Farewell My French Love

by Nadine Williams

  Jane sits alongside Marie-France on a plush, upholstered sofa and I’m opposite on another sofa, while Véronique and Christina sit in identical antique occasional chairs, facing the fireplace. Lively conversation flows to discussions about Véronique’s exquisite art and it seems we are having a delightful salon experience in Paris.

  ‘The art is my passion and I have taken many years to acquire the knowledge to buy well,’ says Véronique. ‘But do you want to know which one is my favourite? It’s that one over there.’ She points behind her to the mahogany chest of drawers where a collection of objets d’art sit alongside an artwork that I recognise as a portrait of Napoléon Bonaparte.

  ‘I found it in a secondhand store in Village of St Paul and it was very reasonably priced. But I would have bought it even if it was very expensive. I don’t know whether to get it restored or not,’ she says. ‘Sometimes it is a mistake to try to make something old look new again.’

  I certainly do because I have a few pieces of Olivier’s French art on my walls at home and when I retired from The Advertiser, we bought Lady in Paris by Hungarian maestro Tibor Boromisza, which needs to be restored.

  I’m about to say something like ‘how exciting to find such a historic painting’ when Jane, who is perched on her sofa like a demure school ma’am, speaks out.

  ‘Well, I can’t understand this hero worship of Napoléon,’ she states. ‘He really was the Hitler of the early nineteenth century.’

  You know not what you say Jane! I think.

  Having lived with a French man for eight years I know that French people revere Napoléon. Although I don’t understand it, I know not to denigrate him in any way. Along with the love of their language, French people love Napoléon because he made France great. This is what my husband told me in 2004 when we visited the tomb of Napoléon in Les Invalides.

  The room is so silent I can hear people breathing. So Jane continues.

  ‘Hundreds of thousands of young French men died under his command and goodness knows how many of the enemy. And for what? For the glory of France?’

  After another uncomfortable silence, Véronique (dear, diplomatic lady) says, ‘Everyone who visits France needs to learn a little about Napoléon to understand the French psyche. Before you leave Paris, you should visit Les Invalides. He is buried under the great dome.’

  She continues in a firm manner. ‘Under Napoléon, France conquered most of Europe. He gained the greatest of victories for France and suffered the worst humiliation himself, dying alone in exile.’

  Then I feel safe to join in. ‘Olivier revered Napoléon and told me he brought in laws which meant women could own property.’

  ‘He gave Malmaison to Joséphine in their divorce settlement,’ adds Véronique. ‘Before then women could not own property.’

  Véronique asks Jane and me if we would like to see the rest of her apartment.

  She leads us into the dining room, which is a juxtaposition of unusual objets d’art. The shiny lid of the grand piano has a gathering of three small works of art on stands, an opened family Bible, a pile of old books and two antique silver candlesticks. The pièce de résistance is a large, aged painting propped against the piano’s music stand. It features a cornucopia of fruit, corn and grapes. In extraordinary design detail Véronique has mimicked the painting with artificial fruit, shrivelled corn and grapes that rest against the artwork as if they were flowing from the canvas. ‘It’s exquisite, Véronique,’ I enthuse.

  On the wall are three circular plaster casts of mythical medieval figures held up by long leather straps. Her decoration has captured all the arts and pleasures held precious by the French—paintings, food, literature, sculpture and music. Elsewhere the apartment reflects classic French interior style. Antiques beautify every room. Lavish elements include marble fireplaces, mirrored overmantels, and all kinds of occasional chairs. Overhanging it all in each room are matching square wrought iron lanternes—light fittings that seem pure French Country.

  She notices me staring at them. ‘They are iron lanterns that date from Louis XVII’s era and were made for candles, but we have fitted lights to them.’

  The whole living space has a wonderful, familiar French feel—exuberantly beautiful, seductive and sophisticated. Then Véronique leads us back to the entrance and we instinctively know apéritif is over.

  Later, when Jane and I are back in our room and it’s well past 11 pm, I read about Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais in Les Grandes Femmes de l’histoire de France, by Catherine Volenti, even though it is in French. Jane is sleeping. I gasp in surprise as I read, ‘Née en Martinique le 23 Juin 1763 …’

  Joséphine was born on the same day as Olivier, 23 June—175 years apart. This amazing coincidence brings back my memories, which had been side-lined all day.

