The Bay of Angels Page 16

  He patted her hand. ‘Yes, I know all about it. That is why I want you to rest while you are here. You will need to be strong.’

  ‘Oh, I shall be. Go home now, darling. I don’t want to spoil your day.’

  Dr Balbi appeared to endorse this. I saw that she would do whatever he told her to do. I kissed her and left, but lingered outside in case he wanted to talk to me. Yet when he came out he strode off in the opposite direction, without looking round. From that I deduced that my particular consultation with him was over.

  I think I knew then, at the precise moment at which I saw his slight figure disappear into the distance, that my mother was doomed. I owed this insight not to her condition, to which I was accustomed, but to Dr Balbi’s tact in diverting me to a story of ordinary love and disappointment. I knew it; Dr Balbi knew it; the only person who did not know it was perhaps my mother. The fiction we all entertained of the return home was simply that: a useful fiction, to which she clung as I had once clung to those fictions I had pursued in the days of my early reading. Such reading was optimistic; that I saw now, though I had once not thought so. The illusions, or delusions, which I had so eagerly accepted, would no longer serve. Neither would the guileless trust I had had that there was a right true end to every endeavour. I felt a childish disappointment that I had been deprived of my happy ending, that I would be obliged to struggle on without that assurance. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed. My task was now to let my mother believe that her hopes, wishes, fears were all in my care, that whatever came about would be within my competent grasp. I must show no misgivings, no hesitations. I would transform myself into the sort of useful fiction that beguiles one on a dull afternoon and is remembered faithfully, even when a harsher truth should prevail.

  I did not intend to have any far-reaching discussion with her. The time for honesty was past. I blushed when I remembered my clumsy questions to her about my father, though they had seemed to amuse her. If they did it was because they were out of place, because her life had given her too much time for reflection, because she needed no reminders from me of events which she had internalized so thoroughly. The flash of irony that had greeted those questions was an indication of my immaturity. She knew what I wanted, another touching fiction, which she had refused to provide. That was the last time that I had had any sense that she was an adult and that I was her child. But the position was too difficult to maintain. All the time she had really craved the alternative: no thought, no memory. Hence her curious acquiescence, her contentment, even, in the company of Mme Levasseur, of Mme Lhomond. For my visits she put on a show of interest. That interest, I now saw, was limited. Her lack of curiosity about how we should live was more significant than I had realized. What was to be managed, I would manage: she would have no part in it.

  I was grateful for Dr Balbi’s finesse, his generosity in reminding me that a world existed beyond the one I was now obliged to inhabit, even if it meant plundering his laconic secrets in order to do so. Yet he had not seemed reluctant. He was a successful man, but even he had succumbed to the lure of conversation. He had no particular liking for me: if anything I was a nuisance who appeared at the wrong time in the wrong places. He had seemed unnaturally alert after his sleepless night, perhaps because of it. He was more authoritative than I had given him credit for, aware of the dilemmas of others, even if he refused to indulge them. I thought of him in that suburban house, with the patterned carpet, of his frustrations as a young man, as a young husband. He was now as he had perhaps not intended to be: dour, self-sufficient, powerful. His power seemed to come from all sorts of negation. I saw the perverse strength that lack of intimate satisfaction can bestow. Quite simply, he had left his youth behind. I should now have to do the same.

  I should also, at some point, have to go home. Homecoming is a theme around which many useful fictions have been built. One thinks of Ulysses, but he had Penelope waiting for him. Penelope herself had the suitors to distract her. My mother had been right all along. The home she cherished was devoid of realistic details; it existed in limbo, perhaps in memory. She believed in it as an act of faith, which is the opposite of reality. For as long as she did so she was becalmed. The details could be left to me, for I had become the narrator of that particular story. Magical thinking would do the rest.

