by Liz Nugent
Looking for a place to live was not difficult. I spoke with my cultivated English accent. It had become normal to me by then. It was no longer an accent that I had to affect. My schoolgirl French was not good enough to make myself understood, but thankfully this was a tourist town and most people who wanted to do business spoke fluent English. After a few days of staying in a hostel-style hotel, I rented a flat in the old town of Nice, several streets back from the seafront. The elderly Russian landlady, Madame Marzikova, wanted cash up front. She recognized something in me, perhaps my neediness, and we sealed the deal over a glass of lemonade (for me) and three glasses of rouge (for her) on her tiny balcony. Her English was not good, but the alcohol eased her understanding. She pointed to my scars. ‘Fire,’ I said, and pointed to the box of matches beside her ashtray. She refilled her glass and blessed herself, and I watched her gulp at the glass and felt proud that I was strong enough to resist it.
I decided on a new identity. I had been Delia O’Flaherty and Delia Walsh. My passport said Delia Russell, but I wanted to leave her behind. I decided on Cordelia. It was close enough to Delia and sounded more aristocratic. I remembered Cordelia in Brideshead Revisited. I was now a single girl called Cordelia Russell whose Home Counties family had fallen on hard times. I had an arts degree from Bristol University and had got caught up in a fire at a nightclub in Soho (there had been one just a few weeks before my own inferno). I was down here to bide my time until the scarring healed and to improve my French. That was the story I decided upon, but nobody cared enough to ask.
The flat consisted of two small rooms, one containing a single bed, a wardrobe and a fridge, the other a sofa, coffee table, an oven and grill, and a sink. The landlady boasted about the fact there was a telephone. But who would I ring?
It did not get any direct light, but in the late afternoon a narrow sunbeam crossed the floor of the bedroom and disappeared halfway up the wall. The wide, old-fashioned brass bed stood beside an exterior window. It looked straight into the kitchen of a restaurant in the alley opposite. Several mousetraps were set in corners, and I quickly got used to evacuating and resetting them. I remembered the sea-rats from my island days and how they would gnaw through the straw in our roof.
A week after I moved in, coming out of our shared bathroom, I met Sally from Scunthorpe. She was a barmaid who lived on the top floor. She was the first person to hear my story.
‘I heard about that fire,’ she said. ‘I think you’re brave, coming here on your own.’ She’d only been in Nice a few months. ‘I can’t wait to get out of this dive,’ she said, referring to the house. She warned me that Madame Marzikova could knock on our doors at any time of the day or night, roaring drunk, that she did nothing to maintain the building and that if anything in my flat was broken, I should fix it myself.
I was living on my own for the first time, and I took delight in making a home for myself in my shabby little space. There were handles missing from the wardrobe door, and the solitary window was not sealed. One shutter was broken. I was handy though. When I was living with Peter, I had played the part of the trophy wife and left all the manual tasks to him or a hired man, so he never knew that I could fix nets and sand rust from the hull of a boat and card wool at the age of ten. Even Alan had taught me how to change a fuse and to fix leather satchels and mend shoes to get an extra year out of them. Sally had some tools and borrowed others from the bar where she worked, so I was able to fix up the flat well. The air-conditioning unit did not work, so I moved my bed in front of the fridge at night and opened its door. Electricity was included in the rental price. Finally, I had my own private space.
I asked Sally about getting a job and she said she’d ask around, but bluntly told me that bar work was out of the question with my face the way it was, and that if I didn’t speak French I wouldn’t get a waitressing job in restaurants either. ‘I’m surprised at a posh bird like you looking for a waitressing job,’ she said, but told me she’d keep her ear to the ground for anything suitable.
I traipsed the streets anyway and offered to wash up in restaurants, clean bars, chambermaid in hotels. The answer was always no, as my interviewers tried not to look at my face. After sunset, I walked the Promenade des Anglais and paddled in the Mediterranean, grateful to be close to the sea again but itching to get into it. Every day, I practised my French from some Linguaphone tapes and a Walkman that Sally lent me. I bought the local newspaper and watched French television and immersed myself in the language.
Sally was right about Madame Marzikova. Some nights, I let her in when she hammered on the door, looking for company, and in she swept, clutching a bottle of wine. It was good to have somebody to feel superior to, and I could practise my French on her. The drunker she was, the more confident I became, less afraid of making mistakes.
Sometimes, when she woke me and I didn’t answer the door, she would sulk with me for days, hinting that she might need the room back. It never happened.
After six weeks of job hunting, I was feeling despondent. I decided to take the bus to Villefranche. I covered up from the intense heat of the day, wearing my wide-brimmed hat and high-factor lotion, but I was still conscious of the vivid red welts on my face, which had barely begun to die down. I realized I would just have to get used to it, and so would everybody else. People still winced and some turned away when they saw me, but at least one side of my face was still normal. I tried to convince myself that it could be worse.
I walked down towards the beach, packed today with tourists. It was mid July, and the heat was intense. As I walked past the restaurant on the cliff side of the road, I heard a long slow whistle, and turned slightly to see the gold-toothed manager. He waved his arm. ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle, welcome back!’ He had recognized my body, my walk, or perhaps the distinctive sundress I’d worn on that blissful holiday three years previously.
