‘Jacob is always, I’m afraid, unpredictable,’ Jacques tossed back the strand of heavy blond hair which still fell boyishly over his forehead. ‘Which is probably why we’re still friends after all these years,’ he whispered with mock seriousness.
The Princess watched them. Suddenly she seemed to reach a decision. ‘Perhaps the two of you might like to come to one of my Wednesday evenings. Monsieur Jardine might then find my name easier to bear.’ Irony played over her features and then with a parting nod, she went to rejoin her group.
Jacob continued to stare after her.
There are certain beings who are born with a radical sense that they are displaced in time or milieu. Princesse Mathilde de Polignesco was one such. Born into a family of expansive wealth and impeccable descent, she was the only child of a mother who had died a mere year after Mathilde’s birth. Her father’s interests had hardly been in the tiny infant. Parsimonious by nature, he had left her upbringing to a succession of nannies and governesses whom he paid little and who paid Mathilde back in kind. As a result, Mathilde had always felt that she was an unwelcome outsider in her own home. When she visited her royal cousins, the feeling was exacerbated. She was always by comparison meanly dressed and as she grew into adolescence, it became clear that she had also been poorly educated. An intelligent little girl, Mathilde was intensely embarrassed by these comparisons. She was also intensely lonely and deeply affected by the evidence of lovelessness around her.
No sooner could she write, than she began to escape from her immediate environment by inventing stories and poems peopled by characters who might be her friends. These friends were to save her from the death she was haunted by and which echoed her mother’s. When she was twelve and she recognized the sheer scale of her ignorance, she took her courage in hand and approached her father with a request. She wanted either to be sent away to school - which was instantly denied - or to be permitted free access to his extensive library and to be given a governess of some intelligence. The latter wish was granted.
Mathilde put all her youthful energy and her loneliness into her studies. She read voraciously and at random. She demanded to be taught mathematics, Greek, Latin, botany. She learned to write in English and German as well as French. When she turned eighteen, her father suddenly developed an interest in her. It was time to find an appropriate match for his daughter, one which would enhance the family line. The year was 1919. The war was over. Europe’s royal families were re-concerting the interests left to them. Mathilde’s aunt was asked to prepare the young woman. The best couturiers were called in, their wares paraded before the discerning aunt. With their help, she transformed the clumsy girl her father had never troubled to look at, into a striking young woman his eyes could not leave.
Discreet gatherings were arranged. The word was put out that a rich and noble heiress was in the offing. Suitors began to make themselves known from amongst Europe’s leading aristocracy. Mathilde frequented balls and select parties. Under the watchful eye of a chaperone, she conversed with men, several of whom were at least as old as her father. Through all this Mathilde conducted herself with dignity. But she remained unmoved. None of it seemed to have anything to do with her. Yes, she was pleased, even deeply touched, that her father seemed at last to take notice her. But the charade of suitors left her cold. They were far more interested in her father than in her. Nor did their behaviour in any way correspond to what in the books or in her governesses’ reminiscences was called love. Nonetheless, she knew that she would do her father’s bidding and marry the man of his choosing. There were no other options open to her.
At the end of Mathilde’s eighteenth year, her father announced that the appropriate man had been found: a Danish prince whose wealth and position matched theirs. The fact that he was twenty-five years older than she was of no moment. Prince Frederick was duly met; the engagement announced. Until her wedding night, Mathilde saw her future husband only twice on his own. On both occasions, he talked to her of his guiding interests - the military and fishing. She stole swift glances at him from under discretely lowered lashes. He was tall, broad-shouldered, well-made; he had sandy-coloured hair and a benign smile. Her pulse raced a little. She tried to mould him into the roles her reading had given her.
