before bedtime but why would they go out tonight? He closed the door and hurried back to bed.

  Everything seemed to be moving in the room. He closed his eyes and hid his head under the covers. He dozed again. He awoke a second time with a prayer that his parents had returned and he rose once more and opened the door cautiously. The room was in darkness. His parents must be there. He strained his eyes against the dark and then he saw movement on the bed in the corner. He looked hard for another moment and then the movement came so clear that it brought a dreadful image to his mind. Michel and the little girl. He stared with disbelief. The world seemed to crumble and fall to pieces around him and he stumbled blindly back to bed.