The Slipper (32 page)

“Are you sure that's wise?” Norman asked quietly.

“There'll be other movies,” she said.

“Malle is a fine young director.”

“He's going to be one of the greatest.”

“You didn't have to turn the movie down, Carol.”

“I'm enjoying my champagne.”

Paris seemed to put on her finest face for them in the weeks that followed. The air was soft and hazy, the skies a pale violet-blue, the old stone buildings and monuments bathed in a pale silvery light, and how they enjoyed it, strolling hand in hand, savoring the awesome beauty and the fragrant perfumes of the city. They eschewed the weighty splendors of the Louvre for the Jeu de Paume, admiring the Degas, the Cézannes, the Monets and Gauguins. Carol had never been there before, and Norman was pleased to introduce her to his favorite museum. Carol had never been to the Eiffel Tower either—only tourists went there—and Norman insisted they go. They rode all the way to the top and she was as thrilled and delighted as any child, the breeze billowing her skirts, tourists chattering noisily, eating junk food and pointing out landmarks.

They wandered along the quais and browsed among the rickety, tattered bookstalls, discovering treasures. Carol was elated with a portfolio of eighteenth-century prints, exquisitely done, covered with dust and picked up for a mere pittance. Norman found a battered first edition of Proust and a French edition of
Mrs. Wiggs and Her Cabbage Patch
which brought a smile to his lips. They ate in small, noisy restaurants with sawdust on the floor and copper pans on the walls, sharing benches and tables with workmen, passing huge baskets of bread and plates of sausage and tureens of marvelous soup. They explored narrow twisting streets with ancient old buildings jammed together like so many petrified wedding cakes, and Carol discovered that the Paris of Balzac was still very much in evidence if one searched hard enough. They wandered into dusty, crowded antique shops hidden away on back streets, and in one of them Norman found an exquisite white-and-pink Sèvres vase etched with gold, something Madame Du Barry might have owned at one time, and he bought it for her, paying practically nothing. The wizened old crone who ran the shop thought it was a piece of junk.

One afternoon they went to the Palais-Royale and wandered through the shady arcades while children romped among the flower beds. They located the plaque beneath the apartment where Colette had lived for so many years, her blue lamp always visible from the moonlit gardens, and they stood quietly, looking up at the window. Carol told Norman how she had discovered Colette at the age of thirteen, taking a copy of
Chéri
from the Ellsworth library, discovering a whole new world through the eyes of that greatest of French novelists. Norman suggested they go to Père-Lachaise and visit her grave. It was late afternoon and drizzling lightly when they arrived. All the flower stalls were closed and Carol had so wanted to place a bouquet on Colette's grave. Someone had recently left a large bunch of pale pink roses on Chopin's tombstone. Carol hesitated for a moment and then took a single rose for Colette. Norman agreed that Chopin would not have minded at all.

They rarely went out at night, preferring to stay home and watch moonbeams stream over the bannister and silver the floor, but Gaby insisted they celebrate with the gang one night. The rowdy group went to Sexy's on the Champs Élysées, and Norman was amused by the strippers. They shared a bottle of champagne with a couple of pimps in a bar in Pigalle, had onion soup at L'Escargot in the early morning hours, watching the market porters of Les Halles slinging enormous sides of beef over their shoulders and shambling along in bloodstained white overalls. Gaby was sad and weary by this time, her great brown eyes woeful as she confided that Alain had deserted her for a dancer from the Folies-Bergère, stealing several of her paintings before he left.

“You'll have to write a novel about it,” Norman told her.

“I intend to,” she confessed, brightening considerably. “It's going to be my best—straight from the heart.”

April melted into May and May was marvelous, flowers abloom on every street corner, it seemed, Paris at her magical best. Carol felt like a completely different person. She felt young for the first time—she had never felt young before, not like this—and she felt gloriously carefree, no grueling hours inside a drafty studio, no schedule to meet, no script changes to learn. Every morning she woke up in Norman's arms, and every day seemed like Christmas, sure to bring wonderful presents—a brioche shared at an outdoor cafe, a stroll through shady paths in the
bois
, a silk scarf bought at one of the swanky shops, a tender kiss exchanged as they crossed one of the old stone bridges spanning the Seine. Norman was almost like a youth as they explored the city, playful, teasing, so very handsome in the casual clothes he had purchased—white slacks, striped jerseys, leather sandals, very French. He was warm and protective and made her feel cherished, and he was a magnificent lover, masterful yet tender, tireless and strong and caring, so caring. The champagne was heady indeed, and she was deliciously inebriated.

