Love Again (20 page)

She was determined not to raise her eyes to the balcony where she might see Bill: even the possibility he was there was enough to exert a gravitational pull down that side of her body, while her back had become a separate sensory zone. Over Benjamin’s shoulder she saw Andrew turn his chair: now he was looking straight at her. Did he want to be asked to join them? But it was unlikely that he wanted to court this rich patron. For one thing, it was not his style, which was independent to the point of bellicosity, and for another, he did not need to. Integrity is so often the fruit of success.

Benjamin was telling her that his bank, or chain of banks, was putting money into six plays or, as he put it, theatrical enterprises.
‘We have undertaken to finance six theatrical enterprises. I have to confess it was our chairman’s wife who suggested it. She is interested in the arts. And we did not respond at first as generously as we should. But she kept hammering away at us, and soon the idea began to take hold. At least, it did not take very much effort on my part to talk the board into it. We don’t expect to make much money, but that is not the main consideration.’

‘I hope you are not going to lose money on our play.’

‘After all, we do sometimes lose money on a risk, so why not on a good cause? That is how we have come to see it. Anyway, I spend my time financing new enterprises, and this isn’t really so very different. And it gets me to travel to pretty places and to meet pretty people.’ Here he slightly but firmly nodded, in the American manner, like a conductor’s baton: You come in here. In this case he was emphasizing that the compliment was for her. She acknowledged it with a smile. She was in fact enjoying the morning and able to forget her condition. She was also intrigued. This man in her own country was referred to as a ‘businessman’, nearly always with faint disapprobation. If he had been British, and needing to defend himself against the genteel prejudices of his nation, he would have confessed to his occupation but by now would be talking about his hobby, growing roses or collecting fine wines, insisting that was where his heart was. Having no need to feel deficient, he was talking with energy and pleasure about his work. ‘I don’t sit in an office, I am glad to say; I don’t want you to believe that….’ Nine-tenths of his time he was involved in the day-by-day struggles of new businesses, some of them risky. ‘I’ve been doing this for ten years now, so I can offer you quite a selection, and some of them I’m proud to have godfathered.’

‘Tell me,’ she invited, for as long as he talked, the splendours and miseries of her preoccupation were kept at bay.

‘Well now, how do you like the notion of a glass factory making exact copies of the masterpieces of the past? Using some old techniques and some new ones? “Masterpieces of the Past”, we call it. I
tell you, when you see one of those things, you want to own it, but they are too expensive for anything but a glass case in a museum. Museums are buying them—colleges, schools. Millionaires…Does that strike you as too rarefied? Here’s the other extreme. We have a factory making a certain component. It is about a millimetre square, but it revolutionizes a whole sequence of processes in computer technology…not as exciting, I must confess.’ In fact she found it exciting, but this was not how he wanted to see her. Artists are not expected to be interested in technology. ‘How do you like the idea of buying a house all furnished and complete? The garden too—everything from a cactus garden to a Japanese garden. Or French formality. An English cottage garden…you order it, and there it is. I confess you have to be pretty well-heeled for some of our gardens.’ He offered her these ideas and then some more, as he sat taking quick mouthfuls of coffee from a cup held at the ready in his hand, as if getting enough caffeine into him was the most important item on his agenda. Meanwhile he watched her face and was pleased when he saw she was interested. He liked her, it was clear. Well, she liked him—banal words for mysterious processes. It became a game. He offered her descriptions of this or that idea financed by his bank, and she indicated the degree to which it appealed to her, not necessarily truthfully but to match his picture of her. If you go along with how a person sees you, then you learn a great deal about that person. Soon they were laughing much more than this factual and sober exchange warranted, partly because she was prescribing laughter for herself as a therapy, and partly because all her emotions were sloshing about like a strong tide in a small rock pool. As for him, the gaiety of the theatre, the charm, had taken him over and he was inside Julie’s spell. Now all the chairs around them were filling, mostly with the company, and they were smiling at this satisfactory scene, their Croesus having such a good time with Sarah. Andrew’s smile, dry, appreciative, seemed to have become stuck there, as he frankly watched the two of them.

