by Annabel Abbs
It was only later, after Mr Leon had left one night, I began to wonder about the law books. While I was sitting at the piano, silently admiring the black and white keys and wondering if Sandy would want the piano painted red, I overheard snatches of Babbo’s and Mama’s conversation in the study. They appeared to be talking about the law books, which was odd because Mama rarely read, and never discussed Babbo’s work with him. Babbo’s fluty voice dipped and rose and that was also peculiar because he so rarely raised his voice.
As I strained my ears, I heard Babbo saying that something (and I didn’t catch what it was) had to be done legally in England and that it couldn’t be done anywhere else. Mama said this was all his fault, after which there was a silence. I leant my body towards the wall, stretched out my neck and listened. Then Mama said something that surprised me. She said her family would never speak to her again. And her voice was caustic and bitter, quite unlike her usual tone. At this point, Babbo’s voice dropped and I couldn’t hear anything. Then Mama’s voice chimed in, loud and clear and angry, asking what they were to do about the newspaper men. I heard Babbo saying he’d manage everything, that it could all be done quietly and legally in London. Mama replied that she bloody well hoped so and then I heard the door handle turning and Mama walked out of Babbo’s study and into the parlour where I was sitting at the piano. I quickly looked down at the keyboard and played a scale. I heard her marching past, breathing loudly through her flared nostrils.
I decided to ask Sandy’s advice. We had a drawing lesson the next day and I was expecting my brooch back, and perhaps my new earrings too and maybe even a ring. I tried not to think about the ring but couldn’t help imagining how it might look. Perhaps it too would contain a miniature spring, so that when my left hand moved, the ring would dance and shimmer, as I did.
* * *
Sandy arrived punctually at ten o’ clock, cane in one hand and suitcase in the other. He told me I was to draw the entire circus as an exercise in perspective. He opened his case and started setting up little poles and hanging wires for the trapeze and tightrope acts and then he unrolled small swatches of red carpet. As he did so, I told him about the conversation I’d overheard between my parents and asked him what he made of it. He laughed so much he knocked over the trapeze wires and had to set them up all over again.
“What’s so funny?” I frowned.
“It’s obvious,” Sandy spluttered. “You’re so naïve, Lucia.”
“What d’you mean?” I drew back, inclined my head, watched Sandy struggling to set up the trapeze wire as his hands shook with laughter.
“Forgive me if I’m too blunt, but your Pa writes books most people consider dirty. Brilliant but dirty. Worse than dirty, filthy.” Sandy hesitated, pushed the trapeze wire into place and attached the lady aerialist. “You do know that, don’t you, Lucia? Don’t tell me you haven’t read Ulysses?”
“He’s the greatest writer of the twentieth century. Everyone says so!” I plucked the lady aerialist from her wire, studied her, tried to keep the truculence from my voice. Tried to still the tremor in my hand. Failed.
“Ulysses is banned in almost every country in the world. Back in America, they burn it. You can go to prison for selling it. Isn’t that why you’re all here in Paris?”
I nodded. I knew all about Babbo’s decade of tribulations trying to get Ulysses published but I didn’t want to think about that. “What’s this got to do with newspaper men and people not talking to my mother?”
Sandy started laughing again, his body shaking with mirth. “The next book must be even filthier. He must be working on a real corker in that study of his.” He stopped laughing and paused. “The funny thing is he looks so respectable and he’s so quiet and well-mannered and he always calls me Mr Calder. I can’t make it out, I really can’t. Don’t grip the lady aerialist so tightly – you’re gonna snap her in two.”
I blinked and tried to stop the muscles round my eyes from convulsing. Truth to tell I had no idea what Work in Progress was about. Something to do with ‘the dark night of the soul’, rivers, Ireland. The pieces I’d heard Babbo read aloud were beautiful and meandering and musical. But what did they mean? Was I a muse for something dirty? For something filthier, more scandalous than Ulysses? No, that simply wasn’t possible. And so I told Sandy he was wrong, that Work in Progress had nothing dirty in it whatsoever.
