I thought this price worth paying in return for the beauty of the house. I was ready to play my part and almost sorry to follow Françoise out through high glass doors to a terrace overlooking a small ornamental lake. We spent the day in the open air, roaming the woods we had traversed the previous evening, not saying much. In fact there was no need to say anything: the rules of the game were apparent, and any remarks of mine would be ill-judged, or rather, superfluous.
We were allowed back for lunch, during which time I was able to examine Mme Desnoyers for myself. A small, powerfully built woman, who had recourse to a bottle of pills by her plate, she appeared both formidable and frail; a frequent asthmatic intake of breath punctuated her questions to me, again in English, which placed me as a guest not destined to be an intimate, since these alternated with her remarks to Fernand, who brought in dishes of indifferent food, and Françoise, who replied with unaccustomed meekness. My references to my mother were well received; they placed me as a daughter who was in all respects cast in a mould of recognizable subservience, though this was not what I felt. I tended, almost in spite of myself, to supply her with what she wanted, a distant image culled from who knew what stereotypes, and which she seemed to prefer to the all too palpable presence of her own daughter, whose expression, though neutral, indicated a tendency to disagree which I knew from my own conversations with her. Indeed I knew about the situation from these conversations, and was confirmed in what I had learned by the silent opposition of two strong wills, anxious, on this occasion at least, to let none of this opposition break cover. At the same time the similarity between them was unmistakable. They had the same almost Roman features—the straight brows, the firm lips, the powerful nose—that in Françoise combined to form extreme handsomeness and in her mother an expression of pure will.
Mme Desnoyers was dressed in a pair of black trousers, as was Françoise, and a black jacket which had seen some wear. A silk scarf was draped negligently round her neck, and her still black hair was swept back sternly from her forehead. ‘Your mother lives alone?’ she enquired, and when, ploughing on through an evident lack of interest, I went on to describe our modest flat, and my mother’s equally modest habits, she relaxed slightly. Obviously I was supplying her with the information she wanted: it was established that my mother owned her own home, had no need to earn her living, and was supported by family money. This placed her in a favourable category as a woman of some independence, an enviable state which had the virtue of supplying me with a modest though respectable rank which might otherwise have struck her as puzzling: I lived in an hotel, sat in a library all day, and was not in the business of making myself attractive to men. All of this was commendable: I was a good daughter. She even favoured me with a more considered examination, perhaps comparing my looks with those of her more striking offspring. My cheeks burned as I realized that I was not adequately prepared for this degree of formality. I had brought no change of clothes with me, thinking my grey trouser suit presentable if not smart. I was informed that after dinner that evening she would be receiving certain guests who were in fact old friends, and that she was sure they would be very interested to hear about my work on garden design. There followed another asthmatic intake of breath. ‘Maman!’ warned Françoise. Mme Desnoyers placed a hand on her breast, and said, ‘Until dinner, then.’ When she got up to leave we both stood respectfully until she had left the room.
The contrast with my own mother could not have been plainer. My mother, a pretty though faded woman, whose active life was all too clearly behind her, made little physical impact, dressed simply in skirts and cardigans, and though no doubt satisfied with my appearance made no attempt to improve it. I did not possess the sort of clothes that were called upon to make an impression, nor was there any need for them to do so: we knew few people likely to visit, kept no servants, and went to bed early. Even I, in the hotel, went to bed early. I was too introspective to enjoy unfamiliar company, which was why I so appreciated the company of the equally undemonstrative Michael. It was only with Françoise that I discussed weighty matters of will and desire, and even with Françoise I did little more than listen. I thought, with a certain discomfort, that perhaps my mother should have done more for me in the way of instruction, of preparation. I was almost angry with her until I reflected that such anger as I felt should more properly have been directed against myself. Mme Desnoyers was of a different order. Her daughter, as I knew from that daughter, was a counter in the great game of possession and advantage; she was to obey, and only then would she be obeyed. She was to secure certain benefits for her mother—status, her continuance in the house, indeed the house itself—by a judicious bargaining of favours. Mme Desnoyers had no doubt that this could be managed. The looks she gave Françoise were full of laconic pride, as if she could well imagine the steps that would have to be taken, the stratagems needed to bring about the desired result. She evidently shared the same disposition she was determined to repress on her daughter’s behalf. And Françoise knew this. She in her turn recognized her mother as a model, and in her reluctant, even rebellious way, felt an equal pride.
