by Dirk Bogarde
‘Get yourself some secateurs, a couple of plastic buckets – they are lighter when you’re up the ladder – and, of course, a pair of steps, or a damned ladder. God! How I hate them. Can’t stand heights, you see. Dottie usually has to stand at the bottom to reassure me.’ He took a good swig.
I looked, I suppose, a little doubtful, because he suddenly said in his schoolmaster voice, ‘What’s up? Going to be timid and British suburban? Glass of wine in the afternoon? Delicious.’
‘I’m driving,’ I said lamely, and took a sip myself. ‘But I do admit I have never seen a sign of a flic between here and Jericho all the time I’ve been here.’
He laughed, scratched a bony, bronzed knee. ‘You won’t either. Too rural here, they stick to the main roads when they aren’t stuck in a bar. Helmets on the counter. No problem.’
‘I need this anyway. It’s been a sod of a week. I’m only just getting used to life on the farm, so to speak. I’ve slept for almost two days. What is it today? Wednesday? I had to hang about because a Monsieur Bourdon from the PTT was due. No one knew just when. Sometime. Because “he is on your route”. So one waits. Came this morning, a great deal of “Mon Dieu! La chaleur! Malheur! Oh la! la!” He was as fat as a boar and shaggy as a bison. Dripping, poor man, like a sodden sponge. But after six iced beers and a flurry of francs I had a telephone! A real, honest-to-God telephone! With a number! I am reeling. I am automatic; he demonstrated proudly by misdialling his own office. But I put that down to excitement. I am in touch with the world. I was beginning, after the last three days, to feel rather isolated.’
Arthur laughed, drank again, wiped his lips. ‘You may very likely wish that you still were. I hate that thing. Terrible intrusion into one’s life. We had so much of all that in the UK. At everyone’s beck and call. Parents worried about their little brutes. Caterers and laundry people. Tax fellows, police too sometimes, if a couple of little treasures had got pissed in the village and felt up some witless girl. Journalists … I really was glad to up stakes and clear off. Giles seems in good form. Chuffed with the house. Are you?’ His eyes were blue and very bright, his question crisp.
‘Very. I think. It’s not something that I was really expecting. It has all come rather suddenly. Didn’t expect the boy either, as you know, flown in like cargo. “Unsolicited gift”. I didn’t have much option. Now I have a house, three hectares, a son and a telephone. And I don’t know quite what to do. But it is getting clearer. Promise you that. It’s suddenly starting to come together at last. I have a feeling it’s exactly what I should have done years ago.’
Arthur reached for his tobacco pouch, began to roll himself a cigarette, the flimsy paper fluttering in his strong fingers. ‘Well you’ve made a commitment now to the boy. You’ll have to stick to it. I have a shrewd feeling that he hasn’t felt very secure. Be cruel to muck him up. You won’t do that? You don’t mind me smoking?’ He lit his rather ratty little tube with a lighter, blew a thin spiral of smoke into the vine.
‘I won’t do that,’ I said. ‘I have made a commitment indeed. Not just to him, made it to myself as well. Don’t worry. I’ll stick by it. I won’t “muck him up”. He’s had enough of that from the lot of us. Not you and Dottie, I don’t mean you! God! His family. We go back to the UK shortly, to sell up there. Then back here. Hence the telephone. I have to be ready to get over as soon as there is an alert. The house is on the market, but it’s a difficult time. Always is. The hotel have the number, Madame Mazine clucked like a contented hen. Maurice-with-the-car fixed it all the moment I agreed to employ his daughter Clotilde. Simple but efficient. Drives a mean Mobylette, dead punctual, and does a bloody good line in pasta, and tarte au blet.’
Arthur waved away a curious wasp buzzing round his glass. ‘And Florence Prideaux?’
‘And Florence. But she left this morning … somewhere near Marseilles. A little break with friends of her mother. But they have the number.’
Then Dottie and Giles, chattering in French, halting but fairly intelligible, were on the terrace. Giles had a small glass jar. Held it reverently.
‘Cherries! Look, Dad. All from three trees. These are for me.’
Arthur hooked a chair with his foot. ‘Dot, sit down, my dear. Have a sip of wine. Giles, nip in and get a glass will you? There’s some Coke in the fridge.’
