The Paris Wife (35 page)

Gerald met our train and drove us back to Villa America in a shockingly fast lemon-yellow roadster. I couldn’t help but be impressed by it all. The Murphys had been sculpting and perfecting the villa for more than a year while they lived in a hotel in town. Before they arrived on the scene in Antibes, there wasn’t really a scene. The town was small and sleepy, with a narrow spring season. No one ever went to the Riviera in summer, but the Murphys loved the summer and they loved Antibes; they would find a way to make the place suit them. They paid a hotelier in town to stay open all year for them alone, and soon enough, other hotels were staying open and more were being built. The beach had once been buried in seaweed, but Gerald had cleared it himself, a few yards at a time, and now it was pristine. Before the Murphys came along and made it fashionable, no one ever thought to sun on the beach. They invented sunbathing, and to be around them for any time at all made you think they’d invented everything that was good and pleasurable and civilized.

Their estate sat on seven acres of terraced gardens, with heliotrope running everywhere. There were lemon and date and olive and pepper trees. Black and white figs grew and an exotic Arabian maple with sheer white leaves. Aside from the guesthouse, there was also a small farm and stable, a gardener’s cottage, a chauffeur’s cottage, a playhouse for the Murphys’ three children, and a private painting studio for Gerald. Before we headed to the main house, he walked us to the end of a rocky path and onto the white, white sand of their private beach. Scott and Zelda were there, reclining on wide cane beach mats and drinking sherry from dainty crystal glasses. Scottie played nearby in the surf with the Murphy children, all of them very blond and dark skinned from the sun.

“Come have a drink, Hadley,” Zelda said, rising to kiss me on both cheeks. “You must need one after Gerald’s driving.”

“It is rather paralyzing coming over the coast road,” I said.

“Scott’s cocktails are paralyzing, too, but that’s what’s nice about them,” she said, and everyone laughed.

“How’s Hem getting on?” Scott asked, shading his eyes and squinting up at me.

“Well enough, I think. The writing’s been good.”

“Damn him anyway,” Scott said cheerfully. “It’s always good for him, isn’t it?”

“Is that what he says? Don’t believe it.”

“See there,” Zelda said, as if settling something between them.

“Yes, darling. I heard her.” Then both of them handed their glasses to Gerald for refreshing.

The main house had black marble flooring, black satin furniture, and bright white walls. The severity of the color scheme was offset, everywhere, by flowers from the garden—just-picked jasmine, gardenias, oleander, roses, and camellias. The whole operation was stunning, and I felt conspicuous even standing in the entry with my worn summer jacket. None of my clothes would do, in fact.

“Sara’s up in bed with a bit of a cold,” Gerald explained. “I’m sure she’ll rally and come down shortly.”

Bumby and I changed into our beach things and went down to the beach to wait for Sara, but she didn’t come down all that day. I was beginning to wonder if I should feel slighted when the Murphys’ physician arrived in the evening to check on her.

“He might as well take a look at Bumby, too,” Gerald said. “Sara can hear his cough from all the way upstairs. It really is worrisome.”

“It is, isn’t it? I was hoping the Mediterranean air would do him some good.”

“It might yet, but why not consult the doctor? Just to be safe.”

I agreed, and after a very thorough examination with Bumby being a perfect lamb undressed to his skivvies on the bed in the guesthouse, the doctor diagnosed whooping cough.

“Whooping cough?” I said with mounting alarm. “That’s serious, isn’t it?” The word that came to mind was
fatal
, but I couldn’t bear to say it out loud.

“Please calm down, Mrs. Hemingway,” the doctor said. “Based on his symptoms, the boy’s likely had the disease for months. The worst has passed, but he’ll need plenty of rest to recover fully, and he mustn’t be let near other children. We’ll have to quarantine him for at least two weeks.”

He prescribed a dose of special cough medicine and a eucalyptus rub for his chest and back, to aid breathing, but even with tonics and reassurances on hand, I was worried about Bumby. I also felt terrible for not knowing he should have seen a doctor in Paris.

As soon as we got the diagnosis, Sara grew agitated and began making plans for us to be moved to a hotel in town. “You’ll still be our guests,” she insisted. “We just can’t have him here. You understand, don’t you?”

I did, of course. In fact, I felt dreadful that we were such a source of concern for everyone. I couldn’t stop apologizing as I packed our things.

