A Good Woman

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘Changed my mind. Thought a movie with two beautiful women was just what I needed before settling into a weekend of manuscript.’

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Tanya smiles while I struggle with my composure.

  We sit in the dark and watch the life of an English butler, locked in an ethic of service, an ideal of propriety, unfold before us. Paul sits between us. At one point his hand curls round mine. It is warm, soft and taut at once. I do not draw away. I am crying. I am crying because the butler has just realized that his life has been given over to hollowed out forms. His service has been meaningless, travestied by his master’s embracing of fascism. He is a relic to nothing. And it is too late for the love that has passed him by.

  I am crying because Paul’s hand is on mine and I would like to keep it there and I can’t keep it there.

  Afterwards, on the terrace of a café shadowed by Napoleon’s triumphal arch, I am angry. I am angry because we are made to feel pity for the butler, in some way superior to him - because we all supposedly know that feeling comes first and life is love.

  ‘But the butler has harmed no one.’ I am adamant. I scowl at Paul.

  ‘Nor has he lived, made choices.’

  ‘Because life equals a few little rolls in the hay. Passionate little rolls in the hay.’

  He shrugs. ‘Rolls in the hay are not love.’

  ‘And why isn’t service a kind of love?’

  ‘Serving fascists?’ Tanya intervenes.

  I shake my head so hard that my hair tumbles over my face. ‘No, just putting our own little selves second. What’s so sacred about our selfishness? Our vaunted individuality?’

  ‘Maria’s about to be born again,’ Tanya laughs.

  ‘That’s not what I mean. My mother…’ I stand up abruptly. ‘Too long a day. I’m not making sense. Must be exhaustion.’

  Paul is swift to rise. ‘Shouldn’t we see you home?’

  ‘No, no, I’ll be fine.’ I reject his concern, dash off with minimal grace and flag down a taxi before they can follow me.

  On Sunday morning, Beatrice and I meet in front of the Musée d’Orsay. She throws her arms around me and kisses me enthusiastically.

  ‘You don’t know how exciting this is for me,’ she says. ‘I’ve only ever been here once since it opened. It does me good to have you in Paris.

  ‘Only once?’

  ‘Yes,’ she looks a little shame-faced. ‘There’s always so much to do, so many tasks that come first. And on Sundays, there are the children, who never want to go and see boring old pictures. But this weekend they’re away with their father. And I haven’t got a single meeting.’ She claps her hands girlishly.

  In fact she is altogether girlish today, now that I look at her properly. Against the light drizzle, she wears one of those round hats with a little upturned brim. It is navy blue, like her suit which has a pleated skirt. A white blouse with rounded collar peeps out from her jacket. She has done her hair differently too. There is a wispy wave at the cheek, and her eyes as she looks up at the pictures are hugely bright.

  ‘Do you remember? Your mother used to take us to museums. No one has ever explained pictures to me like she used to. Maybe you can do it for me again now.’

  I laugh, but I do as she asks, filling in where I can, telling her stories about artists’ lives. There is that rapt look about her which is etched in my memory. Is it only now that I notice the slight wistfulness about the lips?

  We are standing in front of Manet’s Olympia. The original. I don’t really want to pause here, but Beatrice has wrapped her arm through mine and won’t budge.

  ‘She’s so beautiful,’ she says softly. ‘It must be wonderful to be as beautiful as that, so defiant in nakedness.’

  ‘Though she didn’t have that wonderful a life, it seems. She was probably a prostitute.’ A tremor comes into my voice as I catch the look Beatrice turns on me. And I suddenly recall the part the word prostitute played in my childhood spying on Beatrice. I rush on to burble about Manet’s brilliant opposition of light and shadow, his rejection by the academy, his disappointment at being seen only as the head of the Impressionists.

  ‘I still think it must be wonderful,’ Beatrice murmurs.

  Maybe it is the wide silence of her eyes, but I then remember a story about another Olympia, a childhood Olympia, perhaps Manet knew it too. ‘Do you know the story of the sandman?’ I ask Beatrice. ‘That evil demon who comes to steal children’s eyes if they are open when they shouldn’t be? There’s an Olympia there, too.’