Then just as Sarah was telling Benjamin how pleased he was going to be with what he would see tomorrow, for there was no way he could imagine the effect of the music when it fitted the action, there was a check, a snag: he had booked to fly to London that night. This meant he would not have seen
Julie Vairon
. He had thought there was a rehearsal that afternoon, but she explained it was a technical rehearsal and they would be merely walking through their parts. ‘So you won’t have seen it.’

His face indicated that he did not regard this as the total disaster it seemed she did. He even remarked that he trusted them all to get it right—a joke, but she did not laugh. It did occur to her that she might be getting things a little out of proportion. She saw Jean-Pierre on the other side of the square, going to his office. She excused herself and begged him to stay exactly where he was, for he certainly should meet the French side of the production. She walked quickly through the dust under the pine tree and then the plane tree, dry again although the square had been thoroughly watered the evening before. The trees seemed to be accommodating a hundred cicadas, all in full voice. She caught up with Jean-Pierre, to whom she explained it was out of the question that the American sponsor, who was providing so much of the money, should not experience a real performance. She begged him to think of something to keep Benjamin here. Then she walked fast, full of the energy she did not command when not in love, back to her hotel, for it was time to wake Stephen.

On the balcony above the crowd on the pavement outside Les Collines Rouges, a young god, knowing he was one, all sleek warm sun-browned flesh, with glistening dark hair, melting gaze, stood among the oleanders watching Sarah’s progress and waiting for her to see him. As luck would have it, she saw him only at the last moment, and her wave was perfunctory. His hand, which had been held out to her, palm forward, bestowing sensual blessings, sank to his side, rejected. He was genuinely hurt.

She went to her room and telephoned Stephen’s. He was just awake and suggested she should come up. Up she went. Stephen departed to the bathroom and she sat on a fat little sofa, covered with a country cretonne, to match the nostalgic flowered wallpaper, and ordered coffee. She was lighthearted, her miseries in another country—night country.

She stood at the window and looked down through naïvely pretty curtains at a table where Bill sat with Molly. Opposite them were Sally and Richard. She yearned to be with them. Group life is a drug.

Sandy the lighting man came past, paused by Bill, and handed him something that looked like a photograph. Bill took it from Sandy and laughed, a young loud laugh that heard itself and approved. Sarah would never know what the photograph was, or why Bill found it so funny, but the scene was so strongly impressed on her, because of her state, that she felt she could not forget it. Henry went past the tables, stopping briefly to greet them all before directing himself to the end of the square where in a side street was the Musée Julie Vairon. He had said last night he would visit it this morning. Sarah watched Benjamin and Jean-Pierre emerge from a shop and walk briskly after Henry. Stephen came from the bathroom and stood by her, looking down—of course—at Molly. Sarah and Stephen stood side by side and watched Molly and Bill, who were now pretending to tussle for possession of the photograph.

‘Cruel,’ remarked Stephen, with affectation of dispassion.

‘Cruel if not so common,’ she agreed.

‘Cruel, anyway. And I don’t care a tinker’s cuss about Molly, not really.’

She quoted,

‘Who? A minor Roman? But she hasn’t said no. I daren’t ask her. Meanwhile I go from bad to worse. Last night I actually had to stop myself writing poetry.’

Sarah decided not to say that the verse was a result of wakefulness.

The town authorities, or perhaps it was the café, chose this moment to switch on their canned music. It came from the pine tree, and must be disconcerting the cicadas. Julie’s troubadour music, that is to say, love songs, filled the town and vibrated every molecule in Sarah’s body.

‘Extraordinary stuff,’ said Stephen. ‘It takes you over.’

‘Music is the food of love.’

‘Is that what it is the food of?’ said he, with exactly the same mix of irritation and yearning she felt.

