The Bay of Angels (18 page)

‘You seem to have a very poor opinion of the medical profession. Most doctors are competent, though they vary in temperament.’

‘Will you see my mother before we leave?’

‘There is no reason for me to do so. I shall have a word with Dr Lagarde, though he has expressed no particular anxiety on her behalf. Those ladies receive the best of care. They are in a protected environment. In many ways it would be better . . . ’

‘We can’t afford it,’ I said flatly. ‘We have very little money . . . ’

He regarded me with some scepticism. ‘Would it not be better to let your lawyers take care of that?’

‘I should have to be at home. I can’t deal with it by telephone.’

‘No.’

There was a silence. The interview seemed to be over. I leaned down and retrieved my poor radio. In the course of the afternoon I had forgotten why I had wanted it. I wondered whether I might ask Dr Balbi for a lift back to the rue de France, then dismissed the idea.

‘Thank you for your time,’ I said.

I stood up, feeling ten feet tall. The handles of my plastic bag had got twisted. And now I should have to thank M. Cottin all over again. He had shown me a dangerous kindness, and that had weakened me into desiring kindness from others.

‘Goodbye, Doctor,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to have spoilt your meal.’

He stood up and held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, Miss Cunningham.’ He did not tell me not to worry, as an English doctor would have done, nor did he tell me to keep in touch. He did not tell me he was there to help. I knew exactly where I was with him, which was nowhere.

As I made my way home I realized that I was seriously annoyed. I thought that I should have been shown more courtesy. Yet he had been perfectly correct. I had interrupted his meal; I had taken advantage of him in an unprofessional setting, and he had as much right to be annoyed with me as I had with him. It was that mutual annoyance that had led us to square up to each other like antagonists. In other, more favourable circumstances this would have been unimportant. But I had been seen as unattractive, and that was what I could not forgive, and for which I held Dr Balbi partly to blame. I was tired of being polite and tactful, as my lowly status now decreed. I should have preferred a furious argument with someone, anyone: I should have preferred all sorts of flamboyant behaviour, on both sides. It was not that I particularly admired him. I simply wanted to be recognized as a woman. My life was cast now among old people, for I saw my mother as old, as she did, and they were old people who dismissed my youth as an irrelevance. I could not join in their conversations, because my experience, in which they had no interest, was so different from theirs. Dr Balbi was nearer to my age than anyone I currently knew. I thought he must be in his early to mid-forties, but in fact he looked no age at all. He had been seen by me in a setting and on an errand which belied his professional standing. Yet I was the more exasperated.

My mother seemed to have acceded to the prevailing belief that a daughter was of lesser value than a son, which was why I was so eager to attach a masculine presence to my own. She would have listened respectfully to Dr Balbi, who at least impressed one as a man, unlike poor Dr Lagarde, whose assiduity somehow diminished him. There seemed to be an unspoken consensus that his recommendations need not be followed, since he offered them as an option rather than as an order. His flirtatious manner, which should have been thought to work with the elderly, was viewed with a sceptical eye; my mother’s new friends would respond only to a certain masculine rigour. And as they thought they knew their own ailments rather better than he could, they were in no sense dependent on him. Given the chance they would certainly have been dependent on Dr Balbi, which was probably why he did not intervene. Had he been in evidence they would have looked up to him; his severity might have reminded them of masterful men in their own distant pasts. Prudently he made his own inquiries to Dr Lagarde, whom he seemed to trust. Whether he did so or not was his own affair.

On the following day, Sunday, I told my mother that we should be going back to London in due course. ‘How lovely,’ she said, but she was more interested in Mme de Pass’s son, who had arrived back from New York. All the ladies were interested, for this was the sort of man they could understand: robust, even brutal, but knowing his duties. He had a word with each lady in turn, adopted an attitude that was almost caressing, as he kissed hands, patted shoulders, joked. They looked at him worshipfully, laying aside their habitual toughness, smiling, even blushing. They accepted the fact that he was able to spend only a short time in their midst, for real men had important business and could not delay any longer than was necessary. His departure was almost as tempestuous as his arrival had been: he would be a subject of conversation at dinner. Mme de Pass, for all her three marriages, was obviously in love with her son, this big man who had once been a little boy. She would receive congratulations and would accept them as her due. When he left the emotional temperature dropped noticeably, and faces were turned once more to those who sat patiently beside them. He was their type, as the rest of us were not.

