Where to Find Me

by Alba Arikha

  That night, I jumped into a taxi and went out to a pub alone, something I had never done before. I knew the pub, the French House in Soho, because I had been there several times with Vivian and my friends from the Slade. Fletcher had never liked it. He deemed it too pretentious, because of all the artists and writers who frequented it, which was all the more reason for me to go there.

  I wore a woollen skirt, a flattering blouse, black baby-doll pumps and a few dabs of Shalimar. I covered up the scars on my face with foundation cream, a habit I was to keep for many years. I sat at the bar and ordered a Tom Collins, then another. A man asked if he could join me. I said yes. He wore a dark suit and an expensive watch. He spoke English with a thick accent and turned out to be French. His face wasn’t handsome, but it was confident and strong. I like strong faces. I pretended to be English, and he believed me. I told him that my parents were Polish, but that I had been brought up here. He asked where in Poland, and I said Cracow. He was from Rouen, he explained, a manager at Colgate-Palmolive. At one point in the conversation he expressed surprise that I didn’t want to know more about France. “Most of the ladies do,” he volunteered. I told him that I had been there a couple of times, though never to Rouen, which was the truth. Then I asked him about his home town, and he appeared satisfied. I may even have betrayed my roots when I mentioned Flaubert, who had immortalized the region in Madame Bovary. “How do you know Flaubert is from Rouen?” he asked, looking surprised.

  “I read books,” I declared firmly. “And I love Flaubert.”

  We stayed in the pub talking and drinking until closing time. Then he walked me home. I spent the night with him. He was a very good lover. The last man I had made love with was Fletcher, three years back. But Fletcher wasn’t a good lover. He just thought he was.

  In the morning, the Frenchman was about to leave when he stopped in his tracks. He had noticed the books on my shelves. “Do you speak French?” he asked, in our native language.

  “No,” I answered back, in English. “The books are not mine. They belong to my roommate. She’s French.”

  The man left and tried to contact me a few more times, but I declined to see him again.

  *

  By a strange coincidence, one of the teachers at the Slade wrote to me about a job she knew of, teaching French. The man who ran the school, Andrew Burr, was her cousin, and they were looking for teachers. Was I interested?

  I went to meet Mr Burr and he hired me.

  The school was a mediocre one for foreign students in Bloomsbury. The pay wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. I had never taught before, and I did so mechanically, as if the room were empty and I were talking to myself. I cannot recall what those students looked like or what they said. All I know is that after one month I was called into Mr Burr’s office and told that I wasn’t fit for the job. “The students say that you can teach all right, but you don’t look at them when you give your classes and you don’t speak to them,” he told me. “It’s like you’re talking to yourself. Never heard anything like it,” he added scratching his chin. “Anyway, Ms Baum, fact is, in our school we have standards to maintain. We believe in the rapport” – he stressed the word – “between teacher and student, that sort of thing. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Andrew Burr had a large face. When he smiled, it accentuated the small, pearl-like beads of sweat on his brow. He was coarse, but he was kind. “But because you’re a friend of my cousin, I’m going to help you out here.” He grabbed a mint from a tray and popped it into his mouth. “My colleague is looking for a researcher,” he continued, sucking on his mint. “She’s writing a book about some French writer, can’t remember who. Some famous one, though. Would that interest you? And you can do all the daydreaming you want, because no one will be there to watch you,” he chuckled.

  And that’s how I found my peace. Doing research for someone else, about Paul Valéry, as it turned out. The writer, an American woman who wore too much make-up, paid me handsomely for my work, which she declared “faultless”. To this day, she doesn’t know how grateful I am to her. How, by losing myself in another place and time, I was able to regain something I had lost: a modicum of dignity, of self-assurance. I began reading again, and listening to music, nineteenth-century pieces mostly. I wouldn’t say that I was entirely cured by the time Vivian introduced me to Henry, but I wasn’t far off. I nearly didn’t go to hear him play, because I was feeling tired, but she insisted. “Henry Dobbs is a great pianist,” she said. “And you’re always tired.”

