Jigsaw (37 page)

My memories of the great night are mixed and full of holes. I cannot recall, for example, who else was at the Huxleys’ table. Which of their likely friends? Raymond Mortimer? Chronology says probably not. The ravishing young Yvonne Franchetti as she was then (later married to James Hamish Hamilton, the publisher)? Possibly. The Charles de Noailles? Again possibly, though I think not. Clive Bell over from Cassis? Drieu la Rochelle and (another beauty) his wife Olésia? Quite possibly. What is certain is that, when we got there, we found women who looked good and men who talked well. Maria herself will have looked enchanting, with her face of a young El Greco saint, corals on her ears and in her hair a single brilliantly white flower from her garden.

When
we got there. We, my mother and I, were late. Even at her best she had not much regard for time. First she had not wanted to get changed at all – for a little rustic do: where had I got such bourgeois notions? Then she threw herself into it all too much: orange lace, deep décolletage, a Spanish comb with a wisp of veil. I fancied myself in my
tenue de soir
and was anxious to be off and with the Huxleys and the fun. I urged her on; she resisted. At one point we both howled at each other in great wrath. (I discovered that I had, or was developing, a temper.) Then, simultaneously, we laughed. Don’t take after me, she said. In the car at last, I found it difficult to drive in the long narrow skirt, my mother kindly helped me roll it up. That, too, took time. You see? she said. We felt reconciled.

Our entrance – well after Monsieur le Préfet, which was not
bien vu
given my mother’s appearance, make-up and somnambulistic walk, cannot have been inconspicuous. However, we reached the right table, the men whose identities I cannot remember stood up, Maria said the right word, and there we were. A few minutes after, I saw the Desmirails glide in – two slight silhouettes, he in a dinner-jacket, she in a white sheath – later even than we were, odd considering Philippe’s manners. They were followed by the splendid cousins; Louis, Oriane’s attendant demi-god was missing. With hindsight
this
was the most memorable event of the evening – the disappearance of Louis from 
the Desmirails’, from Europe and this story. At the actual moment it was a mere ripple. The dinner, pretentious though not bad, got served with some hitches and was eaten; the official speeches, pompous, deferential, spiced with predictable gallic wit, were sat through; the cabaret got under way and was enchanting. Maurice Chevalier
en chair et en os
, in flesh-and-bone as the French call a live performance, set the audience alight; Mayol entranced it, a fat old man miming a sentimental song. Those who ever saw his act recall what it was like; for the rest it is as though it had never been (unless, improbably, a scrappy film exists): Aldous and my mother, lured from their separate inner worlds, gave themselves to its small magic.

Later, anticlimactically, the lights went up and there was dancing. (Not taken on by the men at our table.) I got a few turns from Oriane’s cousins’ husbands. Passing me, she looked over my get-up and threw me an ungrudging
Très chic
. Next time we were in speaking distance, she said,
Louis m’a plaquée. Plaquer, transitif
, can mean anything from ‘stood me up’ to ‘walked out on me’. She made it sound a great joke.

My mother held up well; our party was one of the earliest to leave – after a brief tour of the salles de jeu, and much head-shaking from Aldous – he simply could not understand anyone wanting to do anything as uninteresting as gambling: too
extraordinary
. My mother helped me rolling up my skirt again and we got safely home.

Next morning the first version of the Louis story was trickling around Sanary: the Desmirails had been late last night because Louis had turned up at their house in a rebellious mood dressed in a
reach-me-down
suit and an open shirt. Oriane, at her disdainful best, told him, ‘You might at least have put on a tie.’ Whereupon Louis lost his temper, shouted ‘
Zut pour la cravate!
’, slammed the well-fitting doors of La Pacifique and rushed into the night.

Oriane, furious in her turn, was soothed down and persuaded to proceed without her
amant en titre
.

