A Favourite of the Gods and a Compass Error

by Sybille Bedford

  “Did you mention where we are going?”

  “New York,” he said.

  “America!” said Constanza. Then she said, “I don’t know. It’s too quick, too sudden,”

  “You have taken your time about it,” he said.

  “If I ever do go, I feel I ought to be more . . . prepared. I’m sorry my being so untravelled is proving such a nuisance. But you can understand?”

  “No,” he said. “But we do as you wish.”

  He was like that with her. Tolerant, unexacting. Uncurious. He would ask, defer to, what she wanted; then take over and see to it.

  He put off his own sailing. A few cables, a couple of telephone calls. The Île de France next Friday. There was something almost ostentatious about his unencumbrance with a secretary. All done by himself in a quarter of an hour, simply but concentratedly. With, obviously, a great deal of money, and disregard for money, behind it, and an entire absence of anxiety, of nerves. Living with her mother, Constanza was used to a certain smoothness of the surface of life. This was a different order of smoothness, on a different scale. She found it inhuman, alien to her sense of measure, but for the time being she suspended judgement. She listened to Lewis, watched his dealings, and could not decide whether he had reached a fine peak of all but subliminal swagger, or whether this was the man, wholly unselfconscious and not showing off at all.

  It was the same with his self-assurance that had already impressed her in Cambridgeshire, that also was, possibly, too complete to be real. Yet there it was: solid, calm, even modest. It was not conceit, there was nothing high-pitched about it. It was sang-froid, Constanza decided, and she liked it very much. Lewis had really loved Simon. Again and again he told her how much he owed to him. During their brief friendship that much younger man had been a clarifying, even liberating, influence. It was Simon who had provided the key phrase to the way Lewis later organized his life: the separation of work and money, writing and money. One should be able, Simon had believed, to write as little as one must.

  “And poor Simon never wrote . . .” said Constanza.

  “He wrote my Douanier book,” said Lewis. “The best part of it. It was my material; his words. He said I wrote like a quadruped. All that’s a dead secret.”

  This was another angle that fascinated her: The things Lewis came out with and the things he withheld. He never volunteered a fact about himself until he was bang in front of it, then out he came with it, square and straight enough, but without a frill of trimming. There it was, take it or leave it, as concrete and as unrevealing as a meteor. Once he mentioned a son.

  Constanza raised an eye-brow.

  “I’ve got one.”

  “What age?” she asked.

  “About the same as your girl’s.”

  “Only child?”

  “No.”

  “And the mother?”

  “My first wife.”

  “No longer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Lewis, have you got a second wife?”

  “Not at present.”

  Something crossed her mind. “You weren’t married by any chance in 1918?”

  “I was.”

  Constanza pondered on the various aspects of that past situation.

  “And you took that chance over my divorce? Madman!”

  “There wasn’t the slightest chance of her getting to know about it.”

  “She might have learnt it from the newspapers.”

  “She couldn’t.”

  “Do you mean that she couldn’t read? Or that she couldn’t read English?” Constanza was beginning to feel conspicuous with her questions, but she was curious and she longed to know. “Please, Lewis. Or do you mean that she wasn’t called Mrs. Ware?”

  “She could read.”

  “Oh, she was Mrs. Crane,” said Constanza.

  “No,” said Lewis.

  Another aspect presented itself. “What would you have done, poor man, if I had said yes to you in 1918?”

  “Divorced,” he said blandly.

  •

  He was quite patient when once or twice during the next days she brought the subject up again. “Where is this family of yours lurking now? The boy of Flavia’s age who isn’t an only child?”

  “The boy’s at Eton,” said Lewis.

  Constanza laughed so loud that everybody in the restaurant looked up.

  •

  When he had to sail they made an appointment to meet a few weeks later, in September, at Genoa. Constanza kept it, and when she met him things had changed between them: she was no longer searching for her past, she was meeting Lewis. Within a week she said very well she would marry him.

