The Great and the Good

by Michel Déon

  ‘If it was up to me, you’d never have seen me got up like that. But the trustees insisted I shouldn’t look like a maid. On the other hand, they let me do what I liked with Elizabeth. If only they’d known …’

  They inched towards each other, step by step. Arthur found it comical how she was scrutinising him with such circumspection that it stuck out a mile. She was worse than a domineering mother. Arthur too was watching her closely: she had a part to play in the affair at hand. He did not think she was Machiavellian, more preoccupied with protecting the overgrown child she had been given to look after. An old habit made him look for the books the former nanny might have kept by her. He did not see any. Everything was based on her good sense and her certainty of belonging to a nation endowed with an innate intelligence about life. She was a rock. The photos told him almost nothing he did not already know: the elegant, outrageously handsome parents; the little girl with a doll’s round cheeks, terribly serious expression, and a ribbon in her hair; the angular adolescent whose face radiated irony, followed by the girl (or young woman) posing like a model, half naked on a leopard-skin sofa, and finally the actress and, most recently, her performance in The Night of the Iguana. Always on her own, without a man to hold her tightly during her long years of struggle against platitudes and mediocrity.

  ‘Do you recognise her?’ Madeleine asked.

  ‘There isn’t one “her”. There are at least ten, and I didn’t like all of them.’

  The Elizabeth who would be his for ever was the young woman sitting on the top step at Rector Street, smoking cigarette after cigarette in total darkness. Or the one biting into a croissant on the pavement outside his building, next to the cab that was waiting to take her away. Madeleine was still bent over her tapestry, as detached, it seemed, as if they were discussing tomorrow’s weather.

  ‘Help yourself,’ she said; ‘it’s easier than me getting up every five minutes to fill your glass.’

  ‘I mustn’t overdo it. I need my legs to get back to Orléans this evening to catch the train to Paris.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s what you have in mind! I’m quite sure Elizabeth won’t let you get away as easily as that!’

  If, having been warned that he would arrive in the early afternoon, Elizabeth was not there to meet him and was instead feigning an irresistible passion for the chateaux of the Loire, it was as much because she was trying to deceive herself as Madeleine, or possibly because she was leaving to the said Madeleine – which was unusually reasonable of her – the job of judging the man who had come into her life without ever truly seeing her. The thought that, as in Baronne Staffe’s guide to good manners, this stout, outspoken woman would soon be grilling him on his origins, qualifications, family, and financial situation made him smile.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts, young man.’

  Arthur admitted what he had been thinking.

  ‘Now that’s a good idea! But I’ve already known you for twenty years. You didn’t need to cycle all the way here on your bicycle. I know perfectly well that one shouldn’t trust appearances.’

  ‘Did you know that we fell out for a long time?’

  ‘I think I even know why. You’d have to find more than that to set me against you. I’m not so stupid. And nor is my little Elizabeth all peaches and cream.’

  Bent over her tapestry, she was unpicking a thread of wool from the canvas.

  ‘I’m getting old, my mind wanders off more and more. Red … when it should be yellow. So you went to Lugano?’

  ‘You really don’t miss a thing, do you?’

  Madeleine laughed. Her bosom wobbled in her tight blouse.

  ‘No, no … far from it. For instance, I shall never understand why two people who loved each other the way Elizabeth and you did are scared stiff at the thought of admitting it to yourselves and wait twenty years to discover that the feeling is mutual. As for this Brazilian—’

  She could not even bring herself to say her name.

  ‘– I should certainly have liked to see her to understand what was so attractive about her. In the sideboard, on the right, you’ll find some marc de Champagne and little glasses, or even some big ones if you’re feeling honest. Yes, there, on the right …’

  The window framed a gentle curve of the Loire and, just below the road, a path along which a man and a woman were cycling with haversacks on their backs.

  ‘Cycling along the towpaths is such a good idea. If only I’d known—’

  ‘Don’t worry, you didn’t miss much. There’s only about five kilometres where you can do it. Yes, a tiny bit for me; just wet the bottom of the glass otherwise I’ll be seeing double threads. This Brazilian—’

  ‘Augusta Mendosa.’

