She was looking straight at me, without smiling; she was seeking out some thought of mine that she wanted at all costs to eradicate. I was to forget her earlier reaction.
‘Yes, yes, she’s – um – a charming girl, really nice,’ I stammered.
She broke into a laugh and I went off to bed feeling very irritated. I fell asleep thinking of Cyril, who was perhaps in Cannes dancing with girls who were anything but nice.
I realize that I have been forgetting – indeed, that I have had to forget – the most important things: the ever-present sea with its incessant rhythm, and the sun. Nor can I bear to recall the four linden trees in the courtyard of a provincial boarding school and their scent, or my father’s smile as he stood on the station platform two years earlier when I left boarding school – a smile of embarrassment because I had plaits and was wearing a horrid dark-coloured dress. Then, once we were in the car, there had been his burst of sudden, triumphant joy because I had his eyes and his mouth and because I was going to be for him the dearest, most marvellous of toys. I knew nothing, and he was going to show me Paris and introduce me to a life of luxury and indulgence. I do believe that most of the things I took pleasure in during that period simply came down to money – the pleasure of fast driving, of having a new dress, of buying records and books and flowers. I am still not ashamed of enjoying those shallow pleasures, and anyway I only call them shallow because I’ve heard people say they are. It would come more naturally to me to regret or disown any distress or fits of mysticism I may have had. My love of pleasure and happiness constitutes the only consistent aspect of my character. Perhaps I haven’t read enough. At boarding school you don’t read, apart from ‘improving’ books. In Paris I didn’t have time to read: when my classes were over, friends would drag me off to the cinema; they were astonished that I didn’t know the names of the actors in the films. Or they would whisk me off to sit in the sun on café terraces; I revelled in the pleasure of being part of the crowd and having a drink and being with someone who would look into your eyes, take your hand and then lead you away from that same crowd. We would walk through the streets as far as my house. There he would draw me into a doorway and kiss me. I discovered the pleasure to be had from kissing. I am not able to put a specific boy’s name to these memories – whether it was Jean or Hubert or Jacques, which are names familiar to all nice young girls. In the evening I would advance in years and would accompany my father to parties that I had no business being at, all sorts of parties that I found entertaining and at which, being so young, I was myself a source of entertainment. When we got home my father would drop me off and, more often than not, would drive his girlfriend back to her place. I wouldn’t hear him come back in.
I don’t want to give the impression that he made any great show of pursuing his love affairs. All he did was simply not conceal them from me, or, to be more precise, he refrained from telling me things that, although they might have sounded acceptable, would have been untrue and would have been said merely to justify the frequency with which such-and-such a girlfriend had breakfast at our house or to justify her moving in with us – albeit, I’m glad to say, temporarily! In any case, I could not have remained in the dark for long as to the nature of his relationship with his lady ‘guests’, so-called, and he was no doubt anxious to retain my trust, especially since, by doing so, he avoided having to go to troublesome lengths to concoct stories. His calculation was excellent. Its only flaw was that for a time it gave rise in me to a certain disillusioned cynicism where love was concerned, which, in view of my age and experience, must have appeared rather more amusing than impressive. I liked to repeat to myself elegant formulations, including Oscar Wilde’s: ‘Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.’3 I made this dictum my own with total conviction, and much more firmly, I believe, than if I had put it into practice. I thought that my life could be modelled on it, that it could draw inspiration from it, that it could blossom out from it like a kind of morality tale in reverse. I forgot that there are times in life when nothing happens and when things don’t cohere. I forgot about everyday goodness. Ideally I envisaged a life of baseness and moral turpitude.
Three
Next morning I was woken by a warm, slanting ray of sunshine that flooded my bed with light and brought to an end the strange, somewhat confused dreams that I had been wrestling with. Still half asleep, I tried to brush the implacable heat away from my face, then gave up. It was ten o’clock. I went down to the terrace in my pyjamas and found Anne there, glancing through magazines. I noticed that she was lightly but immaculately made-up. It seemed she never allowed herself to be really on holiday. She paid no attention to me so I settled down quietly on a step with a cup of coffee and an orange and started into this delicious morning fare: I bit into the orange and its sweet juice spurted into my mouth. That was followed straight away by a gulp of scalding black coffee and then again came the coolness of the fruit. The morning sun was warming my hair and smoothing out the marks that the sheet had left on my skin. In five minutes I would be going for a swim. Anne’s voice made me jump.
