‘Did I?’
‘Yes, you said you wanted to have a “little word”.’
‘Never mind. Let’s look at the plan for today and see what’s happening.’
‘I do mind. What did you want to talk to him about?’
‘Are you sitting for him?’
‘No. He hasn’t asked. Why? What the hell does that have to do with anything?’
‘Well, don’t sit around waiting to be asked, Diana. You should do one of him. I was always sculpting heads of the men I found interesting. There was once a very funny incident with a famous old artist who agreed to teach me to paint in his studio in Paris. He asked me to undress and I—’
‘Caresse, please.’
After a moment’s pause, Caresse spoke. ‘I heard he was getting serious about you, that’s all,’ she said lightly.
‘Yes, we’ve fallen in love rather.’ Diana positioned herself on the pink silk chair. ‘Well, he has, anyway.’
‘You can’t fight that.’ Caresse shook her head. ‘I’ve never battled my body on that count, and I think that’s quite right. We are fools who don’t listen to the wisdom of the corporeal. Mine’s sending me rather bitter notes today, but I’m not fighting it.’ She stopped and then went on: ‘His little wife was terribly upset, you know.’ Caresse glanced at Diana over the top of her glasses. ‘She came to see me yesterday.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes. I gave her the money to fly home.’
‘Economy, I hope.’
‘Honestly, Diana, I dislike conversation without piquancy but sometimes you almost burn. The child looked about twelve, her mother’s probably beside herself. Young heartbreak,’ she sighed, ‘so beautiful.’
Diana remained seated, waiting.
‘Are you planning to take him back to Ibiza?’ Caresse said after a pause.
‘I’m working on it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘He’s still got some of his own ideas.’
‘That’s not like you.’
‘He wants to go back to London for a while. His work . . .’ She trailed off into thoughtful silence.
‘And will Elena be in Ibiza when you arrive?’
‘No.’ Diana frowned, her voice hard. ‘Why?’
‘No reason in particular. I just know how important time alone is at the beginning.’
Diana sat back and looked at her mother. ‘Shall we look at your list, Caresse?’ she said, placing each word carefully between them.
Caresse opened the large diary. ‘Yes, let’s look at today.’
After Diana had gone, Caresse lay back and through the window saw cloud. It came quickly here in the mountains, a deft milky covering of green until the castle was submerged in the drift of dense air. Caresse waited with one finger in the air until she heard the crack of thunder and then the wash of rain, tiny hands hitting everything. She loved it when it rained like this. It meant not feeling guilty at lying in bed like an old pillow – some kind of . . . matron. And it was a familiar sound, a grey sound, wrapped in warmth. Yes, rain was the Boston sky, home, her beginning . . . a heaped grey of boredom broken only by tears. That rain had fallen without stopping until everything was sodden and the streets were drenched almost black. Until he came. Caresse felt her heart move, and she shook her head as though refusing someone entry. Oh, it had been silent as she’d waited for him in that house full of clocks and whispered hallway conversations and cars driving past and never once stopping.
There was Diana, hidden away with the nanny in the barricaded nursery, and the stiff rustle of her mother-in-law drawing lines of duty around the house. ‘I know it’s not easy having your husband away, Mary dear, but you are a mother now and we must look on the bright side.’ And the cosy little upward glance to the floor above. God, she’d sat for hours, like an abandoned fort, doing nothing, seeing no one. What a life. Waiting for visiting hours and the rounds of flowered hats and polite gossip stirred into Darjeeling with small silver spoons, the black tea turning milky with false kindness. The acid murmurs of the women, as gloved hands pulled the still-bloody scalps of those who had strayed from exquisite beaded bags to be compared, weighed, and then pinned to the noticeboard of the Chilton Country Club.
Then he’d come. Salvation in the wilderness.
