Jigsaw (29 page)

I was at a loss for a comment.

‘So there might have been
un petit bébé
; but no, it was not to be. It would all have been so different – perhaps your
maman
would have been happy to share Sandró’s baby, as she hasn’t got one of his of her own. She’s too old now, isn’t she? Do you think she would have been pleased to have a baby in the house?’

August was an awkward month. Our days were spent in a miasma of unease. My mother had arrived tired after a long railway journey made not less taxing by the contretemps that for her beset such
enterprises
. She had mislaid – well, perhaps lost – a piece of luggage; the
douanier
at the border though, when she was unable to lay hands on her keys, had waved her on quite charmingly.

No sooner in the car on our way back from the station than she began to complain about the futility of her Swiss stay – it was dull (I might at least have tried to write her some amusing letters about what was going on at Sanary), it was expensive … yes the air was good and it was cool but what was the good of that as she was back now stewing in the summer heat? The trustee? Hopeless and tactless. She mimicked him, ‘It is just as well that your spouse is providing for you now.’ She had persuaded him that her requirements came to more than that, and got round him in the end; say, half round. ‘He told me it was my choice, if I decided to go on the way I wished to, there would be nothing left to come to my daughter. That’s you, my dear. I told him you were young and strong, and were going to get whatever came out of the sale of your father’s bric-à-brac. I hope you agree? Anyway aren’t you going to be a distinguished novelist and keep us all in our old age?’

She was not pleased by our dinner arrangements. ‘You might have had enough imagination to see that after weeks of Swiss hotel food I’d rather eat at home.’ We could have pointed out that
soupe de poisson
and
agneau des alpes
Chez Marius was not like Swiss hotel food, but were too cowed. Chez Marius turned out to be three-quarters empty, we had a table on the terrace to ourselves. ‘And what have you two been up to?’ 

A light question requiring a light answer. The fraction of silence broken by chatter could not have been lost on her.

Inevitably Sanary set up entertainments to celebrate her return: inevitably Sanary told tales – good-natured tales – how bravely
Alessandro
and I had carried on during her absence. The party we had given on the building site became very glamorous in the telling. ‘While I was battling for your future among the stodgy Swiss, you might have waited till I was back.’

‘It wasn’t planned,’ Alessandro said, ‘it just happened.’

Indeed, I thought. ‘You wouldn’t have enjoyed it, you don’t like dance music and no conversation.’

‘Obviously my highbrow daughter does.’

I understood that her displeasure came from a sense that we were on our guard, that there was something wrong. Alessandro was at his most gentle and affectionate but unable to suppress a touch of sheepishness; I recalled how much as a child I had feared her temper, and was afraid again. We constantly had to lie by omission and simply did not do it well enough. And so it went on.

I survived a dinner party at the Desmirails’. That went off as if there were no thin ice. I could not be otherwise with Philippe, and Oriane was enjoying herself in her way. She praised me to the skies, kept telling my mother what fun she and I had been having, I was such a good companion at marketing and walks, I had such a sense of humour. It made me very unhappy. Also I was not sure whether my mother was not taking it with a pinch of salt.

Alessandro and I survived – barely – a dinner party at the Panigons’. Cécile behaved well, not attempting to exchange a look with Alessandro, nor to snatch a word with him by herself, sustaining the expected level of conversation. I admired her courage and self-possession, but during the long evening felt that Alessandro was unsure whether she would be able to keep it up. One did not have to know him well to perceive how nervous he was (he – not she – pleaded a bad headache).

As the party was moving from the dining-room into the garden for a digestif, Frédéric caught me on my own and tried to kiss me. I rebuffed him. 

‘Why do you treat me like this?’

‘Leave me alone,’ I said.

‘Is this the way you behave to all the men you tumble into bed with?’ he said furiously.

‘Don’t be such an ass, Frédéric.’

‘Bitch!’ he said. ‘
How
I long to tell your mother.’

Here we joined our elders round the garden table. During the next hour I watched Frédéric drink three glasses of
eau-de-vie
.

