'She's cooking now.'
'And I suppose she thinks she's going to get a job with Spanish?'
'I said she is trying to learn Spanish.'
Sarah did not tell them how happy their mother was. She realized she had never seen Anne anything but long- suffering, tired, exasperated. Anne and Joyce were like girls who had left home for the first time, sharing a flat. They made each other little treats, gave each other presents, and giggled.
Then Briony: 'Doesn't Joyce ever actually say anything? I mean, she must be awfully pleased with herself.'
'Well, yes: she says all her dreams have come true.'
'There you are, we knew it!'
'What's wrong with that?'
'All her dreams have come true. That's all she ever wanted, just to have mummy all to herself.'
'But, Briony, just a minute… surely you don't imagine… '
'What?' demanded Briony, already affronted by the new dose of unpleasant reality announced by her aunt's tone.
'Well — don't you see? She's not going to stay at home, is she?'
'What? Why not?'
'Well, she's going to get bored, isn't she?'
'Oh no… '
'She'll be off and back again, it'll all go on the same.'
'But it just isn't fair,' said Briony.
From Elizabeth came a letter and a package. The letter said that when his divorce came through, she was going to marry a neighbour, Joshua Broughton. Perhaps Stephen had mentioned him? She had known Joshua all her life. It would be nice to run the two farms together. She said that her commitment to the Queen's Gift Entertainments would continue, but perhaps not as much as when Stephen was there to help. She did not mention Norah.
The picture she enclosed had hung on the wall in Stephen's bedroom. There was also a photograph.
When Sarah saw what the picture was, she felt she had never known Stephen, even that their friendship had been an illusion. It was of a bold smiling young woman, dressed in a fashionable white dress with a pink sash. She held a straw hat on her knee and sat in a chair under a tree. The picture could have been by Gainsborough. It had been painted, at Stephen's request, by someone or other from the little photograph, now yellowing and faded, which was of Julie sitting on a rock in half-shade. She wore a white camisole and a white flounced petticoat. Her arms and neck were bare. Her feet were bare. Her dark hair was loose and blowing away from her face. She was offering herself to whoever had taken that photograph, in her posture, her smile, her passionate black eyes. The photograph had been tinted, and the crude boiled-sweet colours had faded. A tree behind the rock had hints of sickly green, and the rock had a rouged side. Around her neck — was that a necklace? Little blobs of red… no, a ribbon. Why had she tied on that ribbon? It was out of character, so much so it shocked. Perhaps the man who took the photograph — Paul? Rémy? — had said to her, 'Here is one of the new cameras. Yes, I know you were wondering what was in this great case, but no, it isn't a musical instrument, it's a camera.' She was sitting on the edge of her bed, in her camisole, about to slip it off, or having just slipped it on, saying, 'Oh no, you aren't going to take me naked.' Then he said, 'Come outside. I'll always think of you in your forest.' She tied that red ribbon off a chocolate box around her neck. The chocolate had been a present from a pupil or… could it have been the master printer? Boxes of chocolate were much more in his line than Rémy's, or Paul's. He probably sold them from his shop. What had she said, tying on that ribbon? Or Rémy had said, 'Wait, tie that ribbon around your neck. It makes you look… ' No, that was not in Rémy's character. Or the person who had tinted the picture of the seductress (the studio which developed the photograph could not have been in Belles Rivieres, more likely Marseilles or Avignon, for if anyone in Belles Rivieres had caught sight of it then…) — had that person painted in the ribbon? Now, when you examined the thing carefully, and even with a magnifying glass (Sarah did this, switching on a strong light), you could not see if the ribbon had been painted in afterwards, the photograph was so dulled, the tinting had been so clumsy. Had Julie painted in the ribbon after being given the photograph? It was easier to imagine it had been done afterwards, because it was hard to connect the young woman dissolved in love sitting half dressed on the rock with the red ribbon that was a statement of such a different kind. Or was she identifying with the doll she had buried in the forest in Martinique, which had a red ribbon around its neck, as a memento of the guillotine? If so, the only word for that was sick.
