by Jean Stubbs
As a man he had tirelessly attempted to rid himself of her by comparison with other women who had temporarily moved him. He pictured her in middle and old age, when the rocks of character showed through, and knew that a placid life was out of the question. She would be handsome, determined, and armed with experience. With regard to beauty she came somewhere in the middle of his ideal, and lacked Natalie’s vanity which set beauty above expressiveness and so preserved it. She could be utterly charming and discard charm when it no longer served her. She could be exquisitely tactful and shatteringly honest. She leaped to false conclusions and fought for them. She created situations and blamed him for them. She was instantly and sincerely repentant, when her errors were pointed out — and committed them again, in spite of herself. And yet her absence left him incomplete.
He said slowly, ‘I have decided to love you.’ And knew it was no decision.
She opened contemplative eyes suddenly. He stared back as he must have done in his boyhood, knowing he had dared something unmentionable and would stand by it. His guilty obstinacy disarmed her.
Mildly, she said, ‘I need time to love you. Wait.’
He bent over his work again and she resumed her pose.
In the garden of the Tuileries she cried, ‘The chairs are out again!’ Flinging her arms wide with a rapturous lack of restraint.
‘It’s far too cool to sit down, Claire.’
‘What matter? I do not wish to sit down. I like to see them so. In the autumn they are sad.’ Stacked spindles beneath leafless trees, their summer concert done.
‘Why have you brought your parasol?’ he asked, as she sighed and took his arm and sauntered on.
‘So that the sun will see me, and shine. Do not laugh at me, please!’
‘I thought it was to attract attention — or perhaps because it is particularly pretty.’
‘You are not polite.’
‘You once reprimanded me for being too polite. I am endeavouring to change. I am endeavouring to please you in all things. And I am also endeavouring to be patient, which is hardest of all.’
‘But what endeavour!’ she said lightly, and smiled to herself.
‘Are you coming with me to London, Claire? I must go soon.’
‘I have not made up my mind. Perhaps we are better good friends.’
‘I can think of several striking improvements on friendship.’
‘Because you have known much friendship. I have only you. I do not wish to lose you.’
‘Why on earth should you?’
‘Oh!’ the face of disillusion. ‘You want me. You have me. You grow tired of me. Then there is no more love and no more friendship. It is so.’
They stopped as if in accord and looked about them since they could not look at each other. Fashionable Paris was strolling before and behind, courting spring with delicate ensembles, flowered hats, foppish escorts. Families wended their slower way: Papa smoothing his moustache and glancing elsewhere, Maman superbly-fleshed and handsome, a gaggle of children trailing them in their Sunday best. High baby-carriages wheeled by country nursemaids, their occupants sleeping or protesting in laundered white. A middle-aged Frenchman, bow-tied, bowler hat tipped gallantly, conversing with a middle-aged woman taller and heavier than himself. She turned and glanced at Carradine and Claire, smirking a little, well-pleased with the rendezvous. Moi et toi! her expression indicated.
‘Beside,’ said Claire slowly, ‘how shall I come with you to London? As your little French mistress? Your Madame Tilling will not speak to me. Your friends will joke me. They will say you are a jolly fellow, and look me down their nose.’
He was silent, tracing a pattern in the gravel with the point of his cane. He was not ready to commit himself further than loving. Now she did look at him, and sadly.
‘I am right. We stay good friends, Nicholas.’
‘Do you intend to be solitary for the rest of your life?’ Carradine asked, ‘whether you love or not? You are asking for marriage, aren’t you?’
‘I do not ask!’ she cried, so passionately that even the Parisians raised eyebrows and smiled. ‘It is for you to ask — and you do not! Now I shall go home to Natalie. Take me!’ Imperiously.
‘Oh, the devil!’ he said, defeated. ‘How can I explain myself?’
She watched him with tremendous irony. ‘You explain yourself very well, always. You wish all of me. You give me a little part of yourself.’
