The Bay of Angels (20 page)

My task now was to wear such a mask with my mother, in order to protect us both. I should be the competent daughter, and if I felt any uneasiness, as those dutiful sons so obviously did, I should dismiss it as an unenviable necessity. In time I should develop the same sort of heartiness, so that all the residents would be comforted by the prevailing mood, and no one should be left out of that collusive company. I had seen the relief on the faces of those visitors as they left, the smile fading, the nod of recognition to others in the same boat. Only the following day would restore them to themselves. The company of the able-bodied would reassure them once again that nature was on their side, and if nature needed a little help from time to time, needed to be postponed, or relegated to a dark corner, there was no harm intended. Surely it was more honourable to joke and to encourage than to cast oneself, weeping, at the feet of a parent now in ruins?

I would tackle my work some other day. For the moment I would go out and walk until I was too tired to walk any further. I had not eaten, but was not hungry. I wanted space, light, air, and all of these were more imperative than food. I had no fear of the night; indeed I had no fears at all when I was out of doors. I walked down to the shore, and stood for a while listening to the rattle of the shingle as the sea sucked it down, only to return it with the next wave. The light had faded suddenly, as it did here. There were few other walkers, sometimes the occasional couple entwined, pensive now, the last day of the holiday approaching.

I looked about me for somebody familiar, though I knew no one. Dr Balbi had said that he lived not far from me, but had prudently given no details. He had added that he saw me sometimes, from his car, presumably, may have known something of my habits. He lived alone, as I did, but could call on company when he needed it. At that moment I was not unhappy. Not, that is, until I turned to make my way back up the shingle to the steps that would restore me to the street. The light had been so subtle, the sounds so beguiling that I had thought of waiting out the tide. Then some sort of common sense prevailed and I prepared to make my way home. Glancing up I saw a figure watching me from the Promenade. This figure was in darkness, yet that slightness, that sparseness: surely I had seen them before? The figure moved away, melted into the surrounding gloom. I gave no hint of recognition, neither did he. Yet I did not doubt that Dr Balbi, perhaps taking an entirely coincidental evening walk, perhaps not, had seen me, had even followed me, and had nevertheless remained out of sight. I thought, with some timid feeling of comfort, that this event might be repeated. I should not refer to it. Neither would he. But if it did happen again, as I hoped it might, we should acknowledge it, accept it, as something that had been prompted by nature, and not yet disguised by an appropriate mask.

14

The men I had known, in particular Adam, had been charmingly evasive, mocking my sincerity. I would take care not to be so sincere again. But it would be difficult.

I took to walking in the very late evening, sometimes after nightfall. Instinctively I would make my way to the shore, from which I imagined I could survey the huge crescent of the Baie des Anges. I could not, of course, but I liked the feeling of infinity after a restricted day in my room poring over my texts. Behind me cars kept up their rushing speed along the Corniche road, but on the water’s edge it was possible to capture silence. I would look round from time to time to see if anyone was following me, but for two nights nobody was.

The second time I saw him I approached him with surprisingly few misgivings.

‘Dr Balbi.’

‘Miss Cunningham.’

Yet I found that without sincerity there was little to say. I tried my best, although my technique was poor.

‘You too like to walk in the dark, then?’

‘I have always liked the dark. It is flattering, particularly to an ugly man.’

‘You look quite personable in this light.’

‘I dare say. Do not let that deceive you.’

‘Oh, I shan’t.’

There was a brief silence. We had come to the end of our opening gambits.

‘I will walk you back,’ he said. ‘You should be in bed. It is late.’

‘What happens now?’ I asked.

‘I am not prepared to think about that.’

‘Are you opposed to me on principle?’

‘On principle, yes.’

‘Your position . . . ’

‘My position.’

‘I have never been very good at this,’ I said. ‘I frequently find myself at a disadvantage, trying to guess what the other person is thinking, or even wanting. But the other person rarely says, or not in words I want to hear.’

‘Why do you think you are not very good, as you say? Most people want the same thing.’

‘Then why can’t they say so?’