  So I made the effort and met Vivian at Wigmore Hall, and we took our seats in the third row. I looked at the programme. The first piece was Fantaisie-Impromptu, Op. 66, by Chopin. I knew the piece well. I listened to it often.

  Henry Dobbs appeared on stage with a thick mop of white hair. He walked slowly towards the piano and sat down. Then he began to play, and his hands flew over the piano like small birds. I was transfixed.

  The melody glided in and out, with crystal-clear dexterity and lightness of touch. In the middle section it slowed down and swelled, like a wave rising into a place of great beauty, then crashing and rising again, against all the odds, challenging everything I had believed possible until now.

  I closed my eyes and began to cry.

  His fingers were singing.

  Later we went backstage, and Vivian introduced us. It was as if we had always known each other. That’s what I felt when I met Henry. I didn’t tell him, but I didn’t need too. He admitted later that he had felt the same way: the irrefutable certitude that I was the one. That he had been waiting for me all his life.

  “Your ship’s come in,” said Vivian.

  12

  Henry was fifteen years older than me. He had only been in love once, with a young violinist, Sonia, who left him a month before their wedding. “She fell in love with another man,” said Henry. “It was a bit of a shock.”

  He devoted the next eight years to his musical career, and to the care of his ageing parents. There were few women during that time, “maybe one or two, nothing serious”. When his parents died, he inherited their Chelsea house, where he now lived. “Now you’ve come along,” said Henry, smiling at me. “And you’ve messed up all my tidy little plans.”

  Henry and I got married on a spring day, in a small ceremony at Chelsea Town Hall. I wore a white dress and flowers in my hair. Henry wore a suit. Aside from our witnesses and Henry’s siblings, we had each invited four close friends. Afterwards we went to Claridge’s for dinner. We drank several glasses of champagne, and Henry ordered caviar for everyone. Around midnight we excused ourselves and checked into our room. We made love all night, and Henry later admitted he had never experienced a night of passion before. “Sonia was not a passionate woman,” he said.

  The next morning, after breakfast, we returned to our new house in Chelsea, and Henry went back to practising the Mendelssohn piano trio he was to perform the following week.

  In the middle of his practice he got up and came to find me. I was writing in this notebook. He stood in the doorway and looked at me tenderly.

  “I want to tell you that I’ve never been happier than I am today,” he said. “I am very lucky to have you in my life.”

  *

  Luck. Henry brought me plenty of it. I lived a life I couldn’t possibly have dreamt of before I met him. We travelled round the world, stayed in good hotels, had friends in high places. I never missed a performance of his, except for Israel and China. After China he got tired. He declared he would no longer play in public. He was nearly seventy and worn out. We had moved to our house in Notting Hill by then. Our fussier friends had disapproved. Why have you left Chelsea? Why in the world would you want to live anywhere else? “My wife likes ‘else’,” Henry chuckled. “And I like to do as my wife says.”

  We were happy in that house. Henry perhaps less so than me ini
tially, but only because, as he was the first to admit, “I’ve never set foot outside a predictable neighbourhood.”

  Notting Hill’s unpredictability caught him by surprise. If he found the adjustment difficult, which I suspect he did, he kept it mostly to himself, although he did complain about “those West Indian marauders”. His priority, as he often reminded me, was to take care of me. “I never thought I would find love again,” he once admitted. “Certainly not with a woman like you.”

  He showered me with gifts and compliments. He worried about my health, my state of mind. He was the most delicate and sensitive of men, and I honoured him for it.

