‘Could they?’ Lapped in my British independence, I was still unused to the centrally regulated nature of life in France.
‘Oh yes. It’s the way they work. Otherwise, I suppose, they’d never get high school teachers in remote places. But actually people say they do it to be contrary also. When Sartre and de Beauvoir were both teaching, he was sent to Caen in Normandy, I think it was, and she was sent to Marseilles!’
‘Poor them.’
‘Yes. They used to meet in Paris for the weekends – which must have come quite expensive, for her especially. She took a room in Marseilles by the station, and used to have breakfast every morning in the station buffet, pretending to herself she wasn’t really living there at all. I do feel for her … All the same,’ she added after a moment, with some spirit, ‘if it had been me, I think I’d have tried to enjoy Marseilles for its own sake, while I was there … Oh dear Tom! One shouldn’t think one can’t live without a particular person, should one? It’s too dangerous. I do see that really.’ We smiled weakly at each other, trying to store up principles for the unknowable years to come.
(But can we really have had the conversation on quite those lines then, or have I displaced it from another time? Surely it was not till the late fifties or sixties that Simone’s namesake began publishing every detail of her life? But my Simone had long been interested in the other one, having been given the earliest novels to read by her father when she was in her teens. Indeed on reflection my own less-than-respectful view of Sartre had been strengthened by Jacquou, who held that Sartre, because of his coldness and conceit, had been a bad influence on most of his associates. Jacquou had told me that the most interesting figure of that group was Camus, who had worked through the bleak fields of existentialist theory to the idea of the necessity of commitment and solidarity ‘notwithstanding’. Thinking about this afterwards, I saw something of the same pattern in Jacquou’s own life.)
That long, happy autumn, Simone and I saw less of our old group – though more of Paul and Hermione – and seldom saw Evan and Joyce at all. I was relieved. Perversely, though, I found I sometimes missed Evan’s jokes (which occasionally he and I had shared at the expense of all the French-speaking others), and his skill in telling his tall stories – his gift for turning his own life into an amusing if self-aggrandizing saga.
Then, near Christmas, I received word from Evan that he wanted to see me on ‘business’. Would I come alone to a certain café to meet him? Knowing that he meant ‘without Simone’, I complied with rather ill grace. I was surprised to find Joyce was with him, though, as usual, he did all the talking.
Joyce was pregnant, he said. He spoke without rancour; he was at his best, lucid, warm, ‘more than ready’ (he said) to admit his own part in the matter. When I took a second look at her, sitting docilely at his side, I could see she was pregnant, in spite of her usual voluminous, dark clothes. It was clearly far too late to ‘do’ anything this time, and none of us mentioned the previous occasion. Perhaps Evan really did not know about it, and I was not supposed to know either.
They had decided, he said fluently, to have the baby adopted. It was clearly just not on, was it, for them to keep it? They had looked at it ‘from all angles’ and had decided that, in the circumstances, adoption was the best thing for everyone – particularly for the baby. He continued for a while in this vein, and my eyes kept sliding to Joyce’s face beside his, round, pink-cheeked, impassive yet anxious all the same. I wanted to ask her what she really thought about it. Or rather, I did not exactly want to but felt that I should. But it was not easy, with Evan so voluble and so ready with answers to every query; when I tried, Joyce said simply:
‘I never knew my father and my Mum and I had a rotten time, tatting round different jobs in other people’s houses and institutions and things. It killed her, really. I’d like our baby to have a better chance in life than that.’
Well, it was an impeccable viewpoint, as far as it went. Inexperienced, and a prig still in spite of everything, I let it go at that. How, I asked on cue (as I was meant to) could I help them?
Ah, that was the point. Evan hoped very much that I could. As they were both British it would surely be simpler to get the baby adopted in England than in France, and, as I was British too, they were counting on me to tell them how to go about it. With my education – so much better than theirs – and my contacts and general know-how …
Flattered, as I was meant to be, it did not take me very long to produce the name of Shirley Gilchrist as a likely source of advice, if not actual practical help. (I reflected in passing that poor old Shirley would probably like to hear from me again, whatever the reason, and then felt rather ashamed of this thought.)
