Out of one hundred cartridges yesterday, I shot forty-four head of game, put a bullet right in the hearts of a wildebeest and a duiker. I shot twenty different kinds of game, all the ordinary specimens of deer, zebra, wildebeest, marabou, jackal, wild boar, one lion, one leopard and a number of large birds …
On early autumn mornings, the meadow would be moist with dew, cicadas chanted away and in the evenings mosquitoes haunted the terrace. Towards the end of this idyllic period, there was so much rain in the Midi that mushrooms grew rampantly. As well as cèpes that sprouted at the base of the oaks, there were chanterelles, little yellow flutes embedded in moist, dark soil, and the last to appear were the pink mushrooms that sprouted at the base of the umbrella pines. During the vendange, there would be singing in the valley. For the vendange was a fête. Open trucks piled high with glistening grapes trundled along the main road on their way to the Vinicole Co-Opérative and the whole countryside was permeated with a rank, sour smell. Driving into Grimaud, in the open car, I would pass Joseph standing like Ben Hur at the wheel of his truck, and he’d shout, ‘Ça va? Ça va?’ and I would shout back. The vendange over, the vine leaves turned russet red and large vans with Bavarian number plates would be parked outside the Vinicole Co-Op, their cisterns marked ‘Beaujolais’, when in fact they were being replenished with Côtes de Provence. More and more of the surrounding land became planted with vineyards, and now the Côtes de Provence wine is considered by some to be just as good as any ordinary Bordeaux.
Sometimes in autumn, I drove to the small sickle-shaped beach at Beauvallon. Swimming there was particularly agreeable after a mistral, with the sea brisk and chill, swept clear of floating pine stalks. Small yachts would be moored offshore, their sails billowing down in slats. I might have been invisible for all the attention I aroused in my old Twenties-style bathing outfit, and if by chance some monster’s gaze happened to hover my way, it was only to settle on some plump young Fräulein, a left-over from the tourist season, lying close by on the sand. Sometimes, one saw the two putes who went there not to swim, but sunbathe, a pig-tailed blonde with full, white breasts, while the brunette’s were small and piquant, and passing men would turn and smile, even if their wives were with them. At midday, everyone rose, and what bliss it was to be left alone with one’s ugly thoughts of how old and despicable one was compared with Sagan, Eileen Geist or Bette, then Bernard’s current lady in Paris.
Bored with the beach, I’d walk barefoot to the car, happy to note that one’s hair had bleached a little, even if with the aid of Johnson’s baby oil, though the poor old skin refused to golden as before.
Back at home, the table laid beneath the eucalyptus – pain de campagne … butter … a hunk of gruyère … tomatoes out of the garden. I might open a bottle of Perrier Jouet Rosé 1964 and how delicious it tasted drinking it alone.
Chapter XIX
In the Pink
Just before I married Derek, Aunty Greta wrote to say Mummy had asked her to send me a note to tell me she was not very well and she thought I ought to know she had very high blood pressure. The doctor had told her, Aunty Greta added, that Mummy had had a slight stroke. She was in bed, and had to be kept very quiet and must rest. Aunty Greta had let Brenda know, but Mummy had asked her to tell me not to worry.
‘We are hoping she will be up and about again soon, and we all send our love.’
Two years later, while staying in Claridge’s, I drove down to my aunt’s house on Hythe seafront. Mummy occupied the upstairs sitting room and had a view of the sea from her bed and her own upstairs bathroom. She could move about but she never went down to meals. I can’t remember what I took – probably gin, for that is what the aunts liked to drink. Mummy was not exactly hale and hearty, but it never entered my head that she was seriously ill. A year later, when I was in the Midi, I got a telegram saying, ‘Mummy gravely ill’. I went into Grimaud to telephone. Aunty Hilda answered and said, ‘Mummy wants to see you.’ She was in a nursing home. I was in great pain myself, at the time. In fact, soon after, I entered the American hospital in Paris. When I left for England, although his sister was arriving the following day, Bernard accompanied me into St Raphael, where we drank several Martinis in a hotel opposite the station. I parked the car in a garage and Bernard took a taxi home. When I got into the sleeper I took a Tuinal and was still sleeping when the Blue Train drew into the Gare de Lyon. In the train to Calais, the douanier entered the compartment and confiscated 400 francs – then you were not allowed to take out more than 200. When I got on to the ferry I sent Eileen a telegram asking her to arrange an appointment with a gynaecologist. And from Dover I took a taxi. The following day, I went to see Mummy. The nursing home had once been a private house. Rose bushes bloomed in the garden that looked on to the canal bank, where couples sat sunning. It was Sunday, and church bells chimed as the nurse opened the door and led the way to Mummy’s room. Bending over the bed, she lugged Mummy’s inert form upright, saying, ‘Now then, Mrs Skelton, your daughter from Mars is here.’ The response was a plaintive grunt. ‘She’s been so looking forward to your coming. She’s a dear little patient, gives us no trouble at all.’ The praise would have pleased Mummy, for that is how she had always thought of herself, ‘a dear little thing’. But how could she give trouble! Poor Mummy. There she lay, paralysed down the whole of one side of her body.