‘Cécile, are you not eating?’
‘I prefer just a drink in the morning because …’
‘You need to gain three kilos to be presentable. Your cheeks are hollow and your ribs are showing. Go and get yourself some bread and butter.’
I begged her not to force me to eat bread and butter, and she was about to explain to me why it was essential that I do when my father appeared in his luxurious polka-dot dressing gown.
‘What a charming scene!’ he joked. ‘Two little brown girls in the sun chatting away about bread-and-butter matters.’
‘Alas, there’s only one little girl,’ said Anne, laughing. ‘I’m the same age as you, my dear Raymond.’
My father leant forward and took her hand.
‘As severe as ever,’ he said tenderly, and I saw Anne’s eyelids flutter as if they had been unexpectedly caressed.
I took the opportunity to make myself scarce. On the stairs I met Elsa. It was obvious that she had just got out of bed. Her eyelids were swollen and her lips were pale against the crimson of her sunburnt face. I nearly stopped her, I nearly told her that Anne was downstairs with a flawless, well-cared-for face and that she was going to tan prudently, with no ill effects. I nearly warned her to be on her guard. But she would no doubt have taken it badly. She was twenty-nine, thirteen years younger than Anne, and, as she saw it, that gave her a major advantage.
I fetched my swimsuit and ran to the inlet. To my surprise Cyril was there already, sitting on his boat. He came towards me looking serious and took my hands.
‘I would like to apologize for yesterday,’ he said.
‘It was my fault,’ I replied.
I did not feel in any way embarrassed by what had happened and I was astonished by his air of solemnity.
‘I feel very bad about it,’ he went on, pushing the boat into the water.
‘There’s really nothing to apologize for,’ I said cheerfully.
‘Yes, there is.’
I was already in the little boat. He was standing up to his knees in the water, leaning with both hands on its gunwale as if he were making a plea in court. I realized that he would not climb in until he had had his say, so I paid him the attention required. I knew his face well, I could make sense of it. It occurred to me that, being twenty-five, he perhaps saw himself as a seducer of minors, and that made me laugh.
‘Don’t laugh,’ he said. ‘I felt bad about it yesterday evening, you know. You have no protection against me, not in your father, nor in that woman. You have no example to go by. For all you know I could be a complete bastard, and you would be just as likely to trust me.’
There wasn’t even anything ridiculous about him. I felt that he was kind, and ready to love me, and that I would love to love him. I put my arms around his neck and laid my cheek against his. He had broad shoulders and his body felt hard against mine.
‘You’re very nice, Cyril,’ I murm
ured. ‘You’ll be like a brother to me.’
He put his arms round me with an angry little exclamation and gently pulled me out of the boat. He held me close to him, raised up so that my head was on his shoulder. At that moment I loved him. In the morning light he was as golden-skinned, as kind and gentle as I was myself. He was protecting me. When his mouth sought mine I began to tremble with pleasure, as he did, and we kissed without remorse or shame, simply searching each other out and murmuring from time to time. I broke free and swam towards the boat, which was drifting away. I plunged my face into the water to cool it down and regain my composure. The water was emerald. I was filled with a sense of perfect happiness and freedom from care.
At half past eleven Cyril went off and my father and his women appeared along the goat-track. He was walking between the two of them, supporting them, proffering a hand to each in turn with an unaffected graciousness that was all his own. Anne was still wearing her towelling robe. She removed it in leisurely fashion before our watching eyes and lay down on it. She had a slim waist and perfect legs, and was virtually without a blemish. This was no doubt the result of years of care and attention. I automatically shot my father a look, my eyebrow raised in approval. To my great surprise he did not return my look, but closed his eyes. Poor Elsa was in a terrible way and was plastering herself with oil. I reckoned it would take my father less than a week to … Anne turned her head towards me:
‘Cécile, why do you get up so early here? In Paris you would lie in bed till noon.’
