by JH Fletcher
CHAPTER THIRTY
1
Lucia would never have believed she could miss Jacques so much, yet the emptiness of the air at her side, the absence of his being, was with her always. The nights were the worst. She stroked her own body and tried to pretend that it was his hands caressing her, but it was no use. Each morning she woke to a desolate world. She mooched through the first hours. She had a bath, got dressed. She picked at breakfast. She was sorry for herself. She did nothing.
After three days she said: ‘No!’
She would no longer tolerate in herself what she would have found contemptible in anyone else. She had no choice, in any case. Life, with Jacqui or without him, still had its demands. Her diary was full far into the future and she would not disappoint her public.
Rain or fine, she walked briskly for an hour through the London streets. She worked through a series of increasingly severe exercises. She watched each mouthful she ate. The kilos began to melt away. She willed herself to be strong. She needed to be. She was recording Madama Butterfly; when that was out of the way she was due in New York where she was scheduled to sing Tristan at the Met, followed by a guest television appearance on the CBS station.
She made herself do it and it worked.
At the Metropolitan Opera she had one of the greatest triumphs of her career: twenty-seven curtain calls while flowers fell like hail and the normally stony-faced New York audience skinned hands and throats with the frenzy of their applause. Monty was besieged by offers from Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco. She spent Christmas in New York with the conductor Fausto Cleva and his family. It was a glittering affair with warmth and laughter and snow drifting out of a dark sky. On Boxing Day they went out with sleds; the air crackled with frost and it was like being a child again. On New Year’s Eve she flew back to London. She had two more weeks’ recording, then was due back in Italy. She’d still heard nothing from Milan, where Sciotto was reported to be having a huge success, but Verona, Venice and Rome were on the itinerary, as well as a radio concert in Turin. She’d read somewhere that the medieval English king Henry II had never slept two nights running in the same bed; Lucia knew how he must have felt. Next stop, Rome.
2
Lucia was getting ready to leave for the opera house when Jacqui phoned her.
She was delighted; then she stood by the picture window of her suite overlooking the Spanish Steps, the city lights beginning to gleam out of the darkness, and listened as he told her he was about to vanish out of her life.
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re sending me to Indochina. I told you, remember?’
When he had first mentioned it she’d been pleased because it had eased her guilt over her concerns for her own career, but now she was hungry for him again.
‘Why does it have to be you?’
‘I’ve got good credentials. I’m a colonial who hates colonialism.’
‘When will you be back?’
‘Depends what I find when I get there. Could be anything up to a year, I suppose.’
‘But that’s terrible!’ What made it even worse, he seemed a lot less concerned about it than she did.
‘Hey, don’t sound like that! You should be pleased. It’s a wonderful opportunity for me. This could be a defining moment in Asian history and I shall be there to see it.’
But what about us?
Somehow she managed not to say it. Instead she said: ‘So you want the French to lose? Your own people?’
The idea didn’t seem to trouble him. ‘Of course I want them to lose. Plenty of people will say I’m a traitor but I can’t help that. History will show I’m right.’
Jacques inhabited a different world from her, a world of judgements and certainties so absolute they frightened her. How could he be so sure of everything when she felt sure about nothing?
‘I’d been hoping you’d be able to fly down to join me for a couple of days,’ she said. ‘I’m thinking of buying a house.’
‘In Rome?’
‘Outside Siena. There’s a farmhouse there.’ She would have liked to say how she wanted his opinion because she was buying it for both of them. She dared not, fearing he might accuse her of trying to capture him.
He laughed; she guessed he thought the idea ridiculous, or at least eccentric. ‘When on earth will you have the time to live there?’
‘Whenever I can.’
‘I can’t make it, anyway. I’m leaving tomorrow.’
She had wanted to tell him how she had felt in Gentile, how a secure base in her gypsy-like world would give her such comfort. Put off by his excitement at the prospect of a new world waiting only for him, she decided to say nothing. Not that there would have been time to talk of such things, in any case.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said.
She reminded herself that he had phoned her; that was something.
‘Make sure you let me have your address.’ She would have liked to tell him how she loved him and would miss him, would look every day for his safe return, but she sensed how anxious he was to get to grips with what he had called the defining moment in Asian history. Asking for his address wasn’t much but it was the most she was willing to offer in the face of his evident distraction; she, too, had her pride. Afterwards, seated in the car taking her to the opera house, she thought again about all the things she had not told him. Pride had come into it, certainly, but there had been something more potent than pride. She had been afraid that telling him her feelings would have turned loss to pain.
3
She was determined to come to terms with Jacques’ absence.
