Wild Lavender (40 page)

The Count glanced at me, tears clouding his eyes. ‘It is a terrible thing to have to…Well, it is a terrible thing to be betrayed.’

I put my arm around him. This was not a time for formality.

‘I feel as if this is an evil dream and I keep hoping that I will wake up from it,’ he said. ‘I read, I go for walks, I meet old friends, but all the time I am aware of the pain in my heart.’

‘Is it true they are persecuting the Jewish people?’ I asked.

The Count nodded. ‘They are being beaten in the streets and thrown out of their jobs.’

I thought about Monsieur Etienne and Odette. I was glad to be French. ‘Such a thing could not happen here,’ I
said. ‘The French people would not stand for it. Catholics, Jews—we are all the same.’

‘We thought the same thing in Germany,’ said the Count. ‘But Hitler has persuaded people who normally would not hurt a fly to support his thuggery.’ He covered his eyes with his hands. ‘It makes me sick to think of that philistine ruling Germany. I ask myself, “How did this happen? Those of us who could have stopped it—where were we looking?” Suddenly artists, authors and intellectuals are delegated to second-rate citizenship and vendors of cheese and gherkins are the only ones who count any more.’

‘People in high circles support Hitler too,’ said André. ‘How else could he have got the chancellery?’

‘True,’ agreed the Count.

I looked around the apartment and noticed that the only piece of furniture in the other room was an iron bed with a leg missing. The fourth corner was supported by a chair. Despite the ramshackle nature of the apartment, it was cosier than those I had stayed in when I first came to Paris, but it was not comfortable enough for a sick man. I wondered if the Count had sufficient money. And if he didn’t, I wondered how I was going to get around his pride to ask him. André and I would be glad to provide him with a more suitable apartment.

André must have been thinking the same thing. ‘What do you intend to do?’ he asked the Count. ‘I have an apartment on the Right Bank that you are welcome to for as long as you want.’

The Count patted André’s wrist. ‘I am lucky to have friends like you and Simone. But I am all right. I have given instructions for the sale of my home in Weimar. Then I plan to move to Mallorca. I have always dreamed of retiring on an island.’

He managed a wan smile before his composure broke down. ‘No, that is not what I dreamed of at all,’ he said, weeping into his hands. ‘I wanted to live out my days in Germany.’

He said the name of his country the same way a mother might cry out for a lost child. It brought a lump to my throat. I glanced out of the window. The sky had turned overcast and reflected the grim mood of the day. A storm was brewing somewhere but I had no idea from which direction the tempest would come.

In 1934 my mother and aunt came to stay with me in Paris. I was busy with my show and it would be some time before I could travel to the farm again. It was not their first visit; Aunt Yvette loved Paris and took up André’s offer of a car and driver so that she and my mother could make day trips to Versailles and Senlis. My mother was more reserved in her appreciation of the city, and I sensed from the way she eyed the flamboyant café waiters and froze whenever she found herself caught in a pedestrian rush that she would never have left Pays de Sault if not for me.

She refused to let me buy her new clothes and we visited museums and ate at brasseries with my mother wearing her traditional Provençal dress. When people stared at her, she stared back. And it was always my mother who won the match. André took it in his stride and usually accompanied us to Provençal-style restaurants so my mother and aunt would feel comfortable. I loved him all the more for it—and my mother and aunt too. For while the food never came up to the standard of their cooking, they always ‘Mmm-ed’ and ‘Oh-ed’ as if they were tasting the finest cuisine in the world.

One day we came across Guillemette and Felix in Parc de Monceau. Guillemette had seen us approaching and tried to steer Felix off on another path, but was foiled by a group of nuns coming from the opposite direction. Guillemette stared over my mother’s head when André introduced her and even Felix, for all his snobbery, blushed at his wife’s rudeness. But if my mother noticed, she didn’t show it. She greeted Guillemette with the dignified manner
suited to her own position as a village healer and owner of one of the most successful lavender farms in our region. Guillemette’s eyes opened wide, unnerved at my mother having so easily seized the upper hand. To top things off, as we parted ways, Aunt Yvette whispered loudly to me that a tablespoon of olive oil a day was good for ‘that sort of thing’. By which she meant a cure for what she had interpreted as Guillemette’s case of constipation.

