by Annabel Abbs
“Blepharitis?”
“Yes. And fatigue and nervous exhaustion. Babbo says he deserves it all on account of his many iniquities but I think it’s my fault.” I look up, past the doctor, at the hills rising up in waves behind Zurich.
“No, Miss Joyce. It’s not your fault.” Doctor Jung lowers his voice, as if he’s talking to himself. “Arsenic. Boils … does he get boils? Loss of appetite?”
“Yes, sometimes. But the good news, Doctor, is that Professor Naegeli found no sign of syphilis in my blood.”
“Ah, so now it’s down to psychoanalysis to cure you. We need to uncover your pathogenic secrets.”
“Pathogenic?”
“Deeply repressed secrets. Things that have happened to you and been locked away and are now making you ill. Things you must face up to.” Even out here on the water, his eyes probe me mercilessly.
“But if they’re locked away, how can I face up to them?”
“Keep writing down your dreams. The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost secret recess of the psyche. Better still, paint them or draw them. Can you do that?” He strokes his moustache, watches me.
“What did you think of my memoir, Doctor?”
“Why did you turn down the job as dance teacher?”
“Babbo needed me. Not to accompany him like a blind man’s dog, but to provide substance and inspiration for his book. My dancing was a source of revelation to him.”
“You stayed to continue as his muse?”
“I never spoke of being a muse. I knew my mother wouldn’t like it. But all the time I was growing up Babbo’s eyes were on me, watching me, examining me. That was why I slept in my clothes.” I hesitate. Shiver. Coldness is spreading slowly through my chest as though the temperature of my blood has suddenly fallen.
“Pray continue, Miss Joyce.”
Beyond the white sail a heron dives and surfaces with a small fish flailing in its beak.
“Sometimes I thought his eyes were covetous. His head would perch sideways, like a bird, and I knew he wasn’t just watching but listening and recording.” I see the heron fly to the bank, disappear in the trees.
“No doubt, he was interested in what you had to say, like any good parent.” Doctor Jung leans out of the boat, scoops up a handful of water and drinks noisily from his cupped palm.
“Oh no! I was never under any illusion about that. He thought my words, or the rhythm of them, might be useful. He thought my dreams could help him too, especially when he started writing about the dark night of the soul. Work in Progress is a dream, you see. He uses everything around him, everything that inspires him.”
Doctor Jung dries his hand on his handkerchief. “When did you first know you were your father’s muse?”
I look over the edge of the boat at the water, so green and clear I can see tiny fish meandering round us, their scales glimmering as they catch the light. When did I discover I was Babbo’s muse? Yes, that was it. The evening at Robiac Square when Babbo gave his first reading from Work in Progress. I was seventeen. He invited several of his Flatterers to come and hear the few pages it had taken him a thousand hours to write. Everyone had sat at Babbo’s feet while he read, their faces uplifted as if in supplication. I flitted in and out serving drinks and helping my mother prepare the food we were to eat afterwards. She stayed out of earshot, saying she ‘had heard it all before’. I remember the melodious quality of his words and his thin high voice rising and falling. But then, with a jolt of awareness, I realised he was talking about me, he had written about me and I was part of what was surely to be the greatest novel ever written. My gut twisted. I had to stop myself crying out “But that’s me! That’s mine!” I’d felt a peculiar and inexplicable sense of violation, as though he had taken something from me.
I don’t tell Doctor Jung this. Instead I say, “He used my words. Kitten said I was lucky to be a muse.” I run my fingers through the cool green water. I’m starting to feel tired and weary. All this talk of muses. What has being Babbo’s muse done for me? It has imprisoned me, manacled me to him. And yet it’s all I have left now. Everything else has fallen away.
“It’s true. Many artists have muses and it’s generally considered a great honour.” He pushes his wire-framed glasses up onto his forehead and watches me.
“My father is a genius, as great as Rabelais or Dante.” I push back my shoulders, letting the lake air wrap itself around me. “He’s fêted wherever he goes.”
“Do you envy that?”
