A Good Woman

by Lisa Appignanesi

  I realise that I feel the same fascination with Beatrice’s goodness as I felt as a child. But now it comes to me that I would like to imitate it. Is it something one can learn?

  Now that Beatrice has disappeared I cross over to her side of the street and walk up and down its length, as if tracing and retracing her footsteps. I look up at the facades of the houses with their clear simple lines, their symmetrical stonework, the clusters of grapes and leaves which punctuate the surface. Near the top of the building opposite, huge letters half obscure the windows. ‘A Louer’, I read. For rent. And a phone number. Without thinking, I quickly jot the number down.

  I am suddenly supremely happy.

  -11-

  Two days later a fast-talking estate agent drowns me in words about the apartment. Vaguely I take in square-metrage, two-year lease, new wiring, taxe d’habitation, but I am not listening. The apartment is perfect. One large airy double-fronted room in brilliant white with windows which give on to the building opposite. Perpendicular to it, a smaller room - a bedroom - and next to that bathroom and kitchen. All of it, one half of a square, along which runs a glazed hall overlooking a small courtyard. I take out my chequebook on the spot, but he slows me down, suspicious perhaps, tells me he will have to take references, account numbers, I will have to come back to the office with him.

  He feels cheated in his work, I realise. I am not fulfilling the client’s part of the bargain. He would have liked to show me two other apartments, a little larger, not much more expensive, and a third, on a lovely street, closer to the Seine.

  I give him my most dazzling smile, gesture expansively, ‘Mais celui-là me convient parfaitement. It couldn’t be better. And I would be so grateful if you could speed up the formalities.’

  By the end of the day when I come back to Steve’s place, I know that in two week’s time, bar any hitches, I will be ensconced in an apartment from which I can see and learn from Beatrice’s life.

  The first apartment I thought of as properly my own was the one I moved into a little while after I left French Affair. My new job provided the cash, my new boss the impetus.

  Grant Rutherford was his name and I met him when he came into the office late one wet and wintry afternoon when I had been with Mr. Carruthers for some two months. He was a big man with a shock of ash brown hair, a square jaw and eyes of a cold crystalline blue. The rimless specs which he perched at the edge of his nose did nothing to make it seem as if he belonged indoors. The space was too small for him.

  ‘You’re new,’ he looked down at me through the specs and studied the clutter on my desk.

  ‘Not that new,’ I met him on it.

  He made a noise which had something of a disdainful growl in it and said, ‘Where’s Carruthers? Or Myra?’

  ‘I’ll get Mr. Carruthers for you.’ I rose from my desk and walked a little stiffly across the room. I could feel his eyes on me and I turned to look back at him before I opened Mr. Carruther’s door. He winked at me.

  ‘You’re an improvement on Myra. A big improvement. English?’

  I shrugged and closed the door behind me.

  Mr. Carruthers and the man whom I now knew was Grant Rutherford sat in his office for a while, before Carruthers ushered him back to me.

  ‘You look after Grant, Maria. He wants a week in France, half of it in Paris and then something quiet - intimate, but interesting.’

  Intimate was Carruthers code for a lover’s hideaway, I had quickly learned, so I dutifully brought out my intimacy files, two for Paris, a half dozen for the rest of the country, each of them containing photos, descriptions. I started taking Grant Rutherford through them.

  He stopped me after only a few moments, ‘Okay, okay, I don’t need you to sell them to me. Just look at me for a whole fifteen seconds and then choose for me.’

  I looked at him for what felt like a very long fifteen seconds until he said, ‘Go,’ and then I rifled through my files and brought out the brochure of a little artfully renovated Hotel in the Ile St Louis; and another establishment on the banks of the Yonne, a three rosette restaurant which also offered a very few suites, all discreetly but sumptuously run, as reports had it, by a retired movie star.

  He barely glanced at them before saying, ‘Phone.’

  ‘Now?’ It would be after ten in France.

  ‘Now. Please,’ he added. He scribbled the dates down for me on a scrap of paper.

