Jezebel (8 page)

She was haunted by memories of her mother, whom she had detested; sometimes she pictured the curtains closed round the bed where Sophie Burnera slept in a morphine stupor. Then she would feel a kind of strange humiliation that nothing could pacify. She, Gladys
Eysenach, who was beautiful, admired, loved, still sometimes felt the sadness, the loneliness of her adolescence deep within her heart. If Richard were alive, she would have admitted that to him. But Richard was dead.

She would visit one friend after the other. With them, time would pass more quickly, but eventually she had to go home and still it was daytime. There was nothing left to do but try on dresses and visit the jewellers on the little sloping street near the public gardens, where the sea breeze blew in. Finally, night would come and she would feel as if she had been reborn. She would go home to Sans-Souci, get dressed, admire how she looked. How she loved doing that. Was there anything better in life, was there anything more sensual than being attractive? The desire to be alluring, to be loved – a commonplace pleasure that all women felt – to her became an obsession, similar to the profound way men felt about power or money, a thirst that increased with each passing year and that nothing could ever completely satisfy.

At last she was ready. She went into Marie-Thérèse’s room and affectionately kissed her beautiful, pale cheeks; beneath the soft skin there was evidence of a passionate nature. She looked at her daughter lovingly. Marie-Thérèse remained so delightfully childlike, at least in her mother’s eyes. Gladys dressed her in a way that made her more than an adolescent; she was the very symbol of adolescence: flat shoes, a long, straight, plain skirt, long hair that came down to her shoulders, a delicate gold chain round her neck; she was innocent and graceful.

‘She only likes books, her dogs, running through the gardens,’ thought Gladys. ‘She’s still so inexperienced and
shy. I’ll give it two or three more years and then I’ll teach her. She’ll dance and have fun. Oh! I won’t be a cold, harsh mother. I’ll be her friend; she’ll tell me everything. She’ll be happy. But it’s too soon. She’s still too young. She’s shy, fragile. She mustn’t be vain and frivolous, like me …’

To Marie-Thérèse she said, ‘I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had a daughter who was one of those unbearable little creatures who smoke and wear make-up and want to be like older women. But you, even the awkward phase hasn’t spoiled you. You’re still such an even-tempered little girl.’

Marie-Thérèse let her talk: she retained the great generosity of youth that so often and so oddly is combined with harshness. She realised how much her ageing mother was suffering. She had sensed it, understood it, even before Gladys herself became aware of it. She felt sorry for her. But, most especially, she felt so young, she could imagine such a long road before her, that she did not yet feel there was any rush to live.

She kissed her mother. ‘How beautiful you look,’ she said. ‘You have a really lovely dress, my dear Mama. You are as beautiful as a fairy.’

And Gladys left for the ball, radiant and happy as in the past. She’d been to many other balls, the most brilliant in London and Paris, but she feared more than anything the unchanging social circle in England and France; every night you saw the same faces, you trotted out the same words, and for fifteen, twenty years at that …

Here, at least every summer brought a flood of new people.

That evening she had been invited to the Middletons in Cannes. She made her entrance; she smiled at the women who looked at her enviously. She sweetly nodded her divine little head with its ash-blonde hair. She basked in the kind of tranquillity that comes when passion is satisfied, that moment when the body reacts to excitement, its poison coursing through the body. She lowered her eyes with pity at the sight of the old women, those Fates dressed in velvet, their necks covered in diamond yokes; they pursed their lips and stared at her. She spotted Sir Mark Forbes. Not far from him sat his wife.

Lady Forbes was the daughter of the Duchess of Hereford; her great wealth and family name had served Sir Mark’s political career well. She knew about her husband’s affair, suffered because of it and fought it with all the redoubtable weapons of the betrayed wife, the most terrifying of which was the constant threat of divorce: it would have ruined Sir Mark. Caught between his wife and Gladys, Sir Mark’s life was not a happy one. For several months, now, Gladys could sense within him an almost imperceptible resistance to her will, a coolness that worried and irritated her.

‘He’s sulking,’ she thought, seeing that he did not rush up to greet her. ‘Take your time, my handsome lover …’

Men surrounded her, asking her to dance. Among them was Olivier Beauchamp; she saw him often. Teresa had died some time before and Claude lived in Switzerland. Gladys invited Olivier to dinner, adding with gracious indifference, ‘Marie-Thérèse likes you so much. You must come and see us more often.’

