Her Lover (110 page)

After Italy, there was their week in Geneva. That evening at the Donon, when she had attempted to cobble together an interesting conversation. Which obviously meant wheeling out childhood memories. For of course they had nothing concerning their present to tell each other. Next she had diffidently suggested they might dance. 'Darling, let's dance too.' Her meek 'too', an admission of defeat, had cut him to the quick. After they'd danced a second time and had returned to their table, she had opened her handbag. I'm terribly sorry but I seem to have forgotten to bring a handkerchief. Could you lend me one?' 'Sorry, darling, I didn't bring one myself.' So she had sniffed discreetly, sweetly, dismayed but smiling, while he looked the other way so as not to compound her nasally induced indignity. She smiled and died a thousand deaths, and he loved her, loved his poor girl who was so wretched because her nose was blocked and because he knew it was, at her wits' end because she could not rid herself of the blockage. Pretending to be unaware of her awful predicament, and in an attempt to reassure her with a display of affection and respect, he had kissed her hand. After the fifth or sixth furtive sniff, she muttered that she was sorry but she was going to have to go back to the hotel for a handkerchief. Til come with you, darling,' he said. 'No, I'd rather you stayed, I'll be back soon, it's not far to the hotel.' He knew very well why she wanted to go by herself. She was afraid some catastrophe might happen on the way, given the size of the blockage and the risk of a sudden sneeze with all the consequences which that might entail. 'Come back soon, darling.' Tormented by her cargo and anxious to offload it, she had flashed him a refined smile of farewell — oh to what wretchedness does the loving state reduce poor mortals forced to act it out! — and she had hurried off, doubtless hating the nose which had chosen to fill up and block at the very same Donon where, many moons previously, on the night of their elopement, they had wondrously danced until dawn. Once outside, she had probably run all the way to the redeeming handkerchief. O my darling, how happy I would make you if you were ill for years and years and you were my little girl and I could look after you in bed and serve you and wash you and comb your hair. Alas, they were sentenced to be extraordinary and sublime. Then he'd told himself that when she got back he'd act desire as he danced with her, to please her. The drawback there was that, being a pragmatist, she'd expect a practical follow-up when they got back to the hotel. Oh, if only she knew how much he'd loved her, how delightful he'd found her because she was all hot and bothered on account of her blocked nose. But no, he couldn't tell her that, she would be mortified. He was obliged to keep the best of what he felt for her to himself. My love! Oh to be able to call you silly little names, honey, or honey-bunch, or even, when you're in pyjamas, droopy-drawers. But that was ruled out. It was a crime against love. She returned to the Donon, poetic and unblocked, but had scarcely sat down before she started sniffing again. Prolific was hardly the word for it. He'd offered her a cigarette in the hope it would produce a restricting effect on her nasal passages. Alas, this proved not to be so. Go on, have a good blow and clear it! But no, she merely dabbed at her nose with the elegance and subtle grace of a kitten and gave a series of pretty, ineffectual, pretty ineffectual nff-nffs. That's no good, he said to himself, best start again from the top, you haven't a clue. He so wanted to explain that there was plenty left up there, that she should blow hard, and he cursed the damnable demands of beauty. In the end she'd made up her mind and, deciding to leave nothing to chance, had brayed through her nose with all her might. Her elephantine trumpeting had, praise the Lord, elicited a complete discharge and established a consequential aridity: he curbed an urge to applaud. Now safely delivered, she took him by the hand so that she could feel just how much she loved him, how much they loved each other. It was sad. But that's enough of that.

And now they'd been back at Belle de Mai for weeks. The day they'd arrived, there on the kitchen table they'd found a note from Mariette to say that she'd had to rush off suddenly to Paris to look after her sister, who was ill. Obviously a fabrication. The old girl couldn't take any more of the hothouse life they led and had left their unhappiness behind her. Good for you, Mariette! Then there had been the telegram from the solicitor saying that Ariane's uncle had died. In her grief, she had clung to him. Tears, kisses and a particularly memorable coupling, worthy of the old Geneva days. Oh yes, something new and interesting had happened. She loved her uncle, and her grief ran deep, but above all there had been the input of all those anti-anaemic vitamins from outside. On top of which they were to be parted for a few days and that made him exist for her. He had taken her to the station at Cannes, where a welter of kisses had preceded the train's departure. She had shown the same furious ardour on her return from Geneva. But within days they were back in the noble mire, wading through the lisdess ritual of Amazing Love.