‘My mother and aunt might seem harmless but they both have a wicked sense of humour,’ I explained to André later, as he rolled around the sofa in his apartment laughing. He acted as if my mother’s high and mighty attitude and my aunt’s interpretation of Guillemette’s pinched face was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

‘They are so proud of you,’ he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘It shows in how they look at you.’

Poor André, I thought. I knew how much he would have loved to see that same pride in his father’s eyes.

One day, André took Aunt Yvette to the Louvre, leaving my mother and me to spend the morning alone together. I looked across the dining room table at my mother who was mending one of my nightdresses with her red thread. I might be a stage and film star but I was still the daughter of this quiet, mysterious woman. I wondered why she and my father had not had more children. Maybe the Fleuriers were not fertile. Aunt Augustine didn’t have any offspring and Uncle Gerome had never produced children with Aunt Yvette.

When I was a child, my mother was not like a normal woman to me. She had always been an enigma. But now that I was grown, I was curious to know more about her.

‘Maman, how did you save Papa’s life when the hospital had given him up for dead?’ I asked.

My mother continued to sew. She took so long to answer that I thought she mustn’t have heard my question. But finally she said, ‘One night when there was a full moon, I crept into the hospital with a basket of thirteen eggs. Your father was dying of an infection that had spread
throughout his body, so I opened the curtains to let in the moonlight and rubbed every inch of him with the eggs, chanting a healing prayer as I did so. I disposed of the eggs by burying them in various parts of the forest. In the morning, when the doctor came to see your father, he was sitting up in bed. Cured.’

‘Why didn’t his eye and leg heal?’ I asked.

She looked up at me and smiled. ‘I told you when you were a little girl that you were too logical. It is always black and white with you. That is why I am a healer and you are a singer.’

‘But why, Maman? Didn’t it test your faith when he did not heal completely?’

My mother tied off the thread and put her work down. ‘It strengthened it,’ she said. ‘Who knows the wisdom of why things are the way they are? I have never sought to change what is meant to be. I have only ever sought the wisdom and beauty in what is.’

I sensed that she was trying to teach me something but I found her lesson hard to understand. She considered my troubled expression, and reached across the table and patted my arm. ‘Your father was a good man from the beginning, but he became a better one because of his injuries. He may have had one eye less, but he saw things more clearly.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He became more visionary about the farm. Remember, it was your father who decided to plant lavender. He was no longer content just to follow in the footsteps of his father. He became his own man in a way that Gerome never did.’

At the end of the visit, André drove us to the station and helped my mother and Aunt Yvette with their bags. My mother smiled at André then turned to me.

‘I am getting old,’ she whispered. ‘I won’t be around for ever.’

I was too happy to have spent time with her and Aunt Yvette to let her words trouble me. ‘Maman, you are barely in your mid-forties.’

‘Our time in this world does not always correspond to our age,’ she said. ‘Get married, Simone. It is bad luck for you and André to love each other but wait for so long to make it a sacred union. Your father’s family was against me from the beginning, but we never let them stand in our way.’

I was flooded with gratitude and squeezed her hands. I had never told my mother about André’s family and their attitude towards me, or how it hurt to be snubbed. She had guessed from the rude way Guillemette had treated her that all was not well.

The train whistle sounded and I waved to my mother and Aunt Yvette. ‘I will see you at the farm in a couple of months,’ I called. ‘Give Bernard my love.’

My mother was right: the Fleuriers had opposed her as an outsider and yet my father had still married her. But there was some light ahead for me and André. He had broached the subject of his enduring love for me with his father, who had promised that if André and I were still together in the year André turned thirty, he would believe that I was a suitable match for his son. I told myself not to care about Monsieur Blanchard’s condescending attitude towards me. No matter how rich I became in my own right, he treated me as some sort of frivolous gold-digger. I couldn’t help wondering if Monsieur Blanchard would have relented at all if André had been his favourite son.

