by Allan Massie
I said to Eddie: ‘You don’t want to make a film about two failures.’
Eddie said: ‘Commercially, you are so right. Yet in an odd way that’s precisely what I do want. And were they failures?’
We went out to dinner. The Malay boy – ‘I’m usually called Charlie’ – was amusing and attentive. He was on the make, of course, Eddie represented a way up; but they both knew this and accepted it. It didn’t preclude affection. Being with them, thinking of Lucien and Rupert, made me feel even more a mere spectator, but, unlike Jamie Fernie, I was a spectator who had accepted his role.
Eddie reverted to the idea for his film over coffee.
‘You underestimate me,’ he said, ‘because we are old friends who were young and foolish together.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s why I trust you. You are for that reason one of my special people. And that, I fancy, is how it was with Marcel Pougier and my father. And maybe it helped Pougier get him wrong, as you think I get you wrong. I don’t really know much about my father: what I know has made me believe he was a dull man who tried to do what was right, and failed. No film there, Eddie.’
Looking back on that conversation now, I recognise that I was disingenuous. I simply didn’t want a film made, and certainly not by Eddie. But I was right in one sense: a film that simply told the story of Lucien and Rupert was bound to be false, because they were bit-players in the story of Europe.
As we walked back along the lake to our hotel, the Baron said: ‘I don’t claim originality, you know. My originality has always been confirmed to what is sellable. My dear friend Franz-Josef Strauss said to me a few months ago: “We are moving from the age of Mars, god of war, to the age of Mercury, god of trade and business.” He’s right, you know. He’ll say it in public soon.’ ‘Mercury was also the god of thieves.’
We walked on in silence. A steamer passed on the lake, offices were emptying in the city.
‘He’s left out the intervening planet, Venus,’ I said.
‘Oh, we made a shot at that in the sixties,’ the Baron said. ‘It didn’t work. Make love, not war, remember? But we still made war. Now we are about to try: make money, not war. I think it’s on.’
‘No love then?’
‘Love’s a private thing. Where did public assertions of love ever get us?’
Where had love got any of us, even in private? My story seemed a record of tattered affections, broken trust, wounded hearts. Where had love got Eddie – dying – the intolerable and exquisite Bendico Perceval had told me – of AIDS? Or his friend Charlie, already dead? Or Rupert, who, failing in personal life and sublimating his capacity for love of an ideal person in love of an ideal Germany, had died even more horribly than Eddie would? Or my unhappy mother? Or Lucien and Anne? Or Marcel Pougier? Or me? Or my poor adored Freddie?
What was there to put in the other side of the balance? Berthe and Armand? Yes, I conceded that. But what of Guy Fouquet, whose love for his dead wife compelled him to destroy his daughter’s love for me?
And my Sarah and her Niels Nielsen? What would love do for them? How would love do for them?
The hours of sleepless nights are disturbed by images of cruelty. There was a girl, blonde and healthy and unquestioning, a pony-club girl, and aching for sex and marriage. She adored me for six months and I never touched her. I adored her too, and dared not touch her. Was that a moral choice, or was it cowardice? At night, in the rank sweat of my dark and solitary bed, what indignities, cruelty and pain my adoration inflicted on her lovely and imaginary body, dwelling on them as long as possible.
Was I right to abstain from action?
She married another, has two children, and, the last time I saw her, had lost youth and beauty; and is only, by my count, thirty. But she has kept her cheerful and confident manner.
What would the Baron say to that story?
There is a Fascism of the soul, and it is because I recognise it that I have abstained from politics and come to live in Switzerland.
Would that answer satisfy him?
He has returned to Germany. Last night, waving his cigar at me (having yet again failed to ring his finger with the band), he said:
‘Do you know the secret of my success in life? I believe in nothing, but I don’t even do that absolutely. I am the uncommitted observer who will nevertheless gamble everything on a single throw. I find nihil humanum alienum, and I have a low opinion of my fellow-humans. Do you remember Chesterton’s Father Brown: he said that he was able to solve murders by seeking out the murderer in his heart; sometimes I think I commit them by unmasking the detective in myself.’
