Thurston House Page 41

  “I must have failed him terribly.” She sighed. “If his father had lived, I wouldn’t have gone back to work of course. And I didn’t work full time, but I think he wanted more than I gave.”

  “Maybe he’s one of those people who would have always wanted more than you had to give. You can’t do anything about that.”

  “I’d like to save him from Camille now. He doesn’t see her for what she is yet, but he will, and when he does, he’ll be badly disillusioned.”

  André didn’t think that was such a bad thing, and he thought Jon deserved it for his perfidy. He was a rotten kid. And André hadn’t liked him from the first, but he would never tell Sabrina that. He was the only one she had, and despite her pain, she still loved him after all. He was her son. But she got comfort now from Antoine too. Knowing what she was going through, he was particularly kind to her, and thoughtful, and he brought her flowers and baskets of fruit, and little thoughtful gifts from time to time. They meant a great deal to her and she always mentioned it to André, telling him what a fine boy he had. He was proud of him, and she envied them the closeness they shared. She hoped that in a few years, when Jon was the same age as Antoine, he would have matured as much and grown closer to her, but some deep inner part of her told her that would not be the case, and she turned her mind to other things, the vineyards she was building with André, and the case she was going to bring against Camille. She knew the date was coming close, and she appeared unmoved by it, she played her cards tight and well, and only a week before the court date, she knocked on the door to Sabrina’s suite. It was December ninth, and they were going to court on December sixteenth.

  “Yes?” Sabrina stood in her robe and bare feet, still unable to believe that Camille had inflicted herself on her. She had been there for more than five months now, and it was like a nightmare without end, a terrible dream from which Sabrina never seemed to awaken. Camille was always there, wandering around the house with a possessive air, putting on her cheap clothes and ratty furs and putting on the dog around town. Sabrina had heard rumors of it, and now and then some valuable object would disappear from the house and Camille would insist she had had nothing to do with it, but Sabrina knew otherwise. She couldn’t seem to stop her though and she couldn’t watch her all the time, and as Sabrina had predicted to André, she had attempted to reclaim her jewels, but Sabrina wouldn’t hear of it. By a sheer quirk of Fate, she had to tolerate the woman in her house, but that was all she would do. And as the bills began to pour in, incurred by Camille and her son, she took a stand and refused to pay them. They seemed to be trying to do everything they could to bankrupt her, and she would have been if she had tried to pay the bills for the mountain of things they charged to her. But Sabrina let Camille’s bills pile up without touching the stack, and she mailed Jon’s to him at school. He was twenty-one years old now, and as she told him, if he wanted to live that way, he would have to take responsibility for it himself. But his grandmother had assured him, of course, that she would take care of everything when she got Sabrina out of the house, and she told him that she had every confidence that she would. So he let his bills pile up too. There were hundreds of them in his desk, all unpaid. He would give them to Grandmother when he saw her again, as he used to give them to Sabrina when he went home. But those days were gone now, as his mother constantly said. Thank God, he didn’t have to listen to her very often, she was three thousand miles away. But Camille and Sabrina were only three feet apart when Sabrina opened her door to her. “What do you want?”

  “I thought we might talk.” She always sounded very Southern when she had a plan in mind. And the only thing Sabrina really hated about her was that for the rest of her life she would think of that voice, and see the face and worry that in some way she might look or talk or think or act like her … even a single gesture in common would have been repulsive, and it was still worse to realize how much like her Jon was. But none of what she felt showed in her eyes now.

  “Talk about what? I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather talk than go to court?”

  “Not necessarily.” Sabrina was hardened now, and she was calling her bluff. Why not? Her lawyer said that the more he looked at it, the less he thought Camille had a case. Jeremiah’s will had been written in such a way that he had excluded her without actually saying her name, “any persons I might have been married to.…” Sabrina remembered thinking that strange at the time of his death, but she had been so upset at the time that she hadn’t dwelled on it. And now it had to be fought out in court, no matter how good her chances were. Unless Camille backed down and left, but that seemed unlikely after she’d dug her heels in for so long. “I don’t mind going to court.”

  Camille looked at her and smiled. “I don’t want to take your house away, child.” Sabrina wanted to slap her face or beat her head into the ground. After almost six months of torturing her, invading her life, stealing her son, now she didn’t want to take her house away from her? And she dared to call her “child.”

  “I’m verging on fifty years old, and I’m not your child, and never was. I have nothing to do with you. You make me sick. And if I had my way, you’d be thrown out of here on your ass tonight.”

  “I’ll go this week”—her voice was an insidious whisper—“if you pay my price.” Without saying a word to her, Sabrina slammed her bedroom door in her face and locked it.

