The Joyce Girl

by Annabel Abbs

  Beckett turned to go, shuffling down the hall like an old man. I heard the door of our apartment close behind him and the soft echo of his tread as he made his way down the stairs to the street.

  I thought of the eighteen months I’d loved him, hungered for him. Eighteen months of waiting for him every day. Eighteen months of hallway talks and intimacies and family outings. I thought of our marriage bed – how he’d tumbled in my arms to that slice of honey-coloured light, half-naked and panting with desire.

  I turned the lights on, made my way to the telephone. The number of my parent’s hotel in Zurich lay beside it. I picked up the receiver and asked the operator to put me through.

  A few minutes later I spoke to Mama, told her everything. I told her what Beckett had said, that he’d broken my heart, that he’d left me to walk home alone in the dark, that he’d shamed and humiliated me. Mama was livid. I could hear the anger bubbling out of her as she relayed my words to Babbo. She said Babbo hadn’t had his eye operation yet, but they’d be back as soon as they could. As I hung up, I heard her words loud and clear: “No one trifles with our daughter, Jim. No one!”

  * * *

  I stayed in bed for two days, talking to no one, eating nothing, hearing only the hoarse cries of the rag-and-bone men as they trundled their carts up and down the rue de Grenelle. I watched the hands of the clock move slowly and mercilessly past the hour of my dance class with Miss Morris. Still I couldn’t move. I tried to tell myself how rude it was to miss an appointment, how long I’d waited to teach a class in front of her. But all I could think of was my curtailed evening with Beckett. I asked myself, repeatedly, how I could have got everything so wrong, how I could have misread so many signs. And yet, even in my darkest moments, I knew this was not all my fault. If his soft words and ardent embraces had been nothing more than a bid to ingratiate himself with the great James Joyce then he had cruelly misled me.

  I remembered Sandy’s words, that all Paris thought Beckett and I were engaged. And, once again, the shame and humiliation reverberated through me until every inch of my body seemed shrivelled and shrunken. How would I hold my head up now? Already I could imagine the whisperings in the Montparnasse cafes. The jilted Joyce girl … yes, the one with the squint … quite passed over.

  And why had I behaved with such unnecessary drama in the restaurant? I asked myself what Kitten would have done. Would she have run out shaking and crying? No, she’d have remained seated, masking her shock and disappointment with a display of good manners. She would, I’m sure, have effaced her pain and hurt with a quiet acknowledgement of defeat. But I? What did I do? I went to pieces – spectacularly to pieces.

  When my parents returned, I was still raw with grief and shame. My eyes were sunken and red from crying. My hair was unwashed and unbrushed. My face was pale and hollow. Mama bustled in, opening windows, picking up clothes from the floor, wiping lipstick off the mirror with a handkerchief. I saw her eyeing my new dress as she hung it in the wardrobe. Then she knelt on the floor and picked up each scattered jade bead and put them in a bowl on my dressing table.

  “We can be getting them re-strung,” she said. She went to the bathroom and ran a bath for me, generously filling it with her favourite bath oil. As I lay in the lavender-scented water, watching the steam condense on the walls, I overheard my parents talking. I’d forgotten to completely close the bathroom door and Mama’s raised voice came floating in.

  “I knew what was going on, Jim. I could see it with me own eyes. If you hadn’t been so caught up in your own world, you’d have seen it too. Or maybe you did see it and you chose to ignore it – because it suited you having him here. But he took advantage, Jim. He led her on and then, when he had what he wanted with you, he dropped her. Just like that. She didn’t even do her dancing for that Margaret Morris – the one that was so important she couldn’t be coming to Zurich with us. And she looks something awful. Her squint’s back with a vengeance for sure. What a lousy waste o’ money that was!”

  Her words hung momentarily in the air then began circling and swarming in my head. I heard Babbo’s voice and tried to push Mama’s words to one side.

  “What am I to do?” His voice dipped.

  “Well now, isn’t that blindingly obvious? Sure I want him banned from the house. All of them. Because it’s me that’s picking up the pieces. Not you, Jim, me!”

  “Yes, you’re right, Nora. I’ll telephone him now.”

