When the week was up, Sarah telephoned Stephen to say she believed the script – the libretto? how was this hybrid to be described? – was ready. No doubt that he was pleased to hear her voice, and she was disproportionately pleased that his voice warmed and lifted. Then he said, ‘But you know, you really don’t have to…’ in the way of someone not expecting much consideration. Which was surely remarkable?
‘But of course,’ said Sarah. ‘We are co-authors after all.’
‘I’m not going to complain. Tomorrow?’
And now began a time which, when she looked back on it, seemed like a country where she had gone by chance, one she had not known existed, a place of charm, a landscape like a dream landscape, with its own strong atmosphere, that speaks in a language one half knows or has forgotten. Before meeting Stephen somewhere – a restaurant, a garden, a park, she would say to herself, Oh come on, you’re imagining it. When it was time to part, she was reluctant, and made excuses to put off the moment. She knew he was doing the same. He too probably thought before meeting her or after they separated, ‘Nonsense, I’m imagining it.’ But they could not doubt that when they were together they were in a pleasantness, an case, an air different from quotidian life. A charmed place where anything could be said. And yet this was not a case of two people finding each other’s lives a reason for being intrigued. If she was not much interested in his, it was because she had not experienced anything like it: he was rich, he owned a large and historic house. When he asked about her life, she gave him the facts: she had been married young, widowed young, she had successfully brought up two children by herself. She had almost by accident – so it seemed now – become well known in the theatre. Oh yes, she had for a time been responsible for her brother’s child. He listened, thought, and remarked, ‘When people tell you about their lives – well, the plot – they don’t tell you much about themselves. Not really.’ As if he thought she was about to disagree, he went on, ‘That is, not if they are people with anything to them. What’s interesting about people is not what life hands out to them. We can’t help that, can we?’
He was making some kind of plea for himself, or an explanation, so she believed. But why did he need to? He often seemed to feel the need to apologize. What for?
Meanwhile they went on – well, yes, they were enjoying themselves.
‘I do enjoy being with you,’ he said, and not only did this have the frankness – the generosity – she expected from him, but he sounded surprised. Was enjoyment not something he expected? Well, this kind of delightfulness was not anything she was used to either. She really had had to work so hard, had been so weighed down with responsibility…but surely a man with so many advantages did not lack opportunities for…but it was the two of them, their being together, as if they both owned a key to this place whose air was happiness.
And they might shake their heads, offering each other ironic smiles because of the improbability of this affinity. Charm. Like opening a wonderfully wrapped package and finding in it a gift secretly hankered after for years but never really expected. Her life had become charmed because of this Stephen What’s-his-name, who was in love with a dead woman. Which passion they discussed a good deal, he with perfect good humour because, as he informed her, he had carried away his Julie into some fastness where she, Sarah, could not come. ‘I simply have to save her from you,’ he said. They had fallen into the habit of talking whimsically about his craziness – she could use the word because he did. ‘You’re crazy, Stephen.’ ‘Yes, I’ll freely admit it, Sarah.’ But to say someone is crazy is almost to make it all harmless. It is a joky little word.
Yet she believed he was doing himself real harm. Sometimes, when a silence had fallen between them she saw his face sombre, abstracted: yes, indeed ‘his’ Julie was in some deep place inside him where he visited her. But this was not doing him good, to judge from the dark hurt look he wore then. Sometimes, when she saw that look, she decided not to think about what it meant, for fear she too would succumb. She had learned this habit of self-protection with Joyce: there was a point when she decided not to enter imaginatively into the poor girl’s state of mind, for fear of being taken over. Surely there was something here that contradicted the outward life of this man, which was everything it should be, public-spirited, sane, generous, open for anyone to look at and judge. To joke about his ‘crush’ on Julie, choosing to avert her mind from what it might mean, saved their friendship from Julie. For Sarah – and she was ashamed of the irrationality of it – wondered more and more what witchery that woman must have had to influence people so strongly after she was dead. One might even fancifully see her as Orpheus, charming victims into dark places, by the power of her music and her words.
As for Sarah’s play – or script – Stephen said, ‘You’ve got her pretty well. I do realize I was being partial – I mean, in the play I did. And I’m glad you’ve made me see her…rounded out. It’s odd, what a block I had about reading her thoughts. But it hasn’t changed what I feel about her. You see, we were made for each other, Julie and I. Well, Sarah, your face isn’t exactly designed to hide what you think…is that because you don’t believe there can be someone made for you? I remember I thought that once. But the truth is, there can be just the one person. It’s funny, isn’t it, how few people there are who…but you can have this feeling about the most unlikely people. I remember once – I was in Kenya, on active service. Everyone’s forgotten Kenya. Too many wars, I suppose. I met this woman. She was an Indian woman. Older than I was. And it was there…we knew each other at once. You have to trust in this kind of thing. If you don’t, you are denying the best part of life. You and I have something of the kind – well, we know that. It has nothing to do with age, or sex, or colour, or anything of that sort.’
Sarah was saying to herself, about ‘this thing I have with Stephen’, that if she had had a brother – a real one, not a clown like Hal – then this is what it might have been like. Extraordinary it had not ever occurred to her that to have a brother might be a pleasant thing.
