Falling asleep in her sparsely furnished bedroom, hearing only the regular breathing of Doodie and that bell ringing every quarter of an hour, Daphne thinks about Fernande Yvon, about her theatricality, her sophistication. On waking in the morning, her first thought is for Mlle Yvon, asleep on the second floor, just above her, in the apartments reserved for the school’s management. What is Mlle Yvon’s life like? What secrets does she keep? Daphne wants to know everything about her. This desire consumes her, gnaws at her, and she knows that all of this is much, much more than a mere crush: it is fascination, it is adoration, it has turned into obsession.
One evening, Mlle Yvon accidentally drops her handkerchief on the mezzanine. Daphne discreetly picks it up. What a precious relic, this still-warm handkerchief, steeped in her scent. During an outing to Paris, Daphne buys a light, lemony eau de toilette, and pours a few drops onto the handkerchief. Later, in the back room, she hands the little cloth square back to the headmistress with a sort of courtly gallantry, like a gentleman spreading his cape over a muddy puddle so that his beloved may pass over it without dirtying herself.
Daphne’s days revolve around Mlle Yvon’s reactions. If Fernande pays her no attention, if she seems preoccupied, Daphne is dismayed; if she sends her a look of complicity, one of her devastating smiles, Daphne feels like singing and dancing on the lawn under the spring sun that shines down on Fleury.
Several times, she is bedridden by colds; hardly a surprise, as Daphne has always been fragile. She receives little gifts from her friends: books, chocolates. But what give her the most pleasure are the handwritten notes from Fernande Yvon, signed F.Y., slipped beneath her door. One day, picking up one of these cards from the floor, she is the recipient of an unctuous smile from Marcel the groom, who is always lurking where you least expect him. He asks her if everything is all right. She glares at him disdainfully. What’s it to him? In almost perfect French, she replies that everything is fine, thank you, and slams the door in his face, holding the precious card to her heart.
In April 1925, Daphne returns to Cannon Hall for the Easter holidays. Her parents are struck by how different she is: distant, mysterious, and thinner (and she had no need to lose weight). Her face is pale, her eyes dreamy. Her sisters are in on the secret: Daphne has told them about Mlle Yvon and what an important part of her life she has become. To her parents, she says nothing. She spends hours on end in her room, writing in her journal. She stands in the hall, waiting impatiently for the mailman every morning, and the only mail that matters to her are those letters from the other side of the Channel, the envelopes covered with French stamps and that instantly recognizable handwriting. She counts the days before her return to Camposenea. But didn’t Daphne originally want to stay for just one more term? No, she wants to stay until the end of the year, to perfect her French, to master her grandfather’s native language. Has she made new friends? Yes, lots of friends, she says nonchalantly. A secret smile. They know nothing. They must never know anything.
At Camposenea, spring has arrived, and Daphne finds Meudon and Fleury overflowing with greenery, flowers, scents. When she walks down Rue Banès to the train station, she always admires the houses that neighbor Camposenea: the villa La Source, with its lofty pediment and its orangeries, the Marbeau property and its chapel, the Villa Paumier and its immense gardens, its elm-lined paths.
On warm evenings, after dinner, Mlle Yvon takes her Firsts to the back of the villa, up the hill, close to the remains of Mrs. Panckoucke’s Chinese pavilion. There, they can sit down and contemplate the view of Paris. The air is deliciously perfumed. Here, the truth game takes on another dimension: the questions are intimate, unnerving. If you were invisible, what is the first thing you would do? What is the most foolish thing you have ever done? If you were a meal, what would you be, and how should you be eaten? What is your most shameful dream? Have you ever swum naked? When was the last time you cried, and why? If you were a man, what is the first thing you would do? Who is your favorite person at Villa Camposenea?
Some girls turn white, or scarlet, and flee. Mlle Yvon snorts with laughter, her bright red fingernails covering her pretty mouth like a fan. My God, how timid these English girls are! All except for Miss du Maurier. That flint-sharp look in her blue eyes, that resolute chin, no, she is not afraid of anything, that one, and yet she still has all the charms of a girl of noble breeding, her finesse, her femininity. No question shocks or intimidates her; she gives as good as she gets with her replies, so assured and provocative, and then asks questions that disarm even the boldest of the other girls.
