by Rose Tremain
So General Almarlyes gave the order ‘Women and wounded first!’ Cotton Eye Joe came down from the bridge and washed himself in the clear water and the Daughters of the Lamb with their burden of wounded lowered their eyes on his black nakedness. The scent of the camellia trees fermented in the heart of General Almarlyes unfamiliar longings not entirely unconnected with his boyhood at Lyme Regis and the scent of fuchsias at his mother’s window, but which he couldn’t express, only in his eyes which searched, as the Daughters of the Lamb came out of the ship for the one he had chosen to be the angel of his forgetting, mother of his children who would never suffer as he had suffered, no never as I, General Almarlyes, have suffered in my wars, body and mind for more years than I can remember.
The sun was high above the ship as the last of the wounded were brought out and General Almarlyes could hear, far off, the shouting of his men as they saw for the first time the streets of white houses shaded by the trees and believed they had found paradise. He was alone on the ship in his mended uniform. His mother called to him out of the forgotten ages of her apricot-coloured negligee to be first not last, to be first, son, in all that you do, and then you will win prizes and cups and badges of merit and we shall be proud of you, so proud! And he knew that he was last: left behind on the ship, and that when he came to the white streets described to him by the advanced party of ten, there would be no house left for him, no silent room – confessional of his love – in which to be healed of his madness and renew himself on the breast of his chosen virgin.
“But I am full of resolve,” he said aloud. “I am General Almarlyes, and to the General must be allotted the greatest share of this new silence. If necessary this shall be taken by force, with the revolver I have kept hidden on my right thigh even through the days of the earth tremors and the time spent with the merchant crabs waiting to die. Yet there will be no bravery in it. I shall not violate my order that all Acts of Outstanding Bravery cease for ever and for always, only shoot my man from behind, roll his body in a death bag and say to the Daughters of the Lamb, “This man was a usurper and a thief, an undeserving subject of this new gift of peace.”
General Almarlyes climbed down into the water and only then as he turned on his back and let the tide float his body ashore did he find that his gun was gone.’
Ralph stopped reading and slept almost at once. He dreamed he went to Oxford and met, not John Pennington at the top of some musty stairway, but Walt, smelling of sticky cologne and the body odour of airline travel. He tried to push past the man but he was prevented: Walt held out an enormous box to bar his way and shouted to him that box was full of wooden bobbins for lacemaking, bought in Brittany. There were hundreds of them, the little shiny bones. Ralph stared at them and knew that if he only had the skill (possessed by so very few, surely?) to use them rightly with the minute pins and the cushion to manufacture lace, then Walt would hand him the box and let him go by him and he would never see Walt again as long as he lived.
‘I can learn to make lace,’ he yelled back at Walt, but Walt only smiled and rattled the bobbin box.
‘It will take you the rest of your life,’ he said.
To escape from Walt, Ralph woke himself up. He lay in the dark which, behind the thin curtains, was the dark of one or two o’clock. Only the occasional car passed, yet at five the lorries would begin.
He lay and examined the dream. The exact shape and feel of the bobbins was very clear to him; he could hear them clack. Then he tried to put Walt out of his mind. He remembered his weeping and wondered why there had been so much pent up misery inside him. He knew the answer was there (even in the dream of lace-making – yet just fractionally out of reach. He remembered Erica’s kindness to him – she had given him an extraordinary frayed silk handkerchief, once smart bright green; she had made him drink some wine – and knew that it was the child in him who had wept. Yet he didn’t feel ashamed.
As the dawn crept to his window and the traffic began its ceaseless rattling through Chalk Farm he thought, this is the beginning of the last day. Fear of what it might bring kept him awake till sunrise. Then he slept for a few hours.
‘Well,’ she said brightly, ‘I sent Mrs Burford out for vodka and caviar but of course you can’t buy caviar any more – only in Fortnum’s or Harrods, I suppose – so we’ve got a little pot of what they call lumpfish and the Indian shopkeepers say this is very good. I hope you aren’t disappointed, Ralph.’
‘I’d forgotten,’ said Ralph.
