Jigsaw (27 page)

‘Louis and I thought it was Philippe?’

‘Oh I do love Philippe,’ I said, ‘but with you … with you …’

‘With
me
?’

‘It’s not the same.’

‘Of course it’s not the same.
What
is it then?’

‘I cannot say it again.’

‘The dramatic announcement?’

‘It was true,’ I said.

‘Truth,’ she said, ‘is such a feeble excuse for so many things. What did you expect from me?’

I tried to think. ‘I don’t know. Nothing. I really don’t know.’

‘Oh dear. How inconclusive. Do try and make up your mind.’

And so it went on. She blew hot and she blew cold. Oriane was good at that too. I knew I was being teased. I knew I was making a fool of myself. It changed nothing. Finally she offered me a lift home. I turned the starting handle for her and meekly climbed into the car. At the gate of Les Cyprès, quoting the clinching line of Victor Hugo’s poem about the French captain discovering that the wounded soldier whom he is offering his water bottle to on the battlefield is a Prussian officer, ‘
Allez, buvez quand même
,’ she asked me to dinner that evening. ‘Bring your handsome stepfather,’ she said over her shoulder as she drove off.

I did not go into the house by the front door. I climbed into my room through the window, locked the door and pulled in the shutters.
Le Rouge et le noir
swam into my mind, the most heroically romantic novel I knew – my head, too, was full of French quotations – with Julien Sorel’s flash of revelation as he leaves Mathilde de la Môle at dawn:
II était éperdument amoureux. Eperdument
, I repeated to myself. Lost. Lost in love.

For some days, three of the four who had been to Saint-Tropez lived enclosed each in a private universe of troubles and emotions.
Preoccupations
and feelings ran parallel. The fourth, apart from relief which is soon forgotten, experienced merely bafflement. I, as one of the insulated three, only perceived or thought about this a little later. Soon enough. I was not able to stay behind a locked door for long.

The first thing that penetrated the armour of my own obsession was that the relationship with Alessandro had changed. Camaraderie had been replaced by complicity. Unavowed, and thus uncertain, complicity. There had been no word spoken. Then Cécile Panigon sought me out – she
had
to talk, she said – and made clear a situation I hoped did not exist.

Incidentally, all had gone miraculously well for her and her brother on their return to the parental roof. Madame Panigon’s mind, so readily suspecting adultery, incest, sodomy, rape and worse between any two people in her sight, did not proceed in this way at all when it came to her own offspring. That was the miracle. Fully aware of the season’s
situation hôtelière
, it did not occur to her for a second that the girls, Cécile and I, had not shared one of the rooms allotted, while
les garçons
occupied the other. The key figure, Cécile, had looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, enabling Frédéric and Alessandro to control their nerves. So all went well. Of course they were given a terrific dressing down (I had a full account): they oughtn’t to have gone in the first place, they might all have been killed in that car … so inconsiderate, so selfish, so ungrateful … no one deserved such children 
… But it was all about bad manners and the dangers of the road.

Yes, but the perils, as I saw, as I was forced to see now, were not over. Cécile had been seeing Alessandro, alone, as often as they could. (As I might have noticed.)

She said, ‘I love Alessandro.’

She had no inhibitions about the three fatal words; she made them sound like an incontrovertible mathematical statement. I was silent.

‘You can understand me?’

That was a hard one. Perhaps one can only understand oneself. Imperfectly.

‘Cécile …’

‘He is so sensitive, he knows so much, he’s so interesting – he must have learnt so much from your dear mama, she’s given Sandró
so
much.’

I winced at more than this version of his name (she pronounced it
à la française
). ‘Cécile,’ I said, ‘what
is
to become of this?’

‘He doesn’t love me,’ she said. ‘I know he doesn’t.’ She said it with dignity and courage. ‘He is very nice to me …
il est si gentil
. But he only loves
votre maman
. I don’t mind what he feels as long as I can be with him.’

‘Cécile …’

‘I know that we haven’t much time. I call him
mon papillon
, my butterfly who will soon be gone.’ I groaned. She looked at me anxiously. She really had enormous eyes. ‘You don’t think we are doing wrong?
Votre maman a l’esprit si large
…
’

My large-minded mother – on her own account she had been that. I dared not speculate further. ‘What about
your
father and mother?’ I said.

