A Favourite of the Gods and a Compass Error

by Sybille Bedford

  “That was rather a laugh, it almost made me decide to let the divorce go through. You see, Michel must have come very near the end of his money. That side of the Devaux have never been more than just well off (it’s my people who didn’t regard it as beneath them to go into industry who are rich), they have a good deal of land—they never sell—but they’ve always put more into it than they took out, and now that Michel is using the land as a guinea-pig there is nothing to take out. He’s been involved in other enterprises, not commercial ones needless to say, and he’s been quite remarkably unlucky. Add to it his habit of giving money away. All you have to do is to be a friend of his and ask him, he’ll be too proud to refuse. They don’t know how little he’s got left nowadays, nobody knows about the lump sum he gave me. That was a private agreement preliminary to our first divorce; the one that didn’t go through.

  “It’s a far more intolerable situation for a poor man to be married to the woman who expected his money than to have her merely as his mistress, she knows that she isn’t stuck with him and so won’t let him feel it so much.

  “Luckily I made inquiries. The boot is on the other foot, the poor old lady so conveniently dying left a fortune. An American fortune, I’ll have you remember, not the safest thing at the moment. All this is no news to you, but it was to me and I bet that I’ve got more information about facts and figures than you have—I’ve even seen her list of investments, an American Consulate is not the fortress people like to think it is. The slump is bound to get worse but for the present at any rate she could well afford to give you decent pocket money.

  “Don’t protest. What difference does it make to me whether she is stingy or has reasons of her own to keep you short. What interests me at the moment are her reactions when she finds out what Michel regards as legitimate expenditure. I wonder whether he thinks the time has come to build himself an electric brain. Perhaps he won’t consider himself free to do so if they aren’t married. I see that I will have to think again.

  “To return to my narrative. I arrived; I saw you; I saw the way you looked at me. It wasn’t the kind of appeal that Rosie had had in mind. But it was going to do.

  “Well, that first evening was pretty uphill, your strutting and talking big at the Fourniers’ party, you were absurd, you were pathetic, you were a colossal little bore.

  “But we don’t have to go into that now, I can see you are sufficiently aware of it yourself.

  “Next night was our dinner on my balcony. I noticed that you didn’t take to my nice mise en scène; you balked and were hostile and critical. That was when you first began to interest me. I had expected you to spill the beans after my first soft look and your third glass of champagne. You refused the latter and I couldn’t bring myself to produce the first. I am a truthful woman fundamentally, I don’t like playing parts that I despise.

  “You were very much on your guard about being drawn out. Drawn out about their guilty secret (which you did not guard so well after all), you were ready enough to blab about your own. You longed for me to know about you and Therese, didn’t you? Curious ambition, when you think that the only man or woman on this coast she hadn’t slept with are probably Michel and me. Even if Loulou is im-potent, need she be quite so promiscuous?

  “Do I see you flinch again?

  “So then I tried a tack or two to find out how far you could be led or pushed and in what directions. I realized just in time that you were slipping away. You were quite astute about one thing, you felt that I was incapable of being interested in you emotionally, you could not believe that my affections were involved (perhaps I haven’t got any?), I might have been interested erotically, your instincts may have told you that this was not inconceivable, but there you were on most uncertain ground, as well as uncertain of yourself, and I did nothing to help you. (All that is of the past. Let it remain in the air between us.) I rather think that in your own heart you wanted your sentiment for me to remain platonic, if only to keep it apart from your easier encounters. You may have had a sound instinct (for an intellectual of the kind you imagine yourself to be, you certainly have a good many) as to what is possible at your age and stage. Very young people are perfectly capable of love, they are sometimes capable of a sensually adequate affair; they are very very rarely capable of managing the two together, the whole thing is too much for them. And there’s something else I don’t mind telling you about—to show you that I am neither unfair nor biased and only harp on your bad points—I want to tell you something about your looks. I can safely do so as I’ve noticed that you don’t care about them yourself one way or the other, and I don’t think you ever will. People can take or leave them as far as you’re concerned; conceit or indifference it comes to the same. You want to be liked for other qualities. So a compliment from me at the point we have reached is not going to boost your morale. Well, your looks, my dear, are charming; they’re not exactly conventional and I’m not going to predict what they will be like in twenty years from now with your guzzling all the way, but for the present they will do, they will do nicely for any man, boy, or girl.