  SEVEN

  RENDEZVOUS WITH SANDRINE

  ‘May I tell you again where your only comfort lies? It is in not forgetting the happy past. People bring us well meant but miserable consolation when they tell what time will do to help our grief. We do not want to lose our grief because our grief is bound up with our love …’

  Phillip Brooks, in Betty M. Riordan’s Living Well with Grief

  I awake in such a sad, dark-hearted place that I wonder if I should stay in bed. But Jane is in the shower already. So, I sit on the side of the bed and wait for my turn in the bathroom.

  ‘Good morning, darling,’ she says as she emerges clothed and coiffed.

  ‘Morning,’ I respond.

  We go to breakfast at Le Petit Café, but I don’t have the heart to eat. I take my half a baguette, spread on the jam and let it sit on the plate. Grief is a familiar zone. Perhaps I dreamt of Olivier and me in Paris last night, because something has triggered another bout of despair. Otherwise, what is happening to me? The serotonin burst of being in Paris has evaporated overnight and reality has gripped. Paris is transient. At home I will be alone.

  ‘Let’s go on a culture tour,’ Jane says in a sweetly bossy tone. ‘I’ve been thinking about it since we visited the Shakespeare bookshop. Paris is where so many writers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century were inspired to write masterpieces. What if we walk to Saint-Germain-des-Prés?’

  I should feel thrilled. Saint-Germain-des-Prés is the literary heart of Paris’s Left Bank, a mecca for literati. And every day at home, I admire a treasured painting by French artist Jules Michel hanging in my living room of an artist sitting on her stool painting the ancient church on Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Paris is the wellspring of the ‘entire intellectual history of the West’, according to author Eric Maisel. ‘Every street, every boulevard is its own special art form,’ he wrote in A Writer’s Paris.

  Instead I feel terribly sad.

  How can I say, I really don’t want to go to Café de Flore because of those wonderful memories of an afternoon spent there with Olivier in 2004. I’m feeling so vulnerable. Today I want to run from my memories. From how Olivier would often slip on the disc Music from Café de Flore on a Saturday night and we would read papers or books. Sometimes, in a moment of frivolity, we danced around the living room.

  Normally I would take off with a spring in my step, leading the way like a drill sergeant, but my feet feel like clay and my heart is lead. Yet I have loved learning about French women writers. Paris has served as a muse for centuries of artists, authors, sculptors and philosophers. But three renowned French women authors—George Sand, Colette and Simone de Beauvoir—have intrigued me to study their creative lives. So, why can’t I muster any verve?

  In the early weeks after Olivier’s death, I stayed in bed most of the day and read. The first was Hazel Rowley’s book Tête-à-Tête: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre about their unconventional lifetime commitment to each other. Their literary life was conducted in Paris cafés and they produced volumes of books, essays and plays. During the war, they moved their writing ‘headquarters’ from Le Dôme in Montparnasse to Café de Flo
re at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Next door is Les Deux Magots, which forms the famous café corner overlooking the historic Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

  We finish our scant petit dejeuner and are walking down Rue des Écoles when we pass a small courtyard alongside La Boulangerie Réglait emitting a heavenly sweet aroma. Suddenly Jane suggests we go inside this tempting patisserie and I wonder if she has taken pity on me. I have dutifully followed her breakfast habit each morning having only half a baguette with jam.

  She offers to buy me a coffee with whatever cake I like and I look at her absolutely startled. It crosses my mind to say that I don’t want anything. I do think my taste-buds are in my boots, anyway—like my mood. But it’s such a surprising gesture from Jane, I must accept. Then, more surprisingly, she chooses something for herself—a small pastry cup topped with chocolate glacé icing. My choice, after surveying the lavishly decorated patisseries, is a long slice of multi-layered slivers of rum-soaked sponge, decorated with glazed blackberries.

  We sit at the bench at the window looking out over the park and I can now see that the statue is a woman in military garb. If I were my curious self, I would rush out and check who it is. But not today. I don’t have anything particular to say.