Groups of people were moving across the square to the museum. Among them went Molly and Bill, Richard and Sally. Henry was with them. He had reappeared and was talking to Jean-Pierre. And where was Benjamin? Sarah explained to Stephen it was essential to keep Benjamin here for at least one performance, and Stephen said he couldn’t see why the American chap should be made to stay here against his will. ‘Ah, but it won’t be against his will. And you don’t understand. You rich patrons must be kept sweet and happy because we will need you next year. Not to mention the year after.’

‘Happy!’

‘Happiness is no laughing matter,’ quoted Sarah.

They went downstairs and into the hot morning, the stinks and perfume of the south, the din of traffic, and Julie’s music. They strolled, laughing from bravado, across the square, both high on
these compounded stimulants, and watched Henry and Benjamin approach. Under the plane tree, Bill and Molly stood together.

Stephen stopped, unable to go on. He looked this morning like a miserable old man. Worse, there was something frivolous, or fatuous, about him. She could hardly believe this was the strong and impressive man she had seen in his own setting. And probably she had something silly and pathetic about her too.

She took his arm and moved him on.

‘Even a god falling in love could not be wise,’ said Stephen.

‘Who? I pass. But, Who loves, raves.’

‘Byron,’ he said at once.

‘Oh lyric love, half angel and half bird and all a wonder and a wild desire,’ said Sarah, watching the two men come towards them, Henry visibly slowing his pace to the measured pace of Benjamin.

‘Browning,’ said Stephen.

‘Browning it is.’

‘And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love, the honey of poison flowers and all the measureless ills…, but in my case that is far from true.’

‘Who else but?’ Now Bill and Molly were approaching. She began to laugh. ‘He is coming, my own, my sweet,’ she mocked herself, and looked at Stephen to go on.

He said, not laughing, ‘Were it ever so airy a tread…’

‘My heart would hear it and beat…’

While Sarah and Stephen exchanged lines, Henry and Benjamin stood in front of them, listening.

Stephen: ‘Were it earth in an earthly bed…’

Sarah: ‘My dust would hear it and beat…’

Bill and Molly had arrived. Now the four stood confronting Stephen and Sarah. It was Bill whose face showed a rich and irreverent appreciation. ‘Tennyson,’ he breathed, like a boy in class.

‘Tennyson it most certainly is,’ said Stephen. ‘Had I lain for a century dead…’

Bill cut in, looking straight at Sarah: ‘Would start and tremble under my feet And blossom in purple and red.’

‘What glorious, marvellous nonsense,’ said Sarah, laughing fit to be sick, while Bill gave her a charming and intimate smile, saying he knew why she laughed so excessively and he could not sympathize more.

Benjamin remarked judiciously, ‘I suppose it is nonsense according to whether you are in love or not.’

‘That, I would say, is an accurate summing up of the situation,’ said Stephen. His look at Molly caused her to blush, then laugh, and turn away. He insisted, ‘Time was away and somewhere else.’

‘It’s no go, my honey love, it’s no go, my poppet,’ said Sarah, too harshly.

Benjamin took Sarah’s arm and said, ‘Sarah, your accomplice Jean-Pierre has talked me into not going to the technical rehearsal this afternoon. He is very kindly driving me to visit the château of Julie’s possible in-laws. But he threw her over, I hear? Not a very honourable young man.’

‘The Rostand place,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s charming. And that means you will be with us tomorrow.’

He hesitated. He had decided to leave but could not resist the moment, her mock-command of him, and, no doubt, the music, pleading love throughout the town. ‘Yes, I’ll stay for the dress rehearsal tomorrow. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘That is what I want,’ said Sarah, laughing straight up at him, reckless with the excess of everything and knowing she was behaving like a girl. Inappropriately. Ridiculously. At this moment she did not care about Bill, who stood to one side, enjoying how she was being so ruthlessly charming to the banker.

Then Stephen and Sarah went slowly on, and the others stood listening as the two played their game.

‘It’s good to love in a moderate degree, but it is not good to love to distraction.’

‘God knows. Who?’

‘Plautus.’

‘Plautus!’

‘I had an excellent education, Sarah.’

‘I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me,’ said Sarah, sure that no one had said these words from such a desert of desolation.