My mother differed from the others only in that her response was one of interest, of respect, as if she were now on the far side of a sexuality that had proved only intermittent. Yet when M. de Pass left the room her colour faded, and she relapsed into the gentle dreaminess that I had always known, but with one important difference. She seemed to know that she could no longer join in, had no part in the world’s business. The other ladies were tactful: for all her relative youth they understood her to be more at risk than they were themselves. They were used to her obvious frailty; she had gained their affection, rather as a younger relative might have done. An occasional sharp glance was directed at her in those moments of weakness, but no officious concern was expressed. They were all face-to-face with mortality, and their own took precedence. That was why it was so important not to give way, even to the extent of asking her how she felt. That was my job, and I discharged it badly. I was always glad to leave her on those Sunday evenings, and to be out once more in the beautiful streets. At such times our homecoming seemed to be a matter of dire necessity, and also a more hazardous outcome altogether.

13

Mme Levasseur, the lady with the crooked face who had befriended my mother, suffered another stroke and died. She had been found at the foot of the stairs while attempting to go up to her room, and transported to Dr Balbi’s clinic, where she did not survive the night. I learned all this on one of my morning visits, slightly earlier than usual. I had been eager to get out into the bright day, eager to have the visit behind me. I had thought it to be routine, no more than a brief contact which would then leave me free. Instead I encountered anxious whisperings, and Sœur Elisabeth trying to control and reassure a group of ladies who had gathered in the foyer. The news had travelled swiftly; rightly or wrongly—and I think rightly—it had been thought preferable to announce it straight away.

The sisters obviously had a friendlier attitude towards death than those for whom it represented a dread reality. Voices were lowered, expressions doleful. Yet Mme Levasseur had not been much liked. In other circumstances the ladies, having repaired their morale, would have regarded her demise as evidence of further incompetence, on a par with her intemperate quest for kisses from her grandson. But this was the very early morning and the death had taken place too recently for attitudes to have been perfected. There was even muted discussion, a desire for company. Yet they could not reassure each other, for all were vulnerable. The ‘accident’, as they called it, was regrettable. It would take some time for them to come to terms with it. An effort of will was called for, and in the early morning, after an unusually disturbed night, they were not quite able to summon up the requisite determination. This was the ugly face of the Résidence Sainte Thérèse, a place where people lived out their remaining lives before being claimed by the sort of event that had overtaken Mme Levasseur.

As a special concession I was allowed to see my mother, who was naturally distressed. I found her in bed, under the crucifix, two spots of colour burning in her normally pale cheeks.

‘Zoë,’ she cried. ‘Have you heard the news?’

‘They are talking about it downstairs.’

‘I was very fond of Madeleine,’ she said, still in a slightly loud voice. ‘The others didn’t like her. She was not popular.’ Again the school parlance. ‘They thought she was common.’ Another word from the past. ‘But she was unhappy, you see. She felt out of place. Well, we are all out of place. But she wanted to go home, to live with her son and daughter-in-law. And to see her grandson every day. Of course, they didn’t want that. And she was frightened.’

‘What frightened her?’

‘Everything. She felt unloved, that was what frightened her. As well it might.’

‘Have you had your coffee, Mama?’

‘I don’t want coffee. I want tea! Oh, for a cup of tea!’

‘You shall have tea at home. In those big cups you always liked.’

She smiled gladly. ‘I got them at Peter Jones. Is it still there?’

‘Of course it’s still there. It won’t be long now. You remember what I told you.’

‘I remember. Is it true?’

‘I promise you. But you must make the best of it here, until we leave. Is there anyone else you might sit with?’

‘Mme Lhomond. That silly woman. A sweet nature, but rather slow-witted. When we go out together she drags on my arm, talking all the time. It makes me feel very old, though I shouldn’t mind it.’ She sighed helplessly. ‘I feel out of my depth, Zoë.’