Dottie sat down, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘I’ve done about twenty kilos. Not bad. Ran out of sugar. Never mind. Has anyone ever given that child any sort of responsibility ever? He reacts splendidly, eager, good with his hands. He’s also far more relaxed now. Easier altogether. Maybe Jericho? Certainly you.’
‘I’m not sure about me.’
‘I am. He’s stopped clock-watching. He takes it on trust that you’ll be here when you say you will. And so you are. Up till now, he began to get restless about half an hour before you were due. Like a dog before an earthquake …’
Arthur barked with laughter. ‘Dottie! Really, what an analogy!’
‘Well, I know what I mean. Anyway, that’s stopped … Your responsibility, Will, but desperately important for him.’
Giles came back through the bead and bamboo curtain, set the wine glass down and swigged at his opened Coke. Arthur poured the wine, topped up my glass in spite of my cautious ‘British suburban’ hand which had half moved to cover it.
I said, ‘Giles. Guess what? We are in touch with the world again. Monsieur Bourdon from the PTT arrived this morning just as I got back, swallowed a six-pack of Kronen-bourg and left us with a glorious telephone! Pale beige, with real numbers and a bell that rings. How about that?’
‘Terrific! Brilliant!’ Then his smile faded. He pressed the side of the Coke can. It crackled. ‘Now you’ll be able to call … Valbonne, won’t you?’
I nodded. ‘Sure. But I still don’t know the number. I forgot to ask Mum on Saturday. There were other things to talk about. She’ll call the hotel when she has to. They know the number.’
Arthur scratched a knee. ‘When do you have to go back? To the UK.’ His cigarette was a brown stump by this time. He stubbed it under his boot, caught Dottie’s hopeless look and laughed. ‘I’ll sweep the thing up! Look, woman! Place is covered with vine thinnings. Been showing William what he’s in for. I reckon the summer is a good time to sell in London? Right or wrong? Don’t envy you at all, moving. God! As devastating as death or divorce.’ He looked at me suddenly, slightly confused and embarrassed. ‘Or so they say. Then back here, eh? To Jericho?’
‘Back here. If I am still in one piece after it all. Back here.’
‘For a summer holiday, you said. Didn’t you, Dad? A summer holiday.’
Dottie laughed, began to take off her apron. ‘I know exactly what you really mean, Giles. No more lessons for three months? No more Frog, eh? He speaks very well now, you know? Not perfect but not bad. Good accent. Total immersion in the house, as long as Arthur remembers.’
‘I remember,’ said Arthur. ‘But up in the aviary it gets a bit fraught.’
‘They have terrific summer holidays here in France,’ Giles said. ‘From now until September! Then it’s called rentrée, right?’ he said to Dottie, who nodded. He was swinging by one arm from one of the pillars of the vine trellis, his face bright with cheerful anticipation of weeks of idleness.
‘What in God’s name will you do for three months on our own? I’ll go potty, to start with,’ I said.
Dottie folded her apron, set it on the table. ‘The rest of June! All July, and August. Rather long. But we chug on. Teaching. We Theobalds. You can come here now and then. Give Arthur a hand with his birds, keep from getting rusty with your Frog. Oh! And we’ll have Frederick, or Freddy, de Terrehaute here. Three days a week. A nice young American boy, same age as you about. I think you’d like him. He comes to us to get a “French polish” as his mother calls it. Odd, considering how English we are? Come and meet him?’
‘Why do I know that name? Terrehaute?’ I said.
‘You might. His ancestors used to own the chateau nex
t to your house. Ruins now. In the Revolution. They got away to America. Louisiana. His mother comes back here every summer. Takes the Villa des Violettes, just up the hill. Most amusing woman, widow or divorced, not certain. But I’ve never seen a Duke.’
‘Of course I know it. Great cedar tree? My brother pinched a lot of the stones to build his wall, round Jericho. Of course.’
Arthur started to roll another cigarette. ‘Used to be the pigeonnier of the place, your house. That fat round tower at the corner. Ever been inside? Nothing to see but bat droppings. You getting restless, Giles? We boring you?’
Giles undraped himself from the pillar. ‘No. I was actually thinking about my aquarium. Will said I could have one in the summer holiday. You did, Will, didn’t you?’
It was obvious that my name as ‘Will’ or ‘Dad’ would vary according to the amount of charm which he felt he would need for whatever he wanted. And an aquarium, it seemed, would need an almost sickening amount. He was smiling eagerly, nearly winsomely.
