Remember Me... (19 page)

Joe waited for her to tell him more. He knew by now that too direct a question about her childhood could halt her for days. He had learned to look away from her when she was in this mood in which he sensed both something dangerous and something sacred.

‘Alain was at school with my father,' she said, propped on her elbows, looking out at the Mediterranean, ‘and then at university, in Montpellier and in Paris. Both of them set out to be doctors but my father went into research and then . . . Alain stayed here, in Provence, and the only thing about him that is not Provençal is Isabel, whom he met in Paris. She comes from a good family, an only child like you. She was a great beauty – I think you can still see it today, but she won't be photographed! My father laughs at her a little,' Natasha herself laughed as she said this as if remembering the occasions, ‘because she loves Radio Monte Carlo and takes so much time to dress, but I know he admires her high style, and after all she is Alain's wife.

‘He always says Alain ought to have gone on into research with him but I think he envies what Alain does. My father's father, like Alain, was a country doctor in Provence. He knew Braque. My father calls Isabel “La Belle”. She always protests but maybe she doesn't mind. He can do no wrong. In the old days she told us about Paris and the dresses and the parties, but not any more. They could not have children – so she makes a big fuss of the dogs.' She turned to Joe. ‘And me. And now you.'

Joe felt blessed. This blind and urgent marriage had proved a magic carpet into lives, places, societies previously beyond his horizon. He had not expected any of this and to absorb it was not easy, it was puzzling, there seemed nothing in his past life that linked to this new world and yet everywhere he was accepted as a natural part of it.

‘I like the dogs,' he said.

‘That's lucky.'

‘Yes.' They were German shepherds. ‘I got on their good side as fast as I could.'

‘Do you see how special they are, Isabel and Alain?'

‘Oh yes.' He meant it and repeated the affirmation. Alain and Isabel Brossart had been emphatically welcoming to him, first at their house near La Rotonde and now here at their house by the sea to which Alain had been obliged to return for a week, giving Isabel the much desired opportunity to have the two young people to herself despite her hatred of the coast in the summer months.

‘We must go in,' Natasha said, ‘Isabel doesn't like us to be late for
l'apéritif
.'

Joe got up very stiffly.

‘Why are you so stupid about the sun, Joseph?'

He shook his head. The beach had been irresistible; warm pure sand which trickled so finely through his fingers, warm blue sea, blue clear skies, sun-filled all day. It was privilege and luxury, it was to his damp Northern-clouded childhood the temptation which had to be taken for it might never come again. Perhaps, Joe told himself, seeking justification, it provoked a deep instinctively compelling sun worship denied for centuries in the weather-beaten North. More likely it began in La Rotonde as a show-off aim to get a tan, surest proof of a holiday
Abroad. Loot. It soon became an addiction. Though pitied by Natasha, warned by Alain – ‘speaking as a doctor' – and told crossly by Isabel that it was not at all ‘chic', he persisted.

His lips were still a little blebbed. His shoulders had been blistered but had started to peel. From his knees to his shins his legs smarted and at night the pain could be acute but he had stuck at it, waiting for the day when the pink would mature to the oaken brown of the film stars and the playboys.

He hobbled up the beach, past the small restaurant to which Alain and Isabel had taken them on their first night, rather disappointingly it had seemed to Joe at first but the way in which the Brossarts had appeared to own it, the taste of the freshly caught fish, the chef and the patron joining them for a digestif, not a table empty, convinced him that it was, to use one of Isabel's favourite phrases, ‘
très chic
'. They would go there again tonight. Joe had his eye on the one grand well-ornamented restaurant in the square and he offered to take them all there – his treat – but Isabel said that she would rather starve and besides he was to pay for nothing, he was a guest.

After he had chilled himself in a long cold shower, Natasha rubbed in the cream very gently. ‘Makes it worth it,' he said, quoting from some obscure forgotten film and feeling adult, and she liked that. Joe declared himself ‘much better' as they sat on the verandah sipping their drinks. All four smoked, the red tips of their cigarettes dancing like wingless insects in the twilight. In the cool approaching dusk, the sea, the mythic Mediterranean, surging and dropping back in the near distance, was the heartbeat of their evenings, Joe thought, its sonorously thrumming base line providing a sound which slowly washed your mind of the sores of the day and said, ‘This is what is; live like this.'