‘Your parasol has brought out the sun,’ he observed, relieved by this distraction. The legs of the iron chairs slanted suddenly, new leaves became transparent. ‘Let us sit down for a few moments. If you’re cold you can have my coat.’
‘But how polite! I am a fool to listen. You talk the ear off a donkey.’
Yet she sat down, and he sat by her, studying her averted face.
‘I love you,’ he began, ‘so stupidly that I say your name into silences, conjuring you up like a callow schoolboy. I love you so intensely that I treasure your faults above your virtues. I love your ridiculous stubborn chastity, your irrational fits of temper. You are utterly impossible — neither taking me nor letting me be. I often wonder why I don’t pick up a girl to amuse me and leave you to tease somebody else. In short, you are a damned nuisance — and I still love you!’
She pursed her lips.
‘I can’t believe you are playing with me,’ he continued, ‘and if you are not, if you want me as I want you, then why complicate something so very simple and desirable?’
‘Making love is simple. Loving is not. I wish to go home now.’
‘And have an inquisition with Natalie? I’ve told her I want to take you to London. I’ve promised to provide for you, to care for you...’
‘Care?’ she cried, rising. ‘If you care then I come tomorrow, but you do not. ‘I care. And how do you dare talk of us to Natalie?’
‘For Heaven’s sake, let’s not have a scene in public,’ he begged, and generations of Englishmen spoke through him. A Frenchman would have joined in. ‘Don’t make a theatre!’
‘I make a thousand theatres if I wish! I do as I wish!’
‘How the devil did I get myself into this mess?’ he asked himself, incredulous. For he had always controlled the situation and this one was beyond him and hauled him after it, however unwillingly.
‘Bring me a cab. I go home alone now. You have offended me. I tell you and Natalie to go to hell. You tell me how you love me. I tell you how I do not love you. I do not love your selfish dishonestness with you and me. Leave me for always!’ Barring his pleading with her parasol. ‘I solve your nuisance, M. Carradine. I am out when you call, for ever. Find yourself a French girl who does not worry your work or your heart. Make yourself a little puppet that hangs in the cupboard when you grow tired of her. I wish you much happiness, much emptiness. Bring me a cab!’
‘Look, Claire!’ he cried, oblivious of passing smiles and comments, ‘I’m past bargaining with you...’
‘You bargain well, but not successful. Bring me a cab!’
He flung up his arms and sat again, clasped his hands between his knees, stalled.
‘How would you know,’ he said, more to himself than to her, ‘what it is to be so aware of another human being that she becomes more real than yourself?’
‘And how do you know,’ she cried, striking his legs with her rolled parasol, ‘what it is to see a man, and to know a man, and he will not be that? How do you know what it is always to hope and not to find? Now I find, and you talk of love and say it is simple, and explain it is nothing. You do not like to be discomfortable, M. Carradine. With me, with love, you are discomfortable, but you are not empty. Not because I am me, but because you begin to feel for somebody except your selfish self!’ She nodded emphatically. ‘With me — you risk!’
She glimpsed a cab which appeared to be taking risks of a different sort and hailed it.
‘Don’t leave me,’ he asked humbly. ‘We can go somewhere else. We can dance in Bougival. I promise not to talk. I p
romise not to say another word.’
He held out his hand. She struck it down.
‘You touch me and I scream for the gendarmes. I go home alone.’
He saw she meant it and helped her into the cab. The two vacated chairs seemed sadder than any autumn could render them.
Natalie, thoroughly enjoying herself, played one against the other for a few days, and reconciled them the following weekend. Subdued, they danced in Bougival: he attentive, looking at her face; she abstracted, looking into some sorry dream of her own.
‘Come to London as my guest,’ he suggested. ‘Bring Natalie if you wish. I have been thinking about this. You could be established in a respectable hotel, we could introduce you as a widow. I should watch my visiting hours. You could be no more than a friend to me. That will give us both time, time to learn whether love is enough, whether we have more in common than simple attraction. Is that honest enough for you?’
‘You make no demand?’
‘Lord, no, not the least in the world.’
