I was rattling on. Edwina seemed to be interested. Perhaps she was just a past mistress of giving all her attention to whomever she was with. We had moved into a tiny room in a small tower adjacent to the two great rooms on the upriver side of the château.
“I would think Diane must have spent most of her time here,” Edwina said. “It’s tiny. It’s light with windows all around. The fireplace is large so she was warm. These châteaux must have been freezing in the winter. All this stone seeps up the coldness and hangs onto it fiercely.”
“She took a bath in cold water very morning,” I said. “To preserve her skin. She always dressed in black because she was a widow.”
“What a smart woman,” Edwina said. We had gone from a large bedroom with a portrait of Catherine de Medici over the fireplace to a room across the grand hall that had several portraits of Diane on the walls.
“She was blonde.” Edwina said. “That explains so much. Everyone thinks blondes fade early, but that depends on the climate. France is in the same latitude as Newfoundland, although we have the benefit of the Gulf Stream. Blondes hold up very well in this climate.” The fact that she was herself a French blonde must have had something to do with this statement, but I had to agree with her. The more mature blondes around Cornichons like the mayor’s wife, Madame LeBrun, certainly supported her claim.
Diane had been painted as Diana, goddess of the hunt, in a short tunic carrying a bow and arrow. A quiver of arrows was slung over one shoulder. A small crescent moon was in her hair. She had very much the same pert little regular features as Madame LeBrun. In another painting the Three Graces were painted in their famous pose, back . . . front . . . back, arms entwined. The guide pamphlet said all three were popularly supposed to be Diane. She had long legs, or at least was depicted so.
I pointed this out to Edwina. “It’s so interesting,” she said, “the ideal of beauty at this time in the French Renaissance was probably the closest to our own time than any other period. The women depicted in sculpture always had beautiful, long tapering legs, small bosoms that were up, up, up, and lovely oval faces. Even their hairdos were simple. Just long hair tucked up casually. All through the period of the two de Medici queens, neither of whom was particularly lovely, there was this idea of what a pretty woman should be. Then it all kind of went underground with the Louis’s, and when it reemerged it was much more buxom and short-legged. All tits and ass in the Victorian period.”
There was a gigantic portrait of Louis the Fourteenth in the last big room on the ground floor and Edwina opted not to go upstairs. “I think I’m all absorbed out,” she said. “If I saw any more, I’d go out and have my picture taken on the lawn without the château in the background, like everyone else.” Not much got past Edwina. I suggested that we go have tea in the café that had been converted from the stables.
“Delightful,” Edwina said. She seemed to be enjoying my company. Which again, may have been one of her skills. After a lifetime in advertising, she probably had every charm possible.
“That’s a nice dress,” I said once we were seated. It was self-serve, this little tea room, so I had self-served us.
“Courrèges,” she said. “Well, Ungaro really. Ungaro was Courrèges’s assistant, probably lover, and then struck out on his own. Good-looking but I don’t think he had any original ideas. He just imagined what Courrèges would do. Courrèges was the genius of the 1960s. He really changed how women looked completely. Those little dresses and boots and bonnets. Babies. I never did that. I would have looked like a complete fool. But later when he got less strict I wore him. Him and Jil Sander. They’re the only pure people. Wonderful fabrics. Wonderful sewing. People like Galliano are really circus people. And Ralph Lauren clothes are made so badly. With terrible Asian fabrics.
“So what are you rehearsing for right now?” she said, changing the subject abruptly. She pressed her tea bag under her eye. “It’s great for puffiness,” she said, ignoring the wondering stares of the two couples at the next table.
“We’re doing The Red Mill. I’m playing Kip Connor. Or is it Con Kipper? I can never keep them straight.”
I told Edwina about the very different acting approaches we were being subjected to by Kitty Carlisle Hart and Cranston Muller. Kitty wanting us to delve within and create our own persona, Cranston wanting us to obey direction in every minute detail. She seemed interested. I had no idea how much theater experience or interest she had, but again, who knew?
“I never know whether you are really interested in what I’m talking about or not,” I said.
“You never will,” Edwina replied. “Just watch what I do, not what I say. If we get up and leave very soon, you’ll know I’m not very interested. Actually, I find this quite interesting. I’ve never performed, but I suppose Ms. Hart’s technique is very much like creating your own personality. Find out who you are and then create a personality to communicate it to the world. She must be a lot of fun to work with. Beautiful women so rarely are, but I think she’s an exception. Of course, finding out who you are is a big stumbling block for most people. They really don’t want to cast their eyes in that direction for fear they’ll stumble upon something that won’t be to their taste.”
I said, “That’s why I think there’s something to the way Cranston Muller directs. If the performer has no idea who he is, it would probably be impossible to create a personality for the role he is playing. They can’t even play themselves. So the director has to mold them into a personality. And a lot of those people are very young.”
Edwina laughed. “I like that. They can’t even play themselves. I read that about Truman Capote when he ventured to play in a movie. The reviewer said he shared with Zsa Zsa Gabor the inability to even play themselves. But who is this Cranston Muller? Do I know about him?”