  ‘– I expect this Brazilian had many charms, but charms are short-lived. If you’re still acting like a hummingbird when you won’t see forty again, there’s a strong chance you’ll end up looking like a goose.’

  ‘You’re very hard.’

  ‘I promise you I’m not at all. For example, it pains me to see you sitting so awkwardly. Throw those things off that armchair and flop down in it. It’s perfect. It was a present from Elizabeth, like almost everything I own. Pull that little table towards you for your glass.’

  ‘No,’ Arthur said, ‘a person’s charms don’t really die. They just lose their element of surprise and so we’re no longer the same. We’ve lost our virginity about what love is.’

  The feeling of regret that he felt as he said it was still there, and would always be there when he thought about her. Trembling a little, he stretched his hand out to his glass and knocked it over.

  ‘It’s nothing. Get a cloth from the kitchen and pour yourself another glass.’

  When he had cleaned up the mess Madeleine, who had not moved from her sofa, put down her needle and took off her glasses.

  ‘The more I look at you, the more I tell myself that women are really too stupid. Always the old fear, that if they throw themselves at men they’ll be taken advantage of. Your hand was shaking for a few moments then. Do you still feel vulnerable, after so many years have gone by?’

  ‘I’d worry if I couldn’t feel vulnerable any more.’

  ‘I share your view.’

  This woman was a rock of certainties.

  ‘I escaped the worst of it,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t say that. It’s yourself you’d be wiping from your memory if you believed it. Elizabeth loved her, despite all her reasons for not loving her.’

  All her reasons? He excluded all the mean feminine rivalries, unworthy of Elizabeth, and could only see one reason, whose shadow had passed without his paying it much attention. Men can be a slow lot, and in a not entirely innocent way.

  ‘As soon as I walked through the door,’ he said, taking the plunge, ‘I was on my guard: the Inverness cape, the cloche hat and coypu coat hanging up in the hall. The remains of a glorious past, sending me back twenty years. Getulio, not believing I would come, had left for Campione, leaving her in the care of a nurse in a white tunic who, as I walked in, shut a drawer sharply and hid something in her pocket. Augusta was sitting in a tall armchair facing the open window, a rug on her knees. She must have seen the car arrive, but didn’t even turn her head. I could only see her shoulder, her bare arm on the armrest, a leg hidden by a sari like the ones she had worn at Key Largo. We were about to shoot the same scene all over again: a remake, the Americans call it. I wasn’t ready for it. I’d arrived with a rose in my hand like Marcel Marceau’s poor Bip, the only difference being that I’d lost my much-vaunted innocence.’

  ‘So you think! Would you be very kind and pass me my basket of wools, on your left on the table by the wall?’

  Arthur walked over to the window. The Loire, murky green, slipped between the sandbanks. On the other bank, to the north, were the first houses of Beaugency. His lips murmured the soft litany his mother had used to croon: ‘“Orléans, Beaugency, Notre-Dame de Cléry, Vendôme, Vendôme—”’

  ‘I taught Elizabeth
to sing that. When she came to France for the first time – she was five years old – she wanted to hear the cathedral bells. We waited till evensong, sitting on a bench and licking caramel sweets till the bells began: “Vendôme, Vendôme …” Was Madame Mendosa on her own with the nurse?’

  ‘That woman stuffed her with tranquillisers and plundered the drawers with impunity. Apart from our two weeks in Key Largo, I think Augusta lived on antidepressants: they helped her erase the terrible visions of Ipanema, of her father’s head blown to pieces. And she ended up in that gloomy villa at Brè, shut up in a cold bedroom and stuck in front of a window overlooking an abandoned garden, just so that Getulio could carry on gambling across the lake at Campione, at the only casino that hadn’t banned him. The only recognisable part of Augusta that was left was her eyes. They’d sunk into two deep recesses under the arches of her eyebrows, and from there, from the cavity they made, they looked out as if at something vague or inexpressible, then suddenly jerked out of their contemplation to sparkle in a way that I found unbearable. They pierced your soul … if such a thing exists. Maintaining eye contact with her was unbearable.’

