‘Why do you treat me like this?’
‘Leave me alone,’ I said.
‘Is this the way you behave to all the men you tumble into bed with?’ he said furiously.
‘Don’t be such an ass, Frédéric.’
‘Bitch!’ he said. ‘How I long to tell your mother.’
Here we joined our elders round the garden table. During the next hour I watched Frédéric drink three glasses of eau-de-vie.
‘I’m sure that idiot sentimental Panigon girl is in love with Alessandro,’ my mother said to me, ‘did you notice how she avoided looking at him. Was that for my benefit? Did he flirt with her?’
‘You know what he’s like, he flirts with everybody.’
‘Everybody isn’t stupid enough to think he means it. That girl’s a fool.’
‘I don’t think Cécile is a fool,’ I felt obliged to say. ‘She’s a nice girl really.’
‘I dare say. But so heavy. She’ll look like her mother in no time but she’ll never have her quick wit. What a family. I confess to a weakness for Monsieur, he knows his classics, he’s good with women and he can be an entertaining raconteur. So unlike that oafish son of his, what’s-his-name, I bet he has intentions towards you. I didn’t see you respond. You wouldn’t have such atrocious taste.’
‘I don’t like him much,’ I said.
‘I didn’t think for a minute that you could.’
Oriane was getting more bored and irritable with me every day; she was getting bored and irritable altogether. There had been few opportunities to impress or organise: the theatre bus and the pirates’ entrance were a long way behind. Philippe (whom she always treated with the greatest courtesy, as he did her), occupied with engaging and training personnel, suggested a tennis tournament: there were a number of decent players, men and girls, among the present guests at the Grand Hôtel at Bandol, they’d be pleased to take part in a small but properly set up tournament at Sanary. Oriane took it up sharp. The court was put in super trim, trophies, an umpire’s chair, boxes of new balls procured, a draw worked out, invitations issued for spectators and participants. Oriane sewed arm bands for chief organiser (herself) and linesmen. The date fixed was the first week in September. The main attraction was to be Madame Mathieu, a very high-ranking woman player indeed and a friend who promised an appearance for the final rounds (if this was to be believed).
I was delighted by the whole idea, relieved by the distraction and as serviceable as allowed. Louis was much scolded; he found it hard to give his mind to tennis as he was in serious trouble with his parents who had made producing a stipulated amount of work the condition for his being allowed to continue painting on his own instead of being returned to art school in Paris. He had chosen to paint at Sanary in order to be with Oriane, being with Oriane meant little painting, that was his dilemma. Get a couple of kerosene lamps and paint at night, she advised him, at least it’ll make a change from your sun-drenched Provençal landscapes.
When Oriane began talking Wimbledon traditions, my mother said (not to her), ‘Poor Emma Bovary had a dreary life, a dull husband, little money, she had some excuse … Your sorceress Oriane has got too much of everything. I’d like to see her in a job; I wonder what would suit her best, being headmistress of a very grand finishing school or running a maison de haute-couture?’ All the same my mother consented to take part in the great event.
The first snag came when Alessandro and Cécile Panigon were drawn to be partners in the mixed doubles. Cécile solved it in her own way: by leaving Sanary.
She waylaid me in the Place one morning as I was waylaying Oriane. She looked controlled and determined and very sad. She was going away for a time, an indefinite time, she would be looking after a great-aunt who lived near Valence who was a bit of an invalid, a difficult woman but really not bien méchante.
‘But Cécile …’
‘It was the only way papa and maman would have let me go. They think I am mad, I tell them one should sometimes sacrifice oneself.’
‘Must you go?’
‘I can’t stay here. I embarrass Sandró. And,’ she added simply, ‘je suis trop malheureuse.’
‘How will you be able to bear living near Valence with the really not so nasty aunt?’
She lifted her head. ‘I shall know that I am doing it for him.’
I thought of Rosie Falkenheim and what sustained her.
‘I have something to ask of you – will you give him this note?’
She produced it. I froze.
‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘Please. Just slip it into his pocket. It will be the last time.’
