Katherine beamed, leapt up and kissed him.
‘Yes,’ he waited until she had sat down again. ‘Yes, we’ll expunge Sylvie. Exorcise her.’ He said it lightly, then added: ‘Because this is what all this is about, isn’t it, Katherine?’
Katherine looked away, all her excitement vanishing. The very mention of Sylvie’s name filled her with a rage which was instantly followed by guilt. It tied her up in knots. Why had her father brought Sylvie up now? Why couldn’t he just get over her?
‘No, that’s not what it’s about,’ she murmured. ‘I just thought it would be nice to have a change. This place is hideous,’ she looked up at him boldly.
Jacob smiled. ‘I might agree with that. I’m not particularly thrilled by Sylvie’s last exercise in interior decoration.’ He sipped a little wine. ‘But I want us to be clear about what we’re doing. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think there’s anything terrible about expunging Sylvie. We don’t live in memorials.’
‘But?’
‘But I want you to understand what you’re getting rid of. I want you to know a little more about your mother, come to terms with her.’
Katherine pushed her chair back brusquely. ‘I think I know quite enough.’
‘Do you, Kat?’ Jacob moved to sit on Sylvie’s darkly velvet sofa, urged Katherine next to him. ‘You know, before the war, before you were born, before illness took a grip on her, Sylvie used to love parties, just like the ones you’ve been describing to me. She would sit at the piano and sing. Electrify us all.’
Katherine played with her hair nervously. ‘I don’t want to know, Pappy. I don’t want to think about her.’
Jacob put his arm around her, this daughter of his who was almost a woman. He smiled. ‘Oscar Wilde once said that children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. I don’t want you to forgive Sylvie. I just want you to judge her with a fuller picture at your disposal. For your own sake.’
Katherine’s tension erupted. She pulled away from him. ‘I never loved, Sylvie. You know that. And I’m fed up with hearing about her. From you. From Leo. Don’t I count for anything around here? You’ve never loved me, none of you.’
‘That’s utter nonsense, Kat, and you know it,’ Jacob’s eyes suddenly blazed. ‘What you don’t understand is your mother and my loyalty to her. What you don’t know is that she saved my life during the war.’
Katherine hesitated for a moment, stared at her father. He always took Sylvie’s side. Even now. Even now that she was dead. A strange raw voice burst from her. ‘And what you don’t understand, have never understood, is that Sylvie tried to kill me.’
She raced sobbing from the room.
Jacob didn’t follow her. She had to come to terms with his loyalties, whatever the pain it caused her. Feeding her fantasies was no use. It would only make for more difficulties later on. Somehow Katherine had to learn to make a space in herself for Sylvie. And Sylvie had saved his life. Saved it in her own inimitable way. By methods which didn’t sit well in peacetime America.
A grim expression furrowed his brow. Lying, acting, counterfeiting, cheating. Sylvie’s heroisms of war were to Katherine the signs of a bad mother. How to make her understand?
He would take her to Paris. Perhaps there he could make her see a little better.
And while they were away, he would allow her little dream to come to fruition. They would have the decorators in.
The holiday was not a total success.
It wasn’t that Katherine wasn’t enamoured of Paris. No city she had ever walked in was half so beautiful. The winding river, the curve of the bridges, the elegant uniform facades, the glistening and various roofs, the limpid skies, the bright markets with their wares tantalisingly displayed, all spoke to her. As did the museums which she visited assiduously, as if Thomas, her mentor, was ever at her side offering another pair of eyes.
But she was impatient of their return to the home she had created in endless sketches; impatient too of Jacob’s incessant meetings with colleagues, with acolytes who sat transfixed, listening to him as if they were on their knees. She was slightly wary of him in this city which for him was replete with memories. She never knew when a walk might lead them past a location which was imprinted with Sylvie’s presence. After an initial resistance, she let him talk on when this happened, but she turned her mind away, only half listening. She didn’t want to know.
Jacob, aware of this, persisted nonetheless. Not in any event that he could have stopped himself from remembering. Paris was his city. Sylvie’s city. The cobbled streets and the boulevards spoke to him, told him tales he thought he had forgotten.