‘We’ll see about that when the time comes.’ The winsome bit had to be crushed.
‘You said after the telephone. After we got back from London!’
‘Well we haven’t even gone there yet. Come on! Let’s get Jericho set up first, okay?’
‘Well, okay. But we’ll have a really long holiday here anyway. Won’t we?’
‘We’ll have a decent holiday, my lad. Let us call it a period of adjustment,’ I said, and finished my wine.
Chapter 6
Sidonie Prideaux, Florence’s mama, was what I suppose one would call an imposing figure. In her early seventies, tall, grey-haired, firm jaw, good legs, a body which had once been fruitful and strong, now running to slack. When I had been ushered into her presence (and it had always seemed like that each time), she was engaged in what she called her ‘monthly cleaning’. Before her on a small, hideous, Moroccan inlaid-shell table lay a clutter of little brass pieces. An inkwell, a fish, some Algerian coffee cups, an ugly coffee pot with a long thin spout, a bell, a box inscribed with Arabic lettering. She was buffing away at an Aladdin’s lamp when Annette murmured my name and I moved into the humidity of the familiar conservatory.
Madame Prideaux didn’t look up, but set the duster and the lamp on the table, removed her glasses, folded them deliberately, indicated with them a cane chair in which I might sit, and then laid them among the brass junk on the table. Annette bobbed, closed herself out of the place. Silently.
I dragged the chair across to the little table’s side, ducking a frilling of ferns swinging gently from a hanging basket above my head.
‘My monthly chore. Remember?’
She had a pleasant voice, deep, warm almost. She tucked in some grey hairs which had wisped away from the brown velvet ribbon binding the cottage-loaf arrangement on her head. ‘I seem to recollect that I was doing these same labours on the very day you came here to ask Florence about taking over the lease of Jericho from …’ For a moment she hesitated, moved the little lamp uneasily, folded her hands in her lap and, for the first time, looked up at me directly. ‘From your brother. James.’
‘Correct. You were indeed. And you were most kind in agreeing that I should.’
She shrugged, picked up an old toothbrush with which she applied her polish. ‘Boff! What else could I do?’ She picked up the scaled fish and began to brush it. ‘Your … brother … had paid me three years’ rent in advance. I had no complaint. No wish to be a cheating landlady; that is not my métier. I am a colonel’s widow, an army woman. Not a commercante, and you did agree that I need never be responsible for landlady things: electricity, drains, woodworm and all that nonsense. Ouf! If you had not been quite so imprudent I assure you that, after your brother abandoned my daughter, and “disappeared into the night”, I would have let the house moulder away. I have no love for it. Had no love for it. It was merely a part of my – what do you call it in English? – dowry, my dot. Given to me by my papa. He insisted that land and property were far more useful in life than diamonds, or money in the mattress. I never even lived there. Never.’
She leant back in the chair, polishing, poking, fiddling with the fish. ‘When the children were young, Raymond and Florence, we sometimes used to go there and picnic. Then I leased it to a man from Lyon, an industrialist alas! But he enjoyed the solitude and shooting. Raymond enjoyed shooting there too. He stayed for a day or two when he was on leave from his regiment. He took his military friends. I never asked questions. I am a sensible woman, I like to think.’ She held the fish up before me, her grey eyes, agate hard when necessary, were presently kind, amused. She waggled the scales. ‘This is not Moroccan? Or Algerian? Chinese or something, I’d say. Probably Hubert, my husband, picked it up for me in Saigon or Hue. We were stationed there for a while. And you? I talk like a parrot! A sign of age and solitude. You are settled in that wretched house?’
She placed the fish on the table, and looked at me with full expectation. I told her we were all installed, the telephone was connected, that the gardens and potager were my next concern, to restore them, and that I felt, and hoped, a new life was commencing at Jericho, for myself, my son, and for the house itself.
She smiled bleakly, folded the yellow duster she had used for buffing her trinkets. ‘Your brother and my daughter worked themselves to death in that garden. And the wall they built! Stealing stones from the Terrehaute chateau ruins. Madness! The weight! The dust, the cuts and bruises. A wall for Jericho! I had not the least idea, when your brother came to ask me to rent him the house so that he could work at his painting and build a studio, that in fact he was an infant Le Notre! They achieved miracles in only two years. You will have a lot to do. It had been so badly neglected, and you are not exactly young, are you?’