Sarah was examining the photograph as if it were a clue in a mystery story, but presumably Stephen had been staring at it for years. It was the picture that he had hung on his wall, though. Where had he found the photograph? It should be in the museum. Stephen had stolen it, and now Sarah stole it. She tacked it beside the Cezanne picture of the haughty young Harlequin and the serious youth who had put on the clown's costume to accompany his friend to Mardi Gras. She put the portrait of the fashionable beauty into a drawer.
Andrew wrote:
Dear Sarah Durham,
Since I wrote I have been engaged to be married.
My sister said to me, Why do you always have to act yourself? This on an occasion I will leave you to imagine.
I said to her: ***** XXXXX!..????
She said to me, Be your age.
I said to her, But that's the trouble.
So I proposed to Helen. Your compatriot. She said Americans are solemn and don't know how to have fun. Helen was working as a stable hand at the ranch near here. It is a ranch where people come to ride and eat and have sex. Helen does allow I am a good stud. She says I work at it. 'Why do Americans always have to work at everything?' she wants to know. I said, You can't buck the work ethic. So I proposed to Bella. She is a Texan like me. For three months Bella and my sister have been discussing the how-to's. House or apartment? In Tucson — Dallas — San Antonio? Natural childbirth? How many? and how many films shall I be permitted a year? How should I change my image? They say I am stereotyped. They never talk about happiness, and I would not dare to mention joy. Joy? Who she?
I've learned one thing. My image was right from the start. They got my size all right. So I lit out. As you see. It is lonely here.
Andrew.
Poste Restante, Cordoba, Argentina.
Sarah wrote to Cordoba, Argentina, intending a temperate correspondence, but by the time her letter reached Argentina he was in Peru. Her letter was forwarded there, but his letter in reply, a passionate love letter in which he several times called her Betty (his stepmother?), arrived when she was in Stockholm for the opening of Julie Vairon, and by the time she got round to answering, the problems seemed insuperable. Where was she to address the letter? Should she sign the letter, Much love, Betty?
By the end of the year, this was the situation in The Green Bird: Meetings were no longer held in the upstairs office but in a rehearsal room large enough to accommodate everyone, for now the theatre seemed full of talented and attractive young people, one of whom had been heard asking, 'Who is she?' — meaning Mary Ford. 'I think she was one of the people who started The Green Bird.'
Sonia dominated everything. She was incandescent with accomplishment, with the discovery of her own cleverness. Her impatient confident young voice and her bright bush of hair, now in an Afro (she wanted to identify with black people and their sufferings), seemed to be in every part of the theatre at once. Virginia, known as 'Sonia's shadow', was always near her. None of the Founding Four had been much in the theatre. Roy's wife had returned to him on condition that he 'worked on' their marriage, and this had meant a family holiday. She was pregnant. He was thinking of accepting a job in another theatre. He said it was bad enough being married to a militant feminist, without having to spend his working days with another. Mary had taken weeks off to spend time with her mother, who was, as a result, better again. If Mary spent all her time at home, the old lady would have a new lease of life. Mary could not afford to do this but might do part time at the theatre and find work to do at home. She was in fact adapting Meredith's The Egoist for the stage, which novel Sonia had read with approval, saying it was a useful addition to feminist propaganda. Sarah was travelling a good deal, to discuss Julie Vairon and, even more, The Lucky Piece, which out of Britain was called, simply, Julie. Already Julie was playing triumphantly in a dozen cities in Europe and — the demand for beautiful but doomed or damaged girls being gluttonous and insatiable — she would soon be in a dozen more and was about to conquer the United States, as the advance bookings showed. Julie Vairon was certainly being appreciated, but by smaller and more discriminating audiences and in fewer places. In short, Julie had become, like Miss Saigon, the latest in the long list of gratifying female fatalities, and it was easy for people hearing the two stories, Julie Vairon's and Julie's, to believe that from Martinique had come two interesting and beautiful girls to try their chances in France. Sisters, perhaps?