I say nothing. Sometimes I remember the swell of pride and the glow of success, the prolonged applause and the cries of appreciation that followed so many of my performances – at the Bal Bullier, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. And yes, it felt good.
“So why did you give up ballet, Miss Joyce?”
“It was too hard. Kitten had been right all along. I was too old for ballet.” I pause and look over the edge of the boat where I catch sight of my reflection in the water. My face looks back at me, shimmying and undulating. And for a confused second I wonder if I’m dancing again. “I discovered a new form of dance, one that didn’t involve going on stage. One that helped people. Have you heard of the Margaret Morris Movement? It was my vocation really, my dancing destiny. Kitten and I had done a few of her weekend classes but then Babbo found out she was setting up a school in Paris.” I look pointedly at the shore. The boat is starting to rock and sway, jumbling my memories, throwing them against each other until they blur and distort. “Take me back to the jetty,” I say imperiously. “You’ll have to wait for the next chapter.”
“Have you had any more clairvoyant experiences, Miss Joyce?” The doctor moves across the boat and his shifting weight causes it to change direction, so that we’re now heading back towards the bank.
I hesitate, and for a few seconds the bottom of the boat seems to suck at my feet as if the boat itself is anchoring me, protecting me from its own pitching and rolling. And I remember last night’s dream in which I and Mrs Fitzgerald and Mrs Fleischman and Nijinsky sat in a circle wearing straitjackets and weaving baskets from boughs of willow that glowed like jewels. “No,” I say, closing my fingers tightly round the side of the boat. “Nothing.”
“We are making excellent progress. Now your father has left Zurich there is no obstacle to your cure.” Doctor Jung pulls a rope towards him and the white sail swings violently to one side. “Duck, Miss Joyce.”
And as I duck, I decide not to tell him Babbo is still in Zurich, secretly ensconced in the Carlton-Elite Hotel at the huge expense of his patron. No – that is our secret and I will not tell Doctor Jung.
13
October 1929
Paris
“Mia bella bambina?” Babbo’s voice came through the keyhole of my bedroom door, where I sat in bed wrapped in blankets.
“Go away!”
“I have hired the redoubtable and formidable Mr Calder, Mr Alexander Calder, to teach you drawing.”
I didn’t reply. Instead I pulled the blanket tighter round my hunched shoulders. I didn’t want to draw. I wanted to dance. I needed to dance, to move.
“I think you will like him, Lucia.”
“Is he Irish?” I called, my voice deadened by the blanket that covered my mouth.
“Unlock your door, mia bella bambina and I will reveal all.”
“Does Mama like him?”
“No, but that is no impediment.”
I lifted my head, letting the blanket fall from my face and shoulders.
“Mr Calder will instruct you and then you and I will work together. And Miss Steyn has agreed to show you round the picture galleries. Now will you deign to open your door?”
I shook off the blanket and cupped my hands around my mouth. There was to be no misunderstanding about my next request. Locked away in my room I’d spent many hours in front of my mirror and it had become obvious that my squint was hindering my grand plan of marriage. The strabismus had to go. “Only if yo
u pay for surgery on my eye!”
“I will talk to Doctor Borsch and see what can be done. I promise. Will you unlock your door now?”
I got out of bed, moved to the door, and crouched down so that my mouth was against the iron-rimmed keyhole. “I’m not ready to throw away my talent, Babbo. And I don’t want to do book-binding!”
“I have found somewhere for you to dance, mia bella bambina. Please open the door.”
“Who with?” I could smell Babbo through the keyhole. Disinfectant and tobacco. Mama must have been dousing one of his abscesses or bathing his eyes. I felt a pang of guilt.
“Miss Margaret Morris has opened a training school not five minutes from here. I have secured you a place.”
“Margaret Morris from London?” I stood up, raised my head and turned to the window. Light was pushing at the shutters and outside crows were cawing in the trees.
“She thinks you will make an excellent teacher of her movement. And I have a letter from Beckett asking after you.”
