Authors: Kate Beaufoy
‘What does it mean?’ asked Lisa.
‘That is all we ever had to go on,’ said Nana. The old woman’s tears had dried, but her eyes and nose were red and swollen from the coarse fabric of her apron. ‘I’m sorry for the outburst. You see, no body was ever recovered. Nothing was recovered. Just her shoe. Oh! Excuse me.’ She wiped her eyes again, then retreated from the room, untying the strings of her apron as she went.
‘Do people think that my mother committed suicide?’ Lisa asked Hélène.
Hélène shrugged. ‘Eden Roc is a common spot for such accidents. Just last week a boy fell from there.’
‘Was she unhappy, do you know?’
‘Nana says that she was the blithest creature – a perfect homemaker, a perfect hostess. And Gervaise adored her. You can tell from the painting he made of her. But then, I never showed Nana the journals.’
‘Journals.’ An image flashed before Lisa’s mind’s eye, of her mother covering page after page of lined paper with frantic scribbled words. ‘I remember Mama used to write in red books – like schoolchildren’s exercise books.’
‘Yes. They’re there, still, in the villa. I wanted to throw them away when I first came across them, but Raoul said no, that you might come back some day, and that they were yours by right.’
‘You’ve read them?’
‘I’ve . . . dipped into them. Forgive me. I will make sure that they are returned to you. I’m glad I took Raoul’s advice – they were not mine to dispose of.’
Lisa turned the page of the scrapbook. There, gazing out at her was the sepia image of a woman, her face bronzed but only half visible under the brim of a straw hat. She recognised her at once. ‘That’s her!’ she said. ‘That’s my mother. And that must be me.’ Sprawled in Jessie’s lap, dressed in a baggy striped jersey swimsuit, a miniature Lisa squinted at the camera. ‘I remember that beach parasol.’
‘And there you are again.’ Hélène pointed at a snapshot on the opposite page. ‘With Raoul! How cute you were!’
The photograph showed a lanky, dark-haired boy holding aloft a fish on the end of a line. Standing next to him, Lisa was saluting the trophy with a grin so broad she might have caught it herself.
‘Raoul,’ she said, with a smile. ‘He taught me to swim.’
‘How skinny he looks there!’ remarked Hélène. ‘Did you meet him earlier?’
‘No.’
‘We must remedy that.’
Lisa turned another page. Some postcards had been pasted in, and a small bunch of dried violets. There was a family photograph of the Reverdys and one of –
‘The boathouse!’ Lisa recognized a wooden structure, with a veranda and a gingerbread-style fascia and a wide slipway leading down to the beach. ‘I remember playing there.’
‘It looks rather different now.’ There was a smile in Hélène’s voice. ‘It’s had a facelift.’
But Lisa wasn’t listening. She was examining a dog-eared photograph that had come away from its mount. It showed an attractive young couple in bathing suits sitting on the steps of the boathouse, she with bobbed hair looking challengingly down the lens, he focused on something beyond. Between them stood a fair-haired girl of about four or five years old, dressed in a sailor suit. On the back of the photograph was written in faded pencil:
Scott, Zelda, Scottie. The Plage, Salamander Cove, 1926.
‘Scottie!’ exclaimed Lisa. ‘That little girl – I remember her: we used to play at being cavemen together.’ Looking at the photograph more closely, she noticed the assorted paraphernalia that surrounded the family: the dolly that Scottie was clutching between her hands, the soda siphon, the upturned cocktail glass. ‘Scottie,’ she said again, feeling as if she were putting together the pieces of some peculiar jigsaw. ‘Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s daughter. How extraordinary.’
A creak sounded on the stair, and Nana came back into the room. She had discarded her apron and tidied her hair, and she was carrying a stout cardboard cylinder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, affecting a brisk assurance. ‘It was stupid of me to be so maudlin. Of course, this should be a happy occasion.’
Laying the cylinder on the table, she went to the dresser and returned with a tray set with a bottle of Calvados and several small glasses etched with a pattern of vines.
‘Go now, Hélène,’ she said, ‘and bring the family here. I would like to make a toast.’
‘Calvados! You should feel honoured, Lisa,’ Hélène said, as she rose from the table and made for the door. ‘That’s reserved for very special occasions. The last time we had it was at our wedding.’ She flashed Nana a smile. ‘Are you feeling better, my darling
belle-mère
?’
