by Dirk Bogarde
‘Not very well. But I can imagine. Only don’t be too middle-aged about it. We have just started getting you out of that phase. I reckon she loves you, but doesn’t quite realize it yet. I know the signs – very spinsterish.’
‘You are being a bit tough on Florence. She’s just jealous. Good old female jealousy. That’s all. I don’t think she loves me. Yet. I’ll wait. There is no big rush, and she knows that. She’s had a bloody time. A really bloody time.’
‘Well, she’s in love with you. I know that. It’s a woman thing. We can tell.’ She slid off the bed, reached for a shirt thrown on a chair. ‘Ah well, I just hope she goes along with your new image. Tight jeans, the Hechter shirts. Not to mention your yellow auto. It’s hardly middle-aged. Does Giles notice the change in his pa? Frederick will freak out when he sees me tonight, wearing this, what you call, “savage decision”. He’ll probably notice that. Otherwise I’d have to be dead for a week to get a proper reaction.’ She pulled the shirt over her head, found her thin skirt.
I put out an arm. ‘Don’t put it on. Wait a little. Must you?’
She came over and sat on the bed, the skirt in her hands, across her thighs. ‘I haven’t got a stop-watch. But we have to go. We can’t stay here much longer.’ She bent down, kissed my shoulder, flicked her tongue across my chest, a little adder’s tongue, flicking and darting, but when I reached for her she pulled quickly away. ‘C’mon now! Be good. Lust and revenge have faded. You have worked your magic. Leave it there. Okay? We have to go pick up the children from Dottie, do the “Mom and Pop” bit. Back to normal. Back to Life.’ She got up, wrapped the cotton skirt round her hips. ‘C’mon. Go take a shower, I’ll get my hair right and we’ll lock up for Marcia. Okay? Up.’
I got up and went into the bathroom, ran the shower.
‘My chauffeur, you remember? Tarzan? Well, Henri is fine now. He’ll be driving in a day or two, so we can’t make a habit any more of sneaking away like this, and anyway, this hideous place, Les Palmiers, won’t be empty for ever. Someone is bound to notice we park our cars and never open the shutters. Right?’ There was a note of sharp anxiety in her voice. ‘I hate to hear that water running. Can you hear me? Washing off all that salt from your body. You tasted so salt. Don’t be too long. We have to -’
I turned the tap to ‘Full’, drowning her voice. Didn’t hear any more. The water roared, I found a piece of soap as thick as a penny, dried myself on a fragment of towel. She was standing at a little mirror brushing her hair. ‘Did you really wear knitted ties and brogue shoes?’ A cool voice now.
‘I did. Yes, I did. English gear. I lived in London. Not the Var.’
‘And grey flannels and smoked a pipe?’
‘Never that. I did wear flannels. I won’t ever again.’
‘But were you quite amazingly successful? I mean, are you? Should I know who you are? You a part of the “glittering set”, or whatever they call it? I don’t know these things. You’re never in the Times, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, papers I read. You know?’
‘No. Never been in them. As far as I know. Not part of the “glitterati” or whatever you called it, just comfortable middle of the road. A book a year, faithful list of readers. Steady sales. Not at all dramatic’ I pulled on my shirt, reached for my pants.
She sighed. ‘Pulling on his pants. So sad to see it all go, like that. Tuck in your shirt. Round your ass. In those pants it leaves a ridge. And that looks just awful.’ She began to push a foot into a white flip-flop. ‘Do you have a publisher in America? Someone very grand? I only read extracts and things, so it doesn’t really bother me. But as we know each other so well in bed it seems strange not to know, well, the rest of you. Never mind.’ She shook her cropped head. ‘I’d better go wipe the bathroom floor. I’ll take this rag that Marcia imagines to be a towel.’
‘You don’t drive in those things? Flip-flops. Do you?’
She turned slowly at the door, the rag in her hand, both feet now shod, frowned. ‘I drive barefoot. Always here. Okay?’
She went into the bathroom and I went with her. ‘I’ll give you a hand. We didn’t use any linen, apart from these things. No picnic, this time. No empty glasses.’ We began mopping the wet floor.
‘Are you writing something now? Some tremendous saga? Maybe about your long-lost brother James? That it? About brother James?’ Her voice was high, suddenly quite cool, uninterested. Turned off. It was as if a window had been silently opened in a warm room and a chill air wreathed about. Lulu was deliberately dismissing me. I sloshed the rag round the inside of the shower-stall.