  For André it was agonizing watching Sabrina go through what she had to for six months and there was nothing he could do to help. He went to court with her on December sixteenth and for once Camille actually looked pale and frightened. She had gone too far, and she knew it as she attempted to wheedle her way around the judge, who was shocked by the tale, and her brazen act of moving into the house, and tormenting Sabrina for so long, after abandoning her as a child. A deposition had been taken from Amelia in New York. Despite her age, her memory was excellent, and she had been more than articulate about the events of some forty-six years before. Camille almost shook as she looked around the court. She was alone, and she was a fool. She had never meant for it to go this far. She thought Sabrina would buy her off, and now they were talking about having her pay damages and back rent for the past six months. The matter of her extensive bills was brought up, and those she had encouraged Jonathan to incur, and when it was all over, she was grateful to receive only a sound scolding from the judge. He had actually threatened to put her in jail, and he gave her exactly one hour, with a sheriff’s deputy standing by, to pack and be out of Thurston House.

  Sabrina couldn’t believe the nightmare had come to an end, and as Camille walked down the stairs for the last time, Sabrina looked at her beneath the magnificent dome, and there was no longer hatred in her eyes. There was nothing at all. She had lost too much in the last six months to feel anything for Camille now. She had lost her peace of mind, and more importantly, she had lost her son to her.

  “I thought when it was all over, we might be friends.” Camille spoke to her in a nervous, hesitant voice. She had played her hand too far and gotten badly burned. And now she had to go back to Atlanta with her tail between her legs, to stay with young Hubert again, and she hadn’t been kind to him either when she left Atlanta. She hadn’t thought she would need him anymore, and as it turned out, she had been mistaken.

  Sabrina spoke in a clear strong voice as the deputy stood by. “I don’t ever want to see or hear from you again, and if I do, I’ll call the police and report it to the court. Is that clear?” Camille nodded silently. “And stay away from my son.” But that battle she lost, for when she called Jon the next day, after regaining her wits and her calm, he told her he wasn’t coming home for Christmas after all. He had been planning to take the train west on the eighteenth. He was going to Atlanta instead, and his voice was filled with accusation.

  “I talked to Grandmother yesterday. She says you bought off the judge.” Sabrina was stunned and for the first time since the judge had ordered Camille out of h
er house, she felt tears on her cheeks. Was it possible that Jon would never understand, that he would hate her always, was he that much like his grandmother?

  “Jon, I did no such thing.” She was fighting to stay calm. “I don’t even think one could. The judge was a decent man and he saw her for what she was.”

  “She’s an old woman looking for a place to live, and God only knows where she’ll go now.”

  “Where was she before?”

  “Living on people’s charity from hand to mouth. She’s going to have to move in with her nephew again.”

  “I can’t help that.”

  “And you don’t care.”

  “No, I don’t. She tried to take this house away, Jon!” But he refused to understand. He hung up calling her a bitch, and that night she lay alone in her bed, in the house that was finally hers again, but she knew that she hadn’t won after all. Camille Beauchamp Thurston had. She had won Jon away from Sabrina.

  31

  It would have been a lonely Christmas for her that year, without Jon, if it hadn’t been for Antoine and André. They refused to let it be lonely for her. They arrived on the doorstep of Thurston House, with a Christmas tree, and eggnog Antoine had made, and they teased her and amused her and cajoled her, and they all went to midnight mass together and sang carols as the tears rolled down Sabrina’s cheeks, and André put an arm around her shoulders and smiled at her. They were a good threesome and she was grateful to them. Without them she would have sat alone in the house and cried at the miseries Camille had brought, but with the two Frenchmen around, it was impossible to remain depressed, and by Christmas day, she was in good spirits again, and Antoine went back to Napa to rejoin the men. But André stayed on with her, so that they could go to the bank together the next day. They wanted to take out another loan for some equipment they would need, but things were going well for them. André was brilliant at running the vineyards for her, and they had cleared all of the land by then.

  “Even my jungle looks wonderful now,” she teased, “I hardly recognize it.”

  “Wait till you taste our wine!” But instead he had brought her a bottle of Moët & Chandon and they sat and looked at the Christmas tree after Antoine left, and André glanced at her admiringly. She had been through so much that year, and Amelia had been right long ago, she was made of remarkable stuff, Sabrina was. She was extraordinary, gentle and kind and stronger than any woman he knew. Even more so than Amelia perhaps, and Sabrina would have been stunned to hear him say that. Amelia was what she would have wanted her mother to be like. But she couldn’t pretend anymore. She knew exactly what her mother was. A bitch and a whore, and a woman who had tried to take everything from her dishonestly. She had even stolen a small painting in her suitcase when she left, and Sabrina was grateful to be rid of her. She sat staring at the tree, thinking of that.

  “It’s been an amazing year, hasn’t it?”

  “I would say.” He laughed at the words she used and her look of surprise, but she smiled at him.

  “It’s been good as well as bad. You and Antoine have been the best gifts of all.” And aside from all that, he had given her a beautiful red cashmere sweater and a matching hat and she had bought him a warm jacket and warm gloves. “So, it wasn’t all bad.”

  “I hope not.” But they both knew that she was sad about her son. It would have been impossible for her not to be, although she said little about it, even to him. It was just too painful to talk about, and she concealed it by joking with André.

