Jigsaw (31 page)

Voyons
, leaving her parents even for
les vacances
… This sudden devotion to an aunt … no, a
great
-aunt …?

‘Yes,’ said Madame Panigon, expanding, ‘we couldn’t understand it at first, a daughter of mine turned into a sister of mercy! Now,’ (archly) ‘we can guess the real reason why Cécile left her comfortable life with us … My daughter is a deep one …’

We all looked up.

‘She is more astute than I’d given her credit for. She’s one to look to the future.’ Madame Panigon smiled smugly. ‘My husband’s aunt
est
une femme aisée
, there’s a pretty fortune.
Une tante à héritage
– Cécile is making the sacrifice of her youth looking after her … Need I say more?’

A few days into the New Year, the Desmirails were back. No moves to be worked out, we soon ran into each other on the port. Oriane didn’t treat me like a long lost friend, she treated me like a friend who hadn’t been lost at all. Another status quo ante: I was restored to my place as a minor possession.
I
tried to hang about her less;
she
was less irritable and provocative, her general tenor playful, affectionate. She still teased; as she had every right to as I was still besotted and it showed. Most times she liked it to show, I knew this now; much as I was inclined to admire, I no longer admired all the way. Feelings were made still more complex by my fondness for Philippe, and for Oriane and Philippe as a couple.

They brought back snapshots from their sports d’hiver: on skis too they looked like cut-outs, elegant shadows; Louis beside them was flesh and blood, handsome flesh and blood.

The Desmirail bus line, La Compagnie des Transports du Littoral was to be formally opened on January 15th. Everything was set up. Seven old buses of the lumbering noisy kind, doors and
window-frames
rattling, engines and brakes and tyres put into perfect trim, maintenance and repair shop complete with petrol pump and empty lot where the ancient vehicles could spend their resting hours. The timetables, impeccably synchronous, were printed and so were booklets of tickets. Oriane had designed and Louis executed posters announcing the birth of the Company. And there was the staff: Philippe was going to be manager and his own chief mechanic with the donkey-man and two lads under him. He had found, trained and briefed nine drivers who were to act as conductors as well. They were local men, and not to wear uniform except for white and blue caps displaying the letters CTL. Each bus was to have a number and fly a small house flag – sewn by Oriane – from its bonnet.

‘Who will bet that she’s going to launch them with champagne?’ my mother said.

I became fascinated by the economic and organisational details, and sat in on the discussions. The drivers’ pay. (Monthly according to French custom, English workmen are scoffed at for not being able to manage their expenditure for more than a week at a time.) Most of them were married men, and Philippe offered a generous living wage which was accepted without comment. The majority of Sanaryans, usually including the mayor, were Communists; on the other hand few if any had truck with a union. Philippe also insisted on paying for substantial accident insurance for his drivers (well above the
requirements
of the law) and that too was accepted with no more than a shrug – Well and good, and more fool he. So, how to balance
overheads
with income? How much would passengers think right to pay? How much was needed for them to pay? Should there be a surcharge after 9 p.m.? 12 p.m.? Season tickets for the commuters from La Seyne? Then there was the argument about the secretary’s salary – they’d taken on Josée, a local girl, trained
dactylo
and rather pretty, who was to do the letters and bills, receive and count the cash in the drivers’ money bags. Now French women, especially young ones in that kind of job were as a rule
not
paid a living wage, the assumption being that either they didn’t need it as they were living at home, or if not, that there were always ways for a reasonably attractive girl to make ends 
meet. Oh nothing as crass as prostitution, just an arrangement with a steady older man who’d naturally come forth with the occasional or regular
cadeau
.

Look here, Philippe, they told him, she doesn’t expect it, her father runs a very nice ironmonger’s business … Don’t be absurd, nobody pays more than eight hundred francs … Well,
some
go as high as twelve, and
that’s
exaggerated …

Philippe listened politely, then went and proposed the salary he had had in mind. We were not told how much that was. Josée, unlike the men, showed her pleasure and became devoted to his interests.

