So, by 1960, had Arnaldo.
In 1957 the impoverished couple left the Villa des Pins for a modest home at Magagnosc, near Grasse. Hélène sold the best of her furniture and paintings to pay the rent and to cover their debts; the rest was put into store. In 1958, she made another sale, which produced enough to support them for a further year. By 1959, they were penniless. Arnaldo, still hoping for success from one of his inventions, applied to Jean Behra, the young driver who replaced Hélène in the Grand Prix de Nice of 1951 and who had gone on to become one of Ferrari’s top racers. Behra, who was killed while competing in Germany later that year, told Binelli that his brother José might be interested in his plans (he wasn’t); learning of the couple’s financial difficulties, he also mentioned a new charitable organization which might be able to offer them assistance.
La Roue Tourne had no connection to the world of motor sports; the link which Behra had suggested was through Hélène’s earlier incarnation as a music-hall star. Formed in 1957 by the widow of a Resistance hero, Janalla Jarnach, and by Paul Azais, a film star whose public career ended when he was knocked down by a lorry, La Roue Tourne’s kindly purpose was to provide discreet help for anybody in the theatrical world whose career had been affected by a similar misfortune. With the great comic actor Fernandel as its president, the charity established itself at the building in rue Legendre from which it still operates.
One of the first recipients of La Roue Tourne’s help was Henri Garat, a hugely successful performer in the 1930s.* A pleasant voice and a charming manner were replaceable talents and Garat had been superseded by the younger, more talented Tino Rossi. Depression, ill-health and an inability to manage money had done the rest; by the late fifties, Henri Garat was a ruined man. When he, his Swiss wife, Annaliese, and their young son, Marcel, met Binelli, they were already being discreetly assisted by the charity.
Hélène, in the letters that she wrote years after the event, consistently remembered that her relationship with Arnaldo entered its final phase soon after he made his first visit to La Roue Tourne. Suspicious of a new rival, she searched his pockets and found letters written by Annaliese Garat, who was then working at the charity’s headquarters. ‘Our unforgettable nights of love’ were the words which lodged themselves in Hélène’s memory, along with pleas for Arnaldo to start a new life with her. (Garat had meanwhile been taken into hospital at Hyères, where he died in 1959.) Annaliese was good-looking and determined; she had an attractive child who adored Binelli. He, according to Hélène, dithered wretchedly, announcing one day that he was going to leave, and the next that he was going to stay. Sometimes, he beat her up. On three occasions, he took money from her to cover the cost of visiting Annaliese at her new home in Grenoble.2 In April 1960 he left for good. He and Annaliese were married in Switzerland where Marcel Garat adopted his stepfather’s name. Interestingly, Binelli’s parents were more enraged by his defection to Annaliese than they had ever been by his relationship with Hélène Delangle. Arnaldo was disinherited in favour of his stepson.†3
In retrospect, Hellé Nice wanted to believe that it was she who finally ordered her faithless lover to leave; the letters she wrote at the time show that this was not the case. Binelli’s departure was a devastating blow to her confidence. At the age of sixty, and in poor health, she was left friendless and without means of support. Everything she had, she bleakly wrote to Madame Jarnach, had been used for Arnaldo’s benefit; now, nothing was left. And the rent was beyond her means. In a month, she would be homeless.4
Paul Azais and Janalla Jarnach were shocked and conscience-stricken; unnecessarily, they felt responsible for the fact that Binelli had met Annaliese Garat on the premises of the charity. Never having met Hélène, they promised to look after her. All she had to do was come to Paris.
Madame Delangle, having already grudgingly parted with a thousand francs to cover her daughter’s immediate living expenses, was less sympathetic. Reluctantly consenting to store some furniture, she indicated that this would be a great inconvenience, depriving her of a useful woodshed. She wanted to know when Mariette, as she continued to address her, intended to find some gainful employment.5 Her letter expressed no love and little concern for her ageing daughter’s welfare.
