I wrote a shilly-shallying letter. It would be wonderful if they could come, though I understood her concern about leaving Toni (in the first summer of what must be a kind of widowhood), it was a hard decision to make.
That’s how I wrote. What I should have said was, Do come, you’re not being selfish, you’re not being callow, you are doing enough for Toni as it is; she’s brought it on herself after all. Don’t miss your time with the Judge – she’ll get over it: just two weeks in August, and she’s arranged a lifetime of misery for herself. Hold on to all the healthy joie de vivre you can get – what else is there?
That’s how I ought to have written. And did not. (Self-interest apart, my trust in joie de vivre was at a low ebb.) Might it have tipped the scales? Possibly. There was from early on a curious kind of confidence in each other’s judgement between Rosie and myself, regardless of our difference in age. As it turned out, she decided not to go to Sanary that summer. It was the first time she had ever said No about anything to Jack.
Having survived the casino evening, my mother craved new distractions. By noon most days she would be ready with a plan for an outing. Let’s go to Aix … (Too far, mummy, eighty kilometres each way.) To Cannes … (Twice as far.) We could stay overnight at some agreeable hotel … (They’ll be full up, it’s the summer season.) One always gets in with the right word to the concierge … (Agreeable hotels on that part of the coast are expensive.)
‘How dare you talk to me about money – what do you think he is spending, gallivanting about the Iberian peninsula? He’s spending my money.’
We were down to that kind of talk.
‘With respect,’ I actually said with respect as they do in the law courts, hoping to lighten the tone, ‘it’s his money, he earned it.’
‘At last.’ It had not lightened the tone. ‘And who got him the jobs? Who taught him? Who does he think he is now? He was nothing. I made him.’
I tried to stop my ears. Presently, when the spirit-lamp had brought the water in the little saucepan to the boil at last, she would become the other person again. When she did, she would say, ‘Was I frightful? Was I unjust? Poor boy, he’s got so much talent – who knows? he might have done rather better without me. How can I be so nasty about him? – but I am so unhappy. That’s what it is – I’m nasty because I’m unhappy. And he made me.’
Another time round, she would accuse Alessandro of living off Doris. I couldn’t counter with Doris being a penniless girl because she was and she wasn’t. My mother soon caught up. ‘He’s travelling with Paul’s money … in the car Paul bought … What does that make him? A double pimp –? a kept man at two removes?’
Better, far better, to steer her back to the outings, however perilous. The trouble with these was twofold, the danger of not reaching home in time for the next hypodermic, which could make her suffer badly, needlessly, and me lose my head with anxiety. She airily suggested that I might give her the treatment en route – We could take the box of tricks with us, just like a picnic.
‘And where am I supposed to be doing this?’
‘Oh the roadside or in a lavatory, a lavatory would be more private.’
I was so horrified – and expressed this so vociferously – that for the time being she desisted. It was not a wise attitude on my part.
The other trouble with these excursions was that, however I tried to circumvent, we were spending too much money. She would leave my side and slip into a shop, buy several silk scarves at tourist prices or a piece of Provençal pottery, then a set of Provençal pottery, saying that they would sell at a good profit; she ought to be building up stock against Alessandro’s next commission. By then she would already have stopped at a pâtisserie to order a vacherin or some other large cake to take home, where Emilia might eat two slices or three, and my mother and I as little as makes no difference.
From the frugal days in my father’s château, through the years of fine careless impecuniousness with the Robbinses, I had learned to handle money, particularly the money one hadn’t got. I knew that my mother’s own quarterly income had dwindled to a very modest sum indeed. Whatever she had done for him and his family in the past – and she had done a good deal – it was what Alessandro earned now that was keeping her comfortably off. Comfortably, not extravagantly. I knew how relatively small inroads can destroy financial tranquillity – for people of slender means it is not a very long step between comfortably off and swamped by debt: I was being haunted by Mr Micawber’s sixpence.
As foreseen, Alessandro’s masons’ and carpenters’ bills were coming in. They called them their petites factures whatever the size of the sum and proposed to come by the house next Tuesday, say, and be paid, as was customary, in cash. You offered and shared a glass of red wine, un coup de rouge, counted out the notes, shook hands, smiles all round and that was that. The snag was that my mother had to write a cheque in the first place beforehand and tried to hang on to some of the money.
If it was I who snatched the cheque and went down to the Crédit Lyonnais to cash it, she would waylay me demanding some for herself; if it was she who managed to go to the little branch bank on her own, it was worse as it was I who had to get as much as I could out of her. We didn’t have an easy time of it.
And how often she succeeded in cashing a cheque I knew nothing about, I could not be sure. I never saw a bank statement; she who used to leave everything about now took care to conceal them from me. When my own money came in – by international postal order – we reversed roles: I trying to conceal, she trying to get me to fork out. I resisted because I had to have something to fall back on for Emilia’s wages and our daily food. I, too, had to get good at concealing.