The Murphys called their chauffeur to deliver us to our new lodgings, and the next morning sent him back with groceries and fresh fruit and vegetables from their garden. It was all very generous. I don’t know what we would have done without someone to look out for us there. But they couldn’t help with the nursing or the isolation, and I knew I couldn’t bear it alone. I sent a cable to Marie Cocotte in Paris, asking her to come and help care for Bumby, and one to Ernest in Madrid, explaining the situation. I didn’t ask him to come, though; I wanted him to arrive on his own or not at all.

Very shortly after it was clear we’d need to be quarantined, Scott and Zelda stepped in and volunteered the lease on their villa at Juan-les-Pins. They would move to a larger villa near the casino that had its own beach. This was a godsend, really. The place was lovely, with pretty hand-painted tile everywhere. There was a small garden with poppies and orange trees, and Bumby could play there safely, without infecting any other children. But I felt very low and separate and worried that Bumby would have a relapse. I spent my days rubbing eucalyptus oil on his chest and back, and trying to bribe him into taking his bitter medicine. At night I woke every few hours to feel his forehead for returning fever. The doctor came every day, and so did telegrams from Paris and Madrid. Pauline wrote to say how sorry she felt for me but also for Ernest, who was still lonely in Spain and feeling very desperate about it. I was so angry reading this I very nearly wrote back saying she could have him, but in the end I just folded the telegram in thirds, and then tore it into pieces.

One evening as I sat reading in the little garden, I heard a car horn, and there, coming up the drive, were the Murphys and the Fitzgeralds and the MacLeishes, all in separate cars. They stopped just in front of the terrace behind the iron fence, and the women glided out in their long beautiful dresses looking like works of art. The men were beautiful in their suits, and everyone was in high spirits. Gerald held a pitcher of very cold martinis, and as I walked up to the fence, he handed me a glass.

“Reinforcements have arrived,” he said, clearly pleased that he’d had the idea. Everyone gathered around to lift a glass, except for Scott.

“I’m on the wagon and trying very hard to be good,” he said.

Zelda frowned. “It’s so very boring to hear you say it, darling.”

“It’s true,” he said. “But just the same, I’m a good boy today. Smile for me, will you, Hadley?”

We all stood at the fence and chatted for some minutes, and then they glided back into the cars, followed by laughter, and headed off to the casino in town. I watched them go, wondering if I’d dreamed them, and then went inside to an early bedtime and a book.

When Ernest finally came in from Madrid, ten days after our quarantine was imposed, the Murphys threw him a champagne and caviar party at the casino. Marie Cocotte had come to care for Bumby and I felt tremendously relieved and free to leave the villa for the first time.

Ernest looked pale and tired when he arrived at the house. It had been cold in Madrid and he’d worked hard most days, late into the night. I was still exhausted from worry over Bumby, and also didn’t know at all how Ernest was feeling about me, but he greeted me with a nice long kiss and told me he’d missed me. I let myself be kissed, and didn’t ask what he’d decided to do about Pauline. I didn’t think it was safe to mention her name at all, and because I didn’t, and because that was the principal thing at stake in our lives, I felt absolutely powerless. “I missed you, too,” I said, and then went to dress for the party.

Gerald had spared no expense in welcoming Ernest to town, and why should he? The Murphys had inherited their money and had never once been without. There were camellias floating in glass bowls and mounds of oysters and fresh corn dotted with sprigs of basil. It seemed possible that the Murphys had specially ordered the deep purple Mediterranean sky and the nightingales thick in the hedges, trilling and whistling a series of crescendos. It began to grate on me. Did everything have to be so choreographed and civilized? Who could trust it anyway?

As we waited for Scott and Zelda to arrive, Ernest began telling the table about his recent correspondence with Sherwood Anderson over
The Torrents of Spring
, which had just been published in the States.

“I had to write him,” he said. “The thing was going to be out any day and I felt inclined to tell him how it happened and why I would be such a son of a bitch after he’d done so much to help me.”

“Good man, Hem,” Gerald said.

“Right, yes. You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

“Didn’t he take it well?” Sara asked.

“He said it was the most insulting and patronizing letter he’d ever gotten, and that the book itself was rot.”

“He didn’t really say that,” I said.