  Beatrice shakes her head.

  I grin. ‘This Olympia is the most beautiful creature in the world and the hero, Nathaniel, I think his name is, falls madly in love with her merely by spying on her through a window. Then one day he discovers that this ravishing silent Olympia is really a doll, an automaton created by the man he has always thought is her father and a famous oculist who has provided her glorious, hypnotic eyes. And the two of them are dismantling her. Nathaniel rushes over to save his lady love. But he is too late. Olympia’s eyes are bleeding on the floor and the oculist turns on him and tells him they are really Nathaniel’s eyes, stolen from him in childhood by the sandman who is the oculist in disguise.’

  ‘That’s a horrible story.’ Beatrice shivers.

  ‘Yes it is,’ We move away from the picture at last, but for the rest of our visit, I am haunted by the sense that I have too much in common with Nathaniel, that Beatrice is the doll I spy on, a doll left over from childhood who has grown into independent life. And my eyes will be taken from me for my secret spying on the forbidden.

  Over lunch in the Brasserie opposite the museum, Beatrice confides in me.

  ‘I’ve been twice to your mother’s grave in the last few weeks. I like to talk to her. She gives me solace.’

  ‘What do you need solace for, Beatrice?’

  She shrugs, looks away for a moment.’Sometimes the responsibilities get on top of me.’

  ‘But the responsibilities are good. They anchor you.’

  She laughs, ‘You say that because you’re free. But tell me about London. Did you see your lover there?’

  The question startles me as much as the tone. It has an avidity I don’t associate with Beatrice and I must stare at her oddly for she rushes on, ‘I’m sorry. You stayed on so much longer than you’d said, so I… It’s indiscreet of me. It’s just that I have so few friends of my own, friends I can talk of such things with. And you’ve become one. Again. A friend of my own.’ She smiles at me shyly, then looks away. Her fork is poised in mid-air, as if she has forgotten about it.

  ‘I did see an old friend,’ I murmur, wanting to give her a confidence in exchange for hers. ‘From New York days. That was very nice.’

  ‘New York?’ Her eyes are on me again, soft and brown. ‘Tell me, when you were in America, did you ever go to Hollywood?’

  She is a little breathless and I remember that on the last few occasions we met, we talked a great deal about the United States. At first, she began by lambasting American foreign policy, towards Bosnia, towards France, and then there was a shift and everything was inquisitiveness - about daily life in Manhattan, about the Grand Canyon, about the Everglade’s. And now about Hollywood. I tell her about my visit to a studio with a producer we once represented, about little Venice and Malibu and strips of silver beach.

  Beatrice’s food sits untouched in front of her. ‘It would be nice to go there one day,’ she sighs.

  ‘Paris is nicer. But if you want to go, nothing is very far these days.’

  ‘I know. It’s just that I have no English. And…’ she shrugs, despondent.

  ‘That’s no problem. I can teach you. We can start straight away.’ I laugh, hold up fork, knife, spoon, get her to repeat after me the names of everything on the table. We are giggling. Schoolgirls again, back in my mother’s kitchen, before my perversity tore us apart.

  Over coffee, Beatrice stops the English lesson. ‘You make a good teacher,’ she says. ‘You should
come and help out with the refugee children. I give them extra French you know. At the centre in the 13th. Late on Wednesday afternoons. Could you manage it?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  Beatrice has her busy, responsible look on again and she takes a piece of paper from her bag and writes an address down for me. ‘Four o’clock. A little earlier, perhaps, so that I can set you up.’

  It is when we are already out on the street, that she turns to me and says, ‘And it really is time you came and met my husband, the family. Now that we’re friends.’

  There is an air of entreaty on her face and I have the sudden sense that she is afraid. But I can’t tell whether she is afraid that her family will alienate me or steal me away from her. I put my arm through hers as a promise against either.

  ‘You love them very much, don’t you?’ I murmur.