The verandah before dinner was the place for the Brossarts to feel close to Natasha. It was as if they wanted to enclose her in a loving ambience which would soothe her as surely as the cream had soothed Joseph.

From these evenings on the verandah Joe would remember sentences, fragments as they looked out to the shore. Now and then there would be arguments and the Brossarts, to Joe's relief, were robust.
Issues of the day blew up, were batted about like tennis balls and then arbitrarily dropped.

‘At Cambridge,' said Alain, who dipped in and out of English with dainty self-mockery, ‘we would go into a little
PUB
, and sit with
PINTS
of beer or throw darts at the
BOARD
. It was very agreeable. The English know how to enjoy themselves, I think.'

‘My parents keep a pub,' said Joe, diving in, but probably they knew anyway. ‘For a lot of people it's more a place to keep warm and get out of the house.'

‘But that is the genius of the English,' said Alain. ‘Everybody is cold. Nobody likes to be in the house.
Voilà!
You invent the
PUB
. You have a fire and you have warm beer – everything is solved.'

Natasha suddenly thought of the Welsh Pony, of that moment when Joe had looked at her as if for the first time. She looked at him lovingly: Isabel noticed the look and would treasure it.

‘Pubs can be chic,' she said, to tease Isabel. ‘In Oxford some of them are
très chic
.'

‘Oxford! Cambridge! English! The
PUBS
!' Isabel's voice carried; there were other verandahs at no great distance, but regardless her voice was quite loud, very clear, and the night air carried it well. ‘I am fed up with the English. Joseph is different. He is the husband of Natasha. And Joseph is not English. I have not been to Cambridge or to Oxford or anywhere in England and I will never go into a
PUB
to drink a
PINT
of beer – the thought disgusts me – but I know who is English – Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Charles Morgan, the rolled umbrella and the silly hat – that is English. Joseph is like a Breton. And Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill! – we are all supposed to worship Winston Churchill! I am for Charles de Gaulle. And Napoleon Bonaparte!'

‘You see how ridiculous my wife can be,' said Alain in that tone which Natasha loved, infinite affection posing as brutal criticism, ‘she is uneducated, sadly. She was brought up in Paris society. What do you expect? Listen! Winston Churchill saved Europe from Hitler – is that not true? Joseph, you are a historian – speak.'

‘He will be English when he speaks about the war,' said Isabel. ‘He cannot be trusted.'

‘I think that Churchill—' Joe began.

‘I am sorry, Joseph,' Isabel cut in, ‘the English have done too many massacres in France and for centuries. At my convent Sister Aquinas was excellent at history. The other sisters said she could have written a book. She said – I am sorry – that the English were Godless and enemies of the Pope. It is better not to be English, Joseph. That is enough!'

‘Isabel,' said Alain, raising his glass, ‘has spoken.'

But Isabel had not quite finished.

‘Véronique,' she said, turning to Joseph, ‘she is not French. She was brought up in Lille but the family is Dutch.'

‘What is the logic here?' said Alain. ‘Logic and my wife are like sheep and goats.'

‘Be quiet, Alain. She converted to the faith for the sake of Louis but she was brought up as a Calvinist. They are the worst.'

‘What is she saying now?'

‘Natasha understands. But, Joseph, Véronique tried very hard. She is now a good Catholic. She did everything to please Louis.'

‘Louis has the great skill,' said Alain, ‘of making everybody want to please him.'

‘I met them together in Paris,' said Isabel. ‘I was very young.'

‘Eighteen?' said Alain as if claiming a point. ‘And the belle of Paris.'

‘That is not true, Joseph. Alain exaggerates like other people tell jokes.'

‘I have seen photographs,' said Natasha. ‘Alain is right.'

‘The point is,' said Isabel, ‘Louis and Alain – they were such friends. Together they were such good friends, so good and funny with each other.'

‘She will soon say she fell in love with both of us.'

‘For a few weeks I was in love with both of them,' said Isabel.