He found his submission exhilarating and chastening. After a few silent turns, she said, ‘I come with you to London, as you say. I come without Natalie. She does not understand, and I cannot fight her too. Then we shall see.’
‘And you’ll sit for me again?’
‘Yes, but not in my chemise.’
‘Even in such a serious situation as this,’ Carradine said, smiling, ‘I find your insistence on the proprieties amusing. You have heard me give my word. What on earth makes you think I should retract it at the sight of your posing in a perfectly respectable chemise?’
‘We are changed, Nicholas. As your good friend I sit in my chemise. As your lover I do not.’
He laughed in spite of her frowning protest. ‘But your clothes are so unsuitable, Claire. Very sweet, very jeune fille, but not you. Suppose I buy you some new ones?’
‘No. I shall not be bought.’
‘I must paint you as an oddity in a bad temper, at total variance with her clothes and her inclinations, then!’
‘Do that,’ she flashed. ‘It shall be very interesting.’
‘Are you always going to argue with me, Claire?’
‘Perhaps. We shall see if we are together always.’
Carradine said, ‘I wonder why I bother?’ But seemed to have no choice.
They found words clumsy. Carradine’s river of comment had dried, his analyses ceased. Bereft of a combatant, Claire no longer defended or attacked. Their voices became softer, non-insistent. She sat for hours, patient and tranquil, in the gowns that were a charade of girlish innocence.
And Carradine, since he could not have her, observed her faithfully and so possessed her in a different way. He painted now in order to discover her, rather than to discover a new aspect of himself in relation to her. He began to accept things that irked him, such as her occasional cigarette.
‘I can tolerate Natalie smoking,’ he said, chagrined, ‘but not you, Claire. What on earth do you smoke, anyway?’
‘Russian cigarettes. What do you smoke, Nicholas?’
‘Oh — never mind.’
When she next came he had bought her a box of fat black, gold-tipped Russian cigarettes.
‘I shall not smoke if you wish — not here. But I shall smoke at home!’ with a flicker of independence.
‘I’m growing used to it,’ said Carradine.
She found Bessie Lintott’s packet of Brooke Bond tea in his cupboard and asked if she might try it.
‘It does not taste like French tea!’ she said uncertainly, sipping.
‘The French have no proper respect for tea, my dear girl. Throw it away if you don’t care for it.’
‘I care for it,’ she replied. ‘I think.’
He felt so sharply for them both, each finding a way to the other, that he kissed her cupped hands in token. She leaned forward and kissed him as gently and as compassionately on the mouth. The tea, steaming between them in homely contentment, made them smile and then laugh.
‘That is enough,’ said Claire definitely. ‘Now we shall work again.’
When she had gone he picked up his wrapped copy of The Times, which Mrs Tilling sent daily, faithfully, to remind him of England. He put it down again, unopened. Hands on hips, he stared at the studio, searching for occupation. He adjusted and tidied everything except his tableful of materials, and washed the teacups. He was too weary to concentrate, too full of Claire to think of anything else, too alive to sleep. So he walked, taking Paris in mental camera flashes.
The city was almost deserted at this sacred hour of the evening, as French bellies celebrated the great meal of the day with the absorption of priests celebrating communion.
Beyond this tangible devotion flared the tangible-intangible passion for French soil, for la patrie. Carradine had often pondered on the reaction to a cry of ‘Aux armes!’ in a crowded restaurant. With delicious pleasure he pictured the heroic response, while the women collected and hoarded all the food they could lay their hands on. Encore un peu, l’ennemi ne l’aura pas! A little more, the enemy shall not have it!
Then he saw the vagrants sitting at a table near the pavement, and sat down a little way from them, and ordered cognac.
They had reached a climax of age and poverty, and it was of no account. Faded photographs, they regarded only each other. Between them stood two half-filled glasses of milky Pernod, and Carradine judged that the evening must have begun and must end with these two drinks, which were all they could afford. One would eventually close the other’s eyes, and thank God for a small mercy. They had nothing but each other. They had all that truly mattered.
