Love Again (26 page)

‘Our American cousins,’ said Mary to Sarah.

‘Our cousins,’ said Sarah to Mary.

Les Anglais all laughed, and the Americans laughed out of good feeling. Laughter was breaking out for no good reason, from all around the tables. The company’s spirits were being lifted, borne on those currents that carry players and their minders towards the intoxications of
the first night
. The charm, the enchantment, the delightfulness of—well, of what exactly?—were slowly lifting them, seawater setting fronds of weed afloat, splashing dry rock, sending out invigorating ozone.

They sat on, while Le Patron caused the waiters to bring more coffee, and the square filled with vehicles. Not only this town was crammed; so were all the little towns round about, from where coaches would bring people—were already bringing people, at ten in the morning—to become part of the ambience of Julie, her time, her place.

Soon Henry departed to work out with the technicians the problems with sound, and Sarah, Stephen, Benjamin, Roy, and Mary went off with Jean-Pierre to his office. There finances were discussed, particularly Benjamin’s—or rather the Associated and Allied Banks of North California and South Oregon’s—commitment to the new plans. Stephen’s as well, but as he pointed out, since he was an individual, he had only to say ‘yes’. Money was talking. First things first. Money has to talk before actors can.

Then Benjamin flew off to investigate his investment in the Edinburgh Festival. Jean-Pierre insisted they must decide how to get together a much larger committee to discuss next year’s production in Belles Rivières. Sarah, he trusted, would be part of it. So, he hoped, would Mr Ellington-Smith. Regular meetings throughout the year would benefit them all. All this went on until well after two. When they arrived on the pavement for lunch, it was observable that the players and musicians already preferred to be with each other, merging for their test that evening. Henry sat by Sarah. When she thought that this was the last time she would be with him in Belles Rivières—it would if she had anything to do with it—such a feeling of loss took her over that she had to admit if she were not in love with Bill, then she showed all the signs of loving Henry. It occurred to her that to be with Henry was all sweetness, while being with Bill was to be angry and ashamed. What a pity, if it was her fate to fall in love so inappropriately, that it had not been Henry from the first.

Henry returned from a reconnaissance in the late afternoon to say that crowds were already making their way up to Julie’s house and that all the seats had been booked by mid-morning. He reported that several tastefully designed signs with arrows had been nailed to trees, saying in French and in English, ‘One may stand in this place.’ ‘Please respect Nature.’ ‘Please respect Julie Vairon’s Forest.’

By seven the woods all around the house held a couple of thousand people, most of whom could not hope to do more than hear the music. There being no ‘backstage’, Stephen and Sarah, as authors, Henry, as director, went together to where the players stood waiting among the trees, to wish them luck.

The three sat themselves in chairs right at the back, and this time Henry managed to stay seated through the performance. It was all wonderful! It was extraordinary! It was fantastic! These comments and a hundred others, in various languages, were to be heard all through the intervals, and the applause was unending. And then
it was all over, and the company were down outside the café again, embracing, affectionate, mad with euphoria, in love and out of it, wild with relief. The brassy little moon, like a clipped coin, stood over the town, and resulting moonlight was satisfactorily moody and equivocal. Les Collines Rouges announced it would stay open as long as anyone was still up, and cars roared triumphantly around the little town. Jean-Pierre could not stop smiling. He had continually to rise and shake hands, or be embraced by prominent citizens of the area, for whom he was embodying all the success of the production. Midnight came and was past. Jean-Pierre said he had to get home to his wife and children. Henry went too, saying he must telephone his wife. He murmured to Sarah that he would be seeing her soon in London, with a look that brought tears to her eyes. Richard left, saying he was tired, looking at Sally but not saying good night to her. Soon after, Sally announced that this old woman was going to sleep. Sarah heard Andrew’s low laugh, saw that he wanted to share amusement with her, Sarah, and, as she too got up, heard him say, ‘Well, how about it, Sarah?’ This was so improbable she decided she had not heard it. She announced that this old woman too had to sleep. Groans of protest that the party was ending. Bill leaped up to accompany her to the hotel door, there enfolding her in an embrace and murmuring that he thought of her as a second mother. She went upstairs white hot with love and with anger.

She stood at her window, looking down at the company, and knew that this loss, the desolation of being excluded from happiness, could only refer back to something she had forgotten. Had she too been that child who had stood on the edge of a playground, watching the others? She had forgotten. Fortunately.

