by Dirk Bogarde
She laughed suddenly, a happy, relaxed laugh, without irony or any trace of bitterness as, sometimes, there had been before. ‘Oh là là! Are you a millionaire perhaps? Antiquaires in Draguignon! Next will it be Monte Carlo?’
‘Not a millionaire. No. And I bought modestly. This, the swan, you remember him?’
She shook her head and sat down in the sofa. ‘This is soft, very English, eh? What did you do with the few pieces I left? That disgusting old thing which was here, you covered it with a terrible Indian cloth with bits of mirror in it? I can remember that, but not the swan …’
We laughed together, easily. I sat in the small chair by the door. ‘I had to cover it with something. But it was almost worse than your sofa, if you understand …’
We sat smiling easily at each other, not shy, in the soft, green-reflected light filtering through the vine. It was the first time, almost, that we had sat like that. Her smile had never been quite so open, so clear of apprehension and suspicion.
‘It is pleasant sitting here. The English are very good for “comfort”. We French are always more formal. It’s a relic of the Court, did you know? The straight backs, thin legs, upright, brocaded, elegant. It suited the dress of the day. They did not wear jeans and trainers then, in the days of King Louis.’ With feline suppleness and grace she changed course. ‘And Madame Louise de Terrehaute? How is Madame?’ Her eyes were smiling, her face gently amused.
‘She is very well. I believe. I haven’t seen her since … well … since the party for Giles. She leaves for Rome shortly. The boy has to stay with his father for some of the holiday – part of their deal.’
She stroked the arm of the sofa against which she sat. ‘And your son? Gilles. Does he stay with you? Does he not see his mama?’
‘She has been away on business, back now. Actually it was her who telephoned just now, she is back from Italy. In Valbonne. She comes to see Giles at the end of next week for lunch. But he will stay with me after the divorce. We have agreed that. The division of the spoils.’
Madame Prideaux’s voice suddenly called authoritatively, ‘Céleste! Céleste! We shall go to see the aquarium. Come!’
Céleste came hurrying up from the kitchen and almost ran out on to the terrace. ‘Take Thomas, Céleste. Gilles will accompany me up to the studio.’ She was on the threshold, Giles behind her. For a moment she stood still, adjusting her eyes to the soft light. ‘We go to inspect the studio. You recall last time? I told you that it would make a splendid room? Come, Gilles, let us see.’
Together they started slowly up the stairs and I heard her heavy tread on the floor above. Florence smiled, sat forward, her hands lightly clasped together. ‘I think Mama is being tactful. Giving me time to look about in peace. It’s very pleasant, William. So changed. And you are so changed! A yellow car! Where is the yellow canary?’
‘In the shed up at the top. It doesn’t stand out in the sun. I treasure it. My symbol.’
‘Symbol?’
‘Of readjustment.’
‘Like your jeans, eh? And, what do they call it, “designer” shirts? You look so different. I imagine,’ she said, looking at the tiles at her feet, ‘I imagine that perhaps Louise de Terrehaute has had an effect? Would that be right?’
‘The royal association! You linked her name just now automatically with Louis and the furniture. Louise de Terrehaute is a perfectly simple American girl from Louisiana, just married to the fag-end of a once aristocratic French family, that’s all! You really mustn’t be scornful of her! I know that you are. I can sense it.’
‘Boff!’ she laughed really happily, leant back. ‘Boff! I do not scorn her at all, William. I am so grateful to Louise de Terrehaute! Shall I tell you why? It is curious and it will amuse you. Louise de Terrehaute actually made me aware that my emotions were not entirely frozen, as I thought that they were, like a mammoth in permafrost! At supper that evening at La Maison Blanche, I was suddenly, wonderfully, aware that I was not entirely dead. I was alive because I discovered that I was jealous!’ She stretched her arms along the back of the sofa, nodding, her eyes filled with amusement. ‘Jealous! Can you imagine! Of you! And of her effortless control and power over you, and the table in general. Even Mama! Madame Mazine, remember? They were almost fainting with reverence. Dottie Teeobald actually almost chic! Because of her influence … Your yellow car in the square, your elegant white trousers, the Laurent silk shirt! Mon Dieu! The changes since I went to Marseilles!’ She laughed softly, amused, but lightly mocking. ‘What if I’d gone to Santiago! Or Peking!’