The first amendment came from herself; she told everyone who lent ear that what Louis had hurled at her was not the harmless childish
zut
. His parting shot had been, ‘
Merde pour la cravate!
’

What was not known until some days after, was that Louis in thunderous black mood had run into his brother on the port. Louis had poured it forth. The brother, an elder brother, married, who happened to be staying at the Hôtel de la Plage for a holiday, listened. Louis was fed up with fetching and carrying and being bossed about by Oriane. He had had enough. He wanted out. The brother saw his chance. One should remember that the family – solid, respectable, highly regarded in the Parisian art world – was
against
on every count: a married woman, indiscreet, keeping a young son from the family, keeping him from painting. The brother took Louis back to the hotel, settled him in his own room, fanned the flames; then left him and went to work. Quick work. He telephoned to their father in Paris, the father telephoned to an uncle in Marseille, the uncle chased up a sea captain of his acquaintance, a
capitaine au long cours
, whose ship – a tramp steamer – was lying in port ready to weigh anchor that very dawn on the way to the South Pacific. Louis meanwhile had been nourishing his wrath (helped by brandies and sodas). He would show the bitch, he would. The brother lost no time getting him into his car in the clothes (sans cravate) he stood in. A little after midnight he was on board, under the wing of the complacent captain and delighted with his destination. (Louis liked thinking of himself as a noble savage.) The ship, the brother was assured, would not call at any port for at least five weeks. The plot was a triumph of initiative, family solidarity and cunning, as well as will over matter when one considers the state of the French telephone system (now the pride of Europe) in those days.

Before sailing, Louis had found the time to scribble a postcard addressed to Madame Philippe Desmirail. It said in shaky block letters (I saw it: Oriane showed it to me): ‘
En Route pour Tahiti! Au revoir!
’

At first Oriane took it for a prank. The brother soon circulated the truth. Then Louis’ father wrote her a restrained letter informing her of his decision – at the cost of great personal loss to Louis’ mother and himself – to send his son to the other side of the world for a couple of years. (They must have considered her
very
dangerous.) Oriane appeared to take the loss well, making a story of it – and all 
that for
une cravate
. Later I learnt that it had shaken her badly, a bad blow, as bad in its way as the literal collapse of her tennis future on that court at Biarritz. Each time a Bovaristic dream shattered, a corner of a world she had created to revolve round herself ceased to exist. On a daily level the disappearance added to her serious under-occupation, running Louis the Satellite had used up some of her abilities and time (he
was
a malleable fellow). Now she began to suffer from a series of
crises de nerfs
– as they were always referred to – which from then on beset her at intervals in later life. At the time she suffered these in private, Philippe, also in private, bore the brunt.

What Louis felt the morning after his abduction is not known. He did not return to France until some fifteen years after the war, that is after an absence of over thirty years, as a middle-aged man (with a young Tahitian wife in his baggage) who had not become a latter-day Gauguin but a moderately unsuccessful export-import man. What had been a humiliation for Oriane caused much grief to his parents who did not live to see their son’s return. Then, Louis sought out Oriane, who had long lived separated from Philippe, told her she was the love of his life and proposed marriage, averring that he could easily get rid of the young native wife. Neither took it very seriously, though Oriane was flattered enough to tell me (the physical change in him was much greater than the change in her). Together they enjoyed a few jokes about
la cravate
, then drifted apart for good. He is said to have returned to the tropics.

The story of his original departure on the night of the casino opening was relayed to Aldous by way of Maria. She was his eyes and ears for what was going on in the human world; for his books, she would explain, any odds and ends came in useful. So I was egged on to provide tales. Now the Huxleys, the born, the authentic Huxleys, not the wives they married, were dreadfully addicted to puns and verbal jokes, though Aldous less relentlessly so than his brother Julian. Louis’s quarrel at the Desmirails’ house
La
Pacifique, the Peaceful, and his subsequent destination,
Le
Pacifique, the Ocean gave him the opportunity for a very poor
jeu de mots.

From Toni I had had listless notes. About her, I had heard rather more. She was not adjusting herself to the new life, she was beginning to realise. She missed Jamie. Was her sense of injury still intact? Rosie wrote, Toni would want one to think so, yet there might be a slight chance, a minute chance, that it could crumble.
If
the right thing occurred. Word had got to Toni that Jamie was moping badly and that it was showing even in his work. That shook her a little. Could she be brought to think, Rosie was asking herself, that the man had been punished enough?