And soon all this would have put itself into the past.
Julie Vairon
would never take shape in this way again, in this setting, with these people. Well, it was not the first time—rather perhaps the hundredth—that she had been part of some play or piece, and it had always been sad to see the end of something that could never happen
again. The theatre, in short, was just like life (but in a condensed and brightly illuminated form, forcing one into the comparison), always whirling people and events into improbable associations and then—that’s it. The end.
Basta
! But this event, Julie’s, was not anything she had known before. For one thing, she had not been ‘in love’—why the inverted commas? She was not going to make it all harmless with quote marks. No, there was something in this particular mix of people—that must be it—and of course the music…So Sarah talked aloud to herself, walking about her room, returning often to the window, where she could see how Stephen sat next to Molly, while Bill—but enough. She went to her mirror several times during the course of this excursion around and about her room, for an inspection that deserved to be called scientific. That a woman’s interaction with her mirror is likely to go through some changes during the decades goes without saying but…someone should bottle this, she announced aloud to the empty room, visible over her reflection’s shoulder (Woman Gazing Curiously into Her Mirror)…. Yes, someone should bottle these substances flooding me now. They probably did bottle them. Probably potions were on sale in beauty shops and chemists: if so, they should have on the label the warning
POISON
—in brightest red. It is not merely that I feel twenty years younger, I look it…

Meanwhile she wrote:

This was not the letter she slid under Stephen’s door on the floor above hers, for she thought, One can’t say ‘I love you’ to an Englishman. Stephen would take to his heels and run. She tore up that letter and wrote:

This was the letter she took upstairs, hoping she would not run into him.

Next morning, very early, she woke to see an envelope sliding under her door.

As she stood reading this, another envelope slid towards her feet from under the door. She cautiously opened the door, but it was too late: the corridor was empty, though she heard the lift descending.

While she was drinking coffee at her window, the porter brought two letters.

At first shock, this letter actually seemed to her insulting. She was about to tear it up, her fingers trembling, in order to deposit the fragments in the wastepaper basket, when…Wait a minute. Hold your horses, Sarah Durham. She carefully reread the letter, noting with satirical appreciation for her inconsistency the following reactions: First, the attack of false morality. Second, irritation, because she simply couldn’t attend to it, when she was so beset with emotions. Third, the classic retort to an unwanted declaration of love, faintly patronizing pity: Oh, poor thing: well, never mind, he’ll get over it.

Who was it? Because of what she had heard last night but had at once said to herself was impossible—‘How about it, Sarah?’—she had to admit it must be Andrew. To whom she had never given a thought not strictly professional.

She carefully put this letter away, to be read later when not intoxicated. To be accurate, when no longer sick. Bill’s letter she did tear up and she dropped the pieces neatly one by one in the basket as if finally ridding herself of something poisonous.

It was now eight in the morning. She chose a sensible dress in dark blue cotton, partly because she thought, I will not be accused of mutton dressed as lamb, partly because a dull dress might sober her. The noise outside was already so loud she sat for a few minutes,
eyes closed, thinking of that long-ago youth on his hillside—absolute silence, solace, peace. But suddenly into this restoring dream the three war planes from yesterday inserted themselves, streaking across the antique sky and vibrating the air. The boy lifted his dreaming head and stared but did not believe what he saw. His ears were hurting. Sarah went quietly downstairs. She did not want to have to talk. In a side street was a little café she believed was not used by the company. The tables outside Les Collines Rouges were all empty except for Stephen, who sat with his head bent, the picture of a man struck down. He did not see her, and she walked past him to the Rue Daniel Autram. Whoever Daniel Autram was or had been, he did not merit pots of flowers all along his street, though on either side of the café door were tubs of marguerites. This café had a window on the street and, presumably, something like a window seat, for she saw two young sunburned arms, as emphatically male as those of Michelangelo’s young men, lying along the back of it. The forearms rested side by side, hands grasping the elbows of the other. The arms being bare, there was a suggestion of naked bodies. This was as strong a sexual statement as Sarah could remember, out of bed. She was stopped dead there, in the Rue Daniel Autram, as noisy children raced past to a bus waiting for them in the square. I have to go back, go back, breathed Sarah, but she could not move, for the sight had struck her to the heart, as if she had been dealt lies and treachery. (Which was nonsense, because she had not.) Then one young man leaned forward to say something to the other, as the other leaned forward to hear it. Bill and Sandy. This was a Bill Sarah had never seen, nor, she was sure, had any female member of the company. Certainly his first mother had never been allowed a glimpse of this exultantly, triumphantly alive young man, full of a mocking and reckless sexuality. And the charming, winning, affectionate, sympathetic young man they all knew? Well, for one thing,
that
person had little of the energy she was now looking at: his energy was in bond to caution.