The Suitors (25 page)

Why was Béno intervening between us and Cheryla? Did he find our questions out of order, indiscreet? Or was he trying to remain her exclusive spokesman? Given the number of rich and famous people in his circle, she was really only one celebrity among others, but then I realized that perhaps wealth does not prevent stinginess, so it was entirely possible that Béno wanted to keep his glittering friends for himself.

“… Do you know that her career sales over twenty-eight years add up to more than two hundred million albums? That she’s just begun a tour that will take her to 85 countries for 101 concerts? Which means that if she catches a cold, eighty people in her management team hold their breath, because if she cancels a tour date, millions of euros go up in smoke.”

And there we were, exclaiming in the usual astonishment expressed at such revelations. I still found it strange, though, that Béno kept insisting on talking up Cheryla instead of letting her chat with her table companions the way she seemed to want to do. Was I the only one who thought so? There was no point in turning to Marie, who was gazing at Béno like a moonstruck calf.

“… Her jet, the equivalent of a Gulfstream V, is a Global Express, made by Bombadier. Jay, her pilot, is a Vietnam veteran, a brilliant guy and supernice.… You know, she’s just back from South Africa where—she’s too modest to say so—she donated the profits from her first concert to Nelson Mandela for his foundation. And she visited two orphanages for children with AIDS and distributed food to the needy in Soweto.…”

But Frédéric had had enough and pleaded, “Cheryla, have pity—hire him as your press agent, enough already! Or we’re going to feel obliged to kiss your feet and won’t dare speak a single word to you anymore.”

And thank goodness for Frédéric’s outburst, because it shut Béno up and allowed Cheryla to get Charles talking about his gorillas.

“He’s racking up points, ol’ Goat’s Butt,” murmured Frédéric to me.

“ ‘Goat’s Butt’? Oh, yes, Ramsbotham, silly me!”

Our respite didn’t last long, however, because my sister’s lover suddenly asked Larry Gagosian, “Do you BI?”

“BI?” I repeated, utterly at sea.

“Sure!
Better invitation
, you’ve never heard that? It’s when you accept an invitation but intend to beg off if something more glamorous or fun comes up.”

Seeing that Gagosian hadn’t taken his bait, Béno smoothly went on, “When you think about it, actually, there are only two expensive tastes: philanthropy and modern art …”

Like many eminent specialists who’d rather avoid talking about what they know best once they feel relaxed, Gagosian didn’t pick up the allusion about contemporary art. Therefore, Béno had no other choice than to come up with something else.

“You know what folks say about people like your next-door neighbors? That they know so little about how to live that they’re
not
rich, just poor people with a lot of money.
And that’s exactly my point!
”

The laughter that greeted this last sally must have persuaded Béno that he had us in the palm of his hand. I saw him finally relax, like a migraine sufferer calmed by an analgesic. And I felt relieved as well, so oppressive was the tension I sensed behind his need to seduce every
audience. And I must not have been the only one to feel that way, because taking advantage of this respite, we had a lively discussion right through to the coffee about satellite phones, a subject on which Charles was in his element. His comparative study of the different models currently on the market allowed Cheryla to measure the failings of her own phone, which presented the inconvenience of functioning only outdoors and unsheltered, meaning in full sunlight. In short, lunch was winding down. I slipped away just as Marie was assuring Cheryla that she would always be welcome at our house (including that very evening for dinner, if she would like to come) while at the same time casting a glance at Béno that left no doubt about the kind of nap she intended to take with him.

I thought about Béno while resting in my room. Why did I have such a feeling of having lost my sister forever? This certainly wasn’t the first time that I’d been witness to one of her affairs. And far from languishing, our sisterly bond had always formed my only real family, a family my son had joined, unlike my husband and the lovers Marie and I had had, who’d never really belonged. I had to admit that until then, men could count themselves lucky if they landed a small speaking role instead of simply a walk-on part. Béno, however, had grabbed
himself a starring role from the first moment, throwing me off balance. Was this a sign that Marie and I had outgrown the age when we could settle for the family founded by our parents?

Yet the idea of loosening my bond with Marie made me feel ill. What if this affair were to last? I tried to peer into the uncertain future that seemed to lie ahead. What would the house be like under their care? Béno was a successful and ambitious man; he would doubtless modernize the place and give it a tastefully fashionable veneer. I had the feeling the beach, like an open-air nightclub, would acquire sleek furniture, canopied beds, and fresh style remixes of old standards selected by a sound designer for a lounge ambience.
How awful!
I thought, solely for the pleasure of falling back on a snobbism as comforting as a lighthouse in the fog. Crisscrossed by golf carts, as in the TV series
The Prisoner
, the property would also have its heliport, its home movie theater, and a workout center with a treadmill, a Power Plate, gleaming dumbbells, and mirrors everywhere. Oof, we’d be a long way from my grandparents’ gymnastics room with its abandoned trapeze, rings, vaulting horse, and grand piano.

This detour through our childhood brought me back to Marie. I imagined her, with Béno, as the proprietors
of L’Agapanthe, where they would receive their friends, a crowd of handsome, rich, and famous stuffed shirts, whereas I would be only … their guest. An idea that would have made me shudder—if I hadn’t pulled myself up short. Really, I just didn’t know what I wanted! Béno was an ideal suitor, if we meant to keep the house. Thanks to him, L’Agapanthe would retain all its luster. In which case, he might well transform it into a show-business showcase, if he felt like it. Especially since, if I’d read him correctly, he would make it over into a highlight of the Cannes Film Festival, a venue touted on the Promenade de la Croisette like a password among the happy few invited to parties worthy of Fitzgerald’s
Gatsby
. What more could I ask?