‘They can’t stop me seeing Sandró. They’d lock me up if they knew but I’d get out and run away.’ She got down to what she had come to talk to me about, she was asking me to help. ‘If you are afraid I’d tell anyone, you’re wrong,’ I said proudly and coldly. ‘This is not
my
business.’

It was not what she had meant, the help she needed was
now
. She had worked it all out. They would only have these few days, it wasn’t 
easy for Sandró and her to get off on their own – he wouldn’t like it if it came to a parent crisis – she had to invent opportunities and excuses, such as for instance spending an evening at the cinema in Toulon with
me
.

I laughed. ‘And go on my own and brief you on the film afterwards?’ Lying for them … Well, lying to the Panigons.
Was
it only to the Panigons? ‘Yes, I will,’ I said, feeling heavy at heart. Whatever I did or failed to do would be treacherous. If I refused at this point it could only cause more trouble, more unhappiness. I said again that I would do what I could. Yet I didn’t really want to know too much about the whole thing. I ought to have felt more sympathy for Cécile, for her being so much in love. I did not accept her as
ma semblable, ma soeur.
In fact, I could not bear the thought.

‘A pretty kettle of fish,’ I said.

‘
Pardon?
’

The same day Alessandro spoke to me. He looked careworn.

‘Cécile has been to see you? She told me she would.’ It was the first time her name had been mentioned between us.

‘Poor little thing,’ he said, ‘poor little thing.’

‘Alessandro,’ I said, ‘how was it possible then?’

‘Saint-Tropez. I’d had too much to drink.’

‘But … why now?’

‘You must have heard it from her – she’s taking it seriously. Terribly so. What can you do? What can a man do? Tell her I found a woman in my bed, I hardly knew who she was – that’s how it happened. Goodness knows I don’t want to hurt her, I can’t just push her off. You see, it doesn’t matter so much to a man, one way or the other … She’s really rather sweet in her way. I like her. And it will all come to a natural end very soon.’

‘She knows that.’

‘She’s a good, loyal girl.’

‘Loyal to you. She
does
admire you.’

‘God, yes.’

‘Isn’t it nice to be admired?’ I said. ‘I wish someone admired me.’ 

He laughed. ‘We don’t get much of that at home, do we?’

It was not what I had meant.

Alessandro turned gloomy again. ‘I don’t want to get involved with her blasted parents. You think Panigon’d fight a duel?’

‘
Père
or
fils
?’ I asked, daring to go fishing.

‘Oh
père
, of course,’ he said, ignoring the bait. ‘But I think not. He could make things unpleasant though. With good reason. Funny thing, Cécile is a good liar, you wouldn’t think she had it in her.’

‘L’amour
,’ I said.

‘Oh please.
I
never dreamt this could happen – damn Saint-Tropez – I haven’t slept with a woman, or wanted to, since the night I met your mother.’

We said nothing for a moment.

‘How … how will she take it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t tell her.’

‘She must understand such things.’

‘You can’t be sure with women. They’re easily hurt.’

‘She’s different.’

‘She is different,’ said Alessandro fondly, ‘and not
so
different.
I
must not hurt her. I don’t want to hurt anyone.’

‘Dear Alessandro,’ I said, ‘poor
dear
Alessandro.’ Then I told him I was going to see the new film at Toulon this evening, on my own. He patted me on the shoulder, but he still looked careworn.

In the end I did not see the new film on my own. I went with the Desmirails. I mentioned it to them, they said good idea, we all went. Philippe, Oriane, Louis, I. I had been going about a good deal with them, mostly
à quatre
. The result of my disclosure on the port that morning, the only result one could say, was that Oriane now regarded me as a piece of her property. Not very valuable property. Well below Louis, I had been attached to her cortège. I, too, could now be seen in the back of cars or walking a step or two apart carrying coat or basket. In the mornings I would hang about the Place waiting for her to appear, rush to her car, open the door before it had stopped, kiss her hand – as Philippe and Louis did on greeting her – snatch at anything 
portable. Then I’d follow her to Chez Benech, the
crémerie
, the fruit stalls. When my presence bored her – often – she showed it, that was part of her on-and-off technique. When I did something clumsy, she was genuinely cross. One such occasion was when I took a fine ripe melon from her hands and put it on top of some small cream cheeses. In later years such incidents were transformed in anecdotage: the lovelorn page putting the melon on
les fromages à la crème
. At the time I was made to feel the fool I was.