Sarah and Mary flew together to Nice. When high in the air over Europe, Sarah observed that Mary’s mouth was moving as she sat with closed eyes. No, Mary was not praying. She made a point of repeating her mantra as a public relations woman several times a day: ‘This summer dozens of festivals will compete for attention. The Julie Vairon Festival will be only one of them. I shall make sure it will be the best, the most visible, and that everyone will want to come.’
They were met at the airport by Jean-Pierre le Brun, whom they felt they already knew, after so many consultations by telephone. He was dark, good-looking, well-dressed, combining in that uniquely French way correctness, politeness, and a practised scepticism, as if at university he had taken Anarchy and Law as his main subjects, and these had merged and become subdued to a style. Meeting the Englishwomen, also officials of a kind, he managed to express an extreme of respectful politeness, with a readiness to be affronted. He was not aware that he radiated resentment as well, but in no time he had forgotten about it, for he decided he liked them. They enjoyed an amiable lunch at Les Collines Rouges, Belles Rivières’ main café-restaurant. It then being late for business in the town hall, he drove them off into the wooded hills behind the town, first speeding along a tarmacked road and then driving not much slower when it became a rough track. This was the road Julie had followed when she walked to and from Belles Rivières. ‘She walked in all weathers, la pauvre,’ said Jean-Pierre. Here two unsentimental Englishwomen smiled at the Frenchman who was being so formally sentimental, exactly as expected. And in fact he had tears in his eyes.
At the track’s end they walked up a rocky path till they stood in a wide space between trees and rocks. The soil was a vibrant red in the late afternoon sun. The green of the trees was intense. The air was full of a murmur like bees, but this was the river and the waterfall: apparently there had been heavy rain. There was not much left of the ‘cow-byre’ the citizens had complained about. To quote fr
om Mary Ford’s publicity brochure: A little stone house, cold, uncomfortable, was where Julie Vairon lived in the south of France, from the day of her landing penniless off the ship until she died. It had been a charcoal burner’s house. ‘Well, why not?’ Mary demanded. ‘Someone must have lived there before she did.’ After Julie’s death it stood empty for many years. Then the farmer Leyvecque, whose grandsons still farm in the area, used it as a stable. A storm took off the tile roof. If the town of Belles Rivières had not rescued it, there would be left only a heap of rubble, but instead the site is now a charming theatre, where this summer…
There wasn’t much left of the house. The long back wall stood, and parts of the side wall, now capped with cement to stop them collapsing further. Behind the house red earth sloped to the trees. Umbrella pines. Oaks. Olives and chestnuts. Some of these trees had known Julie. The air was full of healthy aromatic smells. The three people walked back and forth over the site where Julie’s life would shortly be re-enacted. Well, her life as edited by the necessities of the production. The acting would be on the space on a side of the house. The musicians would be on a low stone platform – at once Sarah and Mary began explaining that this platform must be larger, and nearer the acting area, because of the importance of the music. Jean-Pierre argued for form’s sake and then said he had not understood the music would carry so much of the meaning. He gracefully gave in, as he had been going to from the start. These negotiations were going on in a mixture of French and English – the English for Mary’s benefit. She had explained over lunch that she could not learn languages, in the way the English have, as if afflicted by a defective gene as yet unknown to science. Because it was Mary who was going to have to work with Jean-Pierre on publicity, Sarah listened to what turned out to be a pretty fundamental clash of views. He said he expected an audience of about two hundred for each night of the two weeks. Mary protested that many more must be planned for. Jean-Pierre said that one could not expect large audiences for a new play, and one with only local significance. Still gracefully disagreeing, the three arrived back in the town. Jean-Pierre left them at their hotel to return to his family, and it was with regret. Mary and he were making a game out of her inability to speak French and were communicating in Franglais. Clearly he enjoyed the surprise of this large, calm, apparently stolid young woman, with her equable blue eyes, taking off into ever surrealer flights of language.
There were three hotels. Among them the whole company would be distributed. All this was arranged by Sarah next morning, before the visit to the town hall, which was a formality, since everything had been already agreed on. Then Mary went off to interview descendants of the Imberts and the Rostands, Paul’s family and Rémy’s. Jean-Pierre went with her. Both clans had announced themselves only too willing to aid the Julie Vairon Festival, which would add such lustre to the little town. She also intended to visit the Julie Vairon Museum, and the archives, and the house – still as it was – where Julie would have lived had she decided to marry Philippe the master printer. And how about Philippe’s son Robert’s family? Perhaps they would agree – but they were a good way off. All this was going to take at least three days. Sarah flew back to London by herself.
She telephoned Stephen. On hearing each other’s voices they at once entered a region of privileged complicity, like children with secrets. This new note had been struck from the moment the script was judged finished by the Founding Four. When adults do this, it often means they are over-burdened, or even threatened in some way. Well, Stephen’s Julie was certainly threatened. ‘Now Julie’s gone public…’ as he put it.
