I’d been in the flat when Gerald had come back from work. It was only three-thirty, and although he finished early from time to time, the moment I saw him I sensed that something serious was wrong. His skin was puffy and his eyes were too bright. I knew the signs of heavy drinking in Gerald by then, though they were not easy to detect. To anyone else he would have simply seemed a self-possessed man with more than his fair share of energy and vigour. He threw down his keys and stood for a moment in the middle of the room, giving me a long look. Long looks in the afternoon usually meant sex, but not this time. This time he seemed almost stunned. ‘Oh, Jenny,’ he said, shaking his head sadly, tears starting to his eyes. ‘Something’s happened. I can’t really believe I’ve made such a fool of myself. But I want you to know – and believe – that I still love you.’
‘Well, that’s good.’ I said, trying to sound light-hearted. I’d never known him to be maudlin before. He always held his drink remarkably well.
He came forward and almost fell on me. I could smell his sweet winey breath, the aftermath of a rich meal. ‘You have to forgive me,’ he muttered.
‘For what?’ I laughed, trying to fend him off. I felt embarrassed. But underneath my embarrassment was a cold, lurching fear. Gerald never admitted guilt for anything, and certainly never asked for forgiveness. Things didn’t trouble him the way they troubled other people. He only acknowledged problems in so far as they offered an opportunity for solutions, and he never voiced regrets. (What’s the point? he’d say.) So for him to be even the slightest bit emotional was unusual. And it couldn’t all be down to drink.
Eventually he let me go and fell back on the sofa, sinking his face in his hands in a gesture that seemed too theatrical to be sincere. He gave a long sigh and paused, as if expecting me to say something. Something soothing, no doubt, something that would make him feel better. But I was at a loss, my mind spooling out wildly like a broken film. I could only think that he’d been found out in some kind of fraud; something the gutter press would latch on to, something that would mean the end of his career. I discounted as a matter of course that it might be a love affair. After all, I knew Gerald wasn’t faithful, and he knew I knew. Although we never spoke of it, on certain days I could tell that he’d taken another woman to bed because of his heightened animation and effulgent vivacity. I never made even an oblique comment. As long as he came back to me I decided I wouldn’t stir up trouble. Gerald hated women who nagged and fussed.
‘Forgive you for what?’ I said again. He rubbed his hair with his hands and in bits and pieces began to bluster his way through the explanation. I stood like stone as the story came out. It seemed he had ‘somehow or other’ got engaged to be married. That very lunchtime, in fact, in a restaurant in Soho. To a woman called Sarah Latimer whom he had been meeting on and off at ‘various events’ for the last six months. She’d taken quite a shine to him, he didn’t know why. In fact, she had called the shots and more or less made the proposal herself. She was a nice girl. A very nice girl, so that Gerald had been taken aback. Caught off-balance. Made to feel sorry for her. Agreed to it in a kind of whirl without thinking of the consequences.
I stood in front of him, astounded. ‘Jenny darling –’ He raised his big puppy eyes to me. ‘I didn’t mean it to happen this way – well, any way, in fact. But she’s very sweet, and I can’t get out of this without a hell of a lot of bother. Damaging bother. And it needn’t be that way. If you stick with me, I’ll make it up to you. Because you’re the only one who matters to me. Sarah will help me get on, of course. She’s been brought up to this sort of life and can only do me good, but that will help you too.’ He paused. ‘Look, I know it’s not ideal, but we could make this thing work. It could be great for both of us …’
I could see it all – Gerald weekending in the country with Sarah, weekdaying in Whitehall with other up-and-coming men, and popping back to see me about bedtime. I was enraged. How dare he propose such a shabby second-rate relationship for both us women? I told him he was contemptible. He winced: ‘You’re right. I don’t deserve you – either of you.’ And then he threw himself back on his plump silk cushions in a gesture so tragic that it almost made me laugh. He had nerve, Gerald. He really thought he’d get away with it.