My sartorial misgivings were confirmed later that same day. As I had feared, both Françoise and her mother had changed for dinner. Dinner itself was served by Fernand in a slightly grubby white jacket, as if he too were bound to observe certain rules, or rather, forms. I sat with my trousered knees all too prominent, rising to my feet as Mme Desnoyers and Françoise appeared in silk jackets and flowered skirts. They had a sudden look of beauty. If anything Mme Desnoyers outshone her daughter. She had, I saw, a fine figure, although she carried too much weight, and her face had been more clearly defined by the judicious application of colour. She looked to be almost a contestant on her own account, whereas Françoise, in comparison, was almost subdued. Clearly these clothes were kept in reserve for purposes of conquest, and I wondered at Françoise’s decision to lower her sights to her habitual makeshift lovers when she could so easily have followed her mother’s example and played for high stakes. But then I reflected that Françoise entertained desires of her own, and was not willing to subordinate those desires to the ruling of another. ‘How lovely you look,’ I complimented Mme Desnoyers, wondering if this compliment were a little too familiar to be appreciated. But it was received with a gratified smile which reassured me. She seemed to be in excellent humour, which was just as well: her gaze contained complicity as well as decree, a decree that this game was to be played according to the rules, her rules to be sure, but ones with which Françoise would eventually comply.
The guests arrived at nine, at an hour when, soporific after a day spent largely in the open air, and slightly dazed from the effort of giving an account of myself, I was almost ready for bed. They consisted of four couples: Dr and Mme Bachelard, Monsieur and Mme Dulong, Mme Brunet and her ancient mother, and Mme de Lairac and her son Jean-Charles. In fact it was only the latter two who were significant. Mme de Lairac would in fact have been significant in any company, a woman with the assurance of inherited wealth and the slight air of disdain that accompanied it. Her son, Jean-Charles, was a pale, slightly corpulent man of indeterminate age: his flicker of interest when we were introduced was immediately dowsed when his mother laid a hand on his wrist. The rules of the game were apparent. Jean-Charles was the prize, Françoise the sacrifice. Mme de Lairac wanted the house, Mme Desnoyers wanted the money. It occurred to me that she and Françoise were poor, a fact reinforced by Mme Desnoyers’s excessive amiability. Gone was the air of distraction, the implication of hauteur; now she was all enthusiasm, almost excess, a fact noted and enjoyed by her adversary, Mme de Lairac—Madeleine—who contributed little to the conversation but enjoyed the advantage of genuine superiority. This had the unfortunate result of casting some doubt on Mme Desnoyers’s background, which was never disclosed, not even hinted at, her change of demeanour into actressy warmth, with many references to ‘mon pauvre mari’, which were not quite what was expected in this setting. A glass o
f wine was served: the wine was markedly superior to the food we had eaten at lunch and dinner. Since I was there to contribute little more than background noises I said my piece on gardens, and added how fortunate I had been to meet Françoise in the library where I conducted my research. This was well received, and Mme Desnoyers—Marie-France—appeared relieved that her daughter’s function and status were recognized. After that I contributed even further by devoting myself to the old lady, Mme de Freyssinet, who rewarded me with a smile of great sweetness, but who was, I subsequently discovered, almost completely deaf. In any case I was disbarred from the general conversation, which was of local affairs, local politics, and mutual friends and neighbours. Just as I was wondering how much longer I could stay awake, Dr Bachelard signalled the order of release by referring to his wife’s delicate health, with which they were all familiar, and decreeing that she must not get overtired. Leave was taken. The entire visit had lasted a bare hour and a half.