  My own homecoming would be not the end of exile but the beginning of it. I felt as if I should be saying goodbye to the natural world, and to my own memory, which was of those early days at Les Mouettes, when my movements and my impulses were unrestricted, and were allowed to be. We never mentioned Simon now. By common consent he had been relegated to the past, a past which had been brought to an abrupt conclusion, like an episode from another life, or from someone else’s life. The people who had existed in that life had been healthy, untouched, with nothing to fear. With Simon’s genius removed—and I saw now that it had been a kind of genius—we had acceded to a world of accident, of illness, of poor company, in which it was no longer possible to think of a good outcome. For the good outcome had presented itself, had been embraced, and had then been lost. Even if my mother had not been entirely comfortable in that context she had accepted its reality. I remembered her shy pleasure at Simon’s initial approaches, her awakening to new possibilities. How then had she turned so completely into this unknown woman, who accepted other women as her natural companions?

  In the rue de France I switched on the radio, listened for two minutes to a winsome contemporary string quartet, and switched it off again. The radio was redundant: a displacement activity. When I left I would give it to M. Cottin, as well as all the other modest paraphernalia I had managed to collect. I would need no reminders of this life, which would always register as a life I had lost. Home is a closed world, with its own rules and customs, lived mainly indoors, with the usual obligations. I thought that I could deal with absence of company. I had grown so used to my own that it seemed entirely natural to spend days communing only with myself. The visitors to the Résidence Sainte Thérèse all fell into a sort of heartiness that denoted an effort being made. I had thought I had managed to avoid this. With my new perception of the day’s events I saw that such artificiality was a useful stratagem. The affections were still there, but rendered harmless by a carapace of self-protectiveness. If one were to survive one must wear a mask, for to go through the world without one was to court disaster.

  My task now was to wear such a mask with my mother, in order to protect us both. I should be the competent daughter, and if I felt any uneasiness, as those dutiful sons so obviously did, I should dismiss it as an unenviable necessity. In time I should develop the same sort of heartiness, so that all the residents would be comforted by the prevailing mood, and no one should be left out of that collusive company. I had seen the relief on the faces of those visitors as they left, the smile fading, the nod of recognition to others in the same boat. Only the following day would restore them to themselves. The company of the able-bodied would reassure them once again that nature was on their side, and if nature needed a little help from time to time, needed to be postponed, or relegated to a dark corner, there was no harm intended. Surely it was more honourable to joke and to encourage than to cast oneself, weeping, at the feet of a parent now in ruins?

  I would tackle my work some other day. For the moment I would go out and walk until I was too tired to walk any further. I had not eaten, but was not hungry. I wanted space, light, air, and all of these were more imperative than food. I had no fear of the night; indeed I had no fears at all when I was out of doors. I walked down to the shore, and stood for a while listening to the rattle of the shingle as the sea sucked it down, only to return it with the next wave. The light had faded suddenly, as it did here. There were few other walkers, sometimes the occasional couple entwined, pensive now, the last day of the holiday approaching.

  I looked about me for somebody familiar, though I knew no one. Dr Balbi had said that he lived not far from me, but had prudently given no det
ails. He had added that he saw me sometimes, from his car, presumably, may have known something of my habits. He lived alone, as I did, but could call on company when he needed it. At that moment I was not unhappy. Not, that is, until I turned to make my way back up the shingle to the steps that would restore me to the street. The light had been so subtle, the sounds so beguiling that I had thought of waiting out the tide. Then some sort of common sense prevailed and I prepared to make my way home. Glancing up I saw a figure watching me from the Promenade. This figure was in darkness, yet that slightness, that sparseness: surely I had seen them before? The figure moved away, melted into the surrounding gloom. I gave no hint of recognition, neither did he. Yet I did not doubt that Dr Balbi, perhaps taking an entirely coincidental evening walk, perhaps not, had seen me, had even followed me, and had nevertheless remained out of sight. I thought, with some timid feeling of comfort, that this event might be repeated. I should not refer to it. Neither would he. But if it did happen again, as I hoped it might, we should acknowledge it, accept it, as something that had been prompted by nature, and not yet disguised by an appropriate mask.

  14

  The men I had known, in particular Adam, had been charmingly evasive, mocking my sincerity. I would take care not to be so sincere again. But it would be difficult.