Princesse Mathilde came to see them for a weekend. It was the weekend on which Katherine had arranged to fly to London to visit Portia. Seeing her father with Mathilde briefly, she was again impressed by how happy they always were together. It made no sense to her, the couplings people chose. She was tempted somehow to ask the Princesse why her father had not married her instead of Sylvie, but it was not a question which could easily be put.
London was a revelation. Portia’s family house was in one of the Nash Terraces overlooking Regent’s Park. The girls walked in the Rose Gardens and caught up on the past months, discussed the future. Portia had a place at Newnham College in Cambridge. She tried to persuade Katherine to apply there too.
Katherine demurred. ‘I couldn’t be that far away from my father. He’s all alone now.’
Portia giggled, ‘That’s the difference between us. I can’t wait to get away from the Aged P.’s again. A full month with them is already too much.’
‘I used to feel that way when my mother was alive,’ Katherine offered. ‘But now, things are different.’
‘Mmmn, mothers,’ Portia grunted. ‘At least yours wasn’t a bore. She had a sense of the dramatic.’
Katherine gave her a strange sideways look.
She returned to Paris, impatient now for the holiday to be over. They were to spend their last days there with her Aunt Nicolette’s family in Neuilly where they had just moved. She hardly knew them, had only met them once, Jacob had reminded her, at her Grandmother’s funeral in Portugal, before they had left Europe for America. All but one of her cousins was now grown up, her uncle dead, and her aunt had decided to come back to France.
Fearful at first of the reunion, Katherine found herself charmed by her Aunt, who reminisced comically about Jacob’s youthful exploits. Charmed too by her four cousins, their husbands and wives, all of whom treated her with instant familiarity, and their children who caroused through the house with unstoppable stamina, much to her Aunt’s hilarity. She promised herself that she would keep in touch with them.
She was surprised by the notion which came into her mind: this was the first real family she had ever experienced. She found herself envying the easy banter between her cousins and Aunt, the argumentative informality of mealtimes, the laughter and bustle and hugs.
When they got back to New York, to the new apartment, she would make sure that their home was like that. A thought dawned in her. Leo would be coming back to New York now to work in a hospital where he could specialise in tropical medicine. Perhaps he would move into the apartment. Yes, she turned the idea over in her mind. Yes, a home for the three of them.
But Leo, when she put the idea to him was aghast.
He had grown into a slim blond young man, slightly ashen from his long hospital hours, a little frenzied and erratic in his gestures which spoke of bouts of sleeplessness and an adrenalin fuelled energy.
‘What, you want me to move in here? Are you mad?’
They were sitting in Jacob’s study and he looked from his sister to his father in amazement. ‘I’d go crazy here. Why the two of you are like recluses out of some dated European movie,’ he gestured wildly around the room. ‘Books, books, pictures and books. That’s all I ever get around here. No, Kat, it’s not for me.’
Katherine grew pale. Jacob smiled.
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‘And you know what, Kat?’ Now that he had started, he threw his sister a challenging look and rushed on. ‘You’re square, Kat. Pretty, yes. But altogether square. You’re turning into an old frump before your time. Look at you, that little skirt, that little blouse. Why I bet you don’t even have a pair of jeans. Why should you? You’re living in the Middle Ages. This is America, kid. You hear me? America. Not Europe.’
‘I do have a pair of jeans,’ Katherine said bleakly.
Leo stopped in his tracks. His tone softened. ‘Well, get them on kid. Get them on and I’ll take you out with me tonight.’ He posed a mute question to Jacob who nodded. ‘Come on, hurry up.’
Katherine rushed off nervously. Jacob grinned. His son at least had swallowed America whole. He didn’t disapprove.
He was in fact increasingly proud of him, of his dedication to his work, his plans for working in troublespots abroad. And a little fraternal criticism would do Katherine no harm.
Leo took Katherine to the Village. It was as if in that short distance from the Upper East Side she had crossed a magic dividing line into another country. The narrow streets swarmed with young people, the girls, their long hair flowing over tight turtle neck sweaters, eyes darkened against pale skin. The men, jacketless, their sweaters like the girls. Every second door opened onto a café or club. Sound thrust out of them onto the milling pavement. The moan of a sax, earnest voices, the rumble of laughter.