  Again he took over. Marriage in Brussels at a Mairie in October. A fortnight in Paris. He had commitments that winter in South America and they would sail, if she agreed, for Rio de Janeiro after Christmas. They could come back by way of Peru, he would like to show her the Inca ruins. “We can go or not go to the United States.”

  “Don’t you have to go a good deal for your . . . commitments?” she asked.

  “They don’t commit you,” Lewis said. “I like independence. Your independence.”

  Constanza told herself that at last she was getting what she had wanted.

  She sent for Flavia. “What if she takes against me?” said Lewis. “Would you throw me over?”

  Constanza said she only wanted Flavia to be in on things, able to see for herself; she did not believe in springing things on people. “She’s nearly grown-up, and I must warn you, she is very curious.”

  “Like her mother.”

  “Not at all. I never ask you where you come from. She may. So will my mother. She will ask me.”

  Flavia arrived, greatly pleased to be meeting Lewis Crane. She submitted him to a well-laid set of questions. Did he have to have a particular setting to write in, or did he believe in writing as Hemingway was supposed to have said in your head? Did he make his own indexes? When did he meet Modigliani? Did he think it was possible to look at one picture for five or six hours on end as his confrère Meier-Graefe said to have done when he had himself locked up with the El Greco in the Escurial?

  Lewis answered. He said that personally he found half an hour about his limit; he liked to leave a picture and come back refreshed. But he well believed that Meier-Graefe might have done so: “He has huge capacities, everything he does is on a large scale.”

  Flavia pocketed this with a look as if she had received sheer gold.

  Lewis had immediately taken them to the excellent restaurant of their hotel. If he had a way with headwaiters, Flavia here was one up on him, being more voluble, more interested and more native. Lewis sat back while she and Constanza and the staff exchanged a liturgically divided dirge: Too late. . . . Too soon. . . . Alas. . . . So Brief. . . .

  He caught the gist: White truffles not in season. “Do you think a French wine?” he addressed his guest.

  Flavia’s pleased look deepened.

  “Shall we make it Burgundy?” he asked.

  She spoke up. “Don’t you think perhaps . . . claret?” Her tone was social, light.

  Lewis gave back the wine-list to the waiter. “Choose us a good claret,” he said in French.

  Flavia’s expression changed.

  Constanza said, “Oh, leave it to her, Lewis. She’ll do us very well.”

  Lewis signed to the waiter and the list was brought round to the girl. “Thank you,” she said to all of them. She read with a happy smile, took her time, ordered. She turned to Lewis apologetically. “It’s more interesting this way. Of course I make mistakes. Inexperience. It needs years and years. Unfortunately wine is a very expensive——” she was at a loss for a word.

  “Hobby?” said Lewis.

  “More than that,” she said.

  Constanza was watching Lewis. He leant across the table and said in his most friendly, serious way: “I must tell you how much you remind me of your father.”

  Flavia lowered her eyes. �
��Oh, do I?” she said.

  Lewis talked while Constanza ate, as usual, like a hungry country person and Flavia ate and drank with feeling. Later she said in her social tone, Constanza knew she used when her heart was set on something very much, “Could I possibly persuade you to come to the Gallery with me tomorrow? It would be such a treat for me to go with you.”

  Lewis said he was no expert on Old Masters.

  Flavia said, “Oh, cher maître!” Then she asked him to tell her how exactly did one influence the art market? And could he also explain why people bought paintings as a safe investment when they were no last-ditch investment at all? “It puzzles me as much as the gold standard. What can you do with gold in a revolution or a famine, except fill teeth? The Germans, as you know, are backing their new currency with grain.”

  Lewis said she had something there and he was grateful that more people had not caught on. Financial practice was much more mysterious, he said with delight, and much less logical than would appear sound to a donnish mind. He ordered brandy and, to Constanza’s amusement, began to tell them quite a lot (up to a point) about the workings of the international art market.

