The Joyce Girl

by Annabel Abbs

  “Very nice, Miss Joyce, hold it there.” Monsieur Borlin rapped on the floor with his cane. “Class! Please observe Miss Joyce. Note the position of her feet, how they hold her steady. Observe the elegance of her arms.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” hissed Kitten. “I think Emile’s in love with you. And why shouldn’t he be? You’re beautiful, you’re one of the most talented dancers in Paris, you’re clever and kind. And your Pa’s the most celebrated writer in the world.”

  “First position … raise your arms, extending all the way through … push!” Monsieur Borlin bawled over the crashing chords of the pianist. “Now extend the left leg … Higher … Higher!” His cane struck the oil stove, making it spew out a column of black smoke. “And rotate!”

  I could feel the muscles in my legs burning and the perspiration rising on my lip. And yet I loved this feeling, the tautness and control, the sense of every muscle at its perfect pitch, the way my teeming brain stilled in the effort.

  “Emile would be impossible to turn down, darling.” Kitten twisted her head to look at me. “He’s so jolly, always smiling. He’s rather handsome too, in a Jewish way.”

  “Jews don’t marry gentiles and certainly not when her father’s a well-known blasphemer without a penny to his name.” I kept my eyes on my left foot as it pointed high into the air, willing it to stay steady and trying to avoid Kitten’s stare as I pushed back the myriad thoughts that had begun to swarm inside my head.

  “Perfect, Miss Joyce. Push out those toes, Miss Neel. Extend!” Monsieur Borlin raised his cane and tapped its silver tip on Kitten’s left foot. “Keep extending, Miss Neel.” When Monsieur Borlin had passed, Kitten lowered her voice again. “How’s Giorgio? He certainly wasn’t staring at me all night.”

  “He’s exhausted from his singing lessons. Babbo’s quite made up his mind that Giorgio is to be a famous opera singer. It’s what Babbo wanted to do before he became a writer.” I looked at my left foot, still hovering in the air, and wished Giorgio had chosen a different path. I still remembered the day we both enrolled at the same music school, a month after arriving in Paris. Babbo insisted on singing all the way there, even on the tram. A few months later I decided there were too many aspiring opera singers in the Joyce family and made my escape. But Giorgio had persisted, saying singing was the only thing he could do.

  “I’ll wager Giorgio’s music master isn’t half as demanding as Monsieur Borlin.” Kitten slowly lowered her leg, her face pink and beaded with small pearls of sweat.

  “Dancers, relax! Now we will work on improvisation. Imagine yourselves as cubist portraits. Make your bodies into squares, rectangles, lines. I want you to feel the joy, the spirit of Debussy’s music, its subtle rhythms and its bold expressions.” Monsieur Borlin gave a series of loud sniffs as if he was trying to keep a marble up his nose. “Listen closely to the geometry of the music. Mimic this in your movements. This is the beauty of free-form dance, of modern dance!”

  I arched my back and reached for my ankles with my hands, flattening my ribs, my stomach, my chest. I could hear Monsieur Borlin shouting between sniffs. “A beautiful triangle, Miss Joyce. Dancers! If you are not indisposed, observe Miss Joyce’s triangle!” He paced the room prodding and poking dancers with his cane and barking instructions. “Let the music flow through your limbs. It should inform your shapes and lines … That’s very good, Miss Neel.”

  I breathed deeply and slowly and, with my forehead pressed against the floorboards, I thought about Emile and everything Kitten had said. Emile could never marry me, but it was gratifying to be admired and the words ‘Madame Fernandez’ sounded good on my tongue, shapely and elliptical.

  And then I thought of the man with the bird-bright eyes, and my heart soared and plunged. Should I tell Kitten I’d been touched by premonition? She believed in my clairvoyant powers almost as much as Babbo. But even she would think that ridiculous – the fleeting gaze of a complete stranger! And I remembered the peculiar way my heart had jumped. Many years before, when Babbo first claimed me as ‘his Cassandra’, Mama had grilled me on every aspect of my ‘Cassandra moments’. When I described the strange physical sensations that accompanied each occasion, Babbo had swiped his pewter paper knife through the air and said, in a voice hoarse with emotion, “Won’t you believe her now, Nora?”