‘Is she in pain?’
‘She suffers from bed sores, but we’re keeping her under sedation.’
Already anxious to make a get-away, I said, ‘Isn’t it a pity to wake her?’ But at that moment Mummy opened her eyes and gave a crooked smile.
‘That’s a good girl,’ said the nurse. ‘I’ll leave you now. Ring if you should need me. She likes having her forehead dabbed with eau-de-Cologne.’
Although paralysed, Mummy could still move one arm; her face was lopsided, she could hear what one said, but had great difficulty in making herself understood and talked huskily. They had taken away her teeth and her mouth had caved in. She was being spoonfed on slops and jellies. There was a certain dignity about her paralysed state. One arm rested above the bedclothes, the paralysed arm lay beneath the sheet.
‘How thin you are, Barbara,’ she said hoarsely.
‘Every time you’ve seen me in the last few years, you’ve said that,’ I told her. She gave a crooked smile and went on croaking what I interpreted as ‘heir’, referring to her will, which only shows how the subconscious works when someone is dying; eventually I realised she meant ‘hair’, as she was used to seeing it bleached. I remarked on how marvellous her skin looked. She had so few wrinkles, though her neck sagged a little.
‘Michael Arlen always said I had marvellous skin,’ she lisped. Then her eyes closed and she began to fade. I was about to leave when Brenda entered the room with the matron and between them they kept up a conversation about Mummy as though she were already dead, and I saw her looking at them with pleading, desperate eyes. Dying people’s eyes become very expressive, betraying any fear or anguish. Mummy had asked me to see her doctor, which I did the following day. I don’t know what she expected from the visit, perhaps to be told something encouraging. The doctor said she had cancer of the lungs, but as she was eighty-three it would not be advisable to operate. She was not in pain or being given any drugs. Her heart was sound and she had a lot of resistance. Mummy had also asked to be brought her handbag, which I took to her the following day. The aunts had removed all her money, justifying it by saying, ‘You never know in a nursing home!’ Mummy was very pleased to have her handbag. I asked what it was she wanted. Money? Oh no! Only her powderpuff, and there and then, with her one operative limb, her left hand, she delved into it and dabbed and dabbed away at her contorted face. Then her eyes closed and she began to weaken. I went round every day. One never knew what to say. I would smooth her brow with eau-de-Cologne, until she became increasingly irascible, as though her nerves were on edge. We took her flowers – in pots, hoping they would last out until the end.
Brenda was worried. What to do if Mummy lingered on and on? The nursing home was costing £40 a week.
‘Brenda’s such a worrier,’ Aunty Greta kept complaining, and the aunts became increasingly irritated by Brenda’s dog that whined nonstop whenever Brenda left the house. The one time I walked to the nursing home with Brenda and her dog, it was drizzling, and the dog never stopped tripping us up and tugging at its leash. One afternoon, I was alone with Mummy and I heard her say, ‘I know now. I shall never be well again.’ She realised she was going to die, but it didn’t seem to worry her. June 25 was her birthday. Brenda had gone home. All the aunts, Vera, Greta and Hilda, took Mummy a present. I had bought her a rose chiffon nightdress. Mummy was lying propped up, wearing her new nightie, her lopsided face resting against the pillow.
‘How are you feeling, Evie?’ Aunty Vera said, in her usual bright manner.
‘In the pink, thank you,’ Mummy intoned. It was her dernier bon mot.
Two days later, Aunty Greta cooked us a roast. That evening, we were all seated round the gateleg table in the sitting room eating, when the telephone rang. Aunty Greta answered. It was the matron. She asked to speak to me.
‘Your mother passed away an hour ago. Would you come round as soon as possible and collect her things?’
The aunts murmured, ‘Poor Evie!’ ‘It’s all for the best.’ Then, with bent heads, we all went on silently wolfing the dinner.