She had not found another servant, not even a daily, and had taken charge of everything herself, alternating the roles of furtive housewife and priestess of love. He spent the mornings more determinedly shut up in his room than ever, while she peeled vegetables or, turban on head to protect her hair, leaned over a frying-pan or tried to retrieve a mayonnaise. 'May I do your room now?' At this point he took refuge in the drawing-room, so that he would not see the broomstress at work. He would have very much liked to sweep and polish with her. But he had to go on being a Prince of Passion. Not for his sake but for hers. Having to behave like a drone all the time was very trying. But, when she went out to the shops at Saint-Raphaël or Cannes, he raced round doing whatever he could to help, sweeping rooms, washing and scrubbing the kitchen floor, polishing the brass, waxing the parquet. And did it all in secret, so as not to tarnish his image as lover, the stupid image she was so intent on preserving. And she was so absent-minded and scatty that when she got back she never suspected a thing. Casting an eye over her spotless kitchen or her sparkling dining-room, she would tell herself with no little pride that she kept their house looking very nice, and with no one to help her either, and she would take a deep, satisfied breath. His adorable, unsuspecting girl.

Once these chores were out of the way she did her secret exercises, had her bath, then put on her Passion Dress which she had washed the night before and ironed early that morning, and only then, sacerdotally, with jaw muscles jutting, did the vestal, exuding waft-ures of a fragrance marketed as Antic Amber, step into the land of the living. At this juncture they would lunch on the damned terrace so that they could enjoy the view of the damned sea. She went to considerable trouble over their meals. The day before yesterday, such a sumptuous lunch to celebrate their anniversary. His whimsical girl had even done out a menu in her own fair hand, taking great delight in writing (correctly, for his benefit) lobster a rarmoricaine (and not a l'americaine) and jacket (not baked) potatoes. So a girl with a poetic turn and not the least whit Jewish. But the lobster was inedible.

Damn, the first gong. A quarter of an hour from now he'd have to sally forth on to the terrace and eat with taste and discernment and get himself stung by mosquitoes, vile little brutes, which were not only after his blood but out to do him violence. What pleasure could they possibly get from injecting pepper into his skin? It was a quite gratuitous piece of beastliness. Go ahead, you're welcome to the blood, but don't give me a bad time afterwards! The thought of old Madame Sarles suddenly came into his mind, and he whiled away a pleasant moment imagining that she had left money in her will for starting a retirement home for elderly, devout mosquitoes. Yes, that pious lady would undoubtedly have approved of the habits of mosquitoes. They sang you an alluring little song and then poisoned your blood, raising bumps and making you scratch for hours and hours. And if you got cross they said: 'Dearly beloved, we pray constantly for thee, for we bear thee great love! Hear our dainty, sounding bells, hear us as we pray to God to make thee to prosper so that we can sting thee in abundance, and this we do with love and with eyes ashine with spiritual fervour!' But if understanding that a mosquito could not help sticking his Cayenne-tipped barb into you meant forgiving it, then he gladly forgave old Madame Sarles, the great mosquito in his life, a dazzling virtuoso of the pinprick who had never been able to resist the pleasure of poisoning him day after day. God rest her soul.

Oh yes, venture out on to the terrace in his black tie and get bitten on the ankles and prattle on about the colours in the sea and be prodigious and look her hot and deep in the eye and find brand-new ways of saying that he loved her. And yet he did: he loved her. No woman had ever been as close to him. With the others, Adrienne, Aude, Isolde and the ones in between, he had always felt apart. Strangers seen through a wall of glass. They were capable of movement, and sometimes he could quite see that they existed independently, just as he did, and then he asked himself by what right these women moved around in his world. But Ariane was his second skin, his congenial, simple, trusting girl. He loved to watch her when she wasn't looking, and tried to hide his tenderness, that crime against passion. How many times had he resisted the temptation to take her in his arms and kiss her hard on the cheek, kiss her cheek a score of times, and only her cheek. Everything about her was a delight, even when she was being silly. The menu she'd naively edged with little flowers the day before yesterday had been a delight. Delightful too was the appalling lobster which she'd decorated but oversalted, and he'd helped himself to more, just to jolly her along.