  But I said nothing to Kitten. I didn’t want to think about my premonitions any more. Sometimes they felt like stones sitting on my chest. So I closed my eyes. Felt the music rippling through me. Heard the crack of Monsieur Borlin’s cane against the floor, the piano, the stove. Heard him sniffing and proclaiming. Opened my eyes again.

  “Margaret Morris from London is giving a movement master class next weekend. Shall we go? Apparently she’s all the rage in England.” Kitten peered at me from beneath her armpit and for a second her eyes seemed silvery with tears. But then she blinked and I wondered if it was only dust in her eyes.

  “I’d love that, Kitten. And I’ve got a new idea for a dance I want to choreograph. Can I show you after class?”

  I thought about the new dance that was forming slowly in my mind. A Keats poem had inspired me and I wanted to include rainbows, and perhaps some tribal dancing, to help Babbo with his book. I wanted to create a frenzied dance of joy that would have the audience on the edges of their seats. It was an ambitious idea involving several dancers, each of whom would be dressed as a single rainbow stripe. I thought of weaving them together, pulling them into knots and strips of colour, then scattering them across the stage where they would gently whirl like winged sycamore seeds falling to earth. I hadn’t mentioned it to Emile but I hoped he’d write me another score, one heavy with the restless rhythm of several beating drums.

  “Oh yes please! I don’t know where you get all your ideas from. I never seem to have any.” Her words were drowned out by the nasal voice of Monsieur Borlin telling us to “Breathe! Breathe! Do not forget to breathe!”

  Yes, dancing was the answer. Whatever life might throw at us, we must keep dancing.

  3

  November 1928

  Paris

  “You can take them a drink, Lucia. ’Tis after five.” Mama passed me a cold bottle of white wine and two glasses. “He’s been reading for nigh on two hours. He must be parched, the poor soul.”

  “Is it Mr McGreevy or Mr McAlmon?” I asked. For the last few weeks they had taken it in turns to read to Babbo in the afternoons. I hoped it was Mr McGreevy. He didn’t brag as much as Mr McAlmon.

  “Neither. Now get up and take this wine in, or they’ll be slipping out to the Café Francis and we’ll have lost them for the night.”

  “I can’t move. I danced for eight hours today. We’ve been practising for that film I told you about and I’m in agony. I limped all the way home.” I gestured at my feet where small folds of skin hung like slivers of fungus.

  “Oh don’t moan so. You’ve only yourself to blame. He’s nice-looking.” She paused and jerked her head in the direction of Babbo’s study. “Irish. Speaks French and Italian and all. Not many Irish men are doing that.”

  “What’s his name?” I pulled myself up until I was perching on the edge of the sofa.

  “Sure I can’t remember. Your father has so many people hanging on his every word these days. God only knows where they all come from.” She sighed, sat down and started leafing through a fashion magazine. “If God himself came down to earth, he’d be in there typing up your father’s book.”

  * * *

  The floor of Babbo’s study was strewn with Irish newspapers. Books squatted in haphazard piles around the room. Babbo was wearing his white jacket that made him look like a dentist and sitting in his usual way, legs crossed with the toes of his upper leg wedged under the foot of his lower leg. Opposite him, like a mirror image, sat a tall thin man, his legs twisted into exactly the same position, reading aloud from Dante’s Inferno.

  I recognised him as soon as he looked up – the man at the restaurant window. I stared hard in case
I’d been mistaken. But it was most certainly him. Only now his eyes were blue-green bottomless pools. He wore round, wire-rimmed spectacles identical to Babbo’s, although with much thinner lenses, and a grey tweed suit. And when he looked at me, a frisson of recognition passed between us.

  “Ah, white wine. Excellent.” Babbo stood up and took the bottle and glasses from me. “This is my daughter, Lucia,” he said, before turning to me and adding, “Mr Beckett has just arrived from Germany. We must help settle him in, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, of course. Where are you living, Mr Beckett?” I tried to keep my voice even and measured but I could feel my ribs filling with air.

  “At the University, the École Normale on the rue d’Ulm. I’m teaching there.” He spoke with a soft Irish brogue that seemed to ripple round the room.