  ‘This is next week,’ I said, incredulous.

  ‘This is New York. And that is a telephone.’ He put the receiver into my hand.

  I was lucky with the Paris call, less so with the second. He watched me as I tried to soft-soap, wheedle, encourage a room into existence, but it was no go.

  ‘Good French,’ he said.

  ‘Bad luck,’ I answered.

  He grinned. It warmed his eyes a little. ‘Never mind, try the next one. And I want an evening at the Opera. One set of tickets for that Paris-Moscow exhibition. Two of this month’s better restaurants. A list of clubs and a car that moves. All on one nicely typed sheet of paper by Friday afternoon this time. And while you ring your second country choice, I’ll just go and see old Carruthers for a moment. All clear?

  ‘As clear as an Alp on a bright winter day,’ I muttered.

  ‘Better start climbing.’

  I started, reached another country hideaway, managed a reservation, and then realized that if I didn’t hurry, I’d be late again for my computer class at the college. I had graduated from typing and now, on Mr. Carruther’s advice, I was busy with computing and business management three evenings a week, plus a literature course for my own pleasure.

  Just as I was gathering my books and pads together, Rutherford came back into the front office.

  ‘Done already? We do work fast around here.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Rutherford,’ I raised my professional smile, ‘Everything will be ready for you by Friday.’

  ‘Maria’s never let me down,’ Mr. Carruthers was right behind him. ‘She’s always as good as her word.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Rutherford held the door open. ‘Uptown? Downtown?’

  ‘Down,’ I murmured.

  ‘In that case, you can share my cab.’

  I accepted, perhaps a little too hastily. At the end of the day, the sheer density of the New York crowds, particularly as they surged up from the subway, sometimes overwhelmed me. I was used to crowds. But Paris crowds were different from New York crowds. In the chanting and placard waving demonstrations I would bump into in front of embassies or along the avenues, there was a sense of barely contained violence, a reek of grievance far more palpable than anything I had ever experienced. I learned to lower my eyes, to look into a middle distance free of strangers, uninhabited by the homeless and the beggars. In France the meeting of eyes was part of the free-floating play of the streets. Here to look directly at a passer-by was an act of provocation and the response was often aggressive. Some days, the adventure of it thrilled me. On others I was relieved to do without.

  Grant Rutherford was apparently so pleased with the itinerary I had arranged for him that I had the mixed fortune of arranging two more in the course of that year. I learned from Mr Carruthers discreet but suggestive cough, that when Grant Rutherford came into the office himself, the trips were not with his wife. Rutherford was a cautious man, who didn’t trust secretaries and liked seeing to details himself. He was a partner in an advertising firm which went by the name of Rutherford, Owen and Marks, someone to be reckoned with, and an important client.

  By the time of his third jaunt across the Atlantic, we were on first name terms. It was just after that that he rang me up and asked if I’d meet him for lunch. In the Grill Room at The Four Seasons. I was excited, despite myself. The American men I had met so far were mostly boys and after a couple of Italian dinners and fumbling episodes in cockroach ridden bedrooms, I thought it was far better to pay for my own movie tickets and keep conversation strictly to books or business managem
ent.

  I dressed carefully that day: a cream-coloured light woollen suit I had brought with me from Paris and only wore on special occasions; a silk shirt Olivier had given me, a scarf that brought out the copper in my hair. As I crossed the rosewood panelled stage of the Grill Room, I had the sense that all the bright lights were on me. This was my debut performance and a hundred eyes followed my movements, conjectured whether I was a potential lead, or a permanent understudy; found their answer partly in the status of the man who greeted me.

  Grant patted the banquette beside him. ‘Good walk,’ he looked at me speculatively. ‘Have you modelled?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You could.’

  ‘Not my thing. In any case, I’m too old now. Not a minor, you know.’

  He chuckled, ‘Not too old for the more expensive mags. You have an expensive look.’

  ‘Simply foreign,’ I steered the subject away from myself, asked him about his most recent trip.