‘It is perfectly possible, Florence, that you are right. Even Dottie agrees. It is the usual cliché: a peacock lands in the hen-run and everyone becomes flustered, clucks around anxiously and rearranges their feathers. You know? She did a lot of good!’
‘I am most grateful to her personally. It is not very agreeable being frozen in permafrost. I was. For almost three years. Until that evening. Ouf! Will Gilles ever know just how important his birthday supper was, I wonder?’
‘Probably not. But I am very happy for you.’
She leant forward quickly. ‘Oh, that little spurt of envy or jealousy is over now. But it was proof to me that I was not entirely dead yet, that my reflexes still worked. She was being overtly possessive of something which I considered to be my property alone.’
‘You mean me?’ I let my astonishment show deliberately.
She waved a calming hand. ‘My property as my “brother-in-law”, if you like. Nothing more, William. Just that. But I was released.’ Briskly changing the subject, she got up and went to the stairs. ‘I must call to Mama. We must all start to go. It is late and Thomas has his bath to get, and Céleste must be weary. Ordinary life must continue.’
She called up the stairs that they had to move homeward, and I walked out on to the terrace where Céleste was glumly trying to buckle the straining Thomas into his reins. I squatted down to assist her and Thomas clobbered me on the head, laughing, bubbling, dribbling, wrenching about, the unseeing eyes flashing with furious joy. Florence was not released entirely.
Maurice gave his traditional two blasts on the horn. I saw the sun glittering on the bodywork of his car over the wall.
‘They are almost on time. Now, off you go. Greet Mum, be polite, affectionate, and remember it’s your pad this. Make her feel very welcome. Okay?’
He nodded, shrugged hopelessly, ran off down the path through the rows of beans and spinach and reached the gate just as Maurice, cap in hand, bowed Helen through. She smiled and said something to him and then stood with open arms, packages hanging from her wrists. ‘Giles! My little Frenchman!’ she cried, and engulfed him in an apparently joyous swoop.
Maurice called to me, in French, over the wall, that he’d return at three-thirty, d’accord? And I shouted back in agreement, as Helen started carefully up the path in her white stiletto heels. A short tight, expensive white lace dress, a wide gold belt, flash of gold bracelets, swinging earrings, hair high, secured with her usual velvet bow. This time white.
‘William! Long time no see! My word! Lean and brown we all are. Have you all been on a diet? Or do you only eat salads? Everyone just eats salads in this country.’ She sat easily on a tin chair, discarding a giant Hermes crocodile bag, a straw hat with a bunch of cotton wisteria on its brim, a folded white cashmere cardigan, and handed Giles two gold-and-green-wrapped packages. ‘You did get my box from Hédiard, Giles, I hope?’
‘Yes, thank you. It was great. Especially the nougat.’
‘I hadn’t heard. So I just wondered. It would have been infuriating if it had not arrived. Your old ma went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get it to you on the very day! I am glad. Thank you for telling me, sweetie.’
‘We didn’t write, Helen, because we didn’t know exactly where you were in Milan. You were in Milan at that time? You said you would be?’
She crossed her splendid legs, reached down for the crocodile bag and put it on her knee, found a gold lighter, a packet of
Lucky Strike. ‘Yes. Milan! God! That’s a noisy city! This is very peaceful. So silent up here!’ She blew a little flute of smoke into the hot, still morning. ‘Aren’t you going to open your packages? All the way from Italy?’
It seemed not to have occurred to her that ‘all the way from Italy’ wasn’t really that far, about the same as, say, Margate to Brighton; but Giles, squatting on the terrace, murmured pleasantly and ripped off paper and found a glass jar with a ribbon round its neck and a long, slim packet with a Swatch inside. This, at least, he was able to react to, and with an affectionate kiss.
‘It’s such a wild thing, isn’t it? It’s called “Breakdance”. All the colours, and it’ll look really jazzy. I bet not many boys you know have a Swatch!’
Giles was just about to blurt the name ‘Freddy’ when I cut in swiftly and admired the glass jar.
‘What are these, Helen? Chocolate truffles, right?’