‘Would you be happy to see someone from your past?’

‘Who might that be?’

‘My father.’

‘Really? Is it possible he’s finally going to leave Vevey?’

‘Oh, no! I think he’ll spend the rest of his life there. He says he couldn’t live anywhere else. But he has to come to Paris on business and will spend a day here.’

‘Well, that’s good news.’

‘Would you dance with me?’ he asked.

She waltzed with him then, since the salon was so stifling, she went outside to sit on the terrace. She leaned over the stone balcony, still warm from the sunlight that day. It was late when she finally saw Sir Mark walking towards her.

‘Has your wife left?’ she asked.

‘I’ve just taken her home and I came back to see you. Do you want to stay here a while longer?’

She half closed her beautiful eyes with weary, wonderful grace. ‘Lord no! I’m tired …’

‘Let’s go, then.’

They left. It was nearly dawn.

‘Gladys,’ said Sir Mark, ‘I have to talk to you …’

‘Now? I want to go home. It’s five o’clock.’

‘Yes, now,’ he murmured.

He got into the car with her. They drove slowly towards Antibes, along the coast road.

‘Gladys,’ he said, ‘listen to me. If you see me as a friend, even if you no longer are in love with me the way you once were, you will take pity on me. I am exceedingly unhappy.’

‘Oh, Mark,’ she said, gently shrugging her shoulders.

‘My wife …’

‘I know, Mark, I know …’

She knew he was tormented by fear and his principles. He came from a poor Jewish family. He relied upon his wife’s family for everything, but his wife was demanding that he leave Gladys, that he stop following her all over Europe, as he had done until now.

‘I wouldn’t survive a divorce,’ he murmured painfully. ‘Divorce is so scandalous in England. What am I to do, Gladys? My life is in your hands. I’m not young any more …’

‘Don’t be so silly,’ she said softly.

She took his hand, leaned in close to him, but Sir Mark didn’t pull away or seem anxious. He looked tired and ill. Disappointed, she let go of his hand and moved back. Wounded pride brought tears to her eyes. She turned her head, feeling somewhat ashamed. He was moved by this and thought how women rarely hide their sadness.

‘What am I to do, Gladys?’ he asked again.

‘We’ve been in this situation ever since we met.’

‘But it’s becoming unbearable. I love you.’

She cut in, suddenly raised her hand to stop him; Sir Mark could see her fingers trembling. ‘Don’t say that.’

‘Oh, Gladys! I was so in love with you.’

‘Yes, you were. That’s true. That’s not a lie. You did love me, but I’ve hardly seen you at all this past year. You’re cold, evasive, elusive. No, you don’t love me any more.’

‘Gladys, sooner or later life extinguishes even our most fervent passions. I’m tired, that’s the truth of it; I can’t fight a jealous woman any longer, her reproaches and suspicions. My children have adamantly taken their
mother’s side against me. You can’t understand; your little girl adores you, but children you love so much can be such merciless judges.’

She wasn’t listening to him; she lowered her head.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ he whispered.

‘Of course.’

‘Gladys,’ he said with sudden sincerity, ‘I thought I would die before I’d ever leave you, but God has not granted me that blessing.’

‘Your wife has won,’ murmured Gladys.

‘What difference does that make? My wife is only a symbol, a symbol of a certain type of peace that I deserve …’

‘All you can think about is your own happiness.’

‘Gladys, for so many years I’ve thought of nothing but you. And what did you give me in return? You let yourself be loved.’

She turned towards him, showing him the tears that flowed down her face, but he just looked at her sadly.

‘Oh, Gladys! How like a woman. Because I finally have the strength to end it, you are starting to care about me. You’ll soon regret having lost me.’

‘I’ve always cared a great deal for you.’

‘And I adored you. But you’re so used to being adored … you are so supremely apathetic, so sweetly arrogant. How I loved you …’

‘Oh! Don’t talk to me like that,’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘It makes me feel as if I’m dead and you’re crying over my grave. Why did you come to Nice? You shouldn’t have come. You’re as conservative in love as you are in politics, my darling. You treat love as if it were a ballet,
with its set classical steps, the seduction scene, the passionate waltz, the allegro section when we quarrel … We are dancing the allegro. You should have said nothing, stopped writing to me, and it all would have been over. I would barely have noticed.’