In the summer of 1960, Hélène climbed the narrow staircase to the charity’s office at rue Legendre; with her, she had brought her typewriter, a suitcase full of news-cuttings, photographs and the stamp collection which she had been making since she first travelled to America.* After being greeted by Madame Jarnach, a large, blonde, softly pretty woman, Hélène gaily announced that she was ready to turn her hand to anything; all she asked was to be given plenty of work. A little attic above the reception room, accessible by a steep flight of stairs, had already been cleared and provided with a bed and table. On the wall, Hélène hung up her favourite photographs of herself as a dancer; the frames were made of cheap black tape.
Visitors to the charity remembered her for her liveliness; Janalla Jarnach and Paul Azais – he was nicknamed Popole by Hélène, who adored him – were shocked by the intensity of her passions. Arnaldo Binelli was never far from her thoughts. She could not forgive him; as time passed, his remembered crimes increased. Finding a loaded pistol in the attic, Jarnach was shocked to learn that Hélène carried it everywhere in the hope that she would one day cross Binelli’s path. Her plan, she said, was to shoot him in the knees. Prudently, Jarnach removed the bullets.6
During the days, the reception room at La Roue Tourne was busy and crowded; in the evenings, there were galas to be attended for the purpose of raising money. Hélène was at her happiest on these occasions; visits to the Olympia and the Casino de Paris brought back memories of a time which, in her increasingly confused recollections, was now bathed in glory. She, not Mistinguett, was the star in her own retelling of the past, scant solace for the fact that her racing triumphs counted for nothing at La Roue Tourne. The only significance of a turning wheel here was in the wheel of fate from which the charity took its name. Boasts of her triumphs on the international circuits did, however, produce one result: she was appointed as the charity’s chauffeur. Her driving, according to Madame Jarnach, was not of a kind to reassure passengers.
Their new friend had, in Madame Jarnach’s view, the air of happiness but not the conviction. It was evidently humiliating for her, a woman of renown, to find herself placed among people whose fame had been of a less dazzling kind. She hated her loss of independence. Frail – she often had to use a stick to walk – and suffering from bad circulation, she suffered acutely from the damp Parisian winters. The bedroom at rue Legendre was, however hard they tried to make improvements, impossible to keep warm. She pined for Nice, for the sun, for the light on the sea, for the daily pleasure of a stroll along the promenade.
These were the obvious causes of her unhappiness. The difficulties with her family were slower to show themselves.
There is something almost Atrean about the tragedies which befell the Delangle family. Three children had died in infancy, another at Verdun, a father while still in his prime. Hélène’s career had been destroyed twice over, once when she crashed at São Paulo, and again, when she was publicly accused of being a Gestapo agent. In 1960 La Roue Tourne took her in. In 1961 Solange Delangle was confined in a psychiatric hospital in Paris where she was held for almost a year, during which Hélène paid daily visits and took over the care of her apartment. One evening in 1963, gentle, simple-minded Henri Delangle was knocked down by a drunk driver while he was ambling around Sainte-Mesme; his injured body lay undiscovered until the following morning. Visiting him in the local hospital at Estampes that afternoon, Henri’s mother and sisters found him strapped to the bed, ready for electric shock treatment. The treatment was prevented – Hélène credited herself with having taken the initiative – but Henri had suffered severe cranial damage. Incapable of sustained concentration, he was now almost unable to write. He became, as a result, entirely dependent on his mother and on Solan
ge, who had bought a weekend cottage at Sainte-Mesme.7 The two women employed Henri as a useful labourer and decorator.