Tod is the only one who knows about the next stage of their relationship. Daphne is less open with her sisters, saving all her secrets for the letters she writes to her former governess, in which she admits her deep crush for Mlle Yvon. Could the headmistress be “Venetian”?* she wonders. It certainly seems that way! Mlle Yvon turns up in their bedroom most unexpectedly and is at her most alluring in the taxi on their way home from the opera. She even goes so far as to embrace the young girl in the backseat, something Daphne finds simultaneously sordid and thrilling. Oh yes, Daphne has been lured straight into the net, and she describes it all rapturously to Tod. Is it love? There is something secret, clandestine, compartmentalized about it: a whirlwind of intimate emotions, a powerful current that surges constantly, but of which she must not allow anything to show on the surface, about which she must say nothing, let nothing slip out; it is in the same disturbing, arousing vein as what she went through four years earlier with her cousin Geoffrey, an experience she has never forgotten. Some of the girls are jealous of her closeness with Mlle Yvon. Daphne has noticed those sideways looks, those whispers, that suspicion.
The finishing school will soon close its doors for the summer, and Daphne is filled with apprehension at the thought of this: How will she cope without the presence of the woman she now calls Ferdie? Daphne has seen her every day now for nearly six months, in classes, in the corridors, on outings, in the back room, at meals, and yet she is never alone with Mlle Yvon. Only in her journal does she dare to describe all her feelings, unburden herself freely of this passion. In her letters to Mlle Yvon she shyly attempts to reveal, without saying anything overtly, a hint of the fizzing effervescence she feels; she writes these letters in French, as best she can, taking care over her spelling, her grammar. Mlle Yvon responds to these letters with a simple look—a brief, discreet look, to which the others are oblivious—but in those green eyes is a promise that Daphne intercepts and treasures.
A wild hope is born in Daphne when Mlle Yvon suggests she come to spend a few weeks at the end of July in the Massif Central, where Ferdie is going for a treatment. Would Daphne care to go with her? Accompanying Ferdie to a spa resort in Auvergne? Is she dreaming? She immediately writes a letter to her parents, making clear the advantages of going on vacation with her headmistress. After all, what could be better for the progress of her French? To Gerald and Muriel’s stupefaction, she happily gives up the prospect of a vacation in the sun of Capri and Naples in favor of studiously following Mlle Yvon to La Bourboule.
* * *
Daphne still can’t quite believe it. There she is, in the middle of summer, at an altitude of over twenty-five hundred feet, her lungs filled with pure air, looking down on the misty mountaintops of the Massif de Sancy, with Fernande Yvon by her side. Daphne’s parents gave in so easily. In one of her most recent letters, her mother tells Daphne she thinks it an excellent idea, this studious vacation in La Bourboule; Mo has been told by her dear friends the P. family that it is a charming place and so fashionable: Sacha Guitry, Buster Keaton, all the top people go there. Daphne must write to tell her all about it! Daphne smiles as she replies to her mother’s letter. The Italian mail is slow, and letters from her family arrive in Auvergne in dribs and drabs, while hers take a long time to reach her parents in Capri.
She is free. Never before has she felt like this, so independent. Every morning, Fernande goes off for her treatments at the Gra
nds Thermes, a large gray building topped with surprising Oriental-style domes. What kind of treatment is Fernande having, exactly? Daphne doesn’t know and Fernande has not told her. This adds to the mystery. While she waits for her friend’s return, Daphne writes to her sisters, to Tod, and then fills pages and pages in her journal. Later, she goes for a walk in the town’s peaceful, flower-lined streets, where she admires all the elegantly dressed people strolling around. She visits the neo-Romantic church built in white lava, the former casino with its pagoda-style roof that has been converted into the mayor’s office. She crosses a bridge over the Vendeix, her fingers brushing the mosaics on its parapets. She sits on a bench and basks in the sunlight. She observes the tall sandstone façade of the Grand Hotel Metropole, with its black pointed rooftops, and spots her room, up there, on the fifth floor, with the wrought-iron balcony. She remembers the train journey that brought them here, her and Fernande. It was the first time Daphne had gone on such a long trip with someone who did not belong to her family. They’d had to catch a train at Austerlitz station and then, eight hours later, change at Clermont-Ferrand to take another, smaller one, which took them to the station here. Daphne watched the countryside move past, glorying in the wild, mountainous landscape. She had never seen the center of France before, imagined that even her grandfather had never ventured as far as these green peaks.