‘Will you miss me, Gladys?’

‘Why are you going?’ she said without answering his question. ‘Why are you leaving me? There’s something you’re not telling me. Are you in love with another woman? Just say so and you’ll free me from my most terrifying thought.’

‘What is that?’

‘Have I grown old, Mark?’ she asked suddenly, and immediately suppressed a gesture of anxiety and fear.

(‘Why did I say that?’ she thought. ‘It isn’t true … I’m young, young!’)

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Do you think that men look at the face of the woman they love? They look further, deeper than her features. They think: “Will she hurt me more today than yesterday? Will she finally grow bored with making me suffer? Will she ever love me?” You see, even when madly in love, we think only of ourselves.’

They had arrived. The dawn light lit up the house. He walked a few steps with her down the path. She was suffering from a kind of pain she had never felt before. But she was no fool. She knew very well it wasn’t love. She had never felt anything other than the all-consuming desire to be loved, the delicious satisfaction of pride fulfilled. She looked and him and thought, ‘If I kiss him, if he takes me in his arms, holds me tightly … No, I’m
above that. I want him to go. I’m beautiful, I’m young, someone else will come along …’

She held out her hand to him. ‘Goodbye, Mark.’

He was trembling. At that moment she understood her power over him and her defeat, for he hesitated at first, then when he finally did take her hand, he held it for a long time in his own, without daring to raise it to his lips. But when he finally kissed her fingers and looked up at her his face was calm.

‘Goodbye,’ he said softly.

And he left.

‘You’ll never get old,’ said Carmen Gonzales as she massaged Gladys’s long, lovely thighs, ‘because you started looking after yourself when you were still beautiful.’

But that wasn’t enough for Gladys: she wanted no part of a kind of beauty that was pathetically vulnerable, threatened by age; she needed the brilliant, arrogant triumph of true youth. When even the most lowly passer-by turned round to look at her, when on those March evenings in Nice where flurries of silvery rain patter down, she heard from beneath the arches the voice of a little flower seller say ‘Oh, what a beauty! Oh, you’re so beautiful!’ she felt a kind of satisfaction that was almost physical, like after making love.

These days she could barely tolerate the presence of Lily Ferrer; she looked at the wrinkles on her friend’s face with horror.

‘She’s only fifty after all,’ she thought, ‘ten years older than me. Ten years goes so quickly …’ She banished the thought with horror. ‘I want to remain young. I don’t want to be like the others. I want people to look at me and say, “That Gladys Eysenach is still beautiful.” ’

And why would they say even that? Who would ever know her true age? She looked barely thirty. She would look the same for many years to come. Thirty … that was already too old for her. She remembered London, Beauchamp, when she’d turned twenty. That was what she wished to feel once more. She tried to silence the threatening, mocking voice that rose from deep within her: ‘That’s all gone. Gone … You might be beautiful for many years to come, seductive even, but not like in the past. You only experience that exquisite bliss, that triumphant joy, once in life. You have to accept that.’

But then she thought, ‘Why? What’s changed? Mark has left me. Well, there will be other men.’

Mark had left her. For the first time in her life a man had left her. The icy wind of defeat shot through her soul.

No, no. Someone else would come along. She thought of Claude. He had loved her so much. Perhaps he still loved her? As soon as he set eyes on her, as soon as he saw her face, he would be hers. Love, a man’s desire, his trembling hands, his eagerness to do her bidding, his loving, jealous looks: she would never grow tired of such things.

In May, Claude Beauchamp arrived in Nice; Gladys ached to see him with a kind of impatience that made her feel so ashamed that she could hardly admit it.

‘I find it amusing, that’s all,’ she thought. ‘It will be amusing to find out if he’s still in love with me, if he could fall in love with me again. Poor Claude …’

Feverishly she began making her face and body beautiful. Beauchamp was coming to have dinner with
her, alone, at Sans-Souci. At seven o’clock Gladys was already seated in front of her mirror, putting on her make-up. It was a beautiful spring evening, at dusk; the sky looked like green crystal. She thought back to London, the full roses at Covent Garden, going home at dawn after a ball … How innocent she was then. She could picture the young girl she used to be: her golden hair, her white dress, the corsage of roses, when she’d said to Teresa, ‘You don’t understand, Tess. You’re different. You go through life calmly, coolly. I want my life to be passionate, a fire that devours everything and then dies out …’