“He’s a major producer and director from New York. Considered very avant-garde. He became famous when he did a staged version of Gone With the Wind, reversing all the black and white roles. Did you ever see that? He founded the theater festival in Cornichons a few years ago,” I said.
“Was he ever known by a different first name? I used to work with a television commercial director way back named Len Muller who was always talking about Gone With the Wind with a black Scarlett. I wonder if it can be the same person? I wonder if Nina ever worked with him? He was especially good with beauty products, fragrances, that sort of thing. What’s he look like?” Edwina said.
“Medium height. Shaved head. Very tan. Blue eyes. Well, that could be anybody,” I said.
“Even a woman these days,” Edwina said. “It would be very strange for Len Muller to wash up in my life again at this point.”
“I’m sure you’ll meet him. We open The Red Mill next week and play for three weeks. We go into rehearsal for Tea and Sympathy as soon as we open. I wish you could be here for that. I play the lead,” I said.
“The Tony Perkins part? I can see that. Well, not really. You have a lot of self-confidence for the role of a sexually confused teenager,” Edwina said.
“That’s what’s interesting about it. The world has come such a long way since that play was done. All your sympathy is supposed to go to the schoolmaster’s wife who sleeps with him and saves him from the dreaded horror of being homosexual. Or at least wondering if he’s homosexual. I suppose there are still some people . . . many people . . . who see it as the dreaded horror, but it’s kind of an old-fashioned idea. I certainly wasn’t brought up to think of it as something awful.” I was rattling on.
“Has Nina told you that I am a lesbian?” Edwina said. “At least at the present time.”
“No,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about it.
“My lover is coming down from Paris at the end of the week. She’s the only woman I’ve been with, but I think this is it. I don’t plan to go back to having a male lover. We have a real relationship that in some way rises above our sexuality. We’re people first, women second, I guess you could say.” Edwina finished her ic
ed tea. We didn’t need to signal for the bill. I had paid for our teas inside.
As she started to get up, I said, “Does this mean this part of the conversation is over?”
“By no means. We’ve been sitting down for quite a while. Let’s stroll back to the car.” Which we did through wave after wave of tourists pouring into the château grounds. Chenonceaux is supposed to be the second-most visited tourist spot in France after Mont Saint Michel, and the crowd we were pushing our way through did not contradict that information.
“Her name is Angela,” Edwina said. I assumed she was talking about her lover. “She’s in Paris right now doing some television commercials for L’Oréal. She’s the spokeswoman for their hair products in the United States. She has wonderful hair. She’s doing a new fragrance for them, also. I freelanced the copy for it. It’s called Tu M’Amuse. ‘You Amuse Me.’”
“I speak French,” I said.
“I’m sure you do. I would put nothing past you.” Edwina reached for the door of the car.
“Should I open the sun roof?” I asked.
“Of course. Let’s go all to hell with ourselves. Have the sun and wind stream all over us and destroy our skins. We just don’t care,” she said as I wheeled up the little back lane that leads to the narrow main street of Chenonceaux village.
“You want to know where I met Angela? It’s quite unusual. Through Graham and Nina. Graham shot a pornographic film with her. They’re quite a lot alike. Beautiful. Do with their bodies as they damn well please. Have almost no sense of societal pressures. It’s a great way to live,” Edwina said. “She knows Mr. Muller, also. If he is Len Muller. He did a very high-class porn film once. It was never released. One of the male principals paid the director a fortune not to because he got a very important major movie role at the time.”
“Tom Cruise?” I asked.
“No. My lips are sealed. Although I do know who it is. Angela told me.”
“It will be weird if Cranston Muller is the man you know. And that your friend knows him, too. It is a small world, if I may use that cliché.”
Edwina said, “Oh, please do. I’m sure it is one and the same man.”
And it was.
Iris and Glenn Elliott Arrive
When Edwina and I wheeled up in front of the Abbey gates my mother and Glenn Elliott were standing in the middle of the street looking confused.
“We’re here!” I shouted out the window to them. They were both in white. Glenn Elliott was wearing white jeans and a T-shirt, which would have looked too young on any man who didn’t have his body. It was still there. Very beautiful. My mother was wearing white cotton pants and what she always liked to call a “gym shirt.” Just a plain little short-sleeved white cotton shirt. That probably cost hundreds of dollars somewhere in the Bal Harbor Mall in Miami Beach. They both looked swell. As if they had just stepped off a yacht in Portofino. Which is exactly the look they wanted to project, I’m sure.
“These are my parents,” I said, introducing Edwina to them. “This is the fabulous Edwina Grey.”
She shook their hands and said, “I knew it had to come from somewhere,” nodding toward me. “At my age, perhaps more fabled than fabulous. And who knows what those fables might be?”
I could see this was going to be a charm contest as to who could out-nice each other.