But, at the same time, I welcomed Sandy’s explanation of the broken overheard conversation between my parents. After all, what else would involve law books, and going to England, and newspaper men? Was it possible that Work in Progress was so disgusting we’d be forced to leave France? Although why it could be published legally in England but not in France made no sense to me. I shook my head in bewilderment as I set out my pencils and sketching paper. This train of thought brought me quickly to Mrs Alexander Calder. If my parents moved to England (and Mama had made it very clear England was her favourite country and London her favourite city) Sandy and I might need to settle there too.
“Sandy, have you finished my brooch yet?”
“Oh shucks! I have finished it but I left it in my studio. I’ll bring it next time. Promise.” He kissed me absentmindedly on the side of my head.
“And … and … the earrings? The ones that’ll sway when I walk and dance?”
“Still a Work in Progress!” Sandy started laughing at his own wit.
And what about the surprise he’d promised me? My surprise ring? I thought about asking him but then decided not to. It might look a bit presumptuous. A little rude even. He kissed me several times during our lesson but with an air of distraction. Perhaps he too was worrying about my family going to England.
When I’d finished my drawing and he’d praised my understanding of perspective and packed up his circus, he suddenly and unexpectedly asked if I could get away for a whole night. He said he wanted to take me dancing and then home to his studio “You’d be my first,” I whispered, head bowed, eyes on my sketch book. I felt a hot rosy flush creeping up my throat, whether of excitement or bashfulness I wasn’t sure.
“You’re still a virgin?” Sandy reached out, took a strand of my hair, wound it round his finger. “Can you get away then? For a whole night?”
“Yes.” My heart was racing. Who could cover for me? It would have to be Kitten. Only Kitten would lie for me.
“Let’s hatch a plan when I come next week.” He moved away, snapped the lid of his suitcase shut, picked up his cane and gave it an extravagant twirl. “You could drive a man to distraction, you little minx.”
“Can’t I see you before that?” I tried to speak calmly but my words gushed out. A whole week without him? Yes – a long, empty week – but then Mrs Alexander Calder would rise, like a phoenix, from the ashes of my past.
“Next week gives us plenty of time to hatch a plan, my little Irish virgin.” He smiled flirtatiously, his eyebrows going up and down. Then he tilted my chin with his thumb, and kissed me so heavily and feverishly on the lips my insides seemed to rise and plunge and spin and I could feel the blood rampaging round my heart. When I eventually opened my eyes he’d gone, leaving behind the residue of his smell, his energy, his warmth.
* * *
I spent the next week drifting round Robiac Square smiling to myself, much to Mama’s irritation. Babbo, however, noticed nothing. He was full of his own success at getting the famous conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, to attend one of John Sullivan’s recitals. I ignored his ramblings about Sullivan’s ‘amazing tenor voice’, for my mind was full of its own ramblings. I imagined my night with Sandy over and over again. I made a hundred decisions – what shoes, dress and jewellery to wear, how my hair should be set, what colour lipstick, where to dab my perfume, whether to buy new underwear.
While my parents were out, I telephoned Kitten and told her Sandy had asked to sleep with me and I’d agreed. I couldn’t quite gauge her response. I sensed a reluctance, an unwillingness perhaps, but then she agreed to cover for me. It was only whe
n I hung up I saw how absurd it was that I, at the age of twenty-three, should be resorting to such deception. I could name any number of girls in Paris who were in and out of abortionists’ parlours. But of course none of them lived at home, with old-fashioned Irish parents from whom they couldn’t escape.
When the day of my drawing lesson arrived I was so tense with anticipation I couldn’t sit still. I paced the flat, then chasséd round my room, pausing frequently to check my face and hair, to touch up my lipstick or re-powder my cleavage. I changed my necklace and earrings several times before remembering Sandy was bringing jewellery for me. I discarded my beads leaving myself ready to be adorned by his quaking quivering brooch and swinging earrings. I put my lips to the mirror and kissed myself but the glass was cold and hard against my tongue, and not like Sandy’s vigorous mouth at all. So I did a couple more turns of the flat, swiping at bluebottles, checking the clocks had been wound up, pushing back the shutters to see if I could see him walking up the rue de Grenelle. Until Mama decided she couldn’t bear my restlessness any longer and went out. Mr Leon and Babbo were ensconced in the study. I heard the typewriter rattling and Babbo dictating in his mellifluous bell-like voice.
