Jigsaw (17 page)

One could not ask as to the why of the bed-sitter, which by the way was quite charming. A large almost square room with decent ceiling height and two long windows. The bed was a divan, the furniture, not too much of it, light and painted (Bavarian peasant baroque?), light curtains, light wallpaper, comfortable chairs, the whole effect very pleasant, and her washbasin and gas-ring – unlike mine – were invisible behind a curtained recess.
I
would have liked her to have the dignity of her own front door, let alone kitchen and bathroom. (The rent of a small unfurnished flat would not have come to more then.) Perhaps she lived where she did as a ploy for security, a safer hide-out than a flat, say, in St John’s Wood; perhaps it was just because the Falkenheims were not domestically inclined.

The new novels, always on her table – the Huxleys, the Waughs, in due course the I. Compton-Burnetts – were sent to her by the Judge. That is he had placed a general order with his booksellers; the ones she liked, she took to him to read.

In May I had a letter – well, more of a note – from Alessandro. The bathing in the sea had begun, not just for the hardy dippers, the real deep swims. Your mother says you would like that, she asked me to tell you why not come soon and make a long summer of it …

Earlier he had written that they were moving house.
Not
another villa, a Provençal
mas
– eighteenth-century – quite beautiful and uncomfortable.

Bathing in the sea … I had not forgotten. A long summer of it … I gave a couple of weeks’ notice to my landlady, mine or a similar room up the road could be had in the autumn. Another note came from 
Alessandro saying that they would meet my train at Toulon station: she wants you to know that there is a surprise but I’m keeping it a surprise.

Since she’d heard about my leaving for France, Rosie had become thoughtful – I’d told her a good deal about Sanary – and one evening she said she was hatching a plan, a bold plan but perhaps quite simple, would I help her? would I do something for her?

Of course.

She and Jack had never been anywhere together (not since
Switzerland
, what –? fifteen years ago?); he spent his holidays in Somerset, in Scotland, in Ireland, he also used to go to Monte Carlo quite often, ‘But not any more,’ she said, and I thought I saw an expression on her face I had not seen before, quite fleeting, a spasm of acute anxiety. At once she collected herself, ‘What I’m talking about,’ she said in her usual slow, rather deep voice, ‘is that we couldn’t dream of going anywhere in England, or really to the kind of places and hotels abroad that Jack’s used to and known at.’

‘Sanary?’

‘It
might
be possible.’

‘You’d be safe there, in some small hotel – nobody’d know you, I mean him.’

The plan struck fire. Jack was all for it, I was told.

‘He rather likes taking risks,’ Rosie said. He was leaving the
arrangements
to her; she was leaving them to me.

A fortnight starting in summer (after the Courts had risen) – they’d travel separately – she to arrive a day or two before him – separate rooms of course –
adjoining
, if that could be managed.

I said I’d see to it.

Bandol had a
good
hotel, I was expanding, but there would be some English – I’d seen copies of the
Continental Daily Mail
about … At Sanary the hotels were more obscure. There was the La Tour, very pretty view, but noisy and full of grubby artists. ‘I don’t think it would do for Monsieur le Juge.’

She laughed and said Monsieur le Juge was ready to rough it. 

I said that he hadn’t seen the La Tour. There was the Dol, a very snug French, French hotel: commercial travellers all year,
holiday-makers
in the summer; I knew the owner, I said, recalling with pleasure our
belote
evenings at La Marine. But they’d look foreign there, ‘You’d stick out too much.’ Then there’s the one with the tennis court, that’s larger, it’s got an awfully gloomy garden, oleander and pine. Ah, Hôtel de la Plage, quite the best, on the flat side of Sanary but bang on the sea and good food, you wouldn’t see a foreign cat, only the odd English spinster doing watercolours. ‘You’d be quite anonymous.’

Anonymous
?

Rosie saw the snag. So did I.

‘I suppose he couldn’t travel under a false name? Of course not. This is what you actually do when you arrive,’ I was able to explain, ‘you don’t sign a register, you fill up a
fiche
, they hardly look at it afterwards – not like Italy where they pore over your documents and keep them for hours – if you put in your passport number and
Date d’arrivée
. But yes, there’s
Profession
… What does it say in his passport?’

