by Liz Byrski
Throughout the journey to the Riviera she was infected with a curiosity sparked by the gap in Eunice’s diary and her certainty that Antonia was keeping something from her. She headed for Monaco with a strength of purpose that implied arrival would bring resolution. It did not. It did, however, bring her to another place of the heart, very different from but almost as enchanting as Monsaraz. The woman she stayed with for the first two nights knew a family who had a small studio to let. By now it was October and the tourists were starting to leave the coast, the mild pine-scented air was just as Isabel had imagined it, and she knew she wanted a long stay.
‘It is very simple,’ Madame Velly explained, showing Isabel around. ‘Sometimes we have let it to an artist, once to a writer. These people like it for the quiet, you see?’
Isabel saw. The studio was at the far end of the Vellys’ walled garden, which rambled up the hillside. Fading bougainvillea and clumps of untamed geraniums pressed against the pink-washed walls, and the heavy scent of overripe fruit wafted in from the adjacent orchards. The windows looked out over the Vellys’ tastefully overgrown garden and the rooftops of Monaco, to occasional glimpses of the sea. It was an old building simply converted, a large room combining living and sleeping space, with a kitchen alcove and a small bathroom. Terracotta tiles and the minimum of furniture were appealing in their simplicity and Isabel was pleased to find it less expensive than she had anticipated. ‘We leave you alone, madame, but you come to the house whenever you wish. If you need something, always you are welcome.’ Madeline Velly smiled and pointed to a wooden gate set into the garden wall. ‘You have privacy by using that entrance, if you wish. The bus to the centre ville takes five minutes – it goes down this street. If you walk, it is twenty minutes. If you have baggage my son will collect it for you.’
The next day Isabel was unpacking, grateful once again to Sara for streamlining her wardrobe. ‘It’s all so much easier without the baggage,’ she told herself aloud as she stashed the lightweight grip on a high shelf. ‘Now I just have to work on some of the other sort of baggage.’
After a trip to the supermarket to fill the small refrigerator, and a day of organising her new surroundings and writing some letters, she set out the following day in search of the Théâtre des Beaux-Arts, following an old street map of Monaco that she had found in one of Eunice’s diaries. The theatre had figured large in her childhood imagination. Eunice’s letters were full of stories of the dancers jostling for space in the dressing rooms, the elegant decor, a problem with the lighting. And the best story of all was the one in which Eunice was presented to Prince Rainier, after the performance. ‘Fancy me meeting a real prince,’ Eunice had written home. ‘He’s a bachelor, you know, the most eligible bachelor in the world, and so charming and handsome. I heard that Princess Margaret is rather keen on him.’
‘What does that mean, Grandma?’ Isabel had asked, staring at the photograph of Eunice curtseying to the prince. ‘Illegible bachelor?’
‘Eligible, darling, not illegible. It means that the prince is looking for a wife.’
‘Does he want to marry Mumma?’ she had asked, sick with fear that the prince would carry Eunice off to his castle, never to be seen again.
‘I don’t think so, darling, but that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? You wouldn’t mind living in a nice castle in the south of France, would you?’
‘Could you and Grandad come too?’
‘Just try and stop me.’ Her grandmother smiled across at Grandad Pearson, who shook out his paper and gave a short dry laugh.
‘Queen Mother would suit your grandma very well, Izzy,’ he had said with a smile.
Sitting on a pavement seat under the palm trees, Isabel read the diary entry made a couple of days after Eunice had met Prince Rainier.
Heavens, a real prince who bowed when he shook hands, and I did my best curtsey, of course. Sylvia said he was making eyes at me – if only I! What would it be like to marry a prince? I suppose every woman who meets him thinks about it. He’s certainly a real dish. I think I could adapt to being royalty. Anyway, I mustn’t keep going on about him. Eric’s getting frightfully jealous. We’ve only known each other a few weeks, but he’s awfully smitten, poor darling. And I must admit to being pretty smitten myself. I do like all the embassy stuff, the parties and receptions. In the absence of the possibility of royal status the prospect of being the wife of a diplomat comes a good second! Dear Eric, he has such adorable blue eyes and a noble profile. God, how superficial I am – he’s actually a lovely man in every way and I think he might pop the question any day now.