For, as his affection for her grew and grew, so he desired her less and less, though she set great store by being desired and doubtless believed that such was her right, which was very irritating. Oh their monotonous couplings, each one like the one before! In Cannes, on the last evening of operation Vanstead, with the Danish nurse whom he had called to the Carlton on the pretext that he was unwell, with his nurse, who had meant nothing to him and whose first name he did not even know, the pleasure had been intense. Not a word had passed between them. Absolute physical bliss in a silence disturbed only by her gasps. At midnight, when she was dressed again, his unspeaking partner of moments before had fastened her blue, reproach-less eyes on him and, prim in starched collar and stiff cuffs, had asked if she was to come back the next day at the same time. When he said no, she had left without a knowing smile or look, a respectable nurse in low heels, with her white cap perched on top of her flaxen hair.

The second gong made him jump. Damn, he'd forgotten to dress. Quickly now, on with the pointless dinner-jacket, but she insisted on it just as she herself insisted on wearing an evening gown which made her look like an opera singer. 'Let's hope we are spared a recital of rumblings abdominal,' he muttered, and was ashamed to take such revenge against the miserable life they led.

After dinner on the terrace, they moved to the drawing-room. They sat before the open bay window, she ironically in a low-cut gown and he in a white dinner-jacket, and watched with seeming casualness the thrilling spectacle of the noisy crew across the way stuffing themselves and talking and chatting to each other from one end of the long table to the other. They sat on, smoking exquisite cigarettes, distinguished and silent in their sumptuous, flower-filled drawing-room, alone and beautiful, excluded but so elegant. When the junior member of the Council of State came back wearing a woman's hat, a great cheer went up and everyone applauded. At which point she said that she had bought a brand of caffeine-free tea which did not prevent one from sleeping. So that's the level of news to which we have now sunk.

'Perhaps we could try it later,' she said. 'But I don't think it will be as nice as ordinary tea. Oh, I forgot to show you,' she said after a moment's silence. 'This morning, among those old papers Mariette brought back from Geneva, I came across a photograph of me aged thirteen. Shall I get it?'

Returning from her room, she handed him a small square of stiff paper, sat excitedly at his side, on the arm of his chair, and looked admiringly at the little girl in socks and sandals, so delightful with those ringlets, that big bow in her hair, the short skirt and those gorgeous bare legs.

'You were pretty then.'

'And now?' she asked, bringing her cheek nearer.

'And now too.'

'But which do you prefer? Her or me?'

'Both are exquisite.'

Oh, change and decay, he thought, and handed her back the photo. And now what could he talk to her about? They had already pretty well exhausted the sea and its hues, the sky and its moon. Everything that could possibly be said about Proust had been said, and about how they'd both sensed that Albertine was in fact a young man. The reason, respectable observers would say, was that their love was not rich enough. He would like to see those respectable observers change places with them and watch them cope with being shackled within the cell-like confines of a great love. Talk to her about animals? They'd done that. He knew by heart all the animals she liked and why. How about the war in Spain? Too painful, now that he was no longer part of all that. Tell her for the ten-thousandth time that he loved her, just like that, without dressing it up? Now a man who had a proper social life coming home with his wife after an evening spent with their friends, the unlikeable but indispensable Dumardins, was in a good position to say something sparkling and loving, such as Madame Dumardin doesn't dress half as well as you do, my pet. Over the way, the happy neighbours danced to a tinkling piano and allowed themselves a shoal of minor adulteries.

'In Cannes,' said Ariane, 'there's a woman who gives Hawaiian guitar lessons. I've a good mind to go.'

After a moment's silence she mentioned the odd couple she'd noticed on the bus to Cannes, described what they looked like, and repeated what they'd said. He put on his understanding face and forced a smile. As usual, the poor girl was trying to be witty and amusing. Actually she was an acute observer. People who sat on their lonely shelf, hungering for the company of others, were always acute observers. But these two strangers on a bus were the only pickings she could bring him from the world outside. There was another silence.