In no time Evan had extracted from me a promise to write to Shirley and ‘set something up’. The baby was due in less than three months. Would it be simplest if they both went to England for its birth? Like good children (Evan seemed now to be tacitly emphasizing their youth, perhaps to underline the idea that they could hardly be expected to take on the responsibility of a baby, for God’s sake) – they were prepared to do just what they were told.
Cast in the attractive role of responsible adult, I promised to do my best. I was going back to England myself for a Christmas visit to my parents. Probably I would be able actually to see Shirley Gilchrist. I also found myself promising not to tell anyone else of the plan – ‘not even Simone, for the moment, if you don’t mind very much, Tom.’
‘But,’ I said, floundering, ‘Joyce’s pregnancy can hardly be a secret now. I mean – look at you, love. Lots of people must have noticed already.’
No, that wasn’t what Evan meant. Of course everyone would see there was a baby coming. But they would rather that, for the moment, the other plan – the adoption – remained a secret between the three of us. OK?
‘OK,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I promise. I can see you might not want to discuss it a lot. But you’ll have to tell people in the end, won’t you? I mean, when you come back to France without a baby.’
‘Oh,’ said Evan casually, ‘we thought it might be simplest just to tell people it’d died. Didn’t we, Joyce?’
She nodded, and looked away.
‘But we can talk about that later,’ he said.
Just why adoption was such a sensible, reasonable idea but at the same time must be treated as a dark secret, was not explored between us.
I saw Shirley Gilchrist in London. She said she knew more than one family who might be interested. She said she would make the hospital booking for Joyce, who would then be able to leave the baby there for collection. Only from a momentary glint of excitement and suspicion in her eye, did I see that she was wondering if it might be my child I was attempting to dispose of thus, and I quickly set to work to dispel such a fantasy with circumstantial detail about Evan. I found myself emphasizing the scrappiness and uncertainty of Evan’s daily life, his inability to support himself and Joyce adequately, let alone a child … No doubt it was myself I was convincing as much as Shirley.
I minded, rather, not telling my parents about this domestic drama during our cosy, dull family Christmas. I was as fond of them as ever, but I shared so little with them these days; my mother particularly would have been interested, concerned, full of irrelevant practical suggestions. They had not been young at my birth, and now they were getting old. I kept my word to Evan.
I found it harder not to tell Simone. She was intrigued by the idea of the coming baby, planning to buy for it, when it arrived, a special French quilted garment known as an ‘angel’s nest’. But in the end she learnt abruptly what the plans were. For the carefully arranged birth in a London hospital in February never took place. In January, Joyce went into labour unexpectedly (‘She fell down the stairs, silly cow,’ said Evan angrily) and was taken to a large Parisian infirmary. There, three days after the birth, Simone and I visited her. On our way on the Metro, I had hastily told Simone of Evan and Joyce’s intentions, realizing that I could conceal this n
o longer or Simone would say all the wrong enthusiastic things. Simone looked stunned, but at first said little.
It took a while to locate Joyce in the long ward full of the clatter of metal pans and the weak cries of the new-born. We sought her among rows of women, some of whom seemed to my eyes almost old; she lay propped up, looking pale but over-voluptuous in a skimpy hospital gown. Simone kissed her warmly so I followed suit, rather embarrassed. Joyce’s transparent sexuality, I had long thought, must be a major part of her appeal to Evan, and it appealed vaguely to me also.
The baby was a little girl. I gazed obediently into a canvas box at the end of the bed at a small red face, two fists flung up in a posture of drowning. I felt dejectedly that I could see why Evan didn’t want it.
‘Evan and I agreed I shouldn’t feed her myself,’ said Joyce. ‘He told the doctor so. But the nurses say I’ve lots of milk and should. It’s a nuisance for them to have to prepare bottles, I think. The chief nurse is so nasty … And my milk hurts.’ She burst into tears.
Simone said that the baby was lovely. She said it looked wonderfully healthy for one born suddenly and prematurely. She asked – and this seemed the height of tactlessness to me at that moment – if Joyce had a name for her? But Joyce seemed to like being asked this: ‘Well, not a proper one. I suppose you know we’re going to give her away? – probably …’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘But I do have a little name for her myself. I call her Penguin. Because she flaps her little hands like a penguin’s flippers when I pick her up.’