‘Yes, yes. I’m fine. Now shoo, and be discreet about it. We don’t want the entire
arrondissement
descending on the kitchen.’
Nana took a seat beside Lisa, easing herself onto it with an ‘Ouf!’, and reached for her spectacles. ‘You’ve been looking through the album,’ she observed.
‘Yes. It’s strange to see things and people that were so familiar once.’ Lisa turned another page. ‘Look! There’s Papa Reverdy!’
‘Pierre. God bless his soul. I haven’t sat down with this book for a long time.’
‘I’m so sorry, Nana, to hear that he died.’
‘He left me with a bonny souvenir, all the same.’ Nana took up a photograph that was lying loose between the pages, of a burly boy of about five.
‘Your son?’
‘Yes. My youngest, Bruno. He’s in charge of the farm now.’
‘I thought Raoul would have taken it over, being the eldest?’
‘Raoul went to university instead. The Sorbonne.’ Nana picked up another photograph. It showed a man leaning over a drawing board, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow; a pencil tucked behind his ear, a cigarette between his fingers. ‘This is him.’
Lisa recognized the man who had smiled at her from across the room earlier, and felt a little ridiculous. How snooty he must have thought her!
‘He is an architect, now,’ added Nana, proudly.
‘That’s some achievement!’
‘Yes. Both my boys have done well. I am lucky to have them alive and with me still. So many of our Resistance fighters died.’
‘They were part of the Resistance?’
‘Yes. They were both
maquisards
. As was Monsieur Lantier. Ah – that reminds me – you must not forget this. It belongs to you.’ Nana rolled the cardboard tube across the table towards Lisa.
‘What is it?’ asked Lisa.
‘A painting. Your mother gave it to me for safe keeping.’
‘Is it one of Gervaise – Monsieur Lantier’s?’
‘I don’t know. I looked at it once, only. I did not care for it myself. However, your mother was insistent that you should have one day, and I am glad to be able to restore it at last to its rightful owner.’
Before Lisa could inspect the contents of the tube, Nana gave a little exclamation, and laid a hand on hers. ‘You wear your mother’s ring!’ she said.
‘Yes.’ Lisa held out her hand so that Nana could inspect the gold circlet with the dark stone.
‘Oh – it is the very same one! I am so glad you have it still! I remember, I put it in an envelope along with your birth certificate when you left us. And a little porcelain monkey.’
A sudden fracas from the courtyard announced the arrival of Danielle and Nicole. Baby Sophie’s head was lolling on her mother’s shoulder, and the flower in Nicole’s hair was wilting. They were followed by Hélène and the man whom Lisa now knew to be Raoul. Then came a big, handsome fellow who was introduced as Bruno, and a trio of chattering children.
Nana called for silence. Then she, cleared her throat and handed the Calvados to Bruno, who solemnly uncorked the bottle and commenced pouring. ‘I would like to make a speech. Today is memorable for all of us in this room, not just because it is the christening day of our darling Sophie, the newest addition to our family . . .’
At this, Danielle held a groggy Sophie aloft, and Bruno, who had just handed his sister a glass, said: ‘Ick, Dannie! I think her napkin might need changing.’
‘It is also the occasion of a very special reunion,’ Nana resumed, sending Bruno a look of reprimand. ‘I have gathered you around this table to welcome back a former family member. Please, all of you, raise a glass to Miss Lisa La Touche, whom we knew as Baba.’
The family toasted. ‘To Baba!’ said some, and ‘To Lisa!’ said others, and Lisa felt a strange sensation of being simultaneously a guest, and a cherished member of a family at last.
DURING THE SUMMER
months spent at the Villa Perdita, Jessie hoped that Gervaise might execute another portrait of her and Baba, but he did not. The arrival of Scotch’s child had changed something in the dynamic of their relationship.
As agreed, Gervaise had transferred all responsibility for the refurbishment of the villa to her. She replaced the mahogany chaise-longues and uncomfortable bergères with sofas loosely covered in pale linen and armchairs plump with squashy cushions. The heavy curtains and drapes, so essential when the villa had been a winter retreat, were ousted in favour of muslins and calico, and sailcloth in blue and white stripes. The opulent carpets were supplanted by simple rugs, the carved marble fireplaces ripped out and refashioned into niches for
objets trouvés
. For these, Jessie trawled the flea markets and junk shops, as she and Scotch had done during their time spent in Rouen. She remembered how he had haggled for curios in his execrable French – always knowing what was genuine and what was not: a blue wooden rosary, a box inlaid with mother-of-pearl, an old silver buckle, an ivory paper knife, the tiny jade charm that she still wore on a silk ribbon around her neck.
