Remember Me...

by Melvyn Bragg

  Yet, near him again now and once more in the ambience of the unlikely looking ‘mistress’, it was her father she puzzled over rather than the woman or the affair or the consequences it had. Why did she know so little about him? He never failed to respond when asked a question but the times spent with him were so short, so irregular. Natasha wanted to know more about Provence, her childhood there, his widower state, their life under the Germans, her father’s reaction to that. She was sure that Alain had told her that her father had helped people escape, given money, provided contacts for the journey into the Alps beyond La Rotonde. But how much help and what had been the risk to himself? She wanted to dig into that past, that occupied territory. She wanted to talk about, perhaps to write about it, and he could help. But for now, Brittany was a haven, to be accepted for that, and the sea was a medicine.

  Most importantly, she was with Louis and François and her daughter and no one else. Véronique had taken the children to La Rotonde. Louis would join them towards the end of the month. Natasha had come to Brittany to spend time with François. He was happily out on the sea now, with Sylvestre, the handyman from the laboratory, in a rowing boat fitted with a small motor, fishing for specimens for the laboratory, which Louis directed from a distance for most of the year. Louis’s month’s residence in the summer was much awaited. He was held in some reverence. Natasha had discovered that earlier in the morning when Monique, the pale-skinned Breton woman, a fisherman’s wife, who came to clean and cook lunch, had given Natasha an encomium on the virtues and the value to the community of her father and the laboratory. Natasha had by proxy been flattered. She was moved at the prospect of days ahead with Joseph, their daughter, with François and Louis.

  Monique, who had two children of her own, could scarcely keep her hands off the small, fair, merry English child and begged to be allowed to take her home for afternoons, to look after her, giving Natasha proper time to rest which, with sweet directness she declared, she so clearly needed, as all rich women did. It would be such a pleasure for her and for her children to have a little English girl from the Coat Pins. Natasha was practical. The prospect of such stretches of leisure was too tempting to miss and (she smiled to herself as she formulated this) it truly seemed she would be doing Monique a favour. There was happiness to be given, as well as leisure to be taken, an almost absurdly self-serving conjunction, but real, and too good to ignore.

  The child woke up. Natasha re-entered into motherhood. It was as if she had been invisible while the child slept. So curious, she thought, this small person who was the two of them. Everyone said she was a lovely child. Natasha took her down to the beach where they would collect shells.

  François saw that he was scaring the living daylights out of Joseph and so he strained to make the boat go even faster. It had seemed an innocent invitation. François’s friend had told him he could use the tiny vessel. He had offered Joseph a trip despite Joseph’s protests about knowing nothing at all about boats. All Englishmen were sailors, François said, as a challenge. Now he was stuck with it.

  They had skimmed straight out to sea with a wind that had some of the other enthusiasts shaking their heads and holding on for calmer weather. The boat was very small. The sail was a clumsy thing, Joe thought. François’s barked commands were largely incomprehensible. Land was soon out of sight. Would they ever turn back? They were alone on the ocean, it seemed, skimming very choppy water in a universe of sea. Joe fought hard to keep his fear down and the struggle took most of his attention.

  It was when François began a series of tacking and turning manoeuvres to bring them back to land that Joe’s nerves began to show. Each turn, preceded by violent gesticulations and streams of obscenities from François, tipped the boat within centimetres of capsizing, nothing but the cold depth below, no one in sight to see the disaster, François yelling at him to lean out and keep the balance, lean right out, the sail all but dipping into the waves and Joe’s confidence ebbing after every successful manoeuvre – it was bound to go wrong next time. It did. But only when, thank God, they were in sight of land. Joe’s relief at the prospect of reaching terra firma had slowed him down and this time he sat frozen as the sail fell towards him, past him, and the boat capsized.

  François commanded Joe’s help to make several attempts to haul the sail up but its saturated weight defeated them.

  ‘He didn’t know what to do next!’ François crowed as the three of them ate in the rather rough back alley crêperie François favoured. ‘We were told all the English were sailors.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Joe.

