Paris Summer

by Rosemary Friedman

  ‘I’ll have a word with Sherman…’ Jordan placed a pile of the sparkling white shirts he habitually wore and which were made to measure, symmetrically into his case. ‘Why don’t you take Nadine?’

  Fortunately Nadine could think of nothing worse than the Côte d’Azur in August. She was terrified of getting bitten by mosquitoes and prone to prickly heat. While Sherman was away she would occupy herself with finding a caterer who was not on his fermeture annuelle for the celebration dinner upon which a blight had now been cast, and planning a menu worthy of her talents with which everyone concerned would be pleased.

  ‘Nobody tells me that I look tired,’ Lauren said. ‘That I could do with a couple of weeks in Antibes.’

  ‘Will you keep an eye on Jordan?’

  ‘Need you ask!’

  Helga, whose culinary repertoire consisted largely of wiener schnitzel, also promised to take care of Jordan, as far as the housekeeping was concerned, when he got back from Boston. As if making provision for Jordan mitigated my effrontery, I filled the newly repaired freezer with his favourite dishes and made my plans.

  Jordan, who thought of everything, had had Eunice buy me a ticket – Paris to Nice – open-ended so that I could come home at will. In the event, Félix managed to borrow Alexandre’s ancient Merc and we went to the villa by car.

  It was a long time since I had travelled any distance with a man in an otherwise empty car. Conditioned by years of stocking up our station-wagon with bags of chips and candy and games and their favourite CDs and cassettes for Michelle and Joey, and rugs and blankets for the dog who hated long journeys, when Félix picked me up outside the Pharmacie de Ville (our trysting place) behind the Boulevard Courcelles and I climbed into the passenger seat I had the distinct impression that I had forgotten something, that something vital was missing. It was, of course. The sound of ‘Daddy, are we there yet?’ ‘Mom, she’s squishing me!’ Jordan’s authoritative voice, ‘I’m warning you. Don’t make me stop this car!’ as for mile after mile of enforced proximity we counted cows and played interminable games of ‘I-spy’.

  As I made my illicit escape from the diesel fumes of Paris with Félix, I recalled the summer vacation when Joey threw a tantrum in a restaurant; the one when Jordan had to pull in every few miles for Michelle to throw up (she was incubating chicken-pox); and others when, no matter how many times they were cautioned, Michelle and Joey ran into their hotel rooms on arrival and proceeded to jump on the beds. One of the things Jordan did on a long journey was to give the kids a map of the USA so that they could track where we were at any given moment. Whenever we got within ten miles of a state line he’d tell them to start watching for the ‘Welcome’ sign and the first one to see it would get a prize. If I felt guilty at sitting in the Merc next to Félix, it was paradoxically for not having Joey and Michelle in the back, although, in reality, it was they who had gone away, leaving me in Paris on my own.

  Saying goodbye to Jordan, who promised to call me at the villa to say when he’d be back in Paris – hopefully with the Viscomte de Loisy debacle well and truly sorted – I almost lost my nerve. Although I had done nothing else for the past few weeks I was not accustomed to deceiving him. A born organizer, of those around him as well as himself, he made sure I knew how to turn on the water and electricity in the villa – ‘be sure everything’s shut down when you leave’ – to remember to bring the terrace cushions in at night, and not to leave the blinds down when it rained. His paternalism was the price I paid for getting married in my twenties. I wondered would he feel as responsible if he got married again, if he took a second wife… Shocked by my own discursive thoughts that I had no desire to pursue, and which seemed not to make much sense, I turned to find Félix gazing at me with a look that stopped my heart.

  He put his hand over mine.

  ‘Where were you?’

  In the realms of the unimaginable, I did not reply.

  Of course, once we had left Paris and were on the autoroute, Félix, twenty-eight years old and not averse to taking chances, drove the Merc too fast. Accustomed to freeways where the speed limit was a sedate 55 miles per hour, my heart was in my mouth as he entered the lists for the rush to the south in the exclusively male battle of amour propre. As the kilometres clocked up and we skirted Dijon, Lyon, Valence and Orange, passed fields of sunflowers and meadows of yellow rape, the Boulevard Courcelles receded into the distance and it was not only Paris that I left behind.