She could also be charming to me, most so when Louis was about, hinting at shared private jokes, ruffling my hair, touching my hand. It did not take much to make Louis jealous, she always knew how to bring him to heel. There was none of that – no irritation, no flirting – when Philippe was present; I was treated (by both of them) with open affection as a well-liked, if somewhat absurd, young friend of the house. They liked to pretend that I was instructed beyond my years and nicknamed me
Dix-sept ans: Je sais tout
, the title of a popular review for the young. Sadly aware that far from knowing it all I was even no longer seventeen, I got Philippe to impart to me some of his manifold
knowledge
:
he
was both wonderfully instructed and instructive. I could make him tell about Paul Valéry and Valéry Larbaud and Marcel whom he’d been brought to see as a boy and if anything took against, to the disgust of Oriane who was
Proustienne
to her fingertips. He would feed my curiosity about book publishing, French political institutions, car engines, map-making and the drafting of timetables. The latter attracted me by the numerate ingenuity it required. Our calculations, if on a small scale, were no idle pursuit: the Desmirail bus line was to come into operation before long. There were to be seven buses to begin with linking Sanary to Toulon by two routes – one taking in Ollioules, the other La Seyne – at exact suitable times for getting people to work in the mornings, returning them at lunchtime and after entertainments past midnight. Working this out – computers had not been invented – was an intricate and enjoyable job with graphs spread all over the floor; Philippe said he was using the principle employed by the French National Railway network. It was important to get the service from La Seyne right as that rather deprived township, situated 
on the other side of the Bay of Toulon, was mainly inhabited by men who worked in the naval shipyards whose means of getting there were by steam ferry. Philippe hoped to provide alternative public transport by road. La Seyne had something over thirty thousand inhabitants. ‘You’ll be needing seventy buses soon, Philippe, not seven,’ Louis said. ‘You’ll be a millionaire.’

‘Not
Philippe
,’ said Oriane, with slightly less scorn than pride.

‘Why can’t Philippe become a millionaire?’ I asked.

‘You’ll understand all right when you know him a bit better.’

‘Oriane,’ Philippe said firmly, ‘I refuse to believe that one cannot earn money unless one behaves like a crook.’

‘Depends what you call a crook. Everybody is entitled to look after their own interests.’

‘Anybody who commits or condones a dishonest act is a crook.’

‘
You
would call evading one’s taxes a dishonest act.’

‘It is,’ said Philippe.

I
should not have liked to contradict that quiet tone.

‘You are the one and only Frenchman who thinks so,’ Oriane said.

‘Then I must be that Frenchman,’ said Philippe.

I resolved that, when the time came, I too would not evade my taxes. My immediate problem was, however, not to make sheep’s eyes at Oriane in Philippe’s presence.

Unrequited love. There is nothing new to be said about it. Whether it befalls one at eighteen, at thirty, at seventy, the pangs are much the same: the delirium, the hopes, the despair, the waiting. At eighteen one may believe oneself to be uniquely stricken, at thirty one may be able to say that no pain is irreversible, at seventy one knows that it is: irreversible.

Requited or not, some things can be said
for
it – the virtuous resolutions, the ecstasy of a presence, a rare soft look, the
whole-heartedness
, the being
alive
. My feelings were not deterred by the full awareness of my age, sex and station in life (none), but my
comportment
was. I valued Philippe’s good opinion; possibly more than Oriane’s. His example was teaching me
tenue
: grace – stoic or 
hypocritical – under pressure. I don’t know how far I succeeded. Whatever Philippe saw, guessed or knew about emotional human relations, he did not wish to know, nor appear to know.