Finally, the clock chimed the hour. It was time. I gathered up my sketching books and pencils and arranged them on the kitchen table. I tried to calm myself by sketching Mama’s butter knife with the mother-of-pearl handle, but I was fidgeting so much it was impossible. I walked round the kitchen table mouthing the words ‘Mrs Alexander Calder’. And when I got tired of that, I started imagining the night ahead – his large hands unrolling my (new) garters and then peeling off my (new, silk) stockings, his face nuzzling my (perfumed) neck, that way he had of thrusting his tongue into my (brushed and re-brushed) mouth and lapping like a thirsty dog. I slipped my hands inside my blouse, ran them over my ribs, my breasts, my stomache. I swabbed the dampness from my armpits, ran my tongue along my teeth and gums, told myself I had a body made for love, and wished he would hurry up.
After fifteen minutes, when Sandy still hadn’t arrived, I went to the hallway and waited for him there, pacing up and down, watching the clock, flicking at the lucky Greek flag and thinking about Sandy’s smile, Sandy’s hands, Sandy’s breath.
Another fifteen minutes passed. Tired of the dark airlessness of our hall, I went to the parlour, drew back the shutters and sat at the piano. I ran my quivering fingers over the keys a few times until Mr Leon stuck his head out of the study and asked me if I wouldn’t mind doing something quieter. I was too anxious to point out that it was after five o’clock and I was allowed to make a noise. Instead I nodded dumbly and walked back to the kitchen.
As time ticked by, my nervousness ebbed away for it became obvious Sandy wasn’t coming. Instead I felt the creeping listlessness of disappointment and thwarted hope. When Mama walked in carrying a basket of vegetables, I was sitting at the kitchen table, my head on my unopened sketch book, my arms curled protectively round my skull.
She started unpacking muddy potatoes from a bag. “Didn’t Mr Calder come today?”
“No,” I muttered into the table.
“Likely he’s ill. Have you telephoned him?”
“He doesn’t have a telephone.” I raised my head from the table and my shoulders felt suddenly lighter. Of course! He must be ill! He’d never yet missed a drawing class.
“Why don’t you walk over to his studio and see if he’s needing anything. Only yesterday I was hearing about some poor bugger found dead of meningitis in his hotel room. Not a soul noticed. He lay dead and rotting for three days. If you hurry, you’ll be back in time to come to Fouquet’s. And it’ll be doing you good to get some fresh air.”
* * *
The trees were beginning to shed their autumn leaves and there was a sharp chill in the air. I hurried through Montparnasse towards Sandy’s studio, imagining him prostrate with meningitis, perhaps already dead with vermin nesting in his hair. The street lamps were coming on, sending cones of warm light onto the pavements. On every corner stood carts selling paper twists of sugared almonds, or braziers where old men scooped blackened chestnuts into squares of newspaper. I stumbled on, seeing images of Sandy dying, gasping for water, calling weakly for help. What if I was too late?
By the time I reached his studio at the Villa Brune, I was running and hot with sweat. I hammered on the door but there was no reply. When I looked up at the windows, they stared back at me, black and gaping. I kept banging my fists against the door until a wizened old woman put her head out of a nearby window and shouted at me, “Arrêtez-vous! Que voulez-vous?” I asked her if she’d seen the man who owned the studio but she told me to go away and slammed her shutters so hard flakes of old paint fluttered to the pavement.
Sandy must have forgotten. Perhaps he’d got his days muddled up and would come tomorrow. I had enough time to check some of his favourite bars so I retraced my steps until I got to the boulevard Montparnasse and then I pushed open the doors, one by one, of the Select, the Dôme, the Rotonde and the Coupole. It was early and they were all quiet: no sign of Sandy. I was just leaving the Coupole, when Gaston, the head barman, called to me from behind the bar where he was polishing glasses. He’d seen me several times with Sandy, so I smiled bleakly at him and explained I was looking for Monsieur Calder.
His eyes lit up, then flickered with surprise.
