Cazalet did an unusual thing for him during the day. He reached for the bar and selected a crystal glass. “Pour me a Scotch, Teddy.”
“Jake, are you okay?” Teddy said anxiously.
“Sure I am. The only woman I ever truly loved is dying of cancer and my daughter is all alone, so give me a Scotch.”
Teddy Grant’s eyes widened and he poured. “Daughter, Jake?”
Cazalet took the Scotch down in one swallow.
“That was good,” he said, and then he told him everything.
In the end, the mad dash across the Atlantic proved fruitless. Jacqueline de Brissac had died two weeks before. They had missed the funeral by five days. Cazalet seemed to find himself moving in slow motion and it was Teddy who saw to everything.
“She was laid to rest in the de Brissac family mausoleum. That’s in a cemetery at Valency,” he said, turning from the phone in their suite at the Ritz.
“Thanks, Teddy. We’ll pay our respects.”
Cazalet looked ten years older as they settled in the limousine, and Teddy Grant cared for him more than any other person on this earth, more even than he cared for his long-term partner, who was a professor of physics at Yale.
Cazalet was the brother he’d never had, who’d taken interest in his career ever since the cafeteria incident at Harvard, had given him a job with the family law firm, had given him the totally unique job of being his personal assistant, and Teddy had grabbed it.
Once, at a Senate committee meeting, he’d sat at Cazalet’s shoulder, monitoring and advising on the proceedings. Afterwards, a senior White House liaison had come up to Cazalet, fuming.
“Hell, Senator, I truly object to this little cocksucker constantly appearing at these proceedings. I didn’t ask for fags on this committee.”
The room went quiet. Jake Cazalet said, “Teddy Grant graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law school. He was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in the field in Vietnam and the Vietnamese Cross of Valor. He also gave an arm for his country.” His face was terrible to see. “But more than that, he is my friend and his sexual orientation is his own affair.”
“Now, look here,” the other man said.
“No, you look here. I’m off the committee,” and Cazalet had turned to Grant. “Let’s go, Teddy.”
In the end, when the President had heard, it was the White House staffer who got moved, not Jake Cazalet, and Teddy had never forgotten that.
It was raining at the cemetery and slightly misty. There was a small records office, with a clerk on duty, and Teddy went in to find the location. He returned with a piece of paper and a single rose in a cellophane holder, got in the limousine, and spoke to the driver.
“Take the road north, then left at the top. We’ll get out there.”
He didn’t say anything to Cazalet, who sat there looking tired and tense. The cemetery was old and crowded with a forest of Gothic monuments and gravestones. When they got out, Teddy raised a black umbrella.
“This way.” They followed a narrow path. He checked the instructions on the paper again. “There it is, Senator,” he said, strangely formal.
The mausoleum was ornate, with an angel of death on top. There was an arched entrance to an oaken door banded with iron and the name de Brissac.
“I’d like to be alone, Teddy,” Cazalet told him.
“Of course.” Teddy gave him the rose and got back into the limousine.
Jake went into the porch at the door. There was a tablet listing the names of members of the family laid to rest there, but there was a separate one for the general. Jacqueline de Brissac’s name was in gold beneath it and newly inscribed.
There were some flower holders and Jake took the rose from its wrapping, kissed it, and slipped it into one of the holders, then he sat down on the stone bench and wept as he had never wept in his life before.
A little while later—he didn’t know how long—there was a footstep on the gravel, and he looked up. Marie de Brissac stood there, wearing a Burberry trenchcoat and a headscarf. She held a rose just like his own, and Teddy Grant stood behind her, his umbrella raised.