  He waved the question away impatiently, ‘Fine, well devised, as always.’

  ‘If you don’t give me more feedback than that, how am I to keep my files up to date?’

  ‘You may not want to for much longer. I have a proposition to put to you.’

  I almost choked on the Bloody Mary he had ordered for me. Not only was I not used to drinking spirits, but it seemed a little soon for propositions.

  ‘And here I thought you were taking a downtrodden office wretch out for her lunch of the month,’ I mumbled.

  ‘That too, of course.’ He grinned then gave me a hard, assessing look.

  The proposition Grant Rutherford put to me over lobster and crisp leafy salad and proceeded to outline over nougat ice and a first then second cup of coffee was not at all what I had half imagined. He was offering me a job. His firm now had three important French clients who sometimes proved a little tricky to deal with. Communication was too often a series of misunderstandings. There were tastes to be considered, cultural differences to be explained and manoeuvred. Not only did I have France in my bones, he told me, but I had a nose and tact. And I was efficient. Then, too, I was discreet and he thought I could be trusted to work to him and smooth relations with those clients. On the way I would learn about advertising, though the post itself was in his PR department.

  Needless to say, I was thrilled, though I hesitated. I owed so much to Mr. Carruthers. Grant told me he would sort out all that side.

  He did. Three weeks later I was ensconced in my own little office, complete with sleek black desk, framed photographs from one of the fashion houses Rutherford, Owen and Marks handled, and a swivel chair. If I turned it round, I had a sumptuous view of the East River.

  I worked hard and I began to play hard. Often the two were indistinguishable. It was my job, Grant told me, to know who did what and get them to do it for me when whatever it was, was needed. I had to listen as assiduously to gossip as I listened to him. I had to know journalists and their specialisations, editors and photographers, restauranteurs and gallery owners, producers, artists and writers. I had to know clients’ tastes and desires and learn to stretch them in our direction. And since almost everyone was a potential client, there was a lot of knowing to do.

  Grant helped, as did others on the team. Invitations were put my way. I went to parties and exhibition openings and book launches and charity dinners. I scoured the fashion magazines and Women’s Weekly, so that I could identify a designer’s look at a glance, with no recourse to labels. I learned which restaurants specialized in which professions and how to see who was lunching with whom without losing the gist of my associates’ or partners’ conversation. On the way, I went to bed with a few people, and learned a little about American men.

  I was dutiful. I kept notebooks as assiduously as Madame de Sévigné wrote letters, though perhaps not in quite so impeccable a style. The blue notebook was for office and clients and contained portraits, little character sketches of the people I worked with. Two blank pages followed each first entry, so that the pictures could grow fuller as I learned more about tastes and weaknesses. The red notebook was labelled media and contained everything I could garner from press and gossip about people in the field and their recurring interests. In the green notebook, I kept details of campaign strategies. At first there were more underscored questions here, than anything else, but gradually as I began to understand the nature of the work better, the green notebook grew into a series of elaborate diagrams. Finally, there was a black notebook in which everything that didn’t fit anywhere else found a place. This was really the diary of my working life.

  At first I kept the notebooks in French, since they were only for my eyes and part of me didn’t want anyone to know how hard I was working to map the terrain of my new world. But soon, I don’t quite remember when the change came, French went into abeyance and all but the blue notebook turned into English. The colour coding remained the same though: year after year, blue, red, green and black, succeeded their predecessors. Sometimes, late at night, when I made my entries, a sense of power would zing through me. I would have the sudden certainty that I could orchestrate campaigns and intrigues with the best of them.

  There are moments when I think that it was the continuing existence of these notebooks that kept me from being utterly overwhelmed, until the end, by life in New York’s fast track. A tiny part of me remained detached, didn’t need to sniff the coke twice, didn’t need to feel implicated when the syringes came out in the marble bathrooms of gala gatherings on the upper East Side. I would simply make a mental note, keep my cool and write it all down later for future reference in my notebooks. The buzz I got came from work. ‘Not work,’ my mother would have said in her best judging voice, ‘but scheming. Did you ever help anyone?’ I didn’t much. Not in her sense. But then, my mother’s voice didn’t occur to me very often in those days.

