Early One Morning (5 page)

It was hard to explain to outsiders why she was with this corpulent, somnambulant man. That ever since he captured her horrendous experiences at the hands of a German soldier at the age of fourteen on canvas, she had been smitten by his intuition, his generosity, the kindness, albeit attributes increasingly buried under hangovers and sore feet, but still alive and well at his core. Perhaps she’d buy a dog while he was away. Or two. She would love a dog, but Orpen hated canines, and would certainly order its destruction upon his return. No, not worth it.

To cap it all, Orpen was slipping away from her as a lover. Too tired, too fat he would complain. Eve could hardly remember the last time. She had to sit astride him now, because his tendency to flop, unannounced, his full weight on her could break a girl’s ribs.

Her hand sought out between her legs, trying to conjure up some erotic image to initiate the proceedings, but none came. She heard the muffled slam of a door far downstairs, either Cook or Williams, and she felt a little electric spark. Not her type, but he’d do.

At that moment Orpen made an alarming barking sound and threw a stubby arm across her chest as he rolled over. She suddenly felt herself pinned and constricted, the limb as solid as a fallen tree trunk. She eased her hand away from her groin. Ah well, something else that will have to wait for another day.

F
RANCE
, M
AY
1928

S
UMMER ARRIVED QUICKLY
that year, turning Paris warm and golden. The casino at Dieppe was finally completed, and so the twice weekly exodus from Paris began in earnest, Williams motoring Orpen and Eve plus their companions of the week up to Rouen, where they sometimes took lunch at La Toque, partly because it tickled Orpen to be dining overlooking the very spot where the English burned Joan of Arc, and partly because he was slowly reeling in the flamboyantly moustachioed chef as a model for a portrait he wanted to execute.

Then it was an appearance, an entry, no less, in Dieppe, a long slow drive along the Esplanade, as if Orpen were royalty inspecting Dieppe’s parade of grand mansions and apartments, then a few hours at Charlie’s Bar, before the main business of the evening, a burst of intense gambling. Outside, as always, was Williams.

That day, the entourage consisted of Orpen and Eve with Raymond Berri, the chemist, Nick Jessop, the saturnine American writer, and his rather fey friend Patrick, a professional hanger-on from Philadelphia who had managed to pick up Louisa, one of the half-starved, but fully drunk artists who hung around the Dome hoping to hitch their wagon to a passing patron.

Jessop insisted that he was trying to pull himself away from the crowd that ricocheted from La Coupole to the Dome, Select, Falstaff’s and back He was complaining to whoever would listen that the scene was infected with a fatal lethargy. Except for those licking up what he called the ‘literary vomit’ at Gertrude Stein’s famous gatherings. Rather than worship at the foot of a grim old lesbian in a circus tent, Jessop declaimed, he wanted to write and he needed discipline. He had been in Paris fifty-eight weeks, he protested, and had written only two dozen words. Williams wasn’t sure that hooking up, as Jessop would have it, with Orpen was a passport to productivity.

Williams watched them slowly crank up the alcohol levels between Café Pirouette and Charlie’s Bar, Orpen and Berri sticking to his habitual whisky and Eve to grenadine, the others moving through increasingly florid cocktails as they switchbacked from Sidecars to Cablegrams to Crystal Bronxes, Silk Ladies to Southsides, Picons to Ping-pongs.

Williams took a light dinner at the Bistro du Pollet—the monkfish livers followed by a sea bream fillet—with a handful of other drivers and sat out a sudden summer shower by indulging in a rare after-dinner brandy. By the time he emerged to stroll back to the car the rain had left the streets of the port shiny and streaming, the last heat of the day making the atmosphere delightfully Turkish bath-thick.

Williams took up his place at the car, lit a Salambo, cursing the useless French matches which were all spark and no flame, and read the latest issue of the
Light Car
, with its appreciation of Robert Benoist, starting with a smattering of war stories (including the time he was put on a charge for wearing a lavish foxfur collar while strolling down the Champs Elysées in full Air Force uniform) and a critique of his driving skills. Sphinx-like the author called him, a man difficult to read until it was too late and he had struck, leaving his opponent breathing in his benzol. A man who, the article concluded, was, above all, loathe to walk away from any challenge. Williams lit another cigarette, his last.

He looked up as he heard a familiar clack of heels on the steps of the casino, heading down from the vast baroque doorway of the wedding-cake building towards him. Eve, hips swaggering, suggesting she’d moved from grenadine to something more potent.