  “Is it a nice place to stay?”

  “The water is always cold and the kitchen is infested with cockroaches. But the library is magnificent and I have a bed and some shelves.” His unblinking eyes held mine for a few seconds and then he looked down at his feet and I noticed his cheeks were suffused with colour. Only later, when my own nerves had calmed, did I wonder if he too had been struck by overwhelming emotion at that first meeting.

  “Don’t be worrying about the cockroaches, Mr Beckett. Paris is rife with places to eat. Why don’t you dine with us tonight? We’ll go to Fouquet’s. Lucia, run and tell your mother we’re going to Fouquet’s and Mr Beckett is to be our guest.”

  * * *

  Mama writhed and twisted in front of the mirror. “This hat or the black one, Lucia?”

  Her words floated across the air like vapour. I barely heard them as I stared out of the window, straining in the direction of the rue d’Ulm. The last few leaves clung to the boughs of the trees. And beneath them the street lamps cast ragged circles of light onto the cobbled road. The smell of roasting chestnuts from the braziers on the rue de Grenelle seeped through the ill-fitting window frame, but I barely noticed that either. I moved as though in a dream, unable to feel the floor beneath my feet. All I saw, in every direction, was Mr Beckett’s face – his cheek bones in the bare branches of the trees, his eyes reflected in the darkening swell of the sky. My skin prickled all over and I felt light and tight at the same time. I said his name, wordlessly, again and again. Mr Beckett. Mr Beckett. Mr Beckett.

  “Lucia! What on earth’s wrong with you? Aren’t you hearing me? I might as well be talking to meself! Sure I’ve decided to wear the black hat. I think it goes better with me coat.” Mama tucked some stray tendrils of hair behind her ears. “What are you staring at, girl? Find your hat and gloves!”

  The door of Babbo’s study opened and suddenly Mr Beckett was standing in front of me smiling awkwardly, his eyes flickering round the hall, taking everything in: the Greek flag we kept pinned to the wall for luck; the photographs of ourselves, stern and solemn in our best clothes; the stacks of books waiting to be returned to Miss Beach’s lending library. While Babbo and Mama went to look for Babbo’s cane and hat, Mr Beckett asked me about Fouquet’s.

  “Is it very smart? Am I suitably dressed?” There was a slight quaver in his voice, an apprehensiveness that didn’t show on his face. I looked him up and down. His suit was threadbare at the knees and hung on him as though he were a coat-hanger. His shirt was missing a button. His tie was knotted so tightly at his throat he looked in danger of being garrotted.

  “We a–always go there,” I stuttered. “It’s on the Champs-Élysées so we’ll get a taxi-cab I expect.” I felt the colour rising in my cheeks and my body fizzing. Why couldn’t I master my body as I did when I danced? Why was I being so foolish? So tongue-tied?

  “I have better suits at my rooms.” Mr Beckett lowered his eyes.

  “You look grand,” I said in a loud exaggerated voice I hoped would drown out the thumping of my heart. “Just grand.”

  As I turned towards the front door I felt Beckett’s eyes travelling up and down my body. Yes – it had been a good decision to wear my cherry-red dress with the tasselled hem. It showed off my dancer’s shape and my long, slim legs and it made my breasts look fashionably small and flat.

  And then he stepped towards the window and stood looking out, with his back to me, all stiff and upright. “You have a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower, Miss Joyce.”

  I joined him at the window and together we looked out at the lights of Paris. The city seemed to be winking and glittering with the lights of bars and restaurants, the quivering street lamps, the bright streaks of motor car headlamps. And above them all, the lights of the Eiffel Tower leading our eyes heavenward. I was suddenly aware of the smell of Mr Beckett’s shaving soap and the warmth of his body next to mine. And my heart still knocking against my ribs.

  “This is the advantage of living on the fifth floor,” I said, and my voice seemed to bounce up the walls and across the ceiling.

  “What a lot o’ blather, Lucia! All those stairs I’m having to climb, with all the shopping, day in, day out.” Mama and Babbo appeared behind us, their arms linked together.

  “Ah, you’re getting an eyeful of the Eiffel Tower, Mr Beckett. Has Lucia told you about the time we climbed the awful Eiffel Tower?”

