Lady From Argentina

by James Pattinson

  ‘So it didn’t work?’

  ‘I guess not. If people want something real bad, no law is going to stop them getting it. There’s always plenty of guys willing to break the law and feed the market and get rich doing it.’

  ‘You think all drugs should be made legal?’

  ‘There’s something to be said for it. The theory is that it would drive the price down and the pushers would be out of business. Crime would drop because addicts wouldn’t have to steal and mug and rob liquor stores and sell their bodies to feed the craving. Well, sure, it might work. Or we might have a hundred or a thousand times more junkies on the books, and that wouldn’t be so good, would it?’

  Sometimes she wondered whether the gawky American would ever become a great painter, or even a moderately successful one. The apartment was cluttered with his canvases, and occasionally he took a selection and hung them on the line in one of those open-air exhibitions that provided an opportunity for struggling artists to present their work to the general public. It had to be admitted that the general public was not exactly clamouring for the art of Wilbur Manning. As far as she could make out he had never sold anything. But he refused to be depressed by this.

  ‘Look at Van Gogh. How many pictures did he sell in his lifetime? Not one. Yet now they sell for millions of dollars.’

  ‘Are you content to wait that long for recognition? Do you think the bank would give you the loan of one million to be paid back post mortem when you’ve become as famous as the Dutchman?’

  He grinned. ‘Now you’re ribbing.’

  ‘Maybe if you were to cut off an ear . . .’

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Stow that. I need both ears.’

  ‘It was merely a suggestion. He did it.’

  ‘He was mad.’

  ‘And you aren’t?’

  He made a grab at her. ‘Sure, I am. Mad about you, honey. Let’s you and me hit the hay.’

  *

  She had been living with Wilbur Manning for three months or so when she heard the news of her father’s death from a heart attack. She felt a stab of remorse: reflecting that she should have made the effort to see him more often. She had always been meaning to and always putting it off until later. There had seemed to be plenty of time, and now of course there was no time at all. Now she would never see him again.

  The funeral took place in Paris, only a short distance from where she was living, and she went to it. There was a pretty big crowd of mourners present. Charles Lacoste had been well respected in the film industry, and many quite famous people, including some actors and actresses who had started their careers under his direction and made it to the top, had come to pay their last respects.

  She noticed Frieda among them, accompanied by her third husband, a fat industrialist, fiftyish and somewhat reptilian in appearance but reputed to be worth many millions. She caught her mother’s eye for a moment, but Frieda turned her head away and neither of them attempted to make any closer contact. There would really have been nothing to say. All ties binding them together had been severed long ago.

  Wilbur had offered to accompany her, but she had declined.

  ‘There is no reason why you should bother. You never knew my father.’

  ‘That’s true. It just occurred to me that you might like some moral support.’

  ‘It’s very considerate of you,’ she said, ‘but it really isn’t necessary. I’m a big girl now. I can look after myself.’

  The fact was that she felt he might look rather conspicuous in that gathering of mourners. What would he wear? She had no desire to draw attention to herself. Not, when it came to the point, that anyone would have looked conspicuous in that motley crew. Nevertheless, she was glad she had not let him come with her. Her mother was ignorant of whom she was living with or anything else concerning her present mode of life, and she preferred to let things remain that way.

  There were other relations of Charles Lacoste at the ceremony, but none of them seemed to recognise her. They had not seen her since her childhood, and she was wearing dark glasses and did not feel obliged to introduce herself. Now that her father was dead she had made a decision to make a clean break from the family and have nothing more to do with any of them. The Strausses had apparently not considered it incumbent on them to make the journey from Germany, and with them also she would have no future dealings. She was free of the lot of them now and she would go her own way, come what might.

  She might have expected to inherit something in her father’s will, since she was his only child. But it was discovered that he had made no will; and it was of no importance anyway, for he had been heavily in debt when he died. He had made money but he had spent it freely; and so his daughter was left only with the memory.

  *

  It was years later when she came to another crossroads in her journey through life. She was still living with Wilbur, and though she knew that the present state of affairs could not last indefinitely, that no one could remain an art student drawing an allowance from a generous parent for ever, she chose not to dwell on the possibility of its coming to an end. This was just something that might eventually come to pass, but it was still no more than a tiny cloud on the distant horizon, and if she refused to look at it, it would go away.

  So she turned her gaze elsewhere and continued to live in this drugged and dreamy world of cafés and parties and long discussions on the ultimate meaning of things; this kind of Nirvana into which there came at regular intervals the remittance from four thousand miles away that made it all possible.

  Until the fateful day when there came, not a remittance but an ultimatum.

  She was in the apartment with him when the letter arrived. She saw the American air mail stamps on it and knew where it had come from; but she felt no misgiving, no suspicion that this flimsy coloured envelope might contain the dynamite to blow away the entire fabric of her present way of life.