‘I’m sure that idiot sentimental Panigon girl is in love with
Alessandro
,’ my mother said to me, ‘did you notice how she avoided looking at him. Was that for
my
benefit? Did he flirt with her?’

‘You know what he’s like, he flirts with everybody.’

‘Everybody isn’t stupid enough to think he means it. That girl’s a fool.’

‘I don’t think Cécile is a fool,’ I felt obliged to say. ‘She’s a nice girl really.’

‘I dare say. But so
heavy
. She’ll look like her mother in no time but she’ll never have her quick wit. What a family. I confess to a weakness for Monsieur, he knows his classics, he’s good with women and he can be an entertaining raconteur. So unlike that oafish son of his,
what’s-his-name
, I bet he has intentions towards you. I didn’t see you respond. You wouldn’t have such atrocious taste.’

‘I don’t like him much,’ I said.

‘I didn’t think for a minute that you could.’

Oriane was getting more bored and irritable with me every day; she was getting bored and irritable altogether. There had been few opportunities to impress or organise: the theatre bus and the pirates’ entrance were a long way behind. Philippe (whom she always treated with the greatest courtesy, as he did her), occupied with engaging and training personnel, suggested a tennis tournament: there were a number of decent players, men and girls, among the present guests at the Grand Hôtel at Bandol, they’d be pleased to take part in a small but properly set up tournament at Sanary. Oriane took it up sharp. The court was put in super trim, trophies, an umpire’s chair, boxes 
of new balls procured, a draw worked out, invitations issued for spectators and participants. Oriane sewed arm bands for chief organiser (herself) and linesmen. The date fixed was the first week in September. The main attraction was to be Madame Mathieu, a very high-ranking woman player indeed and a friend who promised an appearance for the final rounds (if this was to be believed).

I was delighted by the whole idea, relieved by the distraction and as serviceable as allowed. Louis was much scolded; he found it hard to give his mind to tennis as he was in serious trouble with his parents who had made producing a stipulated amount of work the condition for his being allowed to continue painting on his own instead of being returned to art school in Paris. He had chosen to paint at Sanary in order to be with Oriane, being with Oriane meant little painting, that was his dilemma. Get a couple of kerosene lamps and paint at night, she advised him, at least it’ll make a change from your sun-drenched Provençal landscapes.

When Oriane began talking Wimbledon traditions, my mother said (not to her), ‘Poor Emma Bovary had a dreary life, a dull husband, little money,
she
had some excuse … Your sorceress Oriane has got too much of everything. I’d like to see her in a job; I wonder what would suit her best, being headmistress of a very grand finishing school or running a maison de haute-couture?’ All the same my mother consented to take part in the great event.

The first snag came when Alessandro and Cécile Panigon were drawn to be partners in the mixed doubles. Cécile solved it in her own way: by leaving Sanary.

She waylaid me in the Place one morning as I was waylaying Oriane. She looked controlled and determined and very sad. She was going away for a time, an indefinite time, she would be looking after a
great-aunt
who lived near Valence who was a bit of an invalid, a difficult woman but really not
bien méchante.

‘But Cécile …’

‘It was the only way papa and maman would have let me go. They think I am mad, I tell them one should sometimes sacrifice oneself.’

‘
Must
you go?’ 

‘I can’t stay here. I embarrass Sandró. And,’ she added simply, ‘
je suis trop malheureuse
.’

‘How will you be able to bear living near Valence with the really not so nasty aunt?’

She lifted her head. ‘
I shall know that I am doing it for him
.’

I thought of Rosie Falkenheim and what sustained her.

‘I have something to ask of you – will you give him this note?’

She produced it. I froze.

‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘
Please
. Just slip it into his pocket. It will be the last time.’

‘You must see that I cannot.’

‘You are young, like me, don’t you understand love?’

‘I cannot betray my mother.’ That was love too. Not fear. Though fear came into it. Indeed.

‘You did so before.’

‘By silence.’ No decent person in my position would have talked. ‘I could not betray Alessandro and you, I had no choice. It was bad enough. What you are asking now is active betrayal.’