She crossed the street, stretched out her arms and did a little twirl on her gold-barred kid shoes, the scalloped hemline of her skirt lifting as she did so.

‘It’s so stuffy in there,’ she said by way of both greeting and exclamation. He could smell aniseed on her breath, which made it warm and intoxicating.

‘I would imagine, Miss.’

‘Have you never been in?’

‘Casinos, yes. Dieppe casino, no.’

She grabbed his arm. ‘Well, come on.’

Williams looked down at his uniform, the summer lightweight wool one, and shook his head. ‘Hardly dressed for it, Miss.’

Eve nodded and stepped away. ‘Oops. I was forgetting your position.’ She let the last word slur. ‘May I have a cigarette?’

‘It’s my last I am afraid, Miss.’

‘We’ll share.’ She took the cigarette from his lips, inhaled deeply, tipped her head back and blew a long stream of smoke up towards where the gulls whirled in the dusk sky.

‘How is it inside, Miss?’

‘Oh, everybody has eyes for Babette.’

‘And how is Babette dressed?’

She smiled. ‘Mostly as Vander Clyde.’

For the past few years Babette, with her high wire and trapeze act at the Cirque Nedrano on Boulevard de Rouchechouart, was the only serious rival for Josephine Baker’s crown as darling expat American of Paris. Under the blond wig, however, Babette just happened to be a Texan male called Vander Clyde, which he demonstrated by tearing off his hair at the climax of each performance.

‘Tell me, Williams, what’s a man like you doing here?’

He smiled and sidestepped the question. ‘What’s a man like me?’

‘Ah, that’s another question. What is a man like Williams? English but excellent French. None of that ugly, grating accent.’

‘French mother,’ he explained.

‘Good driver, despite what Mr Benoist says.’

He nodded, not sure whether it was a compliment.

‘Handsome in a kind of … English way.’

‘What way is that?’

‘Oh, more direct and conventional than the French I think.’

‘And?’

‘And you are young. You should be ruining your health with absinthe and ogling the dancing girls at Le Palermo. Yet for the last six months you have spent your days and nights waiting on Orpsie’s whims. What is your secret, Mr Williams? And don’t tell me you haven’t got one.’

‘Eve.’

The familiar rasping bellow, now slurred and rounded by whisky, carried across the street and bounced around them. ‘Get in here. Don’t worry about Williams.’

She turned and raised a hand to Orpen, who ducked unsteadily back in. She handed Williams the remains of the cigarette. ‘Sorry. Seem to have done more than my fair share.’ Eve smiled and turned around, affording him a good look at the oscillation of her hips accentuated by the low sash on the dress.

Three hours later, and Orpen was facing a chilling sobriety as fifty thousand francs crossed the roulette table to the croupier in half as many minutes. Eve tried to coax him away, but he grew more irascible with each spin of the wheel.

Berri was playing
chemin de fer
, and Jessop, Patrick and Louisa, the skin-and-bone Bohemian, had spun off into an argument about Dostoevsky and James Joyce, which was way over Eve’s head and, she suspected, theirs as well. She could feel the slow drip of alcohol into her system over the last twelve hours souring her liver and the pall of smoke that rolled around the gilt fittings was beginning to sting her eyes. The atmosphere reeked of sweat and desperation. The night was slowly turning rancid. She had to go. Eve hovered over Berri as he won a couple of hands, then bust on the third and solicited his help.

‘Ray, I’m tired and Orps is on one of his losing streaks. We should leave.’

Berri smiled. He knew they were in for a long night, no matter what Eve said. ‘I’d get a room if I were you. He’ll stay till he’s winning again or broke. And broke’d take quite some time.’

Eve pouted at what she took to be a refusal to assist and stalked through the thin smattering of punters to the roulette table where Orpen was cursing the croupier under his breath. ‘Y’slippery bastard. I know the owner y’know.’ Then louder: ‘OK, on the black this time, my friend.’

‘Orpsie, come on. Enough.’

He swung his diminutive frame around and snarled. ‘Enough? You mean this man here has enough of my money? Only just started, Evie.’

She tried to keep the petulance out of her voice but failed. ‘I want to go home.’

‘Go home then. Take Williams. I’ll get back one way or another or take a room and he can come and get me tomorrow. Come on, come on, spin the damn’ thing.’