  •

  Next morning when they were alone, Flavia said, “I’ve got great news, too, mummy. Mr. James has found me a most interesting family in London: they both teach and they’re going to coach me for the University Entrance. I’m going to live with them in their house at Hampstead. Nonna has said yes. I’m to go in two weeks.” She added with relish, “For Michaelmas Term.”

  Constanza congratulated her. “It’s always nice to know what one wants,” she said.

  “Nonna doesn’t know your news, Constanza.”

  “There hasn’t been much time, darling. Lewis doesn’t want to meet her before we’re married. I’ve decided how I can present it to her, I’m going to stop at Alassio on my very way to Brussels and tell her as a big surprise. Anyhow I couldn’t stand a lot of fuss and dithering. I don’t think I can like getting married. How does this plan strike you?”

  “She didn’t like his attack on Van Gogh,” said Flavia, “the slashing attack as the papers called it. It upset her very much. Why did Lewis do it?”

  “He doesn’t like the Sun-Flowers and he thinks Van Gogh absurdly over-rated. Darling, can you keep your mind on human affairs for one minute? Mama didn’t know then that we should meet Lewis.”

  “She longs for you to be settled again.” Flavia fell into the principessa’s voice, “Constanza’s life has been a great disappointment to me——”

  “Stop it. Does she talk so much about it?”

  “It’s getting worse.”

  “The move’s been a failure,” said Constanza. “She used to like a place at least at first.”

  “Mena says she’s restless. Mena says——”

  “Darling, Mena has been crying wolf about mama so long. You know what I am hoping for? That Lewis will brighten things for her. Think if we could persuade her to come on those long journeys with us—to South America—I can see her take to it.”

  Flavia said, “What are Lewis’ politics, Constanza?”

  “I wish I knew. Do ask him.”

  “I have. He said he was a spectator.”

  Constanza groaned.

  •

  When Flavia left them a few days later, all had been arranged. Constanza, who was moving on with Lewis to Milan and other places, was going to stop at Alassio in ten days’ time, and spend twenty-four hours with the principessa then she and Flavia would start out together on their journeys.

  “Lewis has booked for us on the Calais Express,” Flavia said. “Mummy, I think he’s reliable. He will look after you.”

  “Don’t let your mother lose the tickets,” he said, “I shall be counting on you that she catches her connection.”

  “D’accord, mon père,” said Flavia, “I’ll see that she gets to the Mairie.”

  They were on the platform, seeing Flavia off. Constanza said, “You don’t happen to be a Catholic after all, Lewis?”

  “No.”

  “I would have liked to show myself to my father as an honest woman for once. The Mairie will be no help at all.”

  Lewis let out, “There’s been some red-tape hitch, we shall be married at the Consulate at Brussels.”

  Constanza said mischievously, “May I ask which consulate? I shall have to share your nationality.”

  “British.”

  She laughed and waited. There was nothing further.

  “I do wish my ear were better,” she said, “as all I have to go on is your accent. It isn’t foreign, it isn’t quite American; I can’t place it in England. Dear Lewis, are you by any chance a South African, a New Zealander? A Colonial?”

  He kept his friendly quizzical smile. “Perhaps.”

  “Who’s Who, mummy. Or don’t we stoop to that?”

  Lewis gave them no sign.

  “What if we find a blank, mummy?”

  Constanza said, “If this is a game, Lewis, it is very uninteresting indeed.”

  •

  From the first Lewis had made Constanza feel that she was the world to him. And that was the one solid thing between them. The rest, most of the rest was covered by Lewis’ will. Milan was not like Genoa, the first days of Genoa; more and more Constanza found herself feeling in terms of plans, plans for her family. And perhaps this was best after all, she thought: at long last I shall have my mariage de raison. And she liked him immensely as a man, she liked him as a companion, a buccaneer side had always appealed to her; and most of all, most free of all, was that she liked him, was able to hold him in affection without that awful compassion she had for Simon, the compassion one comes to feel sooner or later for all living beings. Lewis, like the men of her earlier days, was her equal, her accomplice, her brother.

