Sylvie had agreed. Since she had met Jacob, her nights with Caroline had in any case lost their lustre and begun to seem like mere child’s play. But tonight she needed to elicit her friend’s desire, her focussed attention.
‘I’ve told you. It’s finished. Put your clothes back on and stop behaving like a slut.’ Caroline said vehemently. It was one of the words they had habitually used to increase their ardours.
‘Me, the slut?’ Sylvie taunted her. ‘Who was it who first seduced little innocent me? Was it this that tempted you?’ she arched a golden leg on the bed. ‘Or this?’ she cupped her full breasts with her hand. ‘Or perhaps it was this?’ she waggled a pointed tongue at Caroline. Sylvie had adopted all the gestures of the elaborate games they had invented over the years.
Jacob heard the commotion coming from the room as he was making his way quietly back to his own. He stopped despite himself to listen. He had no way of knowing that he was hearing a repeated ritual now at its end. The black cloud he had been living under during the last weeks suddenly threatened to engulf him. Had Sylvie’s interest in him been but a momentary affair? Not that he was surprised to learn of her relationship with Caroline. He had half-suspected as much. But the reality of the scene he was hearing now, his imaginings of what he didn’t see served at once to heighten the enigma of Sylvie and to cut across him with the force of despair. Pain contorted his face.
It contorted Caroline’s, too, as she looked at Sylvie who grew more wildly beautiful with each taunt. ‘Stop it, Sylvie. Stop it. Go, please go.’ Caroline turned a stubborn back on Sylvie and stared blindly out of the window.
‘Alright, I’ll go.’ It had the force of finality. Sylvie rushed from the room.
Jacob heard her from the other end of the corridor and in the momentary glimmer of light he thought she looked straight into his eyes.
The next day, when they all gathered for lunch, Julie Ezard announced in a slightly shaky voice that Sylvie was gone.
‘Where?’ Gérard looked crestfallen. ‘She didn’t tell me she was going anywhere.’
‘Women, my son,’ Emile Talleyrand pronounced in stentorian tones, ‘are not known for their advance warnings. It is something you will learn in life.’ He patted his stomach comfortably.
Gérard flushed. His father carried on regardless. ‘Why only the other day one of my papers carried a story about a woman who disappeared right in the middle of dinner - purportedly to bring in the dessert - only to turn up again as if nothing had ever happened, three years later just as dessert was being served. He stopped himself in the middle of a guffaw as he took in the faces around him. ‘But of course that was just a story…’ he added belatedly.
‘Did Sylvie say where she was going?’ Caroline asked, trying to keep her tones steady. She was shrouded in guilt. Her sharp, honest face had a sallow tinge.
‘To Paris, I imagine.’ Julie Ezard put more assurance into the statement than she felt. She turned to Jacob with an explanation which was also a plea. ‘She had said to me she didn’t want to be here this week. There was a particular concert she wanted to catch.’
Paul Ezard put a steadying arm round his wife’s shoulders. ‘We’ll phone Paris after lunch. I’m sure she’ll be at home.’
‘I’ve already done that,’ Julie said softly. ‘She’s not there. The servants haven’t seen her.’
‘She’s undoubtedly staying with a friend.’ Princesse Mathilde said forcefully. She couldn’t prevent a small tremor of glee rising in her. Sylvie’s absence would give her time.
But when she saw Jacob’s face, she realised that time might not be on her side.
Sylvie knew exactly where she was going. She sat back in the train’s cushioned seats and let its rhythmic motion hypnotize her. Nothing mattered but that sound and the countryside changing before her eyes. Green fields gave way to sun-dried earth and rocky escarpments. Orchards of peach and orange appeared, their trees heavy with fruit. Dusk fell, instantly followed by dark Southern night. She closed her eyes. Freedom. No one knew where she was. No one. Elation filled her just as it had done in those days when as a little girl she escaped into the forest, fleeing the sharp nails and slaps of an over zealous governess or the stifling hollow rituals of an afternoon party.
She left the train at Apt. The small station was eerily still. A single ticket collector stood outlined in yellow light. She was suddenly a little afraid.