They arrived at the hotel late and rather tired. She recalls her first dinner, alone with Fernande, far from Camposenea, far from everything. In the dining room, filled with the hubbub of conversations among the well-dressed guests, they ate a plate of Auvergne cheeses, a salad, and thin slices of local cured meat. Fernande, as talkative as ever, had made her laugh with her puns on the name Bourboule, inspired—according to their maître d’—by the Celtic name of the god of spring waters, a certain Borvo. They are in communicating rooms. Through the closed door, that first night, Daphne heard the quiet coughing of the headmistress, the sound of running water, then the squeak of bedsprings. It took her a long time to fall asleep.
At noon, Fernande returns from the spa, her skin pink and smooth. They eat lunch in the hotel, then take the cable car up to the plateau of Charlannes, which towers more than three thousand feet over La Bourboule. Daphne enjoys herself in the little oblong-shaped train that climbs up the mountainside like a caterpillar, digging a path through the huge pine trees. Up at the summit, the view is breathtaking. They sit at a shady terrace of the Hotel du Funiculaire, order tea, converse, and read. Since she has been here, Daphne has been reading, in French, the books of Anatole France, Paul Bourget, Jean Richepin, and, above all, de Maupassant. Reading occupies a large part of each day. She is pleased to be able to read in the language of her ancestors, and when she senses someone looking at her in the cable car, with Une Vie or Bel-Ami under her arm, she thinks that the person glancing at her must imagine her as French as Fernande.
They speak French together, always. From time to time, Fernande will correct Daphne’s pronunciation of a word, a turn of phrase, but she is proud of her young student. It is generally Fernande who speaks and Daphne who listens, religiously. The headmistress is extremely chatty, and her young disciple never tires of hearing her deep voice, her throaty laughter. Fernande’s sense of humor is irresistible, and Daphne is in thrall to her mischievous mind. They laugh loudly and heartily together. Between cups of tea, Fernande tells Daphne about her childhood in Avranches, in Normandy. Her father, a gardener named Ferdinand, was hoping for a boy, Fernand; oh well, she was called Fernande! Her mother, Maria, was originally from Aesch, in Switzerland; she is very close to her. As for Mlle Yvon’s love life, it is like a novel. Daphne wonders if she is exaggerating a little bit. She had a fiancé, who died at the front; a cousin, who was madly in love with her but for whom she felt nothing; and then a dear friend, a young actor (quite well-known, according to Ferdie) who died in a car accident. And that’s without even mentioning the fathers of some of her students, who have tried to seduce her behind their wives’ backs, and that Parisian banker, so attentive, who was prepared to offer her financial advantages in return for … A shrug, a suggestive smile. Never has Daphne had such conversations with another woman. She is not shocked, simply dazzled. Why is Fernande, who will be thirty-two on her next birthday, still not married? She doesn’t dare ask. Why this interminable list of admirers? Does she imagine she is going to impress her young student?
Daphne says nothing, listens closely. In spite of the attraction she feels for Fernande, she realizes she is capable of distancing herself, as if observing their table from afar, and later she will describe in her journal the precise content of these conversations, Fernande’s expressions and mannerisms, but also the surrounding décor, the golden slowness of those afternoons in Charlannes, the play of shadows on the tea set, the persistent resinous smell of the pine trees, the laughter of the guests at nearby tables. She is learning how to narrate, recount, seize upon the tiniest detail, and transcribe it on paper, and even if no one else reads her journal, she takes a vital pleasure in this.
