by Gully Wells
“Elle devait nettoyer le français des ordures qu’il avait contractées dans la bouche du peuple.” Right. “She needed to cleanse the French of the garbage that had settled in the mouth of the people.” Maybe “she” would care to take on my mother next? It was hopeless. And even more hopeless were my dreams of easy camaraderie with a carefree group of fun-loving attractive young students. How could I possibly have turned up at the Sorbonne twice a week for three months and failed to speak to another person? Well, I did.
Instead of wasting my precious time lounging about in cafés, flirting, smoking Gitanes, and drinking wine, or smooching in the back rows at the movies, or going dancing in a French cave, or having dinner at that place off the rue Mouffetard, lit only with candles, or going for late-night walks along the cobbled quais, or slipping between the sheets of any unmade brass beds—instead of any of that nonsense I began a love affair with the city of my birth. And, since we both had all the time in the world, nothing between us was ever rushed. I would wander for hours on end, crisscrossing the Seine, exploring the Marais (long before it was cleaned up and made chic), admiring the seventeenth-century hôtels particuliers around the place des Vosges, and Madame Récamier’s seductive sofa in the Musée Carnavalet. Sometimes I would walk from the rue de Rennes down to the Île de la Cité where I would gawk at the heartbreaking perfection of the Sainte-Chapelle. Then I’d cross the footbridge to the Île Saint-Louis and hang about in Francette’s kitchen, drinking coffee and watching her cook—and later helping her eat—the best blanquette de veau in the world. I loved those islands, and would spend days, weeks, idling around like a true flâneuse, getting to know every alleyway, every little shop, every church, until I couldn’t take another step. Then I would collapse on a bench along one of the quais and just sit there in an exhausted trance, mesmerized by the beauty that surrounded me.
Although that megalomaniac town planner Baron Haussmann had destroyed the whole center of the Île de la Cité—a maze of medieval streets, ancient tenements, the Jewish quarter, and the brothels in the Val d’Amour—he died before he could launch his planned attack on the place Dauphine, at the western tip of the island. Secret, dark, and leafy, it is surrounded by dignified old brick houses, with shops and cafés at street level and a shady garden in the middle. One hot spring afternoon, loitering aimlessly about as usual, I found myself in the place, and in the window of a dilapidated building saw a grotesque, Botero-size cat sprawled in a patch of dusty sunlight on top of a pile of leather skins. Inside, an elderly man was seated all alone at a long wooden table, carefully tapping away with a tiny hammer at the spine of a book. The sign above the door said, “Mors Doré, maison fondée en 1876.” I longed to go inside and talk to him about his books—look at them, touch them, smell them—but instead of listening to my mother’s voice and taking a chance, I walked on by.
Forty years later I returned to the place Dauphine, no longer the least bit young or shy, and found the Mors Doré still there, completely unchanged, and finally had the conversation I wished I’d dared to have at eighteen. Another elderly man sat at the same table, and told me, with obvious pride, that he had been in the bookbinding business his entire life. “We still fix our gold leaf with egg white and heat. Nothing much has changed since the Middle Ages.” He was working on a piece of cobalt blue leather, which he flipped over, inviting me to admire the quality of the goatskin, encouraging me to touch the fur. Or do goats have hair? Who, I wondered, stroking the pelt, would want a book covered in bright blue fur—or hair—with a Schiaparelli-pink spine? But then I read the title page, and saw that it was a first edition of À Rebours, Joris-Karl Huysmans’s malevolent tale of fin-de-siècle decadence—a title that positively cries out (in pleasure) to be bound (tightly) in electric blue leather.