  Eventually Jane asks, ‘What do you think of the flavour of your slice, Nadine?’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I utter.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s soaked in rum, with a blackberry spread between sponge layers.’

  I’m still stone-faced, but to be polite I ask her about her humble little tart, now half eaten to expose a creamy inside, oozing slightly onto the plate.

  ‘It’s a lovely custard tart, but for once, I can taste the real vanilla,’ she says.

  I swear this is the first exchange we’ve had over anything sweet that Jane would consider ‘wicked’. Something in her discipline towards food has cracked and she actually says, ‘It’s the tastiest custard tart I’ve ever had.’

  And something in my frozen mood melts and I comment, ‘I think these are raspberries, not blackberries.’

  Perhaps it’s the sugar fix, but that heavy overcoat of sadness that still dampens my days even in Paris lifts a little. Outside Jane takes my arm and we stroll down to Saint-Germain, where we turn left until we see Les Deux Magots across the road.

  ‘You know darling, when you aren’t chattering like a little bird about this or that, I worry. I did miss your chirpy banter this morning. I’m glad you feel better,’ says my gentle friend, her big eyes filled with kindness.

  And the penny drops. Jane has dropped la rigueur to give me pleasure.

  We walk on in silence until we reach Boulevard Saint-Germain.

  Ah, here we are. À la terrasse à Café de Flore. It is so natural for us to sit outside facing the traffic that I don’t mention that Oli and I had lunch inside. We are so jammed into place that when I move to go to the bathroom, I fear the whole row of occupied chairs will topple their occupants like ninepins onto the pavement. Somehow I squeeze my ample frame between two tables. Is this pleasure? Yes. I’m exactly where I want to be—in Paris shoulder-to-shoulder with the coffee crowd, next to Jane in this iconic literary shrine where the trip to the bathroom takes me right into the chambre where de Beauvoir and Sartre worked. Hazel Rowley captured their daily writing routine, how they would arrive in the cafe each afternoon because they both still teach in the mornings. They would settle themselves upstairs at either end of the room to discourage talking, safe in the knowledge that the ominous sounds of the jackboots of the Nazi soldiers never interrupted them. Cafe de Flore was not well known during the war.

  Rowley’s writings give wonderful insight into their modus operandi: like everyone else in Paris, they smoked and an ashtray sat on the table along with writing paper, teapot and cup and saucer. They both used fountain pens ‘and in the fog of tobacco fumes, amid the jangle of coffee cups, the hubbub of conversation, and the distraction of people making their way to the toilet or phone, they wrote.’

  Back then, Sartre called Simone ‘the beaver’ because she was always beavering away at writing. I felt guilty that I had abandoned my writing because once Olivier was diagnosed I wanted to spend my time with him, not locked away in my study. The shock was that I didn’t want to resume writing after he died.

  By the end of the day, I am in a happier mood. Jane has spent the whole day with me and hasn’t disappeared once. At 6 pm, I leave her at the hotel to meet Oli’s dear friend Sandrine at Le Petit Café. Jane plans to join us for coffee afterwards. While I wait patiently at the café, it occurs to me that despite my sadness today, I have appreciated Jane’s company. I know she has tried hard to lift my spirits, chatting to me, making observations, commenting on places, linking her arm with mine, taking charge. And it has worked. It’s the holiday experience I dearly want. Because precious company of a woman friend also nurtures the soul.

  Sandrine sashays in—all smiles—wearing a superbly tailored military-style brown tweed jacket with shoulder lapels and gold studs. Undone, it reveals a low neckline black camisole which shows off cleavage. Her lush dark hair is shorter, clipped to just above her shoulder and shines with a reddish hue. Sandrine’s tall, shapely body is still deeply suntanned from summer. We kiss on both cheeks and she gives me a bear-hug.

  ‘Eet ees so beautiful to see you,’ she says in heavily accented English.

  ‘For me also, Sandrine,’ I respond, smiling at her warmth.

  As soon as we take our seats, she looks me straight in the eyes and admonishes me for not advising her of Olivier’s death until September—four months afterwards.