On the morning of the great day, friends, notables, everyone
connected
with the Company including drivers’ wives were invited to a
vin d’honneur
on the bus lot. The big Panhard, the handsomest of the string, decked out with blue and white ribbons was launched by Oriane breaking a bottle of champagne over its bonnet (my mother’s bet had not been taken on) as it was slowly driven by Philippe himself on to the road and its first trip Sanary–Toulon–Sanary. The other six followed at intervals each with a full complement of festive occupants. The Company had offered free rides for the entire day to every inhabitant of Sanary. It was amazing to find how many people had business to transact that day at Ollioules, La Seyne and Toulon.

Each bus was accompanied by a friend on its first journey, a sort of godfather or mother seated next to the driver. I had been allotted Bus No 6, and was therefore in a position to witness the first dilemma faced by the Desmirail line. As we approached the bus stop – new as paint – at La Seyne, we found a largish crowd waiting to try out the transport that had been widely advertised in
Le Petit Var
and on Louis’s posters. When they found that there wasn’t even standing room, they became offensive. The free-riding Sanaryans snug inside the bus laughed and jeered. There had been the previous
vin d’honneur
. The frustrated crowd responded, the youths inside asked for nothing better and it looked as if a fine
bagarre
was to erupt. Just before it came to blows, two sensible men first blocked, then pulled shut the entrance door and shouted to the driver to be off. This he did, followed by jeers and threats. 

Bus No 7 ran into a similar fate. The prospects of the Compagnie des Transports du Littoral didn’t bear too much thinking about.

Next day the donkey-man called at Les Cyprès to leave three neatly shaped strips of pasteboard inscribed with our respective names. They were passes for free travel on the CTL. A covering word from Philippe expressed his hope that these might be of some small service to his friends.

I do not quite know what had made me tell my family on arrival that I would stay for one month only. Some instinct must have come into it that it was time for me to stop being bundled about and exercise my own choice instead (as well as an instinct for some detachment from Oriane?), but then my
choice
was staying at Sanary, not in London which I had ceased to love. I had liked my work there – if giving improvised language lessons can be called work – had liked the sense of independence (and self-importance?) it had given me, and I fancied it my duty not to let my pupils down. No illusion of being indispensable: merely the facts that I had entered an implicit contract to get them to a certain stage, that they or their parents would be inconvenienced having to make a change, that I
was
getting them somewhere (my own love of French playing a part). It was nice having a little more money: not having to depend at the end of the month on the punctuality of the trustees’ cheque, buying more books, drinking better wines in Soho with Rosie. So I had told my pupils that I would be back after a month of extended Christmas holidays, then take them on for three months more.

To my mother I said I would be back at Sanary in April, if that was convenient. She took it nicely: I must do what I thought best – by the way, was I working on my interpreter’s exam next year? indirectly, I said – she would miss me, I should think of Les Cyprès as my home and could still change my mind about leaving. I was pleased with that, and with myself for a show of independence. Or was it a pig-headed whim?

I sometimes wonder whether my staying on that winter would have made any difference. It is an uneasy thought. Yet I cannot really believe that my presence would have had an influence on events. True, I might 
have been a companion to Alessandro who did not like doing things on his own – he had just been given a third commission, a villa to convert at Le Lavandou (the Wall Street crash had not much affected affluent Europeans yet) – while my mother was tied to decorating the place above Bandol; but then I can reflect that Alessandro and I had spent time on our own before and look at the results.

Between the bus launch and my own departure, Doris von R.
reappeared
well announced this time by post. Paul’s, her fiancé’s, divorce was dragging its slow course with no prospect of their getting married before late summer or the autumn; she, Doris, was recovering from a bout of flu, Paul thought it would be good for her to spend some months in a warm climate rather than hang about in freezing Berlin: he was taking a few days off to bring her South, and would explain everything himself. She was sure that we would like
him
and she hoped we’d like the idea of having her live near us for some time.

