Family and Friends (11 page)

The discovery of this little apartment in the Rue Jouffroy was an event for Betty, and she decided firmly to begin her life again from this point. Like all self-renewing persons, she finds it easy to discard anything or anyone who has proved something of a disappointment. The Pension Mozart was very comfortable but it was stuffy and rather like the finishing school she so cleverly resisted attending. In the same way the money was useful and easy to come by but she was very tired of being lectured
by Maître Blin who seemed to think she could live on far less than Betty herself thought she needed. What right had he to lecture her, she stormed at him, and then stormed out of the room, covering up in her mind the fact that he was on the point of refusing to pay any more of her bills. In that way she felt liberated from the Pension Mozart and all its respectability; if they wanted her to live like a Bohemian, then that is what she would do. A friend of hers, another dancer, as it happened, whose dressing-room she had briefly shared, was leaving to go on tour and offered Betty the rest of her lease. The dark little flat enchants Betty; it is warm and quiet, and yet if she opens the window wide and looks out she can see the softly lit interior of the
pâtisserie
opposite. This sight heartens her for some reason: she finds the idea of women eating cakes infinitely reassuring. Perhaps this vignette impresses her as being one of woman’s true destiny, although she might have questioned this. Betty’s plans for her own life are much more demanding. Perhaps she finds the sight of greed to be natural and consoling. Perhaps she finds some echo, some familial reminiscence, in the warm pink lights and the aroma of vanilla that sometimes wafts across to her. No matter. If she is ever lonely, and that is rarely, she has only to glance across the street, to see the ladies, in their fur coats, meeting each other for coffee and conversation. That is what her mother always liked to do. And although Betty never misses her family, she does occasionally think about her mother. Perhaps it is for that reason that she has instantly warmed to this respectable, bourgeois, and somewhat unexciting neighbourhood: she knows that her mother would have felt at home here. But this is all that she has retained of earlier influences.

The bourgeois residue, for example, does not stretch as far as to encompass any sort of housekeeping. Flimsy
dresses are strewn over chairs, stockings trail in the basin, there is a half-eaten apple on the dressing-table, and the tissue paper in which the morning’s croissant was wrapped has been screwed up and aimed unsuccessfully at the overflowing waste-paper basket. Really, thinks Betty, Madame Mercier is too bad. She was supposed to come yesterday, or was it the day before? In any case, she herself has no time to clear up because she is off to lunch with a producer at La Coupole, a place she adores. She also adores the idea of having lunch with a producer, although what he produces is not entirely clear. She wonders where he could have seen her dance, because she has not been dancing recently. After her fairly successful appearance with Frank at the Moulin Rouge, she did a few weeks’ work there, but it was pretty hard going, and she knew in her heart of hearts that it was Frank who was the star. So she rather went off the idea of
‘Bunny et Frank, danseurs de charme’
, and although Frank liked the regular work, having no Maître Blin to fall back on, Betty told him that he could carry on without her if that was what he wanted. Of course, that was not what he wanted: he simply could not conceive of dancing by himself. He is not enough of a narcissist to be a complete artist. And anyway he looked to Betty to make the decisions, as she had always done. Betty, in the meantime, is taking voice lessons. She has her eye on a film career now. And she thinks that this man at La Coupole might bear her in mind when an opportunity comes up. That is why she intends to make an impression.

The making of an impression involves her in an elaborate
toilette
, which leaves balls of pink cottonwool and empty screw-top jars all over the misty surface of the dressing-table. The finished product is attired in a cunning little violet wool dress with a peplum, shiny high-heeled shoes, and a great deal of Schiaparelli’s
Shocking
dabbed
behind her ears and on her wrists. Then, hastily covering up the unmade bed with the faded crimson cover, and kicking a pair of red sandals out of sight, Betty dons her inexpensive fur jacket and sails out into the Rue Jouffroy, ignoring the fact that Frank Cariani will shortly be knocking on her door as usual with an enquiring smile on his face, which has become increasingly diffident as Betty’s dynamic and volatile temperament has become more emancipated. Like a healthy animal, Betty has a short attention in his solo spot at the Olympia Music Hall; there will quite literally not see him, not perceive him in space, let alone in her mind’s eye. When he brings himself to her attention, she shrugs. As she has mentally discarded him, he no longer being useful to her plans, she wonders why he is still there. Betty’s centrality is so great that she is able to ignore the fact that Frank is attracting some attention in his solo spot at the Olympia Music Hall; there is talk of his teaming up with a pretty young dancer so that they can improvise an apache routine (always popular). ‘What do you think?’ asks Frank with furrowed brow. Betty shrugs. ‘Do what you like,’ she says. ‘But don’t expect to see me again. Don’t expect to remain on terms with me after a dirty trick like that.’ And she reapplies rouge to her smouldering mouth and flirts quite openly with a man whom she can see over Frank’s shoulder. After he raises a mild protest Betty is enabled to make a scene, which she greatly enjoys. Really, of the two of them, it is Betty who possesses the artistic temperament.