  If my love for him was more subdued than his for me, I made up for it by offering encouragement and praise. I admired Henry’s talent. I was proud of being Mrs Dobbs. I kept nothing from him except for my past. I never told him about Maurice. I couldn’t. My son’s existence was part of an underworld no one could enter but me. And I feared Henry might judge me if he knew the truth. I couldn’t take that risk, nor did I ever feel compelled to do so. But I did open up to him about my childhood and my parents, my time in Palestine. I think he found it intimidating, “too monumental”, as he put it, so we seldom discussed it, although the subject of Ezra often came up. “Did you love him?” he wanted to know. I gave him an honest answer, but I could tell that it made him uncomfortable, so we agreed it was best to avoid the subject.

  But after a few years Henry began asking questions again. He wanted to know more about my parents and their history. “I can’t imagine what they must have gone through,” he said. “And I can only guess how painful it must have been for you.” We talked about it, but superficially. By then, I was the one who was reluctant. Many years had gone by, and although the pain hadn’t diminished, the desire to discuss it had. So, after a while, Henry stopped asking altogether. He was good that way. And I was grateful for his understanding, even though I knew that he probably continued to conjecture. Another man might have insisted, but not Henry. Whatever he felt, he kept it to himself. He never lost his patience or his temper – at least not in front of me. Except once.

  We were on our way to New York. He was to perform at Carnegie Hall. If I remember correctly, the programme was Mozart, Alban Berg and Shostakovich. The evening was sold out. I was happy and excited for him, but he was nervous. He always was before performances – especially when playing Shostakovich – and before flying.

  The plane was leaving from Heathrow. Henry wanted to buy a good bottle of Scotch for our friends the Walhams, patrons of Henry’s who lived in a sprawling apartment on Park Avenue. I had already been to the duty-free shop, so I told Henry I would wait for him in the First Class airport lounge. Henry never flew anything but first class, as befitted his status as a world-famous concert pianist. And I enjoyed every minute of it. Vivian had once asked me whether I didn’t find it embarrassing, the notion that everything I had once stood for had gone out of the window when I met Henry. That I had become a “kept woman”.

  I confessed to being utterly bewildered by her comment. What did she mean by “what I had once stood for?” And what window and why should I be embarrassed? Henry worked hard, harder than anyone I knew. He was an astonishingly good pianist, and people paid lots of money to hear him play. If anything, I was proud. Deeply proud of him. “And surprised you would say such a thing,” I added. “I’m as much a kept woman as he’s a kept man. We keep each other happy.”

  Vivian looked upset. “You used to be like a hippy. You were an artists’ model, a cool French girl with integrity.”

  “Until you introduced me to Fletcher,” I snapped. “I didn’t lose my integrity, but I lost something else.”

  “You cannot blame me for what happened between you and Fletcher,” she said, looking upset.

  “Well, don’t accuse me of having lost my integrity, then,” I answered coldly. “Let me enjoy my life as it is.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, “yes, of course.”

  “And you married a doctor,” I added. “You’re hardly well placed to judge.”

  I didn’t hear from Vivian after that.

  Henry returned from the duty-free shop empty-handed and looking very distressed. His well-pressed trousers and polished shoes appeared to be covered in something. As he approached, I could see and smell what it was: vomit.

  In all our years together, I had never seen him look so upset. He spoke heatedly as he recounted what had happened. He was queuing at the till, he said, waiting to pay for his Scotch. Ahead of him was a woman with a little girl. The woman looked harried and unhappy. The child must have been three or four. She was very pretty, the total opposite of her mother, who kept mentioning her name. “Stay still, Donna! Smile at the lady, Donna!” Donna had blond, curly hair and wore earrings, which marred the prettiness, he thought. She was dressed in pink and clutched a fur animal. She looked at Henry, and her face suddenly turned white. “My tummy,” she whined.

  The next thing Henry knew, Donna was vomiting all over the floor and on his trousers and shoes. A few women from the duty-free shop rushed to the scene with paper towels and kept asking Henry if he was all right. “I’m not bloody all right!” he shouted, as Donna’s mother stood looking at him, saying nothing. Not even “I’m sorry”. Nothing. “Vulgar, rude woman,” said Henry, his voice quivering.