  ‘He just didn’t move!’ François was triumphant. ‘The sail began to come down, so,’ he raised his right arm and brought it slowly down towards the table, ‘and I waited for Joseph to move. He was like a statue.’

  ‘I was.’

  Natasha smiled. Joseph was giving François every gram of his moment.

  ‘I was surprised,’ said François, who took another pull of the Muscadet, burped, then speared an over-large forkful of the latest in the steady line of scorching crepes which came hot from the galley kitchen. ‘I thought he had done it before. But now . . .’ François’s frozen fork halfway to his mouth, body stiffened. ‘A corpse. Nearly a corpse.’

  ‘You helped him so much,’ said Natasha, as they walked through the higgledy-piggledy alleys to the harbour front on which stood a few small restaurants, shops and two modest hotels. ‘There’s a French mot: “You missed a great opportunity to say nothing.” You took yours and François was so proud – to show you up, to be superior to you, to be able to boast about it to me. And to all his new friends, I’m sure.’

  ‘The fact is I was happy when it went over. All I had to do was swim and push the thing. I was. Really. Happy.’

  Natasha joined in with his laughter.

  ‘Why do we get scared?’ he asked. ‘Skimming along at a hundred miles an hour with a provenly safe boat under my bum gave me the near terminal jitters. Doing a sort of dog paddle over the same water was comfort itself.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘You have given him enormous pleasure.’

  She leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. It was such a fine night! Almost a full moon, the boats silhouetted in the harbour, the black-walled mass of the fortified old town out there across the causeway.

  ‘Let’s walk over there. Into the magical fortress.’

  ‘You are always a romantic, Joseph,’ Natasha said. They crossed the causeway in the silvery half-night. Once through the narrow gates they were drawn to the tables outside the sole open bar, its front wall slung with a dozen or so white electric light bulbs, beyond it the balmy darkness of a deserted street. Joe felt profoundly abroad.

  Three men were earnest in dominoes at one table. At another a white-linen-suited, stylistically striking young man, English, Joe decided, from the battered Panama hat, was sitting disdainfully alone, sipping, what they heard on his re-ordering, a Kir, smoking a cigarette beautifully, as if it were his art.

  ‘I’m glad François wanted to stay in the crêperie,’ Joe said, lowering his voice to match the emptiness of the street. ‘We’re not alone much, like this, now, not enough, are we?’

  ‘At home we are. When she is in bed.’

  ‘But . . . out . . . being out is where there’s life, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not only here. Nowhere has the monopoly. What is that line you so much like about reading?’

  ‘“My days among the dead are spent.”’

  ‘Not so dead if you are reading the dead.’

  ‘But . . . anyway . . .’ The waiter brought cognac and coffee for him, coffee only for Natasha. ‘I saw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in London,’ he said. ‘All of us did. All of us from the cutting room. After we’d finished.’ He took a rather clumsy sip of the cognac. ‘Margaret had told me that Richard Burton was particularly good. Ross knows Richard Burton. He says he’s a “flawed genius”.’

  ‘Isn’t everyone? That’s too easy. Typical
of Ross. It’s simply said for effect. And you see, it worked!’ She laughed.

  Joe raised the glass of cognac to close down that subject.

  ‘OK. But the film’s about a man who is glued to his books. To the bottle as well. One reviewer said that every couple in London of a certain type went to see it to watch themselves on the screen. To watch two intelligent people in love tear each other to bits.’

  Natasha made no reply. There was an unconscious overemphasis in what he said. It somehow connected with what she had thought of as a rather distracted, unsure look about him when he had come off the ferry.

  ‘God, I love it here!’ he said. ‘So warm at this time of night, this bar, this fortress, the sea, you. I wouldn’t trade this, this moment for anything, anywhere, ever!’

  There was overemphasis again, but no dissembling, she could tell that. True as a bell, the words, and Joseph, and their life. The whisper of doubt faded as quickly as it had arrived.