She nodded brightly. ‘Only one shop in Milan makes them, but don’t eat too many at once. Just one after dinner, you know. They are frantically rich, seriously delicious and death to Weight-Watchers!’ We all made amused noises and Giles fitted his Swatch on to his wrist. ‘So this is home, then? I hadn’t really expected it to be so – you know? – utterly rural. It’s a huge change from London, but I know that you always liked solitude. Well, you’ve got it here. It’s simply miles from anywhere, isn’t it?’
‘No. Not miles.’ I was mixing drinks which Clotilde had organized at the table by the door. ‘It is vodka, still?’ I said.
Helen nodded. ‘Vodka. Still. Ice. And lemon. If you have it?’ She snapped her bag shut, set it on the terrace beside her.
‘From the tree next to you.’
She looked vaguely over her shoulder. ‘Amazing. Goodness. Have we tonic too?’
‘And tonic. It’s very good to see you. You look terribly well, relaxed, and now you are the one who’s brown. Very, very becoming. You really do look quite marvellous.’
‘Well, don’t go on, William! God! Did I look a freak or something before?’ She laughed gaily to show that she was not quite at ease and only joking anyway. And that is how we went through the pre-lunch period. Except that she did come in and look about the house, up to the bedrooms, the studio, exclaimed at the sight of the aquarium and remembered bits of stuff from Simla Road, said how different it all looked in this light. Then we all sat down and Clotilde, beaming, set down a deep glass dish of salade niçoise, the bread, and I uncorked the Domaine d’Ot which had been chilling in a plastic bucket.
‘Voilá!’ said Clotilde happily. ‘Bon appétit, Madame.’
Giles thrust his arm towards her. ‘Look what I got, Clotilde,’ he said in French. ‘A Swatch. From my mama, from Milan.’
‘Oh là là! So chic! Mon ami will be very jealous. You must show it to him.’
‘All Froggy stuff! My goodness, you really are my little Frenchman, aren’t you? It hasn’t taken you long to mug it up. Frankly I can’t seem to get my tongue round it, French, I mean. Or Spanish. I mean, Spanish is the pits – impossible. I leave it all to Eric, the same with Italian. I just haven’t got the hang of languages; your old ma hasn’t got the hang of them, Giles. Oh! You know I loathe anchovies.’
She forked two offenders on to her side plate. Giles cheerfully took them from her. Lunch progressed. She was gay, animated, glittering, scented. We had all altered radically since that April morning in Parsons Green when the key to this house had fallen on the mat. But I didn’t bother saying that, it was self-evident, and she was talking, easily it would appear, to Giles, who was polite, agreeing, and only gave his utter lack of interest away when he suddenly waved happily across the table and called ‘Bon appétit!’ to Mon-Ami walking up from the potager, naked apart from a pair of rather short shorts and a red handkerchief round his throat.
Helen sat back, her glass in her hand. ‘Who is Rambo? Someone you know?’
I explained who Mon-Ami was, and who Clotilde was, and that we now were a household, and did she want a little more? There was only fruit and cheese to follow. She accepted some more wine, said she’d let everything just ‘settle, all that tomato and onion and olives’, and then perhaps a teensy-weensy bit of cheese. For bulk.
When Clotilde had cleared away, we went inside and had our coffee served there. It was, Helen said, rather ‘glaring’ under the vine, and she didn’t want to keep screwing up her eyes against the light. She’d foolishly forgotten her dark glasses. Wrinkles, I knew, were devastating after a certain age. Then looking about, patting the sofa beside her, she asked where Giles had gone to. I said probably down to the kitchen to show Mon-Ami his Swatch, and she smiled thinly. ‘A good idea? Familiarity? A small boy? With the staff? I know things are a bit freer here in the Med. But still, one must keep an eye on it all. Servants get so damned bolshie if they are given an inch out here. I know. God! The sods I have to work with sometimes! In Italy! You can’t believe …’
‘I think we are all managing pretty well. I like Giles being about in the kitchen, and they like it too. Anyway, the “holiday period” is nearly over now.’