And then I heard Mama’s heels coming determinedly towards the door and her voice barking at Babbo: “Leave this to me, Jim. You know nothing about your daughter and nothing about women.” She started hammering on the door with the flat of her hand.
“You’ve been lounging in that bed for nigh on two weeks, Lucia. It’s our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary tonight and Miss Beach has arranged us a party. We want you there. Your father’s agreed to all your daft demands and I’ve bought you a new dress.”
I moved back from the door, straightened my spine until I was standing tall. Yes, I thought. A fortnight is long enough. I’ve work to do. Beckett will be returning from Ireland soon. And I need to dance.
“What sort of dress?” I called back.
“You’ll love it … green silk, dropped waist line, sequinned hem. Open the door and I’ll bring it in, that I will.”
* * *
Stella Steyn and I stood in front of a self-portrait by Chardin, in the Louvre. She told me it would make the perfect starting point for our ‘Discourses on Art’. I tried to focus on the picture, on the painter’s lined face, the bright blue fabric round his head, but my eyes kept flicking to the oil painting beside it. In the oil painting was a dead pheasant strung up over a table of artichokes, apples and wine glasses. My eyes met the eyes of the pheasant and for a second it was as though something passed between us.
“Chardin was a very slow painter.” Stella’s warbling voice pulled me back from the dead bird. “He painted only a very few paintings each year, three or four on average. This self-portrait he did in his seventies when he was so blind he couldn’t mix oil paints any more so he had to use pastels.” Stella examined the picture, her eyes just a few inches from the frame.
I tilted my head to one side and then to the other and looked at the portrait. I took a step back and then a step forward, trying to see what it was she found so captivating. Then my eyes darted back to the pheasant again.
“He was a master of still-lifes and portraits. Look at how he’s captured the light, Lucia.” She gestured at the side of Chardin’s self-portrait. “And look at his use of colour. Even with pastels he’s created texture and vibrant hues. Look at the peacock blue on the band round his head scarf.” Stella gave a sigh replete with contentment. I stared into the glazed eyes of the dangling pheasant.
“Lucia?” She looked at me curiously and pointed to the self-portrait. “Have a closer look.”
I narrowed my eyes and tried to focus on Chardin. The blue band adorning his head was the exact colour of Babbo’s new smoking jacket. But then my gaze slid back to the pheasant. Something seemed to be moving at the back of its eyes … an iridescent light.
“And look at his expression, Lucia, and the way he’s dressed. What does that tell you about him?” Stella looked at me with raised eyebrows.
I turned my back on the pheasant. “He looks kind,” I said. I could feel the pheasant’s eyes boring into my spine.
“Yes, I agree,” Stella enthused. “He paints with such feeling. There’s no pomposity is there? There’s a humility and an honesty in his face. He never left Paris. He found everything he needed right here.”
“Perhaps that isn’t so strange,” I said. To live in one place, to be born and to die looking at the same vista, hearing the same familiar sounds – a life of repetition, familiarity, constancy. I thought of Beckett’s childhood stories, of the garden, orchards and house his father built. Of how these things cheered me but seemed to repel Beckett. And then I turned back to the pheasant and its eyes were still upon me, watching me.
“Why d’you keep looking at that picture, Lucia?” Stella sounded snappish.
“I’m not,” I lied. “I’m thinking about what you said. About living in one place. Is this the first time you’ve left Dublin?”
“I was delighted to leave Dublin.” Stella turned back to Chardin’s self-portrait as though she was talking to him not me. “Paris is the place to be if you’re an artist. Anyway, I’m not staying here much longer. I’ve applied to study at the Bauhaus in Germany.” She gave a little skip of excitement.
“Oh,” I said flatly. I wanted to look at the dead pheasant again, to peer into its eyes, to fathom the light that flickered so peculiarly behind its irises. But I didn’t want Stella to think me strange or to tell Babbo that I hadn’t behaved in her ‘Discourse on Art’.
“Oh not just yet, Lucia.” She reached out and grabbed my hand. “Don’t look so sad. There’s lots of time for you to teach me French and me to show you paintings. This is going to be so much fun!”