Her mother-in-law at the breakfast table, looking up from a letter. ‘Mary, would you like to chaperone a party going out for the day next week? You’re twenty-seven now, that’s quite proper. It’s being organised by that Crosby boy. No, the blond one. Well, I don’t know about that, I think he’s rather strange-looking with those very intense eyes. His mother’s in despair about him. Well yes, it’s him.’
And there he’d been. The most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
The memory birthed and squirmed and beneath the blanket Caresse clenched her thighs – his uncovered head (house of those thoughts, all those thoughts) turning towards her and their eyes meeting as they each took off a glove to shake the other’s hand. An electric connection. Taking each other in, giving themselves away.
And the torture, the torture of having to talk and look at all those people, braying about nothing but each other, unaware that she’d been cut, cut very deep, and was already drifting free above all of them. No more dates and diaries, just love and ideas and never having to stay. Never having to stay.
She tried to focus her eyes on the sky outside her window, wanting to hold on to the feeling of that first day, the certainty of his hands as he’d undone her . . . But memory will not be dictated to – she knew that much – so here were the three of them at the funfair, Diana kneeling in the mud by the House of Horrors, given over to grief because she was too small to go in. And then it was goodbye to her husband’s home, stuffed with fans and figurines, snuff boxes and lacquered screens. Then New York City Hall, long grey wedding gloves and a hotel bed full of pressed promises, the universe sought between their parted lips.
And here was the second blow of the huge ship’s horn, causing Diana to grip her hand too tight where they waited on the dock, and here was the look on his face as he came towards them and saw the little hand that stopped her being able to fully raise her arm in greeting. Now the last warning blast of the horn that set the seabirds reeling, and she was alone with Diana on the top deck watching her old life recede.
But he’d brought something with him too. She felt a flare of rage that surprised her with its strength. He brought them all, the Boston Brahmins, with their hypocrisy and little ways – rebellion for six days and remorse on the seventh. They might have escaped but he never could stop taking their stale bread and sour wine. Measuring how far he’d come, but always by their rule.
But then – her heart changed direction and she felt about to cry – how do we stop believing in the very stuff we are made of? She just had, but that was her. Perhaps she’d never believed it, or perhaps it was that she believed everything all at once rather than one thing at a time.
And besides, where were these thoughts coming from? Where was this getting her? And how very far it all was from the way he’d looked at her as he came out of the sea, thighs straining against the tide, on the deserted beach in Étretat sunk between two abrupt cliffs.
Chest heaving, half-laughing, he lay down in the sand beside her, heedless of the red flag flapping crazily in the wind, or her panic at his having been gone for so long. That great, great gift of carelessness.
He’d looked up at her with those eyes, terribly blue, and said, ‘You look like a saint.’
‘I thought you were dead,’ she’d replied laughing.
‘Not without you.’ He’d reached up and she’d pressed his hand against her heart.
Not without you.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Not without you, Caresse.
Then why his naked feet dead and cold? Why those telegrams STOP. Death will be our marriage STOP. Those stockings like two shed snakeskins.
She pushed the image away, kicked it down like an intrude
r in her bed. But here it was, forcing its way in – the sound of the phone ringing and ringing as she stood in the New York Plaza tearoom with his mother’s eyes watching her over the rim of her bone china teacup. And Hart’s voice through the wire, pouring pain in her ear: ‘Caresse, he isn’t alone.’
He wasn’t alone. Terrible comfort.
And then his mother’s face collapsing inside her gloved hands. Having to share the grief with his mother, as though they were the same. She’d never made peace with that part.
‘Roberto.’ She slammed the memory shut as the lawyer walked in and stretched out her hands towards him. ‘Come and sit. Come and sit over here.’ She patted the bed while he carefully hung his jacket on the back of a chair and then came and sat down beside her. ‘Now you must tell me what’s been going on. How is everything downstairs? You must be exhausted. I’m absolutely exhausted.’ Her voice was wheezing. ‘And rather angry actually, with Diana, for being so . . . so . . . what was your word?’
‘Ego-maniacal,’ he said with satisfaction, feeling afresh the acuity of the observation.
