by Annabel Abbs
“I hope you were drawing over the summer?”
“A bit. It rained quite a lot,” I said, evasively. “How did Mrs Fitzgerald go mad?”
“It’s probably just a nervous thing. Don’t give it another thought. Can I see your sketch books?” He arranged the clown, bending its pipe-cleaner legs to make it more stable.
When I didn’t answer, Sandy picked up a sketching pencil, pointing it impatiently at my stack of drawing books. “You’re a damn fine artist, Lucia. I mean that. You have real talent.”
“I like drawing.” I looked down at the tiny clown in my hand and stroked its wool hair with my finger. “When I draw with full concentration it reminds me of dancing. Mama says it calms me. She likes me sitting still. She never liked me dancing. But the focus is the same. The bad thoughts go away when I draw or paint.”
Sandy nodded enthusiastically but there was a blankness in his eyes as if he didn’t really understand what I was saying.
“When you talk like that, all thoughtful and sort of wistful, it makes me want to kiss you.” He stopped nodding and brought his face towards mine. I dropped the clown, threw my arms around his neck and pressed my mouth to his with a vehemence and force that surprised me. His smell, of scorched wool and oil paint and turpentine, filled my nose and I felt his long moustache scouring my skin, his arms holding me so tightly I thought my ribs might crack. Images of Beckett and Giorgio and Stella appeared before me, as if etched onto my eyelids. And then they drifted from me and I clung to Sandy, kissing him harder and harder, tugging his head into me as if I wanted to be swallowed up.
Sandy pulled away and I heard the kitchen door open. We both recoiled, fixing our eyes innocently on the little clown. When Babbo came in, I breathed a sigh of relief. He was too blind to notice anything. Behind him was a man with a thick salt-and-pepper beard and piercing black eyes.
“This is my daughter, Lucia, having her drawing lesson with Mr Calder,” Babbo said before turning to Sandy and me and saying, “This is Mr Augustus John who has come from England to draw me.”
Sandy leaped from his chair, eyes shining, and rushed to shake Mr John’s hand.
“Mr John is going to capture my likeness in the study. If Giorgio comes, ask him not to disturb us until five o’clock.” Babbo gestured to Mr John who nodded to Sandy and me, before turning and leaving.
Sandy was still glowing and I couldn’t tell if this was because of our kiss, or because of meeting Mr John. He paced distractedly round the table asking if he should invite Mr John to his circus. When I suggested, tentatively, that Mr John was too old for Le Grand Cirque Calder, Sandy laughed and said no one was too old for his circus. And then he said he couldn’t kiss me while Mr John was in the house. He was too distracted, too unsettled.
“Come to the Coupole tonight, Lucia. Quite a crowd of us going. And we can carry on where we left off.” He winked at me. Then he put a hand theatrically to his chest and added, “You’ve stolen my heart, you naughty little creature.”
But his words flew past me, as if a breeze had whipped them away.
“How does madness start, Sandy?” I picked up the little clown again, rubbed my thumb over its striped dungarees, cradled it in my palm.
“You’re thinking about Zelda again? She’ll be fine, I promise. Now, open your sketch book. I’m not asking you again.”
* * *
Babbo was polishing his spectacles and complaining about his portrait, when Giorgio sauntered in, wearing a new velvet waistcoat with engraved silver buttons, and the whitest spats I’d ever seen.
“Mr John hasn’t accurately captured the bottom half of my face. What am I to do, Giorgio?”
“Don’t give out so, Jim.” Mama picked up a cushion from the sofa and started pummelling it.
“It looks fine to me, Father. What I’ve actually come about is your marriage certificate.” Giorgio slumped into an armchair, his gangly thin legs splayed out in front of him. “Helen needs to have a copy made, so if you could find it and let me borrow it for a couple of days we’d really appreciate it.”
Mama blanched. Babbo removed his glasses and started polishing them again. Silence fell over the room.
“You’ll not be needing our wedding certificate to get married,” said Mama finally.
“Oh it’s not for the wedding. As you know, Helen wants to have a child as soon as we’re married. She’s not so young now.” Giorgio ran a preening hand over his oiled hair then laced his fingers together, placed his hands behind his head and waited calmly for a response.