The wedding, a grand affair, took place in Paris. The couple, with their retinue, then travelled to the site of their month-long honeymoon, a Scottish castle which had been loaned to them by a member of the extended family. Mathilde was at once excited and full of trepidation. Sir Walter Scott had given her a taste for the wilder aspects of nature, for abbeys and lochs, mountain and meadow, moss and moor and in none of this was she disappointed. The castle was a regal Jacobean pile, its high walls lined with tapestries and the glow of wainscotting. Outside, the wind blew over purple hillside. Stallions, their manes flowing, challenged the slopes. Streams flowed in a burble of sound over sleek pebbles and weathered rocks.
Mathilde’s disappointments were reserved for the indoors. She and Frederick had adjoining rooms in the Castle’s west wing. In the midst of hers stood a vast four-poster bed. From the moment in which she had been ushered into the room, it was this object which claimed her imagination. She knew that something momentous was intended for this site, though she had no clear idea what it was. Her reading, the very few intimate conversations she had had with her governesses, had only led her as far as the excitement of a kiss. Once or twice, while she was reading she had felt a tremor at the base of her stomach which she associated with such scenes. But on the two occasions when Frederick had kissed her, she had been aware only of the not altogether pleasant bristle of his moustache and the moonlike vastness of his face as it approached hers.
After dinner on their first night in the Castle, Mathilde slipped up to her room while the men were sipping brandy in front of a blazing fire. Her maid helped her out of her dress and into a white satin nightgown with an appliqué of lace. It was the garment her aunt had instructed her, with a meaningful inflection of her voice, to reserve for her wedding night. As its cool length slipped over her head, Mathilde thought of her dead mother. If only the pretty young woman the photographs showed were here to counsel her. She almost engaged the maid in conversation: surely this girl with her winning ways knew more than she did. But she couldn’t bring herself to it. Instead, her toilette over, she lay down on the vast bed and stared at the intricate pattern of its curtaining.
By the time Frederick knocked at her door and she murmured a low, ‘come in’, she was tense with anticipation. The gas lamp by the bedside threw ghostly shadows round the room. She couldn’t read the expression with which he looked at her, but she sensed a note of hostility in his terse, ‘My wife awaits me’. Or perhaps it was simply the note of her own anxiety. Unceremoniously, he took off his jacket and trousers. Mathilde closed her eyes. The bed creaked slightly as his broad boxer’s form lowered itself. She could smell the brandy on his breath. Bristles scratched her face, rough lips met hers. A hand skimmed the length of her torso, then pushed her legs apart. The weight of a body descended on hers taking her breath away. She felt her buttocks being kneaded and then something jabbed into the centre of her. She cried out in pain. She heard an answering grunt, then another jab and another. Then nothing. Only the harsh sound of his breathing and the hot hurt. She lay very still.
After a few moments, he got up, pecked her perfunctorily on the cheek, put on his shoes, almost, Mathilde thought, clicked his heels as he nodded and wished her goodnight. Then he was gone through the side door, his shirt tails trailing behind him.
From somewhere deep inside Mathilde, a laugh rose catching at her throat, strangling her. So this is what she had been waiting for. The laugh mingled with her tears.
For the next two nights, it was much the same, only that the hot pain was somewhat less. She tried to talk to Frederick, but there were no words with which to engage him. And polite and kind as he was to her during the days, at night communication was minimal, abrupt. On the fourth night, he di
d not appear. Nor on the fifth. She had not yet seen the instrument which jabbed at her centre. Mathilde took to her bed. She developed a rasping cough. She was suddenly oppressed with the fear of dying. She imagined that her mother must have perished of that hot pain between her legs, of that heavy, suffocating body. The doctor was called.
When he arrived and was examining her alone in her room, Mathilde took her not inconsiderable courage in her hands.
‘Doctor,’ she cleared her throat. ‘This is perhaps an indelicate question, but is it right that when my husband and I are together…’ she pointed towards the bed, ‘all I should feel is pain?’
The doctor, an old Scotsman, who had an animosity towards language, looked at her as if she had reached the summit of impudence. ‘Woman’s lot is pain,’ he said as if he were quoting from an ancient text. ‘Be grateful you have all this,’ he gestured dramatically around the room while his ‘r’s rolled. ‘And there is nothing wrong with you that a little less bone idleness won’t cure,’ he added for good measure as he closed his bag.