‘Oh, was that it?’ Caresse said in a disappointed voice. ‘It sounded rather better when you said it yesterday.’
‘Diana has a narcissistic temperament.’ He’d sat next to a young analyst from Copenhagen the evening before at dinner, and she had described the pathology in fascinating detail.
‘That sounds rather simplistic, Roberto. You said something much more interesting last night.’
‘She takes things too far,’ he attempted, blindly.
Caresse stared at him levelly and then turned and gazed out the window. ‘I wonder why she’s compelled to continually dig things up? It’s in her nature, I suppose. Though where she gets that from is anybody’s guess.’
‘She needs to take more care . . . she is not young any more,’ Roberto said, trying to meet Caresse’s eyes. ‘Diana cannot continue cutting ties in this manner without ending up in a very lonely position.’
‘Well, I don’t know about all that. We’re hardly in the spring of our existence, Roberto. Diana’s life is her life. But she does seem rather hell-bent on getting at something. She can be such fun, you know, when she wants to be; it’s a shame.’
‘Fun is what you need, Principessa,’ Roberto enunciated the nickname. ‘Fun is who you are.’
She laughed and finally looked round. ‘You are absurd. But it’s true. I am fun. And it’s been in rather low supply round here of late. Just look at me, spending an afternoon staring mournfully out of the window. You know, after Harry died I was in such pain that I threw a huge Surrealist party in Paris. I placed a cow’s carcass in the corner with a record player in its stomach, there were waiters wearing suits made of hair with cages of birds on their heads . . . It was vile! The perfect antidote to all . . . that.’
‘Well, perhaps it’s time?’ He gave her one of the roguish smiles he knew delighted her.
‘Time for a party?’ She looked unsure for a moment but then laughed and it seemed as if there was something budding beneath her pale, veined cheeks. ‘What reason have we?’
‘As if you have ever needed a reason!’
‘Ha! You know me too well.’ She hit his leg happily with the back of her hand. ‘Yes, let’s organise a wonderful party.’
Paris, 1925
‘How old is that child?’
‘Old enough to count to ten.’
‘She’s far too young to be in the hotel bar.’
‘And you’re far too old, madam.’
‘She’s drunk.’
‘She’s a little tight, I’ll give you that.’
‘It’s intolerable.’
‘Then do something to stop it,’ he laughed.
‘She can hardly see straight.’
‘Yes, I can,’ yelled Diana. ‘I can see straight as a die.’
Alderney, 1993
‘Slow down!’ James called, and both he and Elena watched the small figures of their children dashing towards the abandoned road that stretched from the beach to the fort that stood on a small island a hundred metres from the shore.
‘Shall we go across?’ James asked. Elena nodded distractedly. ‘Come back here,’ he shouted, and the children changed direction and looped back towards them. Her conversation with her mother was turning itself over in her mind.
‘What do they mean by “fight or flight”?’ Diana had asked, looking at her as Elena retrieved the papers scattered around her mother’s bed.
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘On the radio this morning. They were talking about soldiers, but I couldn’t make the connection.’
‘It’s a mechanism of trauma,’ Elena warily opened the subject. ‘They were probably mentioning it in relation to PTSD.’
‘Which is . . .?’ Her mother listened keenly.
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder.’
‘Fight or flight? A rather limited menu of response.’
‘There are others.’
‘You neither fight nor fly. It was your sister who was the fighter.’ She smiled approvingly. ‘A tough little thing.’
Elena tensed her mouth.
‘Whereas you, Elena . . .’ Her mother dragged her eyes over her. ‘You stick around. My dependable Elena.’ She smiled into the mouth of her glass and drank.
‘It’s called freezing,’ Elena said quietly. ‘It’s another response.’
‘Hmm,’ Diana said. ‘Well, you have always been distinctly froide.’
‘And the last is fawn. I believe that’s what your friends are for.’
Diana ignored her.