I looked at Mama, expecting a snide riposte on Mrs Fleischman’s age. But, oddly, she said nothing. Her face was very pale and she’d pulled her lips into a tight thin line.
“When do you need it?” Babbo continued to polish his glasses with an exaggerated concentration.
“I suppose there’s no rush,” Giorgio drawled. “But when the child’s born, naturally she wants it to be a Joyce.”
“God save us!” Mama snapped. “And why wouldn’t it be a Joyce? What else would it be? If you’re the father ’tis a Joyce!”
“Actually it’s not that simple. It’s only a Joyce if I’m a Joyce. And I’m only a Joyce if you’re married. We all know you’re married. We all know that Lucia and I are legitimate Joyces – we’ve been to enough of your wedding anniversaries, seen your rings – but the law only knows what’s on paper. So I need to borrow your certificate.” Giorgio eased a finger nail between his two front teeth, picked out something, inspected it, then re-laced his hands behind his head. “I was hoping you’d have it to hand. If it’s lost, Helen tells me we can get a copy made from whoever married you, but it might take some time and she wants to get it organised beforehand. These Jewish women are incredibly organised.”
The room fell quiet again. So quiet I could hear the rattling chirp of next door’s caged canary and the faraway whistle of a train. Mama sat on the sofa, her back rigid and upright. Her face, still bleached of colour, was a mask – expressionless and immobile. Babbo’s right leg twitched slightly and his ringed hands continued to wipe his lenses with the little square of orange silk he kept in his spectacles case. I tried to catch Giorgio’s eye, but he was gazing blandly at the ceiling.
“I think it’s an inheritance thing too,” he continued. “Helen knows all this stuff. Rich Jews – especially rich American Jews – have their affairs properly organised. If our child is to inherit, everything has to be legal. Otherwise it’s just a little bastard with no rights at all.” Giorgio laughed coarsely.
Mama gave a sharp intake of breath.
“That’s enough, Giorgio,” Babbo said firmly. He folded up the orange cloth, laid it carefully in his spectacles case and put his glasses back on. Then he looked squarely at Giorgio and said he’d have the certificate in a week.
“What a lot o’ fuss!” Mama got up from the sofa and walked over to stand beside Babbo. “She’s not even expecting a babby yet. Maybe she won’t even have one at her age. And you’ll have put your father to all this work for nothing!”
“Oh she’ll have a baby all right.” Giorgio gave a short dry laugh. “She’s determined to have a Joycean offspring, a bit of Babbo’s genius as she puts it. She’ll do it if she has to visit every doctor in the land. Anyway, she’s already had a child so we know she can breed. And I’m bound to be fertile. There’ll be a baby Joyce all right.” There was something that struck me as boorish and lewd in Giorgio’s words. How had the old Giorgio slipped so decisively away? How could one person metamorphose, so completely and wholly, into another? Giorgio turned and saw me contemplating him. For a second I imagined us sharing one of the old conspiratorial looks that had bound us so much to each other. I eased my facial muscles into an intimate smile, like the ones we shared when we wanted to silently ridicule our parents or their guests. But Giorgio’s eyes were chilly and he quickly looked away.
“Yes,” he said. “There’ll be a baby and it won’t be a bastard.”
* * *
When Sandy arriv
ed to take me to the Coupole later that evening, he brought me a small package wrapped in tissue paper, and laughingly told me it was for being such a good pupil. I assumed it was one of his circus people, perhaps the lady aerialist. But when I ran my fingers over the tissue paper, gently prodding and probing, I realised I was mistaken. I tore off the paper, unable to hide my excitement and pleasure. Inside was a brooch made entirely of wire, twisted into a simple concentric spiral and attached to a pin. It wasn’t the sort of jewellery that Mama or Babbo would want me to wear. Indeed, it wasn’t something I’d have chosen myself. But I loved the thought of Sandy making it, thinking of me as he hammered and moulded the wire, anticipating my gratitude as his large fingers worked with the thin strands of metal.
“It’s beautiful,” I exclaimed. “I’ll wear it every day so I can have a little bit of you with me wherever I go.”