Leo led her into a club. Small crowded tables, lights so dim the faces were hardly perceptible. Everywhere the curl of smoke. On a tiny stage, a black man at a piano, his face impassive beneath an odd hat, his fingers thick yet darting, running lightly, effortlessly over keys. Rich syncopated sound, cool, playful. She sat back intrigued. She had never been to a jazz club before. Never heard of Thelonius Monk. She watched her brother. He was engrossed in the music, his eyes half shut, his body swaying lightly. Like the others, all of them, a musical trance.
In the break, a large sandy-haired young man in a black leather jacket came over to their table. He slapped Leo on the shoulder.
‘Hiya man, what’s up?’ His eyes slid over Katherine with a mixture of disdain and interest. ‘Who’s the chick?’
Katherine was surprised by the voice. Low, rumbling, sleepy. With Portia’s accent, but trying to sound like something else.
‘My kid sister,’ she heard Leo say.
‘Ya? No kidding. Groovy sister,’ he smiled a flash of white teeth at Katherine and from nowhere pulled up a chair, which he turned back forwards to the table. He leaned his chin on it and looked intently into Katherine’s eyes. ‘Hiya kid sister, the name’s Ted. Ted Mercer.’
‘You’re English, aren’t you?’ Katherine asked.
‘How’d you guess?’ The man laughed. ‘And here I thought I’d perfected my American. I’ve been trying to get your brother to give me lessons.’ He looked at Leo, but Leo was paying no attention to them. He was scanning the smoky room, fidgeting a little nervously. Then he leapt up, waved. A slender young woman made her way towards their table. Tight black slacks, black skinny ribbed top, a length of ash blonde hair cut with a fringe which met her arched brows. She kissed Leo lightly on the lips. ‘Didn’t think you were coming tonight,’ Katherine heard her murmur.
‘I tried to ring you, Claudia. Didn’t get you.’
‘Can’t stay. I’m meeting Pete.’
Leo held on to her hand. ‘Tomorrow then?’
‘Maybe, ring me,’ she pulled away, smiled at Ted, waved.
Leo sat down, his expression glum.
‘A ball breaker, that one,’ Ted offered.
‘What do you know about it?’ Leo prickled.
Then as if he had suddenly remembered Katherine’s presence, he turned to her, a little embarrassed, ‘Want to go somewhere else Kat?’
‘I don’t mind,’ Katherine said softly. ‘Whatever you prefer.’
‘Can’t blow now folks,’ Ted decided for them. ‘The man’s about to start.’ He turned a comical face on Katherine. ‘Think my American’s coming on?’
‘She wouldn’t know,’ Leo muttered.
Later, on their way home, Katherine suddenly realised what it was that had been troubling her throughout the evening. The girl, the girl Leo had kissed, Claudia, she was like Sylvie. Like Sylvie in the photographs. The thought depressed her.
Over the coming months, Leo opened her eyes to the other Manhattan, to another America. He took her, sometimes with Claudia, sometimes with Ted or other friends to a variety of jazz clubs, to The Five Spot, The Village Vanguard, to cabarets like The Premise where satire thrived, and to poetry performances. She was disconcerted and then enthralled by Lenny Bruce’s spitfire monologues, his explosive mix of four letter words and Yiddishisms which hit at the gut of hypocrisies. She warmed to Ginsburg’s chanting lines, to a whole panoply of poets and satirists who launched a full-scale assault on upright and uptight America. She learnt a look and a posture and a set of adjectives which passed for being Hip in the Village. It wasn’t difficult.
And sometimes she thought that whatever Leo said, she nonetheless preferred her quiet evenings with her father or her outings with Thomas.
By the beginning of December, the finishing touches had been put to the apartment. Katherine, as she walked through the enlarged sweep of the living room with its creamy raw silk textures, its mix of low slung sofas and older more ornately curved chairs, was radiant with satisfaction. She saw a new life unfolding. She saw feet sinking into the thick pile of the new rugs whose abstract patterns evoked the work of contemporary artists. She saw tantalizing gatherings round the bold rectangle of the dining table. She envisioned the admiring glances of guests as they noted the sculptural perfection of the two McKintosh chairs poised in the foyer. She saw the foundations of home.
Jacob sharing in her delight, thought that he had perhaps been wrong to worry.