Mathilde repressed the anger which boiled within her and took him at his word. Every morning she began to ride with a vengeance. Trailed by a young groom, she explored the vicinity of the castle, and then ventured further afield, past small huddled villages to where the sea pounded vociferously against vertiginous cliffs. In the afternoon, if the weather permitted, she explored the castle grounds and systematically executed botanical drawings of the vegetation. If the rain was too heavy, she stayed indoors and embroidered, an activity she had abandoned, but now took up again with an increasing delight in complexity of pattern. She gave up reading novels; their contents had misled her. The evenings were devoted to her notebooks: one French, another German, another English. These she filled with reflections and increasingly with fable-like stories and poems. She was left much to her own devices.
Only at mealtimes, did she regularly see her husband and engage in conversation. Their company was small. Frederick was regularly attended by two friends who were also advisors and the talk moved desultorily from the subtleties of angling, the comparative excellence of different streams and rivers, and sometimes to politics. Only the latter interested Mathilde at all, but the occasional sharpness of her interventions brought a frown to her husband’s face.
Half way through the month, they were joined by a cousin of Frederick’s and his young wife. The two women became friendly. Mathilde asked the latter to give her some elementary lessons in Danish. It filled the afternoons. But when Mathilde tried to share with her new friend her feelings about the boredom of their lives, the latter looked at her with utter incomprehension.
After a month they travelled to Denmark. A large wing of the family home just outside Copenhagen had been prepared for the new couple. Again Frederick paid three consecutive and abrupt visits to Mathilde’s bedroom. She was confronted with the realisation that there was nothing more to expect in that domain. In other ways, her life took on a fuller shape. Here in Denmark, the house hummed with the bustle of guests accompanied with numerous children, of grand weekly dinner parties. There were occasional expeditions to the ballet and theatre. Mathilde took a liking to Frederick’s aunt whose store of memories was rich and which she recounted in a vivacious and unhindered fashion. She learnt of court intrigues across Europe, of her husband’s hitherto unmentioned military prowess. As her Danish improved and as her quick wits began to make their mark amidst the entourage, Mathilde realised that she was not particularly unhappy.
There was another reason for her new found confidence. In the fourth month of her marriage, Mathilde found that she was pregnant. Frederick grew tender, solicitous, proud. It became clear to her that this had been the sole object of his brief nighttime visits. They had been as unpleasant for him as for her. She stored the fact away for further perusal.
In quick succession and with relative ease, Mathilde gave birth to two boys. She loved their milky smell, their tiny clasping hands; loved too, as they grew, their clumsy running gait across the carpet-like lawns, the clear peal of their too-loud voices. But the boys were cared for by a succession of nurses and servants. By the time the youngest was four, Mathilde had grown restless, dissatisfied. Time lay heavily on her hands and as she looked into the future, all she could see was the endless unfolding of routine domesticity, punctuated by the occasional flurry of trips abroad. She hungered for the sharper air of Paris, for the crisp sound and wit of her own language, for study, for she didn’t know quite what. She had taken to reading novels again. French newspapers and magazines arrived daily on her table. Avidly she pored over a feature about Marie Curie and wished that she too could dedicate herself to some great task.
Mathilde confronted Frederick. At twenty-five, she was a tall, striking young woman, whose youthful angularity had rounded into a graceful slenderness. Her nose under the dark eyes was a little too long, her mouth a little too wide for picturely perfection, but the mobile vivacity of her features captured the gaze. And when she spoke, the sheer concentrated power of her presence was vividly apparent. Frederick was a little afraid of her.
‘I should like to spend part of every year in Paris, Frederick,’ Mathilde spoke slowly and distinctly so that he would take in the seriousness of her statement.
He looked at her in astonishment and said nothing. The wives of Danish princes did not suddenly pick up and leave the courtly circle.