“No, he said that it might have been funny if it had been a dozen pages instead of a hundred.”

“I thought it was awfully funny, Hem,” Gerald said.

“You haven’t read the book, Gerald.”

“Yes, but from everything you’ve said, it’s obviously very, very funny.”

Ernest turned away with a sour expression and began to apply himself to his glass of whiskey. “Stein let me have it, too,” he said, coming up for air. “She says I’ve been a shit and a very bad Hemingstein indeed, and that I can go to hell.”

“Oh dear,” Sara said. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Damn her anyway.”

“Come on now, Tatie,” I said. “You don’t mean that. She’s Bumby’s godmother, after all.”

“Then he’s bitched, isn’t he?”

I knew Ernest’s bravado was almost entirely invented, but I hated to think of all the good friends we’d lost because of his pride and volatile temper, starting in Chicago with Kenley. Lewis Galantière, our first friend in Paris, had stopped speaking to Ernest when he’d called Lewis’s fiancée a despicable shrew. Bob McAlmon had finally had enough of Ernest’s bragging and rudeness and now crossed the street to avoid us in Paris. Harold Loeb had never recovered from Pamplona, and Sherwood and Gertrude, two of Ernest’s biggest champions, now topped the long and painful list. Just how many others would fall, I wondered as I looked around the candlelit table.

“Hemmy, my boy!” Scott shouted as he and Zelda crested the steps up from the beach. Scott had his socks and shoes off and his trousers rolled up. His tie was loose, and his jacket was rumpled. He looked several sheets to the wind.

“Have you been for a swim, Scott?” Ernest said.

“No, no. I’m dry as a bone.”

Zelda laughed at this with a small snort. “Yes, yes, Scott. You’re very dry, and that’s why you just recited all of Longfellow to that poor man on the pier.” She’d drawn her hair severely back from her face and pinned a giant white peony behind her ear. Her makeup was impeccable, but her eyes looked strained and tired.

“Who doesn’t like Longfellow?” Scott said as he landed in his chair with some aplomb, and we all laughed thinly. “Come, dear,” he said to Zelda, who was still standing. “Let’s have a drink with all these marvelously affected people. There’s caviar. What the blazes would we do without caviar?”

“Please shut up, darling,” she said, taking her seat. She smiled broadly and falsely at all of us. “He’ll be good now, I promise.”

The waiter came and brought more drinks, and then came again to serve the table next to us, where a beautiful young girl was sitting down to dinner with what looked like her father.

“Now that’s a pretty arrangement,” Scott said, staring at the girl hungrily. Ernest elbowed him to stop, but he wouldn’t stop.

“You are not a gentleman,” the father finally said to Scott in French, and then escorted the girl inside, well away from us.

“A gentleman is only
one
of the things I am not,” Scott said, turning back to our table. “I’m also not well and not smart and not nearly drunk enough to spend any kind of time with your lot.”

Gerald paled and turned to whisper something to Sara.

“I say, Gerald, old chap. How about you chuck an oyster at a fellow? I’m famished.”

Gerald looked at him coldly and turned away to speak to Sara again.

“Sara,” Scott said, trying to draw her attention away from her husband. “Sara, please look at me. Please.”

But she wouldn’t and that’s when Scott picked up a cut-glass ashtray from the table and pitched it well over Gerald’s shoulder at an empty table behind. Sara flinched. Gerald ducked and barked at Scott to stop. Scott grabbed another ashtray, which hit the table dead center and then ricocheted off with a loud clang.

Zelda seemed set on ignoring him entirely, but the rest of us were appalled and embarrassed.

“C’mon, Prince Charming,” Ernest finally said flatly. He went over to Scott and took his elbow, helping him up. “Let’s have a dance,” he said, and then led Scott right off the terrace and down the steps to the beach. Everyone stared after them except for Zelda, who was looking intensely at the hedges.

“Nightingale,” she said. “Was it a vision, or a waking dream?”

Archie MacLeish coughed and said, “Yes. Well.” Ada touched her marcelled hair lightly, as if it were glass, and I looked out to sea, which was black as the sky and invisible. Years and years later, the waiter brought the check.

I slept late the next morning, knowing Bumby was in Marie Cocotte’s capable care. When I came downstairs, Scott and Ernest sat at the long table in the dining room with a sheaf of carbon pages laid out before them.