‘You must see that I cannot.’
‘You are young, like me, don’t you understand love?’
‘I cannot betray my mother.’ That was love too. Not fear. Though fear came into it. Indeed.
‘You did so before.’
‘By silence.’ No decent person in my position would have talked. ‘I could not betray Alessandro and you, I had no choice. It was bad enough. What you are asking now is active betrayal.’
She said again, ‘Please.’
I shook my head, and felt that life was awful and that no one should be asked to live it.
‘If you won’t take my note, will you give him a message? Say, “Cécile is going away tomorrow. This afternoon she will be at the place you know, at the hour you know, she has to see you once more.”’
Again I refused, feeling like Judas and Peter in one. When at last she left me, she looked sadder than when she arrived. That morning I did not seek out Oriane’s car on the port. I slunk home.
Whenever in later life I wait for a lover who might be late, who might not come, I think of Cécile Panigon that afternoon waiting in the place I did not know and did not wish to know of. There is no absolution.
‘T’es un brave coco,’ Renée Kisling said, ‘come in the boat with me.’ I felt that I was neither good nor brave, but said that I would go. She and I spent some, almost silent, hours far out on the sea and this was healing.
When I got back I heard that the Desmirails were giving a party that night for some of the tennis people. I was not asked. I was wretched again.
Midway through the tournament – which was well organised, which had a good standard of play – I found myself booked into the last eight without having shot a ball in earnest. I had not wanted to take part at all but Philippe had decreed that original club members however bad should play in at least one event. I was not booked for any doubles, and expected to be quietly out (0–6 0–6) in the first round singles. As it happened two of my opponents had to scratch – we did not have a full complement of players anyway – and there I was. Hardly had I taken in that news when we heard that the girl I was now to face – one of the better players from Bandol – had done something stupid to her ankle and was uncertain whether or not she would be all right next day. Philippe was amused.
‘We’ll have you playing in the final yet,’ he said.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Oriane, ‘the final is going to be Madame Mathieu against me.’
On that evening, a Thursday, the Bandol contingent was giving a dinner for the Sanary one at their hotel. Afterwards we sat on the terrace over fines à l’eau and orangeade. Oriane, whose table I had joined, was in a brilliant mood. On one side of her sat a British Army officer, a captain whom she had made tournament deputy-head, arm band and all. He appeared to be eating out of her hand and bewildered by her at the same time, and did not contribute much to the conversation, which on her part was extremely lively and included me. She was being nice, in the intimate way she chose at times, calling me her dear young friend, alluding to books she and I had read. At one point Frédéric Panigon – still in the men’s doubles – appeared from another table. ‘Come for a stroll with me,’ he said unceremoniously, ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Can’t you see that she’s talking to me?’ Oriane said, continuing to do so. For a moment or two Frédéric stood his ground, looking cyni
cally down at me, then desisted and walked away.
‘Is something wrong?’ said the English captain.
‘I think he’s been drinking,’ said Oriane. ‘He’s got no manners, though he’s not a mauvais garçon.’
We broke up early because of the next day’s tennis. I had come with my mother and Alessandro, and joined them again in our car. Alessandro had a job manoeuvring it out of the hotel yard alive with people and other cars leaving and turning. As we were getting clear and into the drive, Frédéric ran up to us, jumped on the running-board on Alessandro’s side, shouting into the open car window.
‘Vous avez mal gardé votre fille, Madame! Elle court après les femmes … D’you hear me? Your daughter is a slut … She runs after women and she …’
‘That’s enough, Frédéric,’ Alessandro lifted a hand off the wheel, gave him a rough push and drove on.
How much my mother – or bystanders – had heard I was not sure because though screaming, his voice had been quite thick.
‘And what did you think of the food and wine?’ my mother asked, when we were on the road, not adding, ‘Mrs Lincoln?’; she would have been well capable of it.
Further on, she said, ‘Oughtn’t we to have given that uncouth young man – I always forget his name – a lift?’
Arrived at Les Cyprès, we bade each other a good night.
