Dolly (8 page)

But she was young: if necessary she would sell herself. She had nothing against this as an idea, but it seemed that surprisingly few men wanted to acquire her on a permanent basis. Perhaps they regretted the simplicity of dancing all evening with an attractive partner. In this way she retained as much of her virginity as would be useful to her when she was in a more serious marriage market, although for two
years she had been subject to such kissings and rubbings and explorations as necessitated a new make-up before she went home to her mother. She became aware that some men were clumsy when they made love, and she made a vow to seek refinement. In this way she knew she would respect her mother as well as herself. The time had come for her to take on the burden of their mutual existence.

When the Americans left their difficulties increased. The presumed Alsatian origins of their surname did them no good at all. Despised as Germans, hated as collaborators and dealers on the black market, they began to consider the possibility of leaving France. But where to go? Suddenly they had no friends. It was Dolly, with her new-found fluency in English, who suggested London. What could they lose? Fanny could make clothes for the English as well as for the French. Besides, they were very cold, and they knew that the English had coal fires. Once again their ignorance protected them. They shut up the flat and slipped away in the darkness of a winter evening. Three days later they were in the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria.

They were immediately homesick. This took them by surprise. They had thought to find a flat and settle in, but most of the buildings were bomb-damaged and those that were not were requisitioned. Wandering around the rubble-strewn streets they knew an awful fear, as if the streets were to remain for ever desolate. The people looked so cold and so poor that Fanny realised that her career was over, for who would want fine clothes when it had become a matter of pride, of patriotism, to look shabby? She was, to all intents and purposes, redundant, had brought about her own retirement.
She was not altogether sorry. Her eyes troubled her far more than she let her daughter know. But Dolly was aware of her mother’s drooping spirits, and made a decision to spend some of the money they had saved on a holiday for them both. In the foyer of the gloomy hotel she found a brochure advertising Christmas breaks at another hotel, newly re-opened, on the south coast. In this manner Dolly and Fanny Schiff found themselves under the same roof as Toni, Hugo, and the young Henrietta Ferber for three days which were to change Dolly’s life.

On their arrival they were immediately homesick once more. The desolate empty coastline, populated by stoical walkers, was minimally more discouraging than the other guests, large women with accommodating husbands who seemed content to doze in armchairs and let their wives conduct their social lives without their active assistance. Out of fear they stayed in their room until the evening, thus missing the afternoon tea hour at which Toni made a ceremonious entrance, flanked by her son and her teenage daughter. She knew the hotel well, had stayed there before the war, assumed that a certain deference was due to her, as indeed she did in most situations, and nodded graciously at one or two old acquaintances, women like herself who intended to keep a strict watch on their offspring. In consequence of this there were few young people about. Hugo, whose excuse for accompanying his mother was that he would have otherwise been alone in London, and hungry, since Nanny Sweetman was on holiday, was already bored stiff. But at the age of twenty-six he had inherited that agreeable pliancy, that almost meaningless acquiescence in a woman’s whims that
must have marked certain of his Viennese ancestors. Certainly he managed to keep a smile on his face in most circumstances. Few people managed to know what he was thinking, or indeed if he were thinking at all.

Fanny and Dolly dressed determinedly for dinner. Knowing that they had to stay, that there was no home awaiting their return, gave them a last spark of courage. In the restaurant they were circumspect, picking daintily at the terrible food. Dolly was wearing one of her mother’s most beautiful creations, a sea-green faille with a shawl collar and the new very full skirt. Fanny, discreet in black, looked like every respectable continental mother. They could scarcely bring themselves to glance at their fellow guests, but caught glimpses, out of the corner of their eyes, of maroon crêpe and cross-over bodices; they permitted themselves a desolate smile of recognition, as if to register the failure of what must have seemed their last, their final enterprise. But from the adjoining ballroom came the sounds of a band tuning up. That saved them. Dolly breathed more freely, and when they stood up to leave their table they seemed more erect, more confident. A few iron-grey heads were turned; one or two mute interrogations were exchanged. The first chord of the evening was struck, and the band broke into a fervent rendition of ‘Everything’s in Rhythm with my Heart’. This was judged suitable for an ageing clientele which might take a turn round the floor and would certainly reminisce about pre-war musicals.