Mummy was buried beside Daddy in the pretty Saltwood church cemetery. No one cried at the funeral. Aunty Hilda seemed to be the most upset; she threw rose petals on to the grave. Then Brenda and I set off in a taxi to London, where I took a train back to Mars.
In Dunkirk, the tugmen were on strike, so I went back via Calais. In Paris, I went to an oculist and ordered more reading glasses. The gynaecologist said I had an ovarian cyst and made an appointment for me to see a surgeon. I lunched with Eileen. Then Bernard telephoned to know when I would be back.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘or maybe the day after.’
When I got to St Raphael, the car refused to start and broke down twice on the way back. It was very hot. When I got to the mas, there was no sign of Bernard, the front door was ajar and the stereo had been left on the repeat. So I locked up and drove on to Garde-Freinet to stay with Pippa and Peter Forster. The next day, driving back to Grimaud, the car broke down again.
Bernard was sitting beside his suitcases on the terrace. He had spent the last days carousing with Sagan in St Tropez. I thought to myself, and in these circumstances. (I had been booked into the American hospital two weeks from then.)
‘You don’t want me to leave, do you?’ he said, and, after my initial ill humour, we made up.
The mas had been rented to Americans for August. There were a lot of things to do. The following day I went into St Tropez to change a cheque. Bernard came with me. He had to see Sagan, he said, to fix up an abode while I was in the hospital. He was very helpful during the shopping. On the port he saw a blonde in a purple outfit and said, ‘Comme elle est chic.’ I was in pain, uncombed and shabby. I thought, merde, all my money goes on having to support two people.
‘Why are you in a bad humour? Oh, to be free,’ he sighed. I left him in Senequiers and went off to buy a pair of shoes. Passing Senequiers again and seeing him sitting with Sagan’s husband, Bob Westoff, I say, ‘Maintenant, vous êtes libre,’ giving a curt upward gesture of the hand, as much as to say, ‘Hi’ and ‘goodbye’. Feeling lonely and dejected, I walked on lugging a basket of dorade, new shoes and with my handbag strapped over one shoulder. I had just reached Félix Potin the grocers when he caught me up.
‘It’s only 11.30 and Françoise is still asleep. I’ll leave a message. Come and have a drink,’ he said.
‘No thank you.’
‘Well, don’t be cross. Do you feel bad?’ He kissed me and went off.
I returned to the house. It rained and rained. I felt so sad. At 3.30 a telegram arrived, despatched from Sainte Maxime: ’Je déjeune. J’arrive. Tendresse. Bernard.’ A man came to repair the fridge. At 4.30 I decided to go back and change the shoes I had bought that morning. St Tropez was more packed than ever. I bought tomatoes for the dorade, did not change the shoes and got home at 5.30, only to find all the shutters closed and the front door locked. I had not taken a key. Frantic, I drove off to the locksmith in Cogolin. He came up with a jemmy, but then said he needed help. So, I went across to Thérèse who accompanied me back. Thérèse was always very reassuring on occasions like this. She listened at the bathroom window.
‘Monsieur Bernard! It’s Thérèse! He’s in there, I hear snoring,’ she said to me, rapping on the shutter. After some time, he opened up, so drunk he could hardly walk. He explained to Thérèse that the shutters had been closed because of the rain.
It was always like that whenever Sagan came to St Tropez. That evening, Sagan came to fetch him. She did not drive up, but remained at the bottom of the hill and hooted, and Bernard walked down carrying his suitcases.
Whenever he was in Normandy, Cahors or Paris, he wired or wrote regularly, sometimes twice a week: ‘Tu me manques déja à bientôt j‘espère t’embrasse très fort.’
When in Normandy, ’J’a tout de même moyen d’aller au casino pour jouer à blackjack, jeu difficile car les cartes vont très vite. Hier pour raison de régime une coupe de champagne orange au Royal et pendant le dîner le tiers d’une bouteille de Bordeaux … mes essais de travailler me donnent des soucis …’
One day a telegram arrived saying, ‘Le coati nomme Bernard arrive à Nice’, and off went the squaw to the airport.
*
When the first forest fire broke out round Garde-Freinet, we were in the throes of having the telephone installed and a man had come up to supervise the placing of the poles.
‘No poles near the house,’ I shouted down from the bedroom window, ‘I don’t want to hamper the view.’ Later, when a team of men were digging at the bottom of the hill for the wires to pass through and I complained of a branch being lopped off, an official came running up and, after scanning me from every angle, as much as to say ‘nothing doing’, snapped, ‘Well, Madame, do you want to have the telephone installed here or not?’