I could hardly bear the ‘probably’. Everything seemed suddenly awful, with Joyce’s distress and her swollen breasts and the baby real after all – not just something one took a moral position about. It got worse when Simone enquired diffidently about the birth and Joyce said, with a dreadful stoicism, that the whole thing had been worse than she had expected – the pain simply awful – and that she didn’t really think she could go through it again, ever. At that point I got up, took my leave, and went to wait for Simone in the shabby hospital entry hall.
When Simone joined me she was still untypically silent. But she did say she thought Joyce and Evan might, after all, keep the baby. I did not contradict her.
The following day Evan appeared before me in a canteen near the Sorbonne where he knew I often lunched.
‘What the bloody hell have you been saying to Joyce?’
‘Nothing. Why? Sit down Evan, for God’s sake and speak more quietly. Everyone will look at you.’
He sat down, but continued in his tone of fury: ‘You and Simone between you have been going behind my back, haven’t you, changing Joyce’s mind for her? Huh. Fine friend you are, Mr Worldly-Wise.’
I suddenly felt extremely sick of both Evan and Joyce and the whole venture. Outside it was bitterly cold, Paris a uniform grey under a low sky. It was warm in the canteen, but my own room was barely heated, nor was the hotel garret Evan and Joyce shared. Could you take a new baby out into such cold? Mightn’t it die anyway? Nebulous apprehensions assailed me.
‘Look, Evan. I haven’t said a thing to Joyce. I don’t care what you do. It’s your business, not mine. Simone may have said something – I don’t know, they were cooing over the baby, you know how girls are – but surely that was only to be expected?’
‘Oh was it?’ he said nastily. ‘Well, so long as you and Simone realize you may have buggered up everything.’
‘Look, Evan.’ I struggled for a position of reason in the tempest of emotion in which he now seemed to be surrounding me. ‘Did you really expect to keep Joyce away from anybody else’s opinion for ever?’ (But, of course, I suddenly saw, he had.) ‘Even if the birth hadn’t happened here, in Paris, where we could see her, there would still have been doctors, nurses, social workers or whatever. And now Joyce’s going to have to bring the baby out of hospital with her when she leaves, isn’t she, simply in order to get it to England?’
‘Oh bloody hell,’ he said, putting his head in his hands. Evidently that had not occurred to him, till now.
‘So,’ I went on, emboldened, ‘is it really so vital that poor old Joyce makes up her mind to give the baby away now at this moment? The poor kid’s had a hard time, Simone told me … Have a heart, Evan! You and I can’t appreciate what it’s like for them. Can’t you at least wait till she’s on her feet again?’
‘Oh yes?’ he said, ‘And by that time she’ll be all for keeping it, won’t she? Particularly with Simone getting at her –’
He had a point, I knew, but I became angry myself now at the tone of voice in which he said ‘Simone’ and told him so.
He put his head in his hands again, and said after a minute in a different, almost childish voice: ‘Don’t you see, I can’t let her bring the baby out of hospital. I’ve been telling everyone it was stillborn – the old bag in our hotel, the crowd who go to the Deux Magots, Jean-Paul and Sylvie and everyone. Of course they all believe me, with Joyce having had that fall and being taken there by ambulance. They’re all so sorry for us … How can we turn up now with a live baby? I’d look such a fool.’
Suddenly I almost wanted to laugh. The idea of the baby being adopted in spite of Joyce’s feelings, in spite of everything, simply in order to save Evan’s face, was so ludicrous that I wondered that Evan, ordinarily no fool, did not see it himself. But of course it wasn’t really funny, not at all. I did not know what to say.
‘Tom, you’ve got to help us.’
‘Dammit, I have. And you don’t seem entirely grateful.’
‘I’m sorry, I know, I’m just so upset about it all. I’m sorry I was rude, Tom, I really am.’ He sounded so pathetic now that, in spite of myself, I believed him. He’s angry with himself really, I thought – instant psychologist coming to the rescue, the soothing fantasy of others’ ‘guilt feelings’.