She told him what she had seen of Julie’s house. Stephen had visited it ten years earlier when bushes were growing up through the floors and dislodging stones from the walls. She told him of the three hotels, two new, all named after Julie. She described Jean-Pierre. Because of her tone, he enquired, ‘And how does he see her?’ and she was enabled to murmur, ‘La pauvre…la pauvre…’ so that Stephen was able to exclaim, ‘Sentimental bloody…’ and she laughed. In short, they behaved as they had to in this ancient business of the French and the English finding each other impossible, to the satisfaction of both. But perhaps each nation’s need always to find the same traits in the other imposes a style, and so it is all perpetuated.
And now she and anyone else from The Green Bird who was interested were invited to the house in Oxfordshire, because there would be an evening of music and dancing, a miniature festival, and Julie’s music would be sung. Sarah had been invited for the whole weekend. She did not really want to see him in his house, his other life – his real life? Their friendship was threatened, so she felt. Surely it was a tenuous thing, based on imaginings, on phantoms? She knew very well what she was afraid of: that the ‘magic’, the charm, would simply evaporate. But of course she had to go, and she even wanted to. During the week before that weekend, they met for dinner, on his suggestion. She could see that he too was uneasy. He was giving her information, facts, one after another, fielding them to her, she thought, and even said it to him, earning a smile – like an elder brother practising bowling on a sister, watching to make sure she accepted what was sent in the right way. ‘No, no,’ she parodied, ‘don’t step back, you’ll knock the stumps off! Elbow up, as you bring the bat forward.’
The house was his wife Elizabeth’s. His was the money. No, it certainly was not for mutual convenience they had married, but the house was central to their lives: they both loved it.
There were three children, boys, at boarding school. They like boarding school, he insisted, in a way that said he often had to insist. She was interested that people like him felt they had to defend the sacred institution. Boarding school suited them, said Stephen. Yes, it was a pity they hadn’t a daughter. ‘Particularly for me,’ he said. ‘Perhaps if we’d had a daughter, Julie wouldn’t have got to me the way she did.’ But there would not be another child. Poor Elizabeth had more than done her bit.
They were good friends, he and Elizabeth, he said, choosing his words, but not looking into her face, rather down at his plate. Not because he was evading something, but because – she felt – there was more he might be saying, which he expected her to see for herself.
He liked to think he managed the estate productively. Elizabeth certainly ran the house well. Every summer they had festivals. ‘Half the county come to them, and we do them proud. Elizabeth had the idea first, but it was because she knows it’s the kind of thing I like. Now we both put everything we’ve got into it.’ This was said with satisfaction, even pride. They were going to expand, become something like Glyndebourne, only on a much smaller scale. And only in the summers. Sarah would see it all for herself, when she came.
Again she felt that another meaning was carried by these words: and wondered if he was aware that everything he said seemed to be signalling: Listen to this carefully.
‘I want you to see it all,’ he insisted, this time looking at her. ‘I like the idea of your being there. I’m not really the kind of man who likes his life in compartments – yes, I know there are plenty who do, but I…’ His smile had energy in it, the mild elation that seemed to expand him when he talked of his house and his life in it. ‘You mustn’t think I don’t know how extraordinarily lucky I am,’ he said, as they strolled to the tube. ‘Well, you’ll see for yourself. I don’t take anything for granted, I assure you.’
She was to take the train to Oxford on the mid-afternoon on Friday. At two the doorbell rang, and there was Joyce. Having not seen her for some time, Sarah saw her with new eyes, if only for a moment. At once her heart began to feel an only too familiar oppression. As Joyce walked in she seemed to be straying, or wandering in some private dream. She was a tall girl, now very thin. When her sisters put make-up on her she could be lovely. Her hair – and this is what struck to the heart – was marvellous, a fine light gold, and full of vitality, loose around her pasty spotty little face. ‘Make yourself some tea,’ said Sarah, but Joyce fell into a chair. She really d
id seem ill. Her great blue eyes were inflamed. Her characteristic smile – she had faced the world with it since she stopped being a child, was bright, scared, anxious. Yes, she was ill. Sarah took her temperature and it was 101.
‘I want to stay here,’ Joyce said. ‘I want to live here with you.’
Her dilemma was being put to Sarah in as dramatic a form as it could be. She had been afraid of something like this. All kinds of pressure, though none that could be visible, or even probable, to anyone but herself, were urging her to give in at once. But she was remembering something Stephen had said: ‘You’ve been looking after her for – how long? Did you say ten years? Why don’t her parents look after her?’ And when Sarah could not reply, ‘Well, Sarah, it looks a funny business to me.’
‘At the time it seemed quite natural.’
But his silence was because he had decided not to say what he thought. Yet usually they did say what they thought. Would he have said, ‘You’re crazy, Sarah’ and admitted her to the company of those who behave as they do because they cannot help themselves? And another time he had remarked, ‘If you hadn’t taken her in, what do you think would have happened?’ This was not the hot and indignant voice she was used to hearing from people who feel threatened, because they are thinking, If you take on such a burden, then perhaps I shall be expected to sacrifice myself too. No, he had been thinking it all out. She had never wondered what would have happened to Joyce if she had not looked after her. But would Joyce have been worse off if her aunt had left her to her parents? She couldn’t be much worse off, could she?
The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire Page 33