  “And not just him, Jim. You can telephone them all. All the unmarried men coming to help you with your bloody book.”

  “Even the pious and chaste McGreevy? Surely he can help me? Who’ll help me now?”

  “I don’t give two straws, Jim. Your lady worshippers – Miss Beach, Miss Weaver. I don’t want any more people upsetting my family when they’re only interested in you. Mrs Fleischman’s no better but at least she’s marrying Giorgio. But Lucia’s different – she needs our protection, Jim. And like I said, it’s me that’s picking up the pieces.”

  As their voices faded away, I realised the enormity of what had happened. Beckett was to be banned from the house. I was never going to see him again. My dreams of love and escape and freedom were over.

  * * *

  A week later Stella came to tea. She wanted to take me to the Louvre to look at another painting but I didn’t feel ready to face Paris yet and I knew Beckett sometimes went to the Louvre so we stayed at Robiac Square and talked. Stella had seen Beckett and she told me bluntly of his devastation. She said Babbo telephoned him at the École and told him never to set foot in Robiac Square again. She told me that Beckett worships Babbo and is lost without his daily meetings here. Her tone was frank and unrestrained. I wondered whose side she was on.

  “Well, Stella,” I said. “You can have him now.”

  Stella stood up, ignoring my question, and walked to the window. As if something had caught her eye. And then she said, “He’s going back to Dublin, to teach.”

  I felt a spasm of pain. Was this my doing? Had I forced him out of France? I couldn’t imagine Paris without Beckett. Everything was unravelling, coming apart.

  “He looks terrible. Very thin and a rash on his face,” Stella continued, her voice measured, as though she’d said these words before, practised them on her way here perhaps. “He’s working day and night on his study of Proust. And he’s trying to finish his translation of your father’s work.”

  “I thought they weren’t doing anything together?” I said sharply.

  “He promised to do that for your father before all this. He’s lost without your father’s good opinion, Lucia. Their relationship was very important to him.” Stella kept her eyes fixed on the view from the window – the Paris sky, streaks of red and yellow and grey, blurring and smudging in a blaze of light. I wondered if she was admiring the view with her painterly eye or just avoiding me.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I said. “You seem to forget he broke my heart!”

  “Is it really necessary to break his in return?” She turned and looked straight at me. There was something flinty in her expression, in the square set of her jaw.

  “That’s not my doing! My father’s angry. He doesn’t want to see Beckett any more. That’s not my fault!” I could hear the indignation in my voice. Why was Stella saying this?

  “I tried to warn you. I tried to tell you your plan wasn’t going to work. But you’d only listen to Kitten. What does Kitten know about Irish men or artists?”

  “Kitten has lots of boyfriends,” I said loyally. “She knows all about men!”

  Stella turned back to the window, back to the receding sunset. “There’s something else you should know.” She paused and I heard her take a loud gulp of air. She seemed about to turn and look at me, but instead she carried on talking to the window. “Beckett already had a lover. Not now, but all of last year. When you thought he had eyes only for you he was having a love affair with someone else. Mr McGreevy told me. No one knew but Mr McGreevy.”

&nbs
p; The noise in my head threatened to engulf me. Beckett’s words, Mama’s words, now Stella’s words – all scrambling and flailing inside me.

  “Who?” I whispered hoarsely.

  Stella came to sit beside me on the couch. She took another deep breath before she answered. “His cousin. That’s why he was always going to stay with his aunt and uncle in Germany. I’m sorry, Lucia. I thought you should know. Mr McGreevy thinks it’s over now but he can’t be sure because Beckett never talks about it. Mr McGreevy said she wrote him millions of letters. That’s how he guessed something was going on.”

  “That can’t be true. It’s not true. Mr McGreevy’s mistaken!” But even as I spoke I was remembering the letters under his bed … all those letters tied neatly into bundles.

  “I don’t think so, Lucia,” said Stella gently.

