Jigsaw (28 page)

Another thing in favour of besottedness is that it insulates one from much of the rest of the world, it muffles other pangs and dilemmas. Inevitably I had been running into Frédéric Panigon, treating him without self-consciousness as I always had, that is off-hand and
reasonably
friendly. At first this puzzled him. He wouldn’t have liked it any better if I had thrown myself at his head, or heaped reproaches, but may have felt that some kind of recognition or attention was due. This I failed to provide. After one or two refusals, casually given, to go dancing or for a swim with him, he was showing bewilderment, then umbrage.
Vous êtes une drôle de fille
, he told me, an odd girl (we were back to
vous
, thank goodness).

I probably should have had – but
could
not muster – the grace to explain. I would rather have mounted the scaffold than bring Oriane into it. What might have been said was: ‘Saint-Tropez was a fortuitous, an opportunistic thing. You used me, I used you to help me through an unobtrusive rite de passage. Are we not quits?’ Only an older and a very worldly woman could have said it. Or could she?

I took refuge in telling him we had so little in common.

‘You are wrong to equate me with my family.’

I said his family had always been very nice to me, pleaded an engagement and escaped.

Next time I saw him – Sanary was so small – he told me I had time for everyone else but him. There was little to contradict here. ‘You are seeing my sister often enough.’

I recognised the acres of thin ice, and forced the feeble reply, ‘Oh girls like doing things together.’

He glowered at me. ‘You know that Cécile
est bien malheureuse
?’

‘Well
I
am not,’ I snapped, ‘and neither are you. You are not in the least unhappy, don’t pretend.’

At this point someone else came up – you also never stayed long tête à tête with anyone at Sanary – so I escaped again.

But I had hurt his amour propre. I would have to reckon with him: 
he knew too much. I wished I were in the position to have someone throw him into the Bosphorus. Or the Neva.

If he tried to seek me out at Les Cyprès, I would not have known, Alessandro and I these days still spent little time at home. One place I was safe from Frédéric was at the Desmirails’. They and the Panigons did not entertain each other in their houses, only we foreigners were the wild cards in their social game. As the purported chaperon of Alessandro and Cécile, I had to go into hiding on some evenings; the Kislings lived too much in public, the Desmirails were of course ideal (and not in the know, though I was being pumped by Oriane). They were good to put up with me so often, and at least I provided them with some amusement. One night Philippe and Louis were talking sport and getting on to boxing. Was there such a thing as a straight left, I wanted to know, and what exactly was an upper-cut and how was it done? Philippe and Louis stood up and demonstrated basic movements, I stood nearby to watch them. ‘What was this one, how did you hold your elbow, do it again.’ I leaned forward to get a closer look, next split second I had crashed to the floor. Later I found myself on a sofa being revived by Oriane with a handkerchief soaked in
eau-de-cologne
. I had received a true knock-out (and a huge black bruise). They were concerned, they were also writhing with laughter. That misadventure as well has passed into anecdotage (and cloondom).

‘
T’as l’air triste, mon coco
,’
Renée Kisling said, ‘come out in the boat with me.’ I would not, it could mean missing Oriane on a marketing morning, she did not come every day. Renée gave me a pat on the shoulder: she made no comment, asked no question, did not insist.

There had been letters from Rosie Falkenheim. She and the Judge rather hoped to come, still hoped to come, did not think they could come, were unable to come to Sanary this summer. The Judge was worried about something and thought he ought not to be leaving England. He would be spending his holidays in the West Country then Scotland as usual. Toni and Jamie were going to be in their cottage in Essex; she, Rosie, was going with them. Toni needed company and
support – she still hadn’t taken at all to their country life, nor to Finchingfield where Jamie was spending most of his time. Those games were going harder than ever … It might be less awkward for Jamie if Toni did not detach herself so obviously from his friends and pursuits, those Finchingfield people were almost openly trying to console him. She had tried to make Toni join in just once in a while but I knew how stubborn Toni was.