Being a healthy animal, Betty taps her way appreciatively down the Rue Jouffroy, inhaling the sharp cold clean air, and eyeing her reflection in the windows of shops. With this sense of well-being which comes to her unmediated by scrutiny and which is the greatest gift that nature could have bestowed on her, Betty is surrounded
with an aura of confidence and expectation which assures the only sort of success that she values: acclaim. It was for acclaim that she began to dance, knowing that the applause greeting her final pose was not so much for the performance as for the provocation of her offered body. This is what she understands. And if she has stopped dancing, it is because she has realized that she can win the same sort of acclaim without going through the punishing routines of practising and rehearsal on which most managements seem to insist. When Betty remembers, she can twist her body into a charming little undulating walk, languorous but tongue-in-cheek, and can receive the same appreciation while walking down the street as she previously did when dancing the rumba, the tango, or the cachucha. She knows in her heart that such posturing is what Sofka would call
mauvais genre
, but she is above such considerations now. Or perhaps she is below them: as she is no longer supported by her family, needs must when the devil drives, and although she knows that all she has to do is to make reparation to Maître Blin and an act of contrition to the bank to have her funds restored, she has rather consigned those stratagems to the past, realizing, with that instinct that healthy animals possess, that where there is explaining to do she would rather leave no trace. For this reason her telephone calls home have become less frequent and are now rather stereotyped, relying on endearments which could, in time, become mechanical and are now beginning, just beginning, to appear so.

Anyway, she is meeting this man Markus for lunch, and rumour has it that he might be useful to her, as he spends half his time in America and that is where Betty would like to go. Although Paris is very beautiful and the adventure has been, on the whole, a success, Betty is ready to move on. And anyway, possessing the artistic
temperament as she does, she feels she could bring a great deal of lustre and panache to the screen, and she starts to think of her appeal in wider, more brilliant terms. For those who seek acclaim are in love with the crowd, and, in time, only the plaudits of the crowd will satisfy them.

Betty has walked all the way to La Coupole, on her obedient, high-instepped dancer’s feet, and the walk has brought out both her colour and that slightly sharp odour that excites some men and is about to have an immediate effect on Mr Markus. Mr Markus, Hungarian by origin, is a dark bulky man with troubled eyes, his heavy shoulders and arms decently shrouded by expensive suiting, his black and silver hair expertly barbered, a large gold ring on the little finger of his left hand which, even at this early hour, supports a massive cigar. Wearily but appreciatively, Mr Markus lumbers to his feet as Betty trips in, bows slightly, and kisses her hand. Despite his saturnine appearance, Mr Markus is a genuine film producer and he is almost entirely preoccupied with images rather-than realities. Nevertheless, his Hungarian eye notes Betty’s immediate animal appeal and his senses register her range of appetite. In this, he is, of course, ahead of her, but Betty is willing to brazen it out until long experience will have made her a genuine expert. After Mr Markus has growled his usual rather extravagant greeting and after Betty has sparkled at him in return they both sit down and study the menu. As she is not paying, Betty orders caviare, steak, and
île flottante
.