‘I’ve never seen his passport,’ Rosie said.

‘They needn’t either. Couldn’t he put something like
Docteur en
droit
, Doctor of Laws – when I
am
one, I shall always put
Femme de
lettres – Magistrat
too covers a lot … Perhaps it will have to be
Juge
, that isn’t so very grand in France, he might be just some
juge
d’instruction
. As long as they call him
Monsieur
and don’t get on to any
Milord anglais
business.’

Here, I wondered, not for the first time, what he looked like. Rosie had not, or did not show, a photograph.

It was decided that I should reconnoitre when I got to France.

While thus conspiring with Rosie, I saw a good deal of Toni; I also saw a good deal more. Despite the baby German and the loyal support of his work, one perceived that Toni treated and, if indirectly, spoke of Jamie with condescension; that she held herself his superior, that is, more civilised, more sophisticated, in a number of implied ways.
She
was not a man (inferior by definition because of men’s gross appetites);
he
was not an artist or musician, not a Berlin Jew but an Anglo-Saxon 
goy. She felt affinity only with Jews (Italian and Latin-American opera singers being honorary ones). She had been reticent about this until the day I happened to refer, I don’t remember à propos of what, to my own Jewish origins. (By blood, not by religion or tradition; my mother had set me such an example of entire disregard of race and nationality that I rarely give it a thought. That was still possible – in some enclaves – in the nineteen-twenties.) Toni’s reaction to my casual disclosure had astonished me. ‘So you’re
not
a goy, thank God!’ Then she became suspicious and began to quiz me. I didn’t have the right kind of hair, or colouring or anything. I assured her that I was guaranteed quarter Jewish from my mother’s side with some more percentage introduced by some illegitimate line. Toni said that it must have been instinct on her part that she first took to me and that my mind at least was not pure goy. I took that as the compliment it was. From then on I was treated with more affection and far less formality.

Among the things she thought fit to talk to me about was the Weimar Republic theatre – early Reinhardt, early Elisabeth Bergner – she led me to reading the James Agate of Berlin, Alfred Kerr – the brilliant and original critic as innovatory in his time as G.B.S. Kerr, notorious for his penchant for very young girls – he married a good many – had once courted Toni. On afternoons when we were alone together in the mews, Toni played the piano for me, often Mozart. Music had had hardly any part in either my father’s or my mother’s life, and this was something I now needed. She offered to teach me to play – then and in later years – unfortunately it remained hopeless: wrong hands, no ear. But I listened. Once when she was practising the Contessa aria for her teacher, accompanying herself, she allowed me to stay in the room. I was in no way able to assess her voice: the sound to me was lovely and her singing moved me much.

A day or two before I was due to be off, Toni and I were sitting on the lawn in Regent’s Park on a couple of those hired chairs (a man would come round from time to time to collect the twopence). It was a fine late afternoon in May. I’d been telling her that I was looking forward to my going to the South of France. 

‘Like Rosie,’ she said. It was a whiplash.

I said nothing. How
had
she got wind of it?

‘So Rosie’s off to France!’

‘Not yet … Only perhaps –’ I said weakly.

‘And you are encouraging her.
Don’t
.’

‘How did you –?’

‘Don’t be such a fool,’ she said, ‘Rosie is so transparent.’

I pondered this.

‘It’s
madness
. The press doesn’t like him, he can’t afford their getting anything more.’

‘
More
?
’ I said.

‘That business two years ago. If he hadn’t been so well connected … The right strings were pulled.’

‘Not –,’ I said, ‘not –?’

‘No. Not evidence of another sex scandal,’ she said in that crisp voice.

I was shocked. She was not the right person to use such terms.

‘If you don’t know, if she hasn’t told you,’ she said, ‘
I
shan’t.’

‘Of course,’ I said quite cold too now, feeling chivalrous, or perhaps just priggish. ‘I don’t want to know.’

She ignored me. ‘It’s disgraceful! Henry is behaving appallingly. She’s ruined her life for him.’

Henry was the Judge’s actual first name. So she does talk about it, I thought, she does mention him.