‘
Voilà!
'

‘But then I saw that Louis would go so much further, with that brain, and Alain was much more handsome.'

‘That is true,' said Alain, ‘I can agree with that.'

‘Natasha's mother knew both of them too, at that time. She could be serious. Like Louis. And when they worked together in the laboratory and began to make discoveries . . .'

‘Very important discoveries,' Alain said, ‘work on the adrenal gland. Serious discoveries.'

‘They should have had the Nobel Prize,' said Isabel, ‘but there is always a prejudice against the French.'

‘Marie Curie?'

‘Marie Curie was Polish.' Isabel paused for a while. The sound of the sea surged strongly in the silence.

‘Your mother gave Louis everything, everything. We were four together,' said Isabel, quietly, and let the words go, as she turned her thoughts back. ‘It was very sad.'

‘What a brain,' said Alain, quietly. ‘Bio-chemistry is his chief subject but physics, biology, history, especially archaeology, art; he speaks German, English as you know, Italian, Spanish and Dutch now because of Véronique; he knows Latin and Greek . . . he is like blotting paper. He reads, he looks up, he remembers!'

‘But he is still the Louis I met in Paris, Natasha. And he loves you, Natasha. I know he was not there very much. But still. That is not the most important thing. You are precious to him but also you remind him of Sophie and that must be hard . . .'

‘Véronique is formidable,' said Alain, abruptly, ‘you would not guess she was Dutch, not for a moment.'

‘Alain is sometimes very stupid for such an intelligent man,' said Isabel, and then, carefully, ‘but I like Véronique. Now. Time to eat, my children.'

The dogs were collected from the kitchen and it was to them that Isabel directed much of her attention as they sat near the sea and ate fish caught there earlier in the day.

The Brossarts had invited old friends, a couple their own age and their two children, Michel, on his way to becoming a surgeon, who was a little older than Natasha and had known her for years, and his sister Andrée, Joe's age, who was still at Montpellier University.

As usual one or two boatmen came around and asked if anyone would like a half-hour on the sea. Alain encouraged the four young
people to take up the opportunity and they went willingly into the rowing boat, lanterns fore and aft.

Michel and Natasha sat together facing the boatman, Joe and Andrée behind them.

Natasha was happy. These days with Isabel and Alain had sealed the new life. Joseph was accepted, and respected. He was a barricade against Véronique, he had become a friend of her brothers and sister, her father and her mother's family and now the Brossarts had all taken to him.

She was greatly relieved. There would be a life. She would paint, he would write and work until they could live by the writing and painting – they agreed it would take time but they were without material ambitions and their heads were full of stories of young artists who had persisted and come through.

It was at this house, in fact on the beach, that Natasha had completed her first painting, a dour study in oil of the cliff which closed off the beach to the east. She had been living with Alain and Isabel then, for some time, after the worst troubles with Véronique and the problems with her studies and her health. Alain and Isabel had a room in both their houses which they called ‘Natasha's Room' and no one but she – and Joseph now, of course – was allowed to use it.

The boatman stopped after ten minutes or so, just occasionally touching the oars, letting the little boat sway in the murmuring, swirling water. The lights on the shore were not so very distant but, Natasha thought, it was like looking into another country. Michel caught the keenness of her look and asked her how she would paint it. She reminded him that he had laughed at her first efforts; ‘Not laughed,' he protested; ‘Yes,' said Natasha, smiling, ‘and you were right. You were going to be a great surgeon then,' she said, ‘and do you remember Clothilde? Well, she is in a publishing house in Paris now and some of her articles have appeared in magazines.'

Joe tried to restrain his rapid ejection into jealousy but he could not. Of course! Michel was the man she should really have married. They were perfect together. Background, class, country, language, friends. The way she laughed was not how she laughed with him; it was so easily intimate. The music in her voice – was that there for him? Michel was clearly entranced by her, he spoke in a low voice so that Joe would not be able to
hear, he leaned close, he steadied her unnecessarily, Joe thought, by putting an arm around her shoulders when the boat was only barely caught by a little breeze, he showed off to her: and she to him, Joe thought.