All day, planes had been flying backwards and forwards to St Raphael to fill up with seawater to quench the flames, and it never entered our heads that we were in any danger until late in the afternoon, when Bernard was crossing the terrace carrying a lightly boiled egg, like a participant in an egg and spoon race, we heard a sudden hiss of sizzling maquis and, looking up, saw the whole of the adjoining hillock in flames, whereupon the telephone official joined us. Surveying the oncoming devastation, he turned and said, ‘Well, Madame, it doesn’t look as though you’ll be needing the telephone, after all,’ got into his car and drove swiftly down the hill. We were debating what to do when a Deux Chevaux drove up. Thérèse and her daughter got out and shouted, ‘You must leave at once.’ The two of them then gathered up all the garden paraphernalia and carried it into the house, and closed all the shutters while we packed. They drove away warning us not to dally, but should we get trapped by smoke to make for a vineyard, as being cleared of debris, it was the only safe place. Indeed, when the fire eventually abated and stretches of forest were reduced to black charred stumps, the only undevastated areas were the vineyards.
It is quite difficult to decide what to pack in a hurry. I took a toothbrush, reading glasses, a dressing gown and a book, but forgot to include an overcoat. It was late October, a mistral raged and the car was open. The animals piled into the back, we drove away. All the valley dwellers had departed early that morning, their cars stacked with bedding. When we reached Grimaud, I remember getting out of the car and looking back at the smoke screening the valley with tears pouring down my face, like Scarlett when fleeing Tara, while Bernard murmured, ‘Is the house insured?’ Then we joined a stream of cars heading for Toulon, stopping every so often at a café to warm up on Cognac. In Toulon, most of the hotels were full.
We eventually found a double room. Bernard had no trouble in getting to sleep, but I spent most of the night fretting.
When the mistral had abated, we drove back to find four members of the fire brigade installed, with sleeping bags, in the garage and a fire engine in the drive. They remained on the terrace for days, which made one feel protected. I would take them cups of coffee and drive into Grimaud to get their bread. At nights, should a faint breeze revive the smouldering tree stumps, the men would make a systematic tour of the forest quenching any flickering flames that, from my bedroom window, looked like myriad glow-worms. The smell of burnt bracken lingered on for weeks.
*
My first summer in Grimaud, Cyril came to stay, bringing a paperback of The Unquiet Grave – ‘With love from Cyril, London 1967. Two corks that have been over Niagara. Bobbing along in the shallows.’ As I was alone, not wishing to be compromised, he booked a room in a Sainte Maxime hotel. At that time, Deirdre assumed me to be a witch. When Cressida was born, I had not been allowed to see her, as it was feared I would give the baby the evil eye.
The next time Cyril came to Grimaud, he was on his way home from Kenya and had spent the night on the plane. He arrived so tired that he immediately went up to bed and fell asleep. I did not want to wake him, but Bernard thought he would not want to miss dinner. I cannot recall the menu, but I do remember that during the dessert course, a pot of cream aimed at me skimmed past Cyril’s head, as I was listening too intently to his observations on Proust and Diderot, and an Englishman was not considered to be sufficiently knowledgeable about either. But Cyril certainly knew the meaning of ‘vieux gâteux’ and, the following morning, when I took him his breakfast, he was already planning a get-away. He only looked up from a array of timetables spread across the bed to say, ‘I pity you, Barbara. Your priorities are all wrong. You’ve let this man abolish all your powers of action. Get out before it’s too late. Either it’s real love of a sadomasochistic kind, or you are just frittering your life away on a futile, neurotic situation, cutting yourself off from all other sources of pleasure, intellectual activities, friendships, travel. Buy yourself some pretty clothes, for God’s sake.’ Intellectual activities! There was no time for that sort of thing any more, all my energy being expended on running a large house, choosing tiles for the construction of a swimming pool, deciding whether or not to have the shutters repainted or buying new material for the wine-drenched cushions. There was a plane strike on at the time and what, in fact, Cyril wanted me to do was to drive him up to Paris. He said he liked Bernard, adding that I did not take him seriously enough as a writer, as Joan (with whom he identified me at the time) did Paddy Leigh Fermor. For both Cyril and Bernard were very alike … talented, irascible writers, appreciators of good food and wine, animal lovers, with a coterie of admiring women and a penchant for disorderly, book-infested dens. When Cyril had gone, I teased Bernard by saying, ‘You ought to have more respect for a man so much older than yourself! At any rate, Cyril earns a living, has the courage to support a family and still has immense curiosity about everything. Whereas, all you have any curiosity about is trying out some brand of catfood for Suki or Mell!’
'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More' Page 43