  After their meeting with the bank the next day, she went back to Napa with him, and she spent the rest of the week there. She wasn’t afraid to leave Thurston House unguarded now. She had had the locks changed the day Camille left and even Jon did not yet have the new key. And she had her own room in the large farmhouse André had rented eight months before. He and Antoine were already making plans to build their other house, but for the moment they all still lived in the large communal arrangement, and Sabrina was happy there. The men were friendly to her, and she was beginning to speak halting French to them.

  And after New Year’s, André drove her home again. They came across the Bay Bridge, up Broadway, and then south to California Street and right on Taylor to Nob Hill. He parked the car on the street outside Thurston House, and carried her bags inside for her. He wanted to stay in the city again for a day or two, Antoine could easily carry on for him, and he and Sabrina could do some work in town. They spent long hours in her library that night, going over some of the paperwork. They shared the responsibility of that, and in some ways it reminded her of the old days at her mines after her father died, except that she would have been grateful to have André then.

  “It must have been difficult for you.”

  “It was.” She smiled. “But I learned a lot from it.”

  “I can see that. But that’s not an easy way to learn anything.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t destined to learn the easy way.” She was thinking of Camille and Jon again, and what a disappointment he had been to her, and André watched her eyes. He asked her an odd question then, about something he had wondered about for a long time. They had been good friends for ten months now, but there were certain things they never talked about. She rarely mentioned John Harte to him, and he seldom spoke of his wife. She had died when Antoine was five, and he had been lonely for a long, long time. There had been a woman he had grown fond of in France, but now that was over with. He knew from a recent letter from her that she was involved with someone else. And he wasn’t heartbroken over it. He had expected that when he left France, and she hadn’t wanted to come to America with him. But now he wondered about Sabrina’s life and he was comfortable enough to ask.

  “What was your husband like?”

  She smiled at her friend. “Wonderful.” And then suddenly, she laughed. “Actually, at first we didn’t like each other very much. He kept trying to buy me out. He owned the rival mine.” André laughed, imagining the sparks of that. “But eventually …” She smiled nostalgically. “We settled down. You know,” her face sobered again, “I never let him merge our mines even in later years. And afterward, I was so sorry about that. I gave him such a bad time … and for what?” She looked into Andre’s eyes. “In the end, after he died, I merged them anyway. I was stupid not to have done it before that.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I think I wanted to prove something to him, that I was still independent and not just a part of him. But he humored me, and kept things the way I wanted them, even though he must have known that it was a lot more trouble that way. He was so patient.” She looked into Andre’s eyes. “It has made me a better partner to you in the past year because of what I learned from him.”

  “You’ve been wonderful.” He smiled at her, and then he grinned. “Except for your cooking and your French!”

  “How can you say that!” She began to laugh. “I cooked everyone an omelet last week.” And she had been so proud of herself and they were laughing now, at one in the morning in her library, tired, but comfortable side by side.

  “Didn’t you see how sick they got?” He loved teasing her, and he pulled gently now at one of the braids she wore. She looked like a very young girl to him, and to someone who didn’t know her well, they would have shaved a dozen years off her age. “You know, you look like an Indian squaw.” And at his words she suddenly remembered Spring Moon, and she told him about her fascination with her, and that she had saved her from being raped by Dan. “You certainly didn’t lead a boring life, my dear. Are you sure the vineyards aren’t too tame for you?”

  “They’re perfect now. I don’t think I could stand all that excitement again. One day, more than three hundred men walked out on my mine. I don’t ever want to live through something like that again.”

  “You won’t. Your life will be peaceful from now on. I promise you.” She had certainly earned that much and she smiled ruefully at him.

  “I wish you could promise that, for all of us.” S
he was also thinking of Jon. “What about you, André? What do you want out of life, other than a huge success with our fancy wines?” She tweaked his ear and he pulled her braid again.

  “Don’t get fresh with me, ma vieille … what do I want?” His face grew serious, and he would have had a good answer to that, but he didn’t dare. “I don’t know. I suppose I have everything I want. There’s only one thing lacking here.” She was surprised to hear him say that. He seemed so content.

  “What’s that?”

  “Companionship. I miss someone to share my life with, I mean other than Antoine, because that won’t last for long. He should move on, and he will in time. But don’t you miss that too?” He had had it far more recently than she, only a year before, and she thought about it now. She had missed it too of course, but she had grown accustomed to being alone for so long. There had been no man in her life since John, and she had told André that before. He thought it remarkable, but he wasn’t surprised. “I always suspected that.” By now, they knew each other very well, and he would have known if there was someone in her life. “How could you stay alone for so long?” He was impressed by that. Two years after his wife had died he had had a serious affair, and there had been several in the years since, nothing excessive, but he enjoyed having a woman in his life, and he missed that now. “Don’t you find your solitude unbearable?” He was intrigued by her and she laughed at him.

  “No. I don’t. It’s actually very simple and pleasant sometimes. It’s lonely too. But after a while, you don’t think of that. You know,” she teased, “rather like being a nun.”

  “What a waste.” He looked very French as he looked at her and they both laughed. “It really is, you know. You’re such a lovely woman, Sabrina, and you’re still young.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, my friend. I’ll be forty-eight in May. That’s not exactly like being a young girl.”

  “You’re in your prime.”