Blaze (34 page)

Nina watched for a while as the theatre emptied, then walked down the aisle and stood on the fringe of a tiny group of friends. A key light from the wings shone into the corner near where Lucien was and Nina, although unaware, was caught in its spotlight. Lucien glanced up, saw her, their eyes met and he froze. Her face was a vision from his past, as lovely as he'd always remembered her. He was stunned for a moment, then hurriedly thanked his fans and moved through them to Nina. They stood facing each other, silent, smiling. Then Lucien spoke.

‘It is you. Nina, my Nina. Look at you.' He spread his arms, words failing him.

‘Yes Lucien. It's me. Nina.'

He opened his arms and embraced her. They clung together, speechless, then drew apart, both shocked at how the years melted away and they were as familiar and as dear to each other as when they were young. ‘You haven't changed. You look utterly wonderful.' He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Let's leave here and go to somewhere we can talk.' He took her arm and Nina finally found her voice.

‘Don't you have work to do, people to see? I can wait . . .'

‘Everything has changed as of this moment. Come on.' He led her out of the cinema. ‘Supper. A drink. God, I'm shaking. How could you spring this on me?'

‘Would you have met me if I'd called and said I was here?' she asked gently.

He didn't answer as they walked along the street. ‘I don't know. It's been a long time since you broke my heart. What, thirty-something years?'

‘Lucien. It was not a one-sided decision. I suffered too. But please let's not go over all that,' she chided softly.

‘After so many years, it's hard to come face to face suddenly with someone who meant everything to you. I see you again and I hurt like hell.'

Nina stopped and withdrew her arm. ‘I'm sorry. Perhaps this is a mistake. It was an impulse. I just saw the notice a few hours ago . . .'

‘You didn't plan this?' He stared at her, then took her hand again. ‘In that case, we can't fight the gods. Are you alone? On business? Where are you staying?'

Nina smiled. ‘Le Chapeau Rouge.'

‘They have a superb restaurant.
Très bon
. Where will we start?'

‘A glass of champagne sounds an excellent place to start.'

His bantering manner faltered for a moment. ‘I meant, all the catching up.'

‘I know you did. And you mean other than what we've read about each other over the years.'

He nodded and tightened his hand on hers, unable to speak as a rush of memories flooded over him.

Nina had made a big impression on Lucien from the moment she'd asked him to free the dragonfly he'd been filming so long ago. They had met again at the premiere of Franco's film and naturally gravitated to each other. From there a friendship had developed based on their mutual interest in film and writing. But Nina's focus was always towards print, while he wanted to write a film and bring it to fruition.

They had explored Sydney, spent hours in dark coffee clubs around Kings Cross listening to jazz and folk singers. They'd found a wine bar frequented by Europeans that had flamenco guitar music and dancing. They stayed out late, talking endlessly of their past and plans for the future. Lucien was fascinated with Nina's memories of her early childhood in Yugoslavia.

‘It would make a wonderful film. Though obviously filming at present sounds dangerous. Tito's heavies would think we were making a propaganda film,' he told her. ‘But your Clara sounds a fabulous character.'

‘Would you like to meet her?'

‘Ah, I'm being taken home to meet mother. Is this becoming serious between us?' he laughed.

‘Of course not,' she'd quickly retorted, then seeing a flash of hurt in his eyes, added lightly, ‘only serious fun.'

Clara and Lucien had adored each other from the minute they met. Clara practised her poor French and flirted outlandishly, to Nina's amusement. Clara cooked Lucien sarma, rich and heavy with finely minced beef, pork and veal wrapped in pickled cabbage leaves and boiled, and told him stories of Nina's beautiful grandmother, whose own mother had been a medicine woman who'd lived in the forest and cooked up herbs and plants to cure everything from stomach ulcers to a broken heart.

‘Tell me how you and Nina escaped from Zagreb,' said Lucien, feeling enough a part of the family to venture into the territory of sensitive memories.

‘You've heard that story,' sighed Nina in exasperation.