Next day, Friday, early, Philippe and Oriane came to see me at the house. Philippe looked as if he had heard a very good joke. Oriane looked tragic. ‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘we just heard from Miss Beauchamp’ (the girl I was to play in the last eight later that morning), ‘her ankle is worse: you are in the semi-final.’
‘That’s impossible,’ said Oriane. ‘Madame Mathieu, three times French champion –’
‘I am to play against Madame Mathieu?’
‘She must scratch,’ said Oriane, ‘we can smuggle in someone from the other side of the draw.’
‘That’s not done,’ Philippe said. He gave a wink, ‘Not Wimbledon tradition.’
He was enjoying himself, he was also both kind and efficient. ‘Billi will play,’ he said, the childhood abbreviation of my name, which my mother generally and he sometimes used, implying a kind of paternal reassurance. ‘It is the proper thing to do, and she is brave, and she’ll do her best, who can do more? Janette Mathieu is a very nice woman who won’t care two hoots, Oriane, that you haven’t been able to provide her with a Suzanne – in fact she may be relieved that it is not Suzanne.’
Oriane looked as though he had been spitting in church.
And so it happened. Philippe was angelic, umpiring the match himself, arranging it to be played, unannounced, in the luncheon hour, with few spectators about. For me there was no known face other than Alessandro and the ball boys. Madame Mathieu appeared with her clutch of rackets, a small woman, feminine rather than athletic, possibly turned thirty (they didn’t reach their peak as early as they do now). It must have been explained to her that I was a beginner who had not arrived at the semi-final by her own efforts; in any case it was clear to her what she was up, or rather not up against from my first return of service. Philippe was right, she was a very nice and a very kind woman. She showed no surprise, dismay or condescension, she carried on for all the world as if she were fighting a plausible opponent. She must have adjusted her play but with no sign of doing so, and she still played magically well, employing her art to draw me into her rhythm; within minutes she had lifted my play. I lost all nervousness, concentrating only on movement and response. She gave me chances to play to the limit and beyond of my ability. It was an intoxicating experience. For once in my life I physically knew good tennis, a sensation of swiftness, heat, engagement, of skimming through air feet above the ground – a suspension of gravity I had known skiing – I wished it would not end. It did soon. A two-setter. Twice I’d got to fifteen, once to thirty – all, and I believe they were honest points, given Madame Mathieu’s lowering her game. When we shook hands, she said, Bien joué. Alessandro made approving noises; Philippe got down from the chair, kissed me on both cheeks and said, Bravo, mon enfant. (Oriane, who was on the premises, had not come to watch.) I thanked Madame Mathieu – who into the bargain was easy to talk to – it was all due to her kindness and great skill.
The other semi-final was played that afternoon and won of course by Oriane with such publicity as Sanary afforded, and on the Saturday took place the main event, the final between her and Madame Mathieu, and an exciting as well as a most elegant match it was. Oriane, too, lifted her game to and beyond the limits of her capacity. We saw the top professional (not professional in today’s sense) pitted against the brilliant amateur stretched to the utmost. Madame Mathieu – as had been expected – won; the match went to three sets, and once in the second set Oriane led 4–1. When it was over the loser had an ovation, people crowding round her; Oriane looked pleased with herself and had full reason to be. I queued to say my word, she did not notice me.
The prizes were given at a reception that evening. It was made a formal affair, with the men in dinner-jackets. The La Plage would have been the suitable venue yet something was due to the proprietors of the court, so it was held at the gloomy hotel. Oriane liked a challenge and had devised decorations to transform the restaurant into a pastiche ballroom. Her post was on the platform – decked out with Tricolor and Union Jack – players and public sat at tables arranged in a semi-circle below her. (I was with my mother and Alessandro, and had been prevailed upon to wear a pale blue taffeta semi-evening dress my mother had got for me some time ago at the Galeries Lafayette; her choice of unsuitable clothes was not restricted to her own.) Oriane’s deputy, the English captain, called out the names of victors and runners-up, who then walked to the platform, received their trophy – in the men’s singles and Madame Mathieu’s cases, a small silver cup – a hand-shake and, if female, an accolade from Oriane. When it was her turn, she stepped off the platform, Philippe took her place, the captain called out her name, Philippe bestowed the prize, Oriane received it with grace and there was another ovation. She then resumed her place: it was the turn now of the runners-up of the various semi-finals to be handed their prizes. I had not foreseen this and was as surprised as the rest of the audience (that semi-final had been played in camera as it were, few even knew it had taken place) when my name was called by the captain.