‘I need to get to Roussillon,’ Sylvie announced to him.
He looked at her suspiciously from under bushy brows and shrugged, pointing towards a solitary taxi. The driver was dozing. Sylvie knocked at the window. She repeated her destination. ‘Ah non, c’est trop tard,’ the man muttered. ‘It’s too late. Tomorrow.’
‘But what am I to do?’ Sylvie was desolate.
‘There’s the hotel.’ he signalled down the street. ‘Someone might still be up.’ Sylvie followed the line of his hand and saw a dismal two-storey building with a rusty shingle announcing, ‘Hotel des Voyageurs’.
Sylvie did some quick mental calculations. If she spent the night in a hotel and then took a taxi, most of her money would be gone. She stiffened her back.
‘I’ll wait there,’ she pointed towards a wooden bench. ‘Tell me when you’re ready.’ The driver looked at her oddly as she arranged herself on the bench, then shook his head sourly. ‘Ces Parisiennes,’ he muttered, loud enough for Sylvie to hear.
When the first glimmers of morning sun lightened the sky, Sylvie approached the taxi again. The driver was gone. She was suddenly in despair. Her body ached from the hard bench. She felt dirty. More waiting. She hated waiting. A scraping sound caught her attention. Down the road, the little hotel seemed to be in motion. Tables, chairs, gaily coloured parasols were making their way onto the pavement. Coffee, Sylvie thought, brightening. With long-legged strides, she entered the little bar.
‘Ah, here is my first customer already.’ her driver stood there, peacefully sipping a vast bowl of cafe au lait.
In the morning light, Sylvie saw a small robust man. His arms against his blue shirt were strong, deeply browned. White teeth accentuated a friendly smile. She bit into a flaky croissant, still warm from the oven. Yes, she had after all been right to come.
They travelled over a narrow dusty road in growing heat, past tiny villages. In the distance, the abrupt shapes of the Provence hills broke the still air. As the earth turned from sandy yellow to rich ochre red, the driver announced, ‘Voilà, we’re approaching Roussillon’. Houses, hewn out of the red stone clustered over a hilltop, at its peak ramparts and a spire. The road rose sharply into the town, wound through it, and came down the other side into vineyards, miles of them, stretching sea green as far as the next sudden escarpment.
Sylvie’s destination was a large old ramshackle farm house in the midst of the vines. Its windows were shuttered. Everything had an ominous quiet about it. Sylvie looked to the driver for reassurance. ‘Perhaps everyone is still asleep.’
He shrugged disdainfully. ‘They’re artists, aren’t they? Parisians. I heard about them in town. They probably don’t wake up until the best of the day is over.’
‘Come in and have a drink,’ Sylvie, reassured, was generous. She knocked at the vast wooden door, while he looked at her sceptically.
‘Sylvie!’ Michel, short, bronzed, with the muscled arms of a working man, looked at her with astonishment. ‘I never thought you would make your way here.’ He pulled her to him and embraced her delightedly.
‘Neither did I, Michel.’ She clung to him for a moment. ‘Neither did I.’
Jacob stepped out of the taxi in front of the Hotel Crillon, glanced at his watch and then waited for the driver to pull away before heading off in the opposite direction. Evening traffic hummed round the obelisk of the stately Place de la Concorde. Millions of lights glittered emphasizing the darkness of the small tree-lined allée which bordered the Champs Elysées. He headed for the darkness and walked. The Princesse had summoned him. The message had arrived at
the hospital. Le Crillon: 8.30. He had no choice but to come and he needed to arrange his thoughts before meeting her. He realised it must be all but her last day in Paris and that he had behaved badly. Since that dismal weekend in Fontaineblau, he had made no attempt to get in touch with her. It was cowardly of him, he knew. But he also knew that there was nothing he could say to her, nothing she would want to hear. He couldn’t pour out his agonies about Sylvie who had still made no sign. And apart from that, he seemed to have no feelings. Only an intensity of work kept him going.