‘But from your mother, there will be more detail. I want to soak it all in. Clara, one day I'll make a film about you and Nina.'

Nina smiled quietly as Clara rose to sing for Lucien. She had a glorious voice and from that moment on Lucien never tired of listening to Clara's Croatian love songs.

As the friendship between Lucien and Nina grew, their passion intensified. Lucien, learning Nina was a virgin, was gentle, loving and not insistent. But the fifties postwar puritanism was behind them and a new decade loomed as a time of freedom, a time to experiment, a time of hope.

Nina was promoted from cadet to D-grade journalist. And so, on the threshold of seeing her dreams become possible, Nina and Lucien swore that no two people had ever felt so committed in heart and soul, understood each other so well, or loved so hard. It had been Nina who shyly suggested they should make love. And when they did, it was not Nina giving herself to him, but a mutual expression of all that they felt for each other.

The very next time she spoke to her mother, Nina sensed Clara knew. She found Clara and Lucien talking quietly together as they looked at the small vegetable patch Clara nurtured in the tiny back garden.

Clara never said anything to Nina – their mother and daughter talk about sex and reproduction had been years before. It had been a frank exchange based on the old medicine woman's mystic as well as pragmatic practices that had been handed down through the family. Nina had been quick to realise she had a better grasp of sex and contraception than her Australian girlfriends at school. They seemed to find it hard to talk about sex to their mothers. Only with her best friend, Claudia, could she share whispered secrets and information.

Claudia was from Belgium and as the only two European girls in the class they had gravitated to each other. They discovered they had similar backgrounds – Claudia came from a well-to-do family from Brussels and they shared tastes, humour and thinking. It was to Claudia, now working as a doctor's receptionist in Macquarie Street, that Nina confessed she and Lucien were ‘now one'.

‘Did it hurt? What if you have a baby?' Claudia, despite her exterior sophistication, was suddenly a wide-eyed schoolgirl again.

There had indeed come a brief scare when Nina thought she might be pregnant and Claudia arranged a discreet appointment with the doctor she worked for. However, when Nina arrived for her appointment a flustered Claudia greeted her.

‘The doctor was called away to deliver a baby. His locum is here – Doctor Jansous.'

‘Well, that's all right. I'll probably never see him again.'

But Nina felt awkward and embarrassed when she saw the handsome doctor sitting at the desk. He was in his early thirties and looked coolly professional, even distinguished, in his crisp white shirt and navy tie with a private school emblem on it. Nina had stammered and blushed and looked down at her hands. He had helped her by asking softly, ‘Is the reason you're here something to do with a boyfriend?'

She'd nodded and he'd questioned her further, then taken a urine sample and asked her if she'd rather have the examination when she came back to find out the results. Both seemed relieved at the notion of postponing an internal intrusion.

‘My next question is . . . Are you going to continue to see this fellow? If so, he'd better take precautions. But, remember, you sit in the driver's seat. It will end up as your responsibility.'

‘Thank you, doctor. I'll remember that.'

‘Good luck, Nina.' He'd looked a trifle wistful as she left the office.

The urine test was negative and when she told Lucien, he'd hit his head with his hand. ‘God, I could kick myself for putting you through that. I promise to take care of things next time. That is . . .' he'd given her a worried, questioning look.

Nina kissed him softly. ‘Good. But my life is my responsibility, Lucien.' And she made a pact with herself that from then on she, and she alone, would decide her destiny.

Their love affair absorbed them deeply, and it stimulated rather than interfered with their work. Each was pleased to see how the other was progressing. Lucien had written a script and sent it to a producer in France in the hope of having it financed through an independent studio that supported new work. More and more of Nina's articles were being accepted and she had been promoted to a C-grade before her year as a D-grade journalist was up.