  It was Grant who was my mentor. It was Grant who explained the ways of New York to me and who debriefed me after meetings and parties. It was Grant who told me where to have my hair cut, where to buy my clothes and accessories, and to make sure that whenever I might be seen by any of our fashion clients, I was to be seen in their gear. The firm would advance me a sum to that end.

  Soon after that, it must have been some five or six months after I started at Rutherford, Owen and Marks, Grant mentioned that he’d heard from his secretary that I only had a small studio apartment, not in the most salubrious part of town. ‘Are you interested in finding something else?’

  I nodded. ‘But I never seem to have the time to look.’

  It was true. Now that I had a little more money, work was so all-encompassing, that even the idea of flat-hunting was more than I could entertain. I simply filled the studio with flowers - flowers I had always coveted and my mother had always refrained from buying - and concentrated my gaze on those.

  Grant gave me a stern look. Sternness had been his mode with me ever since I had begun to work for him, as if I were on trial and any levity would detract from my attention to the hurdles that demanded to be leapt, and perhaps remind both of us about the questionable arrangements I had made for him in the past. I didn’t mind. He was perfectly civil, if distant, in a way I had learned to identify as pedigree Yale, and the very coolness made whatever he imparted to me seem doubly significant.

  But that day, I think I had hoped for a smile and a metaphorical pat on the back. Earlier in the week, I had managed by a combination of wit and charm, to woo a French client back into the fold. He was the head of the Normandy Cheese Marketing Board and he loathed the humorous campaign our creative department had come up with for launching the cheeses. It worked on the negative stereotype principle: ‘Smelly but…’ So we had ‘smelly but succulent, ‘smelly but sumptuous,’ ‘smelly but substantial’, ‘smelly but sublime’ - all complete with a beret clad cartoon Frenchman, holding his baguette in one hand and his nose with the other in image one and ecstatically biting into the cheese, now on the baguette, in image two. Jacques Perra
ult hated it. Only by dint of a great deal of manoeuvring and persuading and playing of the French card, did I manage to convince him to give us another week to come up with something that he wanted - which was high chic, good taste, and glamour.

  Grant, however, said nothing about cheese. Instead he handed me a piece of paper. ‘Ring Gerry Hynes tonight, about 8.30. He’s off to the coast for a couple of years and he wants to sublet on a semi-formal basis. Far cheaper than the going rate, but with the option that he may change his mind and be back here in six months time. He’s an old friend and I’ll vouch for you.’

  ‘Sounds wonderful.’ I glanced at the number and address on the sheet of paper. ‘The problem is that I’m dining with Jacques Perrault tonight.

  ‘Mmm. I see,’ Blue eyes glinted at me with a trace of mockery, ‘Well, if you’re interested in the apartment, you’ll just have to excuse yourself and scuttle off to the powder room at eight-thirty.’

  ‘I don’t scuttle.’

  He laughed. ‘No I guess you don’t. Glide then. But do it.’

  I’m not sure if I managed a smile as I turned to the door.

  ‘And Maria, keep Perrault sweet. Keep up the good work.’

  If that was the pat, it made very little impact on my back.

  The apartment, nonetheless, was wonderful, two spacious rooms and a kitchen, overlooking Central Park at West seventy-third. Four weeks later, I moved in. I inherited Gerry’s bed and a kitchen table and a television set, but at the last minute he decided he couldn’t part from his other possessions and he shipped everything west. It took only a single taxi load to bring the trinkets I had collected since I had arrived in the city over to the West Side. I had vases and bowls, plates and clothes and some books and that was it. The following Saturday, I bought a vast overstuffed white sofa, a glass coffee table, and at the Metropolitan Museum, a framed overblown poster of Bonnard’s The Terrace at Vernon. I don’t quite know why I chose that one, except that it had three women in the foreground and a great many flowers.