There is nothing so difficult, Jacob reflected, as telling a woman you respect that your passion for her has died. When hers so evidently hasn’t. It would have been so much simpler if the Princesse’s inner clock had been tuned to his or vice versa. On impulse he made a dash back to the Crillon, found the boutique he remembered and selected a fine but simple platinum watch which he thought the Princesse amongst all her riches might not despise. He wrote out a card, ‘Always, with us, a question of time and timing. My love, Jacob.’ He paused next at the florists and chose a vast bouquet of roses, velvet red and iceberg white. He asked that these, together with the watch be delivered immediately to the Princesse’s room. Fifteen minutes later, Jacob followed.
‘I thought you might not come,’ Princesse Mathilde opened the door herself.
‘I always come when you call for me. I shall always come,’ Jacob said simply. ‘You mean a great deal to me. I think you know.’
She looked at him hesitantly for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said. Then, ‘I think I do. Thank you for this,’ she lifted her slender wrist and allowed her gift to catch the light. ‘I shall treasure it.’
‘Yes, time needs treasuring.’
‘We have tonight. A whole night. It is a great deal to treasure.’ she murmured. She had the look of a woman struggling to reconcile her fate and her desires. Her composure embued him with awe.
They stood by the windows and looked out on the splendour of the Place de la Concorde and the long swathe of the Champs Elysées leading to the triumphal arch. ‘Our city,’ the Princesse said.
Jacob had the sudden urge to take her in his arms and hold her slender form. Her face above the warm peach tones of her swirling summer dress held such sadness and yet was so contained in its emotion. It was like this splendid room, rich in the memory of history, and yet discreet.
She led him to a softly lit corner where a small round table had been intimately set. She gestured towards a silver bucket which held two bottles of champagne.
‘For the rest, tonight, I shall serve you myself. I thought you wouldn’t mind a cold dinner.’ A teasing smile flew over her expressive features, ‘like on our picnics, but with great gleams of silver.’
Jacob poured and they lifted their glasses to each other.
‘So, my friend,’ the Princesse said, once they were seated. ‘It is over between us.’
Jacob shrugged. ‘So it would seem.’ He suddenly felt in this room which floated above Paris that he had moved out of time. A muted ache, somewhere in the region of the heart, reminded him of Sylvie, of the agonies of the past months. They seemed strangely distant. He held the Princesse’s eyes. ‘But you are weaving a spell around me.’
She caught his mood. ‘Only for tonight. Tomorrow I shall be gone.’
Jacob didn’t contradict her. They were silent for a moment. She lifted silver lids to expose an array of seafood, oysters, lobster, arranged on a fairy-tale landscape of ice.
‘I know I have always asked the impossible of you,’ Mathilde said after a pause. ‘It was selfish of me.’
Jacob shook his head adamantly. ‘No, I accepted the conditions. It is not because of anything you have done or said that…’ he threw his hands up, unwilling to finish his sentence. ‘It is simply in the way of things,’ he finished lamely.
‘And this child you have taken up with. Will she make you happy?’ As soon as she had said it, Mathilde realised it had been the wrong thing to say. Jacob had made no confessions to her, named no names. He had simply intimated and she had surmised the rest. His face was dark now, brooding. He avoided the specificity of her question.
‘We all carry a child within us,’ he said his tone abrupt. ‘Sometimes that child’s needs may seem peculiar, even to ourselves.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Mathilde let it go. ‘I didn’t invite you here to pry.’
He answered her now. ‘Yes, Sylvie is a child. But she is also a woman. I want both. And no, I don’t know whether she will make me happy.
The name was now between them, a stumbling block. The Princesse leapt over it. ‘I’ve known her for years, you realise. I knew her parents.’
‘And you don’t approve,’ Jacob taunted her. ‘Say it.’
The Princesse paused for a moment. Then she gave him one of those ravishing smiles which lit her face with intelligence. ‘If I were a man, I might approve. She is exceedingly beautiful. But I am a woman…’ she lifted her hands in the air with a little helpless gesture.
Jacob laughed, ‘Something I’m presumably supposed to have forgotten.’ He stood to his full height and stretched his arms out to her. ‘Come here, Madame la Princesse and let us see if I can revive the memory.’