The place Dauphine was my refuge in the city, a secret place I could escape to, far away from the laughing crowds. And although this bosky triangle, with its narrow passage that sliced through the houses at one end, may have been an oasis of calm for me, for two of France’s great twentieth-century men of letters it represented something far more enticing. In a book about André Breton, which Francette had lent me, I learned, among other things, that he had gotten into a fistfight with a Russian who had accused all surrealists of being pederasts, that he’d had a violent argument on a boat off Martinique with Lévi-Strauss about the definition of art, that he had lived with Trotsky on an island in Mexico, and that he had declared of the place Dauphine: “It is without doubt the sex of Paris which is outlined in this shade.” Returning the book to Francette, I quoted Breton’s pronouncement, and she roared with laughter. “Malraux a dit la même chose. C’est la vérité.” Even sober, serious André Malraux, she told me, whom nobody had ever accused of being a sex-crazed surrealist, agreed with Breton and had written about the place Dauphine’s “triangular formation … and the slit which bisects its two wooded spaces.” Francette poured herself some more pastis and smiled. “Breton, Malraux, Freddie, ils sont les hommes. Qu’est-ce que tu veux?” Which I translated as, “What do you expect? All men are sex maniacs.”
One evening, when triste Monsieur Bretiane and I were having one of our customary triste dinners, the telephone rang, and Mademoiselle Mañana appeared through the swinging door and said, “C’est pour Mademoiselle.”“Pour moi?” I excused myself and ran to Monsieur’s dusty study—could the Brewer have called that idiotic woman who had given the party, tracked my mother down, begged her for my number in Paris and, at this very moment, be gazing out at the place Vendôme from his room at the Ritz? No. He had not. Instead, I heard Raymond Carr’s booming voice (he was calling from Oxford, so naturally he had to shout) asking if I would like to have dinner with some friends of his when he arrived in Paris next Friday. Of course I would. I was in love with the whole Carr family, but I loved Raymond the most. He was completely mad, and exuberant, and outrageous, and he made me pee with laughter. He also happened to be a brilliant historian. What more could a girl who had been awarded the Acne Scholarship in Modern History want?
We met on the terrace of the Café de Flore, where he was reading some Spanish newspaper, drinking whiskey and soda, no ice (“Can’t stand wine. Never could.”), and puffing away on an evil-smelling unfiltered cigarette (“Ducados, dear girl. I get them in Madrid. They’re so much better for you than those filthy English ones. Help yourself.”). After another drink or two (“I think we have time for just one more, don’t you?”) we walked down the rue de l’Université, turned left onto the rue du Bac, passed Deyrolle et Fils, where my mother bought her butterflies and beetles, and finally arrived at a honey-colored building at the end of a leafy cul-de-sac.
I wish I could remember the conversation at dinner, but all I recall were the people and the apartment. We were greeted at the front door by our host, Julian Pitt-Rivers, an English anthropologist working in Paris, who was one of Raymond’s oldest friends. (It was his brother, Michael, the handsome, gay, ex-convict gentleman farmer—married to Sonia Orwell—I had fallen for at my mother and Freddie’s wedding lunch.) His wife, a tiny dark-haired Spanish lady with a glossy pink smile on her lips, click-clacked across the parquet floor, took us both by the arm, and showed us into a large sun-dappled room. Flowering jasmine plants stood on either side of the marble fireplace, and above it an oval mirror in a gilded frame reflected the impressionistic swaying leaves and pink blossoms of the chestnut tree outside: a living, breathing Monet.
Madame poured me a glass of rosé and led me out through the French windows onto a wide, flagstoned terrace, where I was introduced to a man who looked just like one of the glass-eyed, intellectual stuffed owls I had seen in the window of Deyrolle on our way there. His name was Theodore Zeldin, and he taught French history at Oxford. But not the kind of history Monsieur le Professeur droned on about in that vertiginous auditorium at the Sorbonne. La gloire and the names of those vainglorious men—thieves, liars, and murderers for the most part—who had swaggered their way through the centuries and onto the p
ages of the history books were not what Professor Zeldin was interested in. Instead he looked at the French through the prism of their emotions, their desires, the books they read, the music they listened to, the food they ate, the jokes that made them laugh, and the men and women they loved—and hated. All of this I had learned from Freddie, who was rather old-fashioned in his own view of history and wasn’t at all sure about this newfangled approach, but had conceded that “Zeldin is a very clever young man. I am told he went to London University at fifteen and had graduated by the time he was your age now.” Far too terrified to talk to the brilliant, precocious Owl, I stood there listening as he and Raymond gabbled away, until another older gentleman came over to join us. He was wearing glasses and seemed shy like me, so, feeling a bit sorry for him, I summoned up the courage to introduce myself, and in reply he quickly bowed his head and said, “Enchanté, Mademoiselle. Claude Lévi-Strauss.” I didn’t say another word for the rest of the evening.