But he didn’t. I packed and left him the same day. All my friends said I was doing the right thing, cheered me on, patted me on the back, gave me tea and sympathy and lots of vodka: The cheek of him, they said. You’re far better off on your own. He was just holding you back. You can follow your own career now. But I was used to Gerald, to his expansive nature, to his ability to make decisions, to take me places, and to make me laugh. I was miserable without him. And Paris and that wretched room was making everything worse. I had hardly spoken to anyone since I’d arrived. Some days I’d go and sift through the archives in the library, or shut myself up in one of the Academy darkrooms, passing only the time of day with the curators or caretakers, asking brief questions as to where I might find fixing solutions or developing trays. Most days, however, I walked about on my own, trying to collect material for my projected exhibition back in London. In spite of my big talk about following in the footsteps of Cartier-Bresson, I felt inhibited by the Master as I wandered the very streets he had wandered. I’d hoped to see French working life from an outsider’s point of view, but I found myself photographing the same old clichés of Parisian life as I sat on park benches in the Tuileries watching children at play in sandpits, or sailing boats in the grand basin across the river, supervised by foreign au pairs. And everywhere I looked there were promenading lovers. I photographed waiters in pavement cafés in the Latin Quarter, street cleaners in Porte de la Villette, and streetwalkers in Pigalle. But everything seemed hackneyed. My eye and hand felt dull. I was wandering about like a ghost, covering a great deal of ground but not making much headway. Each night I would return, jaded, to the dreadful room.
I hated it every time I opened the door. It was so awful it was not even worth decorating. I took to flicking through the pages of Le Figaro to see what other rooms might be to let, but all the ads were for two-room apartments and always too expensive. There was a crisis among the immobiliers I was told. Rents in Paris were sky-high, especially if you wanted to live in the central arrondissements. So I resigned myself to sticking it out. It was only for another four months after all, and I was away most of the day. I’d taken to eating at a little café on the corner – almost as cheap as cooking my own, and a good deal better. And I’d found somewhere to wash – a hall of residence for Catholic students. They didn’t seem to mind that I was not, strictly speaking, a student or indeed a Catholic. They were happy to take my one franc fifty for the use of their showers and laundry room. I could thus avoid using the unspeakable encrusted lavatory on the eighth floor, which could only be opened by the insertion of a portable doorknob into the spindle-hole, and which, once entered, gave off a smell that made the gorge rise. I had only used it once and couldn’t help wondering how the other tenants managed to cope with it every day. Mademoiselle Regnier, for example. She had the room opposite mine, a single servant’s box room (as they all were on the eighth floor), and she was old and frail. I’d sometimes see her in the dim corridor, painfully dragging the enamel jug to and from the tap. I’d never spoken to her. She avoided my glance. I only knew her name by the faded white card pinned to the frame of her door by a rusty drawing pin. Mademoiselle Regnier, it said in full. Sonnez fort S.V.P.
The sad but assertive singularity of her title made me curious about her, as did the odd hours she kept. Sometimes if I was awake at night, I heard her emerging from her room, breathing heavily, walking slowly down the creaking stairs. Once, coming home in the early hours, I’d seen her emerge from the shadows of the entrance arch and set off into the dark street. Sometimes her solitude reinforced mine, and I saw myself foreshadowed in her existence. I wanted to know more about her.
This curiosity was quickened when I had a conversation with Cherbal. He was the unofficial
caretaker of the flats. There was no concierge – the apartments were too lowly for that – but Cherbal, who was a fruit porter, undertook the general maintenance of the building. Every morning he hosed down the courtyard and once a week he saw to the collection of the bins. He was a big, muscular man with flashing white teeth and the air of a circus performer. He lashed the water from his hose around the walls and windows of the courtyard like a lion tamer. Whenever he saw me coming, he would pretend to direct the hose at me, then turn instead to flush out some rotten cabbage leaf from a corner. Passez! Passez, Mademoiselle! he would shout urgently, as if his ringmaster skills would soon fail and the wild water hose get the better of him.