  He was also still irreducibly Simon’s dark horse. They had some high moments together; yet this remained nagging, and before they parted, a week before their wedding, they had another bout of the question-and-answer game.

  Provoked at last, Lewis said, “Why do you want to know so much about me?”

  “Why do you want to tell so little?”

  “I thought you were a woman without prejudices.”

  “Then give me something to have no prejudices about. Wanting to know who a man’s father was, wanting to know how he grew up is not prejudice.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because it is part of the man. Because the whole is more true than a half. Because the truth is more interesting than mysteries.”

  He was silent.

  “Because,” and here she held his eyes, “the reasons for mysteries are often childish or shabby.”

  He met this well. “What if the truth is utterly irrelevant to the man?”

  “Is it, ever?”

  “Who has the right to another man’s truth?” he said.

  She accepted this. “Ah, but then—if the man wishes to separate himself from the truth, then I think he ought to provide some substitute.”

  “A jolly good lie?”

  “A jolly good lie. A cover-story, well-cooked up, well-served. He ought to give up the pretentiousness of mystery, the teasing, the invitation. . . .”

  He drew a red herring. “So you believe in lies, Constanza?”

  “I’ve never been able to see how one can manage without them. We would hurt each other too much. I lie like a trooper; and for my own convenience. The thing is to remember one is lying. The truth is safe enough as long as one does that.” Unlike my poor mother who even hesitates over the whitest of social lies. . . . This Constanza did not say aloud for Lewis was a stranger still to Anna and the problem of Anna.

  He said nothing. Constanza had never learnt to cope with silence; she did not use it herself.

  “Is it that you want the world to think you have been through romantic hardships?” She felt she had to do it, had to clear it up, as it was something in him which she could not accept and which might wreck them because she would
not accept it, as Simon’s jealousy had done. “I can’t make out whether you want me to think you are, or whether you want to hide from me that you may be, the son of an anarchist Rumanian tailor?”

  “I love you when you talk like that, Constanza,” he said. It was no use; she got no further.

  The next day she was on her way to Alassio, and that evening she told Anna. It was devastating. Anna ranted herself into a state of despair from which there could be no return by argument. Mena tried to keep her arms round her, Flavia left the room; Constanza stood, as she had so often stood before her mother, chilled, at a loss. She was aware that there were many things against her marriage from her mother’s point of view (as well as things that she knew might please her), but there was nothing rational in that storm. Anna asked no real questions, listened to no answer. It was only late that night when Constanza was alone that she was able to see it as what it was, an out-cry against life. A cry of disappointment: Is that all you brought to me after these many years? all that is come of promise? all that was in store?

  I am marrying Lewis Crane, a man full of life, who will give us all a new lease, the sense of a new lease. Or: I am marrying a middle-aged art-dealer who refuses to admit he is one, a critic with a shady reputation.

  Constanza blamed herself; for lacking showmanship, for failing in imagination. She ought to have persuaded Lewis to appear: Lewis in the kind of Isotta he was apt to conjure up, bland and quizzical, laden with presents, alight with plans. Now it was a mess; perhaps irretrievable.

  In the morning, Flavia said in a small voice, “Are we still going?” Constanza, determined, cold, answered, “What else?”

  The principessa did not come down to luncheon; then suddenly appeared, stood in the door.

  She pointed a hand. “You are even taking the child from me! You are all a treacherous breed. I wish to heaven I had never set a foot on Europe.”

  Badly shaken they were driven to the station by the principessa’s man. They were nearly late for the train. As they boarded it Constanza touched a hand to her ruby as it was her way.

  2

  THE NAME of the French fishing port where they found themselves that night was St-Jean. St-Jean-le-Sauveur. For the first few days circumstances propped her; afterwards, unaided, Constanza pursued her instinctive course. She refused to move.