  I took to walking in the very late evening, sometimes after nightfall. Instinctively I would make my way to the shore, from which I imagined I could survey the huge crescent of the Baie des Anges. I could not, of course, but I liked the feeling of infinity after a restricted day in my room poring over my texts. Behind me cars kept up their rushing speed along the Corniche road, but on the water’s edge it was possible to capture silence. I would look round from time to time to see if anyone was following me, but for two nights nobody was.

  The second time I saw him I approached him with surprisingly few misgivings.

  ‘Dr Balbi.’

  ‘Miss Cunningham.’

  Yet I found that without sincerity there was little to say. I tried my best, although my technique was poor.

  ‘You too like to walk in the dark, then?’

  ‘I have always liked the dark. It is flattering, particularly to an ugly man.’

  ‘You look quite personable in this light.’

  ‘I dare say. Do not let that deceive you.’

  ‘Oh, I shan’t.’

  There was a brief silence. We had come to the end of our opening gambits.

  ‘I will walk you back,’ he said. ‘You should be in bed. It is late.’

  ‘What happens now?’ I asked.

  ‘I am not prepared to think about that.’

  ‘Are you opposed to me on principle?’

  ‘On principle, yes.’

  ‘Your position . . . ’

  ‘My position.’

  ‘I have never been very good at this,’ I said. ‘I frequently find myself at a disadvantage, trying to guess what the other person is thinking, or even wanting. But the other person rarely says, or not in words I want to hear.’

  ‘Why do you think you are not very good, as you say? Most people want the same thing.’

  ‘Then why can’t they say so?’

  ‘It is very alarming, the sort of declaration you say you want. One finds one has given too much away. And been poorly repaid.’

  ‘I want only what could be freely given. And should be freely given.’

  ‘You place too much emphasis on freedom. There is no such thing.’

  ‘Yet I have known that sort of freedom. You must have known it too. Your mother . . . ’

  ‘Yes, that love was a sort of freedom. You have it with your own mother. But, as you have discovered, it turns into something more tragic. One is obliged to care, to take responsibility, just at the time when one’s own life beckons.’

  ‘And yet one is left with that memory, that imprinting . . . ’

  ‘One cannot remain in love with one’s mother for life.’

  ‘Yet that sort of love remains the ideal.’

  ‘That is the love of an infant, a nurseling. We cannot go back.’

  ‘I want to go forward, not back.’

  ‘How do you see yourself in, say, ten years’ time?’

  ‘That is what I can’t do. Once I leave this place, as I shall have to do eventually . . . ’ He nodded. ‘. . . I see myself leading a very dull life, doing very dull work, waking up each morning in a panic, wondering how to fill the day. I shall be living automatically, artificially, pretending to be like everybody else. I shall fill the day somehow, shop, cook, settle down with my books, perhaps walk in the evenings . . . No, I shan’t walk in the evenings. By the evening I shall be frightened again, wondering how to pass the time.’

  ‘Does this life you describe contain no other people?’

  ‘There are friends, of course, the friends I have left behind, and whose activities I hear of long after they have taken place. I could not emulate their lives. They seem so busy, planning holidays all the time. And the strange thing is I think they envy me here. To the unknowing the South of France means leisure, pleasure. The holiday syndrome, all over again.’

  ‘Whereas you see it as a place of . . . what?’

  ‘Sadness, I think. Above all, sadness. I am here against my will, yet I cannot bear to think of my eventual departure. That will mean the end of everything.’

  ‘You may marry.’

  ‘No. I shall never marry. I don’t seem to have the knack.’

  ‘Most people marry. Even I married once.’

  ‘But you would not do so again.’

  ‘No, that is true.’

  ‘One thinks of marriage as the end of the story.’

  ‘There is only one end to our story.’

  ‘You mean . . . ?’

  ‘Yes, I mean that.’

  ‘Are you warning me of something? Is there something I should know?’

  ‘At this stage you know as much as I do. Whether you know it as consciously I cannot say.’

  ‘So that one day I shall leave empty-handed. With very few stories with which to entertain my friends.’

  ‘What stories would entertain them?’