But that night in bed I went over every single detail: the scent of the jasmine, the bitter chocolate on top of the profiteroles, Raymond’s laugh, the living, breathing Monet, the sparkle in the Owl’s eyes, the conversation between our host and Lévi-Strauss (what they actually said had floated way above my head and up into the warm summer sky), the surreal perfection of it all. Would I, could I, ever hope to live like that?
A week later I said Au revoir and Merci beaucoup to Monsieur Bretiane, took a taxi to the Gare de Lyon, and boarded the overnight train to Toulon.
Le Coiffeur
THE SUMMER BEFORE I WENT UP to Oxford my mother rented Francette’s vertical shed to the chancellor of the exchequer. The shed was even more primitive than our house, and a great deal smaller, with a grand total of three rooms and a bathroom the size of a coffin. Why Roy Jenkins would wish to spend his vacation there—along with his wife and two teenage children—was something of a mystery. Admittedly Roy was an old friend and, as home secretary, had been Freddie’s ally in the campaign for homosexual law reform and the repeal of the death penalty, but he was also famously partial to the finer things in life, like very good claret, very grand houses, and very pretty duchesses. Francette’s shed seemed unlikely to offer him any of these pleasures.
I suppose it never occurred to my mother, with her wonderful American enthusiasm, her uncontrollable appetite for mixing people up, her scorn for convention, and her New England disapproval of luxe et volupté, that the shed and Roy might not be an ideal coupling. She just thought it would be fun to have her friends next door. Then again, maybe they were short of money. But how could a man who was in charge of the entire British economy be quite so hard up? It wasn’t terribly reassuring. But whatever the origin of this ill-fated plan, the chancellor did not last long at La Migoua. About two days after they arrived, an urgent message from the prime minister’s office summoned him back to London. Or that’s what he said. I’ve always suspected it might have been an urgent invitation from Marietta Tree in Tuscany or the duchesse de Douceur in Deauville that snatched him so cruelly from his dear friends and the cozy bosom of his family. At any rate he took off—with a far-from-enigmatic smile on his face—in a slick, black chauffeur-driven car early one morning, leaving behind his wife, Jennifer (who was immune to the siren song of dukes and Haut-Brion), and their children, Cynthia and Edward.
Shortly after the chancellor’s departure I, too, received an urgent invitation. Actually, it wasn’t especially urgent and had come about through one of Freddie’s innumerable old girlfriends. During the war he had taken up with a particularly attractive American correspondent named Polly Peabody. (Why had the war been quite so much fun for the lucky few? I would often hear Englishmen of that generation say, with admiration and just a twinge of envy, “George had an incredibly good war.” Freddie even said it of himself.) It turned out that Polly now had a daughter my age who also happened to be going up to Oxford that fall. Of course we had to meet. Serena was even prettier than her mother, tall and slim, with robin’s egg blue eyes, ludicrously long legs, and satiny blond hair. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she was also clever, funny, and extraordinarily sweet. What could she do? I knew it wasn’t her fault, and flattered myself that with my natural sensitivity and deep psychological insight I was able to see through the exquisite wrapping paper into … her equally delectable interior. We became close friends immediately. Which is how I found myself, in early August, staggering down a swaying gangplank into the blazing noonday sun of Ibiza’s harbor.