  ‘Did she recognise you?’

  ‘In the heat of the moment she thought I was Seamus Concannon. She was afraid of me touching her. I couldn’t even stroke her hand. She started to let fly a stream of obscenities, she who was so shy … I asked the nurse, who was watching us triumphantly, to leave the room. I had taken a dislike to her the second I walked into the room. As soon as she wasn’t there any more, Augusta became calmer. She carried on speaking for a moment as though I was Seamus, and when I said, “Seamus has been dead for twenty years,” she sighed, “I know. And who are you? … Arturo, oh yes … kiss me.” She spoke like someone who has woken up with immense relief from some appalling nightmare, and is back on solid ground. She took my arm to walk around the room, showing me the furniture and the bad engravings on the walls. We went into the garden where Jean-Émile was discreetly smoking a cigarette, which he immediately dropped and stubbed out with his shoe. She went towards him and kissed him. “I’m so happy to see you again. Why don’t you ever phone me?” Jean-Émile behaved perfectly. Getulio arrived, behind the wheel of a knocked-about little Fiat. He wanted to know where the nurse had gone. Augusta could catch cold or fall and hurt herself. She could; she frequently fell over because of her medication, which made her lose her balance. Women fall over so often, don’t they? To make men feel sorry for them. In that area Augusta was about as experienced as they come. They were about to leave for Marrakesh. The Ticino climate was no good for Augusta’s convalescence. She listened, clinging to my arm, and nodded. She smiled for the first time, maybe because she remembered all the fabulous projects that had soothed their passage through life. Getulio envisaged me coming to visit them as soon as they were settled. A wealthy Moroccan friend was lending them a small palace for as long as they needed it, a jewel at the edge of the medina, an absolute gem, with servants as handsome as gods to look after them. In short, everything was normal, and when I arrived I’d simply fallen victim to an illusion, which Getulio had waved away in a few words with his charmer’s eloquence. We walked in circles round the garden, under the astonished gaze of Jean-Émile, and gradually, despite her lightness, despite her being less than a shadow of herself, I felt the weight of her on my arm as though she herself were rediscovering her own mass, which she had forgotten for so long as a result of the tranquillisers. Her nails dug into the skin of my wrist. With unexpected violence, through clenched teeth, she said, “I wasn’t expecting you. You could have warned me. And why didn’t you come with your wife?” Getulio made light of it. Augusta had been marrying off all her friends for some time. She looked at him pityingly. “You’re trying to make out that I’m mad. Arturo knows perfectly well it’s not true. Arturo, you must come back and bring Elizabeth. She loves you so much … We hurt her at Key Largo …” Getulio raised his arms heavenward. “Key Largo again! In the past few days she’s started talking non-stop about Key Largo, where she’s never set foot in her life. The doctor has no idea what she means. Do you?” I had none whatsoever, as you can imagine. Augusta asked again, “How is your relationship?” That word, Madeleine, “relationship”, a word that’ll make the most ardent of men run a mile, a word no one dares utter any longer, full of intrusion and stupid compromises … I told her, “We’re very well, perfectly happy.” She looked as though she was thinking for a moment, then said in a whisper, “So I suppose I must be forgiven.” There was nothing to forgive her for. We said goodbye at the car, whose door Jean-Émile had opened. “You have a chauffeur?” She offered me her cheeks to kiss. I could see Getulio was desperate to know what was going on. He wanted to have dinner with me. I suggested a hotel at Lugano. She tried to run after the car. The nurse caught her arm and stopped her. I waited till midnight for Getulio. There was no answer when I phoned the Villa Celesta. In Paris a telegram had been pushed under my door. I had to be in New York that evening. Elizabeth was waiting for me at Kennedy airport. We cried a lot. Apparently it wasn’t the first time; the nurse had stepped out of the bedroom, leaving the window wide open. I didn’t get any news from Getulio, but friends told me that the day after the funeral he sold the jewels that were left and went straight to Campione to put it on the tables. The gods that had always looked on him so kindly saved him yet again. He broke the bank, left a wealthy man, for a few months anyway, despite his aching soul … oh, I’m sure it was aching, he never had anyone besides her, but he’ll recover; I don’t have any worries on that score.’