‘It is very alarming, the sort of declaration you say you want. One finds one has given too much away. And been poorly repaid.’

‘I want only what could be freely given. And should be freely given.’

‘You place too much emphasis on freedom. There is no such thing.’

‘Yet I have known that sort of freedom. You must have known it too. Your mother . . . ’

‘Yes, that love was a sort of freedom. You have it with your own mother. But, as you have discovered, it turns into something more tragic. One is obliged to care, to take responsibility, just at the time when one’s own life beckons.’

‘And yet one is left with that memory, that imprinting . . . ’

‘One cannot remain in love with one’s mother for life.’

‘Yet that sort of love remains the ideal.’

‘That is the love of an infant, a nurseling. We cannot go back.’

‘I want to go forward, not back.’

‘How do you see yourself in, say, ten years’ time?’

‘That is what I can’t do. Once I leave this place, as I shall have to do eventually . . . ’ He nodded. ‘. . . I see myself leading a very dull life, doing very dull work, waking up each morning in a panic, wondering how to fill the day. I shall be living automatically, artificially, pretending to be like everybody else. I shall fill the day somehow, shop, cook, settle down with my books, perhaps walk in the evenings . . . No, I shan’t walk in the evenings. By the evening I shall be frightened again, wondering how to pass the time.’

‘Does this life you describe contain no other people?’

‘There are friends, of course, the friends I have left behind, and whose activities I hear of long after they have taken place. I could not emulate their lives. They seem so busy, planning holidays all the time. And the strange thing is I think they envy me here. To the unknowing the South of France means leisure, pleasure. The holiday syndrome, all over again.’

‘Whereas you see it as a place of . . . what?’

‘Sadness, I think. Above all, sadness. I am here against my will, yet I cannot bear to think of my eventual departure. That will mean the end of everything.’

‘You may marry.’

‘No. I shall never marry. I don’t seem to have the knack.’

‘Most people marry. Even I married once.’

‘But you would not do so again.’

‘No, that is true.’

‘One thinks of marriage as the end of the story.’

‘There is only one end to our story.’

‘You mean . . . ?’

‘Yes, I mean that.’

‘Are you warning me of something? Is there something I should know?’

‘At this stage you know as much as I do. Whether you know it as consciously I cannot say.’

‘So that one day I shall leave empty-handed. With very few stories with which to entertain my friends.’

‘What stories would entertain them?’

‘Oh, love, of course. Women lose interest if you deprive them of this sort of exchange. They think you are concealing something. Or else that you are a crashing bore.’

‘Do women count on love to such an extent?’

‘Of course they do. Don’t men?’

‘Oh, sometimes, I dare say.’

‘You are very cautious.’

‘Well, it is my job not to rush to conclusions.’

‘But don’t you get lonely?’

‘Naturally. Most people know loneliness. Even with a partner one can know loneliness.’

‘Mme Levasseur was lonely when her grandson refused to kiss her. I saw her face. I never want to look like that.’

‘The rejection of a child carries a shock. But one knows that the child means little by it, except petulance, distaste.’

‘Rejection by an adult is worse.’

‘We have all known such rejections. They are not always significant.’

‘But I think they are.’

‘Your circumstances are perhaps extreme. You see everything from a vantage point of isolation.’

‘Strangely, I mind less and less about the isolation. But I know that this will increase in ways I am beginning to appreciate.’

‘You have no other family?’

‘No, we were always together, my mother and I. I remember two women coming to see us when I was quite young. They were some sort of connection on my father’s side. They were sorry for my mother, which annoyed me; I thought that they were trying to take her away. They were delighted when she married again. They thought that that was a natural conclusion. Instead of which the marriage changed her life for ever. And mine.’

‘I believe she is not unhappy.’

‘She should be.’

‘You talk like a young person. I have observed this process for much longer than you have.’

‘This process. Is that what it is?’

‘Oh, yes. We shall all know it one day.’

‘Who can console one for one’s own death?’