  “No, she hasn’t, Sir.” Mr Beckett turned his face expectantly to mine.

  I opened my mouth to speak but words fled me. Just as they had when Babbo and I stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower, clutching the handrail and looking down at the shrunken city. That same lurching giddy feeling that washed over me then, washed over me now, leaving me mute and shaky. Suddenly I wanted to reach out and touch Mr Beckett, to hold onto him as I’d held onto Babbo that day, to grip Mr Beckett’s arm as I’d gripped my father’s arm at the summit of the Tower.

  “I think of La Tour Eiffel as a skeleton, a cadaver, a carcass looming over us,” Babbo murmured, gesturing with his cigarette in the direction of the window.

  “You do not, Jim,” Mama said. “You never think of it. You think only of Ireland and well you know it. Now, let’s be going or there’ll be no table. Lucia, close your mouth before you swallow a fly. Oh I do wish Giorgio was here. He’s always out these days. Always at his singing lessons. I’ll ask him to show you a bit o’ Paris, Mr Beckett.”

  And with that she pulled Babbo towards the door and down the stairs. I looked at Mr Beckett, my face hot. I thought I saw the trace of a smile on his lips but all he said was, “After you, Miss Joyce.”

  I felt the gnawing pain of the blister on my heel as it rubbed against my shoe. But I thought of Mr Beckett, just behind me, and the pain receded almost immediately, as if my blistered calloused feet had disappeared. Where had the pain gone? Why were my feet no longer sore and aching? I tried to focus on my heel, to feel the blister that only minutes earlier had throbbed and oozed. Nothing. I felt nothing. Instead my feet seemed to flutter and float, following the strikes of Babbo’s metal-tipped cane on the stone steps.

  That’s when it came to me. A portent! An omen! I thought back to Michaud’s where I’d first set eyes on Mr Beckett through the restaurant window. I recalled the tangle of our gaze through the glass, the charge that had passed between us like electricity, the inexplicable jolting of my heart. And hadn’t Babbo said I was having a clairvoyant moment? Hadn’t he raised his hand, priest-like, to hush everyone? He had sensed it too – the extraordinary force of that split second. I felt the hairs rise up on the back of my neck. Was Mr Beckett to be my fate? Was my life to be woven into his?

  * * *

  At Fouquet’s the waiters fussed over Babbo, elbowing each other out of the way so they might be the one who took his cane or hat, or guided him to his usual table, or presented him with the menu. Mr Beckett looked at me with raised eyebrows and I took the opportunity to lean in and whisper, “He’s famous for his generous tips … they always dance around him like performing monkeys.”

  Mr Beckett’s eyes widened.

  “He has rich patrons,” I explained. “We used to be very poor but now a rich Ameri
can man and a rich English lady wire us money every month. So we can dine out whenever we want.” I didn’t tell him we spent our patron’s money so effortlessly we kept having to ask for more.

  Mr Beckett looked round quickly and when he saw Mama and Babbo talking to another couple at the bar, he turned back to me and said, “Is that so, Miss Joyce?”

  I nodded, ready to tell him all about Robiac Square, how splendid it was for Babbo to have his own study, for me to have my own bedroom, and how marvellous it was to have a telephone and electric lights and our own bath with brass taps, when he changed the subject abruptly. “Your father says you’re a very talented dancer, Miss Joyce?”

  “I dance all day, every day.” I took off my hat and shook out my hair. The nervousness of earlier was fading now I suspected Mr Beckett may be my fate, now I’d seen the hand of destiny at play. “I’m training to be a professional dancer. Dancing is the most divine thing in all the world. Do you dance at all, Mr Beckett?”

  He shook his head.

  “I can teach you the Charleston. Or the Bunny Hug?” An image of Mr Beckett in my arms flashed before me – his hand in mine, his skin against mine, our hips swivelling side by side, and the air between us sizzling and snapping like a forest fire. “I’ve taught all Babbo’s friends to Charleston,” I added, seeing the apprehensive expression on his face.

  “Does Mr Joyce do the Charleston too?” His eyes flicked back to Babbo who was still talking to someone at the bar.