‘Is this what she wants?’ he asked himself, and was appalled by their consummate courage, by his lack of that same courage, by the knowledge that Claire possibly possessed it.
He left them still sitting, still exchanging an occasional word or smile, being careful of their Pernod which must last them until the café closed for the night. He went back to the studio and sketched until dawn broke.
When he woke, Claire had let herself in and was examining the drawings.
‘Les clochards!’ she smiled.
‘You like that, do you, my love?’
‘I like him,’ she replied.
She did not mean the tattered knight beneath the café awning.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Carradine had waited in that hotel room off Rue Jacob for two hours, six and a half minutes. Years afterwards he would be able to draw it in detail. Sunlight slats on faded carpet, dusty crimson curtains hung by brass rings from a wooden pole, their mended lace companions fringed at the hem. The marble wash-stand, tiled with pictures of the apostles, bearing its china burden of flowered jug and basin. Balloon-backed chairs, scrolled commode-cupboards, gas brackets on the wall surmounted by glass shades the shape of upturned lilies. Busy-patterned paper. And dominating the whole a huge mahogany bed, inlaid, ornamented, bow-legged.
He counted the tiles on the wash-stand. St Paul was cracked. He inserted a fingernail into the crack to test its durability. The saint would last some time yet. He pondered the worn patch on the carpet before the long windows and wondered how many people had stood there and looked into the well of the courtyard, and waited. Perhaps this was a well-known room for assignations? Perhaps the paironne, who seemed to favour pink satin tea-gowns, only rented it to lovers who would never meet? Perhaps a thousand men had mounted three flights of stairs in delicious hope, and stumbled down them desolated?
Claire would not come, even though this hotel’s shabby gentility was what she said she preferred. Her final decision had erupted a serene three days. He found it difficult to believe how much living they crowded into a little space of time. Those three days had been idyllic years, marriage at its mellowest and best, riding at anchor in mild harbour. Then she made a theatre to end all theatres: accusing him of emotional blackmail, exposing his vile nature, and capitulating without his ever asking her to do so. It was as though, like the White Queen in Al
ice, she must suffer before the event. The whole mood, the entire argument, had been self-induced. Then she set out her conditions. Natalie must never know, never guess. The studio must not be despoiled. Claire would not stay the night. She would not meet him anywhere this side of the Seine — as if the river were a guardian of secrets and would keep theirs safe.
On the other side of the thin wall, two lovers had been happy. He reflected that there was no lonelier experience on earth than being solitary and forced to share the muffled pleasures of two people crowning a rendezvous. Down in the courtyard, shaded by a plane tree, an old man remembered his youth. Around the house, windows open in mild May, other lives lifted voice.
Carradine had said, head in hands, as one who has sat out a hailstorm with no shelter, ‘Do I now understand that if I book a room in a respectable hotel on the Left Bank, in the afternoon, you will give up your long-preserved virginity?’
‘Yes. But I shall not be pregnated. And I shall not do what Natalie says to do not to be pregnated.’
‘Certainly not. You may leave the matter to me.’ They would have caught humour from the situation, had her mood remained that of Bernhardt hogging a scene, but she turned sad again.
At the studio door she had said, ‘Now we shall not be friends.’
‘Lovers and friends.’
She had shaken her head, ‘No. You shall not like me when you love me.’
He now ordered coffee and gateaux for two, again. He smoked and waited. The afternoon waned, the room sobered to shabbiness. The hours of cinq & sept approached. Natalie would be in her boudoir, entertaining the Minister or his son. Claire would sit at her window, having changed her mind for the hundredth time, raising aloft God only knew what personal standard, following some unfathomable personal crusade.
He was so shocked when she appeared behind the maid who brought the tray that he did not even greet her. She had dressed for battle. A close-fitting plum velvet hat with a plum satin band, set straight on. A plum silk dress overlaid by plum georgette, transparent sleeves, her hips swathed with a black satin sash which looped to her knees in a casually careful knot. Her parasol was domed and fringed. She wore a black silk mantle.