Just a couple of weeks after that, Eunice was dancing again at the Beaux-Arts, in a pale green chiffon dress, and somewhere in the audience Antonia was watching her.
Despite the warmth of the day, goose bumps crept along Isabel’s arms and down her spine. Sitting there with the diary and the program was like stepping back into her mother’s life. She wanted to be inside the theatre, to sit in the auditorium just as Antonia had done, to look around and see what Antonia had seen. At first she couldn’t find the theatre. The changes in the streets since Eunice’s map was printed had her walking around in circles until she realised that she had already passed it twice, only now it was called the Princess Grace Theatre. It was late afternoon by that time and, undeterred, Isabel headed for the box office to ask if she could take a look inside. It was not a normal request, the woman at the desk told her in a clipped Parisian accent. There was a rehearsal in progress, but she would consult the manager. Did madame have a special reason for wanting to visit the theatre outside of performance times? She nodded when Isabel, in awkward French, explained that her mother had danced there with Compagnie Fluide in 1953. The woman indicated a seat and asked Isabel to wait, the manager would be with her in a few moments. She roamed the foyer impatiently, studying the history of the theatre, which was told via a series of framed photographs and accompanying text. The Beaux-Arts had been completely refurbished in December 1981 under the direction of Princess Grace. She would not, after all, be able to look upon the scene as her mother and Antonia had done.
‘Perhaps you’d like to see photographs of the theatre as it used to be,’ the manager suggested in hushed tones as he led her to the back of the theatre where some dancers were in rehearsal. His English was excellent and he seemed genuinely delighted to meet the daughter of a past performer. ‘It is beautiful now, of course, but you would like to see what it looked like in your mother’s day?’ He was too busy to spend time with her then and there was a ballet festival beginning the next day, but if she cared to return during the last week in October, the theatre archivist would be available. There would be photographs of the original theatre, performances and performers, perhaps even some of her mother. Isabel’s heart leapt at the prospect, and she thanked him profusely and made an appointment for the last week in October.
In the days that followed she could think of little else, reading over and over again Eunice’s jottings, the stories of dressing-room tantrums, good and bad audiences, parties with Eric, and drives along the steep coastal road to Antibes to an exhibition, Nice for an embassy reception, or Cannes for a jaunt on someone’s yacht. She entered into another world, a world of diplomats and dancers, a glittering, cosmopolitan one that bore no relation to her own with her grandparents. She vacillated between jealousy and the feeling, one that had haunted her since childhood, that her mother was always beyond her reach. It was almost incomprehensible that her quiet upbringing in a Perth backwater had been so closely linked to this glamorous life on the other side of the world. Perhaps if her mother had returned triumphant from Europe, bringing with her the sparkling aura of performance, it might have been different. But Eunice had returned a grief-stricken invalid.
Isabel had been bitterly disappointed when Eunice and Eric returned from Europe. Her excitement had evaporated the moment she saw them. Her mother was neither the glamorous dancer of the photographs nor the vivacious mother who had lived in the pages o
f her letters, but a thin, pale woman whose face was lined with pain and whose wheelchair was carried down the gangplank onto the Fremantle wharf by two sailors. Isabel’s jealousy was born in that moment, for as the chair was set down it was pushed to the terminal by a tall blond man in a Harris-tweed jacket, the bowl of a pipe sticking out the breast pocket. A stranger who talked like the men who read the news on the radio, and who seemed to have first claim on her mother. Poor Eric, he had shown such patience.
Years later he had told Isabel that the moment he saw her that day, in her blue coat with the velvet collar and her matching hat and white gloves, he had fallen in love with her. ‘I felt as though you were my real daughter, as though I’d always known you. I’d no idea you were going to give me such a hard time. You looked like a little angel, but you really tested my patience.’