‘Well I knew you would, dear, after all that sobbing yesterday. I felt very stupid you know, very inadequate, like one of Bernard’s butterflies just perching there by your waterfall.’
She was suddenly downhearted. ‘And there’s very bad news about the cupboard,’ she said, ‘I opened the door, just a crack, yesterday evening because I could hear a strange little noise in there and I was longing to see what it was, I was certain it was something I could make sense of. But it’s mice.’
‘Ah, shit!’ said Ralph.
‘Well quite. It’s not as if I’ve ever even liked mice. I told you that in that room I first had in Paris – the one with the singing concierge – I used to feel them crawling over my face, and I hated this. So I had to shoo them out. I got a broom and I tried to push them out onto the stairs. I told them to go and find the ’cellist, but they bolted under my bed. They go like bullets, you know, so fast.’
‘D’you want me to get them out, Erica?’
‘On no, I got them into the kitchen in the end. They’ll be all right in there because there’s a lot of old packets of things that I never eat. They can have a feast. Just as long as they don’t go into the cupboard. But let’s not think about them, Ralph. Mrs Burford is going to put the lumpfish on some toast for us, and I told her to buy a lemon and then we can talk and have little sips of vodka which was one of Chadwick’s favourite drinks. Not that he approved of Russia, of course, even though we were allies at the beginning of the war. I think he imagined all those grand drawing-rooms being ransacked by the mob and that made him feel frightened, yet although he was a snob, he wasn’t a cruel man and he didn’t like repression at all, so I’ve never been able to see quite why he wasn’t on better terms with Lenin. It was very odd of him.’
Ralph smiled.
‘Are you feeling happier today, dear?’
‘I guess.’
‘You go to see your friend tomorrow, don’t you? I shall think about you in Oxford, which is very beautiful in parts. Saladino had a picture of Oxford, you know, on his landing, though I can’t imagine why. It was an engraving. It said underneath “Oxford au Dix-septième Siècle” and of course it looked very small and quiet and rather black and dirty which it isn’t now. They’ve cleaned it up. I used to stare at that engraving when I was ill. I think it came from the Quai St Michel.’
‘Tell me about Saladino. You said he survived the war and you and Bernard went to see him.’
‘Oh we did, yes. It must have been in 1954 when The Hospital Ship came out and there was such a fuss about it. I had to go to Paris to see Jacques Cambier who was very old and ill by that time – too ill to come to England – but he wanted to publish the book very quickly, before he died.
‘I didn’t want to go to Paris. Bernard and I were happy then, in our quiet life with the farm and the butterflies. We hardly ever went to London or did anything. Only our trip to Kenya. He loved Suffolk – more than I ever did. He was having the life he’d always wanted and even his dreams of Crowbourne were lessening. And I wanted us to stay put, so that nothing would threaten us. I thought if we stayed put and I had Bernard’s wonderful love and caring, I would become a proper writer, someone who wrote every day and for a time I was determined to be this. When I wrote The Hospital Ship I wrote for six or seven hours each day and it was finished in six months. It was thrilling.
‘But then the Paris question came up and Jacques Cambier started sending cables. So I went. I wanted to leave Bernard behind so that I wouldn’t have to talk to
anyone. I decided that if I had to see Paris again, I just wanted to see it silently and pretend I was invisible. I knew I’d have to talk to Jacques Cambier and Valéry Clément who was still in the same flat in Montparnasse, but otherwise I didn’t want to have to be. But I couldn’t explain this properly to Bernard; I couldn’t find the moment to say “Please don’t come with me”. And he was full of excitement about the trip. He promised to give me lunch at Fouquet’s.