  “I’m not digressing. I did have, I do have, an interest in you, it’s genuine—so that confused you too—it’s not personal (I don’t need you), it’s a clinical, a general interest. I told you that people are my main thing. I didn’t want to lose you for more than one reason and when I saw that I was about to, I had to put on the kind of act I dislike, I pulled out the organ stops and told you about ‘my life,’ about the ‘façade’ life had forced on me—mawkish rubbish, I did resent that.”

  “You did not really tell me anything,” Flavia said, “I thought about it later, it didn’t hang together.”

  “The devil it didn’t?”

  “It wasn’t about your life at all, it was mostly about French attitudes.”

  “You know,” Andrée said, “I could almost like you at times.”

  Flavia said, “I must ask you again: why don’t you let Michel go? Go in form? I still don’t understand. What can you hope to gain?”

  “You have read enough to know about l’acte gratuit.”

  But Flavia was intent on unravelling it along her own lines. “It isn’t as if . . .”

  “Say it.”

  “As if he’d ever come back to you.”

  “Are you sure? (Assuming that I wanted him.)”

  “Yes,” said Flavia.

  “So young and so untender. (That’s what he once said to me.) And what makes you so sure, my tactful one?”

  “A man like him does not put up with what you are.”

  “He did have to put up with it for a good long time.”

  Flavia said, “That was his tragedy.”

  Andrée stood up. They were facing each other across the enormous table. “Still full of fine words? I haven’t crushed you yet. You haven’t heard enough home-truths. What about yourself? Do you think he . . . a man like him (an ideal judge!) will put up with you now? Do you think he could bear your association with me? Quite apart from its results. Won’t he, won’t they, look at you also with new eyes?”

  Flavia brought out, “I shall tell them exactly . . . what happened.”

  “Yes——?”

  “That you stole their address.”

  “Crude, my poor child, crude. One would think you had spent most of your young life in a police court. In your story, your . . . confession (gracious, your stammer again) would you mention your own gullibility?”

  Flavia nodded.

  “Your . . . infatuation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your running after me? Your refusal to listen to Therese?”

  “Yes.”

  “Speaking of Therese, does your mother know—she who’s such a one for les beaux garçons—is your mother aware of your . . . deviationist tastes? Don’t frown. I can use other terms, there is quite a choice, classical, medical, contemporary. Let’s try if you’ve heard any of them.” She did. “You don’t like that one? Does your mother know that it applies to
you? Answer me!”

  “I don’t think I knew myself.”

  “Meaning, until Therese? I suppose you will have to include your association with the Loulou family in the tale you are planning to unfold to Michel? It won’t be so easy.”

  “Not easy,” said Flavia.

  “But mummy will forgive you?”

  “Andrée—Andrée, is there nothing that could stop you from doing it?”

  “If I believed, for instance, that they’d be more unhappy married than not married. I was rather afraid that she wouldn’t give a damn. Fortunately you took the trouble to reassure me on that score.”

  “Is there nothing you would take in exchange? Nothing I could give you?”

  “A bribe, dear?”

  “Something you wanted.”

  “What could I want?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather be free yourself?”

  “I am free.”

  “To marry again?”

  “Marry the kind of man who puts up with what you say I am? You wouldn’t mind that? My marrying some inferior Michel as long as I leave the original to your mama?”

  “Isn’t there anyone you want for yourself?”

  “Oh, for a time. My. . . influence on people doesn’t last as long as you might think. (Michel was rather unique in that regard.) Besides I don’t care about domesticity, or respectability. It’s I who don’t give a damn; your mother’s turned out to be the conventional one, not surprising perhaps when you consider her—let’s not qualify—past. I know, rumour may exaggerate, she couldn’t have had quite as many lovers, though she must be rather older than she admits to being.”