June came and with it the heat and the hordes of tourists. No one remained in Paris in June, not if they could possibly escape. Gaby invited them to come to St. Tropez for three weeks, as Cliff was not to be married until the last of the month. They gratefully accepted. Norman rented a car and they took Highway 7 from Paris and they arrived in the late afternoon. Gaby had bought a rambling old villa near the beach, surrounded by cork oaks, after the huge success of her first novel. St. Tropez was a quaint, quiet fishing village then, rarely visited by the chic and successful, and it appealed to Gaby primarily because Colette had kept a house there for several years. Vadim filmed
And God Created Woman
in the town, and suddenly its sun-drenched beaches and the multicolored old houses climbing up the hillside became a mecca for pleasure-lovers who equated the town with sun, sin and sensuality. Hotels, shops and bistros sprang up like so many glossy mushrooms, prices soared, but even progress and the invasion of cafe society couldn't destroy the charm of the old port.

Gaby's villa was just outside of town, relatively isolated and with its own private stretch of beach, within easy walking distance through the pines and oak trees to all the shops and the marvelous old restaurants like L'Auberge des Maures, where Colette used to dine on crayfish and herb salad. The air smelled of pine and salt and iodine, wonderfully invigorating, and despite the trendy shops and new hotels and nightclubs, St. Tropez was incredibly, spectacularly beautiful, the sea gray-green, spangled with sunlight, the beaches blazing white sand, the sky a deep indigo canopy overhead.

Gaby was a perfect hostess, extremely casual, leaving her guests to do whatever they pleased, to swim, to sun, to shop, to join in the sorties to the nearby casinos in the evening or stay home. Her new lover, Jacques, was blond, bronzed and far more amiable than Alain, a handsome, charming brute who did stunt work in films and hoped to graduate to acting. His roving eye and his fondness for variety would inevitably lead to more heart-break, Carol knew, but for the moment Gaby basked in the glory of his strength and virile beauty. The wooden floors of the huge, sprawling old house were sprinkled with sand, damp towels and bathing suits scattered about, the place aflood with books, magazines and unexpected guests who dropped by for a few hours or a few days, plenty of room always available for the chums from Paris.

Carol and Norman bought unbleached cotton pants and rope espadrilles and explored the twisting streets and alleyways and the old port with its fishing boats and tar pots and nets hung out to dry, its smell of rotting wood and moss and barnacles. They wandered through the woods and fields surrounding the town, climbed the cliffs and enjoyed the magnificent vistas. They sunned on the beach and went to the restaurants alone or with the gang, went dancing in the clubs and wandered home late at night under the starlight, strolling leisurely along deserted beaches as waves washed the sand and le jazz hot spilled into the night from the clubs nearby. In their sparsely furnished room in back of the house, the windows open to the night, they made love in the old brass bed with its mosquito net while the crickets chirped beneath the flagstones outside and an owl hooted in the surrounding woods.

Carol was delighted when Cecil Saint-Laurent stopped by for a visit one day. His
Caroline Chérie
had been phenomenally successful a few years back, spawning a number of sequels and a film version starring Martine Carol. Still in his thirties, Saint-Laurent was an eminent historian, an authority on the theater and one of the most prolific writers in France, holding a record for noms de plume before his breakthrough with the Caroline series. His most recent heroine, Clothilde, a charmingly amoral lass who worked for the underground during the days of occupied France, was almost as popular as Caroline. Saint-Laurent had written the screenplay for
High Heels at Breakfast
, the comedy Carol had done with Daniel Gélin and Dany Robin, and he was one of her favorite people, astonishingly erudite, marvelously witty, with a wry, wicked humor quintessentially French.