  I put my head in my hands and bit my lip to keep the tears back. Nothing had prepared me for this. How could I have been such a fool! I’d made myself the laughing stock of Paris. While everyone had been gossiping about our engagement, Beckett had been in love with his cousin! How could this have happened? And yet … And yet I didn’t believe I was entirely at fault. I couldn’t forget Beckett’s affection. I couldn’t forget the way he’d looked at me, touched me, kissed me. I couldn’t forget his lover’s gift or the way his hands had brushed mine at every opportunity. I couldn’t forget the feel of his body pressing down on me, the feel of his lips on my neck, his tremulous voice as he told me I was beautiful. No – I was the wronged party and I wouldn’t let Stella think otherwise.

  “I don’t care! He’s a bastard! He’s a fucking two-faced bastard!” I shouted. I saw the look of shock on Stella’s face and heard the clattering of Mama’s heels as she hurried down the hall towards the parlour.

  “I hope you’re not upsetting yourself again, Lucia?” Mama peered at me, examining my left eye, my squint. “You need to calm yourself.” She turned to Stella. “’Tis good of you to come, Stella. Lucia hasn’t been out for days and days. Paris will be forgetting she exists.”

  “Shall we go out next week, Lucia? If you’re not up to the Louvre, we could go somewhere else. Perhaps to some smaller galleries?” Stella sounded tentative, wary. I wondered if she would ask if she weren’t under obligation to Babbo to instruct me in art history. Before I could respond, Mama replied for me.

  “Yes, Stella, Lucia would love that. It would be just what she’s needing right now. And she needs to meet some new people. Not writers. Not Irish. Not clever. Just normal. ’Tis what I’ve been saying to meself. Can you ask Kitten? She has lots of gentlemen friends.”

  17

  September 1930

  Paris

  When I woke I was panting slightly and out of breath, my body covered in a thin film of sweat. Briefly, I thought I was still on stage. I heard applause resounding all around me. I felt the flood of exhilaration and relief that followed a performance. For a few seconds I basked, like a fat lizard, in the adulation and the glory. I smiled generously as I curtsied, seeking out Babbo, Giorgio and Beckett in the dark sea of faces before me.

  It was only when I opened my eyes and saw light easing reluctantly through the shutters, that I knew I was in my room at Robiac Square, that I hadn’t performed for almost a year, that I hadn’t danced for several weeks. And the sour smell that clung and rose in my nostrils was a sharp reminder that Beckett was gone and Giorgio was gone and Babbo was so absorbed with Work in Progress he might as well be gone.

  Since we’d returned from our summer tour of Wales, London, Dover and Normandy, every night had been distorted and twisted by dreams. Frequently I dreamed I was dancing again. Two nights ago, in my dream, I looked into the audience and found Beckett and Kitten and Stella standing and clapping enthusiastically. But as the dream progressed they mutated into strange wire figures with wool hair and malevolent faces and I saw they were being manipulated by a motor that Sandy was controlling in the wings. He changed the motor and they started belly dancing, their evil faces leering as they thrust and gyrated. In another dream, I ended my dance to jeers and catcalls from the audience. As I stood, bewildered, on the stage, Zelda Fitzgerald began jumping up and down in the front row, her hands cupped round her mouth. But the boo-ing and hissing from the crowd was so loud I couldn’t hear her. It was only when I looked down that I realised I was naked, I’d forgotten to put my costume on. As I fled from the stage in shame, I suddenly heard Mrs Fitzgerald’s voice, shrill and stentorian. She was trying to tell me both my eyes had crossed, that everyone could see. She didn’t mention my nudity. When I woke, my face was wet and I was trembling with humiliation. I didn’t get out of bed for two hours, because I couldn’t face seeing myself in the mirror. Just in case.

  Sometimes my dreams were so unpleasant, so perverse, that waking to my room and my life at Robiac Square was a relief. But sometimes waking up was like walking from warm sunlight into icy shadow. I had to think of things to look forward to, reasons to get out of bed. Today was good. Babbo was sitting for a portrait. Giorgio was coming for tea. Sandy was coming. Yes, Sandy was coming.

  * * *

  After Beckett, Babbo was more willing to let me to go out alone. I don’t think Mama wanted me moping around in the evenings and I suspect they knew I’d never make friends or find a new boyfriend sitting in Fouquet’s with them and their Flattering friends.