  ‘Oh, love, of course. Women lose interest if you deprive them of this sort of exchange. They think you are concealing something. Or else that you are a crashing bore.’

  ‘Do women count on love to such an extent?’

  ‘Of course they do. Don’t men?’

  ‘Oh, sometimes, I dare say.’

  ‘You are very cautious.’

  ‘Well, it is my job not to rush to conclusions.’

  ‘But don’t you get lonely?’

  ‘Naturally. Most people know loneliness. Even with a partner one can know loneliness.’

  ‘Mme Levasseur was lonely when her grandson refused to kiss her. I saw her face. I never want to look like that.’

  ‘The rejection of a child carries a shock. But one knows that the child means little by it, except petulance, distaste.’

  ‘Rejection by an adult is worse.’

  ‘We have all known such rejections. They are not always significant.’

  ‘But I think they are.’

  ‘Your circumstances are perhaps extreme. You see everything from a vantage point of isolation.’

  ‘Strangely, I mind less and less about the isolation. But I know that this will increase in ways I am beginning to appreciate.’

  ‘You have no other family?’

  ‘No, we were always together, my mother and I. I remember two women coming to see us when I was quite young. They were some sort of connection on my father’s side. They were sorry for my mother, which annoyed me; I thought that they were trying to take her away. They were delighted when she married again. They thought that that was a natural conclusion. Instead of which the marriage changed her life for ever. And mine.’

  ‘I believe she is not unhappy.’

  ‘She should be.’

  ‘You talk like a young person. I have observed this process for m
uch longer than you have.’

  ‘This process. Is that what it is?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We shall all know it one day.’

  ‘Who can console one for one’s own death?’

  ‘Ah, that is a very big question, one nobody can answer. The choir of angels, the company of saints? That is what the sisters believe. In many ways they are to be envied. Such trust has kept them young. They could not do the work they do if they were not convinced of eternal life.’

  ‘What a prospect. I only want one life.’

  ‘That is all you will get. Come, I will buy you a tisane. Then you will sleep. There has been enough talking for one night.’

  ‘I always feel that when a man spends money on you it is some sort of concession.’

  ‘It is only a few francs.’

  ‘Maybe that is all you can afford. Emotionally, I mean.’

  ‘Quite.’

  He led me down a side street, away from the traffic and the noise. My one regret at that point was that I might not be able to find it again. Yet even this was only a passing reflection, for I felt, whether rightly or wrongly, that the time for contrivance was past. Those anxious moments I had experienced with other men, the fatal question—‘When will I see you again?’—had faded from my mind as though they had never existed. That not quite accidental meeting had allayed old fears. This fact alone made me quiescent, although quiescence in itself can be a danger. We sat at an ordinary table in an ordinary café, and I obediently drank the faintly nauseous decoction that he had ordered for me. I sensed that any further discussion would be unnecessary; a silence had intervened which would be difficult to break. Dr Balbi drank coffee, in spite of the late hour. I did not think it appropriate to comment on this; his habits were his own affair. So were his appetites, for they did not seem to include me.

  In other circumstances this would have alienated or alarmed me, but now I did not seem to mind. For that short interval I was content to obey his rules. His conditions had been stated; he had a stern professional conscience, and to him I was, if not a patient, the nearest relative a patient could have. He seemed beyond desire, and briefly I was the same, content to register the evening as one of the best I had ever spent. What conferred this realization was Dr Balbi’s absolute calmness, which had a similarly hypnotic effect on myself; my habitual agitation had fallen away, leaving behind an impression of benevolence, not the right true end of my childish imaginings, so much as of circumstances which might be permitted to turn in my favour. I was in no way attracted to him. He was not an attractive man. He had authority, and it was to that authority that I was willing to submit. I wanted to ask him whether he had been looking for me, or had been merely taking a walk on his own account. I did not, for I had the sense to realize that this might expose him in a moment of weakness, and I had no desire to do so. I sipped my tisane and looked ahead of me, at the few passers-by still enjoying the evening. It was very late, near to midnight, but neither of us seemed in a hurry. Finally he signalled the waiter for the bill, and turned to me.