  Madeleine put down her needles and her wool.

  ‘I’m getting stiff sitting here. Would you like tea? Elizabeth will be back soon.’

  He followed her into the kitchen, where she plugged in a kettle.

  ‘I usually find it so difficult to talk about myself,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised how easy it is with you.’

  ‘You’re not talking about yourself, you’re much too introvert to do any such thing! You’re talking about other people, and through them I understand you better. I’ve always been like that, ever since Elizabeth found herself alone in the world and I devoted myself to being her confidante. People don’t know me for five minutes and they start telling me their life story. I’d have had to say no from day one, when my little girl decided she wanted to tell me some little bad thing she’d done. But I let her, and ever since then I’ve had no life of my own, only the lives of other people.’

  She was about to pour the boiling water into the teapot when Elizabeth’s voice stopped her.

  ‘Madeleine … didn’t he come?’

  ‘Do you want tea?’ Madeleine called.

  ‘Shit! What’s wrong with him? Why didn’t he come?’

  ‘I think you should dump him. He’s obviously a philanderer.’

  Elizabeth materialised in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘You’re so naughty. I was going to say some horrible things about you. How did you get here?’

  ‘By bicycle.’

  ‘And do you intend to go back to Paris by bicycle?’

  ‘With you sitting on the luggage rack. Unless we buy a tandem and some bobble hats.’

  ‘Madeleine, do you realise? For twenty years I’ve fancied this guy who cycles all over deepest darkest France on his bicycle, as if it was still the Middle Ages!’

  ‘Are you staying tonight?’

  ‘What is there to eat?’

  ‘Is love making you hungry?’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with you!’

  ‘You won’t be disappointed. I think you’ll be staying with us tonight, Monsieur Morgan—’

  ‘Arthur. Call him Arthur.’

  ‘He can put his beloved bicycle in the boot of your car. We’re having salmon with a beurre blanc sauce for dinner.’

  From his window the view swooped down the narrow tunnel of Rue de Verneuil and between the concrete wall and mute buildings of the mysterious Rue Allent where on weekdays, at the little school opposite, you could hea
r the shouts and laughter and tears of the children for whom, lunchtime and evening, their mothers waited on the pavement, eyeing each other distrustfully. The night fell as it does in Paris, taking the city by surprise, cloaking the provincial-looking block in a light silence.

  ‘You’re not going to be sad, are you?’ she said, leaning on her elbows next to him.

  He shook his head. But she had to agree that it was a moment to be thoughtful. Who doesn’t feel lost for those minutes when the night robs us of what’s left of a day? In a moment they would go their separate ways, and the decision he had been incapable of making would be thrust on him by Augusta’s fall like some blinding truth. There was plenty to wonder about.

  ‘Did you say worry about?’

  ‘No, wonder about.’

  ‘When are you going to stop wondering? Time is passing, right under your nose. One day you’ll discover that the play’s over and the set’s collapsed. You’re like Augusta. She took for ever to realise she was just dancing and singing among the ruins and that no one was watching any longer, not even you, because you were so relaxed about seeing her show that you hung on endlessly in Paris, then dawdled all the way there.’

  ‘Unlike you she didn’t need a large audience. One was enough.’

  ‘One at a time. Several a day.’

  ‘She liked to charm.’

  ‘And the day she was locked up in Lugano in that dreary house, with no audience to charm, deserted by her husband and with Getulio more unpredictable than ever, and realised that in those twenty years you’d finally grown up, she panicked. Unfortunately this time it worked.’

  ‘Were there other times?’

  ‘Two or three, not really serious.’

  ‘You’re being hard on her.’

  ‘The more I liked her, the more angry I was with her for having stolen the man who interested me.’