It took at least two years before her anger, disappointment and jealousy burned itself out, before she learned to live with Eunice and Eric as they were, devoted to and dependent on each other, a couple of which she could not be a part. She had grown to love Eric as if he had indeed been her own father. Only since her mother’s death had Isabel realised how many questions she had left unasked.
Isabel spent long days in the old Monaco museum and the library, building up a picture of the life Eunice must have led. She scrolled through the newspaper archives on microfiche, struggling with the French headlines, to learn about the people who lived in and visited Monaco in the fifties: the cars they drove, the restaurants in which they ate, the clothes they wore. She walked for miles to drink tea in hotels where Eunice had drunk tea, to eat dinner in the restaurant where Eric had proposed, to search for a dress shop where Eunice had bought a wool stole, a leather shop where she had bought a handbag. She took train and bus rides exploring the coastal and inland towns, always referring where she could to something in Eunice’s diaries. A visit to a parfumerie in Grasse, a picnic spot near Antibes, a favourite beach. She even managed to locate the place where Eric’s embassy car had broken down and they had waited by the roadside for a breakdown truck to arrive from Cannes. Each time she rounded a corner to a new street or another magnificent view, she paused to wonder if it was still as Eunice would have seen it.
Within days of Isabel’s visit to the theatre Eunice’s life had become more real, more present, than her own. But still the absent months frustrated her, and she could see no way of finding out what had happened to take Eunice away from the company in Monaco for several months in 1953. By the last week in October she was in a fever of anticipation and she knew that whatever she might find at the Princess Grace Theatre would now fit into her understanding of those times.
‘You are our most welcome guest,’ the young manager told her with a smile, pressing tickets for the ballet into her hand. ‘Please take your time and Lisette will help you with anything you need.’
Dressed entirely in black with dazzling crimson lipstick that matched her dyed crimson hair, Lisette was the theatre’s part-time historian/archivist. Isabel thought she had never seen anyone look less like a theatre historian than this robust young woman whose breasts threatened to burst forth from the tight black fabric of her low-cut dress. ‘So tell me, Madame Carter, where do you wish to begin?’ Lisette asked, leading Isabel to what looked like a library reading room, the shelves packed with bound copies of old programs, file boxes full of photographs, and walls covered with photographs of performers, patrons and audiences.
And so they began with the arrival of the dance company in early February 1953. Isabel was giddy with excitement. She had to restrain herself, slow herself down to take notes and to apply the blue stickers that Lisette had given her to mark anything she wanted to copy. It was all there, the booking sheets, the performance listings, the costings, the names of the dancers, the audience numbers, the programs with Eunice’s name, sometimes on the front cover, sometimes inside, on posters and handbills, and in newspaper and magazine reviews. The company would perform for a few weeks, then there would be a different company, and then they were back again with a new program. As she turned each page Isabel felt as though she was walking behind Eunice, a fly on the wall in the dressing room, in the front row of the stalls at a performance, a silent observer at rehearsals. Constantly on the verge of tears, she was intent on drawing from the documents whatever they could tell her. But in the middle of May, Eunice’s name disappeared from the archives, only reappearing in mid October when she danced again for a few weeks before the accident cut her down.
‘There is a file,’ Lisette said thoughtfully, ‘a correspondence file. Perhaps we find the answer there.’ By now they were on first-name terms and Lisette, with the detective-like curiosity of the historian, was also anxious to fill the gaps. She scanned the correspondence archive, shaking her head as page after page revealed nothing of relevance. ‘Ah! Voilá! I have it,’ she exclaimed at last. ‘A letter from the director of Compagnie Fluide to the director of Théâtre des Beaux-Arts. Mademoiselle Eunice Pearson is to take congé … how you say … ?’
‘Leave of absence?’ Isabel volunteered.
‘Yes, that is right, leave of absence for reasons personal and of health. She goes to Lisbon for four weeks. But then, look, in this next letter here … it is made longer … extended, you say? Until fin Septembre.’
Isabel thought she might faint. ‘Personal and health reasons … does it say anything else about those reasons?’
Lisette shook her head. ‘Non. Look, you can read for yourself – it is not a difficult letter for translating.’