‘When we arrived, I felt very ill. I found the whole place suffocating. Bernard went for walks along the river and I stayed in bed and listened to the cars on the cobbles. The cars had changed of course and they swooshed more. I think I wanted to be in one of them, going away. But I had to get up and go to see Jacques Cambier. He was very drugged because of the pain he was in. He kept stroking my hand and whispering: “Étonnant … étonnant …” I can’t imagine how he’d been able to read the book, but he had and Valéry had begun work on the translation. But I couldn’t bear to see him full of morphine and dying and I got away as quickly as I could and, without really guiding myself, I found I was in the Boulevard St Germain, just a few hundred yards from Saladino’s patisserie. I thought of turning back but I didn’t. I went on. I don’t think I believed it would still be there – not after twenty years – but it was. I stared at all the cakes, the mille feuilles and the japonais and the tartes aux pommes and then I noticed that the “English Spoken” sign had gone, so I thought, it doesn’t belong to Saladino any more. Someone else has taken it over. And I was about to walk on when I caught sight of him. He was at the back of the shop, as usual, by the coffee machine and he looked up and saw me staring in.
‘He’d hardly changed. His hair was grey and he was very bald and red in the face and fatter than ever, but I would have recognized him anywhere! And when he saw me he came darting out and took me into his arms and kissed me all over my face and there were tears in his eyes and he said “You were right about the Americans – they came! And we all fought for France, all of us here.” And then he begun calling for Thérèse – in front of everyone eating their brioches and their florentines – and Thérèse came hurrying down the stairs, just as she’d always done when Saladino called and when she saw me she ran to hug me too and I noticed a wonderful change in her! She was much older, of course, but there was colour in her face and her straggly hair was all tidy in a bun and she smiled and laughed and wiped her eyes on her apron and Saladino put his fat arm round her shoulders.
‘So you see, time had mended Thérèse and Saladino. I suppose he was too old to go running after smart women any more – too old and too fat! So he stopped beating Thérèse and decided to be kind to her and she told me how every year now, he took her to Calvi in September.
‘They made me sit down – on the same old banquettes but recovered now in red leather, and Saladino made me a cup of tea. We laughed at the tea and I asked him, “What about the sign, Saladino? What about the English Spoken?” And he said he’d tried to learn but he’d never got much further than “tip not included”, so he’d had to take the sign down. So we laughed and laughed and only when Thérèse had slipped out with some cups and saucers to wash did he whisper to me about the death of Celestine. “Two bodies in the bed, Erica,” he said. “Two bodies! So who in life can a man trust?”
‘I didn’t mind talking to him, being with him. I was so glad he had patched up his life with Thérèse and of course we hardly spoke about the past because it was much too sad. He told me the patisserie was doing very well. People had money again, he said, after all the bad years. And he’d hung on, mainly through his connections with the black market. He’d kept going in a meagre sort of way, even making strudel for the Germans and spitting behind their backs. And me? What about me? he kept asking. So I told him I’d never married but that I had found someone to be with and we had a quiet life and all I wanted now was to be quiet and do my writing. But he made me promise to bring Bernard to the shop the next day. I tried to refuse. I suddenly imagined Bernard sitting on Gérard’s banquette and not knowing that it was ‘his’ and talking on in his schoolteacher French and I thought, I don’t want him here because this isn’t what we share, this is another of my lives and he’s got no business in it. But Saladino said he would make us a special gateau and Thérèse would put on her Sunday dress. He said he’d be honoured to meet Bernard. I kept saying no. I tried and tried to explain that I didn’t want to come back; it was enough to know that he and Thérèse were well. But he didn’t understand and looked very hurt. So in the end I agreed.
‘We went at four or five the next afternoon and there was a magnificent cake layered with chestnut cream. We didn’t sit anywhere near Gérard’s banquette, thank heavens, but it was still dreadful. We were all very serious and embarrassed and Bernard in his tweed jacket seemed very, very far away from me and I found myself thinking, I wish he was a stranger and in a moment, when the tea is over, we’ll part. I felt all my love for him slipping away. I wanted to resurrect the past and have it there again, every incredible moment of it. It was so foolish, Ralph. I’d been content with my life for years. There was no one in the world who had ever been kinder to me than Bernard. But in Saladino’s teashop I just let him go. I did, Ralph. And this was precisely what I’d been afraid of when I’d tried to stop him coming to Paris with me. I didn’t want to let him go and yet I knew I would. It’s impossible, you see, to replace one person with another: they must be separate and live in different worlds.