Alessandro had been away now for a long number of weeks and she was on the alert for some sign or date. Secretly feeling the same I tried to keep her mind off as much as I could. One afternoon she proposed a drive into the back country – so peaceful, so beautiful; she was tired of beaches and people and shops. I jumped at it, concurring about the shops. From Bandol we drove to Le Beausset, from there up the pass over Le Brulat on one of those narrow white D roads on the Michelin maps, up further to Ste-Anne-du-Castellet and on. It was still and very, very hot – burnt bare country of noble contours where one feels free and enclosed in lucent space. When we came down to Le Camp where the D26 crosses the N8, the main road from Marseille (by which we were meaning to return), my mother said let’s go on.
Let’s go on further into the empty country, towards the Massif de la Ste Baume, see if we can find Signes, a village with an auberge by a river which she had crossed on her way to Haute-Provence with Alessandro. Indeed, we saw another D, a Departmental road and the kilometre stone said Signes 20 Kms, that seemed achievable. The evening – it was beginning to be that – was so serene, so was my mother’s mood; I suppressed misgivings, we drove on. The last time she’d passed through Signes, they had been roasting a string of small birds at the auberge – yes, little song birds, so cruel, so awful of the peasants, but admit they taste good. We got there. The village and the auberge, by a gorge, dry now, looked deserted and remote. No little birds a-roasting – just as well. We sat by a mellow parapet and were served cool vin blanc-cassis by a woman, the shadows were getting longer and my mother restless. Time, high time, to think of getting home. We must have a casse-croûte first (my mother’s insistence), before that long drive. But it wouldn’t be a long drive, would it? We didn’t have to go back the way we came? Surely, there was a short cut?
They brought the casse-croûte – it took a little while – anchovies, olives, oven-grilled bread. Sure, there was a short cut: if we didn’t mind it not being a real road, we could take a left turn some five kilometres out of the village that would take us down eventually to the N8. I found a thread like a snail’s trail on the map – the light was going fast – a thread classified chemin d’exploitation, a track for peasants’ carts? It cut right down towards the coast, it would save miles and miles – if I could find it, if it led where it
appeared to lead to.
My mother still dawdled. She lacked a sense of self-preservation. At last … I found the left turn, or what looked the likely left turn. We took it.
It was narrow, it was bumpy, it began to wind; I could see no guiding sign or stone. Quite soon I would gladly have turned tail – there was no place a car could turn. I pressed on, praying we were in the right direction, praying we would meet no other vehicle to pass. There was not; the track was getting to feel very lonely and at times uncomfortably steep. From time to time it seemed to me that we were climbing – on a descent towards the coast? I prayed some more, casting sideway glances at my mother trying to assess her state of mind, feeling that she was beginning to scent danger. I drove as fast as allowable in the conditions and tried to calm myself by counting blessings: we had plenty of petrol, I’d seen to oil, water and the tyres. All roads must ultimately lead somewhere – or must they? If they were tracks – chemins d’exploitation – might they not end at some uninhabited agricultural plantation? And how far was ultimately? It had been getting dark, now it was dark. The Ford’s headlamps were good but I had not had much experience of serious night driving; after all I had only passed my driving test a little over a year ago and, notwithstanding Philippe Desmirail’s training in double de-clutching, I was not an experienced driver. Still, all would be well if this track led somewhere. Somewhere near home.
Now my mother’s questions were beginning. Are you sure this is the right road? We’ve been going an awfully long time, it seems to me? Oughtn’t we to be down at the main road by now?
How much longer is this going to take?
From her tone, she was strained, impatient; she had not yet come to the excruciating stage of nervous craving and physical pain I had lived through with her once or twice before when a hypodermic had been too long delayed.
Damp was rising after the heat of the day and for stretches visibility was blurred by swirling mists. It was difficult driving.
Could we go a little faster? my mother said.
On and on we went. We seemed to be descending now. Still no signposts. Night noises had begun, tree-frog and cicada, nothing else; once I hoped I heard a dog bark. Two of the worst moments were when we came to crossroads. Don’t you dare stop, my mother shouted. Her acute time had begun. I just drove: nothing could save us now but luck.
I knew what she was suffering. (One of La Rochefoucauld’s most repeated maxims is to the effect that nothing is easier to bear than the suffering of others, les souffrances d’autrui. In some situations this is not so.) Another mist patch, another sharp downhill bend, my mother beating her own legs with her fists. Faster, she cried, faster. Please.
Nothing for it but keeping steady, keeping on. Quite suddenly the track debouched into a back street of a hill village, dead asleep, which I recognised as Evenos. Within minutes we were on the N8: we were less than fifteen kilometres from home.
The last stretch was the worst for my mother. Once on the main road she urged me to drive as if I were driving in a race. I felt as a horse might in a finish with nothing left to give, she was beating the steering wheel, she was beating my hands and arms; feebly, that made it all the more pitiful. Faster, faster, FASTER …
When we reached Sanary, I dared look at my watch for the first time: it was two o’clock in the morning. We drove straight to Docteur Joyeu’s house under the dank trees – an unspoken decision, I was in no state to handle a syringe. Joyeu received us wordlessly – he appeared not to have been to bed – my mother, equally speechless, looked ghastly, she might well just have had some appalling attack. He put her on a chaise-longue and administered what was necessary. I believe she fell asleep for a while. I was gasping for breath: Joyeu handed me a glass half filled with a cloudy liquid with a vaguely pharmaceutical smell. I did not really want to, but I drank it. Eventually he aroused her quite gently. She opened her eyes. ‘I will go home with my daughter,’ she said, ‘if she will kindly take me.’ It was then that I had to try not to burst into tears.
