Authors: Kate Beaufoy
‘And the wash of waves. That’s soothing, too.’
They had wrapped themselves up warmly in eiderdowns purloined from the linen cupboard, and were sitting on the terrace drinking wine. It was getting dark, and the faint sound of the sea came to them from the beach below.
‘Can we throw parties?’ she asked.
‘Why not? And when our guests have gone we shall laze like cats.’
Jessie smiled, and linked his arm. ‘Smell the woodsmoke!’ she said, breathing in. ‘I wonder where it’s coming from?’
‘The farm, up above. It beats Parisian smog, that’s for sure.’
‘I wish we didn’t ever have to go back. This place feels like home already.’
‘It’ll feel even more like home next time we come,’ Gervaise told her. ‘You can have free rein to play at being hausfrau, and do what you like with it.’
Jessie turned to him, astonished. ‘You mean, decorate it?’
‘Yes.’
‘However I want?’
‘Every single room. Apart from the one on the top floor: I’m bagging that as my studio.’
‘What heaven! We shall make it a perfect dove of a house!’ Jessie clapped her hands. ‘And the garden, too? May I have carte blanche there?’
‘You mean the jungle?’ He gave her an indulgent smile. ‘You’ll need help.’
‘We could hire a gardener.’
‘And a housekeeper. And a cook.’
‘Where will they all live?’
‘There’s a boathouse on the foreshore. It could be refurbished.’
Jessie had noticed the boathouse on the way to the beach earlier, and thought what an ideal hideout it would make for a child. She could convert it into a Wendy house for a little girl, a den for a boy. She could decorate it with a frieze of daisies, or of toy soldiers. It could be a repository for shrimping nets and beach balls and buckets and spades and kites! Maybe one day there’d be other children, half brothers or sisters for the child she was carrying. Jessie slid a glance at Gervaise. She knew she couldn’t prevaricate any longer, that it was time to broach the subject neither of them cared to talk about.
She took a deep breath. ‘Which room shall we use as the nursery?’ she asked.
Gervaise didn’t speak for a long time. By the time he did – in a very grave voice – Jessie’s mouth had gone dry and her nails were digging like poniards into the palms of her hands.
‘Jessie,’ he said. ‘I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m very glad you brought the subject up now, because I’ve outlined a plan that I think will suit both of us. I would like you to give the baby over to foster care—’
‘Foster care? But why? The baby has a mother and a . . .’
‘I know what you were going to say. The baby has
no
father, Jessie. The baby’s father might as well be dead.’
‘No!’
‘I can’t be a father to a child that is not mine.’
‘Oh! Oh, God – Gervaise—’
‘Hear me out. It’s not uncommon – I know lots of women who have left their babies with foster parents in order to pursue their own lives, and personally, I’m not sentimental about children. They’re hardy little buggers.’
‘But—’
‘Listen to me, Jessie! I’m not suggesting that you abandon your child – don’t get me wrong. What I am suggesting is that he – or she – comes to live in Provence. It’s far healthier for a child to grow up in the clean air of the countryside – can you imagine the poor creature stuck in Montparnasse in the smoky heart of Paris? And then, when we come here to escape from the city – which I have no doubt we shall want to do regularly – you can see it as often as you wish. You’re in the fortunate position of being able to have the thing reared without inconvenience; most women who find themselves solitaire can’t afford that luxury.’
The
thing
.
Oh, God. Jessie felt as if she’d been kicked in the gut. White-faced, she stared at him. ‘You called my baby a “thing”.’
‘Well, it
is
a “thing”, darling. Until it – until the birth we haven’t a clue what the gender might be.’
‘I hope it’s a boy!’ she hurled at him. ‘Men can do whatever they like in this world, it seems to me. I’m a so-called “emancipated” woman, but I’m still expected to be a good girl and do as I’m told!’
Gervaise sighed. ‘I’m not
telling
you to do anything, Jessie. I’m simply being pragmatic, and outlining my thoughts on the subject – which is more than you’ve ever done.’
‘I thought you were open-minded about such things,’ she retaliated.
Gervaise gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Open-minded! You come into my life pregnant with another man’s child and blithely assume that I’m comfortable with the idea! Don’t you think that smacks a little of presumption? Oh, Christ! Please don’t cry.’