Six months passed and Nina's life was full, happy, busy. She was given her first out-of-town assignment and Lucien drove her to the airport. She was gone for a week and adored the pressure and madness of chasing and digging around for a story in the wild underground town of Coober Pedy. The quest for opals – the ‘fire in the stone' – drew a colourfully diverse group of dangerous misfits and adventurers. The magazine wanted the story behind the exquisite opal jewellery now in demand around the world. The rare black opals, the cream stones that flashed a red fire, the glittering rainbow colours of boulder opals fascinated Nina. What her editor didn't know was that the place harboured a hotbed of radical and energetic Yugoslavs, who continued their centuries-old conflict of racial antagonism – Serb versus Croat – even in remote Australia.

Nina, speaking Croatian, began to uncover a different story. One of heartbreak, loneliness, theft, sudden riches and sudden death. She wrote an article as searing as the sun in this desert place and as sensitive as the quiet outpourings from bitter, despairing, funny, optimistic and wildly eccentric characters who inhabited the cool limestone tunnels and caverns they called home.

She submitted this story to the
Weekly
's sister daily newspaper, which ran it as a big feature with her own photographs. Lucien had lent her an old Leica camera and taught her how to use it.

She was overflowing with ideas when she came back to Sydney. ‘Lucien, I don't want to stay in women's magazines. I want to travel and write about other places, other people.'

‘Be a photojournalist?' he asked quietly.

‘Yes, I know it's not considered a woman's job. But why not?' She caught a whiff of reticence. His enthusiasm was watery. ‘Don't tell me you think I should stay here writing about roses, knitting and legendary old ladies?'

‘No. I think it's a fine idea. It would be fantastic in fact. Seeing as how I'm going to be in . . . those places.' He looked away from her.

‘What do you mean?' She felt cold, a small shiver starting at the bottom of her heart.

‘Good news and bad news. I've been offered an assistant director of photography job. With Truffaut. In Paris. I have to leave in a week for pre-production. Franco helped me land the job. He re-edited my reel and sent it to them with a personal letter.'

‘It's what you've always dreamed of doing.'

‘Yes,' he said miserably.

There was a silence as the realisation of what this meant sunk in.

‘How long?' asked Nina finally.

‘Now there's the rub.'

Nina couldn't help smiling at this expression coming out in a French accent.

‘So?'

‘Indefinite. The shoot is eight weeks, but there is an offer to stay over there. My time here was only meant as a training period. I've graduated, I suppose.'

Nina fidgeted with the bracelet he'd given her. ‘I suppose I'd better look into finding work overseas.'

He grabbed her and hugged her to him. ‘I really adore you, Nina
mon bijou
. But I am not a whole person if I am not making my pictures, my little movies.'

‘And one day big pictures, eh?' She knew only too well how he felt. When a career was more than a vocation, when it was a passion, as important as breathing, when you woke every morning thinking of how and what you would create that day, then it was more than just a job. The childhood dreams and ambitions, suddenly in reach, could not be ignored. Nina felt it, breathed it, thought and dreamed of this too. ‘I know. I do understand, Lucien. We will find a way. We're soul mates. We will work this out.' But in her heart she knew, she was saying – I will find a way to fit my life to yours. And her heart ached with pain, anger and fear of losing this, her first love. A love that could never be matched.

They met again a few months later in Paris. Phone calls had been unsatisfactory due to the time changes and the pressures of their work. She was covering her first couture collections and it was a frantic, heady, fabulous time. She visited Lucien on his movie set and he swapped accreditation with a photographer friend and stood in for him at one of the showings. He managed to go backstage, and the photos he handed over to Nina were a scoop that once again marked her for promotion.

They stole several wondrous days together in a small hotel in Provence. But once they were rested, were satiated sexually and had eaten their way through the village menus, they were both anxious to pick up the threads of their careers. They parted, clinging and crying together at the train station at Marseilles, Lucien running along the platform, blowing kisses to her face pressed to the window, until the train slid from his reach.

And so they had gone their separate ways. There was no cut, no decision to do so. It just became harder to find time to be together. Lucien begged her to come to France and find work and, as she wavered, Nina was offered the position of features editor. Her flair and story sense were highly prized.

Then came a day when she picked up a rival magazine to see a picture of Lucien at his film premiere with his arm around his leading lady, described in the caption as his lady partner.