  Although I had visited the villa in Antibes only once with Jordan, I was not unfamiliar with Provençe. I had spent a week in Aix in my student days, in a room with poor lighting, a brass bedstead, an old-fashioned closet, and a telephone of archaic design, the function of which was mainly symbolic since no amount of jiggling the gibbet on which it was suspended could capture the attention of the standardiste. The hotel in the rue Cardinale, although simple and clean, had probably remained unchanged since Cézanne had left his imprint on the red-tiled farmhouses and undulating meadows of the surrounding countryside. When Vincent Van Gogh moved from Paris to Arles, the region, with its celebrated light, had yet to cast its spell upon artists. It soon became the fashion, however, for painters to haunt the narrow streets of le Cannet, Sillans, Tourette, Vence, Mougins and Cagnes, and it was not long before Matisse, Renoir, Chagall and my beloved Picasso made the sun-bleached hamlets, the perched villages, and the olive groves their own. Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse. There were still plenty of good painters in the area but now they were outnumbered by indifferent ones, and Provençe had become a mecca for tawdry craft shops, the conduit for mediocre works.

  Arriving at Notre Rêve with Jordan and the children, had been a matter of activating the essential services, unpacking the suitcases, visiting the supermarché, filling the fridge – Jordan could not survive long without his cold drinks – restraining Joey and Michelle from plunging straight into the translucent sea. Arriving with Félix, before we had opened the shutters, before we had walked out on to the terrace and gazed at the lights along the foreshore, for it was dark when we arrived, we dropped our few clothes on the blue and white tiles and, falling upon the bed, made ardent love.

  What can I say about the two illusory weeks in heat that exhausted and enveloped us? That we swam naked in the shallow water which lapped at the foot of the villa, lunched lengthily beneath vine-covered trellises, dined at cool tables amid fountains and jars of giant gladioli, danced intimately to Piaf and Gainsbourg, listened to candle-lit concerts in cobbled squares, eavesdropped on street musicians, browsed in open-air markets with their pissaladières and pots of basil, stepped over prostrate dogs taking refuge from the heat, picnicked beneath umbrella pines among the ants and the beetles and the green leafhoppers, climbed up to fortified towns where geraniums hung from window-sills and geckos darted from cracks in dry stone walls, gorged on berries and peaches, visited the Biennale at Monte Carlo, renewed our acquaintance with Matisse and Chagall at Cimiez, with Léger at Biot, Cocteau at Menton, and Picasso – not far from the rented villa – at Antibes.

  When Jordan phoned, to say that he was back in Paris and dining on Helga’s wiener schnitzel, that Michelle (who had called from Genoa) had had her credit card stolen, that it was raining in Scotland and Joey had inadvertently sat on a fish-hook which had to be removed by the ghillie, and that George Grabfield was pulling the necessary strings in Boston to persuade the French Government to change its mind about the golden share, it was as if he were in another country, as if he spoke a different language. When he asked me, concerned, whether I was managing, whether I was happy on my own, I crossed my fingers and assured him I was fine.

  I was lying topless, my eyes closed against the early morning sun, on the blue and white striped lounger on our minute patch of sand, when a kiss, light as a butterfly’s wings, landed on my shoulder.

  We had decided to spend the whole day at the villa to allow Félix to paint, but he was fully dressed – black shirt, black chinos (Félix would not be seen dead in shorts), blac
k espadrilles – and carried a blue and white shopping basket.

  ‘Today is Judith day…’

  ‘It’s not my birthday.’

  ‘I don’t want you to lift a finger. I’ll cook lunch. The kitchen is strictly out of bounds.’

  He set the table, blue and white tablemats, bubbled blue glasses from Biot, on the terrace amid the oleander and pelargonium. Salade Niçoise with glistening anchovies and shiny black olives, an ambrosial cassoulet rich with pork and with cannelini beans, followed by a plate of Chèvre with sweet Reine Claude greengages. Stupefied by the food and the pastis which had been followed by a bottle of Bandol rosé, we sat, replete, for a long while, each with his thoughts, looking out at the diamanté sea with its sailing boats and the sky innocent of clouds. I was the first to break the silence.

