Colonfay

by O'Grady, Myles;

  “One day, he called from Paros. He’d had a row with Nana. I didn’t know that at the time, of course. He asked me to marry him. I said yes.

  “We were married in the church of Saint-Sulpice. Settled into a flat in the Rue Madame. He continued to travel. Of course people were shocked when I married him. They could see the excitement of an affair but marriage!

  “You married him,” the psychiatrist said later, “because he was the antithesis of all the men you were expected to marry. Because life with him would not be like that on the Rue Freycinet. He was your ticket to escape. Oh, yes, you were in love with him. But he wasn’t the him you were in love with.”

  “Of course she was right. Now, please, I would like to hear all about you.”

  André said, “First tell me how it worked out.”

  “It was fraught from the beginning. Oil and water. Celtic dreamer and Gallic intello. Improvident, impulsive, undisciplined—and no solid dependability. Me looking for a protector. A disaster. One hesitates to use a hackneyed simile but Dermot was like a bird that had just been caged. All of a flutter. Trying to sing but desperate to break out. I was stupid. I forgot he had just been divorced from his first wife. He had been hurt. She was an English county girl but, I think, wayward.

  “They had been married in Bombay. He was sent to India for two years. Hated it. She went out to marry him. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, he said, as an explanation for that marriage. He couldn’t stand the society and the snobbishness. There were few English girls there and the ones that were single were jumped-up bitches, he said. You weren’t allowed to talk to the Anglo-Indians, the pariahs, but you could mix with the Parsees and the high-caste Indians. He said the day he arrived he was warned that if he was ever seen with an Anglo-Indian girl he would be on the next plane out. Fantastic. Apparently, he revolted.

  “He wouldn’t talk about the early days of the marriage but I gather she had an affair with an Anglo-Burmese on the ship going out and continued to see him after they were married. A real mess as a beginning and it destroyed his position out there. He really hit the bottle and the ego was badly bruised. When they went back to New York they broke up. It was a traumatic experience for him. He was still hungover from the Catholic past and it all seemed wrong. Marriage was for life.

  “This was not the Dermot who was later in Annabel’s and Tramp and Castel with all the top models, who went to dinner with Michael Caine and took out Anna-Maria Pierangeli. Not the Dermot who developed an aversion to domesticity and permanence and marital chains. Not the Dermot who ran away at all signs of entrapment. Who boasted of being of the senses and not the mind.

  “But it worked until the death of Penelope. Then he looked for diversions. So did I. I had an affair with Marcel. Non-sexual but he didn’t know that and I didn’t disabuse him. That hurt him. Two marriages, two betrayals. Our relationship broke down completely. He was bitter, unforgiving. I was resentful. He moved into the downstairs flat and we met only at mealtimes. Finally there was hardly any attempt to disguise his affair with Nana.

  “She called once, “Why don’t you let him go? He’s bored with you.”

  “She sent me a packet of his letters, very steamy, when they had a row once. Not a nice person. I knew when he started to come to Paris that he was not ready to settle down.

  “Even when I first met him in the Hotel d’Alsace he used to play with other girls there. As I told you, even Nana. Oh, yes, I was jealous. After all, how could I compete with all those free souls? I had no experience at all. I was not wild. I tried to wear short skirts but I could never be like his London birds. The Sixteenth is not Chelsea. The Avenue Montaigne not Knightsbridge. But I said yes to marriage. Of course I did. I wanted him. And naturally I thought he’d be happy when we had an apartment in Paris. He does love Paris. So we settled into the Rue Madame.

  “After Penelope died he was forced to move to Zurich, though I always suspected that he asked for the job. They made him head of the European creative side—he was never an administrator. Later they set up a company in Lausanne and he took an apartment there, in Pully. So he was always back and forth and I never knew where he was sleeping. Or with whom. After a while he started to spend more time away than in Paris. I was nervous.

  “He will tell you suicidal. Perhaps. It was the big failure. We had next to nothing in common. My whole background was alien to him and all my friends patronized him. He had no culture as we knew it. Soon I was going out to social functions with my old escort, Marcel. To Versailles. Dermot minded, I think. He couldn’t very well object. And he couldn’t participate. The language for one thing. It was a disaster. I was seeing more and more of Marcel. It was never physical, as I told you. Only once, after the awful treatment of him by Uncle René. He taught me a lot about Mannerism.