“Here, let me.” Sandy took the brooch and held it up against me. “Where would it sit best? Near your long neck I think. I like the idea of the roundness of it against the length of your neck.”
“I can change my outfit,” I said. “D’you think it would look better with a different neckline?”
“No, here is perfect.” He pinned the brooch to the top of my dress, just below my throat. Then he stood back to admire me. I felt a lurch of happiness. Over the last five months, the pain of Beckett’s rejection had slowly ebbed and I thanked Sandy for this. His boisterous kisses, his obvious desire for me, his faith and belief in me – he had redeemed me where Beckett had diminished me. As he accompanied me round Montparnasse, kissing me publicly and passionately, the humiliation of Beckett’s rebuff had slipped away. Sandy had let me glimpse a future again.
And so I’d started, very tentatively, to imagine myself as Mrs Alexander Calder. But this time I knew it was real and nothing to do with my father. Sandy admired Babbo but had no interest in him or his work. He came to the house only to see me, to teach me. Sometimes I thought back to Beckett and laughed bitterly at how my love had blinded me to so much. How naïve I’d been! But it was different with Sandy. Where Beckett had been secretive and silent, Sandy was vocal and public. He didn’t care who saw him kissing me. And when we bumped into his friends (and he had many), he introduced me as ‘Lucia, the light of my life’, and told them what a great painter I was. Not a word about my father. And Sandy knew what had happened to Beckett, how my father had banned him from the house. Would he risk the wrath of Babbo if he wasn’t serious about me?
Of course, Mrs Alexander Calder would be very different from the exiled Mrs Samuel Beckett, and her wedding bouquet would be completely different. The pale pink rosebuds would have to be replaced with flame-coloured gladioli and the white lilac swapped for deep red chrysanthemums. There’d be obstacles – America, for example. It would break Babbo’s heart if I were to live in America. I’d have to insist on us living in Paris. I imagined myself helping Sandy with Le Grand Cirque Calder. So many things I could do. I could mend his figures and props when they broke, I could help with the gramophone, I could sell tickets and serve drinks.
Sandy stared at the brooch he’d just pinned to me, moving his head from side to side, taking a step back, then moving towards me until he was so close I could feel his breath on my neck. “How does it look?” I asked anxiously.
“I might need to borrow it. Think how great it would be with little springs on the back. Walk round the room for me, Lucia. As if you’re modelling it in a fashion show.”
Hips thrust forward, I shimmied round the room with Sandy loping along beside me, watching me and looking at his brooch. His face was alive and mobile, so unlike Beckett’s. And in that moment, I recalled how my dancer’s instincts had alerted me to Beckett’s reticent body language, all those months ago. Why hadn’t I trusted my instincts? Why had I been so blinkered by love? I’d known then that he was holding something back.
I stopped moving and looked at Sandy, examining him through my dancer’s eyes. He moved with a looseness and energy that was entirely unlike Beckett’s awkward caginess. I remembered the wooden feeling of Beckett when I tried to teach him the Charleston, before we started on Babbo’s whiskey. I’d danced with Sandy numerous times – his movements were guileless and extravagant. And I knew then that our love-making would be unrestrained, abandoned, honest.
Sandy was oblivious to my sudden scrutiny. His eyes were shining and he was nodding his head with such vigour I thought it might fall off. “If I put tiny springs on the back of the spiral, between the spiral and the pin, it would move when you move. It would dance!” He put his hands on my shoulders to stop me walking and then unpinned the brooch. “Bad manners I know, but think how much better it’ll be with springs on. A dancing brooch for my dancing girl!” He hesitated then moved his narrowed eyes to my ears. “Earrings!” There was such delight in his exclamation that I laughed out loud, despite knowing I was about to return my lover’s gift within minutes of receiving it.
“Are you going to make me matching earrings?” I asked.
“Well, they wouldn’t need springs would they? They‘d move naturally, with the wind, with your body. You shall have both! I’ll fix springs to the brooch and make spiralling earrings.” Sandy delicately rubbed my left ear lobe between his thumb and forefinger. “I wonder what weight your ears could bear,” he muttered. I smiled and stroked his forearm.