Fernande is affectionate, tactile. When they go out for walks, she holds Daphne’s arm, leans against her; a passerby might see them as two old friends, happy to be together again. Sometimes, during meals, her fingers brush Daphne’s. When Fernande tells a joke, when she bursts out laughing, she puts a hand casually on Daphne’s shoulder. Does she have any idea of the excitement her touches provoke? Describing each scene in her journal, Daphne wonders: In a distant future, reading these impassioned pages devoted to Ferdie, will she feel embarrassed? But for now, she is only eighteen, and her whole life is before her.
At the day’s end, the mail is distributed at the Hotel Metropole. Daphne is moved by a letter from Angela, in which she learns that Katherine Mansfield, her literary idol, who died two years ago, had once lived in Hampstead—in Portland Villas, very close to their own home. That window she saw, from her bedroom, lit all night, that window belonged to the novelist’s house, a coincidence she finds magical. Fernande reads; frowning, she sighs, drums her fingernails on the table. Her mood is changeable, oscillating between giggles and preoccupied silence, and then mutating into irritated impatience. What is in those letters? Why doesn’t she smile anymore? When Daphne asks her, Fernande replies that she is annoyed by “un rien”—a small thing, of no importance—and this response unsettles her young student. What is this “nothing”? Is it a word, a line, a disappointment, an unkept promise?
During dinner, while Fernande remains walled up in her discontent, Daphne again distances herself from the table, unknown to her companion, projecting herself outside the scene, as if photographing it with words. Nothing escapes her: the bitter creases around Fernande’s mouth, the way she keeps shooting disillusioned glances toward the guests at the table facing them, the yawn she conceals with a weary hand, the forced smile that appears on her face when the mayor of La Bourboule, Mr. Gachon, who is dining at an emir’s table, comes over to greet each guest. Then, as if by a miracle, without Daphne understanding why, Fernande’s face relaxes: she gives her student a sly elbow when a woman wearing too much makeup walks past, takes another slice of tarte tatin. The pianist plays “Plaisir d’Amour,” a tune Daphne loves. Her eyes meet Fernande’s.
The vacation takes place under the August sun, punctuated by Fernande’s treatment, outings to Charlannes, the reading of books. Each night, Daphne listens to the sounds coming from the room next to hers, her face turned toward the door that separates them. Soon, they will go back to Paris together, from where Daphne will return to Hampstead and Fernande to Normandy. After that, they won’t meet again until classes start at Camposenea in early October. Two months without seeing each other, without speaking. Only letters. She stares at the door. Last night, Fernande half-opened it to say good night, dressed in a bathrobe, her long black hair flowing over her shoulders. Daphne was reading de Maupassant in bed and this sudden appearance startled her. She dropped her book. Then the door was closed again. She didn’t get a wink of sleep.
Was it a message? An invitation? Daphne gets up, draws back the curtain, looks through the window. It is late, almost midnight. The square outside the hotel is deserted. She sees the bench where she sometimes sits during her walks, near the bridge. A pale moon shines in the night. Not a sound. She turns around, looks at the communicating door. A thread of light is visible underneath it. So Fernande is not sleeping either.
Suddenly Eric Avon’s voice whispers into her ear, and it is his boy’s heart that she feels beating, very strongly, inside her. Go on, Daph; open the door. What are you waiting for?
* * *
It is their last day at La Bourboule. Tomorrow morning, they must wake early to catch the train. Their suitcases are almost packed. Daphne and Fernande have afternoon tea at Maison Rozier, the tearoom with the gold-and-blue mosaics in its storefront. They are sitting upstairs, overlooking the street and the passersby. Daphne is reading de Maupassant’s Le Horla; Fernande is writing to her mother. From time to time, Daphne looks up from the page at the headmistress, observing her suntanned skin, her black, shining hair, her plump little hand, and she wonders, her mind buzzing, if it can be seen by other people, if the couple sitting opposite them have any idea, if it’s written on their faces, hers and Fernande’s, if their passion can be detected, their desire sensed. But no, nothing is visible, all they see is a woman in her thirties, concentrated on her letter, and another woman, younger, very studious, book in hand. The others see nothing, notice nothing; their secret is well guarded. As they leave the little town the next morning, Daphne knows she will not return to La Bourboule, but this is the place where she will have lived the most intense moments of her young life, instants that—even if they remain confined to the pages of her private journal—will have forged her.