However, one day he’d stopped me in the courtyard for more protracted conversation. He wanted to know if I had the key to the top-floor lavatory. It was important to keep it locked, he said, so it would not be rendered unfit by unauthorized users. A propos of this I expressed sympathy with poor little Mademoiselle Regnier, so old, and with so many stairs to climb. Cherbal shook his head and lifted an admonitory finger. ‘Keep away from that woman,’ he warned me, his eyes fierce. I expressed surprise. She seemed such a sweet little lady, I said. But Cherbal repeated the head-shaking and the finger-wagging. ‘Méfiezvous, Mademoiselle,’ he reiterated. ‘Méfiez-vous de cette femme.’
I decided there was something unstable about Cherbal’s flashing eyes and flashing teeth and general air of performance, and that I would make my own mind up about Mademoiselle Regnier. But moments later she became of marginal interest to me when I unlocked my letterbox and found a letter from Gerald. I’d taken great care to pass on my address to all the friends whom I’d thought Gerald might approach for information. I’d been quite depressed when I’d heard nothing. Two years of being a mere appendage to Gerald had made me angry. But not angry enough to do without him entirely.
His letter was humorous, decisive and sure of itself. A wave of physical desire came over me as I stood reading the confident, well-formed handwriting. I leant up against the wall, my hands shaking. Gerald made no mention of Sarah or the engagement. He simply said he had an appointment in Paris the following Saturday and would like to come and see me in the afternoon – ‘chez toi unless you tell me otherwise’.
I decided I would not reply. I wanted Gerald to think that the strong and self-confident woman who had rejected his shoddy compromises and walked out of his flat to make a life for herself was still strong and self-confident; that she was too absorbed in her work, too busy (or too disdainful) to reply. I knew he’d come all the same. And I would be ready for him.
Ironically, the prospect of seeing Gerald again revitalized all the energy I’d once thought I’d regained as a result of leaving him. I looked at the room with a new eye. I photographed my chair in all its plainness, as if it were van Gogh’s chair at Arles. I photographed the wardrobe with its doors open, a combination of strange angles and absurd gaping mysteries. I photographed my bed, with the cold little window above it almost aching with loneliness. I photographed myself in the mirror – shattered, divided. I felt enthusiastic about my street project for the first time since my arrival. I decided I would go down to the wholesale markets that night and see if I could catch Cherbal at his work. I hung around in the Place de l’Opéra taking long shots across the square, till the cafés closed and the streets emptied. Then I took the Métro to Les Halles. There was a lot to see and I got some good compositions. I looked out for Cherbal, but he was not to be seen. Some flower porters gave me a bunch of carnations and I was carrying them back home, stepping over the crates and debris strewn over the road, when I saw the little figure in black, hobbling along ahead of me, a bulging string bag in each hand. It was four a.m. and the streets were still dark, and I couldn’t be sure at first, but I hurried alongside her and fell into step.
‘Bonjour, Madame,’ I began, bending to look into her face. She looked up at me, slightly suspicious, slightly cross. Then she recognized me.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘my young neighbour. Good day to you, Mademoiselle.’ She put down her shopping and shook my hand. A porter, doing a passable imitation of Cherbal with a lively hosepipe, sluiced our legs as he passed. Mademoiselle Regnier cursed him with an expression which was unknown to me, but elicited a ripe reply from the porter. Then she turned to me with a lovely smile, and I could see she had once been a beauty: ‘Take no notice. He is an ignoramus.’
I went to pick up her shopping bags, now lying in a puddle at our feet. ‘Let me help you with these. You’re out very late.’
‘No,’ she replied, ‘very early. They sell off the damaged fruit for next to nothing, and practically throw away the vegetables. Look at this –’ She ferreted in one of her bags and produced a creamy white cauliflower. ‘I picked this up from the pavement. Perfectly good. You see, Mademoiselle, I am not rich. I must take advantage of opportunities.’
We walked back together, slowly. We climbed the eight floors even more slowly.
‘This is a long way up for you,’ I remarked.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘One lives how one can.’