With coffee, Betty relaxes, inserts a cigarette into a long holder, and leans back, surveying her favourite meeting place through eyes narrowed by smoke. La Coupole is full, as usual, and waiters force their way between the tables with trays held shoulder high; disappointed clients beg vainly for a seat. Betty sinks back against the velvet banquette with a sigh of pleasure. For a moment she has
almost forgotten to make an impression on Mr Markus, who, unbeknownst to her, is watching her with genuine amusement. This child, he thinks, with her tiny fragment of experience, has the temperament of a great
allumeuse
: greedy, probably frigid, good-natured, vicious. Obviously well brought up but happier being less well brought up than her mother intended. Rich, well fed, well cared for: a glossy little girl but able to convey a marvellous impression of dirtiness. Mr Markus applies a match to his dead cigar and smiles, quite kindly. Well, if that is what she wants, he can give it to her. He will make her a bad girl on the screen – but only on the screen. While she half-closes her eyelids and moistens her lips for the benefit of an unseen audience, she will be remote from clutching hands, inviolate. Mr Markus, a man of great sophistication, knows that this will suit her very well for a time. When it no longer suits her, she will be of no further use to him.

Lifting a finger for the waiter, Mr Markus orders more coffee. ‘I have to wait here until my nephew comes,’ he explains to Betty. ‘I asked him to meet me here. He is my assistant for the time being. My sister’s son.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ replies Betty, uninterested. Mr Markus frowns. He appreciates a show of good manners, even if the good manners are not there. He is a family man who likes to talk about families, but in this city, he finds, no one is interested in his family. Mr Markus sighs, with weariness and with homesickness. This troublesome nephew, whom he dislikes but who is the son of his beloved sister, has been wished on him; there is panic in Europe, a fact of which Betty is unaware, and a general desire to reach America. ‘Take him,’ Margit had pleaded. ‘Take him with you.’ And he had taken him. But the boy is insolent, quick-witted and hysterical, perhaps already unhinged by the separation from his home. Mr Markus, who loves
his sister and who makes continental films with an English sound-track, takes the boy with a sigh. Every time he looks at him, he thinks of home.

When Betty first sets eyes on Max Markus she sees the cruel-eyed lover of her dreams. Max is a splendid feral creature with a narrow glossy head and dark plum-coloured eyes. He moves through the crowd contemptuously, a cigarette in his mouth, his jacket slung over one shoulder, his feet, in hand-made snakeskin shoes, carrying him effortlessly through the confusion and the press of people, a sheaf of papers in his hand. ‘My nephew, Max,’ says Mr Markus, with a helpless tremor of perception. ‘Miss Dorn.’ ‘Bunny,’ murmurs Betty, extending a hand. Max brings his heels together – a habit he is trying to forget – and bends low over the hand. Betty draws in a quivering breath. He pulls out a chair and sits astride it. ‘Bunny?’ he queries, with a wrinkling of his brow. ‘What kind of a name is that? Is it your real name?’ ‘My stage name,’ murmurs Betty, submissively. ‘My real name is Babette.’ ‘Your stage name? What do you do?’ Max Markus has this explosive and interrogatory habit of speech which makes everything he says sound provocative. Those who wish to rise to the bait may do so; others will have to learn to ignore it. Betty rises. ‘I’m a dancer,’ she says, bristling. Max Markus laughs. He also has a habit of laughing derisively after most remarks made by other people. Quite a lot of people find this offensive. To Betty it sounds deliciously masterful. It would be easy to have wonderful lovers’ scenes with this extraordinary man, who is, she is sure, possessed of a volcanic temperament, and who is, in addition, Mr Markus’s nephew. Half an hour after meeting Max Markus, who has taken his uncle’s more influential surname, Betty does something entirely out of character. She falls in love with him.

With a sigh Mr Markus heaves himself to his feet,
leaving a handful of paper money beside the bill. ‘You will excuse me,’ he says to the preoccupied Betty. ‘I must get back to my office. I will be in touch.’ Then, turning to his nephew and attempting to read some kind of moral admonition into his glance, he suggests that Max should see Miss Dorn to the Place de la Concorde where she can catch a bus. Max accepts the suggestion but otherwise takes no notice. His way of asking Betty if he may accompany her is to remove his long legs from the chair, to sling his jacket over his shoulder once more, and, standing, to give a magnificent yawn, stretching his shoulders and his chest to great advantage. Obediently, Betty gets to her feet, then, recollecting herself, undulates past him, giving an answering display of waist and back muscles. Mr Markus, knowing that he is no longer relevant, lets Betty move ahead; he makes a sign to Max, and, as usual, slips him some money, which Max thrusts carelessly into his pocket.