The shortcut

August 3, 1990

I’m thirteen. Instead of the grown-ups’ usual route to the beach, I prefer the one that leads me from the heart of the house to the path running past the lawn down to the sea. I am as proud of this shortcut as if it were my own creation. It begins, like the universe of a fairy tale, in a ground-floor junk room next to the guest powder room, where the elevator, behind a forgotten folding screen, gives off a strange and delightful scent of forest undergrowth. The basement, I’ve been told, was laid out by some Russians before the Great War and was meant to house a casino. A wide corridor leads down with a series of landings to the foundations of the house, giving onto areas planned as game rooms along the way. Papered with bamboo matting and feebly lit by jaunty little sconces, the corridor aspires to the
rakish atmosphere of a nightclub from the Roaring Twenties, but the game rooms, frozen in midcompletion by the Russian Revolution and the First World War, now seem like dungeons with their rough stone walls, gravel floors, and those iron doors with their little barred windows
.

Is it the cool air of the corridor, the semi-obscurity, the insouciant casino atmosphere of going on a spree? I breathe deeply, inhaling the ambience of adult pleasures, dreaming of leaving boredom behind. But the shadows of the cells now storing a jumble of lawn mowers and old armchairs soon encroach on the subdued light in the corridor. Suddenly, I think I hear rats. I freak out … so I avoid looking too closely around me as I move through this underground passage that both scares and excites me. And I settle for regretting the peace I might enjoy if only I had the courage to stay there, because this basement would make an ideal hiding place. One just like the tiny space concealed behind the fake books in the library where a man hid during the Second World War when some Italian officers decided to set up their headquarters in the house—a disaster narrowly avoided by a stroke of genius from the caretaker at the time, who took advantage of the pocket windows, an American innovation as yet unknown in Europe, by sliding them back into the walls, thus persuading the Italians (in mid-December) that the unfinished house had no windows yet
.

Simply emerging into the daylight on the path along the lawn persuades me that I have just been through a great adventure and triumphed over hostile underground terrain. And now I’m ready to spy on my parents’ guests behind the sparse hedge that separates me from the lawn, the way a curtain walls off the wings from a stage
.

A mosquito roused me from my torpor; impossible to fall back asleep. In any case, it was teatime. Leaving my room, I noticed my mother in the entrance hall, consulting with Roland, the chauffeur. Wishing neither to interrupt nor disturb her, I slowed my approach, intending to wait so that we could go down to the loggia together. She had her back to me, and half hidden by the open front door, Roland couldn’t see me either. I would not have tried to overhear them, though, if they hadn’t been whispering.

“My dear Roland, I find I’m running a little low …”

“Very good, Madam. Shall I proceed as usual?”

“Yes.”

At first their remarks seemed as harmless as they were incomprehensible, and I would have thought no
more of the whole business if I hadn’t seen my mother quickly press some bills into the chauffeur’s hand. Something was wrong here. Her gesture was too practiced for someone who insisted that all tips should be handed to the servants in envelopes. I retreated and huddled in dismay behind a pillar while my mother rejoined her guests. Then, knowing that my father would be swimming with Georgina at that hour, I shut myself inside the master bedroom to review my evidence: the overfamiliar “My dear Roland,” the mysterious “running a little low,” the chauffeur’s “as usual,” not to mention the money …

What hidden vice could she have? It wasn’t sexual, obviously, since there was nothing louche between my mother and her chauffeur. Alcohol? There were rivers of it in the house, she wouldn’t need Roland to get her some. So I came face-to-face with the conclusion I’d already reached. Because although I’d been wrong to think of it that very morning to explain why Lou and Mathias had dashed into Juan-les-Pins, it fit too well with my mother’s nosebleed before lunch. No doubt about it: my mother was a drug addict.

This was so appalling, so hard to accept, that I tried to imagine her with a dealer in some shady neighborhood—which was silly, since Roland was her go-between. I was
definitely mired in clichéd scenarios about the problem: drugs were no longer the privileged playthings of rock stars, flower children, or fashionable hipsters. Hadn’t my grandmother once told me that her women friends from before the war used to “arrange things” with hotel concierges? And I’d been floored when she’d made such remarks as, “No one would ever
think
of leaving for Saint-Moritz without her morphine!” And of course, there’d been Baudelaire, and later on Malraux and the others … Yes, but my
mother
! Of course, she did already take Temesta for her nerves, Rohypnol to help her sleep, as well as the sedative Mogadon. But to go from that to cocaine …

Why hadn’t I noticed? Naturally, since she didn’t work, no one expected her to be superefficient or even a paragon of lucidity, which made the state she was in all the more difficult to discern. But that was no excuse. The proof? I’d paid no attention to her increasingly frequent bouts of ill humor. How could I have been so uncaring! And yet, why should I have worried? Wealthy, still beautiful, loved by my father, my mother had an easy life. As if that were enough to give her a sense of fulfillment! Especially if she felt almost useless, good for nothing but making conversation and worrying about who sat where at meals, I thought, rummaging through
her vanity table drawer … where I soon found a crystal snuffbox with a bit of caked white powder at the bottom.