In a gesture of defiance at the fate that separated them, she went ahead and inspected the farmhouse in the hills outside Siena. The hills were densely forested and, when the wind was in the right direction, the scent of the pine trees blew coolly from the plantation on the other side of the valley. The house and outbuildings were constructed of local stone, as warm and brown as honey. Against one wall a scramble of orange bougainvillea spread an exotic brightness. It reminded her very much of the villa at Gentile and she fell in love with it at once. She thought how delighted Jacques would be when she showed it to him. The thought that one day he would be back excited her, not that there seemed the slightest prospect of that happening yet. The house was called, most appropriately, La Fattoria Tranquilla, the Farmhouse of Tranquillity. She made an offer, it was accepted and the next weeks became a riot of builders, gardeners, interior decorators, the fattoria far from tranquilla during the renovations.
There were other ways to occupy her spare time. She, who had never had any interest in politics or French colonialism, took to reading Le Travailleur, Jacques’ paper, because it made her feel closer to him. The paper was well known for its communist sympathies; on Stalin’s death, a year ago, every page had carried a black border, and now Jacques’ reports, appearing under his own byline, were extremely critical, not only of the conduct of the war, but of the French presence in Indochina. A month earlier, like other French newspapers, it had been full of reports of the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the French stronghold in Vietnam. There were prophecies of imminent French defeat; it began to look as though the comments Jacques had made in Gentile had been right. His own contributions in Le Travailleur were particularly scathing.
General Navarre, commander-in-chief of the French forces, is on record as doubting the possibility of France finally winning what from the first has been a war of liberation. The General’s political judgement is clearly superior to his negligible military skills. With the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the last desperate hopes of a military victory are indeed lost. All that remains is for France to withdraw, quickly and finally, from a territory in which it has no business to remain.
4
Jacqui sent her his address. Lucia wrote to him regularly about her appearances in this and that opera, and the house in the Siena hills that she hoped would be ready for him by the time he returned. In reply she received one or two aerograms, hastily sc
rawled, then nothing. She told herself he was in the middle of a war but anxiety gave her no peace. The situation in Vietnam was clearly falling apart; there were reports of mounting casualties among civilians as well as soldiers. Jacques’ byline still appeared regularly but they could fake that, couldn’t they, if they wanted to hide his death? She took to reading his reports with extra care, looking for changes in style that might indicate he had not written the article at all. Eventually she could stand it no longer and phoned his newspaper in Paris. Their bland assurances did nothing to soothe her fears.
‘May I ask who’s calling?’
She would not say. She knew only too well what would be the outcome if she did.
OPERA STAR SEEKS MISSING LOVER
That, she didn’t need. She was filled with the same deadly mixture of optimism and doubt she had known before. After all the things that had happened in her youth she had no belief in permanence, yet she longed for it. She was frightened of losing happiness, which was why she would not allow herself to think about it. She would carry on with her life. Jacques would return and they would find a way of resolving the demands of their two careers. She was like a blindfolded acrobat walking a tightrope high above the earth. She had to trust each step she took because the alternative was death.
5
Lucia stepped onto the farmhouse terrace and looked out across the green tranquillity of the Siena hills before walking down the steps to the pool. She swam vigorously for half an hour, finishing off with the daily workout that kept her body trim. Now that she had finally got rid of the fat that had plagued her, she was determined there would be no backsliding. It was a clear day in midsummer with a promise of heat later. She had three weeks of blessed freedom before her and later that morning would be driving to the airport to meet the man who was coming to spend time with her in the peaceful beauty of the Siena hills.
6
It had been a horrible time.
The Vietnamese peace conference had begun the previous July; when North Vietnam had achieved its independence in November, she had allowed herself to hope that Jacques would now come home.
He had not. At least he’d written to her at last, yet the tone of his letter, which she had expected to be triumphant at colonialism’s defeat, had been sour and disillusioned. She knew better than most how war did strange things to people; she had found herself wondering what could have happened to change him from the confident man he had been before. More and more she had felt out of touch with him; Saigon was no more than thirty hours away, yet seemed much further. Even in the early days he had told her next to nothing of his experiences; he’d said he’d been a front-line observer in a number of actions but had provided no details. Even with the war over he had still said nothing of what he was doing or his plans for the future. She had continued to buy Le Travailleur but seldom saw his byline or, indeed, anything about the newly independent country at all. Then, late in May, he had written to say that the paper was bringing him back to Paris. What happened after that would be up to his editor but it looked as though his Far Eastern tour might be over at last.
Thank God!
She could have danced, yet had been too exhausted to dance. Jacques was safe; that was all that mattered.
Three weeks later he had phoned her in Rome. She had clutched the phone and instructed herself not to weep.
‘Where are you? Paris?’
Already she’d been making plans to fly up and see him. Just to hold him … Yet it had seemed he wasn’t in Paris at all.
‘Algiers? What are you doing there?’
‘I stopped off to see my father. Algeria’s going to be the next flashpoint, you know.’
‘When will you be home?’
‘This is my home.’