In my room I thought of Jean-Charles and his adamantine mother, both to my mind unbearable, the son even more than the mother, though he had said and done nothing that was less than polite, even courtly. It was his appearance that offended me. A pale and costive-looking young man—but how young or rather old was he? Thirty? Forty?—he had the look of one who had come up through the best schools and risen to that most esteemed of French professions, civil servant. In fact he worked in a bank, as I had learned from Mme de Lairac’s throw-away remarks, as if she were advertising his worth. She had to do this, as he was virtually silent. He was tightly buttoned into the sort of blazer I had seen in the windows of Old England and which did little to disguise an incipient paunch. Certainly his attitude to his mother was exemplary: he hovered over her like a waiter in an expensive restaurant, but I felt indignant on Françoise’s behalf. Such devoted sons rarely appeal to the women they marry, or are instructed to marry. Françoise herself looked particularly handsome that evening, although her unaccustomed flush may have been prompted by annoyance. Something more heroic might just have won her over; in fact a show of rebellion, or just polite boredom on his part, might have served to incline her in his favour. Even a mother might have appreciated some sign of independence, but Mme de Lairac merely cast an eye from time to time over the handsome appointments of the salon and did not protest against its chill. I noted that she had provided herself with a silk shawl which she drew protectively round her shoulders as the evening progressed. To each of her minimal utterances Mme Desnoyers responded with enthusiasm, but she did not attempt to detain her guests, all of whom knew the form the evening had taken. As Françoise had said, there was not much to do in the country. I had no doubt that the ritual would be repeated in the days, weeks, months to come. For that reason alone it would be desirable to break the monotony, but it would take something equally ceremonious in order to do so. Either that, or some act of violence, which would be unthinkable.
I slept badly, in my hermetically sealed bedroom. The following morning Fernand failed to appear with my coffee, all that was apparently required in the way of breakfast: bodily needs were not much catered for in that household. But the house itself looked even more beautiful in the early morning, as I made my way out onto the terrace and walked round to the main entrance. This was how I should think of it when I was back in Paris, pristine, impervious to human intentions, and even to human inhabitants, whoever they turned out to be. I should like to have left at that point, but I was reliant on Françoise and her car. I was sure that Mme Desnoyers would have wished me to have left, certainly to disappear before lunch, if lunch there was to be. The servants were surely absent on this Sunday morning, and although intrigued I was rather hungry. It seemed polite to linger downstairs until someone—Françoise or her mother—appeared and to take my leave, with fulsome thanks that would be entirely genuine. I wondered if by any lucky chance there might be time to catch Michael before he left the hotel and started out on a walk. I wanted to discuss this almost theatrical weekend with someone, though I was aware that he would be largely unresponsive.
When Françoise appeared she was carrying my bag, which I had already packed. ‘We can go as soon as you like,’ she said. ‘My mother says to say goodbye to you. She has enjoyed your visit and hopes you will come again.’ I doubted whether she had said any of this, but I expressed equal gratification and sent the appropriate messages to my absent hostess.
‘Maman is not too well this morning,’ said Françoise, her face clouding over. ‘Her breathing is bad. These evenings are quite a strain on her. And the upkeep of the house . . .’ Her voice trailed away. ‘And Fernand and Mariette are getting old and are threatening to retire. They won’t do so, of course, but if they did . . .’
‘There are agencies,’ I pointed out.
‘Pouah! Foreigners. My mother would not consider them suitable. Are you ready?’
She was so anxious to leave herself that I was almost bundled into the car. We drove in silence through the beautiful morning. There seemed to be no other cars on the road, and few houses. I was removed from the house’s sphere of influence, and was half regretful, half relieved. Françoise evidently felt the same.
‘I’m sorry it was so boring,’ she apologized. ‘You were very good.’
‘I loved it,’ I said truthfully.