‘About San Francisco, actually.’
She hung her wet towel on the edge of the little bath. ‘You know San Francisco? I mean, really know it?’ She pushed gently past me into the bedroom, I hung my towel next to hers, wrung out. ‘Sure I know it. Months there. It was fun, in a hellish sort of way. Research always is.’
‘What kind of book are you writing about San Francisco?’ She was smoothing the crumpled pillows on the rubber sheet. ‘Travels with My Uncle. Something?’ She took up a pink candlewick bedspread. Unfolded it roughly.
‘It’s all finished. Delivered, corrected. It’s called Five-Twelve.’
She looked at me in mild surprise. ‘Just that? Nothing more?’
‘Just that.’
‘What is it? On maths? Geographical? A science thing?’
‘It is the exact moment in the morning when the ‘quake hit the city, in nineteen-six. I spent weeks talking to people. Did you know that Enrico Caruso was there? At the Palace Hotel. He actually sang in the ruins.’
She snorted. Then a thin laugh. ‘What a gas! You mean the opera singer? That Caruso? Anyway, that was all in a different movie. That was Jeanette MacDonald.’ She threw the pink bedspread across the rubber sheet.
‘So you spent months in San Francisco wearing your grey flannels and knitted ties and talking about poor old Caruso. What a wild thing to do! Can you just smooth out your side? Tuck in the end … fine.’ She looked round the ugly little room. ‘What haven’t we done? Left untidy? Nothing, all is fine. Just fine and I have the key right here.’ She had opened her straw purse, fumbled in it. I went across to the windows, closed the slightly opened shutters, turned off the air-conditioner. It whined softly to a stop. There was no sound. A flat, dense, muffled air. She rattled the little key on its chain, to break the silence. ‘Ting! Ting! Ting! I said Henri’s foot is just fine now. He’ll be able to drive in a couple of days.’ Suddenly she looked shy, lost, rattled the keys again. ‘He’s really much better now. It was not so bad after all. No poison.’
‘You told me that. So he’ll be driving you again? You won’t be able just to sneak off on your own any more. Right?’
‘I said all that. I told you.’
‘Yup. You also said that the people here, at Les Palmiers, would start to get a bit suspicious if we came here …’
‘And just parked? And never opened the shutters. It could be difficult.’
‘I know. You said.’
‘And Marcia. I don’t want to get her in trouble. You know, she’ll be arriving back soon. At least, I suppose so. You never can tell with Marcia. Rome today, Athens or maybe Malibu. Never know. Doesn’t know herself really. Where she is …’
‘Drop in at any moment? Catch us by surprise? That it?’
‘That’s exactly it. And then, well, there is Freddy. He has to go see his father. We have to go up to Rome. See Bobbie. It’s all part of the deal, you know? Not Rome, really. Outside. It’s quite pleasant. Lago Bracciano, cooler than the city in July and August. But I do have to take him up.’ She stopped and pulled off a flip-flop, examined the sole with care.
‘When do you go? Exactly?’
‘Pretty soon … I trod in some chewing-gum. Disgusting … Soon. I want to avoid Ferragosto, the big holiday, in August.’
‘So soon.’
‘So soon.’ She slid her foot into the sandal. ‘We really have to go.’ She was not looking at me, jingled the
little key.
I took her face in my hand and tilted it towards me. I was vaguely surprised, chastened, to see that her eyes were brightly rimmed.
‘Not tears?’
‘Almost. Silly. Yes.’
‘This is all just concealing one simple word, isn’t it?’
She drew her head away from my hand. ‘I’m not that clever. Can’t write books and things. Don’t know about words. What word?’
‘Goodbye. That’s it. Isn’t it?’
We stood together in the filtered light in the drab little room, a splinter of sunlight sparked for a moment on the rail of the brass bed.
‘It sounds awful. Just like that.’
‘But that’s what it is, okay?’
She suddenly brushed the fist holding the dangling key across her eyes. ‘I guess so. Wiser. Did you turn off that tap in the shower? Really hard?’
‘I did. Yes.’
‘It drips.’
‘Sure.’ I leant down and kissed her on the forehead. She stood motionless. ‘Now, Lulu, remember. What we did this afternoon?’