‘I can’t help it. I can’t help it!’ Sobbing, she stood up from the table and stumbled to the sea wall. Her baby! The child she and Scotch had made when they loved each other still, before Finistère . . .
But wait. He
hadn’t
loved her then. He’d known full well that he was going to betray her. Scotch hadn’t loved her since Chambéry, since the Italian girl. He had called Jessie his elixir of life while she had been his muse and lover, but he’d clearly drunk his fill of that particular elixir.
How had he left her? Had he looked down on her sleeping face before he’d walked out of the room on the top floor of the Hôtel Simonet? Had he tiptoed out like a coward, terrified that she would wake and confront him?
He hadn’t loved her then. The child she was carrying was not a love child. But she could feel the flutter and pulse of life in her womb, and some instinct told her that the baby they had conceived together would thrive and flourish in spite of everything.
Jessie clutched the balustrade until her knuckles went bone white, gazing down at the churning sea below, feeling as though she’d been set adrift. She and all the other lost souls, the walking wounded, all the ghosts of the bloody corpses scattered about Europe in the aftermath of the war, all the weeping widows and pale, hungry children. How to go on living in such a world where men began wars, men would not end wars, men were stupid enough to mythologise wars: men who were motivated solely by greed and power and money. Jessie suddenly felt strangled by the need for Scotch; just to hear his voice might bring some ease. She had sunk so low and now she was sinking again, deeper and deeper, because to relinquish her baby meant that she was cutting for ever the ties that bound her to him.
But she couldn’t look back. It hurt too much to look back. Gervaise was right. She knew in her heart of hearts that she couldn’t expect him to be a father to a child who was not his. She forced herself to think rationally, forced herself to be objective. What had he said, when he first offered ‘Perdita’ the job? ‘
I shall want you to keep me amused. A sense of humour is an essential trait in a
maîtresse en titre . . .’ He had ditched his former muse, Violetta, and his own daughter Ghislaine. He might not have any qualms about ditching her, too.
‘If I refuse to give my baby up, what will happen, Gervaise?’ she asked, trying to sound dispassionate.
‘I think you know the answer to that.’
Jessie could hazard a guess. If she refused to relinquish her child, she would have to renounce her privileged, very lucrative position as muse to a major artist, and once that happened she and her child would be quite destitute. They would fetch up in some dosshouse as bad or worse than the Trois Moineaux, some place reeking of unwashed bodies and the sour miasma of drunkenness, in a street where tank wagons emptied the cesspools by night and couples copulated on corners.
‘You say I may see my baby as often as I wish when we come here?’ she asked, without turning to him.
‘Of course.’
‘Could – he – she – stay here at the villa while we’re in residence?’
There was a pause while Gervaise considered. ‘I don’t see why not. As long as it doesn’t get in my way.’
‘And may I ask you for a gift to bequeath the child? I couldn’t bear to think that – should anything happen to me – the poor creature would have no inheritance.’
‘Of course. What do you want?’
‘I want one of your Picassos.’
Gervaise whistled through his teeth. ‘Astute girl. Which one?’
‘I want the blue pierrot.’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘It’s yours,’ he said. He joined her by the balustrade and kissed her, first on the forehead, then more passionately on her mouth. When he broke the kiss, he took her by the hand and drew her back to the table where they’d been sitting over their wine. Refilling her glass, he gave her a sympathetic look. ‘I am sorry to have given you this ultimatum. I know it can’t have been an easy decision to make.’
With an effort Jessie smiled, then raised her glass to her lips to hide the fact that her smile had faltered. She hadn’t made any decision, she thought as she sipped the red wine that had come from the vineyards of a revered local château. That luxury had been denied her. She had simply had no choice.
IN PARIS, IN
the Hotel George V, Lisa met her director Emile Legrandin for the first time. It was a trying experience: Legrandin appeared so indifferent to Lisa as to be offhand, and she found herself doing all the small talk, and asking all the questions.
‘What is likely to be the duration of shooting?’ she enquired, trying to appear business-like.
Legrandin gave a Gallic shrug.
‘As you know, I’m contracted for three months, not including weather cover. But my agent can renegotiate, if you feel you need more time.’