  Donna began to cry and vomited again, and Henry fled the scene.

  Now he was in the bathroom cleaning himself up. I waited outside for him to reappear. When he did, his trousers were all wet, and his shoes had regained their previous shine. But Henry was still cursing the woman and her daughter all the way to the aeroplane. “It was hardly the child’s fault,” I ventured, as we sat down in our seats. “Don’t be so harsh on her.”

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “She was a sweet little girl. But you know about me. I’ve never liked children much. Thank goodness we didn’t have a child – I don’t think I could cope. I really don’t. That vomit, Flora. All that vomit…”

  Now it was my voice that began to quiver. “Adults get sick too sometimes, Henry. You can’t blame the child. It was hardly her fault, “ I repeated. “And for what it’s worth, I think that children are lovely. I would have liked to have a child of my own.”

  I avoided his gaze, as I felt his boring into mine.

  “We have each other,” he said, grabbing my hand and squeezing it tightly. “We have each other, and I wouldn’t want anything more.”

  *

  We celebrated 1968 by going to the Royal Opera House to hear a performance of Strauss’s Elektra. Henry and I had grand-tier seats. Expensive seats. I was wearing a black dress and a pearl necklace. During the interval, we went to the bar to get a glass of wine. It was very crowded. There was a flurry of fabric and a sweetness of scent. A woman next to me smelled of violets and tobacco. Another of tuberose: Fracas. I recognized it instantly. Then Dior. I had developed a nose at Selfridges.

  There was a man jostling for the waiter’s attention. I could see him from behind. The waiter placed a glass of wine in front of the man, who had grey hair and a plump neck, like uncooked roast beef. He was fumbling for his change. Then he turned round and I saw him: Fletcher Schumann. An overweight man with grey hair and weary eyes. Of the man I had once known, once loved, there were only vague traces, like the remaining foundations of a demolished building. And that man turned white when he saw me. That demolished building of a man turned ashen white. I thought he might faint. I wanted to do something to him. I wanted to squeeze his plump rump of a neck until he stopped breathing. I wanted to watch him die. I had never harboured such strong feelings of hatred towards anyone – not even Ezra. But towards Fletcher, I clearly did. I was about to say something when someone called out his name. I had time to see her, a woman wearing a pink dress and matching lipstick. She had to be his wife, Rosalind. And then Henry appeared. “There you are, darling,” he said, handing me a glass of white wine. />
  I was momentarily distracted by Henry. By the wine. When I turned round again, Fletcher had disappeared. Vanished. That’s all it took. A few seconds of distraction. And I was shaking and squeezing the glass so hard that it broke. A few onlookers stared at me as I stood there, holding pieces of shattered glass. A woman shouted and pointed. I looked at my hand. It was covered in blood, and drops of it were falling onto the dark carpet.

  13

  A new family has moved into Bert Moser’s house. The date is 18th December 1983, a day after an IRA bomb injured 91 people outside Harrods. The nation is in shock, and I’m surprised anyone would choose to move on such a day. Then again, it would have been planned weeks before. Most moves are. I can almost hear Henry reprimanding me. “Come on, Flora, stop judging people. You’re too harsh.”

  I enjoyed it, the way he used to call me “harsh”. It was the last word I would have used to describe myself. Harsh. Then again, do I have an objective view of myself? Does anyone?

  Henry.

  He died in 1981, after a severe stroke. He was practising a Mozart sonata when suddenly I heard a loud thump and found him on the floor, unconscious. He died on the way to hospital.

  I went to say goodbye to him in the morgue. That’s when I told him the truth. About Fletcher and Maurice. I stood by his side, holding his stiff hand, and I told him everything, in a low voice. As I did so, my tears flowed, down my cheeks and onto the casket. I knelt, leant towards him and kissed him. “Forgive me, Henry,” I whispered. “Forgive me. And thank you for the life you gave me.”