  ‘Pourquoi ne m’as pas tu dit quand Olivier était mort?’ she says with a sad, enquiring look. Why didn’t you tell me when Olivier died?

  ‘Excusez-moi?’ I begin, flabbergasted at this beginning to our dinner. ‘Mais j’étais absoluement desperate avec la douleur.’ I was absolutely disabled with grief, but the English word ‘desperate’ must do. It is important to struggle with the French because clearly she has been offended.

  ‘Je connaissais Olivier depuis quarante ans,’ she adds. ‘Il était dans mon coeur; il était mon bon ami, toujours.’ I knew Olivier for forty years. He was in my heart; he was my wonderful friend, always. ‘Il m’a dit qu’il était malade à l’hôpital,’ she continues. He told me he was sick in hospital.

  Oh dear. My elbows are on the table, and I run my right hand over my lips as if loosening crumbs. I offer an explanation.

  ‘Après son mort, je n’ai rien fait pour un long temp.’ After his death I did nothing for a long time. Suddenly I remember an embarrassing fact.

  ‘Je n’ai pas répondu aux messages de sympathie que j’ai reçu de mes amis Australiens jusqu’en Novembre.’ I pause to think in French. ‘C’était six mois après sa mort que j’ai écrit a tous mes amis pour dire merci.’ I did not respond to the cards and messages of sympathy that I received from my friends until November, six months after Olivier’s death.

  ‘Moi-même j’ai voulu mourir,’ I add. Myself, I wanted to die. Recalling these feelings of how despair overwhelmed me brings tears to my eyes.

  ‘Oh, chérie, désolée, désolée. C’était horrible pour toi.’ And in English she adds, grabbing the drinks menu, ‘We must drink to our memories of Olivier.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She orders a bottle of house wine—a different scenario from the first time I met her on the Champs-Élysées at Fouquets when it was French champagne all afternoon. We both order pasta, which I now know to be of excellent homemade quality with various tasty sauces. I order the simplest—melted cheese, fresh herbs and black pepper. Hers comes with a mushroom, wine and cream sauce.

  ‘I have a new partner,’ she tells me in French. ‘It’s a long story, but he and his wife were friends of ours when I lived with Didier. But I had not seen him for many years until on the train back to Cognac,’ she says, with gleaming eyes. I’m thrilled to understand her simple French sentences, but distressed that Sandr
ine seems to look in all the wrong places for love.

  ‘Two years ago, and it was coup du foudre.’ Strike of lightning.

  She tells me that he left his wife and they moved as a couple to Trocadero, an elite area in Paris where the tourist bus stops for panoramic views of the Eiffel Tower. She assures me they are very happy, the only problem is his four adult children will have nothing to do with her. This sounds like a body blow to happiness, but I make no comment. She tells me that he had planned to buy a block of land in Cognac, build a new house for them and they would move back where he had lived all his life.

  ‘When Didier heard of the plans through Philippe’s wife, he threatened that he would shoot Philippe dead if he ever returned to Cognac. So we stay in Paris.’

  I think Didier is still wielding violence as a weapon. The first time I met Sandrine she told me how he had marched her and their daughter—then aged nine—out of the house at the end of a gun when he discovered she was having an affair with Serge. He has long departed Sandrine’s life after a ten-year relationship.

  Didier has been a ‘pest’ all of her life, she vehemently expresses, before explaining her latest angst. Philippe has told her that he is taking his eldest son to visit Australia next year and these plans have upset her. She looks as if she is in physical pain.

  ‘Can you imagine how I feel?’ She sounds exasperated. ‘I’m the partner and I want to go to Australia, but he has refused to take me. I’m very sad about it.’

  Her vivacious mood has vanished and she seems overcome with anguish. She throws her head back and raises her hands in the air as if praying for deliverance. Then, having voiced her dismay, she changes tone.

  ‘Would you like to visit us at our beautiful new apartment?’ she says. ‘It’s close to where I lived on Cours Albert Ier.’

  I smile remembering the lovely view of the sparkling tower from the bedroom window of her apartment in 2008. But I decide instantly I don’t want to get involved in this sticky situation, which I’m sure won’t bring Sandrine the long-term happiness she desires.