Mathilde read his mind. ‘I know it is an unusual request. But my father is growing old and I should like to be near him in his last years. The children can come with me, if you allow it. It will do them no harm to taste a little of France.’ Mathilde paused and chose her words carefully. ‘I would like it if you too could be with us, at least part of the time, when your affairs permit.’
Frederick thought as rapidly as his painstaking mind permitted. Mathilde had fed him the appropriate cues. It was true that no one could object to a daughter going to her father’s side in his last years. It was true that his children were part French and of a family which prided itself on its origins. But he would miss them. He had no taste for Paris, with its quick-witted ways. Still, he might join them for a month at a time.
Frederick looked cautiously at his wife. ‘Perhaps we could try it for a year or two. Only four months at a stretch, mind.’
Mathilde planted an uncustomary kiss on his cheek. She was euphoric and as Frederick listened to the fluent stream of her plans, he grew increasingly pleased with himself. He had obviously granted his wife a long-desired wish and he had also exercised his authority by setting a limit on it. He had made her happy; and as he gradually admitted to himself, he was also making himself happy. He never felt quite at ease with Mathilde. She challenged his peace of mind with her constant queries and endless activities. And he always felt just a little bit guilty about his increasingly infrequent visits to her bedroom. This new scheme might prove satisfactory to everyone.
Frederick’s sanction obtained, Mathilde buzzed with new energy. She made a preliminary journey to Paris, reorganized the family house in Neuilly so that it was ready to receive her and her children. With the ample private inheritance she had from her mother, she also bought an apartment in the centre of Paris, near the Champs Elysées. It was this site which was to serve as the true birthplace of her new and independent identity.
Mathilde threw herself into her Paris life with the zest of a woman who had been restrained too long. No sooner had the news of her return made the rounds, than she was besieged by invitations from every quarter. In addition to her rank, her personal charm ensured that these invitations recurred. Mathilde could be seen at the opera, at the theatre, at salons where politics, or literature, or music were the focus of affairs. For the first time, she developed an interest in her appearance and in clothes. Paris was not the outskirts of Copenhagen. Top couturiers came to her home in Neuilly and the models paraded their latest designs. She indulged herself, developed a taste for high style and on occasion for the slightly outré.
Ma
thilde’s married status gave her far more freedom than she had enjoyed as a girl. She could talk to anyone and everyone about almost anything within the magic circle of the gatherings she attended. In the daytime she could, though with a little more difficulty, walk through the Paris streets alone, sit in cafés in unfashionable quarters and observe the life around her. Her predilection for these anonymous outings grew and she ventured further and further afield. What she observed both horrified and fascinated her. In the sheltered life she had led, she had always been oblivious to poverty. Now, in her wanderings, without the distance of car or carriage to shield her, its brutality confronted her daily. She took to talking to the grubby street urchins who begged centimes from her. She bought them hot chocolate and listened to their accounts of their lives. Feeling helpless, she gave away everything in her purse.
After two seasons like this, Mathilde began once again to suffer from what she perceived of as the constraints of her life. She would have liked, she thought, to train for some profession, to study at the university, to fight cases in the law courts, even to work like one of those female stenographers in solicitors’ offices. Her status, her position as Princesse Mathilde, Prince Frederick’s wife, barred her from any real activity. She began to despise her idleness, the uselessness of the chit chat she engaged in daily in her own and others’ salons. She determined to do something.
The first thing she did was to fund a residential school for her street urchins. It wasn’t, for Mathilde, a simple act of charity, performed at a distance paved by finance. She did her own research, travelled to England and Germany, consulted experts, talked to children themselves to see what it was they would prefer, and then bought in the talent she considered most progressive. It took three years to bring things to a point of readiness and she found the undertaking exhilarating. At last she was stretching herself, accomplishing something of use; even, she was prepared to admit it, taking advantage of the privileges she had so long thought did no more than confine her range of possibility.
Memory and Desire Page 10