Stella turned her head back to Chardin’s self-portrait and began examining it again, sighing happily as she did so. I turned my head back to the pheasant and our eyes met again.
“Has your father found you a drawing instructor yet?” She asked.
“Oh yes, I’ve had my first lesson with Mr Calder.”
“Sandy Calder?” There was a splutter in her voice as though I’d said something shocking.
“Yes, he does the amazing mechanical circus. Have you seen it?”
“No,” she said, an expression of surprise and confusion on her face.
“Well, I’ll take you. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I know Sandy Calder. He’s not a serious artist. He’s an engineer.” Stella’s tone was scornful. “You need to be learning from nature, studying life drawing and painting from models. It seems so flippant to hire him as your drawing master. I must admit I’m very surprised.”
“Oh, I rather like him.” I tried to suppress the smile his name brought involuntarily to my lips. “He makes me laugh.”
“I believe he’s engaged to someone in America.” Stella looked at me through little screwed up eyes as though she was examining another painting. “So perhaps he won’t be in Paris for much longer.”
“He keeps asking me to go to the Coupole with him so I doubt he’s engaged. Of course I won’t be unfaithful to Beckett.”
“And how is Mr Beckett?”
“He’s in Dublin. We’re expecting him back any minute. Of course, Mama doesn’t want me to marry an Irish man. She’s made that very clear.” I rolled my eyes dramatically.
“But she did. She married an Irish man.”
“Yes, well that’s different. Or maybe that’s why she doesn’t want me to marry one. She thinks they’re all drunks.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want you to marry a writer with no prospects?”
“Sometimes I don’t think she wants me to marry anyone. I don’t know what she wants. I know she doesn’t want me to dance – she’s made that abundantly clear. But when I’m married I’ll dance on stage again. You’ll see!” And I thought of my marriage plan and felt my hands curling resolutely into fists.
“You must carry on. You’re a marvellous dancer.” Stella beamed at me.
“Oh I haven’t given up entirely. I’m training with Margaret Morris to teach her method of movement. It’s dance with a practical purpose.” I unc
lenched my fists and put my hands together, fanning out my fingers and rippling them from side to side. “This hand position’s called the river.”
“How is that practical?” She looked enquiringly at me.
“Miss Morris believes how we move can help children, women in childbirth, physically handicapped people, invalids.” Then I lowered my voice and pulled Stella towards me. “What d’you think of my left eye? Look closely, as an artist would. What d’you see?”
Stella looked startled and I could see her fumbling for words as if she wasn’t sure what to say.
“Babbo’s promised me an operation to correct my squint. I think it could be the answer to my prayers.” I pushed my palms together and raised my eyes to the ceiling.
“May I ask what you’re praying for, Lucia?”
“If my eye was normal, perhaps I could go back to performing again. And it would be easier for Beckett to propose.”
“What are you talking about?” She stared at me.
“He might be concerned about having children with a squint. He might not want a wife with crossed eyes. Appearances are very important to men.” I looked at Stella and, for the first time that morning, I noticed how she looked, what she wore. I saw her black hair in glossy ringlets, her round face, her dark eyes like two black marbles, her arched eyebrows that sat like two obedient black caterpillars above her eyes. She wore a striking outfit in bottle green with an orange scarf knotted at her throat and a cloche hat to which she had fastened a small bunch of silk flowers, again in vibrant orange. Why hadn’t I noticed the boldness and elegance of her outfit earlier? Why had I been so obsessively distracted by the inert eyes of a dead pheasant?
“I think your cast is part of you. It gives you a vulnerability that’s rather endearing. I think if a man loved you he wouldn’t mind it.” Stella spoke very slowly as though she was thinking about each word as she chose it.
“Well, I hate it! I can’t wait ’til it’s gone!” Two old ladies at the other end of the gallery turned and looked at me. Stella gently took my elbow and steered me towards the next room, but not before I’d turned back for a last look at the dead pheasant, hanging ignominiously from its ropes.