  ‘Isn’t François in good form?’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen him in such good spirits.’

  ‘He drinks plenty of them!’

  ‘Joseph! He is proving himself a man among the men here. And the Brittany men are tough, they are strong, the fishermen, and François loves to go to their bars and cafés and Sylvestre tells me they like him. He has no snobbery. None. And they like his jokes!’

  ‘He was telling me about the van, or is it a truck, he drives across to St Malo twice a week to send some of the laboratory’s catch to other labs in Marseilles and was it Naples? He explained that what they can find here is unique.’

  ‘You see? He knows what he is doing. And,’ she smiled as if she had been vindicated, ‘he is driving, not a lorry, but almost!’

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Joe. ‘I like him. Who couldn’t?’

  ‘Only his mother.’

  Joe held back the cry for mercy: not Véronique, not on such a rare night.

  ‘I think Father has adapted,’ Natasha said. ‘More or less. Or he ignores him now. Just someone else about the laboratory during the day and a son scarcely ever at home in the evenings. But Véronique . . .’ Her face grew tense; he saw her make again for the unhealed past.

  ‘Natasha . . . could we forget Véronique tonight?’

  ‘She is . . .’

  He sang, softly,

  ‘She gets too hungry for dinner at eight

  Goes to the theatre but never comes late

  She never bothers with people she hates

  That’s why the lady is a tramp!’

  The sound of singing and in an American accent unseated the white-suited Englishman and imperiously he rose to leave. ‘L’addition,’ he called, ‘s’il vous plaît.’

  ‘One down, three to go,’ Joe whispered, but one of the Frenchmen looked over and said,

  ‘Encore!’

  ‘This is you,’ he said, and sang on:

  ‘She likes the cool, soft wind in her hair

  Life without care

  She’s broke, it’s OK

  Hates California, it’s cold and it’s damp

  That’s why the lady, that’s why my lady, that’s why the lady is a tramp.’

  The Frenchmen applauded. The proprietor beamed. ‘Frank Sinatra,’ he said, ‘bravo!’ The tall Englishman, with contempt in every stride, marched away into the dark reaches of the old town.

  ‘You are so silly, Joseph,’ Natasha said, when arm in arm they got back into the town. ‘I love you when you are silly. You should be more silly more often.’

  ‘It’s hard,’ he said, ‘living with you.’

  ‘Am I so serious?’

  ‘Oh yes! So serious. Lovely and serious. Sea air makes seriousness sexy. Try saying that when you’re sober.’

  ‘We are happy, aren’t we, Joseph?’

  He stopped, faced her and kissed her.

  Monique had achieved one of her goals – to ‘kidnap’ their daughter for the night. The next goal, she said, was to ‘keep’ her.

  ‘Imagine,’ Joe said, as they walked past the bulky laboratory and turned up the sandy path which led into the pine woods. ‘Tonight we’ll be on our own. No cries, no “alert”. Just us.’

  ‘We shall sleep the sleep of the dead,’ said Natasha, ‘in disbelief.’

  A few days later she woke up early and lay on her side for a while, looking at Joseph in the early light. He was deeply asleep, one arm above his head on the pillow, the other stretched out towards her, his legs, she could see their shape through the single thin sheet, halfway towards the foetal position. She was reminded, by this pose, of the painting she had done, long ago it seemed now, of Icarus. One day she must collect it from Julia’s cellar.

  Joseph was already tanned. He liked the sun and in the first days, as always, he had taken too much and boiled red, lips blebbed, blisters on shoulders, but he stuck it out until he shaded to this gypsy brown which suited him, and brought out a deeper aspect of his character, she thought, something sensually unloosened, unmappable, less organised, and the richer for that.

  She got out of bed and reached out for the black dressing gown she had worn since Oxford. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her hips had become heavy, her belly still sagged, the breasts still bigger, altogether too much of her, she thought, and knew she should try harder to regain her previous shape. Joseph would prefer that, however much he protested the contrary, what man would not? That was the result of the bone tiredness in her which had still not gone away. Why bone? she thought. She decided she must be the Empress of her own body and from this moment command it to obey her.