Rosie was working on it – it wouldn’t be the first time ever that a divorce had been stopped. She wrote a word to Surbiton telling Jamie she would like to talk to him. When he replied, he apologised about the delay: he had left his mother’s – from where the note had been forwarded – and moved into London again. The address heading his letter was in Bloomsbury: he did not say so, but Rosie gathered that it was Cynthia’s. Jamie had not asked what Rosie wanted to talk about, nor had he suggested a meeting. So that glimmer of hope was extinguished.

Now Rosie was beginning to feel that she really could not leave Toni and go off with Jack to the South of France.
He
was able to go this year, wanted to go, insisted on going, she herself longed to go … But when she thought of Toni – who had no one to go away with – stuck on her own in London, she felt that
she
ought to take her somewhere, a fortnight in Brittany, say. Oh, she did not want to. To be able to travel once more with Jack! She was torn. What was she to do – what did I think?

What
did
I think? My heart was with the lovers – they had already missed Sanary last year because of the Judge’s troubles – one should take joy when one can, if one can, but can one? If Rosie felt so guilty about abandoning her sister? For whom things
were
pretty grim. Was it never possible for everybody to be happy? Did anything good have to be at somebody else’s expense? I wanted Rosie to have her time with Jack, I wanted them to come. Did I really? Did I want to face – or evade – Rosie’s questions at this point? Was I in the mood for burgundy lunches with a distinguished ever so nicely patronising 
judge? (That had been two years ago – it felt an age.) Would I not watch the swing-doors of the Hôtel de la Plage dining-room for my mother wandering in?

I wrote a shilly-shallying letter. It would be wonderful if they could come, though I understood her concern about leaving Toni (in the first summer of what must be a kind of widowhood), it was a hard decision to make.

That’s how I wrote. What I should have said was, Do come, you’re not being selfish, you’re not being callow, you are doing enough for Toni as it is; she’s brought it on herself after all. Don’t miss your time with the Judge – she’ll get over it: just two weeks in August, and she’s arranged a lifetime of misery for herself. Hold on to all the healthy joie de vivre you can get – what else
is
there?

That’s how I ought to have written. And did not. (Self-interest apart, my trust in joie de vivre was at a low ebb.) Might it have tipped the scales? Possibly. There was from early on a curious kind of confidence in each other’s judgement between Rosie and myself, regardless of our difference in age. As it turned out, she decided not to go to Sanary that summer. It was the first time she had ever said No about anything to Jack.

Having survived the casino evening, my mother craved new
distractions
. By noon most days she would be ready with a plan for an outing. Let’s go to Aix … (Too far, mummy, eighty kilometres each way.) To Cannes … (Twice as far.) We could stay overnight at some agreeable hotel … (They’ll be full up, it’s the summer season.) One always gets in with the right word to the concierge … (Agreeable hotels on that part of the coast are expensive.)

‘How dare you talk to me about money – what do you think
he
is spending, gallivanting about the Iberian peninsula? He’s spending
my
money.’

We were down to that kind of talk.

‘With respect,’ I actually said with respect as they do in the law courts, hoping to lighten the tone, ‘it’s his money, he earned it.’

‘
At last
.’ It had not lightened the tone. ‘And
who
got him the jobs? 
Who
taught him? Who does he think he is now? He was
nothing. I
made him.’

I tried to stop my ears. Presently, when the spirit-lamp had brought the water in the little saucepan to the boil at last, she would become the other person again. When she did, she would say, ‘Was I frightful? Was I unjust? Poor boy, he’s got so much talent – who knows? he might have done rather better without me. How can I be so nasty about him? – but I am so unhappy. That’s what it is – I’m nasty because I’m unhappy. And
he
made me.’

Another time round, she would accuse Alessandro of living off Doris. I couldn’t counter with Doris being a penniless girl because she was and she wasn’t. My mother soon caught up. ‘He’s travelling with Paul’s money … in the car Paul bought … What does that make him? A double pimp –? a kept man at two removes?’

Better, far better, to steer her back to the outings, however perilous. The trouble with these was twofold, the danger of not reaching home in time for the next hypodermic, which could make her suffer badly, needlessly, and me lose my head with anxiety. She airily suggested that I might give her the treatment en route – We could take the box of tricks with us, just like a picnic.