  She watched him slit the envelope open and take out the single sheet of paper covered in a spidery handwriting. She watched him glance quickly through the letter and observed the change of expression on his face.

  ‘Jeeze!’ he said. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded. ‘What is it, Wilbur?’

  He gave a kind of strangled laugh. ‘The game’s up. That’s what it is. The goddamn game is all you pee.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said; though she had a horrible feeling that she did. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, honey, that the faucet’s been turned off. The gravy train has run into the buffers. We’re sunk, holed below the waterline. Done for. Here, read it for yourself.’

  He handed the letter to her, and she read it and knew that the cloud on the horizon had crept up on them and was covering the entire sky. The game, as Wilbur had said, was indeed up.

  The letter, which was from Wilbur’s father, Abraham Manning, was brief and to the point. In essence it stated that his patience with his youngest son had run out. The farm was not doing so well and it could no longer subsidise Wilbur’s artistic aspirations. He was, therefore, offered the choice of two alternatives: he could either stay on in Paris and support himself by his own efforts or he could return to the States and work on the farm.

  ‘Oh dear!’ she said.

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’ He was looking at her as if accusing her of taking it too lightly. ‘You know what this means, don’t you? I’ll have to go home. I’ll have to work for a living.’

  She almost burst out laughing. His evident dismay at the prospect would have been more amusing, however, if she herself had not been involved. That aspect of the situation appeared not to have occurred to him; he was thinking only of himself.

  ‘You don’t propose staying on here, then?’

  ‘How can I? What would I live on? You’re not suggesting I could suddenly start selling my pictures, are you? That horse won’t run, and you know it.’

  ‘There are other ways of earning one’s daily bread.’
r />   ‘Oh sure there are. But not for this guy. No; I don’t have a choice, no choice at all. My old pop knows that. He knows I gotta pull up stakes and hit the trail for home.’

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘You?’

  For the first time he seemed to realise that she had an interest in the problem, and it left him at a loss for words.

  ‘Yes, me. I am affected by this, you know. Or hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘Well, sure.’ He tugged at his beard, embarrassed and not certain just what to say. ‘But you see how it is.’

  ‘Of course I see how it is,’ she said. ‘I was just wondering what proposals you had regarding me.’

  ‘Proposals?’

  ‘Yes. Did you, for instance, intend taking me with you?’

  ‘Oh, well now; that’s a big question.’

  ‘I know it is. Which is why I asked it. I need to know where I stand, don’t I?’

  ‘I guess so. But there are problems. They don’t know about you back home. I’ve never said anything. If I was to turn up with a girlfriend in tow; a French girlfriend; well, I don’t know just how they’d take it.’

  ‘Would it help if we were married?’

  He looked startled. The question had taken him completely out of his stride. She saw how he was squirming and she took a perverse kind of pleasure in putting the knife in. He might at least have spared a thought for her without being goaded into it. They had, after all, been lovers for quite a while, and that ought to mean something.

  Though perhaps it had been too long. Perhaps it was high time it ended. To be perfectly frank, there were occasions when she was irked by his ways, his little mannerisms, by his utter fecklessness. That awkward gawky boyishness that she had once found so endearing no longer had the same attraction for her. It was time he grew up.

  ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked. ‘For me to marry you.’

  It was the last thing she wanted, but she did not tell him so. Why should she let him off the hook so easily?

  He began to hum and ha. She could tell that he felt himself to be in a corner and believed she really was proposing that they should marry and he should take her back to that farm in the American Midwest as his wife.

  ‘Aw,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. It would give the folks a real bad shock. They wouldn’t be expecting it. And besides, you mightn’t find it easy to settle down to life out there. It’s not like Paris. You’d miss the cafés, the people we know, the fun.’

  ‘What you’re telling me is that you don’t want to take me with you. Is that it?’

  ‘It’s not a question of what I want, is it? I mean what we’re talking about is what’s best for you.’

  ‘Oh so now your only interest is in my welfare. And there was I thinking you were simply concerned with how this affected you. Well, you needn’t worry, because I wouldn’t marry you and I wouldn’t go to that awful farm in the backwoods even if you begged me to. Not now; not any time. Understand?’

  ‘It’s not in the backwoods,’ he said. But she could tell that he was relieved. His pride might have been damaged a little, but the relief made up for that. Now he did not have to wriggle his way out of any responsibility he might have felt for her. She had saved him the bother. ‘But you’ve made the right decision, of course. We’ve had some good times together, but that’s all finished now. What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I reckon you will. It’s the way you’re made, isn’t it? And I still love you, you know. Guess I always will.’

  He moved towards her and stooped to kiss her. She let him do so, and even responded a little. But then suddenly she reached up and grabbed his beard with her right hand. She gave a vicious tug and plucked out some of the wiry black hair. He gave a yell and recoiled from her, staring with disbelief at the tuft of beard in her fingers.

  ‘What the hell! Why did you do that?’