  She went through to look at their sleeping daughter. Another love, a different love, flesh and blood now safely launched, a puzzle, she thought, so much out of me, the months in the womb, so little from Joseph and yet he was even more present than she in the face of this other self.

  As she made a bowl of coffee she realised how little she understood and did it help, even the little she understood? Or was the best way just an acceptance inside the inevitable?

  She went into the garden, carrying the coffee, like a libation to the dawn; she could understand libations to the dawn. The rising of the sun must not have seemed inevitable on many a dark night. She went beyond the garden and further into the pines. She left behind her, in the wooden chalet, the four people she loved most in the world: Joseph, their daughter, her father, François – how could the one word, love, describe the nuances and the differences? Yet it served, she did not know how, to embrace tenderness, passion, respect, admiration, protectiveness, dependency, constancy.

  There was the sea, calm on this morning of the Fête des Filets Bleus. The beaches were empty, the gulls held the rocks. Out there, when she narrowed her eyes, there were as always the small boats trailing the blue nets in the dark water. Soon enough the bands would arrive and the parade would begin, her heart would swell a little at the simple demonstration of continuity and victory over long voyages in unsafe waters, of the women looking out to sea, waiting for the homecoming, of the small community on this short strip of shore on the edge of the Atlantic celebrating its unity and survival. Joseph would romanticise about that.

  He would also romanticise about the sea which was now beginning to sparkle as the sun’s face moved higher from the east. He could go into states of almost instant exhilaration where she could not follow. Either in his nature, from his birth, or from those fractured boyhood experiences there had grown a religious, even a mystical feeling about the vastness, the unknowability, the interconnectedness of life and what sustained it, what moved it, a feeling almost entirely foreign to Natasha. Sometimes she could dream herself into a luxurious self-hypnosis, looking at the stars, looking out at the sea, but she was never far away from a more powerful sense of being puzzled or, more often, an overwhelming impulse to find out how it all worked. She was content with that, content as now with the fact that this was the sea and the morning light on the sea was beautiful in her eyes though to the fishermen it would just be work, to others an obstacl
e to cross or, as used by Joseph when he swam out to the rocks like an otter, a facility to turn happiness into health. What was really out there she did not know and such intimations as she had were no more than scattered showers on the fathomless indifference.

  They would all be stirring soon. She took a final sip of the coffee, poured the remainder on the ground and walked back quickly, suddenly eager to be in the house, with them, with all of them.

  Natasha kept clear of the main flow of the procession which took place under the midday sun, first along the coast road then marching into the town and finally across the causeway where troupe after troupe, pipes and drums skirling, walked between the waters into the narrow streets to the arena whose thick walls fronted the Atlantic. She took care never to let go of her daughter’s hand. She had encouraged Joseph to go off with François and his friends whom she categorised as ‘just like your friends in Cumberland’. Her father had said he would go his own way. Even on the day of the Fete he wanted to spend some hours in the laboratory and making arrangements on such a day of flux was pointless, he said. But, Natasha thought sadly, the other woman would share his time.

  She remembered the day as a series of impressions. She knew the work of the Impressionists who had painted in Brittany near by. The broken daylight on the sea had provided the perfect subject. But so had the crowds, and those painters’ interest in the movement of crowds could be both understood and realised, Natasha thought, in the gaudily clad marchers, the thronging spectators in holiday mood, the common open air, the constantly moving complex of light and people, of sky, sea and the gulls swooping along the shore.

  Monique was in the procession and waved and both of them waved back, Natasha holding the child high in her arms. The tall Englishman in the white suit was joined by an equally tall young woman also in white and they stood on a wall, above the crowd, as if taking the salute. She saw Joseph several times, intent, smiling, shot through she could tell with the drama and the music, sometimes with François and his friends, sometimes alone. Her father was there at one point with Mademoiselle Benoît. She linked Louis’s arm in an open companionable way.