Henri and Hélène had always been fond of each other. The accident removed any chance of fraternal support in fighting the battle for her inheritance, something about which she was becoming increasingly concerned. The value of Madame Delangle’s property at Sainte-Mesme was, by Hélène’s own calculation, at least one and a half million francs.* French law entitled her to receive a third of the property as her legacy. Unfortunately, however, only Solange’s name appeared on the title deeds which had been drawn up in 1926, and the relationship between the sisters was not friendly. Hélène’s frantic appeals to her mother met with the cold response that all future arrangements would be dealt with by Solange in an appropriate fashion. This was not reassuring.8
Hélène became hysterical during the summer following Henri’s accident. La Roue Tourne had closed for the summer holidays; Paul Azais and Janalla Jarnach were spending a fortnight on the coast; she was alone. Unreasonably, she insisted that her benefactors should return; when they refused, she became abusive, screaming down the telephone and writing long, anguished letters which rambled from tales of one vendetta against her to another. Reminded of all they had done for her, and of their readiness to protect her until the end – ‘you will always be our dear Hellé, always safe and in our thoughts’, Madame Jarnach reassured her – she seemed to calm down.9
Returning to Paris at the end of August, the charity’s founders saw that the attic bedroom had been emptied out. A jubilant letter arrived from Nice where the runaway blithely announced that she had found a charming place to live, with a kind landlord who put flowers in her room and allowed her cat, Minette, the run of his garden. The rooms were pretty and a little expensive, but if they only knew how wonderful it was to be in sunshine again, to be near the sea. She had, she added proudly, done the last part of the drive to the coast in record time;10 Madame Jarnach did not remind her that the car in which she had taken off was the property of La Roue Tourne. Full of forebodings, she begged Hélène to remember that her lodging at rue Legendre was still empty; would she not come back and join them?11
Her fears were soon confirmed. Madame Delangle’s health began to deteriorate rapidly in 1964 and fierce discussions took place between her daughters. Solange wanted her put in a home; Hélène, perhaps still hoping to influence her and regain a place on the title deeds of the property, proposed to bring her to Nice. Henri sided with Solange; Madame Delangle was taken to ‘La Domaine’ at Boissy Saint-Léger, where she died in June 1964. Solange immediately took possession of the house at Sainte-Mesme and informed Hélène that her stored furniture was being sent to Nice. As for any chance of the will being altered: ‘I went to the lawyer,’ Solange wrote. ‘Hopeless. Nothing can be done. Still, I’ll try to do the best I can for you.’12 Hélène’s possessions arrived a week later. Her silver trophies, although tarnished, were intact; the furniture, stored for four years in a damp shed, was sold by a local dealer in Nice. It fetched a disappointingly small sum.
Destitute and fearful, Hélène now became entirely dependent on La Roue Tourne. She moved to a grim basement room in the Cimiez area of Nice and then to Beaulieu, where she had once lived in carefree splendour, high on the hill. The Renault belonging to the charity was traded in for a secondhand Simca. In this, she travelled to local cinemas where, during the matinée performances, she sold the charity’s funding envelopes. ‘I live like a bird on a branch,’ she wrote. ‘I seem always to be cold, and so tired.’13 Madame Jarnach sent an appeal for help, at her suggestion, to Marcel Mongin – ‘votre ex-époux’. He sent back 50 francs. Henri Thouvenet contributed 200. At least, Hélène answered, she’d be able to buy herself a pair of shoes for the first time in four years. She would, she added with a touch of her old spirit, give Mongin a kick up the backside if she ever saw him again.14
In 1974, the year in which Paul Azais died, Hélène also learned of the deaths of her brother Henri and of Arnaldo Binelli. The loss of her brother produced a burst of grief. ‘Mon petit Didi,’ she wrote. He had been her favourite, so gentle, so harmless and kind: ‘I loved him so much.’15 The news of Binelli’s death – it was cancer – stirred no such tenderness. ‘Why should I regret a man who robbed me of three million francs?’ she demanded. All she remembered of him now was that he had left her when she was penniless, when she had done everything for him. Hadn’t she paid for every one of his useless schemes, for an operation on his kidneys, for journeys which, she now believed, had been made only so that he could enjoy himself with other women? ‘Et tant et tant de choses,’ she concluded savagely: no, there was nothing to grieve her in the news of Arnaldo’s death.16
Writing to Janalla Jarnach, her last remaining friend, was Hélène’s continuing solace in the last and terrible years of her decline. Some letters, like one in which she spoke of her plans to race again and retire in glory, bear witness only to her unstable mental state; others, when she poured out her hatred of Solange for having robbed her of her inheritance, are shocking in their ferocity. For the most part, however, the sheaf of documents typed or written in a small sloping hand on squared paper torn from an exercise pad chronicle the wretchedness of a woman living in extreme poverty, without friends, and in deteriorating health. Psoriasis, the curse of Solange’s life, now afflicted her. Her skin bled from suppurating sores; frightened that her landlords would throw her out if she dirtied their sheets, she slept in her clothes, wearing the old trousers of which La Roue Tourne sent her a steady supply. Sleep became impossible. Her teeth were taken out. She no longer had the courage to appear at cinemas gathering money for the charity; she was too ashamed of her appearance.