Life at Polly’s finca was altogether different from the scene at La Migoua. From the moment she woke in the morning—around ten, when the maid brought her breakfast in bed—to the moment she laid her weary but still amazingly lovely head on her downy Frette pillow at night, Polly devoted all her strength and energy—often exhausting herself—to the pursuit of pleasure. Her project was neither selfish nor solitary, so you could say she lived for others, since everyone around her was invited to join in the task she had set herself. Like Prince Azamat, she made it all seem effortless, as if her only desire in life was to make sure that her guests enjoyed themselves just as much as she always did. At the beginning of each day Serena and I would sit out on the terrace, in the shade of the grape arbor, drinking our café con leche and eating churros—deep-fried sausage-shaped pieces of dough oozing grease and sugar—with nothing more demanding to do than discuss which sublime beach we might want to visit later on. A picnic lunch would be prepared by the cook, and around noon the four of us would set off: Serena, her boyfriend, a good-looking young Englishman named Ed, myself, and Sean, the other houseguest, whose complexion, I noted with evil satisfaction, was possibly even worse than my own. Some beaches were so remote that they could be reached only after abandoning the car and following a narrow, scraggly goat track through the scrub—the boys lugging the picnic baskets, Serena and I mincing on ahead—until we finally arrived at a secret deserted crescent of sand. It was a long way from Monsieur Maurice and Bikini Beach. Tired but happy, we would return home in the late afternoon for a well-deserved siesta in our cool, darkened rooms and then awake, fully restored, in time to get dressed up for the long night ahead. It was a routine I adapted to with terrifying ease.
The only thing Serena and I ever competed over was the length of our skirts and the size of our bikinis. And since this was the summer of 1969, the only pressing question was how high and low did we dare go? On one of my marathon walks around Paris I had discovered a boutique on the rue du Cherche-Midi that specialized in the tiniest bikinis known to man. Standing there on the sidewalk, I dared myself to actually open the door, walk into the shop, brave the predatory witch behind the counter, and emerge with one of these creations wrapped in tissue paper inside an appropriately minuscule bag. If I could just do that I knew that my life that summer would be transformed. So I did. And it was. No matter that I had spent a good portion of the rent I owed Monsieur Bretiane on a “garment” that was considerably smaller than the handkerchief he used for blowing his nose and for smearing around soup stains—after he’d spat into it—on his tie. It just had to be done. As soon as I arrived in Ibiza it immediately became clear what a wise investment this had been.
As I was determined to liberate Mademoiselle Barbie once and for all, and to relegate the tiresome Mademoiselle Lévi-Strauss to the library where she belonged, the bikini acquired a talismanic importance way beyond anything it deserved. It was after all just a few scraps of gauzy fabric, tied at the sides and back with bits of string, but for me it was pure magic. Whenever I put it on men couldn’t take their eyes off me. Or so I imagined. And since wearing it was the equivalent of going naked, it was probably true. Their gaze may have been entirely confined to my body—I don’t recall any of them bothering to linger too long above the neck—but what did that matter? It had delivered on its side of the bargain. Even Serena, who had her own magical bikini—tiny white triangles joined together by three golden hoops—was impressed enough to ask where it came from. I was thrilled to be able t
o reply with a bored shrug, “Oh, it’s just something I found in a little shop on the Left Bank.”
Never before had I uttered quite such a dazzlingly sophisticated sentence. Serena barely nodded and went on basting her long bronzed legs with almond oil.
EVERYBODY ELSE WAS still getting dressed for dinner when I walked out onto the terrace just as the sun was setting. The heat from the smooth flagstones seeped through the thin leather soles of my sandals, and the scent of the chamomile plants that somehow survived in the arid chinks of the terrace wall hung in the warm evening air. I stood there wallowing in the peculiar sensation of having absolutely nothing to do—no picking basil or looking after my baby brother or decapitating sardines or setting the table or washing pots or telling Sorgue to fuck off—when I heard Polly’s little geisha footsteps tip-tapping across the living room tiles and turned around to see her standing in the doorway. With her absurdly tiny waist, flouncy skirt, and off-the-shoulder white blouse, she looked exactly like the ballerina that twirled around on top of the musical jewelry box my father had given me for Christmas when I was six.
“Darling, where are those boys, and why on earth haven’t they brought you a drink yet?”
Polly was convinced that all men had been put on this earth to do things for her. It was a concept I had slowly been groping toward myself, but I had never actually met a true believer before. She flirted, she flattered, she charmed, and men responded by making her life even more agreeable than it already was. Maybe she was onto something. Maybe if you didn’t shout at them, tell them what fools they were, and make it clear that anything they could do you could do better, they might be more likely to concentrate on giving you a good time. A novel notion, and one that I was determined to try out just as soon as I could find a man to experiment on. But the instant this heretical thought floated into my head, I heard my mother’s voice snorting in my ear, “Sure, be my guest, go ahead and let me know where it gets you.”