  “Constanza! She who never dreams of lying about something like her age!”

  “Ah—I have provoked you into using the sacred name.”

  Flavia controlled herself.

  “You are going to hear something else. You do know whom you are really in love with?” Andrée gave her a long look; in her softest voice she said, “You are madly in love with her.”

  After a moment, Flavia said slowly, “Everything you touch becomes . . . hideous.”

  “Or true? Oh, you do have no stomach for reality. You don’t want to see yourself as what you are—you, who are worse than your mother.” Andrée’s voice went up, “Oh, I told Rosette, never fear, St-Jean will be ringing with it, the story of the man you dragged into your bed—you can’t even remember whether he’s called Marc or Charles—you little pervert, you cold-blooded slut, shall we talk about what you let him do to you?”

  Andrée was pressing her hands against the edge of the big table, the part that represented the extreme southeastern corner of France. “Shall we name the rather . . . indelicate? things people do with each other for lust or for money, or conjugal duty or sentiment, and which you allowed to be done to you to please me? Of all the forms of prostitution yours surely takes the biscuit.” There followed a sequence of precisely phrased obscenities, “And that was what you let him do? And that?”

  Flavia had stopped her ears.

  Andrée became shrill.

  Flavia cried, “But . . . you are raving?” She was shaking herself. She looked at Andrée with a sense of the ground giving way, of sliding into the past. “You are like . . . you are like . . .” She did not finish the sentence, she did not say that she was hearing Anna.

  •

  Presently, and quite abruptly, Andrée stopped.

  Flavia said, “I must go now.”

  Andrée once more in full self-possession asked, “Go to what?” And went on, “So you are sending a telegram? I can read your thoughts. But it’s not going to be much use your warning them, my detectives will be on their way to Madrid now. By air. I daresay it’ll take them another twenty-four hours on a Spanish train, but you don’t imagine that Michel and Mrs. H. will be able to cover their tracks after ten weeks in Almuñecar?”

  Flavia said, “You haven’t really answered me: I would do anything for you, anything in the world, if you will let the divorce go through.”

  Andrée looked at her. “What have you got to offer?” “Nothing now,” said Flavia. “But I would work hard, I could work for the future.”

  “For my financial support? Supplementary income is always useful, though hardly an adequate inducement in my case. I’m rather well off, you know.”

  “I might . . . become something.”

  “And dedicate your Ph.D. thesis to me?”

  “If I promised to keep myself at your disposal for the whole of my life, doing everything you told me—the bad things, too—if I promised to serve you, like a pact, you know?”

  “Ready to sell your soul?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your proposal shows some insight. Yet, once more, too crude. Childish and crude. No, I do not need a sorcerer’s apprentice. As for your future—that academic future!—frankly, I don’t believe you’ve got one. You are a precocious puppy and you’ve got a good memory (too good) for parrotting what you’ve read and heard, but have you ever proved your worth in the slightest way? Have you tried? You haven’t even sat for an exam; at your age people like Michel and I had got our bachots—summa cum laude, what else?—not that it means much, but since you do cherish these ambitions, it’s rather essential.” Still leaning against the table, Andrée picked up a little co-operative winery off the Roussillon. She was speaking with the utmost deliberation and gravity, without any of the maniacal strain of a few minutes ago, putting behind each word a full and memorable weight of conviction. “You haven’t got what it takes—you are a flash in the pan—you think about doing things, that’s all—you’re a dilettante. You will never get a degree, Flavia, you will never be a fellow of your college. Never, do you hear me? Never.”

  Even at that moment Flavia recalled the fact that she had kept from speaking of the other thing, the secret thing, her hope one day to write.

  She went round the table and took the winery out of Andrée’s hand before it came to any more harm. She uncrumpled it and replaced it accurately. As she turned to the door, Andrée followed her.