‘I had studying to do there,’ I said. ‘It wore me out.’
She didn’t smile. She only ever smiled when she wanted to, never out of politeness like everyone else.
‘And what about that exam of yours?’
‘I flunked it!’ I said brightly. ‘I totally flunked it!’
‘You absolutely must pass it in October.’
‘Why must she?’ broke in my father. ‘I never had any qualifications myself and I live a life of luxury.’
‘You had some private means to begin with,’ Anne reminded him.
‘My daughter will always find a man to keep her,’ said my father gallantly.
Elsa started to laugh, then stopped when she saw the three of us looking at her.
‘She has got to study during these holidays,’ said Anne, closing her eyes to shut off further conversation.
I cast a despairing look in my father’s direction. He responded by giving me an embarrassed little smile. I had a sudden vision of myself faced with pages of Bergson,4 with those lines of black print jumping out at me and the sound of Cyril’s laughter drifting up. The very thought horrified me. I dragged myself over to Anne and called out to her softly. She opened her eyes. I leant over her with an anxious, pleading face, sucking in my cheeks even more to give myself the look of an overworked intellectual.
‘Anne,’ I said, ‘you can’t do this to me. You can’t make me work in this heat and in the holidays – they could do me so much good.’
She looked at me intently for a moment, then smiled enigmatically and turned her head away.
‘It’s my duty to do “this” to you, even in this heat, as you say. I know you – you’ll only hold it against me for a couple of days and you’ll pass your exam.’
‘There are some things there’s no getting used to,’ I said, no hint of laughter in my voice.
She responded with a look of amused arrogance and I lay back down on the sand, feeling very worried. Elsa was holding forth about the various festivities taking place along the Riviera, but my father was not listening to her. From his position at the apex of the triangle formed by their bodies, he kept looking at Anne’s upturned profile and her shoulders with that rather fixed, unruffled gaze of his, one that I recognized. His hand was opening and closing on the sand in a gentle, regular, tireless movement. I ran down to the sea and plunged in, lamenting the holidays that we might have had and were now not going to have. We had all the makings of a drama: there was a seducer, a vamp and a woman who knew her own mind. I caught sight of a beautiful shell-like object on the sea bed, a pink and blue stone. I dived down to get it. It was worn all smooth and I kept it in my hand until lunch. I decided it was a lucky charm and that I would hang on to it all summer. I don’t know why I haven’t lost it, because I lose everything. I am holding it today; it is pink and warm and it makes me want to weep.
Four
What surprised me most during the days that followed was how extremely nice Anne was to Elsa. Elsa’s conversation was sprinkled with numerous idiotic remarks but Anne never responded to them by uttering any of those curt phrases that she had such a knack for, and that would have made poor Elsa look ridiculous. I inwardly commended her for her patience and generosity, without realizing how much shrewdness was involved. My father would quickly have tired of any such savage little game. Instead, he was grateful to her and could not do enough to express his appreciation. In any case, this gratitude of his was only a cover. There was no doubt that, when he spoke to her, it was as to a highly respected woman, a second mother to his daughter. He even played that card by seeming constantly to put Anne in charge of me, making her to a certain extent responsible for the kind of person I was, as if to bring her closer and bind her to us more tightly. But he would look at her and motion to her as to a woman he did not know but whom he desired to know – to know, that is, in an intimate way. It was the same kind of considerateness as that I sometimes detected in Cyril, which made me want simultaneously to run from him and to lead him on. I must have been more impressionable than Anne. She responded to my father with an indifference and a serene good grace that put my mind at rest. I reached the stage of thinking that I had been mistaken that first day. I failed to see that this sheer good grace of hers was hugely appealing to my father. And above all there were her silences … silences that seemed so natural and so elegant. They formed a sort of antithesis to Elsa’s constant chirruping, like the contrast between sun and shade. Poor Elsa, she really did not suspect anything. She went on being loud and over-excited and still just as wilted-looking from the sun.