I did, and could see them still cowering in that back room with young Tommy, the dog. I was sorry Rosie couldn’t have her time at Sanary with the Judge, sorry the Judge had worries, yet it did not really sink in.

We now knew the date of my mother’s return. On the eve
Alessandro
and I had another talk. In the house, by ourselves. It took a long time to get going. Eventually he said, ‘It would be best if we forgot everything that’s been happening during the last weeks.’

‘Other people know.’

‘They won’t be shouting it from the roof tops. With any luck.’

‘Aren’t we glad she’s coming back?’

‘Once she’s here,’ he said, ‘it will all seem like an idiotic prank. Except … except for Cécile. She’s crying a good deal now though she tries to hide it from me.’

‘Oh Alessandro.’

Again he took some time. Then he said, ‘What about
you
?’

‘What do you mean?’ On the immediate defensive.

He made an effort. ‘What is going on between you and Oriane?’

‘If you are talking about Madame Desmirail, that is entirely between her and me.’

He let this imbecility pass. Very nice of him too.

My make-believe collapsed. ‘I’m sorry, that was extremely silly. The answer is nothing, of course. Nothing.’

‘You mean,’ he smiled, ‘Madame Desmirail doesn’t …?’

‘Oriane doesn’t.’

‘But you
will
go on seeing her?’

‘Running after her, you mean,’ on the high horse again. ‘Oh yes!’ 

‘You know people are talking.’

‘Are they?’ I felt flattered.

‘I beg you to be
careful
.’

‘Why?’

‘For your mother’s sake.’

Very unhappily, I said, ‘You mean … you mean she would … disapprove of me?’

Again he was slow. ‘Her own instincts are so different.’

‘She believes in tolerance.’

‘She doesn’t always go by her theories, she’s not as rational as she and you like to think.’

‘
What shall I do
?’

‘Not take it too seriously, give it time. And again, be
careful
.’

‘You mean not tell her?’

‘That might be sensible. Though I don’t know, she might just tease you.’

‘That I’m used to,’ I said, ‘but it won’t change me.’

‘You may change yourself – in due course.’ (Here I was tempted to tell him about Frédéric, but refrained.) ‘Meanwhile I wish you the best of luck with Oriane – though I don’t hold with her much myself – or with anyone else you fancy. As long as you are discreet.’

I didn’t see it that way: I didn’t care what anyone might say. Since we were having this – could one call it family? – talk, I brought up something that had been long on my mind.

‘Alessandro,’ I said, ‘what was wrong that summer, the summer you and she left Italy, our first summer in France?’

‘1926,’ he said. He had caught on at once. ‘A good deal was wrong. For one thing there was no money. She’d been spending far too much – and some on
my
brothers – the trustees were frightening her badly, they wouldn’t go into capital again, for the time being they were reducing her allowance to nothing at all. I wasn’t able to earn anything then … She didn’t know what was to become of us.’

I had guessed most of this. ‘She’s not easily frightened,’ I said.

‘She’s capable of panic. The future looked impossible for us. Well, then she went to Paris. On her own. I didn’t quite know what was in
her mind, I thought she was trying to get some of her old connections to help find a job for me. I knew she was going to see O.’

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘What she actually did was to tell O that now she might consider marrying him. You must understand that she was in a panic.’

‘To the point of leaving
you
?’

‘It was an impulse. She couldn’t stand the insecurity, and …’ he hesitated, ‘you know that from the beginning she was afraid I was too young for her … that some awful fate was in store for us.’

‘Then
she
would bring the awful fate about? I can’t believe it.’

He said, ‘She was fond of O.
I
couldn’t believe it when she was marrying me instead of him.’

‘You were running away with her,’ I said; ‘there was no question of marriage then.’

‘You have a long memory,’ he said.

‘O. was very gentlemanly.
You
insisted. You should have seen
yourself
in desolation, goodness, you were romantic, you
were
le Prince d’Aquitaine.’

‘Who?’

‘He of the doomed lute and melancholy’s black sun.’

‘Though I didn’t know the poem then.’