I smiled. It was a performance. We can all seek meaning by reversing the apparently axiomatic. Forster began Howards End with the words ‘only connect’, and so put an expression on the lips of two generations of liberals. Haven’t I, on the contrary, come through, to the present point, by saying to myself: ‘disconnect’?
Yet I’m haunted by what Jacques said to me in the prison at Lyons, quoting Descartes: ‘Conquer yourself, not the world.’ That, it seems to me, is what Lucien failed to do.
Two letters this morning. I opened Hugh Challefray’s first. He is profoundly grateful for all I have done, staggered by the acuity of my psychological insight, even more amazed that I should not wish to publish my ‘brilliant’ reconstruction myself. It dazzles and overawes him. Nevertheless, he would eagerly begin work, were it not for the fact that he has just been offered a position on the Prime Minister’s staff. The opportunity is not one to be lost. Probably the job will not last long. There is an election in the offing, and the public is tired of the governing party, which is of course the Establishment there. If they are defeated he will immediately set to. And so on; I condense four typewritten A4 pages into a paragraph.
The other letter is from Polly. This time it is I, to employ Hugh’s hyperbole, who am staggered. She has actually read what I sent. I never believed she would.
‘I found it fascinating, darling, and macabre too. It’s all so long ago and I’m surprised how right some of your guesses are. That scene between Rup and your father when they discussed me and came back drunk together, what a pair of swine I thought. But you’re too kind to your father, you know. As soon as I was out of love with him, and you’re right, that happened a long time before we split up, I saw that he was really mean-spirited. He wasn’t a real person. He was afraid of living. I hated that magazine of his, it was all so self-important, and he was so wrapped up in it. I remember telling him that Pétain was just an old fart, but he insisted on seeing him as a wise hero. He was so sure of himself he didn’t even get angry when I said that, just gave me one of his superior smiles. But I was right, Pétain was an old fart and nothing more. Do you know, when Armand arrived in London in 1940 and told me Lucien had stayed in France and would be in the government, I was so angry I could have scratched his eyes out. God knows, I’ve never been political, but even I could see that the Nazis were skunks and that you couldn’t begin to deal with them without starting to stink yourself. I was glad, you know, when Aurora was shut up in Holloway, serve her right, I thought … Rup was right when you made him say that the war was really between decency and indecency, but Lucien didn’t understand that you can’t be reasonable with indecency, you just have to biff it. It makes me angry still. I still think he stayed because he was a conceited coward, and an ass to be taken in by his precious Marshal. One thing you don’t say – maybe it’s got nothing to do with your story – but I was so angry that for six months I licked envelopes for the Free French. I knew all along de Gaulle was a hero, and wasn’t I right?
‘Any chance of you coming home? I’m getting a bit wobbly on the old pins and would like to see you again before I pop off. Have had to put poor old Roddy in a home, he stopped making sense, and started writing cheques all over the place. Too much Cape brandy, poor beast, always told him gin was better for you.
‘Sarah came to stay with her boy, a real poppet, such a joy to me since she was a litt
le girl and now it’s a comfort to think she has this nice boy.
‘Terrible work all this must have been for you, only hope it will do you some good, you’ve always had a bit of a hang-up about Lucien, haven’t you?, maybe you can see him better now. I suppose he was brave in his way and tried to do what was right, but such a prig, prigs always get things wrong, haven’t you noticed?
‘Do come home and see your old ma. Talking of mas, you are too kind to my ex-ma-in-law, she was a frightful bitch, you know.
‘I remember that Torrance, he came to dinner once, Lucien told me he was a wonderful writer, I saw he was a rotter straight away. Shouldn’t be surprised if he did have something to do with his death. Mind you, darling, I’ve never doubted that it was suicide. It’s just the sort of way out he would take, typical of him, I said, when they told me. Do you know what was really wrong with him? He didn’t like life enough, he was always looking for some sort of substitute for ordinary living.