‘Saladino and Thérèse were very confused by Bernard. After seeing me with Gérard, he wasn’t what they’d expected. I know they’d prepared the cake for someone quite different, someone they just imagined. So they wanted the meeting to be over quickly too and we didn’t stay long or eat much of the chestnut gâteau and when we said goodbye, it was a very formal thing, even though I knew I’d never see them again. I remember thinking of all the questions I wanted to ask them and never would and all my life I’ve thought of those questions I never asked. But they’re dead now. They must be, or they’d be a hundred. And I expect the patisserie’s gone.’
Mrs Burford opened the door with a sniff. She carried a laden tray very carefully to the table and set it down. She gave Ralph a gleeful smile.
‘Last day, eh?’
Ralph nodded.
‘Ralph’s going to Oxford,’ said Erica.
‘Oh yeh. Nice there, is it?’
‘Yes. I think so,’ said Ralph.
But Mrs Burford had gone, closing the door behind her. She’ll creep away, Ralph thought, when her work’s done and I won’t see her again, never get the chance to say: “Why are Americans … Why d’you hate me so when we’re on the same side? You help Erica in your way, and by her own admission, she’s found something useful, even valuable, in me.” Absent-mindedly, Ralph poured the vodka.
‘It’s odd,’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘To be drinking this in the afternoon.’
Ralph noticed that, in Erica’s room, he’d become afraid of silences. It was as if, when the room was quiet, he expected a dismissal. And she was silent now, taking up her little glass of vodka but not drinking it, her eyes behind the thick lenses staring beyond him at some object on the wall.
‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly, ‘if it was painful for you to tell me about the trip to Paris and Saladino. If it was, we won’t go on. But I’d like to know if things did change for you and Bernard after that, or whether –’
She focused on him and her mouth was a hard line.
‘Yes, they changed.’
Ralph took a sip of his vodka and waited.
‘I went to see Valéry Clément that same evening. I think I’d planned to go the next day, but I left Bernard at the hotel and went straight to Montparnasse in a taxi. Climbing his stairway was awful, and the smell of his room, it hadn’t changed. But he was an old man by that time, Valéry Clément, with all his good looks stretched into tiny lines and very curious dyed hair which looked navy blue. I got very dr
unk on his red wine and tried to tell him what a terrible folly it is to mix up lives like cocktails. I was very, very unhappy, because I just couldn’t see how I could ever love Bernard again, not as I’d been loving him in a contented way. I told Valéry I would rather be by myself till the end of my life than try to love someone I couldn’t love any more. And he said love was unimportant. He said, it’s unimportant because its base is a fundamental absurdity – the absurdity of our notions of time. He told me to spend my life preoccupied entirely with human folly and human cruelty, exposing these in all their manifestations and to forget love absolutely, as if I had never felt it.
‘I don’t remember what else he said, because I was too drunk. I think he would only talk about the book after that. He told me its only weakness was General Almarlyes’ belief that love could save him. “I despise those who believe they love,” he said and I knew that inside all his white suits, for years, and years, he had been feeling bitter and betrayed. But we were a silly pair. We just wanted to be young again and we weren’t!
‘So I came stumbling out at about midnight and I was sick in the hotel bathroom and Bernard ordered coffee and a hot water bottle because I was shaking. It was all disgraceful and sad. I’d let my head fill up with memories and they made me unkind. Yet even the next morning when I woke up and looked at Bernard I couldn’t find all my old feelings for him. I just couldn’t remember how content I’d been. I couldn’t.
‘I think we went back to England the next day or the day after and I’ve never felt so miserable. It wasn’t as if I could say well, that portion of my life is over – the portion with Bernard – and pack my things and start somewhere else. I was sixty, not a thing of twenty-five in a strawberry hat! I kept saying to myself it will all evaporate like a dream, the Paris feeling, and then I shall get back to work and Bernard and I will be just as we’ve always been and he will understand that what I feel now is something temporary, a kind of illness.
