The Bay of Angels (26 page)

‘I saw you,’ he said. ‘Why did you not wait for me?’

‘I thought that I might find you here. Or that you might find me.’

‘As I have,’ he said. ‘As I have.’ Then he led me away.

17

October is a beautiful month in Nice, and November is equally benign. By that time the tourists have gone, and the streets and cafés have been restored to their normal inhabitants. I am usually there in October, as I am in May and July and December. The rest of the winter months I spend in London, working as a copy editor. When the light changes I am anxious to be on my way. My return to Nice has come to represent a true homecoming, and I would not have it otherwise.

I unpack my bags in my room and take my usual present of tea and biscuits downstairs to M. Cottin. He has come to accept me as his permanent lodger, and sometimes we have a cup of coffee together before he opens the shop. He also appreciates the radio which I presented to him when I realized that I had no further use for it now that other voices fill my evenings. These voices belong to Dr Balbi, Antoine, and his sister, Jeanne, whose visits increased in frequency as soon as she suspected that his affections were divided. I understand this, as he does: he is a faithful man, and would regard any defection with distaste. I have worked mightily to repair the breach which she must have feared, and have probably succeeded. She is an envious woman, who bears the marks of her early privations, suspicious of my presence but making heroic efforts to be welcoming. She is naïve enough to let her suspicions show, but I have become adept at defusing them. The days usually end with the three of us sitting together in their dark dining-room, our hands on the table, discussing the day’s events.

She manifests an inordinate interest in my work, hoping that it will soon take me away again. There is no pretence that I am just a friend; on the other hand no uncensored words or gestures disturb the harmonious atmosphere. They are my family now, and I am careful to defer to them both. Occasionally Jeanne will succumb to her earlier love for her brother and extend that love to myself: a favourite dish will be produced for dinner, at which there will be smiles all round. I thank her fervently, knowing what such gestures must have cost her. She is there most of the time now, and this must be accepted. It is their home, after all, and perhaps it suits the three of us when I exclaim at the time and announce that I must return to the rue de France before M. Cottin double-bolts the street door. She is relieved to see me go, but manages to be gracious enough to say that they expect me on the following evening. ‘As usual,’ she says, with a gallant smile. Such smiles represent true sacrifice, and also immense relief. In that way the conventions are observed. Antoine finds this appropriate: he is not a man for indiscretions, for breaches of good manners. He spares her feelings in this way, as I do, although I have no taste for hypocrisy. But then I have no taste for giving offence, and I think I have the better part of the bargain.

Jeanne is well aware of my restraint, though she would forgive her brother anything. But her hurt goes very deep, and this humdrum pantomime of normal life is the factor that maintains her equilibrium. As for Antoine, he is grateful to us both for preserving the decencies. This is how we conduct our lives together, and there is no particular cause for regret: voices have never been raised, objections never voiced. In time she will come to accept me more wholeheartedly, knowing her brother to be as much in my care as he is in hers. We all know this. She may even volunteer a kind of love for me, rather than the eagerly disguised resentment she habitually experiences. I feel for her, as I should feel for anyone in her position. I have seen bewilderment before, seen it too often not to sympathize.

Our time together is thus limited, but is all the more intense for that reason. He drives me to Aix or to Montpellier, and we spend a few days in a quiet hotel. Our cover story is his interest in photographing architectural curiosities. I am the navigator on these occasions, a task I enjoy, for these excursions are real: it would offend him to tell a lie. In those out-of-the-way hotels we have come to know each other, to witness each other’s intimate life. It surprises me to realize how effortless this process has been, and how heartfelt. Little is said: I respect his silences as he respects mine, for, like him, I have become taciturn. Thus there are no tedious confessions of past affections, no digressions from what is truly our affair. We know each other so well by now that there is no need to ask questions, to offer explanations. Even our returns to Nice are devoid of regrets. We turn to each other with a reminiscent smile before he sets me down in the rue de France. He does not ask when we shall see each other again, for he knows that I will always come back to him. I know this too, for at last I have a certainty in my life. He is my certainty, and I am able to accept the fact that I am his.

He is a busy man, a prestigious man, with multifarious professional obligations. I am his secret life, and perhaps one day it will become less secret. Soon we shall begin to travel together. He has mentioned conferences in Geneva, and in Atlanta. This will truly be a new life for me, but for the moment I am happy with the present arrangement. This is a love affair, not the rapturous kind I once loved to read about, with a definable conclusion. It is more of a lifelong occupation, and I am surprised to acknowledge that it suits me perfectly. When I am in London I can imagine no other, and when I am with him no other is so desirable. I would say that the very slowness of the process has revealed me to myself if I were not wary of such rationalizations. In fact what is so precious about this friendship—for it is a true friendship—is that it has involved no change of character, no effort to meet the other’s requirements. We find each other acceptable as we are, and thus there is no room for any possible comparisons. There is no pretence either: that would be anathema to both of us. Equally there are no protestations of happiness. These would be redundant.

After so many upheavals I enjoy the regularity of my life, its predictability, the assurance that is there in the background. I even enjoy my work, which brings me into contact with writers, but not, fortunately, into close contact. I even enjoy those winter months when I am entirely alone, for I know that when the days lengthen I shall be in another place. I pity those people who plan strenuous holidays, just as they pity me for my hidebound routines. They know that there is someone in my life, but no more than that. They have come to accept my reticence, as I have, for I acquired it from an expert. When I am in London I am able to imagine the three of us in that dark red dining-room, presenting a picture of harmony which is not entirely deceptive. I know that Jeanne Balbi is frightened that I might take her brother away from her, just as I know that Antoine is aware of this. But I have no wish to hurt her, no wish to disrupt their lives. There must be some validity in that image of the three of us at the table, like a picture seen long ago in a remote gallery which I do not remember. In time Jeanne and I will be friends, as we pretend to be now. This is not an urgent matter. I have spent so much time in the past months, years even, trying to argue fate into some kind of acquiescence that I am now content to surrender such efforts, such initiatives as I have tried to undertake. In the end they proved useless. Far be it from me to argue in favour of a higher power. If anything there may be a sort of inevitability that demands our patience. That patience I now possess.