The backstreets in Antibes yielded up all kinds of treasure to Jessie. She found a hammered-pewter-framed looking glass, a painted Russian birdcage, an oriental silk parasol. She found vases and jugs that she filled with flowers from the garden – peonies and roses and heliotrope. In the weekly market she acquired everyday objects that she made extraordinary: earthenware bottles into which she decanted expensive bath oils, wooden curtain rails which she festooned with silvery chimes. Wicker shopping baskets became repositories for scented soaps, while enamel basins from the
quincaillerie
were reinvented as punchbowls, and brushed steel flasks as cocktail shakers. Jessie was, she knew, making the kind of home she had once dreamed about settling down in with Scotch.
Gervaise spent much of his time sequestered in his studio, or sitting over pastis with his artist friends in Cannes and Antibes. Sometimes he would leave for Paris without her, and then she delighted in fetching Baba down from the Reverdys’ farmhouse. As her daughter grew and learned to walk and talk, there were sandcastles on the beach, games of hide-and-seek in the garden, stories at bedtime, teddy bears’ picnics, and lots and lots of kisses and cuddles and tickles and laughter.
Nicole and Dannie doted upon their foster sibling, but it was Raoul whom she worshipped. The boy had little time for his sisters, dismissing them as ninnies, but Baba was special because she had no fear of the water. He taught her to swim, and often took her fishing. Madame Reverdy frowned upon these activities, denouncing them as hoydenish, but Jessie loved to watch her daughter splashing about in the shallows in her vest and knickers, her tawny hair bleached into tiger stripes under the Mediterranean sun, her limbs burnt berry brown. Baba would help Raoul clear the beach of seaweed, too, dragging long strands of the stuff above the high-water line, where she would plunder it for crabs and shells and other treasure trove.
Periodically during July and August, Gervaise would come back from Paris with parties upon endless parties of people. Since the arrival in the Hôtel du Cap of Gerald Murphy and his wife – a couple of wealthy Americans who had come to Antibes with plans to build a villa – spending summer in the South of France, which had once been considered unthinkable, became fashionable overnight. A procession of socialites, artists, writers, musicians and hangers-on paraded through the Riviera and posed on the Promenade des Anglais. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald drank their way through the afternoons and on into the early hours of the morning while Coco Chanel bought a plot of land to construct a retreat. Endless visitors ‘dropped in’ and stayed for days on end.
Jessie’s life became a blur, a kind of hedonistic treadmill interspersed with the joyous, precious, increasingly infrequent moments she grabbed with Baba. Her daughter was not interested in the company of the adults who frequented the villa: when she wasn’t pretending to be a pirate or a mermaid or a savage, she preferred to go back up the hill to the farmhouse, where there was a barn to play hide-and-seek in, and chickens to chase, and a kitten of her own to take to bed at night.
And that is when Jessie took to writing to Scotch in red hardbacked notebooks, with a bottle of wine to hand, late at night when guests had retired to collapse comatose or make illicit love.
I long & long to know about you, Scotch – where you have been; where you will go; how you are in health & spirit & what thoughts you have had about all sorts of things.
I love loving you, love having loved you. Lots of the time I feel quite isolated & afloat in an endless unknown sea – very very lonely – or, rather, alone & terrified of – I wish I was quite sure what. I know what death in life really is: I died on the beach at Finistère the day you left me, I died in that hellish hotel on the rue Coq d’Or, I died when Gervaise told me I must give up my – our – child. But this is a new high in lows.
I seem to be made of mist. And yet . . .
I have our daughter with me & no one can feel completely dead while someone so perfectly simple & beautiful is around – not so simple, either! Baba is quite the most wonderful character of a tiny girl & so lovable & attractive – I say this in a completely unbiased way! She is adorable, & such heavenly fun – trotting around after me & talking a lot of glorious jargon – a mix of French and English.
And then one day – after the departure of the renowned diva Mistinguett – another visitor arrived at Cap d’Antibes.