‘Not exactly old, either. I think I still have a little strength left. I’ll try.’
‘And why have you come to visit me this morning? I am not your landlady, you recall.’
‘I do, Madame. I am returning, very briefly, to England in a day or two, to sell up my house in London, pack some stuff and ship it out here. I intend to stay on.’
‘So Florence has told me. Well, that is up to you. You know that Florence is away? She has taken Thomas for a little holiday, a change. A rest after the distress and anguish of the last months. Now that she knows your brother is laid to rest, if that is what one should call a shower of cinders wilfully thrown over a cliff into the sea, the anguish will ease. It has been a very stressful time for her.’
I shifted in my cane chair, it creaked quietly. ‘For all of us, Madame.’
‘For all of you. Of course.’ She was agreeing only to be civil. She smoothed the brown velvet ribbon binding her hair. ‘So. Alors. What can I do? Why did you ask me to receive you?’
‘My address in London. And telephone number.’ I fished a sealed envelope from my jacket pocket, laid it among the brass toys before us. ‘I’ll be away when she gets back. Just in case she wants to contact me before I return.’
‘Why do you imagine she would want to contact you? Remember that she has gone away to think things out. To restore her mind. When she returns she will try to restart her life. She has the boy, she will have to find a job. A disabled child is an expensive joy. She will not view you, I think, or any member of your family with affection. Her grief has almost consumed her.’
‘She still carries my family name. Her son is still my brother’s son.’
‘Thomas is the centre of her life. She has no room for anything or anyone else. A ruinous, appalling, state of affairs.’ She shrugged lightly. ‘But consider, Monsieur, who could accept her with the burden which she would bring him? An imperfect, incontinent creature which she must tend for the rest of her life? You understand me?’
‘Perfectly, Madame.’
‘It is perhaps unfortunate that you are so near; that you have taken over Jericho. I should perhaps have thought of that? Memories stirred. But we must all be civilized about it. I am certain that we can be. I see no
reason for her to wish to contact you again, however near. Ever.’
‘Except that I love her. Am in love with her. She knows that. We have spoken of it a number of times: she knows I will be patient, that I am stubborn, that she is absolutely all that I want in my life, to cherish and to heal.’
Madame Prideaux looked at me calmly. She made no move, her eyes were quite flat, unfathomable.
I sat back in my chair. ‘I am not a youth, Madame. I know exactly what I am saying.’
‘You are not a youth, indeed. You are a married man with children. You appear to have failed in your marriage and now attempt to restart your life in middle age with the woman your brother so brutally discarded. What impertinence! I am certain that your protestations of “love” were severely rebuked.’
‘Rebuked indeed. But with infinite gentleness and sweetness. Obviously she has told you of this. I am certain she told you without anger or disdain.’
Madame Prideaux looked across the conservatory to the bubbling fish tank, then down at her lap, flicked a piece of fluff from her flannel skirt. Looked up. ‘Yes. Yes, she told me. I still consider it immoral and distasteful. Your brother never even married her: fathered a malformed child, and fled away to rejoin his loathsome friends from Paris. The sodomites, those who corrupted him from his earliest days. He had no courage. He was unmanly. No courage. He abandoned my child as a spinster, with a disabled child, alone in a small, gossiping little village. What chivalry! How gallant!’
‘She was abandoned as his wife, Madame. As Madame Caldicott, not as a spinster.’
‘Boff! A faux-marriage on some beach by moonlight, with a tin ring! Capricious, romantic idiots. Very well, I can, almost, accept that, but the brutality of his desertion, and of that disgusting creature, Aronovich!’
I leant towards her, the cane chair creaking noisily. ‘No! Now I must rebuke you. He is not “disgusting”. If it had not been for Solomon Aronovich in the first place my brother surely would have been destroyed by those ugly people in Paris. I can agree there. It was Aronovich who got him away from that city, from them, who got him to come here, who forced him to paint, to work, to start his life afresh. Aronovich was his patron, paid him for his paintings, commissioned him to work for him for his new hotel in Cannes. If it had not been for Aronovich, Madame, your daughter would never have had the little joy which once she did. She owes all the happiness she had to him, however brief it might have been. And then, finally, he cared for James after he disappeared. If it hadn’t been for him we would none of us ever have known what had happened to him, where he had gone. That he had died -’