One day, however, she must have realized. She must have intercepted a glance from my father. I saw her murmur something in his ear before lunch. For a moment he looked surprised and put out, but then he nodded with a smile. At coffee, Elsa stood up, walked over to the door, turned towards us in a languorous way – greatly inspired, it seemed to me, by American movies – and, injecting into her intonation ten years’ worth of French amorousness, said:
‘Are you coming, Raymond?’
My father stood up, blushing almost, and followed her out, extolling the virtues of the siesta. Anne had not moved. Smoke curled up from the cigarette she held between her fingers. I felt obliged to say something.
‘People maintain that a siesta is very restful but I don’t think that’s true …’
I stopped myself immediately, conscious of the ambiguity of what I was saying.
‘Please,’ said Anne coldly.
She had not even taken my comment to be ambiguous. She had straight away seen it as being a joke in poor taste. I looked at her. She was wearing a deliberately calm, relaxed expression, which I found disturbing. Perhaps at that moment she was madly jealous of Elsa. A cynical idea for cheering her up occurred to me and I was pleased by it, as I was by all my cynical ideas. Bolstered by a sort of confidence and a sense of colluding with myself that was quite intoxicating, I could not resist putting my thoughts into words:
‘Mind you, with Elsa being so sunburnt, that kind of siesta can’t be much fun for either of them.’
I would have done better not to have spoken.
‘I detest that kind of remark,’ said Anne. ‘At your age it’s worse than stupid, it’s tiresome.’
I promptly lost my nerve.
‘I only said it as a joke. I’m sorry. I’m sure that they’re very happy really.’
She turned to face me with a weary look. I immediately apologized. She closed her eyes and began t
o speak in a low, patient voice:
‘Your idea of love is a rather simplistic one. Love isn’t a series of isolated sensations …’
It struck me that that was just what all my experiences of love had been: a sudden surge of emotion at someone’s gaze or gesture or kiss … Radiant moments without any underlying connection, that was all the memory I had of them.
‘It’s something different,’ Anne was saying. ‘It’s about constant tenderness, gentleness, missing a person … Things you wouldn’t understand.’
She made an evasive gesture and picked up a magazine. I would have preferred it if she had shown anger at my emotional deficiency, or had abandoned that air of resigned indifference. It struck me that she was right, that I lived on an animal level, letting myself be led by the wishes of others, and that I was a poor, weak creature. I despised myself, and it was terribly painful to me because I wasn’t used to that, to passing judgement on my actions, so to speak, as to whether they were good or bad. I went up to my room and mused a bit. The sheets were warm beneath me. I could still hear Anne’s words: ‘What’s different about it is missing a person.’ Had I ever missed anyone?
I can no longer recall the various events of that fortnight. As I’ve said already, I didn’t want to face up to there being any precise threat to our happiness. I do of course recall very clearly the rest of the holiday because I brought to bear on it all my attention and all that I was capable of. But as for those first three weeks, which were, in fact, three happy weeks … Which day was it that my father looked very conspicuously at Anne’s mouth? Was it the day he reproached her out loud for her aloofness, while pretending to laugh at it? Or when in all seriousness he compared her subtlety to the half-wittedness of Elsa? My peace of mind rested on the stupid notion that, if they had been bound to love each other, having known each other for fifteen years, they would have started sooner. ‘What’s more,’ I said to myself, ‘if it has to happen, my father will be in love for three months and Anne will carry away from it a few passionate memories and a mild sense of humiliation.’ Yet surely I knew that Anne was not a woman whom you could abandon just like that? But Cyril was there and he was all I needed to think about. In the evenings we would often go out together to nightclubs in Saint-Tropez, where we would dance to the swooning rhythms of a clarinet, murmuring words of love that I had forgotten by the following morning but that at the time had sounded so sweet. During the day we went sailing round the coast. My father sometimes came with us. He thought a lot of Cyril, especially since the latter had let him win in a race they had had, doing crawl. He called him ‘Cyril, my boy’ and Cyril called him ‘sir’, but I sometimes wondered which of the two was the true adult.