‘Is there anything in there when she comes back?’
‘Perhaps,’ Lisette shrugged. ‘We will see.’ And she worked her way on through the file. ‘Just this,’ she said a few minutes later. ‘Just this letter advising that she is back a little early and then her name is on the programs again. You see she comes back and within two weeks is dancing again as a soloist. So whatever this health reason she must have stayed active while she was away, or she could not dance again so quickly when she comes back.’
The two women stared at each other in confusion across the vast table now piled with files and papers. ‘You want we take a look at the photographs? I don’t know, maybe she is there, your mother. Now I too want to see her! I must look at her, I will be desolate if she is not there.’
But Eunice was there, curtseying to Prince Rainier, in a photograph so familiar to Isabel that she gasped in recognition. She was there on the stage, moving like a leaf in the wind against background swathes of white fabric, entwined with other dancers on what appeared to be a glass lake, peering into a dressing-room mirror with three other dancers, their hair tied back as they applied their make-up. There were half a dozen pictures so stunningly and purely Eunice that Isabel could not contain her tears.
Lisette brought her a glass of water. ‘We can stop, Isabel, if you want. You come again tomorrow?’
‘No, no, let’s continue. Unless you don’t have time.’
They found their way through more images. ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Isabel in a shaky voice, ‘we could look for the fourteenth of April. I know she danced on that night. Someone whom I met recently saw that performance.’
‘Here,’ Lisette said triumphantly lifting an envelope from the file. ‘This is the night.’
So this was the dress of eau de nil chiffon, this was the performance that Antonia had seen and forgotten, but for which she had kept the program. The camera had captured Eunice in arabesque, her body in a graceful arc, her head thrown back, one arm behind her, the other arched above her, her shingled hair gleaming in the spotlight.
‘Elle est tellement belle,’ Lisette breathed in admiration.
‘Beautiful, yes,’ whispered Isabel, almost unable to believe what she was seeing. ‘Are there any more for that date?’
Lisette delved into the envelope. ‘Some, yes. You want to have these rephotographed, I think, for yourself. I can arrange it for you. These … well, no, she is not on the stage but, look, here is a party, I t
hink after the performance, perhaps she is here.’
The shiny black and white prints were as sharp as the day they were taken, only the slightest yellowing at the corners proving that they were over forty years old. ‘Such good photography then,’ Lisette said, spreading the photographs on the table.
‘There’s my stepfather,’ gasped Isabel, picking up a picture of a group of people in evening dress raising their champagne glasses to the camera. ‘The fair man here, my mother married him later that year.’
Lisette turned over the photograph. ‘Yes, it is as I thought. A party after the performance on the fourteenth of April. It is here in the theatre, it seems to celebrate the birthday of the founder of Compagnie Fluide.’ She pushed the photographs across to Isabel. ‘You look through these, Isabel, I go to fetch us some coffee, and then we look in October when your mother comes back.’
Isabel drew the photographs back across the table, slipping one after the other aside to see if Eunice or Eric would show up again. She was almost at the end when she found it, a photograph of the party. In the foreground was Eric, deep in conversation with an elderly man in a dinner jacket, and further back, almost hidden by other guests, Eunice, still in the chiffon dress, champagne glass in hand, conversed with a young woman in a halter-necked dress. She picked it up, entranced at first by the sophistication of Eric’s stance, the manner in which he leaned forward to explain something to the other man, then by the long curve of Eunice’s neck, the slim arm with the hand holding the champagne glass and a cigarette in a long holder. She was so captivated by the grace of Eunice’s posture that she very nearly overlooked the other woman gazing intently into her mother’s face. A woman whose face was undoubtedly the same one into which Isabel herself had gazed so intently in the cloister at Évora. Antonia.
It was the first time in her life that Isabel had seen snow and the delicate blanket that covered the rooftops and spires of Nuremberg enchanted her. ‘You can see the pictures but nothing tells you how it feels,’ she said. ‘It’s the stillness of it, even here in the city, the snow changes everything. And the light – it’s so weird.’