C
amille had returned from Germany in 1930, when the film industry converted to sound and she couldn’t get away with mouthing words any more. Whenever we bumped into each other at premieres and balls, we always said that we would catch up, but never did. That was, until the summer of 1935 when Camille was renting a villa in Cannes with her lover, Vincenzo Zavotto, of the Italian shipping family. She invited André and me to stay there in August.

‘I have never understood why you have anything to do with Camille Casal,’ groaned André when I told him about the invitation. ‘She is so condescending when she speaks to you, it is like watching a cat torture a mouse.’

André’s viewpoint surprised me. Was that how he saw us? When I was younger I had idolised Camille, but our relationship had changed over the years. My success had put us on a more even footing, although we were more like colleagues than friends. I would never confide in Camille the way I did Odette.

‘I have known her for years,’ I said. ‘She got me my first part with the Casino de Paris. I would be embarrassed to refuse her now.’

‘As you wish,’ he said, running his fingers through my hair. ‘I am happy to go with you. But be careful of her. She has a reputation of being a snake.’

André wasn’t saying anything about Camille that I hadn’t heard from other people. Her aloofness and opportunism hadn’t won her many friends. But I knew
about her daughter, and that made me interpret her motives differently. If I had given birth to an illegitimate child I would have had a family to help me. Camille had no one. She had been generous to me; I didn’t think it was asking so much to be her friend, at least socially.

The contrast between the blue of the bay in Cannes and the white-walled villa on the hillside reminded me of the two colours I had always associated with Provence. Camille and Vincenzo were sunning themselves by the pool when André drove the car up the gravel driveway. Vincenzo, hair slicked back and bronzed all over, leapt up to greet us. Camille slunk after him.

Vincenzo introduced himself in an affected French accent. He was a playboy from head to toe with his square sunglasses, belted swimming shorts and manicured feet. But he was likeable nonetheless when he flashed his pearly smile. I had heard that Camille still carried a torch for the War Ministry official, and only saw Vincenzo to keep herself amused.

Camille called the maid to bring us a drink. ‘You must be exhausted from the heat,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised that you decided to drive.’

‘We took our time,’ said André. ‘We had a few rest stops along the way.’

‘Very wise,’ said Vincenzo. ‘Come, have a seat. The maid will show you the rooms afterwards.’

We sat down at a table by the pool. The maid brought us glasses of Pernod. The aniseed flavour coated my tongue and took me back to Marseilles 1923, with me and Bonbon walking past the cafés of the Canebière. Bonbon was old now and her companions, Olly and Chocolat, were gone. Camille slipped off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. She was still beautiful but she was showing signs of age. Her skin wasn’t pure cream any more; there were freckles on her cheeks and lines around her eyes. But to my mind, she was still the ultimate screen goddess.

After dinner that evening, Camille fell asleep in the armchair. ‘She’s had too much sun,’ grinned Vincenzo. ‘You two should take a walk on the beach.’

After driving the past few days, the thought of stretching our legs was tempting and we rallied to his suggestion.

‘Smell this air,’ I said to André, running across the lukewarm sand to the water. The waves bubbled like frothy milk around my ankles. ‘And look at the sunset. It is so beautiful! I am sure that dusk in the south of France lasts longer than anywhere else.’

André stood behind me and put his arms around my shoulders. ‘It’s nice to be like this, isn’t it? To be out in the open space.’

‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘It reminds me of the first trip we made on the
île de France
.’

He pressed his cheek against mine. ‘Simone, I will be thirty in December. When we return to Paris, I am going to tell my father that we are getting married.’

I turned around and looked at him. ‘Do you think he will give us his blessing?’

He kissed me lingeringly. ‘Everyone knows that he will.
He
knows he will. I have chosen a beautiful and intelligent woman who speaks several languages and is an elegant hostess. You are three rungs higher than any of the daughters of his friends. The fact that you also love and understand me will make me a better businessman and a good father.’ André rested his chin on my shoulder. ‘He and the whole of
Tout-Paris
know that there has been no other woman except you.’