As the ball clattered into the blurring wheel, Eve turned and walked off, glancing over her shoulder to see if Orpen acknowledged her departure. She was vaguely aware of Jessop rising as she brushed past his table at the perimeter of the gaming area. ‘Eve.’ She carried on walking.

Outside she sucked in the warm air, still deliciously damp with the last of the evaporated rain and skipped down the steps towards the Rolls. She could see Williams in the front, hat pulled down over his eyes and she let out a shrill whistle using two fingers that almost woke the entire town. Williams calmly pushed up the peak of his cap and pulled at his uniform to correct himself.

‘Eve.’ She felt the hot brandy-laden breath of Jessop on her neck. ‘You’re not leaving are you?’

‘I’m tired, Mr Jessop—’

‘Nick. It’s Nick.’

‘Don’t worry, Orpsie won’t leave you high and dry. He never does.’

‘No. I wanted a chance to talk to you. Patrick and I are pushing off for Spain in a few days …’

She hesitated, trying to decode what this meant. ‘It’s an interesting country I hear.’

‘Patrick has a commission to write a piece for
American Mercury
…’

‘What about Louisa?’

Jessop hesitated. ‘What about her?’

‘I thought she was rather sweet. Shame to leave her.’

‘She’s bisexual,’ he said dismissively.

‘Are they mutually exclusive then?’

‘I guess not,’ he laughed at himself. ‘Rats. I’m not going very well here, am I?’

She laughed at his hitherto unheard admission of fallibility and walked towards the Rolls as Williams slipped out to open the door for her. ‘Nick, I would love to sit and talk, but I am very, very tired.’

Jessop’s voice quavered as he said: ‘Let’s go to bed then.’

Eve didn’t stop or break stride at this proposition, just made a slight huffing sound, a hiss of displeasure. She stepped into the car and Williams slammed the door. Jessop tapped on the glass and she cracked open the window a few centimetres as the car moved off.

‘I can pay you know.’

It only needed a minuscule flick of the wheel and Williams managed to take the full weight of the Rolls over Jessop’s foot as he pulled away, crushing several toes. Eve spun round as he shrieked and watched him hopping on one leg, his eyes screwed up in pain, bellowing that he would ‘fix that man’s clock’.

‘Good God, Williams. Will he be all right?’

‘Eventually, Miss. A few days. One shouldn’t get too close to machinery. It can be dangerous.’

Eve looked back again as Jessop hobbled for the casino steps and began to laugh. ‘The poor man.’ She could feel the staleness of the casino clinging to her and sniffed at her arm. She shuffled her dress up to her hips and pulled it over her head with a grunt, aware of the driver’s eyes flicking into the mirror. ‘Williams,’ she said firmly, ‘I need a swim.’

Eve directed them west, towards St Valery, and down a narrow lane that snaked along the small valley that bisected the coastal cliffs. There was something of a moon, but not enough to aid navigation of a big car along a tiny track, and Williams was grateful for the large saucer-like headlamps of the Rolls. Eventually the track gave out to a small cove, where several boats lay beached and neglected on the crescent of sand.

Williams bumped the big car down the launch ramp on to the soft, gritty surface, hoping it was solid enough to support the weight. Sensing his tentativeness, Eve said, ‘It’s quite safe, Williams. I’ve done this before. Take it to the water’s edge.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

Williams did as he was told and stopped within ten yards of the sea, not wanting to risk the treacherous shoreline where the retreating water had so recently been lapping. He turned off the engine and for a few seconds listened to the faintest of ticks as it cooled down.

‘Lights, Williams.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Put on the headlamps, please.’

‘I’ll have to start the car again to get the dynamo going. Otherwise we risk flattening the electro-chemical cells.’

‘Whatever you need to do.’

Williams re-fired the engine, which turned over with the merest mechanical fuss, and stepped out to open the rear door. Eve came naked, her skin ghostly pale in the thin moonlight, already goosebumping. ‘Won’t it be cold, Miss?’ he managed to ask.

‘I expect. Get the whisky ready, will you?’ With that she ran in, squealing as the water rose above her knees, then arcing into the frothy waves, disappearing for a second, gasping as she surfaced, air exploding from her lungs.

She struck out a few yards from the shore, framed in the yellowy orbs of the lights as if this were some extravagant Folies Bergère number. ‘It’s …’ Her teeth chattered and she had to clench them before she could speak again. ‘It’s not too bad, once you get used to it.’