It had surprised her how much that hurt. He must have sensed he’d said the wrong thing; he had tried to make amends.
‘Ever buy that house you were after?’
Which had only made things worse.
‘I told you all about it in my letters!’
‘Did you? I’m sorry. I had a lot on my mind in those days.’
No doubt that was true, yet his casual words had chilled her.
‘Come and see it. I bought it for both of us, after all.’
And she had waited anxiously for his reply.
‘Sounds good. When?’
‘When suits you?’
‘Any time. I’ve a stack of leave owing.’
‘The beginning of August, then. Stay as long as you can. Stay for ever!’
7
A month to go. Three weeks.
She was in Geneva, at dinner after the first performance of I Puritani. There Was the usual party: director Dubois and his wife, the general manager of the opera, the Cambodian conductor Khieu Pen, the tenor Corelli, one or two friends.
The waiter came, bowing.
‘Telephone, Madame …’
She took the proffered receiver.
‘Lucy?’
It was Jacques.
She smiled with her whole face, not caring who saw her. ‘Where are you?’
‘Paris.’
‘It’s wonderful to hear from you.’
Three weeks, she thought. Finish up here, go to Verona, then Siena. Her expectations were golden; the thought of being with him again at last made the breath catch in her throat. Then something in his voice stilled her joy.
‘What is it, Jacqui?’
‘This trip to Siena … I won’t be able to make it.’
Her voice hardened despite her efforts. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Something’s come up.’
He was saying something about Algeria, his father … She knew already from the papers that the insurrection there was out of control; before they knew it the whole country might be at war.
‘I have to be there!’
It was what he had told her about Indochina.
‘The paper’s sending me over. It’s the chance of a lifetime. I can’t afford to miss it.’
She was listening, yet not listening, his voice running like a motor behind the sharpening realisation that once again her dreams were dust because of this man. She had told herself they would have to find a way of reconciling their two careers. It would mean compromise but it seemed he was not interested in that. The chance of a lifetime …
He clearly regarded his career as more important than their future together.
‘Lucy?’
Rage flared. She did not speak. She put down the phone on his excuses.
8
After Arturo’s betrayal, the abandoned Elvira flings her despair furiously into the face of the fate that has so cruelly used her.
O rendetemi la speme, o lasciatemi morir!
Again the English words cried in Lucia’s head: Oh, give me back my faith or let me die!
Lost in a world of fantasy and pathos, she was no longer able to distinguish between Elvira and Lucia. They were one in the wrong that had been done them. She heard her voice, her sorrow flowing like blood.
Vien diletto, è in ciel la luna …
Come beneath the sky and moon: the notes falling, now ecstatic, now with an echo of returning joy, finally with the drum beat of ultimate abandonment.
9
For the benefit of her table companions and for her own pride, she smiled her way through the rest of the meal. Once or twice she even laughed, while her heart bled. After supper she returned to the hotel, found her suite, her feet beginning to blunder as they sought the bed.
She lay down fully clothed. She gazed at the ceiling. At nothing. She remembered a poem she had read long ago. The words ran over and over in her head.
You promised you’d write: no letter.
You promised you’d call: no phone.
You promised you’d stay true and faithful
And each time I turned round you were gone.
You went for a walk with your lover,
You told me you had to be free,
And the flame that yo
u lit when you did it
Left just ashes of you and of me.
After a while she got up. Meticulously she undressed. She hung up her dress, rolled down her tights while the tears rolled down her face. Again she lay down. She did not sleep. Eventually, through the window of the hotel room, came the first grey desolation of the dawn.
10
The farmhouse was ready. She squeezed a visit between performances. She phoned her mother to invite her to stay for a week. She returned to Geneva, she scoured the shops for things she did not need, she accepted invitations to parties that at other times she would not have dreamt of attending. Anything to keep herself from thinking, from feeling.
Two weeks later she had lunch with Khieu Pen, who had expressed interest in having her sing in Lyons. When they had finished their business, they talked about other things.
‘The season’s nearly over. Will you be going back to Cambodia for a holiday?’
‘No. There are still things I have to do in Lyons.’
His voice carried an eastern chime that gave individuality to his fluent French. Lucia found it charming, as she did the conductor himself, who had far exceeded all their expectations. Khieu Pen was lithe, slender, with pale bronze skin, black hair swept back and twinkling eyes. He was dressed like a million dollars, yet stylishly, without ostentation.
During the days since Jacqui’s phone call she had watched him closely, as she had watched everyone else about her, not with desire or even particular interest, but because of her unspoken hope that meticulous attention to the present might protect her from memories of what had passed, what had been her expectations for the future.
Jacqui had phoned from Algiers; she had refused to speak to him. He had written; she had held the letter, turning it in her hands, before putting it away in her suitcase. She would not read it, nor would she return it. Let him wonder, she thought. Let him never know.