  Just before we left for the summer, I was allowed to go to the Coupole with Sandy and his crowd. Sandy’s friends were American and rich. We drank mint juleps and when it got late we went to a jazz club and danced for hours and hours while Sandy’s friends cheered and pestered me for private dance classes. When I suggested a group lesson, they insisted the lessons should be private, all the time winking and nudging each other. The following morning Babbo asked me about Sandy’s crowd and a dark look of disapproval crossed his face. He and Mama exchanged an inscrutable glance, but neither said anything.

  I didn’t tell them what happened on the way home – how Sandy had kissed me on the lips, full and passionate. And while I was with Mama and Babbo on their summer tour, I wrote to him every week. Gradually he helped anaesthetise the pain that Beckett had left. He would never replace Beckett – no one could do that – but he distracted and amused me. Stella said Beckett had a girl in Dublin but she knew no more than that. When she told me, I thought I saw the brimming of a tear in her eye, but she turned away so quickly I couldn’t be sure. Although I tried not to think of Beckett, he kept tiptoeing, insidiously, into my thoughts. Kitten said I would probably love him forever but that I had to move on and let myself fall in love with someone else now.

  * * *

  When Sandy arrived for our first drawing lesson after the summer break, I was flustered and on edge. He was wearing grey knickerbockers and bright red stockings and carrying an ivory-topped cane in one hand and his suitcase of circus figures in the other. He put his cane and suitcase down, then beamed at me for a long time, as though I was some rare and exotic creature he’d managed to trap with nothing more than his own skill. I closed the door to avoid Mama’s prying eyes and no sooner had I turned back than Sandy had scooped me into his arms and was covering my face with kisses and telling me how much he’d missed me. A few seconds later we heard footsteps and hastily disentangled ourselves.

  “How about we have these lessons in my studio?” Sandy looked at me, his eyebrows raised.

  A thrill ran through me as I imagined myself and Sandy alone, every week, no one eavesdropping or interrupting. And then a memory of Beckett flashed before me – his hands clumsy with whiskey, searching beneath my dance tunic. What an intense sweet ache had been induced in that simple brushing of my body. And from there my mind jumped back to Emile, and the odd resistance, almost disgust, I’d felt at his hands beneath my blouse. How distant those days seemed. But how far I’d come! I was now, finally, the fun-loving flapper, the modern Parisian girl I’d always wanted to be. Or was I? Would I need a bottle of whiskey before I made love to Sandy? No – this time I w
ould get it right and go all the way, as Mama called it. Perhaps then I could stop loving Beckett.

  “D’you reckon your Pa would allow that?” Sandy pulled out a wire figure wearing a tutu made of hessian, her arms outstretched. I noticed her wire feet were on points. Before I could answer, Sandy passed me the figure.

  “I made this for you, Lucia.”

  I looked at the figure’s whimsical face and admired the grace and elegance of this ballet dancer made entirely of discarded wire and unwanted sacking.

  “She’s perfect,” I whispered. “The arch of her feet. How did you do that?”

  “You’ll be amazed what you can do with a bit of old wire.” Sandy chuckled. “I can’t give her to you though. She’s in my next show. I’m going to call her the female aerialist. But she’s in your honour.” And then his face clouded over and he asked me if I’d heard about Zelda Fitzgerald.

  “Heard what?” I asked.

  “Gone to the lunatic asylum, that’s what I’ve heard. Gone crazy!” Sandy tapped the side of his head. “She always was wild. Scott’s devastated, apparently. It was thinking of you both dancing that reminded me.”

  I looked at his lady aerialist, turning her over and over in my hand. And I thought of Mrs Fitzgerald. The way she’d whirled into Madame Egorova’s studio that day, her fierce determination to dance despite her age, her resolution to be more than just a bit part in her husband’s story, her preoccupation with ‘genius’. “Gone mad? Why? How?”

  “Cheer up! She’ll be back. Let’s not draw this one after all. I’ll find you something funny.” He gently took the lady aerialist from my hand and gave me a small woolly-haired clown playing a trumpet. He pulled his chair closer to mine, until he was so close I could feel the warmth of his body.