‘Ah, that is a very big question, one nobody can answer. The choir of angels, the company of saints? That is what the sisters believe. In many ways they are to be envied. Such trust has kept them young. They could not do the work they do if they were not convinced of eternal life.’

‘What a prospect. I only want one life.’

‘That is all you will get. Come, I will buy you a tisane. Then you will sleep. There has been enough talking for one night.’

‘I always feel that when a man spends money on you it is some sort of concession.’

‘It is only a few francs.’

‘Maybe that is all you can afford. Emotionally, I mean.’

‘Quite.’

He led me down a side street, away from the traffic and the noise. My one regret at that point was that I might not be able to find it again. Yet even this was only a passing reflection, for I felt, whether rightly or wrongly, that the time for contrivance was past. Those anxious moments I had experienced with other men, the fatal question—‘When will I see you again?’—had faded from my mind as though they had never existed. That not quite accidental meeting had allayed old fears. This fact alone made me quiescent, although quiescence in itself can be a danger. We sat at an ordinary table in an ordinary café, and I obediently drank the faintly nauseous decoction that he had ordered for me. I sensed that any further discussion would be unnecessary; a silence had intervened which would be difficult to break. Dr Balbi drank coffee, in spite of the late hour. I did not think it appropriate to comment on this; his habits were his own affair. So were his appetites, for they did not seem to include me.

In other circumstances this would have alienated or alarmed me, but now I did not seem to mind. For that short interval I was content to obey his rules. His conditions had been stated; he had a stern professional conscience, and to him I was, if not a patient, the nearest relative a patient could have. He seemed beyond desire, and briefly I was the same, content to register the evening as one of the best I had ever spent. What conferred this realization was Dr Balbi’s absolute calmness, which had a similarly hypnotic effect on myself; my habitual agitation had fallen away, leaving behind an impression of benevolence, not the right true end of my childish imaginings, so much as of circumstances which might be permitted to turn in my favour. I was in no way attracted to him. He was not an attractive man. He had authority, and it was to that authority that I was willing to submit. I wanted to ask him whether he had been looking for me, or had been merely taking a walk on his own account. I did not, for I had the sense to realize that this might expose him in a moment of weakness, and I had no desire to do so. I sipped my tisane and looked ahead of me, at the few passers-by still enjoying the evening. It was very late, near to midnight, but neither of us seemed in a hurry. Finally he signalled the waiter for the bill, and turned to me.

‘Your main concern at the moment is your mother,’ he said.

It seemed both a prediction and a promise.

‘You will see her again?’ I asked.

‘As I have explained to you, she is in the care of Dr Lagarde.’

‘But at the clinic . . . ’

‘The clinic is where I work. The Résidence is where Dr Lagarde works.’

‘Yet I should like to feel that I could call on you.’ Consult you, I should have said, but it was too late. ‘Does the clinic belong to you?’ I hurriedly asked, aware that the question was unseemly.

‘I have a controlling interest. The owner is Dr Thibaudet, whom I think you once knew.’

I nodded, aware that I had not contacted the Thibaudets, as I should have done. My mother had reported one visit, which had not been repeated. This had rather surprised me, though on the whole I was relieved that they had not seen her too often in these reduced circumstances. Besides, Simon had been their friend; their hospitality had been for Simon, only incidentally for his wife.

‘He always asks after her,’ Dr Balbi continued. ‘He is a good man. I am glad to say that he is enjoying his retirement. One never knows.’

‘So the clinic belongs to you both?’

‘It will be mine eventually.’

‘Is that what you wanted, all those years ago in Marseilles?’ For I was as familiar with his childhood as I was with my own.

‘I believe it was, yes. Or almost. With one significant difference: I wanted to help poor people. My patients at the clinic are comfortably off. I wanted to help the sort of people I had grown up with. But I was ambitious, I suppose, so I followed a certain path.’

‘I might even have met you at the Thibaudets’ house,’ I remarked.

‘We do not mix socially. He regards me, still, as his assistant, one to whom he issues advice and directions. Our professional relationship depends on my showing respect. Which of course I do. Are you ready to leave?’