Strangely, I do not have a sense of difficulty, although I know that difficulties exist. The problem of Jeanne will not be easily solved. She will not return to Marseilles, or not for long, for she must monitor her brother’s affections. I appreciate her unhappiness, as who could not? I do not make the mistake of pitying her, for that would be reductive and insulting. She is still locked into the drama and wistfulness of her early years, and one must respect her yearnings. One must also respect the fact that they are with her for life. Yet I think she believes that I am benign, that I wish her no further suffering. In that way she will eventually accept me as an ally in the great enterprise of wishing her brother well. It is on such a basis that I hope we will grow old as friends.

As a woman approaching middle age I know that certain changes are inevitable, that I may not always be as adaptable as I have so far proved to be. I shall grow tired, cranky, inclined to insist on a life of my own. The lives of my friends have become expansive, filled with children, houses, dependents; secretly they deplore my lonely status, though that is not what afflicts me. I miss children, as all middle-aged women do if they are childless. I see them in the streets around my flat, on their way to school, chattering blithely to their mothers. Latterly I have found myself lingering in supermarkets to watch them running heedlessly past the shelves. I know that such a life is not for me, has never come within my grasp. I accept that in that sense nothing has changed. What I have instead may have been denied to those happy harassed mothers: I have that terrible freedom of which others are justifiably afraid. I now recognize its deep seriousness. I am free to live my life without restraint, and again without witnesses. This is not always a joyous procedure. On certain cold evenings, before the winter has turned into spring, I look out of my window and feel a sudden loneliness. I tell myself that this is due to the absence of the sun, and that once I am back in Nice the loneliness will vanish. My moments of cold sense disconcert me, for so far I have managed to maintain my resolution to live as I have chosen to live, transfixed by what I have assumed will be permanent when in fact it may be no more than temporary.

At such times I picture the brother and sister without me. They are seated at the same table, under the dim centre light, and they are discussing me. This is a conversation from which I am naturally excluded, yet I am sure it is entered into with some regularity. Antoine will have the difficult task of remaining loyal to us both, and will do so by virtue of his habitual discretion, but his sympathy, I fear, will always be with his sister. She is not a strong woman, as I appear to be; she is dominated by her nerves, and is not shy about showing her fears. Strangely, her fears are the same as my own; they are the fears of what happens to a childless woman as she grows old. I doubt if such fears are quite formulated in her somewhat incoherent mind, but she knows instinctively that she must hold on to those affections she already possesses. When I am feeling very brave I face the possibility that she may become ill, may regress, demand protection, demand sacrifices, as the sick so often do, extort promises, and even reveal an antagonism which she does not yet acknowledge. Then, I know, it will be time for me to do one of two things: to stay behind and look after her, or to take my leave of Antoine and come home for ever. It astonishes me that I can even contemplate this. Yet I know that I too may succumb to weariness, may in the end prefer my own isolation, consigning Antoine to his. I know that we shall always be lonely without each other, but will be wise enough to know when the situation has become unsustainable. Then old age will truly begin.

For the moment this is in the realm of speculation. For the moment I am content with the compromises I have made. It is enough for me to remember my life before Antoine—the life of a hapless daughter—to exult in the present. Admittedly this is easier to do in Nice than in London. In Nice I have the simulacrum of a family, a history. I have those evenings round the table, Antoine smiling faintly as Jeanne deplores my poor appetite. Then, just briefly, I wonder how long we can maintain this politeness. I begin to anticipate my return to London, discuss my work, watch Jeanne’s expression relax as I do so. Then I make a pretext of an early night. Antoine will offer to see me home, an offer I will accept. Jeanne will start to clear the table before I have even said goodbye.

This almost impalpable disaffection does not last. I am too aware of what might be lost to allow it to continue. With a little practice I can repair the breach almost immediately, for what use is a woman of my age if she still clings to the fantasies that should belong to youth? Before I leave Nice, having said two separate goodbyes, one to Jeanne, one to Antoine, I try to spend a day alone. I wander down to the beach, as I used to, but now I do so in the full blaze of noon, having returned the night to its rightful place. And it is at such times, in the late morning or the early afternoon, before catching my plane, that I am reminded once again that I have been fortunate, and that my continued good fortune depends on tact, on discretion, on clearsightedness. These qualities are not beyond me. I am not without resource, should it become necessary. For the moment all is well. The future is, in a sense, taken care of: it is in another’s hands. And in mine, perhaps, but I decide not to think ahead. I prefer, at such moments, to feel the heat of the day, to let my thoughts become as evanescent as the ambient air. The sounds of the traffic at my back hardly impinge on what is in effect a restoration of good will, of joy. I do not make the mistake of ascribing this joy to any superhuman reminder of the brevity of life. I am aware once more of the force of nature. And at such moments I experience the fullness of nature and of its promises. Life has brought me to this condition of acceptance, and at last I understand that acceptance is all. I succumb to the genius of the place, and know true felicity. The sun is God. Of the rest it is wiser not to know, or not yet to know. The plot will unfold, with or without my help. It is my hope that there will be a place in it for all of us, for Jeanne, for Antoine, and for myself. Under the promise of that cloudless sky it seems that our lives together have only just begun. In that sense our story will run its course, and I realize, with a lifting of the heart, that it is not yet time to close the book.

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