I turned back to the ocean. So this was it? How quickly life was changing! I had loved my time in the music hall and films but I couldn’t go on at that pace for ever. I was almost twenty-seven and I wanted at least four children. I imagined tiny pairs of hands reaching up to mine and four upturned faces, two girls and two boys.

‘I have already told my mother,’ André said.

‘What did she say?’

‘She said that we should look for a house.’

The sun seemed to stop in its tracks and the water around my feet rippled away. ‘Really?’

‘Maybe in Neuilly or Les Vésinet. Somewhere we can have a garden but not too far from the city.’

So our patience and faithfulness had paid off. Monsieur Blanchard could not deny us the happiness we had earned. I smiled, thinking how wonderful it would be to finally live with André as man and wife. I had loved him ardently for all the years we had been together, but sometimes I’d had doubts that Monsieur Blanchard would really agree to our marriage. And yet, somehow, it had worked out. I was going to be André’s wife at last.

André slept late the following morning, while I was wide awake before breakfast. I looked out the window at the teal blue ocean and was pleased to see Camille sitting by the pool, watching Vincenzo swim his laps.

‘You look as happy as a cat that has just caught a bird,’ said Camille, glancing up from her deckchair when I stepped onto the patio.

‘André and I are getting married,’ I said, forgetting André’s warning to be wary of her. We had waited long enough; I wanted to announce the good news to everybody.

Camille looked startled, as if I had somehow insulted her. ‘He asked you?’

I nodded. She turned her eyes towards the pool. ‘Are you sure? He might love you but I don’t see how his parents will approve. Those kinds of families marry for power.’ Her voice was dry and hard. I hesitated, not sure how to react to her less than enthusiastic response.

‘They have known for years,’ I said. ‘André’s mother adores me and his father said if we were still together when André turned thirty, he would give us his blessing.’

Camille looked unconvinced. She cast her eyes over me, taking in my figure and clothes. I felt like a young girl standing before the headmistress. I was telling the truth but
she made me feel as if I were lying. I realised that I was gaining what Camille had always wanted but never found: someone to give her and her daughter security. She had been ahead of me in every step in life, but in this one thing I was the winner.

‘Has Monsieur Blanchard formally given permission? Has he made a public announcement?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘All that will happen when André and I return to Paris.’

Camille’s face settled into a more serene expression but something lingered in her eyes. ‘Do what you want,’ she said, lying back in the deckchair and slipping on her sunglasses. ‘I just wanted to warn you that I know about those kinds of families. I can only predict things ending badly for you, even if they do let you marry him.’

I realised a rift had opened between us. Camille was not used to having anything less than the upper hand in our relationship. But now that I was about to marry André I felt more secure and less needy for her approval. I shrugged and turned to walk down to the beach. I would be alone with my happiness if Camille would not share it. But I could not shrug off the chill of premonition in her words.

As soon as we returned to Paris, André and I embarked on our search for a house. We marked our territory on a map and learnt the street names by heart. I kept my ‘film work hours’ but used them to contact real estate agents and inspect houses. We enlisted the help of Odette and Joseph, who we intended to put in charge of decorating and furnishing the house. The four of us travelled around Neuilly together. Paul Derval had suggested that we stick to street and house names with thirteen letters for good luck, but we let Kira be our guide. When we arrived at a house I set her down by the gate. If she lifted her tail and ambled inside, sniffing the path and following her nose to the
house, then we continued too. If she didn’t, there was no point in going any further.

‘You will like this one,’ said Joseph one morning as he drove us along a tree-lined street. ‘The exterior and the garden are perfect. I will have the interior stripped out to create something beautiful for you.’

We pulled up outside a house with oatmeal-coloured walls and white shutters and columns. The garden was overgrown with lilac and wild rose.

‘It is peaceful,’ I said.

I placed Kira near the gate where she hesitated a moment, sniffing the air. She was getting matronly in her middle age and stubborn. But then she moved forward and sauntered down the path to the front door. We cheered.

‘The interior colours are hideous,’ said Odette, while Joseph slipped the key into the lock. ‘Ignore them. Think of the layout.’