My mother hugged me to her and held me very tightly. I probably do love her more than anyone else in the world, Steve included. Listen, this is the person who would crawl across the Sahara on her hands and knees for me, and would do this every day, couture sports shirt or no. No one has many of those people in their lifetime. She’d do the same for Glenn Elliott, too. What Glenn would do for us, I’m not sure. I do know he thinks he’s very, very lucky to have wound up with us as a family. The fact that he used to fuck me doesn’t count. That was before we were family.
“You’re both so dark, and Hugo is so blond. But Italian blond. That’s true.” Edwina was standing with both hands on her hips and her legs in a firm stance looking at us. As though she were considering buying us.
Glenn Elliott said, “I’m not his birth father. I’m his stepfather.”
“My real father is dark, too,” I said. “Let us look no further. My grandmother was blonde, I think.”
“Very blond. She was from the Swiss border. Way up north,” my mother said. And that subject was closed.
I looked up and Nina was in the window of her bedroom. “Would you like to come in and have tea?” she called down. “I’m Nina de Rochement. Nina Grant, really.” She disappeared from the window.
We heard the big locks turning in a few moments, and the door swung open. Nina was there with Theo on her hip. He was smiling, which wasn’t that usual. “Come in, come in, come in,” she said, kissing Edwina and me both on the cheeks as we passed into the sitting room. “How very nice to meet you. We talk about you all the time.
“What a beautiful gym shirt,” she said to my mother.
“Do you call it that, too?” I said from the living room. “Where does that name come from?”
“We wore those little white shirts for gym in school. We had dark green shorts that went with them,” Nina said.
“We had dark blue,” my mother said. “Do you suppose this is some kind of international fashion phenomenon that we just haven’t noticed yet?”
My mother and Glenn Elliott came into the lavender living room and sat down as though they had been there dozens of times and knew everyone very well. Here I was with this group of people who didn’t know what the words “ill at ease” meant. The school for charm.
It was the same at dinner. Nina had planned to prepare dinner for us, knowing my parents were arriving. Graham was out shopping when we had arrived and soon came in the door with his shopping basket full. The stores were closed, it being Sunday, but he had been at the market in Amboise. In France, there’s always a market open somewhere when all the others are closed.
Glenn Elliott and Graham were very jolly with each other, as professional male beauties often are. They recognized each other’s type. It was like a club members’ meeting. When my mother and Glenn Elliott left with Edwina to go back to the hotel to change for dinner, Nina said to me, “Before you go upstairs, why don’t you run over and see if Steve would like to come to dinner, too? He should join us. We’re going to eat in the green dining room, and I can manage to squeeze seven people around the table. I’d like to have him.” My dear Nina. She never needed explanations. She probably understood exactly where I stood with Steve and was pitching in to help. And thought my parents should meet him. Check.
Graham had prepared dinner. He was quite a good cook. I actually preferred Nina’s cooking. Which wasn’t real cooking. As Graham said, Nina was the only person he knew who could prepare lunch by going to the bakery. But in France, the boulangerie has those delicious chicken a la crème in a pastry shell, and that piping hot with a big salad and a cherry or apple or pear or raspberry tart for dessert is my ideal lunch. With iced tea. In the garden. Yum-yum. The French probably don’t even think that kind of meal is very French, but it’s top of the line for me.
We were eating lemon sole and fresh green beans. Kind of stiff and crunchy. We had paté de foie gras to start. “I thought I’d splurge,” Graham said. “And our guests have just arrived in France so I thought we’d do a very French thing.” We drank red Gamay straight through the meal. Having white wine with fish isn’t done by many people in France because they think that white wine creates acid in your digestive system. And even if you’re drinking six bottles of wine a day, certainly it shouldn’t give you acid indigestion.
We drank quite a lot of wine and were very lively there in the candlelight. Nina’s green dining room is actually white with a kind of grayish-green paint on the woodwork. Perhaps something like avocado. I don’t know. It’s used a lot in France, but I don’t know of anything in nature to equate it to. The art deco statue of racing dogs on the mantel was exactly the same color green
and much of the china was, too. Let’s just call it French Green and be done with it. Like French Blue. Kind of like a gray-blue that they make uniforms of a lot here. Again, I’m not sure what there is in nature that’s similar. Maybe the sky from time to time. Even the blue of the sky is different here. Often it’s hard to love the French people, but it is easy to love France.
The gilded frame of the big mirror over the mantel shone in the glow of the candles and in the mirror you could see us. Four heads of blond hair. Three of brown. Smiling, laughing animated faces. Wine glittering in the glasses being raised. Silverware throwing off edges of light as it was raised to mouths, placed on plate edges. I was truly happy. If evenings like this are possible, then certainly life is worth living. Even with long periods of grumbling in between. I thought of Freya Stark, the woman who wandered around the Near East by herself in the 1920s. Her books were good, but her diaries were great. She wrote that she found happiness was often condensed into short periods of time and there were long periods of duty and dullness in between. Bearable because you knew more happiness was coming.
As the peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream was placed before us for dessert, this was my question. Not about the cobbler, which Graham had made and which was extremely delicious, but about the kind of relationships that I could see around the table. Weren’t they all rather similar?
Love in the Loire Page 18