Then he picked up my hand, my left hand, and looked at it in a speculative way as though he was assessing that too for its size and strength. “A brooch, a pair of earrings, and …” He paused mysteriously. “And a surprise.” And with that, he pressed my hand to his mouth and kissed it.
“A surprise?” I was so startled, so overjoyed at the inherent meaning of his words, that my voice came out as a croak.
“I’m not saying another word. Or it won’t be a surprise, will it?” He dropped my hand and then put my brooch back in his pocket. “Come on, Lucia, light of my life. The Coupole calls!”
I felt a sudden urge to dance, to spin and turn and feel my hair and dress skating out behind me. How quickly I was sloughing off my past. But Sandy was already jamming his hat onto his large head and making for the front door.
“Can’t I show the brooch to Babbo?” I called after him. I wanted someone else to see how much Sandy loved me. It was as if a part of me didn’t quite believe my good fortune, as if I needed someone else to see his gift and affirm its meaning.
“Not yet. When it’s done you can wear it and everyone will see it. I promise!” He grabbed my hand and together we left Robiac Square and headed down the rue de Grenelle and on to Avenue Bosquet. And that was when I remembered Stella’s crazy words on our trip round the Louvre, when she’d told me Sandy was engaged.
“Sandy,” I said, as I looped my gloved hand through his arm. “Stella Steyn thinks you have a fiancée.” I didn’t have time to say any more. He stopped right there, with the bleating of motorcar horns and the rumbling of distillery carts all around us. And he pulled me into him with such force I felt my breath seize in my throat. Then his mouth was on mine, warm and wet and pressing, his tongue prying at the corners of my mouth, pushing into my throat.
“You’re driving me crazy, Lucia.” He tucked my hand back into the crook of his arm. “Have you asked your parents about having lessons in my studio yet, you bewitching little creature?”
“I will. I promise.” And I gave a small skip in anticipation. I suddenly felt released, like a boat that had been unmoored. By making his feelings for me so clear, Sandy had set me free. An image of myself and Sandy floated before my eyes, naked on the floor of his studio, his circus figures cheering us on as we flipped and rolled and devoured each other. How different this was from Emile, or Beckett. And how wrong serpent-tongued Stella had been. Yes, Mrs Alexander Calder was gradually taking shape, developing and filling out like one of Sandy’s sculptures.
“You’re something else, Lucia.” And Sandy gave such a bellow of laughter, I could feel his body shake against mine. “Ask them tomorrow,
promise?”
* * *
Of course, Mama and Babbo didn’t agree to me having lessons in Sandy’s studio. And Sandy didn’t mention the subject again. So we carried on my drawing classes in the kitchen at Robiac Square.
One day, after a long evening kissing me in a dark corner of the Coupole, Sandy arrived very late for my class and breathless with excitement. He’d come straight from Piet Mondrian’s studio and talked so fast I couldn’t keep up with him. His words fizzed and bubbled and overflowed as he walked round and round the kitchen table, too intoxicated to sit down.
“His studio’s all white. There’s hardly any furniture. Only the bare essentials, and he’s painted them white too. He had nothing ornamental. Just a single tulip in a vase – and guess what? Yes, you got it! He’d painted that white too! There was one thing that wasn’t white – his gramophone. But guess what? He’d painted that red. The gramophone – can you imagine?” Sandy paused to draw breath and then carried on, gesticulating wildly and shaking his head with amazement. “The studio has windows on either side so light comes in from the left and right but on the wall in between the windows he’d tacked up large rectangles of painted cardboard, in primary colours. And he moves them around according to how he’s feeling. I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“He painted a tulip white? Why didn’t he just buy a white tulip?” I reached out to stroke Sandy’s arm. But Sandy ignored my question, disregarding its pertinence entirely, and carried on striding so fast round the kitchen I was unable to touch him.
“Mondrian only believes in lines and colours, says they’re the purest form of expression and nothing else matters. But his rectangles gave me a brilliant idea – the idea of things floating in space, all different sizes and colours. Some moving and some still. So I asked if I could have a play with his rectangles, make them jiggle.” Sandy was almost running round the table now, his arms waving and his fists opening and closing.