‘The way he allows her to live …’

I had at moments thought on these lines.

‘
Disgraceful
,’ she repeated.

I said reasonably, ‘One does see why they have to lead – different lives … If nobody is to find out –’

She interrupted me, ‘We know all that – “A man of his position …” “No breath of scandal …” And so on. Of course he couldn’t stay being a judge if it came out that he keeps –
keeps
– a mistress. And serve them right!’

Again I was shocked. ‘But it’s monstrous – people feeling like that, or the press assuming that they do. It’s his … it’s their business – it’s 
got nothing to do with his being a good judge.’ I too was getting vehement.

‘I’m not responsible for the British gutter press. Or for British hypocrisy.’

‘But they
are
monstrous – one ought to try to change all that.’

She paid no attention. ‘… that hole-and-corner existence, she should never have put up with it.’

‘What could she do?’

‘She could leave him. He could marry her. Some men do, you know.’

‘Perhaps they don’t want to,’ I said, ‘get married.’

‘You can bet
he
doesn’t. Henry is the most selfish man on earth.’

I tried to think of Rosie as an English judge’s wife. Alessandro swam into my mind – he would be, it struck me, perfectly charming to her but he would like it less to be seen with her in public. Then Alessandro was so very young and handsome, yet the Judge too had been the good-looking young barrister from England.

‘Let’s face it,’ Toni took the thoughts out of my mind as it were, ‘Rosie’s no oil painting,’ she used the expression with a chuckle; again I felt unease. The full ruthlessness struck later. Then, she rode on, ‘Fat lot of good it does to one in this country to marry a foreigner! – with no money either – our family is rather presentable in Berlin,
here
they wouldn’t know the difference. And Henry would never marry a Jewess.’

‘He
can’t
be anti-semitic! He would be a horror if he were, and he can’t be against Jews if he – well, if he loves one.’

‘You know nothing about the social anti-semitism of the English,’ Toni said contemptuously, ‘in Germany it’s the plebs’ (she used a horrid-sounding German word,
der Pöbel
) ‘who are the anti-semites, here it’s the nobs. It’s their natural order of things, “Oh, he’s of the tribe of Moses,”’ she snorted. ‘Jamie isn’t like that, probably because he didn’t go to a public school. Henry would never not conform. Except,’ she added, ‘in private.’

I said quietly, ‘Isn’t it possible that they both just don’t want to get married? Maybe he’s a born bachelor – and so is Rosie.’

She turned on me, ‘So young and no moral sense.’ A pause. ‘I suppose it’s not your fault.’ 

I caught the innuendo – used to catching it – my mother did not have a good press with those who didn’t know her.

I said. ‘I thought
you
would understand.’ It was difficult: the last half-hour had been my first – adult – confrontation.

‘I?’ she said.

I plunged. ‘The way you sang “Porgi Amor”.’ Into her silence I tried to insert what I now knew I felt. ‘I’m sure that Rosie doesn’t want any more than what she’s got. Even if it has to have its – imperfect sides. I know she is – content.’

‘That,’ Toni said, ‘is even
more
disgraceful.’

The surprise announced by Alessandro stood square brown and largish outside Toulon station. Wild joy fought with disappointment. It must not be assumed that my thoughts were all concentrated on Huxley, the League of Nations, food and other people’s love affairs; I dreamt a good deal about motor cars. And now there was one, not my own but the very next best to it – a
car
. But – the cars I dreamt of had long bonnets, low seats (preferably only two), above all they were
open
cars. Even Jamie’s drab Morris-Cowley had a dickey in which one could experience something of the wind of speed. What was parked between the pavement and the dusty municipal palm-trees was a saloon, God forbid
une conduite intérieure
, a family car with four doors, an irremovable roof and what made it look even less sportif an ungainly luggage rack on top. It was a second-hand Peugeot of, as design went, an unusually clumsy year.

My mother, with imaginative abnegation, made straight for a back seat. In front, next to Alessandro at the wheel, joy got the upper hand. He managed to overcome the serious hill that leads westward out of Toulon in top gear. Alessandro had passed his own test only a few weeks ago but already drove with what I felt as natural aptitude and well. He had also learned to talk car.