‘I got my hair done at Etienne’s, had lunch with Véronique at her studio. She’ll confirm. She’s all right.’
‘I was over at Saint-Jeannet at the co-operative. Two blades for the scythes. They’re already in the car. I got them yesterday. Then to Draguignan to look at the Allied Cemetery outside Muy.’
We had crossed the room. I reached up by the door, straightened a cheap print of Antibes harbour.
‘You go on down,’ she said. ‘By the stairs. I’ll wait here, then I’ll take the elevator. You never know …’
‘Like two felons.’
‘I’ll come down when you’ve driven away.’
‘Will you hear me? Drive away?’
She looked deliberately across the room. ‘I’ll hear. Oh yes. I’ll hear you go,’ she said.
Standing at the far end of the studio, unfazed by the steep climb up from the Long Room, Dottie clapped her hands with delighted surprise. ‘But it’s huge! The whole length of the house, isn’t it? I’m amazed, it’s really marvellous.’
I pushed open a shutter which had swung closed. ‘It will be. When I have got it all sorted out. This stuff, the desk, chairs, the crates all arrived from London yesterday. A half-load, they call it. Sharing with someone else, I think at Le Foux. Come and sit down.’ I pulled a rush-bottomed chair into the centre of the tiled floor and she sat among the tea chests and as yet unwrapped stuff from Simla Road. ‘Poor old Arthur!’ I screwed up a mass of old newspaper. ‘I loathe dentists.’
She pulled off her straw hat, fixed a hairpin in her plait, curled tight on the top of her head. ‘I call it my whipped-cream walnut, this hair-style. Arthur won’t let me cut it. Idiot. It’s his own fault, the dentist. He hasn’t been for months and yesterday the throbbing started again. An abscess, of course. Maddening.’
‘But a good excuse for you to come here?’ I chucked the paper bundle in a corner.
‘Oh, yes! Fearfully good. Well, he was passing on his way. Just dropped me off.’ She looked round the long white-walled room. ‘In all the years we’ve lived here, before Arthur retired even, I have often passed Jericho but never been inside. Was it like this before? I mean with your brother and Florence?’
I sat down on one of the tea chests. It had ‘office books’ chalked across its side. ‘More or less. After he disappeared, I rather think she stripped it out. It was pretty Spartan when I first saw it. I’ve tarted it up since April.’
She put her hat on the floor beside her, looking round with obvious pleasure. ‘I wouldn’t say “tarted”. The whole house feels “lived in”. It all feels very personal to you. Your house. And you’ve even got an aquarium! My word. I thought one only found them in dentists’ waiting-rooms and Chinese restaurants.’
‘Well you’ve found one here. It’s Giles’s, need I say? My present for his tenth last week. He was almost sick with delirious joy, and then went into sullen rage when I insisted it was put here. Not downstairs, or his bedroom. I had a hell of a time. But I’ve won, as you can see.’
‘Far better. It’s rather noisy.’
‘Oxygenator. I’ll switch it off, kill the fish, when I start work here. But he has done it all himself. Landscaped it. Can you landscape under water? Rocks and pebbles and so on. The fish were gifts from Clotilde and her chum.’
‘Clotilde served us that huge couscous at the party? I had never eaten there before, the Maison Blanche. Really rather good.’
‘She also appropriated the blond god you admired working in the garden.’
‘The Donatello? Very fine. She found him? Is he French?’
‘Yes. We call him Mon-Ami, he’s really Luc Roux. His parents own the traiteur in Saint-Basile. You know it?’
She nodded, picked up her hat, settled it on her knees. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. He’s obviously a by-blow from the Occupation days. A few of the local girls suddenly gave birth to corn-blond children in the late forties. No one was desperately upset down here. Far more easy-going than up north. I assume that Papa is also blond?’
‘And getting fat. Thinning blond. Pity if his son follows on. Being fat would put an end to his labours here. What an odd world it all is.’
For a little time we sat up in the studio in the cool, idly talking. It was just after three o’clock, too soon for tea, too early for wine. L’heure verte. Giles was over at the Villa des Violettes with Frederick. His time with his new friend was rapidly running out. In a week or so he’d be off to the ‘Lago’ and his father. Ferragosta was the fifteenth of August. I’d miss him too: when he left I’d be firmly on my own with Giles. A daunting thought. How to amuse him?