‘Yes,’ Alessandro said, ‘
we ran away together
.’

‘She couldn’t have planned to marry O,’ I was still reeling, ‘you’re Italians, you can’t divorce even if you wanted to.’

‘I don’t suppose she was thinking of legal technicalities. She had some vague idea that O might be rescue – he’s a generous man,
something
might be salvaged. Don’t ask me how. She doesn’t see obstacles when she doesn’t want to.’

‘Alessandro,’ I said, ‘what
happened
?’

‘That was the bad part. You see, O was living with a young woman, they weren’t married, but it had been going on for some time – your mother didn’t think that would be much of an obstacle.’ 

‘But it was?’

‘O must have told her so. I never knew exactly but it seems he made it clear to her that all was over between them. As for her offer: no thank you. That gave her a shock. Nothing like it had ever happened to her. She felt she had lost her power. She was not in a good state when she came back from Paris.’

‘Was that just before I arrived from London?’

‘It was.’

‘And she told you?’

‘Not at once.’

What about yourself, Alessandro? I wanted to cry, how did
you
feel? but could not.

He said, ‘I understood her. I should have liked to have been able to warn her.’

There was a pause.

‘You said that O behaved like a gentleman that time at Cortina – you must be right, he did an extraordinary thing – a few months after their disastrous meeting in Paris, it was he who got me those art contacts in Amsterdam, who started the whole thing rolling.’

‘In a way a happy ending? How did she take it?’

‘In her stride.’

‘But she didn’t go with you.’

‘Quite.’

After a while, when I had taken it all in a bit more, I said, ‘I see even less now why
I
have to be so discreet, so careful?’

I should have left it alone for there followed what I remember as one of the oddest parental conversations.

‘Discreet for her sake,’ he said, ‘I didn’t explain it properly, for her
reputation
’s sake. You know she has this past – she talks about it often enough – so do her friends. They talk of her as someone who rode roughshod, a
grande amoureuse
who had little regard for conventions, there was her life before she married your father … Now whatever
you
’ll do, they’ll say she’s been a bad example –
telle mère, telle fille
– a chip off the old block: it will be blamed on her. They’ll say she brought you up badly. I won’t have her talked about like that, you
must
see this.’ 

‘Alessandro, you’re being absurd.’

‘Please be good,’ he said, ‘or they’ll think she’s been a bad mother.’

Early in the afternoon of the day my mother was to return, Cécile came again to Les Cyprès. I assumed that she had already said goodbye to Alessandro but did not know where or how. I was in my room, lying on my bed, trying to read, treachery and guilt were already casting their shadows. Emilia was not due back from her holiday till the end of the week, Alessandro and I had done some cleaning and tidying (not that this meant so much to her, it was he and I who minded). We had decided against cooking a home-coming dinner and ordered a special one at a bistro instead – with luck some of the Kisling crowd might be there.

I got up and pulled out the desk chair for Cécile. She preferred to stand. She would always love Alessandro, she told me, her butterfly who would soon be gone, there could be no other man for her. She had no regrets. Nor fears. As soon as she was of age, she would leave home and study to become a painter. ‘Sandró knows about
la peinture
, he tells me I have some talent. I was always serious about this, not like Frédéric who only wants to be an artist to annoy papa. And don’t worry – from today on I shall not betray myself, nor him, by a look or a word.’

‘It will be hard for you,’ I said, feeling sad for this girl whose heroics and banalities I shared.

She burst out, ‘I have one regret, I would have liked
d’avoir porté son enfant
.’

I was aghast.
Might have borne his child
.

‘Cécile, is this possible?’

‘I asked Sandró, he said it could – at Saint-Tropez.’

An abyss opened. So young persons did need diagrams and instruction from parents and school.

‘That night he was quite drunk, poor Sandró. He would have gone to sleep, I don’t think he even remembered who I was. He has no idea that I was aware of it. He thinks it would hurt me … It was I who said to myself,
quelle chance
!
You see, I was in love with him before,
I
did not allow him to go to sleep.’