‘Oh, I’ll help you,’ I said. ‘But I do think you may have trouble with Joyce’ – I found myself hoping that he would – ‘And you’re not to blame Simone for anything. Whoever’s fault it is if things go wrong, it’s not hers.’
‘I won’t, I promise I won’t. Simone’s a great girl – a real friend. I’ve always thought so.’
So we helped them. In spite of Simone’s own voiced forebodings and my own silent, less formed ones, we were evidently both too committed to the idea of ourselves behaving well in one particular way. A week later we went with Evan to collect Joyce and the much swaddled Penguin from the hospital by taxi, and deposited them straight at the Gare du Nord. Fortunately the weather was milder by then, a greasy, dreary day. Worried that the winter Channel would be rough, Simone urged Joyce to take Penguin below directly they were on board the ferry and lie down with her. Joyce said she would: she still looked pale, and said her stitches hurt. I walked away at this point, and bought everyone over-priced croissants from a station barrow. I did not want to hear about stitches. But Joyce seemed quiescent: after all, she was no ‘trouble’. At one moment in the business of organizing their untidy belongings out of the taxi, she had even handed Penguin to me to hold. In the miniature revelation of the baby’s warmth and compact weight, I had felt a human stirring for which I had been quite unprepared and for which I did not even have a name, a foretaste of the instincts which one day my own infant child would rouse in me. It disconcerted me very much, and, making some joke about male ineptitude, I handed the baby on to Simone as soon as possible.
Naturally I had paid for the taxi, and had ‘lent’ Evan some of the cross-Channel fare. I believe Simone had provided the clothes the baby wore.
Evan himself was cheerful, but in a subdued way so as not to seem insensitive, and was full of eloquent thanks to us. Of course he was.
As we left the station – a forbidding name it had always seemed to me, the Gare du Nord – I noticed that Simone was crying unobtrusively. She said it was because it all seemed so awful, but did not elaborate, and I did not ask her to. I felt bad enough as it was, though I did not then, or for many years, give my sad, uneasy feelings the name o
f guilt.
That morning, I just thought I should be quite glad if I never saw Evan or Joyce again. And yet, as the days went by, I found I missed them. In absence, they seemed faintly glamorous.
In the spring, they were back. Both seemed almost exuberant at being in Paris once more. There had, Evan conveyed, been some unspecified ‘trouble’ in London with people out to do him down: the English really were a putrid race, he said, sounding more Welsh than ever. Joyce had recovered her figure and her pink-cheeked smiles. I felt almost annoyed with her, yet at some deeper level much relieved. Perhaps, I thought, Evan had been right after all: women were emotional and unreliable just after childbirth and one should not take their desires then too seriously.
Joyce confided that Evan was now doing some marvellous new pictures which she was sure the French would appreciate much more than the stupid Londoners. She only looked sad when she spoke to us of the baby, and that was just once, to tell us that its ‘new family’ (whom she had not met) had called it Amanda: ‘Shirley Gilchrist says that means ‘‘deserving of love’’, Tom. I do think that’s a good sign, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Oh yes I’m sure it is. Of course.’
‘She’s awfully nice, Shirley, isn’t she? So kind and sort of efficient. I wish I knew more people like her.’
Being Joyce, I don’t think she meant to convey anything particular to me. She was simply speaking out of her limpid self. But of course Simone and I both, silently, took the remark as a challenge. In any case Simone still seemed bent on helping Evan and Joyce. I wasn’t quite sure why.
‘They seem fine now to me,’ I said. ‘People like that bob up again like corks.’ I had just come to realize that myself.
But a few weeks later it was apparently important that they leave Paris again. Evan had been let down by someone on whom he had counted: a promised sale had fallen through, there were dark references to people being ‘double-faced’ and ‘crooks’: now there were bills mounting up … I hoped cravenly not to hear too much about that. But Joyce had a heart-to-heart with Simone, whose own English was improving under my influence and who seemed, since the baby, to have replaced me in Joyce’s affections; Joyce expressed to her the idea that if only she and Evan could ‘get away somewhere into the country’, live quietly for a bit, amass pictures, spend little, they could ‘get back on their feet again’. Evan, she explained, spent too much in Paris, as in London, on buying other people drinks: ‘He’s too generous.’
Give Them All My Love Page 9