‘Besides, I do leave,’ Elena said indignantly, already hating herself for being drawn in. ‘I haven’t been here for over two years.’
‘You may leave,’ her mother said. ‘But you always come back.’
‘I’m always asked to,’ Elena said, exasperated.
‘People can ask what they like. Some of the things I’ve been asked to do! My God, you’d lose your mind. You don’t have to do them, Elena. You only have to do what you want. Your sister was always clear on that front. Always stood her ground. Solid, that’s what she is. The fact that she spends most of her time kneeling these days, well . . .’ She whisked her hand about.
‘Didn’t she always?’ Elena said viciously, and Diana laughed, delighted.
Elena pressed her hands into her eyes. ‘I don’t mean that. Leonie’s . . . amazing.’
Her mother looked at her for a moment. ‘Hiding in a convent? What’s amazing is that they let her in.’
‘There’s no hiding in a convent, Diana,’ Elena said. ‘She’s chosen an arduous path.’
‘Jealous?’ her mother said, with a needling smile.
Elena shook her head. Her mother had the ability to locate the correct emotion in much the same way that she would immediately find the children on the rare occasions she was induced to join a game of hide and seek, without moving from the sofa or setting aside her magazine.
‘Yes, I’m a little jealous. A life of silence is . . . tempting.’
‘You do a bloody good job at trying . . .’
Now as Elena walked onto the short causeway that led to the gates of the abandoned fort, she saw the way the tide had pulled the sea back from the shore, revealing the rough rock formations usually concealed by the smooth sheet of water. The children peered left and right as they picked their way over them, occasionally kneeling down to put a tentative hand into the pools of warm water that lay in the lee of the rocks, daring themselves to touch what was inside them.
As Elena and James walked through the broken gates, the boys appeared at their sides. ‘Can we go in there?’ Jake asked, pointing to a dark doorway, surrounded by a tangle of nettles.
‘Yes, but you must be careful,’ Elena warned as she felt broken glass crunch under her battered plimsoll. ‘Perhaps you should go with them, James?’ And James let go of her arm and went towards the boys.
In the silence they could hear, from somewhere, a thunder
ing sound.
‘Why’s the water in this hole black?’ one of the boys shouted.
‘It’s not. It’s clear as day,’ James replied, disappearing behind them into the dark. ‘A trick of the light.’
Through the doorway, Elena saw the beam of a torch moving over a concrete wall, marked as though it had been filled with dirty water that had slowly drained away over the years. She could hear James speaking to the boys.
‘The Germans needed vast stocks of essentials in order to withstand a sustained assault. The beach we’re on was in a vulnerable position and they laid a number of . . .’
‘Bottles!’ one of the boys exclaimed. There was a smash. ‘Wait!’ Elena heard James call. ‘You mustn’t smash a wine bottle until you’re absolutely sure it’s undrinkable.’ There was silence. ‘All right, you can break a few.’ There were whoops as the smashing began. Elena followed through the doorway and felt herself swallowed up by the cool musty darkness. The sound of the sea beyond the fort’s walls echoed in the abandoned space and somewhere there was the scurrying of tiny feet over broken glass. Elena felt a small hand steal into her own and she looked down to see Bay, backlit by the light from the doorway, staring into the dark at something only she could see. ‘Have you had enough, Bay?’ she said. ‘Shall we go back?’
‘Yes,’ Bay said quietly, tightening her grip.
And turning round, they walked towards the square of light, leaving the noise of the smashing and whooping behind them.
Rue de Lille, 1926
‘What is jazz?’
‘An axe taken to a harpsichord.’
‘How do you dance to it?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Why?’
‘I like to watch.’
‘Well, I like to dance. I do shows for Auguste when he gets home after taking you and Caresse to the ends of the fucking earth.’
‘Auguste is a very good chauffeur.’
‘I’ll go to jazz clubs when I’m older.’
‘Jazz will be old when you’re older.’
Diana was silent.
The Heart Is a Burial Ground Page 12