  ‘Jordan doesn’t like it when I don’t speak. It makes him nervous.’

  ‘“Chaque atome de silence est la chance d’un fruit mûr.”’

  More than a little drunk, I raised my empty glass to Félix.

  ‘Congratulations to the cook!’

  He looked suitably modest.

  ‘I’ll do the dishes. It’s only fair.’

  Gathering the plates on to the blue and white tray I walked barefoot over the cool tiles to the minuscule kitchen. On every available surface were scattered tinfoil containers of varying sizes and carrier bags bearing the legend Madame Fave: traiteur.

  ‘You cheat!’ My voice could have been heard in Monaco as I rushed out through the sliding windows on to the terrace where Félix, quick as a flash, eluded my flailing fists and dashed into the sea. ‘You’ve been to Madame Fave!’ I splashed in after him. ‘You didn’t cook a thing.’

  Whereas Jordan was a classy swimmer, a skill he had passed on to the children, Félix, who could manage no more than a dog-paddle, never ventured out of his depth. I caught him up in the shallows and attempted to pull him beneath what passed for waves as punishment. Restraining me, he took me in his arms and my anger at his deception subsided.

  Standing up to our waists in the ocean, Félix held me at arms length, the water hanging in droplets from the black hairs on his chest. His face was serious.

  ‘Judith, we have to talk…’

  I turned my head, away from his steady gaze, away from the burning sun.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

  ‘If it’s about Madame Fave, forget it. I’ll never forgive you.’

  ‘It’s not about Madame Fave. I love you, Judith. I’m not going to let you go.’

  I took my breasts, which had fed Michelle, suckled Joey, in my hands. ‘I’m old enough…’

  ‘Marry me.’

  ‘I’m already married.’

  ‘You do a marriage when you’re young, then you find out what you’ve really been looking for. What makes you happy. What you need.’

  ‘I love Jordan…’

  ‘To think you can love only one person for the whole of your life is like expecting a candle to burn for ever. Don’t go back to Boston, Judith.’

  ‘…I do love Jordan.’

  He put a damp hand beneath my chin raising my eyes to his.

  ‘Then why are you here, les pieds dans l’eau, la main dans la mienne?’

  chapter fifteen

  I’m not sure when I first realized that I was in love with Félix and that what had begun as a game, the last bastion of the disenchanted wife, had got out of hand. Some say that love is blind, others that it defies explanation, and the more scientifically minded that lovesickness is merely a specific and clear-cut type of brain activity which could lead otherwise sober-minded people to abandon the security of their lives and give everything up for a stranger. For doctors, since Hippocratic times, lovesickness was not so much about love as about fixation. Its victims, wavelengths coincided in a primeval connection, would find themselves unable to rid themselves of obsessive thoughts about some usually unattainable object, and the cure for the malady was sex.

  The question was whether you fall in love with a person because you have great sex, or whether you have great sex because you are in love: is passion created in our synapses or in our souls? In the absence of personal affection, can the condition truly be regarded as love, which is sometimes described as akin to madness and, in its most severe form can drive a lover clinically insane. Looking back now, I could see that what had drawn me towards Félix in the first place was a mixture of exhilaration, pleasure and danger which had evolved into exploration, excitement, care and compassion until finally, and this was something I refused to admit even to myself, it began to bear a suspicious resemblance to love.

  Having declared himself to be in love with me while we were at Cap d’Antibes, Félix begged me to admit that his feelings were reciprocated. It was not so simple, and the first ridiculous thing that occurred to me was to ask Jordan, who had for so long been my mentor. I tried to analyse my feelings, to catch the emotions as they went haywire in my head and having snared them to martial them into some sort of order. It was a pointless exercise, like trying to make sense of the ineffable or unravelling an intricate web. I needed Félix every moment of every day, becoming distraught if I could not see him, could not touch him. Without doubt he was my raison d’être and I grew frantic if he was not there. As the days went by and the time grew near for me to go back to Jordan, to my life, as attractive as the prospect seemed – I missed my husband, wanted to see my children – I knew that Félix had the keys to part of me I had not known existed and it was a part I did not want to leave. Our relationship was no longer only about the fascination of sex. Sometimes we did not touch each other for hours at a time.