  “I left the agency. Set up an agency with a girl who was one of the best creative types in France. Of a similar background. She had connections. We got a lot of business which we handled efficiently. I sold out after five years.

  “Started dealing in drawings. Things got better with Dermot. On a friendly basis. I was interested in art and so was he. But whereas mine was classical, Renaissance, his was modern and contemporary. He used to get drunk with Francis Bacon every day at the Colony Room before he quit drinking. I hadn’t realized it but now his need for oral gratification seemed to turn to sex. Nana satisfied that, if his recent letters are anything to go by. Our relationship, unfortunately, began as mental communication. It was unsatisfying. He started to come to exhibitions with me. Because we had a lot of spare money—the apartment was given to us by my aunt—one day we bought a Giulio Romano drawing on the Rue des Saints Pères. Five thousand francs! He started to read my books on the Mannerists. Of course I didn’t know too much about them myself. Marcel taught me a lot later.

  “Dermot and I went to Italy together. To Florence, to Bologna, often to Milan because he worked there a lot. The Duomo Hotel. There was always an excuse to go to Italy. A client in Rome. Stay at the Eden. The Accademia in Venice. The Continental in Florence, and when it opened, the Lungarno. The most important list we had was the list of telephone numbers of hotels and trattorias. We discovered Parma and Mantua and Modena, where he had his car serviced at the Ferrari factory. Pienza, Cremona, Brescia, Bergamo, the Palladian villas in the Veneto, we saw them all. No doubt about it, his interest was cursory. He was still a playboy at heart. Fast cars and fast women.

  “I remember we went to Greece when I was pregnant with Penelope. I was so seasick on the ferry to Santorini. I hate the sea. He loves it. I thought we had a lot in common apart from the wine-dark sea. All camouflage. Yes, we liked being together, as long as it didn’t lead to intimacy. Oh, I don’t mean sex. We did that rather awkwardly, shyly, like children.

  “He hated to be touched. At least by me. No, I mean we never actually communicated properly. I was trying too hard: he was petrified of being imprisoned. Loss of independence, it isn’t just a psychological cliché. Yet he wanted to settle down, I think. Yes and no. He quite liked the idea of being married to me and living in Paris. He was proud of me, I see that now. He loved me, yes. Not passionately but deeply. The trouble was he always set me apart. I could never be like one of the other girls. I remained an ideal. Who wants to be an ideal?

  “After Penelope, he found more and more excuses to be in Lausanne. I didn’t find out until much later that Nana was living there too.

  “More and more also his interests centered on Germany. His big clients were there and the German offices needed a lot of help. He was in Dusseldorf and Hamburg all the time. We still shared our interest in pictures but he didn’t keep up with my knowledge. I remain a student. He looks with an intuitive eye. First, the Giulio Romano. Then, a Bonnard, for seven hundred and fifty thousand francs! A painting, not just a drawing. We sold it later and bought three drawings. A Guercino. A Rosso Fiorentino. Then, because we couldn’t really go up to expensive paintings, we concentrated on drawings, just because we liked them.<
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  “Then Dermot bought a huge picture in Colnaghi’s. A picture they had bought at Sotheby’s that nobody knew who’d painted. Dermot had it cleaned. It was a Nicolo dell’ Abate. He’ll tell you how that started him on the detective trail. He’s looking for another by the same painter. We were lucky. He was paid a big salary, in Switzerland, but he quit the company and became a consultant. He didn’t become a resident of France for a long time. He had Swiss companies and a Gibraltar company. Big fees. Royalties on new products. I was making money with the drawings and I had a sizeable income too. My father kept giving me money. I didn’t want it. I felt it was a form of bribe. To get me to see him. He pretended it would lessen the tax load when he died. Anyway, I said, he owes me.