They planned a New Year’s Eve dinner party, a double celebration of their transformed home and the dawn of the new year. 1963. A new year without Sylvie, Katherine thought with a mixture of guilt and jubilation.
And so, on the evening of the 31st of December 1962, Jacob, Katherine and Leo waited in a living room decked in flowers and soft lights for the first guests to arrive. Katherine, in a dress of milky white shantung, simple in its A-line, but rich in its texture, a dress which she felt matched the calm of the room they were sitting in. A dress which enveloped her in an aura of purity. Jacob, trim in his dinner jacket, his dark eyes sparkling darker against the greying of his thick hair; Leo, blond, relaxed, despite the effort it had cost him to put on a suit for the occasion.
Guests began to arrive. The psychoanalytic contingent first. Dr and Mrs. Hartman, Dr and Mrs. Eisler, an old stooped bearded man, Dr. Jones, with a deep voice, who chucked Katherine a little lasciviously under the chin and cackled to himself eccentrically. Then, a woman Katherine didn’t recognise, blonde, statuesque in a sculpted magnetic blue dress which revealed an expanse of creamy throat on which a single jewel radiated. Jacob held her hand a little lingeringly before he gravely presented her to Katherine and Leo as Dr. Camille Briand. Something in his demeanour made a tremulous question form in Katherine’s mind, but it fluttered away at the distinctive sound of Violette’s infectious laugh.
Violette, briefly in New York, galvanising the room with her presence. Violette, her hair cut short in raffish pixie fashion, so that her eyes looked luminously large. Violette in a mannish black silk trouser suit, decorated only with an intricate artist’s clasp.
‘And yet another Violette, this time,’ Jacob teased, lifting her off her feet, a note of warm approval in his voice.
‘I’m masquerading, playing fashion games,’ she whispered so they could all hear, unlike ma belle Katherine, who will never feel the need to. Ca va, petite?’ she hugged Katherine, then corrected herself, ‘Ma grande, I should say, since you now tower over me.
‘And Leo, my favourite man.’
He kissed her on one cheek cutting sho
rt the second as he spied a new arrival.
‘Claudia, Claudia,’ he called his girlfriend over and held her hand tightly.
‘I can see I’ve been displaced in Leo’s affections,’ Violette pouted wryly. Both she and Katherine gazed at the girl’s openly sensuous movements, the clinging magenta frock, the dramatically outlined eyes against the pale skin, the fall of blonde hair.
‘Well, well, well,’ Violette murmured, ‘A man’s taste revealed,’ she caught Katherine’s glance and smiled conspiratorially. Then, with a dramatic gesture, she put a hand to her brow, and turned to Jacob, ‘I’d almost forgotten. I took the liberty of inviting my friend, Carlo, along. Carlo Negri, you remember Katherine. The madman has just flown in from Rome on a whim, to spend a few days with me here. It’s alright isn’t it, Jacob? He’ll be around in a little while. He wanted to rest and freshen up before foisting himself on you.’
‘Of course, of course, Violette.’ Jacob smiled.
Katherine read a slight strain in Violette’s voice.
She echoed her father’s assurance, ensured another place at table. The room was now alive with people. Corks popped, glasses tinkled, delicate canapés were served, laughter sounded.
Thomas appeared, dapper in a dinner jacket. Blue eyes twinkling. He surveyed the apartment, surveyed Katherine. ‘Wonderful Schätzchen, wonderful. You have done well. And you look like a blushing bride. Is the dress a hint? Do I see a groom?’
He caught her embarrassed flush, the flash of anger in those cool eyes. ‘Now, now, don’t tell me that you put on that dress tonight in all naïveté?’ he tsked humorously. ‘Let me go and congratulate Jacob. On the success of the refurbishment, I mean,’ he chuckled, his expression roguish. ‘And then I shall come back. I have a little present for you.’
He left her just as Carlo Negri was shown in. It had been over a year since Katherine had seen him and again she was struck by the magnetism of those coal dark eyes, the indolence of his gestures as he took her hand and playfully brought it to his lips. ‘La bellissima Katrina,’ he murmured. ‘The one woman whom I might almost leave my roulette table for.’ He held her gaze.
Memory and Desire Page 43