Look after yourself, all love, Polly.’
The telephone rang. The hotel clerk told me there was a young lady to see me.
It was Sarah. She was huddled in an armchair in the lobby. A young man in a Loden coat sat beside her, perched on the arm. He got up as I approached. I kissed her.
‘This is a surprise,’ I said. ‘You look tired, and cold.’
‘I read your book. I took the first flight. This is Niels by the way.’
He smiled and held out his hand.
‘It’s terrible,’ she said.
‘You’re very dramatic. Besides, it isn’t a book, it’s not for publication.’
‘I didn’t mean the quality.’
She looked as if she might cry.
‘This isn’t the place for talking,’ I said. ‘We’d better go up to my room. I’m sorry if the book shattered your illusions.’
She shook her head.
It was difficult for either of us to begin. My response was corrupted by the protective love I felt for her. So I occupied myself arranging for coffee and sandwiches to be sent.
‘You’ll need to eat. Airline food, terrible.’
She shook her head again. Having crossed the world, she had lost the words with which she had embarked. I explained about Mr Challefray, though I’d already done so in the letter which had accompanied her copy of the manuscript.
‘You’ve just missed your boss,’ I said to young Niels. ‘He thinks very highly of you.’
‘My boss? Oh, you mean the old Baron? Is he a friend of yours?’
‘He was here till a few days ago. We’ve just committed his wife to a lunatic asylum.’
The young man sat down.
‘He’s a strange old bird,’ he said.
They were the same physical type. Perhaps the Baron saw in Niels the young man he might himself have been in a different and less complicated world.
‘Why did you all lie to me?’ Sarah said. ‘Why did you let me believe your father was a hero? That he was killed in the Resistance?’
She nursed her coffee-cup in both hands, which were shaking so that the liquid lapped against the rim, and a few drops splashed on to her jeans. I was powerless against her indignation, which recalled her mother, though in her directness she was more like Polly. I could not excuse myself by saying that it was a long time ago, in another life, in another country, when I had devoted months to the elaboration of the story which had so shocked her.
‘I’ve been trying to explain to her the way I see it,’ Niels said. There was sunshine in his light flat voice.
‘Why did you send it to me if you can’t explain?’ she said.
‘It’s not something I’ve ever wanted to talk about. But when I was driven to write it, I thought you had a right to read the story. When you were here last,’ I said, ‘you were so clear and certain about everything that you worried me. Things are never clear and never certain. I hoped Lucien’s story might show you that.’
‘What it shows me,’ she said, ‘is why you have made nothing of your life, Daddy.’
The boy Niels had manners better than are found in Europe now. They were so good I even questioned whether he was indeed a journalist. He was anxious that I shouldn’t misconstrue the reason for their visit.
‘The thing is,’ he said to me, when we were alone after dinner, ‘that Sarah was so upset by your manuscript, she couldn’t stop talking about it, and at last I suggested we come to see you. We both had holidays due, you see. She has liked to believe that she’s in some way carrying on where her grandfather left off, she was very proud to think of him as a hero of the Resistance, and now she finds he wasn’t, and that life is more complicated than she believed. And she’s very fond of you, sir, and worries about you.’
‘I worry about her.’
‘Can you stay over Christmas?’ I asked next morning. ‘In that case we’ll go to Rome. We’ll go to Midnight Mass at the Aracoeli and be serenaded by the pipers who say they are shepherds come down from the Abruzzi. I don’t believe it, but I like to believe it.’