“Ah Mam’selle Joyce, Monsieur Calder was here last night. I never saw him drink so much. Never!” Gaston slapped his thigh to make the point. “You could not come? I’ve not been so busy since Pascin killed himself. Quelle tragédie!” He paused to pick up a new glass then looked at me quizzically. “You were Monsieur Calder’s friend – no?”
I stared at Gaston, confused. “No, I’m talking about Alexander Calder, the artist. You’ve seen me here with him lots of times. Often wears an orange suit, loud voice, always laughing, hands always covered in glue and paint.”
“Yes of course! Monsieur Calder!” Gaston paused, eyed me over his linen cloth, started polishing again. “We gave him a good party. Very sad that you missed it. I don’t know how he caught his boat today. He must have felt terrible this morning.”
“Boat?” I echoed dumbly.
“Yes, home to America. Oh what a man of mystery! No one knew he was engaged. But his fiancée came last night too.” Gaston saw the shock on my face and gestured to a chair behind me. “I think you need a drink, Mam’selle Joyce. Have something on the house. A brandy?”
I gawped at him, my mouth hanging open, limp and lifeless. His words churned in my head. Sandy – engaged, gone home to be married. On the day he and I were supposed to … No! It wasn’t possible!
I reached out, took the brandy glass from Gaston, tipped it down my throat, felt it burning, stinging. The rising panic and darkness ebbing. Dizzy. Giddy.
“He was engaged to you too, Mam’selle Joyce?” Gaston shook his head sadly. “These artists are very bad. I am just a simple bar man. Another brandy?”
He re-filled my glass as I struggled with what he’d told me, that there was to be a Mrs Alexander Calder but it wasn’t to be me, that Sandy must have known this for ages, that he’d had a leaving party and not invited me. Not invited me! Said nothing – not a word. Not a single word! I gulped the brandy down, felt my insides scalding, my eyes watering, my temples beginning to throb.
“Who is she?” My voice was barely a whisper and Gaston had to bend down to hear me.
“American lady. Nobody knew her.” Gaston refilled my glass, shaking his head and making sympathetic clicking sounds with his tongue.
“What did she look like?” My voice was stronger and louder now and I slowly released the grip on my brandy glass.
“Not beautiful like you, Mam’selle Joyce.” His kind eyes raked over me, full of solicitude and concern. “You are a real Irish beauty.”
“I asked him, Gaston. I asked him if he had a fiancée.” I drained the brandy from my glass, relishing the heat running through me, the tingling feeling be
hind my eyes, the lightness in my head. Stella’s words were swimming in my brain, sinking then surfacing like flotsam. “He’s engaged to someone in America.” And I had asked him! And he had answered me with a kiss so full of passion he’d almost squeezed the breath from my body.
“He made her a beautiful ring. Made it himself. My wife would not like it, but it was beautiful.” Gaston shook his head sadly again.
“The bastard! We were about to be married. I can’t believe it!” And then I remembered my brooch. Sandy never gave back the brooch he made for me! The bloody bastard! I imagined the American fiancée, with her straight eyes and pockets full of yankee money, sashaying around in my brooch, my earrings. I stood up and staggered to the bar, full of anger and fury and outrage. I slammed my glass onto the marble top and demanded another brandy.
Gaston narrowed his gentle eyes and said he thought I should go home.
“She’s wearing my jewellery. Don’t you see, Gaston? And she’s got my fiancé. He’s a bastard but he’s mine!” A table of chomping tourists turned to stare at me, their forkfuls of steak poised mid-air. The room was starting to spin. Tilting and turning as though the world had come loose from its axis. “I am Mrs Alexander Calder!” I swayed towards the chomping tourists, my voice becoming louder, coarser.
“I’ll take you home now, Mam’selle Joyce.” Gaston called to one of the waiters, walked out from behind the bar and propelled me firmly towards the door. He had one hand on my elbow and one on my back, steadying and manoeuvring me as he flagged down a taxicab. I didn’t resist. At that moment I felt all my bravado and anger slip into self-pity and all the vigour of fury slide into wretched exhaustion. I leaned heavily on Gaston and wished the throbbing in my head would stop.