Helen leant forward, stubbed her cigarette in a glass dish at her side, shook another from the pack, lit it with a sharp flick of her wrist, bracelets and chains clinking and clattering. ‘I wanted to have a little word with you about that. It is about time that we considered the child’s future. School. You know?’ She drew on her cigarette hard, snorted smoke down her nostrils, an old habit which usually meant intense concentration or anger. ‘I have been thinking it all over very, very carefully. I remember, have no fear, that ugly day at the Negresco in Nice. Remember it well, and don’t want to go into that again. But Eric and I do, honestly, feel that it is utterly wrong to deny the child a proper English education. We feel that very strongly: I know you don’t, I understand your, rather trivial, worries, but we do think he should be able to take advantage of Dr Lang’s offer at Eason Lodge If you remember where that is. Do you?’
‘Very well. Burnham Beeches.’
‘Where he will live, at weekends, in a family atmosphere, with his sister and with me.’ For a split second she floundered, tapped the cigarette on the rim of the dish. ‘In a close-knit family. That’s all. He can’t potter about France for the rest of his life like a sort of vagrant. I don’t think you realize that children do need security. The security of a family.’
‘And you feel that you can offer him that?’
‘Definitely. I’m his mother, remember? Did it slip your mind?’ She was smiling pleasantly, head tilted on one side. Coquettish, you could say.
‘What about this “trivia” which you have said you understand? Has all that “trivia” been tidied away? Your chum isn’t curious about my son’s genitals any longer?’
She blushed scarlet, either with embarrassment or with rage, difficult to know just at that moment. ‘Don’t be so bloody obscene! You are inferring that Eric abused him? Right? Is that the fashionable word? Abused? How dare you! How dare you suggest anything so vile.’ She leant back in her chair. ‘I really do think you have taken leave of your senses. Sun’s got to your brain. Chuntering away about -’ She shrugged, avoiding words which might trap her. ‘You really have to try and understand, as I’ve told you before, that I am his mother. I know. Can’t understand that basic feeling, can you? Men don’t give birth, do they?’
‘No they don’t. If you have come here today to try and take the boy away, just forget it. We’ve agreed all this. More or less amicably. He stays with me.’
‘He’ll come to you for the holidays. Easy. So can Annicka. Remember, we agreed? But he gets a proper English education, he has a place at Eason Lodge, a proper family life. He has got a sister, after all. We are a unit.’
‘Helen dear, if you are brightly playing Solomon today, drop it. He stays with me, you are not getting him back. Got it?’
She crushed her cigarette in the glass dish. It rattled lightly. ‘Some quite absurd idea that he was, what, spied on? In a bathroom. So
mething?’
‘Something.’
‘He’s just ten. Under age. Hysterical emotionally, they all are at that age. Easily swayed, accept wild suggestions.’
‘He’s not a bit emotional, in that manner. He’s settled with me, he has friends, feels that he belongs to this place. He loves it. I am, Helen, trying to be fair!’
‘So am I. Maureen Cornwall, who suggested Eason Lodge, her boys go there, is a social worker, for her sins. Marvellously supportive, loves helping, she’s very bright, and frankly, William, she is a tiny bit uncomfortable about Giles here. All-male society? Running about, as I can see, half-naked. Half-naked gardener – all hugger-mugger, to use a phrase. And well, there is the mother and son business, but equally there is the father and son thing. Unhealthily close. But if I even whispered my concern to Maureen, well. You can imagine how difficult it would be? For us all. Take ages. Investigations, so on. Eric and I do rather worry for him, honestly. Not that I’d ever dream of making a sound. But you do see? The situation?’
I got up, went to the kitchen door, and called for Giles. She flinched, put up a hand to secure the bow in her hair, drew on the cigarette. ‘Oh, don’t drag the child in …’
Clotilde shouted, ‘Il arrive … une seconde …’
Helen stabbed out her cigarette. ‘Really, William. Don’t make a meal out of everything.’
I sat opposite her. ‘My goodness, Helen, you must want him back very badly? To risk all this in public. That, subtly, I may, as his father, be “too close”. That it? That it might be “unhealthy”. That’s the implication, isn’t it? Want to drag us all, willy nilly, headlong into misery, harry us all through the courts, through Maureen Cornwall’s concerned, meddling hands? The tabloids?’
She shook another cigarette into her hand, dropped the package into her bag, twisted the lighter. A flash of gold in the cool room. ‘I merely want my family. What belongs to me. I have had time to think, and I am not ready just to hand him over to you. How do I know how you will cope? His hair is halfway down his back.’