‘You see what I’m up against,’ she said, but her heart was not in it. She was bound by a complicated loyalty which could only be shaken off as the physical distance between herself and her mother increased. ‘À demain,’ she offered through the window of the car, as she handed out my bag. Evidently there was to be no further meeting that day. I, on the contrary, longed to place the whole incident on record. Back in the hotel, which now looked shabby, I knocked on Michael’s door, but there was no reply. I stared out of the window at the familiar street and wondered what to do with the rest of my day.
7
THAT NIGHT I HAD A DREAM OF BLISS SO RARE THAT I knew it was unconnected to anything I had ever experienced. The details immediately escaped me when I woke, but I knew, simply and conclusively, that I was loved. I was left with an impression of golden light, but this light had nothing supernatural about it, almost the opposite; it was the light of the sun in mid-heaven. What this dream signified was unclear, as were the circumstances that had brought it into being. Maybe the mere fact of eating at someone else’s table was responsible for the feeling of being included, or maybe it was a warning that the circumstances of my present untethered life were inadequate. I also knew that Michael could not supply this intimation of completeness, and my disappointment that he had not waited for me was dispelled by the knowledge that he was not and could never be the agent of my happiness. In the light of this dream I dismissed my customary timid pleasures and realized that something else was called for. Yet there was no sign of this, or what it was to be. It simply put into place the mild diversions of the weekend, which I now saw were emanations, echoes of other lives, and not of my own.
At other times, and perhaps until then, I had been amenable, passive. I considered myself, in outward appearance at least, virtually French, walked the streets with vigour, drank my coffee black. The possession of a little money had given me assurance, yet that money was limited, and I should soon have to go home. I also knew, in the light of that dream, that my work was not only cursory but humdrum, that any further work I did would not supply the illumination I had glimpsed. I even wondered if I might abandon the work already completed, let it slip into that limbo in which all unpublished theses reside, with the promise to my superiors that I would continue my researches and that they would eventually come to fruition. Maybe this was true, yet the prospect was unattractive. Unfortunately there was nothing else within my grasp, nor, it seemed, could I hope to conjure an alternative into being. The gift of such happiness, the happiness of the dream, although entirely human—for I knew it did not pertain to the hereafter—was arbitrary. One might or might not encounter it, but only as a gift. So unmistakable had it been that I knew
I should remember it, whether or not it was ever to be repeated. It seemed that even this was unlikely. Beautiful as the feeling had been, its only effect was to expose a condition of longing, and the knowledge that it must be sought, but also that it might not be found.
I wondered what to do with this new day, which promised to be fine, too fine to confine me to the library. In any event Françoise had intimated that she did not expect us to meet, and I thought it better to let a day or two elapse before we resumed our normal routine. Michael, I knew, would be invisible: it had somehow been decreed that we should not meet in the daytime, but only in the evenings and at weekends. This ruling was unformulated, but neither of us thought to question it. The mere fact that I went, as it were, to work every morning, leaving him in situ all day, had so far suited us both, but now I saw that it constrained me to keep on doing the same thing every day, when in fact I had less incentive to tinker with footnotes in an attempt to convince myself that this was a useful activity. To do so on this particular day, and even more so on the days that followed, would be mere pretence. This frightened me: instead of leisure, freedom, this suspension of routine had a feeling of remission, as if by abandoning my harmless task (and it was after all quite respectable) I was laying myself open to all sorts of extravagance, depredation, and a kind of inventiveness which was not in fact in my nature. There were no witnesses: no one would deplore my absence, or indeed question it, yet the prospect of an empty day was not reassuring. Moreover it did little to mask the greater problem of how to continue, now that this licensed interval was drawing to a close, may even have ended quite definitively before I was properly aware of the fact. This would mean that I had no further reason to stay in Paris, yet my life in the library, the hotel, the café, had suited me until I became aware that it was in all respects inadequate. That had been the import of the dream: beauty had been revealed, either real or imagined, and I could no longer live with its absence.
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