‘That’s quite natural. And it won’t be for much longer. Won’t you come out and have coffee with me? I haven’t had any breakfast either.’

In reply she pulled off her nightdress, in a way that shocked me. Yet she did not seem to be afflicted with any particular shyness, having evidently forgotten that she was an ageing woman face-to-face with someone who was still intact. I helped her out of bed, took her into the adjoining
cabinet de toilette
, and left her there. For a terrible moment I thought that she might expect me to wash her. I shut the door resolutely and wandered over to the window, aching for a glimpse of the outside world. But there was nothing to be seen from here, only a corner of the courtyard, several empty boxes, and a row of dustbins. In the distance I could hear the sound of a van, come to deliver the day’s supplies. Only the ardent sky served to remind one of the season, which was high summer. In contrast the room seemed dark, as would all interiors deprived of that light. The sounds of splashing ceased; a smell of soap replaced the odours of the night. I noticed them, as I noticed them every morning. However rigorous the efforts, and I did not doubt that they were rigorous, nothing could quite disguise that miasma, which was of women living together. It would have pertained to any school, any convent. It served to remind one of the desirability of other arrangements. Here, among women, efforts would be made, but such efforts would be nugatory, for however great one’s care one would recognize in others that negligence that time bestows and which is time’s sad legacy.

Dressed, my mother looked more like herself. I placed my hand under her elbow and guided her down the stairs. In the foyer Dr Lagarde and Dr Balbi were attempting to console a red-faced man who was trying not to weep. This was Levasseur
fils
, I presumed, and I could see why his mother had been thought of as somewhat inferior in rank. Any tiny distinction would have been seized on with alacrity in this place where there was nothing to do. Mme Levasseur had confided in my mother, and in no one else, that her son was in the construction business, as I might have observed for myself from his footwear, massive dusty trainers of the kind worn by men on a building site. He was apparently a successful entrepreneur, able to afford the best of care for his mother, but preferred not to visit her too often, leaving that task to his wife and the boy. Yet he seemed so sincerely affected, struggling against his tears while being assured that his mother had suffered no pain, would have been unconscious at the time of her death. This glimpse of an adult man newly deprived of his mother moved me strangely. I ceased to think of my own condition, and felt a desire to reach out, to comfort. A woman would have managed better, I thought, than this poor fellow, who now resembled no one so much as his son, Jean-Claude, source of pleasure and of pain.

My mother laid a hand on his arm and murmured condolences, which occasioned more tears. He was a graceless sight, a fact registered by both the doctors, seen here at a natural disadvantage since they had failed to prevent death from taking place. My mother told the son how she had found a friend in Mme Levasseur, who had been so kind to her when she had first come to take up residence. He listened eagerly, smiling from time to time as he allowed her to take over. This she seemed willing to do, even too willing. In a moment she would ask him if he had a handkerchief, and would generally soothe him into acceptance of the inevitable. This might have been touching, but I did not wish to see it.

‘You are going out?’ questioned Dr Balbi, who had observed these manoeuvres with a faint smile.

‘We have not had our coffee,’ I told him.

‘There is a place on the corner. It should not be too busy now.’

I looked at him in some surprise. This solicitude was new, but maybe he too was affected by the death of this unknown man’s mother, of any man’s mother. I was slightly irritated by this, and yet I had seen the man’s tears, had registered the softening of Dr Balbi’s attitude, although it was Dr Lagarde who seemed uncharacteristically gloomy. He too was a mother’s favourite son, as his normal behaviour proclaimed to the world at large. His mother’s preference had not made him a hero, as Freud had said it would, but had turned him into a sexless acolyte for whom his mother would always come first. He hovered at Dr Balbi’s elbow, as if Dr Balbi were Jesus and he merely one of the disciples. And like the disciples he was outclassed, not able to give a good account of himself. Yet with such a charismatic teacher he would eventually amount to something. His slow climb to man’s estate was, fortunately, something we should not be here to witness.