  “Penelope. Penelope came along. Then the May 1968 riots. Dermot was in Greece. He left after the riots began. He drove to Brussels for a meeting and couldn’t get back. No essence. But I remember when they used the first tear gas and it came in the windows of the Rue Madame. He was nervous as hell. Fit to be tied. It was nothing to do with him. He was trapped. He could not accept it. He hated the students and the damage they were doing. The trees ripped up on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. The damage. The police breaking heads.

  “He hated violence. I imagine he had seen enough of it in the war. I first noticed his hatred of that sort of thing in Athens. There was an explosion as we walked through Syntagma, that’s Constitution Square, and a piece of brick flew past my head. He went white. He was shaking. I thought he was a coward at first but I didn’t really know how dangerous it was.

  “And I didn’t really pay much attention to a story of two men killed next to him in Burma and the blood running over his gear. Another time we were in Bologna and there was that terrible bomb explosion that killed so many people. He simply could not accept any excuse for violence. Of course, he was a rather violent person but it was well suppressed.

  “I think he was frightened for us. Especially after Penelope was born. I don’t think he was afraid for himself. But he could not stand being in a position where he was not in control. Penelope. Look, it’s hard to explain. He was so proud of her. He would have spoiled her if I hadn’t prevented it. Then he accused me of being jealous of her. What a laugh. But it may have been partly true.

  “We bought the house in the Luberon. Of course that was twenty years before the smart people discovered it. It was an old hunting lodge for the Château de Lourmarin. In fact, it was a joke. We needed a place to hang the big painting. And it was literally a fortress. A fortified farm. A big bastide with courtyard. Secure.

  “Penelope grew up. She was very pretty. His coloring, my features, Irish but French. A volatile mix. She was quite a girl. He bought her the apartment downstairs so she would have a private place to paint and entertain her friends. He was so happy when she showed signs of artistic talent. She would be what he had always wanted to be. A painter in Paris. A foolish dream, but harmless. The trouble was he and I were drifting apart in other ways. We still shared the art scene and he was rapidly acquiring a French culture. Proust, Balzac, Baudelaire, Stendhal for a start, then Mallarmé and of course Flaubert and all the Russians.

  “I wrote some articles for special art magazines. Pretty soon I was asked to edit art books and finally I became a recognized specialist in all aspects of mannerist art. I also set up a travel agency for art tours and architecture. My grandfather had instilled a reverence for Greece and the myths. I saw a Greek tragedy at Epidaurus and I took Dermot there one day. You know if you stand on the stage and drop a coin it will be heard in the back row at the top of the theatre?

  “Dermot sent me to the top, stood in the centre of the stage, and said—Fuck Sophocles! I must say he had a sense of humor. We were all growing up, I suppose.”

  Laure said, “God, was Dermot ignorant! Uncultured. But in the end I had to watch it. He soaked it up like a dry sponge. He never had the Greek or Latin background and had huge gaps in his general knowledge but he could trip me up on some things. I suppose we have to give him credit for the fact that he was travelling all the time and he was mixed up in some big projects. Very demanding. He was a one-man band. A sort of creative doctor. He gradually moved from multinational advertising to new product development and his fees were sometimes up to a million dollars. His clients liked him but he lost a lot because he could never suffer fools gladly. He could not learn to indulge the mediocre little men in the packaged-goods organizations. Dullards. He was not a corporate type. In and out. A fireman. A commando. Dermot was not—how do you say it?—a stayer. He was always a sprinter.

  “Look, the marriage became an arrangement. It couldn’t work properly.

  “He would not be tied down. He was an alien in France; my scene wasn’t his. He was a forty-year-old playboy when he was let loose in London and afterwards the continent. He was a child in many ways. Easily flattered.

  “There were all those young girls who chased him. I suppose he was fairly glamorous. Tearing around Europe and to the West Indies for shoots.

  “Ferraris and yachts. A grownup’s toys. But who wouldn’t go off for a week in Verbier or Monte Carlo? And who can blame an Irish country boy, deprived in his youth, from being impressed by fast girls and powerful cars? The fact was he could only loosen up with someone who didn’t pose a threat. Someone impermanent. He always said he felt just like the horse he used to try and get a bridle on as a boy. He didn’t want to be caught.”