She said again, ‘Please.’

I shook my head, and felt that life was awful and that no one should be asked to live it.

‘If you won’t take my note, will you give him a message? Say, “Cécile is going away tomorrow. This afternoon she will be at the place you know, at the hour you know, she has to see you once more.”’

Again I refused, feeling like Judas and Peter in one. When at last she left me, she looked sadder than when she arrived. That morning I did not seek out Oriane’s car on the port. I slunk home.

Whenever in later life I wait for a lover who might be late, who might not come, I think of Cécile Panigon that afternoon waiting in the place I did not know and did not wish to know of. There is no absolution.

‘
T’es un brave coco
,’ Renée Kisling said, ‘come in the boat with me.’ I felt that I was neither good nor brave, but said that I would go. She and I spent some, almost silent, hours far out on the sea and this was healing. 

When I got back I heard that the Desmirails were giving a party that night for some of the tennis people. I was not asked. I was wretched again.

Midway through the tournament – which
was
well organised, which
had
a good standard of play – I found myself booked into the last eight without having shot a ball in earnest. I had not wanted to take part at all but Philippe had decreed that original club members however bad should play in at least one event. I was not booked for any doubles, and expected to be quietly out (0–6 0–6) in the first round singles. As it happened two of my opponents had to scratch – we did not have a full complement of players anyway – and there I was. Hardly had I taken in that news when we heard that the girl I was now to face – one of the better players from Bandol – had done something stupid to her ankle and was uncertain whether or not she would be all right next day. Philippe was amused.

‘We’ll have you playing in the final yet,’ he said.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Oriane, ‘the final is going to be Madame Mathieu against me.’

On that evening, a Thursday, the Bandol contingent was giving a dinner for the Sanary one at their hotel. Afterwards we sat on the terrace over
fines à l’eau
and orangeade. Oriane, whose table I had joined, was in a brilliant mood. On one side of her sat a British Army officer, a captain whom she had made tournament deputy-head, arm band and all. He appeared to be eating out of her hand and bewildered by her at the same time, and did not contribute much to the
conversation
, which on her part was extremely lively and included me. She was being nice, in the intimate way she chose at times, calling me her dear young friend, alluding to books she and I had read. At one point Frédéric Panigon – still in the men’s doubles – appeared from another table. ‘Come for a stroll with me,’ he said unceremoniously, ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Can’t you see that she’s talking to me?’ Oriane said, continuing to do so. For a moment or two Frédéric stood his ground, looking cynically down at me, then desisted and walked away.

‘Is something wrong?’ said the English captain.

‘I think he’s been drinking,’ said Oriane. ‘He’s got no manners, though he’s not a
mauvais garçon
.’

We broke up early because of the next day’s tennis. I had come with my mother and Alessandro, and joined them again in our car. Alessandro had a job manoeuvring it out of the hotel yard alive with people and other cars leaving and turning. As we were getting clear and into the drive, Frédéric ran up to us, jumped on the
running-board
on Alessandro’s side, shouting into the open car window.

‘
Vous avez mal gardé votre fille, Madame
! Elle court après les femmes
… D’you hear me? Your daughter is a slut … She runs after women and she …’

‘That’s enough, Frédéric,’ Alessandro lifted a hand off the wheel, gave him a rough push and drove on.

How much my mother – or bystanders – had heard I was not sure because though screaming, his voice had been quite thick.

‘And what did you think of the food and wine?’ my mother asked, when we were on the road, not adding, ‘Mrs Lincoln?’; she would have been well capable of it.

Further on, she said, ‘Oughtn’t we to have given that uncouth young man – I always forget his name – a lift?’

Arrived at Les Cyprès, we bade each other a good night.

Next day, Friday, early, Philippe and Oriane came to see me at the house. Philippe looked as if he had heard a very good joke. Oriane looked tragic. ‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘we just heard from Miss Beauchamp’ (the girl I was to play in the last eight later that morning), ‘her ankle is worse: you are in the semi-final.’