“I loved the latest Clothilde,” Carol told him.

“The wench is wildly popular,” Saint-Laurent confessed. “I suppose it's all her love affairs. Many readers, alas, skip over my painstakingly researched historical passages to see who Clothilde will pop into bed with next.”

“She does it with such flair, Cecil. As did Caroline. Did I ever tell you
Caroline Chérie
was banned from the Ellsworth library? It was far too French for Kansas, I fear. I managed to get a copy and read it anyway. I was in the tenth grade at the time.”

“Most unsuitable reading matter for a girl that age, I must confess. Did it corrupt you?”

Carol smiled. “Judge for yourself. Have you written a new film for me?”

“I'm afraid not. Clothilde keeps me far too busy. Speaking of films, word is that the new Louis Malle is going to be a masterpiece. They're filming in Saumur, and several American companies are already fighting for distribution rights. It's going to clean up.”

Carol was silent a moment. Norman, who was sitting out on the terrace with them, gave her a peculiar look. Saint-Laurent had no idea she had turned the movie down.

“Who—who's playing the lead?” Carol finally asked.

“Moreau. She completed the Vadim film on a Tuesday, began the Malle on Wednesday. It's quite a role, I understand. Jeanne is already a star in France, of course, but this one is going to make her an international celebrity. It's that kind of film.”

Gaby insisted Saint-Laurent spend the night, and that evening the group went to the Hotel de la Ponche for a festive meal, wine flowing freely. Carol was unusually quiet, smiling her sphinx smile and not joining in the general merriment. Paris and his typewriter called, and Saint-Laurent left the next morning, promising to write Carol another comedy as soon as Clothilde permitted. That afternoon Carol and Norman went for a long walk on the beach, passing La Madrague, the villa Brigitte Bardot had purchased. Both were barefooted, Norman's thin white cotton pants turned up to mid-calf, Carol wearing a blue-green dress of handkerchief cotton with a cord sash at the waist, sea spray dampening the billowy skirt. Two gulls circled overhead shrieking noisily. A boat with an orange-and-gold striped sail bobbed against the misty violet-blue line of the horizon.

“I'm sorry about the film, Carol,” he said. “I should have insisted you go ahead and do it.”

“There—there'll be another film,” she replied.

“This one was the one you'd been waiting for. It would have brought you to the attention of the Hollywood moguls.”

“Jeanne will have the success. She deserves it far more than I do. I'm happy for her.”

“You wanted the part.”

“I wanted you more,” she told him.

“You've been struggling so long. I—” He hesitated, shoving a shell out of his path with his toe. “I'd like for you to give up the struggle, Carol.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have to fly back home at the end of next week for Cliff's wedding, as you know. I'd like you to come with me.”

“Norman, I—”

“I'd like to make it a double wedding,” he continued. “I want to marry you, Carol. It's no secret that I'm in love with you, and I think you're in love with me, too.”

“I am, you know that, but—”

“I know your career means a great deal to you, but—you could still continue to make films, and you wouldn't have to worry about money. I have no responsibilities whatsoever—Cliff has taken over all the business—and we could live anywhere in the world, wherever your work might take you.”

And what would you do while I was making films? How happy would you be with me getting up at four-thirty in the morning to be at the studio by six and coming home at seven or later with several pages of dialogue to memorize before the next day's shooting? How long before you would begin to resent my work, resent me for not giving you enough attention? How long before you would insist I give up making films altogether? I would be a rich man's wife. I wouldn't need to work. I might not even want to. It's a dream, Norman, a beautiful dream, and how I wish I could buy it, but … my career means too much to me. I wish it didn't, but I've worked too hard, too long, to give it up for … for a steady diet of champagne, no matter how glorious that might be.

Carol wanted to say these things aloud, but she didn't, yet Norman seemed to read her mind, seemed to understand her reservations. They walked on in the damp sand in silence, and after a few moments he reached over and took her hand.

“I love you, Carol.”

“And I love you. These—these past weeks have been the most wonderful I've ever had.”

“It could always be like this,” he said. “I—I won't pressure you about it, Carol. I—I'd just like you to consider it.”