My old desire to know more about Mademoiselle Regnier took hold of me. ‘Will you have coffee with me, Madame?’ I paused by my door.
‘Non, merci, Mademoiselle, I will not intrude.’
‘Oh, please. It would be my pleasure.’
She inclined her scarfed head with the graciousness of a princess and followed me into my room. Its bleakness struck me anew, as I saw it through the old woman’s eyes.
‘You must forgive the mess,’ I said, hastily clearing negatives and prints from the hard chair. ‘I’m not here for long. And I’m not at home very much.’
Mademoiselle Regnier sat down and put her bags on the floor at her feet. She glanced around the room with an expression that was almost rueful. The enamel jug was empty and so I went out to the landing to fill the cafetière. When I returned, Mademoiselle Regnier was studying the photograph of Gerald which I had left lying on the table.
‘Very handsome,’ she remarked. ‘Très, très beau. He is your lover?’
I was disconcerted by her directness, and answered in rather a flustered fashion. ‘He was once. A while back. I’m afraid he’s marrying someone else now.’
‘I see.’ Mademoiselle Regnier looked at me and then the photo. ‘Then you would be better to put this man out of your life, Mademoiselle. Let him go – Bye-bye!’ (She said that in English, waving her hand like a child.) ‘There is no future for you there. Believe me, Mademoiselle, I speak from experience.’
‘That’s why I’m here – in Paris,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to forget.’ I avoided her eye, concentrated on making the coffee. There was a silence. The cafetière spluttered and splashed coffee over the cramped cooker. I lifted it and hastily poured two cups. Mademoiselle Regnier took one in her bony, misshapen hand.
‘I’ve had a lot of trouble with men,’ she said finally, as she swallowed. ‘It is not too much to say that men have ruined me. Especially handsome men. Especially those. You see, Mademoiselle, I am not exactly the sort of woman it does you good to have coffee with. I have a bad reputation.’
I half laughed. ‘Surely not,’ I said.
‘Assuredly so. People don’t care so much now – now that I’m old. They put up with me now. But I’ve had a lot of hard words. No doubt Cherbal has given you his usual warning …’ Her eyes twinkled attractively in the wrinkled mask of her face, a face still powdered, still a little rouged.
I didn’t reply, but she obviously knew he had talked about her. ‘Well, Cherbal has not got much finesse.’ She smiled. ‘A porter after all, only a porter. At least the men in my life had some charm, some culture …’ She got up painfully slowly and went to the mantelpiece where I’d roughly arranged some contact prints. She picked out the pictures I’d taken of the women in Pigalle. It had been difficult to get those; the women had been annoyed when they saw my camera, turning their backs and making rude gestures. Two of them had threatened me in the end, sayin
g I was embarrassing their clients and spoiling their livelihood, and I’d had to stop. Mademoiselle Regnier looked at them and said, ‘These are yours? You are a professional photographer, Mademoiselle?’
‘Of a kind.’ I felt embarrassed. I took the prints from her and put them face downwards. ‘These are not very good. Just experimenting.’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t be embarrassed on my account. It’s a way of life after all. And you don’t have to depend on one man, always waiting at his beck and call. But there you are, I was ignorant and stupid. But that’s all in the past. Girls these days don’t make that kind of mistake, do they? They’re much more independent.’ She picked up Gerald’s picture again and then propped it up on the mantelpiece. ‘Très beau,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Très, très beau.’ And then she said it was late and she needed to lie down for an hour or two: ‘I’m always tired, but I never sleep. It must be my bad conscience.’ She laughed, shook my hand and wished me good night.
On the Saturday I went down to the shops and got fruit, cheese, wine, eggs. I’d decided I could just about manage an omelette on the little cooker. I chose some pictures to pin around the room to show off my prowess. I’d developed my shots of Les Halles and I was pleased with them. I loved the sensual heaps of vegetables and fruit, the early morning light filtering through the darkness and the casual grace of the porters as they carried the crates about. I thought Gerald might be impressed.
Lying Together Page 16