  Laure hesitated. “The explosion on the Rue de Rennes. Penny’s death. No, I can’t talk about it.

  “That’s the story. Up to the time I read the letter he left lying around. The absolute end of the marriage. Enough. That’s enough about me. Now you.”

  28. André’s Story

  André said, “That won’t take long. We used to live on the Rue de Varennes. In a hotel particulier. The Weinrebs.”

  “Ah, yes, the name change.”

  “My mother’s name was Wiseman. I assumed it after all the Weinrebs were killed. Didn’t want to be the only one left. Can’t explain it. In 1940, my father sent us to the house on Cap d’Antibes. My mother was American and I and my sister had American nationality. When France fell, we had a phone call to tell us to leave. We took a train to Madrid and then on to Lisbon. We took a ship to New York. I guess we owned the shipping line. We had a lot of companies apart from the bank. When we were staying at the Ritz in Lisbon, waiting to embark, one of my father’s men arrived. He asked for our passports.

  “The childrens’ passports. My mother was reluctant to hand them over. He smiled and reassured her.”

  He said, “You won’t need them. But two other children do.” So they were used to get two children out of France. Everyone did it. That’s about all there is to the story except for the fact that the maid who was entrusted with a lot of jewelry disappeared with it in Madrid. We never saw it or her again. My father had three brothers. One ran the bank in Hamburg, another in Frankfurt, and the one in Paris. The two in Germany were picked up in 1940. My uncle left in 1942 when the Germans occupied southern France. My father thought he would be safe if he stayed in France. Too many politicos owed him. He was picked up at the roundup of the Vélodrome d’Hiver.

  “My step-sister, by his first wife, stayed with him. They were both deported. Weinrebs kaput. Lampshades. I escaped the clutches of your family’s friends.”

  “Then what?”

  “That’s not enough? You want more?”

  “Yes. It’s too much and not enough. You have to go on.”

  “Oh, Groton, Princeton, Harvard post-grad, then three years with Kahn in Philadelphia. Big projects.”

  “He was the best of the modern architects. Did the Kimbell Museum.”

  “Yes.”

  “San Francisco?”

  “Partnership with an old friend from Princeton. Married his sister. A Bellington. Owned Federated Foods in Minneapolis. She was living in Belvedere. Amusing herself with a gallery in Sausalito. Gave me shows.”

  “And the ban
k? The company?”

  “My uncle came back and picked up the pieces. He’s a genius. Built it up again from scratch. Didn’t take a holiday for years. Collected reparations from the German government for the odd four hundred buildings we owned in Hamburg and Frankfurt. And the ships. The French kindly nationalized the bank after he’d built it up. Like the Rothschilds. Now we’re out of it all. Clipping coupons all of us. In Gstaad, Paris, Aix, Belvedere.”

  “Are you still married?

  “No. Divorced and now engaged.”

  “Children?”

  “Only one. A son. Harry. He’s taken over his mother’s gallery in Sausalito. Not a great success, I’m afraid. Hasn’t got the balls, if you’ll forgive me, of his step sister. Tatiana. You saw her at l’Isle sur la Sorgue. She left that day for London. The Courtauld Institute. Harry’s a bearded hippie type. Typical Marin County boy. But hetero, I think. Spoiled rotten. I gave up on him long ago. But I’ll do anything for Tatty.”

  “Your wife was married before?”

  “Yes. To a lush. He married her for her money. Was paid off. Still a menace. Has the right to see Tatiana, of course. Always looking for the main chance. Trying to make money. Unfortunately, Tatty can be influenced by him. Thinks he had a raw deal. Maybe he had.”

  “What went wrong with the marriage?”

  “Money. Too much of it. Indolence. Selfishness. Trying to buy people. Like me.”

  “You wouldn’t be bought?”

  “No. I had enough of my own. And I had a job. And, perhaps, a certain small talent. We’ll see when I finish that painting of you.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s it. At least, that’s all I want to talk about.”

  “You mean, all I would understand?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “Had two. I told you. My step-sister killed by the Germans, with a little help from the French. The other, Sarah, who came to America, killed herself as a result of it.”