Some comfort came, in 1975, when a new landlord, Raymond Agostinucci, expressed a good-humoured interest in her former history as a racer. She spent her last nine years in a small, cold attic apartment at one of his properties in Nice. Rue Edouard Scoffier is a dingy street in a run-down area at the back of the city; here, in a house filled with Italian tenants who assumed that she was living rent-free, Hélène lived in solitude, poring over the newspaper cuttings which told of more glorious days, smoking the thick yellow Mais cigarettes which were her one luxury. Each day, clutching a tattered leopardskin coat around her like an amulet, she went across the street to start up the Simca and sit in it for a little while before climbing the stairs back to her room. Sometimes, if she could persuade them to take an interest, she showed one of the tenants her cuttings and the precious trophies which, even now, she could not bring herself to sell.
Hélène’s last home on rue Edouard Scoffier, Nice, 1975–1984.
In 1978 she enjoyed a moment of glory when the postman told her that he had seen the film of her Brazilian crash on television the night before; invited to speak about it on Radio Monte Carlo, she was obliged to refuse. ‘How could I do it?’ she asked Madame Jarnach. ‘I can’t afford the journey and speaking’s almost impossible since I lost my teeth.’ Sometimes, she admitted, she thought of shutting the door, turning on the gas, ‘and goodbye to Hellé Nice and her miseries. I’m often tempted.’ Still, she added with a touch of her old merriment, ‘at least I still have my dear Janalla’s trousers to keep me cosy and my fur coat which is old now, really old – like me!’17
In 1983, she told Madame Jarnach that she had made one final bid to recover her lost inheritance. Frail though she was, she had driven the Simca to Sainte-Mesme and knocked on the door of the little house where her sister lived, having sold the maternal property.* Solange refused to speak to her. A young cousin was called in to explain that she must leave. ‘It’s incredible that a legitimate child can be robbed like this,’ she wrote ‘and yet it’s legal. I’m sorry to be writing badly but my eyes are terrible.’18
In September 1984 Hélène was taken into hospital for an operation on her legs. A friend of Madame Jarnach’s, asked to visit and to take her some fruit and biscuits, found her lying in a coma. ‘Bon courage chère Hellé,’ Madam
e Jarnach wrote, but her words were never read. Transferred to a second hospital a few days later, Hélène Delangle died while still unconscious. La Roue Tourne, faithful to the end, organized a commemorative service at the little church on rue Legendre, Sainte-Marie des Batignolles, on 29 October. A small announcement had been placed in Le Figaro, but the church was almost empty.
Madame Jarnach, anxious to find some way of honouring the memory of a woman she sincerely admired, made the journey to Nice in 1985 and visited the dreary house on rue Edouard Scoffier. She was told, to her dismay, that everything had already been dismantled and given away, the cuttings books, the trophies, the book of stamps. The room at the top of the house was stripped bare, its faded green shutters tightly shut. She returned to Paris, knowing only that the funeral rites had been properly executed and that La Roue Tourne had also paid for Hélène’s ashes to be sent to Sainte-Mesme for burial in the family grave. Payment was made for flowers to be laid on the tomb every Sainte-Hélène’s day, 18 August, as was proper. Everything concerning her death, at least, was in order.
Hélène’s obituary in Le Figaro.
Or should have been. The details confirming the transaction and payments are preserved at the Nice Mairie, but the instructions given by Madame Jarnach were ignored. The slab of stone commemorating the Delangle family in the graveyard at Sainte-Mesme is engraved with only three names: Alexandrine, Solange and Henri. Solange, who died in 1986, was living at Sainte-Mesme at the time of her sister’s death. As the purchaser of the plot, she had the right to do as she wished with it. She chose to obliterate her sister’s presence. With the trophies sold, the cuttings books lost and the place of burial unmarked, it would be as if Mariette Hélène Delangle (1900–84) had never existed.
The Bugatti Queen Page 21