The entrance way was powder blue with gilt detailing and a black and white tiled floor. A chair sat in the corner with some dusty books scattered around it.

‘Imagine it all in beige and white,’ said Odette, leading us into the drawing room. ‘With natural wood, sleek lines and a couple of Directoire pieces and Japanese vases mixed to give it a soft touch.’

‘I like the sound of that,’ André said as we climbed the stairs to the upper floor.

Joseph threw open some double doors and led us into a light-filled room with a marble fireplace and bay windows. ‘The master bedroom.’

‘It’s huge,’ I said. ‘And it looks over the main garden.’

Joseph and André wandered down the hallway, opening the doors to the other rooms, while Odette and I circled the master bedroom and imagined the possibilities.

‘Jean-Michel Frank made me a suite with dark wood and ivory upholstery,’ said Odette. ‘Something like that would look good in here.’

‘Simone, come quickly!’ called André from downstairs. Odette and I found the men in a room with French doors
looking out onto the garden. André turned to me. ‘Wouldn’t this make a wonderful music room? Or a room for dancing? We could put in a polished floor and…
voilÀ
!’ he said, sweeping his arms into a waltz pose. Kira appeared from under a table, pranced across the floor and pushed on the doors before running out into the garden.

‘Can you get it fixed up by the end of the year?’ I asked Joseph.

‘Of course,’ he said, folding his arms and surveying the room. ‘I would be delighted.’

André and I smiled at each other. All that remained was to tell Monsieur Blanchard formally, which André intended to do the following month when he and his father travelled to Portugal on business.

I reduced my performing engagements and put my energy into the house instead. There was little structural work to be done, so the decorating progressed quickly. Odette’s colour scheme for the interior—butterscotch, vanilla, toffee, cocoa and cream—was so delicious-looking that sometimes I was tempted to lick the walls. The tones would ‘warm up’ the modern furniture which was to be finished in tortoiseshell, bronze and leather.

One afternoon, Odette and I were sitting on the terrace, mapping out designs for the garden. We wouldn’t do much to it until the spring, but with the house well on the way to being finished we wanted to keep going.

‘A visitor is here to see you, Mademoiselle,’ my maid, Paulette, announced.

‘Who?’

‘Madame Fontaine.’

I glanced at Odette. ‘André’s sister.’ I told Paulette to show Guillemette to the terrace and to make us some tea.

‘Should I leave?’ asked Odette.

I shook my head. ‘She didn’t make an appointment with me so why should you go? Besides, she is a dragon. I don’t
want to face her alone. I’m sure she is here to say something nasty about the house.’

Paulette returned with Guillemette. She had three sons now and motherhood had not improved her figure or her temperament. She barely waited for Paulette to retreat and for me to introduce Odette before she pointed an accusing finger at me and blustered, ‘So you think you have won, do you?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked her.

She took a step closer, trying to intimidate me. She was powerfully built but I was taller and I disliked her too much to be threatened by her. ‘You think you can wheedle your way into my family and drag us all down to your level.’

Odette let out a shocked hiss.

‘I haven’t wheedled my way into your family—’

‘You intend to marry my brother, do you not?’ she spat, making a gesture towards the house. ‘It looks to me as if that is your plan.’

I folded my arms. I remembered the way Guillemette had treated my mother and it infuriated me as much as if it had happened a moment ago. André and I had been happy together for ten years. Yes, I had made my career as a performer, but I had never danced naked. André was the only man I had ever been with. I had enough money of my own not to need any of the Blanchard family fortune. I simply wanted to marry the man I loved.

‘That,’ I said, ‘is none of your business.’

Guillemette’s eyes turned red. Her face became so flushed I thought she might burst into flames. ‘It is very much my business,’ she screeched. ‘I have three sons and I do not intend for them to have an immoral aunt. I have tolerated you long enough as André’s companion but I will certainly not tolerate you as his wife.’

Odette stood up. ‘Madame Fontaine, if you cannot speak calmly and with civility, I suggest you leave,’ she said.