Dolly installed her mother in a chair and waited in an agony of impatience on the edge of the floor. She wanted to dance; she would even dance with the fogies who waddled
behind their wives and beat time complacently to the music. As she was the only young woman in the room and Hugo was the only young man it was inevitable that sooner or later they would dance with each other, but first they had to do their duty, Hugo to his mother, Dolly to various roguish oldsters on whom she bestowed her prettiest smile. My mother, who was present on this occasion in an entirely subordinate capacity, told me that at this stage in her life Dolly was ravishing. When I knew her she was stocky and highly coloured: she had a middle-aged hairstyle and carried a handbag like the Queen’s which swung vigorously as she walked. But when she was twenty-six (except that she gave it out that she was twenty-three) she was dark and slim, with big rueful eyes and an ardent expression. It was this expression, in which could be discerned a rapturous pleading for pleasure, which so appealed to men. It was more virginal than they knew; it was the expression of a girl at her first dance, a turning up of the face, a smile of anticipation, a readiness for, and an expectation of, enjoyment, and more than enjoyment; it was a plea for every kind of fulfillment. Dolly turned up her face as others might make a wish, with a longing for happiness, a trust that if certain words were imparted, certain promises made, all her dreams would come true. Many years later I was to see that expression again, whenever the afternoon faded into evening, whenever an engagement, however apparently dull or worthy, was announced. When the lights were switched on and the stage was set Dolly would brighten, sit up straight, metaphorically square her shoulders, and ready herself for pleasure.

By the time I knew her that expectation of pleasure was
more limited. She was no longer a girl with a painful need for validation, for status, for security, but a respectable and slightly disenchanted matron. Yet still she brightened at the thought of diversion, and if her diversions were now notional, almost meaningless, she retained the hope that somehow, against the odds, one such diversion might change her for the better, might propel her into a more satisfying life, among happier, more beautiful people. The smile that came unbidden to her face and transformed her rather hard features into something ardent and melancholy gave her a look of distinction that was almost troubling, putting one under an obligation not to disappoint, to be generous, lavish, indulgent towards the person whose smile expressed such yearning. To her great credit Dolly was ignorant of this. She believed that any good fortune that came her way was richly deserved, but remained unaware that another face had peered through the resolute social face she presented to the world, and thus quite misjudged the effect she produced, congratulating herself on her good sense, and not knowing that for a moment she had shown herself to be the most passionate and most languishing of maidens.

‘You could ask her to dance,’ Toni instructed her son. She had remarked upon the beautiful dress, the respectable mother in discreet black; she had noted the expression, and some impulse from her distant girlhood prompted a faint smile. Hugo, who obeyed his mother unhesitatingly when it cost him nothing to do so, advanced obediently. When the girl was in his arms his own expression changed to one of surprise, admiration. They were marvellous dancers. Hugo had been trained by his mother, Dolly by the Americans. He
was naturally inclined to the Viennese waltz, but she soon indicated a few new steps and he followed her at once. If she wanted to be thrown about and flung over his shoulder she managed to conceal the fact. This no doubt set the pattern for their life to come. On that evening there was no hint of discord, nor, to Dolly’s credit, was there ever to be any open disagreement: one simply knew her to be bored. Gradually the jolting middle-aged couples left the floor. Dolly and Hugo danced on and in the end were rapturously applauded. Hugo led Dolly over to his mother.

‘You dance very well, my dear.’

‘Thank you,’ said Dolly in her pretty accent, which she was to lose so quickly.

She introduced her mother, who nodded and smiled. As Fanny spoke no English many an awkwardness was evaded.

‘Such a beautiful dress your daughter is wearing,’ said Toni loudly, with exaggerated intonation, as if speaking to a native from the other side of the world.

‘My mother is a well-known dressmaker in Paris,’ said Dolly.

‘Ah, yes,’ replied Toni. ‘You have so many clever dressmakers. Chanel. Patou.’