I watched his face fall as I walked towards him. A glance towards his name badge reminded me of his name. ‘Raoul! How lovely to see you again.’
He looked at my hairline, at my left ear, at my left shoulder, concentrating on my good side. ‘Madame,’ he said courteously, all of the lascivious flirtation gone, ‘you have returned to holiday, with your husband?’
‘No,’ I said, laughing, ‘he is soon to be my ex-husband, and I am looking for a job.’ I turned the bad side of my face away and offered my hand for him to shake. He took it, but when I said nothing more and looked expectantly at him, the penny dropped.
‘Here? You want a job, here?’
‘Yes, anywhere.’
‘To serve?’ I could see him trying to equate the beautiful rich young girl with the disfigured wannabe waitress.
‘Yes.’
‘We have nothing, I am sorry.’
I squeezed his hand. ‘Please? Anything? In the kitchen?’
His eyes took in my entire body from my toes up to my neck.
‘I think you are not strong enough for the kitchen.’ He had been assessing my body for its strength, unlike before.
I flexed my biceps. Keeping my damaged side in shadow, I smiled gratefully. I placed his hand on my tightened upper arm. ‘Please?’ I could still flirt. I still had the body, even if I didn’t have the face.
‘What is your name?’
‘Cordelia Russell.’ I said it without any hesitance. Delia had died in the fire.
‘Come back on Tuesday, Cordelia. Seven in morning. Hard work.’ He spoke as if to a stroppy teenager.
I wanted to know how much I would be paid, and he said that after Tuesday he would decide.
He pointed to my face. ‘What is …’ He struggled to find the words in English.
‘A fire,’ I said, ‘an accident.’
‘Tant pis,’ he said. His tooth glinted in the sunlight.
I went home and bought myself some flowers on the way. I ran up the stairs, passing Sally on the way out.
‘Congratulations, Cordelia!’ she said. ‘Can’t imagine you getting your hands dirty, though!’
The others who worked in the restaurant were mostly students from southern Europe. They were all younger than me. I was the only Irish person there, or the only English person there, depending on how one looked at it. They were fun, free, happy-go-lucky. Their kindness to me was touching. I knew they felt sorry for me, and the words they constantly used to describe me were ‘brave’ and ‘courageous’. But they all had their own obligations to partners or parents and children.
Sometimes, I would climb the rock-hewn steps up to the house in which Peter and I had stayed, half expecting that I might see Isabelle, since it was her friends who owned it, but there were only ever strangers, mostly the same British family, and later, as the season wound down, occasional couples, like Peter and I had once been.
The work in the restaurant was tough. At the height of the season, the restaurant was busy all day and dirty dishes stacked up quickly. My hands, once soft and manicured, soon became as rough and raw as my face. Thankfully, my work station was outside in a lean-to behind the restaurant in the shadow of steep rock, so I was spared the heat of the kitchen, the intensity of the sun, and worked mostly alone. I would also slice endless baguettes and prepare salads. Customers did not see me unless there were still some stragglers at closing time, when the staff gathered for a collegial bottle of wine and shared cigarettes. I began to smoke regularly then. It was a way to fit in. There was nobody to tell me that it was bad for the child. There was no child. I could pretend there never had been. This was a new opportunity. I decided that Cordelia Russell was not going to be washing dishes for long.
23
Hidden away in the restaurant, I did not get the opportunity to meet too many men, but Raoul, who also lived in Nice, would drive me home in the evenings in his Ferrari, of which he was incredibly proud. Top-end sports cars were everywhere on the Riviera. The rich and famous lived here, and ostentatious displays of wealth were common. Raoul was a generation older than me, perhaps in his early forties. It didn’t take me long to notice that he whistled at all the pretty ladies who passed his restaurant. I hadn’t been that special. He was, I discovered, not just the manager but the owner. He worked hard when he was there and rarely took a day off. He had several business interests in Nice and Marseilles, and when the restaurant closed at the end of October he would tend to those, he said.
I learned not to enquire too closely about Raoul’s businesses because he would become cagey and monosyllabic when I tried, but those night-time journeys on the winding coastal road were surprisingly companionable and I would catch him looking at me from time to time. My good side faced him in the car. He chatted easily enough when he could fool himself that he had a beautiful young woman next to him. Sometimes, to emphasize a point, he would put his hand on my thigh. I let him. I needed the job. But his hand never moved upwards, and I realized after a short time that his way with women was always like this. I watched him through the small window of the restaurant from my outdoor wash-up area. He flirted with every woman, touching their arms, their shoulders. He was a tactile person. There were some good-looking young waitresses on staff and he behaved with them in the same way. He was married, he told me, to his first love at the age of sixteen. Arabelle, he said, was the only woman in his life.
It is my failing that I saw this as a challenge. As damaged as I was, as kind as he was to give me a job in the first place, I set out to seduce him.