  “And what are you going to do with the sweater I gave you? Try to burn it? You’ll find that stuff pretty hard to light. Throw my sweater in the dustbin? Give it to the femme de ménage? Such common gestures. Well, it’s your problem, one of your minor ones.”

  •

  Flavia ran through the house, the verandah, the garden, at the gate Fournier’s nephew stepped into her way. “At last, I’ve been trying to get hold of you——” She ran on. “I’ve got to see you, I’ve got to talk to you——”

  “Not now, for God’s sake, not now.”

  8. CORNERED

  1.

  TO THERESE the essential facts were quickly told. She had no remedy, offered no consolation.

  “C’est mal,” she said, shaking her great head, “c’est mal.”

  Her soft word was for Flavia’s mother. To Flavia protesting her initial good intentions she said with final sternness, “That was no excuse.”

  2.

  During the days that followed Flavia did not stir from the villa except for a walk after dark. She remained in her room in the mornings sequestering herself from the femme de ménage, pleading a bilious attack through the door, feeling as sick as she said. The rest of the time she spent pacing the floor downstairs: recapitulating. Her most concrete reflection was, If only it were still eight days—nine days—ten days ago.

  Twice the Fournier nephew called. He knocked at this door and that, called her name under windows, walked round the house, while she lay low till he went. The second time he left a note which she destroyed unread, feeling that she could not bear communicating with him again in any form.

  One day she found two letters in the box. The first was from Mr. James and it was post-marked Rome. It was a long letter containing many sheets of fine rapid script, requiring more than one reading to take in. Mr. James’s first paragraph revealed that he was in Rome, had travelled to Rome: the prince had had a heart attack.

  No
t the most serious kind, he reassured her at once, then a few lines farther down the page appeared to contradict himself. He had set out from London, the letter went on, as soon as he received the news, Rico after all—though nobody ever seemed to remember that—was one of his oldest friends, his earliest friend in Rome; moreover he had realized that Constanza must have been sent for and that in the circumstances she might be alone. This indeed had proved to be the case. Here followed particulars about trains, arrivals and departures; Flavia skipped these for the present. On another page she found (some passages stood out more legibly than others),

  . . . end of an epoch . . . at least so it is to me . . . sad to think that you, dear girl, will never have known. . . .

  It was over then? The prince——? And here,

  . . . glad to learn that the government have promised a safe-conduct to your mother . . . no attempts while she is here to bring her to book for her political peccadillos . . . last illness of a parent still respected in Italy. . . grateful the régime . . . not entirely dehumanized.

  So the prince was dead?

  But no,

  . . . tenderly and competently nursed by Giulia . . . fully conscious . . . great pleasure in your mother’s presence . . . oppressive . . . writing to you in the very salotto dear Anna used to . . . still remarkable how uninhabitable the house became after she left. . . . My hotel room. . . stifling . . . Santa Maria Sopra Minerva . . . to be near . . . a seven minutes’ walk . . . the Corso . . . the sirocco. . . . Never known Rome so empty. . . one used to be away. . . season of saturnali . . . ferragosto . . . evening in Trastevere with one of your great-uncles-in-law. . . . Rico . . . almost cheerful . . . apparently improving every day, although he himself . . . quite certain of a second attack. Curiously enough everybody else here expects this, too . . . according to the doctors nothing in the clinical condition to justify. . . of a far less serious nature than my own two years ago . . . and here I am to tell the tale (for the time being). . . . His sisters . . . your mother. . . Giulia . . . dissolving into tears. . . Italian women. . . extraordinary the way she becomes one of them here . . . so much stoicism . . . open emotion. . . . She wonders, she speaks of it, whether her true life and lines may not have been to have remained here . . .“They plucked me from my father”. . . They did that! But true lines? I, who saw her in those years before the war in London. . . . Now, such certitude of death . . . to her—you know her—it is the final point: Extinction . . . with it goes, when does it not? a part of her own life. . . . Too much in one year. . . . Michel Devaux . . . glad to have had a glimpse . . . between trains . . . saw him off while your mother was taken straight to the palazzo.