‘
Non. Ça marche
.’
‘When might I meet my fellow actors?’
‘In Rouen.’
‘Oh. I thought a small party might be a good idea, in order for me to become acquainted—’
‘No party will be necessary.’ An assistant entered the room and passed Legrandin a note. He scanned it briefly, then rose to his feet. ‘Enjoy your stay in Paris, Mademoiselle. A car will collect you from the hotel and take you to Normandy on Monday. We start shooting on Tuesday morning.’
And that was it.
The following few days were spent undergoing make-up tests at the hands of a supercilious
maquilleuse
. Costumes and wigs had been hired rather than made to measure, so at least she didn’t have to spend too much time under the scrutiny of Wardrobe, who just gave her a perfunctory once-over before dismissing her and lapsing once more into trilling, songbird French. Lisa zoned out: she didn’t want to know what these women were saying about her.
She spent a lonely weekend wandering through Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, ducking into museums when the rain became too relentless, retracing the path that her mother had taken with Scotch in the early days of their honeymoon, referring constantly to her letters.
How different – how very different – had her mother’s life been back then! Blithe, buoyant, irresponsible – Jessie and Scotch had been jazz-age gypsies, free to travel where and when they wanted, unconstrained by finances simply because they had so little.
And when Lisa returned to her hotel room with its oversized four-poster bed and pink marble bathroom and view of the grand Avenue George V, she wondered why she was feeling so damnably miserable.
Rouen bore no resemblance to the busy, vibrant town described by Jessie in her letters home. It had been badly hit in the Second World War, and the citizens had a hopeless, beleaguered air about them. Lisa was reminded of London the last time she had visited, and wondered how long it would be before life in Europe returned to any semblance of normality.
The movie was to be shot in colour, but it might as well have been in black and white, so grey was the landscape and so funereal the lighting. Lisa needn’t have drawn attention to the weather cover clause in her contract, because Legrandin’s misanthropic perspective made it redundant. He wanted his film to have an earthy realism, and took a perverse delight in sending his cast out in rain, hail and sleet. The actors were perpetually bedraggled, bad-tempered and muddy; Lisa’s boots were so soaked through that she feared she was in danger of developing trench foot.
Few of them spoke English. When Lisa questioned this, she was told it was no matter; their voices would be dubbed post-production. So while Lisa’s lines were scripted in English, the rest of the cast spoke theirs in French, which only added to her confusion and increased her stress levels. Even the dog that was assigned to her – a little greyhound called Djali – hated her, and bared its pearly fangs every time she approached.
In the evenings she would retire to her hotel room and write to Róisín, hungry for news of her daughter. Her cousin’s letters were all she had to look forward to, and she read and reread them avidly. From Róisín, Lisa learned that Cat was intelligent beyond her years and wickedly charming. She had her own hen, who laid a brown egg for her every day, she had a kitten that slept in her bed and a pet lamb that followed her everywhere (‘just like Mary!’ Róisín wrote). Róisín enclosed with her letters photographs of a sweetie-pie with curls like a miniature Rita Hayworth, a drawing in crayon of a donkey that showed a precocious talent, and on one occasion a lock of red-gold hair fell from between the folded sheets of paper. Lisa promptly visited a jeweller’s shop in Rouen, and bought a locket in which to safeguard the precious keepsake.
On the day filming wrapped – a week ahead of schedule – she quit the set shivering in camisole and starched linen petticoats, suffering a blinding headache from the wig that was cruelly pinned to her scalp, nursing a nip from Djali and beard rash from the actor playing Rodolphe. When she left Rouen, streaming with a cold and running a temperature, neither Legrandin nor any of her fellow actors turned out to say goodbye to her.
At a loose end in Paris, Lisa cast around for some way of keeping herself amused. She thought of going to London, but because she was so under the weather she did not wish to be an additional burden on Eva, who was still getting by on meagre post-war rations. She thought of maybe travelling south to Italy, following in the footsteps of Jessie and Scotch, but lacked the energy to arrange the itinerary. She would have loved more than anything to make an impromptu visit to Ireland, but she was bound by the promise she had made to Róisín, and besides, Cat had measles.