There was also a mercenary reason for my seduction. At the end of October, the restaurant would close for the winter until Easter and I needed money. The maintenance that Peter paid covered my rent and basic food, but there was no money for extras. I still had some items of designer clothing from the old days that had been untouched by the fire, kept wrapped for special occasions, but I wondered what and when those occasions would be. I needed to feel glamorous, to feel like I mattered.
As the season wound down, I became friendlier to Raoul, more respectful and courteous, and I knew he was flattered. On the drives back to Nice, I might mention how he was still in such good shape, or what a good people manager he was. Little compliments dropped casually into the conversation, and occasionally a peck on his cheek as I got out of the car.
One evening, I suggested he should come up to my flat for a coffee before he went home. He was reluctant, and claimed to be tired, but it did not take much to persuade him, just a tip of my head on his shoulder and my hand on his knee.
When we got upstairs into the flat, I poured him a glass of wine from a bottle I had bought specifically for this night, then nipped into the bedroom and let my hair down, discarded my work dress and threw a silk kimono-style gown over my slip, tying the belt loosely around my hips. He pretended not to notice as I sat myself to his right so that he would not have to look at the bad side of my face. We smoked and chatted for a while in French and English about the restaurant and the other staff members, the recent tax increases and the different types of tourists that patronized the restaurant. He wondered how I could afford an apartment on my own. Most of his workers, he said, stayed in youth hostels, rented houses together or commuted long distances. I admitted that I was in receipt of payments from my ex-husband, but that they didn’t stretch very far. He had never enquired about my personal life or the fire, but he was emboldened now to ask. I decided to change my rehearsed story. It seemed the best way to garner sympathy and to tug on his heart strings while shyly looking at him from the beautiful side of my face. I explained, halting sometimes for emotional effect, that my husband had been violent, and had set fire to our house. As I expected, Raoul’s arm slipped around my shaking shoulders.
‘Is he in prison? He is rich man, yes? Why you no stay in London?’
I could tell some of the truth now: that my husband had been caught embezzling money from his company, but that his powerful friends had kept him out of prison for his assault on me. I said honestly that I was an orphan with no family and no other means of income. I feigned upset and began to weep quietly. Raoul drew me closer, as I knew he would, and I nestled into his shoulder and turned my lips to his neck.
He jumped backwards as if startled, and inhaled deeply, with his hands up. I reached out and tugged him towards me by his belt, but he stood firm and put his hand up before my face. In French, he said, ‘Do not mistake my sympathy for anything else. I came here because I felt sorry for you. I have told you often that, for me, there is only my wife.’ He saw my confusion as I turned the bad side of my face away. ‘It is not because of that,’ he lied, gesturing towards my face. Of course it was.
It was a great shock to me. After he left, I spent a long time looking in the mirror. I had spent my whole life under the gaze of men. Their marriages had never stopped them pursuing me before. Despite the damage, up until now I still had confidence. I stared in the mirror, and whereas previously I had been mentally able to block out the ugly side of my own image, now I saw what Raoul saw. The scars were permanent, though significantly improved since I’d left the hospital. I felt ugly for the first time in my life. Who would ever want to kiss this face again?
I never went back to the restaurant. I stayed indoors for months, wallowing in my shame. I ate little, smoked a lot, but resisted the urge to drink. At night, I would slip out and paddle in the sea, stopping in the late supermarket for bread and tinned food. I contemplated a life in which nobody would fight over me, because nobody would care enough. I missed my father so much in those days and longed to be back in his strong arms. He had loved the fact that I was beautiful, but he had also loved everything else about me. He would not have been put off by my disfigurement. It would have been, it should have been, just him and me on the west side of Inishcrann, away from everyone. Daddy and me.
Autumn turned to winter, and the weeks of being cooped up while my money was stretched thinner took their toll. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to face the world either. Sally had gone back to university in Leeds.
On Christmas night, Madame Marzikova invited me to her flat and, having nothing b
etter to do, I went. She tried to insist that I drink with her, but I refused.
‘You are an alcoholic, Cordelia?’
I laughed at her. ‘I don’t drink,’ I said. ‘You are the drunk one!’
‘The difference,’ she said, ‘is that I know what I am.’
She was wrong. It had been nine months since I’d had a drink and I’d given up all by myself, without need for support groups or prayers or AA meetings. And besides, Peter’s maintenance payments wouldn’t even stretch to the occasional bottle of wine on top of the rent, so I couldn’t afford to drink. I was saving up for a consultant’s appointment.
She changed the subject, pointing to my face. ‘It is better, your face,’ she said, slurring her words, ‘I can see how beautiful you were,’ and she cupped the good, left side of my face in her gnarled old hand. ‘But the rest of us live our lives with the faces we are born with. You will get used to this too.’
In the new year, I had my appointment with an eminent English-speaking skin specialist, not available on the French health service. Dr Giraud told me nothing new. The scarring was permanent, though it would fade in time. There were experts who could work wonders, but they were prohibitively expensive and must be paid for privately. There was no guarantee that such an investment would be successful. Dr Giraud was sympathetic but unimpressed by me and didn’t show any interest in the details of the nightclub fire or my financial plight, how I’d just been divorced by my embezzling husband. He charged me the full fee and barely met my eye when I shook hands to say goodbye.