  She answered coolly: ‘Oh, I just thought I’d like to see what was really behind all that face fungus. And it’s like I guessed, just piss and wind. Nothing but piss and wind. Know something, Wilbur? I’m not going to miss you. I’m not going to miss you one little bit.’

  ‘Well, you bitch!’ he said.

  It was not, she reflected, going to be the most amicable of partings.

  Chapter Nine – A Splendid City

  Nobody introduced her to Pierre. He introduced himself.

  It happened outside the cathedral of Notre Dame amongst a crowd of sightseers. She had gone there for no particular reason. She was feeling depressed, because she had recently lost a job, she owed her landlord rent for the sordid little room in which she was living and she had scarcely any money left.

  Things had never been so bad, and she knew that she would have to do something about it but could not think what. She supposed that as a last resort she might appeal to Raoul for help. He would probably send her some cash if she told him how desperate she was, but she did not wish to do this. She had had no contact whatever with him since leaving the château, and she was reluctant to go to him now with a begging-bowl. Anything but that.

  Then someone said: ‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’

  She turned her head and saw the man who had spoken smiling at her. He was fortyish, elegantly dressed, not particularly handsome but certainly not ugly, a trifle plump in the face and clean-shaven.

  ‘Magnificent?’

  ‘The cathedral.’ He made a gesture with his hand to indicate the façade of the building with its two great towers and imposing doorway. ‘It is what you were looking at, I imagine.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

  ‘But perhaps you had something else on your mind. You seemed, if I may say so, a trifle distrait.’

  He was observant, she thought. She wondered how long he had been watching her. She had not noticed him until that moment but she had not been noticing much at all; she had been too self-absorbed.

  ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Pierre Roussel.’

  He paused, as though waiting for her to be equally informative; and somehow she felt compelled to tell him her own name. That was the odd thing about him: he had this way of inviting confidence. Right from the start she felt that she could trust him completely.

  So she said: ‘I am Adelaide Lacoste.’

  When he invited her to have lunch with him she scarcely hesitated before accepting. And before the meal was finished she had told him precisely what her situation was. She had been finding life difficult ever since the departure of Wilbur, and she had taken various unskilled ill-paid jobs, none of which had lasted very long.

  The latest one had been as sales assistant in a cheap-jack jeweller’s shop. The jeweller, a smelly little man whom she thoroughly detested, was a groper. When his groping became more than she could stand she kneed him in the groin, and that was the end of that employment.

  Roussel smiled when she told him this, and she had to smile too; because it was rather amusing to look back on, even if she had not found it so at the time.

  ‘I see,’ he said, ‘that you are a person of spirit. That is something I admire. You stand up for yourself. As indeed you should. You do not believe in letting anyone push you around. Am I right?’

  She had a suspicion that he was flattering her; but perhaps he was not altogether mistaken in his assessment of her character.

  ‘It hasn’t done much for me, though. It’s put me out of a job.’

  ‘You will find something else. Perhaps I could help you.’

  ‘You? Why should you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Let us say because I wish to.’

  She did not believe him. No one could be quite as altruistic as that. There had to be something in it for him, and it was not difficult to guess what that something was. She was not unaware of the effect she had on men.

  He said: ‘But first we must find accommodation for you, since it seems you cannot go on living in your present quarters. Now what I suggest is this. I have a place which is far too large
for one person. If you wish you could stay there for a time while you look around. It would, as one might say, give you a breathing-space. How does the idea strike you?’

  It struck her as being quite obvious what he was up to; and perhaps he himself was well aware of this. But she did not reject the suggestion out of hand. The alternative was bleak. And he had that persuasive way with him which made you want to believe every word he said, even though a part of your brain was warning you not to.

  ‘You do not have to decide at once,’ he said. ‘What I suggest is that you should come with me and see what is being offered. Then, if you like it, we can go and collect your things. Now what do you say?’

  She thought about it, and there seemed to be no good reason why she should not fall in with this suggestion. After all, it did not commit her to anything. She could go to his place and take a look at it – indeed she was rather curious to see where he lived — but there would still be time to walk away if she did not care for what she saw.

  This was what she told herself, but even as she was doing so she had the feeling that with this first step the die would be cast and there would be no going back. It was, she felt, another turning-point in her life, and what she decided at this moment might affect her entire future — for good or for bad.

  Yet she hesitated only for a moment. She was being offered a way out of her predicament and she had to take it, come what might.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  *

  It was a luxury flat in a rather select quarter north of the river. As he had said, it was too large for one person, and compared with this the apartment she had shared with Wilbur was a veritable pigsty. She had been roughing it for so long that she had almost forgotten that some people still lived in this style; she had said goodbye to all that when Raoul had seen her on to the train in Bordeaux. Now it was being offered to her again, this gracious living, and she wanted it. She could not deny the fact to herself: she really wanted it.

  She realised that Roussel was observing her closely as he showed her round the flat. No doubt he could tell that she was favourably impressed, and had probably expected no less.