They arrived (by train and wagon-lit), she looking as much like a waif, though a cherished waif, as ever. Paul, lover and protector, the architect who wasn’t a philistine although he built department stores, turned out to be a tall blond Jew with a charming careworn face, looking older than his age which was the early forties. We booked them into the Hôtel de la Plage which kept one floor open during the dead season. He was able to spend only two days, and did indeed a good deal of explaining, closeted with my mother.

The weather was exceptionally fine – blue, wind-still days –
Alessandro
, Doris and I spent the late morning hours in one of Sanary’s most sheltered winter corners, Schwob’s outdoor terrace, absorbing the sun, talking little, glancing through newspapers, looking at the sea, drinking innocent things like grenadine and vermouth-cassis. I was having serious second thoughts about going to London.

Paul meanwhile was telling my mother that Doris’s health needed watching, just watching – after all her mother had died of TB at just about her age. There was no question of
that
with Doris, so far she was just delicate, as we could see. She had been seriously
under-nourished
as a child during the war, and poorly fed afterwards in the 
pension years. Yes, the pension was closed down – after a fashion, Paul explained – Grandmammerl was staying on in the flat to which she was attached, as she was to Berlin, she belonged there and too old to change, that’s why he had not dragged her here. Nor was she left rattling on her own in a large empty place, it had been arranged that she kept on one or two of her lodgers, the ones she liked most.

Paying lodgers? my mother asked.

Not
regularly
, perhaps, Paul said with a smile. Nor should young Doris be left on her own, she was no good at looking after herself. Berlin was not the right place for her at present, too many rackety friends, late hours, too many night clubs … It was the life she was used to. Poor girl she’d never had much of a chance. All that would be different when he could look after her properly. What she needed now was warmth, some feeding up, no snacks at three a.m., and someone to keep an eye on her.

My mother apparently said she would.

His wife, Paul told her, had offered to take Doris on a cruise or to winter sports. She
was
a very nice woman, she liked Doris, they got on. Civilised. He was a lucky man. However, it wouldn’t do – the divorce for one thing if it came out … and his wife, here he smiled again, did have other commitments.

In the evening we all tried to decide where Doris had better live. My mother proposed at Les Cyprès with us, it would be nice, she said, to have something young in the house.

Alessandro and I avoided looking at each other, something we often thought wise to do.

Paul thanked her but thought it would be better if Doris stayed entirely independent. Alessandro knew of a small house nearby which it would not be beyond the wit of man to heat adequately. Again Doris let Paul speak for her. She was not domestically inclined he said, hadn’t even cooked a breakfast in her life. Besides starving, keeping house would be no fun for her – what she liked, and hadn’t had much of – unless you counted the grandmother’s pension – was hotel life. And so it was to be: a sunny front room was booked for Doris at the Hôtel de la Plage, she could eat there or with us as she felt like. Having 
just devoured Emilia’s dinner, Paul agreed. He tried to express his admiration of her cookery; as he had no Italian and poor French, my mother relayed the compliments to Emilia. She received them with dignity.
Signor
, she said and gave him a slight smile. (He was a man who exuded kindness and strength.) He went on to say how much Doris looked forward to future enjoyment of Emilia’s delicious food. Again my mother translated. Emilia’s face closed. A clipped
Sì, Signora
, and not a glance at Doris.

I hoped that this passed unobserved by our guests. Emilia approved and disapproved in a mysterious way.

Some practical questions remained. Paul wanted to leave her with plenty of money – to be able to buy clothes, to go over to Villefranche or Nice where there might be friends. A bank account? She wouldn’t be able to manage one. Cash in the hotel safe? She’d manage that even less. He’d better leave it all with my mother – Doris said that would be all right. Paul was about to produce manilla envelopes, my mother had the blessed sense to say, You’d better leave the money and the bills to Alessandro. Doris again concurred.

Then the men discussed how to get Doris’s Chrysler roadster to the South of France, as Paul felt she would like to have her car. Some reliable tourist to drive it down? Shipment by train – not easy in those days, with a frontier and all. They hoped to find a way before long.