Rome is my favourite city – why then have I settled in Geneva? – and especially in winter when the pines on Trinità dei Monti stand black against the dying light, and the travertine stone glows first pink, then red-gold. Stendhal advised visitors to Rome to sacrifice I forget how many francs in order to have a beautiful view; they would keep it for life, he said. But nowadays I prefer to stay in the Inghilterra, which stands on the plain between the Spanish Steps and the Corso in that area of small expensive shops where they put down carpets on the streets at Christmas. And you only have to saunter a hundred yards to have breakfast at the Caffè Greco, or two hundred to eat poached eggs at half-past four in Babington’s Tea-rooms. We walked in the morning on the Palatine and lunched at Sabatini’s in Trastevere, and strolled and looked, and were happy, in the afternoon. We did not talk of the war or of Lucien, and we dined most evenings in Ranieri’s.
Sarah relaxed. I could see her mood easing from day to day. She allowed me to buy her clothes: boots from Gucci and a wide-skirted suit in Scotch cashmere from a shop in Via Borgognona. For the first time since she was a child she looked like a rich man’s daughter. Niels was admiring. There was no anger in him, he was at peace with himself. I was almost able to believe that Sarah might be safe.
Then it occurred to me that his peace derived from his moral certainty.
‘You don’t need to worry about Sarah, sir,’ he told me. ‘I know our politics seem dangerous to you, but we have the future on our side. Even the Nats know that.’
‘And do you see your future still being in South Africa after the blacks take over?’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘We’re all people. But if it doesn’t work, then somewhere else. We’re not tied anywhere.’
We were sitting outside a wine-shop in Campo dei Fiori. It was a beautiful shining morning with touches of snow on the Alban Hills. Sarah was buying fruit, vegetables and cheese for a picnic lunch we planned to take on the Palatine.
‘I used to drink here with a Polish friend,’ I said. ‘It was when I worked here two years with FAO as one of those speciously high-level consultants that international organisations love to attach to themselves. My Polish friend was a Prince who had lost everything he had inherited. And yes, he was in a new way a happy man. He had accommodated himself to things. You could say he was free. He told me once how he had seen a boy shot by the carabinieri, just over there, where that orange cat is. The boy had died with a look of surprise on his face. I suppose he had woken up that morning full of life and optimism, the way such boys do.
‘Come,’ I said, as Sarah approached, ‘we’ll walk this way.’ I led them through a narrow passage, into a little piazza round which tenements ran in a graceful and ancient curve.
‘Do you know where we are?’
‘Yes,’ Niels said, ‘I’ve been here before. It’s the Theatre of Pompey, isn’t it, where Caesar was killed?’
‘They thought they were restoring Liberty. They ran through the streets crying tha
t the Republic and Liberty had been won back. Within eighteen months you had the proscriptions, then more civil war, then the empire, and little by little, even the name of Liberty was forgotten. It’s been the same with revolutions ever since. They set out to destroy evil and men release the evil in themselves.’
‘But in the long run,’ Niels said.
‘In the long run?’
‘Daddy,’ Sarah said, ‘history doesn’t repeat itself. That’s an old lie.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘people repeat history.’
*
People repeat history. I had received a letter. It had arrived circuitously: from my lawyer in Paris, to my bank in Geneva, to the American Express in Rome. Often I don’t open letters for several days – some not at all – and some instinct prompted me to neglect this one. It lay on my dressing table for a week, and eventually it was Sarah who, entering to see if I was ready for dinner, picked it up, and said,
‘Who’s Anne Candice?’
‘No idea.’
‘Aren’t you going to open it? You really should. She might be a beautiful rich widow.’
‘Are you so keen to have a stepmother?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Still, I shall. Oh,’ she said, ‘I think you will have to read this,’ and passed me the single sheet of dove-grey paper.
‘I used to be Anne Querouaille,’ the first sentence read. There was a Paris address.
We took the Palatino the day after Epiphany. There had been telephone calls, to fix a date. There had been no discussion about whether Sarah and Niels should accompany me. We all took it for granted. It was my decision to travel by train, for that allows a shifting of mood which the aeroplane denies you.
‘She must be getting on,’ Sarah said.