  ‘I am enchanted by your face,’ Félix said as we lay on the sun-loungers beneath the blue and white striped awning, he on his elbow, consuming me with his eyes. Sometimes his English bordered on the quaint. ‘You are my Héléne of Troy, my Mary Queen of Scots, my Emma Hamilton, my Greta Garbo, my Marilyn Monroe… I would like to paint you.’

  ‘I’m not a good sitter.’ I was too impatient.

  ‘I didn’t say I was going to paint you. I said I would like to paint you.’

  It was too hot for conundrums. Felix opened the Sonnets from the Portuguese which was never far from my side:

  ‘“I love not for those eyes, nor haire,

  Nor cheekes, nor lips, nor teeth so rare;

  Nor for thy speech, they necke, nor breast,

  Nor for thy belly, nor the rest;

  Nor for thy hand, nor foote so small,

  But wouldst thou know (deere sweet) for all.”’

  There were tears in my eyes. It was not the sun. I recognized the moment and tried to hold it to me, to stop time from passing, to defy what the future might bring. Holding out my arms to my lover we rose as one and walked on our bare feet, embracing, into the cool, into the penumbra of our blue and white house.

  Making love with Félix, unlike making love with Jordan – he was far too cautious – was to make love in risky places, to take one’s partner for la danse de la séduction, the aim being to win them over rather than simply getting them into bed. If love-making for Jordan, while unequivocal and tender, bordered on the prosaic, sleeping with Félix, of which I never tired, entailed touchingly attentive gestures, innovation and diversity, distractions and amusements often un peu fantasiste. Perhaps it was because at Cap d’Antibes we had time. Time to talk – with Jordan there was little dialogue – time to explore, time to experiment, time, above all, to laugh.

  ‘You and I could make beautiful children,’ Félix murmured in the half-light that filtered through the drawn blinds.

  ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  A boy, dark like Félix; a girl with his Gallic charm.

  ‘I have two children. Jordan would never let them go.’

  ‘Do we have to talk about Jordan?’

  ‘It’s OK for you. You have no one to consider. Nothing to lose…’

  Stopping the utterances he had no wish to hear with his kisses, F
élix put his mind to the task in hand, one which if we so desired could be extended, and often had been, to fill the entire afternoon in which the heat, almost physical in its intensity, seemed to have attained a manic crescendo. We had reached the core of our beings, the acme of our love, when I heard a noise.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Rien.’

  ‘I heard something, Félix.’

  ‘The stores…’ the blue and white blinds. ‘Probably a mistral.’

  Lulled into acceptance I caressed his flesh. His head, with its lustrous dark hair, was sweetly between my thighs when I heard the noise again, soft footfalls. I glanced round in time to see the door to the bedroom pushed open, causing me to freeze. A female form appeared, silhouetted against the light. Blinking with incredulity I recognized my Calvin Klein teeshirt.

  ‘Michelle!’

  The tableau vif would haunt me to the end of my days. The half-light of the soporific afternoon trapped in the chalk-white room, the bed with its tumbled linen, my daughter’s uncomprehending expression of horror, my naked lover. Before we could move, the door slammed shut and there was the sound of sobbing; a wail as for a dead person; a piercing cry of disbelief.

  Félix was the first to recover. Getting out of bed, he touched my shoulder reassuringly. I retrieved my robe from the bathroom and motioned him not to accompany me, to let me deal with Michelle. Neither of us spoke.

  She was curled up on the capacious chair in the salon, howling into a blue cushion. I stretched out my hand.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ The sound was that of an animal in pain. ‘You’re disgusting. I’ll never speak to you again!’

  I wondered how Michelle had got there, what she was doing on the Cap when the last week of her vacation was to be spent living it up in Juan les Pins. Later I discovered that whilst they were in Genoa, Lois had had to go home because her mother was ill and Jordan had suggested to Michelle that before going on to Juan, she should look in on me at the villa to make sure that I was all right.