‘Oh yes,’ the young woman declared, ‘we must have it. We must sleep somewhere. My husband has been ill.’
‘Not seriously?’ Madame Sasso hoped; and would they pay a deposit?
‘If we are already here?’ the husband pointed out.
‘In advance then — if you would prefer it …’ Madame Sasso smiled.
She tried to make a joke of it, but the wife was of a serious disposition; she opened her bag and brought out two or three notes as token payment.
So they were installed: Monsieur et Madame Vatatzes — un nom grec. Madame Sasso was impressed by the old gentleman’s distinguished appearance and the beauty of his young — wife.
Left to themselves in their narrow room the travellers spoke in whispers at first. They touched each other often and gently, as though each suspected the other might break, or even vanish.
24th March
Soon after our arrival at this not very savoury pension Angelos took to his bed. The awfulness of yesterday’s journey was too much for him. A. is prepared to accept this place as an asylum, in which case I do too. I realise by now we can never be separated, not by human intervention (no Golsons!) only of my own free will. There I come up against the big snag. Shall my will ever grow strong and free enough for me to face up to myself? If I wanted that. To leave my one and only lover. I don’t. I don’t.
He snored the night away in this maid’s bed. Myself comfortable enough in the chair until he asked me to come to him. We comforted each other narrowly and fell asleep towards dawn.
Will they hear us? The bed such a musical one, and the house, I’m sure, full of attentive ears.
Dined alone last night as he had no appetite: little separate tables, each with its complement of bottles — pills, spa water, wine eked out from previous meals to be consumed by sour mouthfuls at those to come. Dirty napkins put away in paper envelopes. Overall a smell of thrift and cheap oil.
Most of the guests are English (the Anglaise predominating) escaping from bronchitis, rheumatism, taxation, one or two perhaps from scandals. A few faces of mixed race — Levantines? A. would have known, too vocally to be comfortable, if he had been present. Trust A. to spot the Frangolevantini.
He ate a splinter of fish, mostly skin, which I took to our room, then he fell asleep again …
This morning was an improvement in every respect, though morning usually is. Looking back, my whole childhood is composed of mornings, yet I wasn’t happy by any means. The future threatens very early. This growing threat which I’ll always associate with unruly masses of purple lantana, and cats lying on hot asphalt as they died from eating too many lizards … Or was that a parent’s disgnosis?
MOTHER: Don’t look, darling. Patches is sick from eating lizards. They somehow poison cats. We’ll take her to the vet and he’ll make her better.
The vet didn’t. I think Eadie hated cats. We were a house of dogs. Father was a cat man, but seldom there — away on circuit, or at the club. Father never wanted his child hanging round, or was in some way afraid. Eadie wanted one constantly.
EADIE: Don’t you love me, darling? … Then why are you avoiding me?
Eadie’s desire to devour — when you could have devoured the stuffy Judge — his man’s smell! (This I think more than half explains my relationship with Angelos.)
Washed smalls, then walked down into the town. A scent of jonquils, roses — flowers. A yucca flaunting last year’s brolly reminded me of home. Always these pointers. In the town the Golsons were out in force — a less showy variety because less affluent than those at St Mayeul. The ladies several years behind in their style, or else in enforced collusion with the past — putting on a brave show however, shaking their plumes, disentangling lorgnettes from lace. Elderly gentlemen in seedy retirement: tweeds in brown or grey, all tending to turn green. With luck their tweeds will see them out. The network of veins in flushed elderly male cheeks …
An English church, a squat Gothic in grey stone. Fine avenues at intervals. Outside their version of Miss Clitheroe’s Tea-room and Lending Library a group of pelicans and brolgas discuss, not unexpectedly, war. War may be the solution.
Ate a delicious lunch alone on the terrace with my old darling, who had dressed, and persuaded the Sasso to let us enjoy this luxury. Madame S. is impressed by A. They always are till experiencing his rages, his not quite madness, which automatically they interpret as the real thing. First they are insulted, then frightened. May he continue to impress at ‘My Blue Home’ morally I am exhausted.
An old servant, Marguerite, arranged a table for us in the patchy shade from an almond tree. Angelos in sentimental mood as we got through our déjeuner: a thin, rather greasy soup from last night’s fish, beignets de poisson (pieces of skin, again from last night’s fish, done in batter) something indeterminate as meat. For some reason one did not care. The bay, a breeze shaking alternate light and shade out of the branches of the almond tree, exorcised my thoughts of recent weeks — even Angelos helped.
A. remembers our first meeting when he picked me up on the Canebière. Who picked whom? he her she him, perhaps it was he him …
A.: Don’t you remember?
E.: I could hardly forget. I can remember the dress I was wearing.
A.: I can’t.
E.: You can never remember dresses. To me they mean so much.
A.: [for him, infinitely kind] Your vice. [He was in a stroking mood this morning.] I remember it was raining and we went to that hotel.
E.: Because you were ashamed to take me back to yours. You weren’t quite sure what you’d got hold of.
A.: Don’t be unkind, E. You can never resist the opportunity to be unkind.
[Marguerite brings the fruit; she has the sly look of a dog who has just disposed of a couple of pounds of fillet beef.]
A.: Do you know, darling, I’m sure we forgot the enema. If we wrote for it they might send it on.
E.: If we wrote for it Madame Boieldieu might make you pay the rest of what we owe.
A.: But I shall miss that enema. It’s unlike anything they make today.
The damn enema notwithstanding, lunch on the terrace at ‘My Blue Home’ was an occasion I feel I shall remember. My old monster would not know it, but I could have eaten him between the courses. How is it the French can get away with pieces of fish skin done in batter? How can A., by looking at me from beneath those horny eyelids, convince me that we are wearing the purple, standing on the steps at Blachernae or Nicaea? more — that I am no longer a fiction but a real human being …
Madame Sasso and one of her boarders, a Mrs Corbould, were seated at an accommodating round table in a small salon between kitchen offices and public rooms, discussing over their second glass of poire William and before laying out the cards, the husbands they had buried, womb complications, and decreasing incomes; it was all too personal to include les Boches. As it was around 2 a.m., the other boarders had decamped to their beds with hot-water bottles, tins of imported Bath Olivers, and indigestion, while Marguerite had descended to the lower town with whatever she could scavenge from the evening meal.
Crimson plush and poire William were lighting the throats and cheeks of the confidential ladies when this young woman, this Madame Vatatzes burst upon them from the surrounding dark.
‘Mon mari, je crois, est gravement malade,’ she informed Madame Sasso, then remembering that her landlady was a linguist, ‘He is having a heart attack.’