As if she had sensed that my scattered observations were prompted by some family problem, Dottie got up and wandered slowly across to the aquarium. I followed her, hands in my pockets. She was wearing a thin cotton shirt, a blue and white striped skirt, tiny pearl ear-rings. No denim now. ‘It’s very pretty. All the bubbles. What happens to Giles when the summer ends? Back to the UK? He’s ten now. You can’t leave it too late.’
‘I know, I know. It haunts me, don’t think it doesn’t. I’ll cope with that a bit later, not today.’
She traced a finger along the glass side of the tank, fish swung away, startled. ‘No shrimps in here?’ she said quietly, not looking at me.
I half laughed. Caught it, suppressed it. ‘No shrimps. Sharp as a box of knives, you are.’
She put a hand on my arm without looking at me. ‘I am being perfectly idiotic’
‘No. I know you, Mrs Theobald. You weren’t far off the mark at the very start. The only shrimp there is stands beside you. Simple.’
‘Into the net were you?’
‘Into the net. Willingly. No regrets. The only regret I might feel is that next week there won’t be a “shrimper” around.’
‘Oh? She is so attractive. Wildly attractive, alive, fresh, gay. Don’t blame you for a moment. She was, is, good for you. Got you to shake yourself up, change your attitude, what you wear, who you are, that absurd yellow car! Simply marvellous, huge fun!’ She turned and we walked through the stacked packing-chests, the wrapped bits of stuff from Simla Road waiting to be unpacked. Picked her hat from the floor where she had left it.
‘Dottie?’ I touched her shoulder. ‘Isn’t it amazing just how often one can go trundling through life being absolutely convinced that how you are existing is exactly, and precisely, how you have always wanted to exist – and be quite wrong? You discover you have made a very grievous error, and you shouldn’t have been existing as you have at all. Your new existence could be just across a room or, as in this case, just across your terrace one afternoon. I was losing out slowly. I was forced to reconsider my life.’
She laughed, shrugged, went towards the door, leant against the jamb. ‘The extraordinary thing is that she had much the same effect on me. She forced me to reconsider my life. Ever since she arrived with her child, last summer, she brought a beam of dancing ligh
t along with her. It sounds quite silly, but she did. I’d become such a frump. Flopped about into indifference, wore my gardening gear all day. One suitable dress to play bridge. She forced me, by her own attitude, to reflect on mine. To make an effort to change. Not for Arthur, God bless the man: he wouldn’t take note if I started to prune the roses in a crinoline. No, the effort was for my own self-respect. Woke me before the cobwebs smothered me, and it was too late to change. Easy to let things slide … easy, and quite fatal.’ She turned and started down the stairs. I followed her, keeping one step behind; it was a steep descent.
‘All that I can say’, she called over her shoulder, ‘is that we were most fortunate in your guest. That evening, at Giles’s party, she looked so vivid, so alive, naughty, so attractive … it was splendid. But, of course, you knew that already?’
We had reached the bedroom floor, went on down to the Long Room.
‘I knew that already. Yes. I know very well what you mean.’
She smiled lightly, stopped at the door of the Long Room, raised a finger.
‘Listen! Your femme de ménage? Clotilde. Singing like a lark. How pretty it is: “J’attendrai, le jour et la nuit. “J’attendrai toujours, ton retour.”’ Her voice was sweet, young. She smiled again and we moved into the cool of the room, shadows dark in the corners, slits of light striping through the shutters. ‘A silly popular song, long before she was born. “J’attendrai” meant such a lot during the German Occupation. It was almost a secret thing: people sang it all the time. Whistled it. I am waiting. Waiting for the return of their men from the deportations, for the Germans to be driven out, for us, the Allies, to arrive. For liberation. It was a sort of symbol, of courage, of holding on. Perhaps she sees it as a sort of “holding on”? Possible?’
I thought of Mon-Ami. ‘Quite possible,’ I said. ‘But we were talking about Lulu de Terrehaute, remember?’
‘Ah, yes! The shrimping-lady! Let’s go into the air.’
On the terrace we took the tin chairs and sat under the vine in the cool. Cicadas chiselled in the olive tree near the house. In the long grass down the path crickets scissored and sawed, and beyond the fig trees, in the shimmer of afternoon, Mon-Ami swung gracefully with his scythe, a gentle, rhythmic movement.