‘And
where
am I supposed to be doing this?’

‘Oh the roadside or in a lavatory, a lavatory
would
be more private.’

I was so horrified – and expressed this so vociferously – that for the time being she desisted. It was not a wise attitude on my part.

The other trouble with these excursions was that, however I tried to circumvent, we were spending too much money. She would leave my side and slip into a shop, buy several silk scarves at tourist prices or a piece of Provençal pottery, then a set of Provençal pottery, saying that they would sell at a good profit; she ought to be building up stock against Alessandro’s next commission. By then she would already have stopped at a pâtisserie to order a vacherin or some other large cake to take home, where Emilia might eat two slices or three, and my mother and I as little as makes no difference.

From the frugal days in my father’s château, through the years of fine careless impecuniousness with the Robbinses, I had learned to handle 
money, particularly the money one hadn’t got. I knew that my mother’s own quarterly income had dwindled to a very modest sum indeed. Whatever she had done for him and his family in the past – and she had done a good deal – it was what Alessandro earned now that was keeping her comfortably off. Comfortably, not extravagantly. I knew how relatively small inroads can destroy financial tranquillity – for people of slender means it is not a very long step between comfortably off and swamped by debt: I was being haunted by Mr Micawber’s sixpence.

As foreseen, Alessandro’s masons’ and carpenters’ bills were coming in. They called them their
petites factures
whatever the size of the sum and proposed to come by the house next Tuesday, say, and be paid, as was customary, in cash. You offered and shared a glass of red wine,
un coup de rouge
, counted out the notes, shook hands, smiles all round and that was that. The snag was that my mother had to write a cheque in the first place beforehand and tried to hang on to some of the money.

If it was I who snatched the cheque and went down to the Crédit Lyonnais to cash it, she would waylay me demanding some for herself; if it was she who managed to go to the little branch bank on her own, it was worse as it was I who had to get as much as I could out of her. We didn’t have an easy time of it.

And how often she succeeded in cashing a cheque I knew nothing about, I could not be sure. I never saw a bank statement; she who used to leave everything about now took care to conceal them from me. When my own money came in – by international postal order – we reversed roles: I trying to conceal, she trying to get me to fork out. I resisted because I had to have something to fall back on for Emilia’s wages and our daily food. I, too, had to get good at concealing.

Alessandro had been away now for a long number of weeks and she was on the alert for some sign or date. Secretly feeling the same I tried to keep her mind off as much as I could. One afternoon she proposed a drive into the back country – so peaceful, so beautiful; she was tired of beaches and people and shops. I jumped at it, concurring about the shops. From Bandol we drove to Le Beausset, from there up the pass 
over Le Brulat on one of those narrow white D roads on the Michelin maps, up further to Ste-Anne-du-Castellet and on. It was still and very, very hot – burnt bare country of noble contours where one feels free and enclosed in lucent space. When we came down to Le Camp where the D26 crosses the N8, the main road from Marseille (by which we were meaning to return), my mother said let’s go on.

Let’s go on further into the empty country, towards the Massif de la Ste Baume, see if we can find Signes, a village with an auberge by a river which she had crossed on her way to Haute-Provence with Alessandro. Indeed, we saw another D, a Departmental road and the kilometre stone said
Signes 20 Kms,
that seemed achievable. The evening – it was beginning to be that – was so serene, so was my mother’s mood; I suppressed misgivings, we drove on. The last time she’d passed through Signes, they had been roasting a string of small birds at the auberge – yes, little song birds, so cruel, so awful of the peasants, but admit they taste good. We got there. The village and the auberge, by a gorge, dry now, looked deserted and remote. No little birds a-roasting – just as well. We sat by a mellow parapet and were served cool
vin blanc-cassis
by a woman, the shadows were getting longer and my mother restless. Time, high time, to think of getting home. We must have a
casse-croûte
first (my mother’s insistence), before that long drive. But it wouldn’t be a long drive, would it? We didn’t have to go back the way we came? Surely, there was a short cut?