I forgot; she asked, ‘What do I owe you, Docteur?’ He named twice the usual sum, speaking his first words that night, ‘puisque c’était une visite nocturne, Madame.’
* * *
We were both so unnerved that for some time after we could neither of us speak of that night-ride. Nor was there any question of undertaking further outings together. By the end of the week she told me she could go on no longer: He must come back. I would have to telegraph. Today. I begged her to leave him be – she had been so good to let him go: don’t spoil it now. Let him come back of his own accord. It’s not even the middle of August yet, leave it to him, it’ll feel better for you if it is his decision.
She would not hear and ordered me to send the telegram. Say I am ill. ‘It’s nothing like appendicitis,’ I said stupidly. ‘Then say it’s appendicitis.’
I held out. She demanded to be given his address.
When I held out again, she said, ‘Let me remind you that you are under age, I can denounce you to your German guardians for not obeying your mother. You are out of control, they will take you over.’
I felt rigid with shock. Not that it worked any longer; it triggered off residual apprehensions, not real fears. In less than six months I would be twenty years old, a number of disagreeable things might still ensue, legally I was not out of such clutches, but I no longer led the life of, I no longer felt, a ward in chancery. I was shocked by my mother, and very angry. In this matter she and I had always been on the same side; she knew it had been my bugbear; I could not take the malice of her betrayal.
Coldly I told her that I had promised Alessandro not to recall him except in a real emergency.
‘A real emergency! He made you promise that? The cad.’
‘Of course he did not. We didn’t speak about it. It was understood, some things are.’
‘Stupid girl. Where did you get those gentlemanly scruples from? Not from me, nor from your father as I knew him.’
Next Sunday morning they were to launch a ship from the small naval yard at La Ciotat where it had been built, something pleasant to watch. The Huxleys were going with some of their friends, Maria proposed that we join them and eat a picnic afterwards in a rock bay on the far side of the harbour. I tried to tell my mother that it would be all right to go – I wanted to make amends for something I had felt guilty about in my mind: my squeamish refusal to give her an injection outside our own walls, putting her into the position of the other night. I would find a way of transporting a sterilised syringe, we would find a discreet place en route … ‘If it will make you feel more free, I will give you the treatment wherever you like.’
She gave me a curious look. ‘Too late, my dear. I’ve learned that lesson too. I’ve been giving it to myself – quite easy really – as you say, it makes me feel more free.’
I realised then that when I had been puzzled about the number of ampoules in the box, it was not I who had miscalculated. From that day on I never gave her, nor did she ask me to, another hypodermic. I continued seeing Joyeu and touring pharmacies for her supplies.
In the event we did go to La Ciotat. The launch of the ship, a small coaster, the slow glide under a noon sky into natural harbour was beautiful; and memorable.
A couple of days later when I came home to Les Cyprès after an errand, I found the sitting-room floor covered with splintered wood and glass. My mother, standing among the débris, said smugly, ‘Isn’t this what they call “breaking up the place”?’ Indeed it looked like something seen in the movies.
‘For God’s sake, where’s Emilia?’ I said.
‘I gave her the afternoon off.’
The weapons, I saw, had been a flat-iron and a stick. What sent a shiver down my spine was the crack across the looking-glass over the chimney-piece. That brought bad luck. She was ingrainedly superstitious about a broken looking-glass, so was I. She couldn’t have done this too on purpose?
She said, ‘I’ve only just begun. Unless you think that this is an e
mergency?’
Linked into an inescapable chain of wickedness and betrayals, I walked down to Sanary, to the post office, asked for a form, wrote out the brief message in dictionary Spanish and addressed it Correo Restante Granada.
5
For the best part of a week we heard nothing, then one mid-morning Alessandro burst into the house. He looked unslept, red-eyed, streaked with dust and sweat. ‘How is she? Is she ill?’ He brushed past me, ‘I must see her!’ I wanted to prevent him, he went straight to her room.
When he came out again only minutes later, he still looked dreadful though in another way – stricken, bewildered, dazed. He fell into a chair. ‘What has been happening? What have they done to her?’
I knew what she was like in the morning, the colour of her skin, the state of her hair, of her nightdress, the state of the room: I had seen the changes, I had seen them gradually. To him they were new shocks.
‘What is that awful smell?’ Ether. For some reason she had been using ether rather than neutral spirits as a disinfectant for her needles. I had ceased to notice it. Alessandro stayed slumped in that chair for some time. Emilia, unasked, brought him coffee and a jug of fresh lemonade. My mother came in, dressed now, said haughtily, ‘You ought to have a bath.’ Wandered out again. We seem to have spent the rest of the morning and the day and the time that followed sorting ourselves out at a slow pace with no aim.
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