He kissed her with leisurely relish and something in the slow voluptuousness of her hands in his hair, the little moans, reminded him. He lifted her in his arms, ‘If Madame la Princesse would not feel her dignity was at stake in directing me to the bedroom, I might just rise to the occasion of memory…’ He bathed them both in his irony.
‘My dignity,’ she smiled, meeting him, ‘has rarely been an issue between us.’
‘No,’ Jacob said lightly, ‘there has always been far too much else.’
He left her in the early hours of the morning, sorry to be away from the glow of her warmth. But they both knew it was over.
‘Our last night has perhaps been worthy of us,’ she said, looking him directly in the eyes.
Jacob nodded, squeezing her hand. ‘Thank-you my friend, he said.’
Two weeks later, Caroline rang Jacob. ‘I’ve got to see you right away,’ her normally soft voice was fraught. ‘It’s about Sylvie.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I can’t talk now. I’ll meet you at the Café de la Paix in half an hour,’ she rang off.
‘You’ve got to go and get her,’ Caroline looked at him earnestly, from across the table. She wrung her serviette with stocky fingers. ‘You’ve got to.’
‘Tell me again what Michel St Loup said to you.’ Jacob lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
‘That he was worried about her. That she was behaving strangely. That he didn’t know what to do.’
‘Why didn’t he ring the Ezards?’ Jacob interrogated her.
Caroline shrugged impatiently. ‘Presumably he didn’t want to worry them. He said he’d found my number in her notebook.’
‘Why didn’t he ring me?’
Caroline looked away. ‘I don’t know. I…’ She wrung her hands, lit one of his cigarettes nervously and started to cough. ‘She told him she didn’t want to see you. You were the last person in the world she wanted to see.’
Jacob flinched. ‘But you think I should go,’ he said after a moment. ‘Rather than you?’ he looked at the girl with the sharp, serious face with a glimmer of suspicion. Did she realise that he had found her and Sylvie out?
‘She doesn’t mean half of what she says,’ Caroline said bluntly. Her eyes stirred with memory. ‘I know she doesn’t. She’s always saying things she doesn’t mean.’ They gazed at each other for a moment, both suddenly acutely aware of the bond their shared love for Sylvie created between them.
‘Look, I’ll go with you if you insist,’ Caroline offered, ‘but I think from what Michel says, I may be out of my depth. And I suspect this has something to do with you. Please.’
‘Yes, of course I’ll go.’ Jacob rose. He knew, as he spoke that he couldn’t in any case have stayed away.
Within an hour, he had rung his assi
stant, explained that he would have to be away for a few days, given detailed explanations of what needed to be done in his absence, packed a small bag, and set off into the night. He drove relentlessly until his eyes threatened to close. Then he pulled up on the side of the road and dozed restlessly for a few hours. By mid-morning he was in Roussillon.
The picture that met his eyes when he approached Michel’s farmhouse through the sun-warmed courtyard was one that stayed engraved on his mind for the rest of his life. The sitting room windows were flung open to the morning air and white tulle curtains moved lazily in the breeze. Michel, darkly brooding, was sitting by his easel. He jabbed at a large canvas where thick dabs of paint had half-formed an image. In front of him, half-reclining in a cane chair, Sylvie sat. She was bare to the waist; a long loose skirt trailed round her legs. Her head was flung back in abandon, her long hair reaching almost to the floor. Her eyes were half-closed and Jacob could just glimpse their stark blueness. The atmosphere reeked of intimacy.
Jealousy hovered over him and settled in a scowl on his face. Caroline had misinformed him. There was no need for him here.
‘Hello, Michel. Hello, Sylvie,’ he said in a voice too loud. ‘I trust I’m not disturbing you too much.’
‘Jacob,’ his friend dropped his brush and rushed over to him. ‘How good to see you,’ he shook Jacob’s hand with apparent warmth. ‘Sylvie, Jacob is here,’ he enunciated the words with care as if speaking to a small child. ‘Jacob,’ he repeated.
Sylvie didn’t stir. Only her eyes opened a little wider.
Michel walked over to her and shook her.
‘Leave her,’ Jacob commanded, his tone threateningly low.
Memory and Desire Page 15