‘C’est Monsieur Dior maintenant,’
offered Fanny shyly. In her tentative smile could be seen the ghost of her daughter’s desire. But where Fanny’s smile merely offered friendliness Dolly’s offered ardour. By the end of the evening some sort of accord had been reached, although it was still unformulated. Toni saw in the girl a prospective daughter-in-law whom she could almost take to as a daughter, that is to say as a replica of herself: that hint of appetite, that imperious raising
of the head she recognised as if they had come from her own background, whereas my fifteen-year-old mother, looking shy and pallid in an awkward dress made out of parachute silk, would obviously, so she thought, never do her credit and could be left in the care of Nanny Sweetman. And the name, Schiff, like a taste of home … He might marry her, she thought. She saw no difficulty in persuading him to do so, she who had held his hand until he was eleven years of age.

On the floor again Dolly and Hugo were striking up an even more rapid acquaintance. Dolly, flushed with pleasure, pressed Hugo’s hand: his own hand returned the pressure on the small of her back.

‘Tomorrow?’ he enquired. ‘Or, better still, tonight?’

‘I am here with my mother,’ she explained.

He made a face. ‘So am I.’

She liked him: he was kind. He would do her no harm. He was a good son and could therefore be counted on to behave decently to her mother. She saw, with her expert eye, which had been trained on several previous men, that he would be a complaisant husband. She determined to marry him. She would not necessarily love him, but he was the equivalent of the bar in Fréjus, the restaurant in Saint-Raphaël, coveted in a fantasy by Lucette and Michèle, those girls for whom she retained a feeling of the utmost friendliness. She would put up with the old lady and the little girl: she would have to. What else could she do? She did not have the courage to return to Paris, even if that were a serious option, as it no longer seemed to be. Her mother’s eyesight was now too bad to permit of further work and therefore of further income:
Dolly, in the room they shared, had come upon her trying to read the printed sheet giving the times of the evening’s festivities on the dressing-table, her head bent fatally close to the paper, her face, when she raised it, distant, puzzled. Her mother’s eyesight was the deciding factor. I have no doubt, even at this distance, that Dolly was an honest woman. I simply believe that her scruples derived from a different set of circumstances. As far as I know she was never unfaithful to my uncle after their marriage. But he failed to banish that look of expectation which she habitually wore, as if it were time to get dressed and to make her way back to the Place de la Concorde and the Crillon and the evening’s pleasure. In time, of course, that look of expectation had acquired a patina of trust that was almost childlike in its simplicity.

In the course of conversation—again, on Toni’s part, articulated very clearly—Dolly pulled matters together by saying that they were staying in an hotel in London while looking for a flat. Did Mrs Ferber perhaps know of anything? Toni did. She was the owner of the house in Maresfield Gardens in which she occupied the ground-floor flat. A military man and his wife had the first floor, but the second floor was momentarily free. There was now no need for her to advertise, or rather to take in someone on the recommendation of her friends: she mentioned the empty flat to Dolly who clasped her hands with joy and embraced her mother. Toni liked that; she liked to see that closeness, which she had never felt for her own daughter, but which she was suddenly prepared to feel for Dolly. In fact, of the two of them, Toni and Hugo, Toni was the more infatuated. She had been bored for years, with a deadly boredom, of which her son’s
boredom was a mere shadow; even the war had bored her. She wanted a lively pretty companion, a vivid presence about the place. She had no doubt that if Dolly married Hugo they could all live together in her flat, with the mother conveniently put away upstairs; in that way there would be someone to look after her when she became ill, although at the age she was then she regarded that eventuality as remote. In the meantime she and her daughter-in-law could spend days in town, looking through the stores, taking coffee in the new cafés that were beginning to open; they could have delicious feminine discussions, while Hugo went to work and returned faithfully each evening. Eventually, when petrol came off the ration, she would buy Dolly a car, so that Dolly could drive her out into the countryside, in which, it might be noted, she had never taken the slightest interest. In this love affair between Toni and her prospective daughter-in-law Hugo was slightly overlooked. Fortunately he was acquiescent. Nothing could please him more than to have his mother’s approval for something so attractive and so simple: a very pretty girl who liked him, and who apparently liked his mother. Sexually Hugo was not enterprising, nor had he been given much chance to experiment. He was to remain in awe of the fate which had presented him with Dolly, and consequently never to understand her. She in turn kept her thoughts to herself.