  She squeezes my arm. ‘We’re having a little party. For my husband’s birthday. Saturday next. You must come.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  All at once curiosity seizes me, as acute as it once was about Beatrice’s parents. Its strength makes me uncomfortable and I fail to notice that we are walking up the Rue d’Oudinot and that Beatrice is hesitating in front of Steve’s place. I was going to tell her today that I had found an apartment opposite hers, but now it’s too late. I squirm at my secret, am troubled too, because if I invite her up, she is certain to notice how unlived in the place looks.

  ‘I need to pop round the corner and get a few things,’ I try to salvage myself. ‘Then you can come up for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Okay.’ Beatrice has no suspicions. ‘But we could have some of this.’ With a smile she holds up the bag of treats I have brought her and Marie-Françoise from London. ‘And I can only stay for a moment.’

  The apartment smells a little stuffy, but doesn’t look too bad. I fling open some windows.

  ‘Haven’t had a change to air it properly since I got back,’ I mumble.

  ‘It’s a fine place.’ Beatrice walks round the salon appreciatively, ‘It’s amazing that you’ve managed to find so many good things in so little time.’

  ‘Oh, it all belongs to an American friend.’ I see my opportunity. ‘I’ll have to find my own place soon.’

  ‘Why bother?’ Beatrice smiles as if I have just let her in on an intimacy. ‘This is so nice.’ She pauses in front of my favourite picture, moves back to find a better angle and brushes against a side table. A pile of post the gardienne must have piled up in the weeks of my absence, begins to topple to the floor.

  ‘But you haven’t even had a chance to open your letters.’ Beatrice stops the fall. ‘I really musn’t keep you.’

  ‘Junk mail,’ I say. ‘Not worth the time it takes to open.’

  I don’t know whether it is as much of a surprise to her as it is to me, but we both start to laugh.

  After Beatrice has left, I sit back in the sofa and start to sift through the post. It is mostly junk, but there are two large envelopes from the office in New York, each containing an assortment of forwarded letters. I am reminded of the fact that I have not yet written to Steve to inform him of my new address.

  There is a letter from Steve at the top of the pile and I read it first. He gives me a round-up of New York gossip - births, marriages, deaths and who has been lunching with whom and replacing whom in an assortment of key posts. He tells me I am much missed, and if I should decide to come back, open arms and racing hearts will greet me. He also tells me that he and Chuck will be in Paris in late June.

  I am touched by this letter: beneath the flamboyant fast talk and intent superficiality, Steve has proved a loyal friend. And I can almost hear him chortle as I tell him what I’m now up to.

  The next two letters are from my publishers: the first containing a royalty statement which is not minimal; the second asking me whether I would consider doing another book, given the success of the first and suggesting some possibilities. I daydream about this for a few minutes and it is while I am locked in the daydream that my eyes focus on the next envelope, redirected from publishers to office. I know that writing - plump, childish, green inked with thick slashes beneath my name. I don’t want to know that writing,

  Cold beads of perspiration gather in my armpits. That writing has found me, that writing which pursued me for months, a letter a day, malicious, furious, demented, coiling round my thoughts, my life, like a nemesis. Trapping me, because every one of its spiteful words was in essence true.

  I don’t want to open this letter, but my fingers are already tearing away at the envelope. And as I tear, a crack appears in the well-guarded perimeter fence I have erected around an area of my life. Atop brick and barbed wire, the bare rickety sign still reads, ‘Do Not Enter’. But the crack is widening, opening to engulf me. I am through. Arms flailing, eyes tightened against grit and stone, I am through on the other side.

  -25-

  Autumn-bright leaves dance and swirl amidst the murky browns and greys of Manhattan’s Flatiron District. In my office, the noisy old radiators make the atmosphere tropical. The plants have noticed: their tendrils creep over pictures, assault chairs and curios. I haven’t the heart or time to restrain them. It is October 1991 and Nichols, Regnier and Peele Associates now occupies a whole floor of this converted century-old warehouse. Steve Nichols, who invited me to join the agency just over three years ago, is next door to me. Harold Peele, who handles the corporate accounts and the occasional city politician, runs the little empire at the other end of the long corridor. Despite the Wall Street Crash of ‘87, we are doing well. People seem to need images even when money is tight.