‘Mademoiselle who –?’ Oriane said in a ringing tone.
The captain obligingly repeated my name. Oriane still looked blank.
‘You must go,’ Alessandro whispered. I got up and walked forward, heads turning to see what the cat’s brought in.
Oriane handed me a silver stamp-box without looking up, omitting to shake hands. As I walked back, a few baffled people attempted applause.
When we got home that evening the storm broke. I have to use this cliché as no other description serves. My mother was in a whirl of passionate fury; I had forgotten what her temper could be. I will not have my daughter humiliated and made a fool of in public, that was the theme.
‘It was disgraceful … Not that you didn’t bring it on your own head … But how dare she …’ It was the sound of her voice that made Alessandro and me bow our heads. ‘Who does she think she is …? That … that second-rate Madame Verdurin – well, and so was Madame Verdurin: second-rate.’
At least my mother had not resisted making a literary joke; checking at once that somewhat lighter note, she thundered on, ‘She is a monster, I will not have my daughter treated in this way. She must be shown up.’
It was dumbfounding to see my parent turn into a tiger mother.
Presently she changed the target of her wrath. It was my turn. ‘She’s got to go,’ she said to Alessandro. ‘She must leave the house. I don’t know what she’s been up to, I don’t know what’s been going on – and I don’t want to know. No explanations please. One thing is clear, she’s been given too much freedom. Sanary is no place for her.’ She addressed me directly. ‘You will leave for England
at once. Alessandro, you must telegraph to her Nairns, they’ll find her a room or something. Tell them she’ll be arriving tomorrow. And now I don’t want to hear another word.’
We had entered the world of anger and telegrams.
*
Next day was Sunday. Very well, so it would have to be done on Monday morning, and I would leave by the afternoon train. ‘Meanwhile you are not to see that woman again.’ It was a very long day, even with a little packing to do. My mother and Alessandro went out for both luncheon and dinner.
‘We shall make excuses; we will also say goodbye for you: you’ve been recalled to London to resume your studies.’
Before leaving next day, my mother made me a short speech, ‘Remember you are a goose and a fool, not a martyr. You are not afflicted by a great love, you are afflicted by a crush. It happens to everyone, though I’d think you are a bit too old for that now. You’re not a schoolgirl, and I never treated you like one. You are very immature. After all the trouble I’ve taken … A disappointment. Come back when you are in a more reasonable mood. And don’t go about thinking of yourself as a doomed Baudelairean pervert burdened by the love that dare not speak its name. I rather suspect you have dared.’
Alessandro took me to the station. There had been no time to get hold of my trustees for travel money, so I was sent third class by the Dieppe–Newhaven crossing, and with very little money left on me. In the car we had been too dejected to speak. On the platform Alessandro said, ‘I am very sorry it had to end in this way. It’s not your fault. She is under a strain. It will all blow over.’ Before he left me, he slipped a banknote into one of my pockets.
PART FIVE
Landslides: Sanary–London–Sanary
1
IT HAS OFTEN been said that nothing is ever as bad or as good as one thinks. For some time, I thought it was very bad, I felt crushed and in exile. My mind and emotions were confused, having lost trust in myself and people I loved. Who was right? Who was not? One major shock was London, the transition from Mediterranean summer to the bed-sitter in grimy Upper Gloucester Place. The excitement, the sense of freedom of the former years had evaporated entirely – how could I ever have been happy living here? – in every fibre I was missing Sanary, my elective home.
Jigsaw Page 25