  Unwritten company policy has it that every year one or other of the partners will carry what we call internally a ‘guilt’ account - that is, provide advice and a measure of services pro bono, free or all-but-free to a worthy cause or small charity. This is Steve’s idea: for years he has been helping various Aids groups, though in his jaunty way, he is quick to announce that the rationale for the ‘guilt’ accounts is that there is nothing like helping to help our own image.

  This season it is my turn. Out of the batch of letters which come in regularly soliciting our help, we have chosen three which tickle our conscience and our fancy; and the last of the candidates, a group seeking to provide shelter for the homeless in Spanish Harlem, is due this afternoon.

  Promptly at three, reception announces the people from the Hundreds Project. Instead of the anticipated two, four traipse into my office, two men and two women. They are about my age, but they feel younger. All but one are jean clad and all but one, as I shake their hands and note Spanish names, look at me with a suspicion which borders on hostility. The exception wears a trim navy blue cord suit and carries a large rectangular portfolio. He has the dark good looks of a silent film hero with heft and he smiles warmly. His name is Sandro Jimenez.

  All my style prejudices must come to the fore, since I fully expect Sandro Jimenez to make the presentation. But no sooner has one of the women, Valeria, pulled a thick sweater off, than she begins to speak. She is quickly interrupted by the second woman, who is in turn cut off and contradicted by the other man. And so it goes on in an uncontrolled three-way relay until all I want to do is shout for a single voice and a single coherent picture instead of this chaos which nonetheless bears the tangible whiff of deep commitment.

  ‘Perhaps one of you might make it clear just what it is exactly that you’re trying to achieve,’ I manage to say during a pause in the relay.

  ‘May I?’ The one called Sandro Jimenez looks at his colleagues and then at me and gestures at the portfolio beside his chair.

  ‘Please.’

  He places the portfolio on the easel stand which just about escapes green tendrils and begins to show me photographs: large, stark, black and white prints of streets in the East Hundreds, derelict, devastated sites, weed in concrete; people sleeping rough, covered in newspapers, slumped in doorways; children playing in wasteland; young men, cold hands to
o big for their bodies, old men with dead eyes beneath crazy hats lining up for soup in front of churches, missions. Meanwhile he talks with soft passion of a block in the lower East Hundreds, calling out for reclaiming; small rooms but with light and privacy for young, homeless men, who could help, be trained in construction work, in a neighbourhood reclamation project which could gradually be theirs; vouchers for food and shelter instead of cash for drugs. The photographs are replaced by architectural drawings, illustrations of finished sites, bright in colour, fresh, welcoming.

  I am hooked.

  ‘And how far have you got?’ I ask.

  Three of them start to speak at once. I throw up my hands in a gesture of desperation and I hear Sandro say, a note of quiet authority in his voice, ‘Carmen, explain about the churches.’

  There is silence for a moment, then Carmen starts to tell me how two of the churches in the area have pledged their support for the project, how in the first term they will provide food and shelter for a proportion of those selected to work on the reclamation. Then, at a nod from Sandro, the other man, José, tells me how after much persuasion, they have had the go-ahead from the relevant authorities, have obtained all the necessary permissions and a small grant. Finally, Valeria explains that they have begun to designate the most reliable amongst the drifting youths in the area, have talked to them about the project, nurtured interest, promises.

  At last, I have something of a coherent picture and I smile gratitude at Sandro.

  ‘And who are your architects?’

  A shy half-smile flickers over his face. He points to himself.

  ‘I see. And the firm?’

  ‘No firm. Just me.’

  ‘Sandro is one helluva architect,’ Carmen enthuses.

  ‘Terrific,’ Valeria echoes her.

  ‘I don’t doubt it. But that may not be enough. What have you built, Mr. Jimenez?’

  He lifts his hands dramatically in the air. ‘What haven’t I built! I’ve worked on brownstones, office blocks and warehouses, on suburban ranch houses, bungalows, swimming pools, apartments.’ He bends towards me as if he is about to convey a secret. ‘But this is the first time I will have planned from beginning to end.’