She had bare shoulders and arms; a heavy gold and ebony bracelet; an enormously long necklace of what looked like sapphires, though I presumed they must be paste, or ultramarines. I guessed her to be about twenty-two or three. But there clung about her something that seemed much older, ten years older, a sort of coolness – not coldness or indifference, but a limpid aloofness; coolness in the way that one thinks of coolness on a hot summer’s day.
She arranged herself in her chair, folded her hands, then smiled faintly at me.
‘It is very warm this evening.’
Her voice was completely English. For some reason I had expected a foreign accent; but I could place this exactly. It was my own; product of boarding school, university, the accent of what a sociologist once called the Dominant Hundred Thousand.
I said, ‘Isn’t it?’
Conchis said, ‘Mr Urfe is the young schoolmaster I mentioned.’ His voice had a new tone in it: almost deference.
‘Yes. We met last week. That is, we caught a glimpse of each other.’ And once again she smiled faintly, but without collusion, at me before looking down.
I saw that gentleness Conchis had prepared me for. But it was a teasing gentleness, because her face, especially her mouth, could not conceal her intelligence. She had a way of looking slightly obliquely at me, as if she knew something I did not – not anything to do with the role she was playing, but about life in general; as if she too had been taking lessons from the stone head. I had expected, perhaps because the image she had presented me with the week before had been more domestic, someone less ambiguous and far less assured.
She opened a small peacock-blue fan she had been holding and began to fan herself. Her skin was very white. She obviously never sunbathed. And then there was a curious little embarrassed pause, as if none of us knew what to say. She broke it, rather like a hostess dutifully encouraging a shy dinner-guest.
‘Teaching must be a very interesting profession.’ ‘Not for me. I find it rather dull.’
‘All noble and honest things are dull. But someone has to do them.’ ‘Anyway, I forgive teaching. Since it’s brought me here.’ She slipped a look at Conchis, who bowed imperceptibly. He was playing a kind of Talleyrand role: the gallant old fox.
‘Maurice has told me that you are not completely happy in your work.’ She pronounced Maurice in the French way.
‘I don’t know if you know about the school, but – ‘ I paused to give her a chance to answer. She simply shook her head, with a small smile. ‘I think they make the boys work too hard, you see, and I can’t do anything about it. It’s rather frustrating.’
‘Could you not complain?’ She gave me an earnest look; beautifully and convincingly earnest. I thought, she must be an actress. Not a model.
‘You see…’
So it went on. We must have sat talking for nearly fifteen minutes, in this absurd stilted way. She questioned, I replied. Conchis said very little, leaving the conversation to us. I found myself formalizing my speech, as if I too was pretending to be in a drawing-room of forty years before. After all, it was a masque, and I wanted, or after a very short while began to want, to play my part. I found something a shade patronizing in her attitude, and I interpreted it as an attempt to upstage me; perhaps to test me, to see if I was worth playing against. I thought once or twice that I saw a glint of sardonic amusement in Conchis’s eyes, but I couldn’t be sure. In any case, I found her far too pretty, both in repose and in action (or acting), to care. I thought of myself as a connoisseur of girls’ good looks; and I knew that this was one to judge all others by.
There was a pause, and Conchis spoke.
‘Shall I tell you now what happened after I left England?’
‘Not if it would bore … Miss Montgomery.’
‘No. Please. I like to listen to Maurice.’
He kept watching me, ignoring her.
‘Lily always does exactly what I want.’
I glanced at her. ‘You’re very fortunate, then.’
He did not take his eyes off me. The furrows beside his nose caught shadow, deepening them.
‘She is not the real Lily.’
This sudden dropping of the pretence took all the wind, as once again he knew it would, out of my sails.
‘Well… of course.’ I shrugged and smiled. She was staring down at her fan.
‘Neither is she anyone impersonating the real Lily.’
‘Mr Conchis… I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.’
‘Not to jump to conclusions.’ He gave one of his rare wide smiles. ‘Now. Where was I? But first I must warn you that this evening I give you not a narrative. But a character.’
I looked at Lily She seemed to me to be perceptibly hurt; and just as another wild idea was beginning to run through my mind, that she really was an amnesiac, some beautiful amnesiac he had, somehow, literally and metaphorically laid his hands on, she gave me what was beyond any doubt a contemporary look, a look out of role – a quick, questioning glance that flicked from me to Conchis’s averted head and back again. At once I had the impression that we were two actors with the same doubts about the director.
28
‘Buenos Ayres. I lived there for nearly four years, until the spring of 1919. I quarrelled with my uncle Anastasios, I gave English lessons, I taught the piano. And I felt perpetually in exile from Europe. My father was never to speak or write to me again, but after a while I began to hear from my mother.’
I glanced at Lily, but now, back in role, she was watching Conchis with a politely interested expression on her face. Lamplight became her, infinitely.
‘Only one thing of importance happened to me in the Argentine. A friend took me one summer on a tour of the Andean provinces. I learnt about the exploited conditions under which the peons and gauchos had to live. I urgently felt the need to sacrifice myself for the underprivileged. Various things we saw decided me to become a doctor. But the reality of my new career was harsh. The medical faculty at Buenos Ayres would not accept me, and I had to work day and night for a year to learn enough science to be enrolled.
‘But then the war ended. My father died soon after. Though he never forgave me, or my mother for having helped me, both into his world and out of it, he was sufficiently my father to let sleeping dogs lie. So far as I know my disappearance was never discovered by the authorities. My mother was left a sufficient income. The result of all this was that I returned to Europe and settled in Paris with her. We lived in a huge old flat facing the Pantheon, and I began to study medicine seriously. Among the medical students a group formed. We all regarded medicine as a religion, and we called ourselves the Society of Reason. We saw the doctors of the world uniting to form a scientific and ethical elite. We should be in every land and in every government, moral supermen who would eradicate all demagogy, all self-seeking politicians, reaction, chauvinism. We published a manifesto. We held a public meeting in a cinema at Neuilly. But the Communists got to hear of it. They called us Fascists and wrecked the cinema. We tried another meeting in another place. That was attended by a group who called themselves the Militia of Christian Youth – Catholic ultras. Their manners, if not their faces, were identical with those of the Communists. Which was what they termed us. So our grand scheme for utopianizing the world was settled in two scuffles. And heavy bills for damages. I was secretary of the Society of Reason. Nothing could have been less reasonable than my fellow-members when it came to paying their share of the bills. No doubt we deserved what we received. Any fool can invent a plan for a more reasonable world. In ten minutes. In five. But to expect people to live reasonably is like asking them to live on paregoric’ He turned to me. ‘Would you like to read our manifesto, Nicholas?’
‘Very much.’
‘I will go and get it. And fetch the brandy.’
And so, so soon, I was alone with Lily. But before I could phrase the right remark, the question that would show her I saw no reason why in Conchis’s absence she should maintain the pret
ending to believe, she stood up.
‘Shall we walk up and down?’
I walked beside her. She was only an inch or two shorter than myself, and she walked slowly, slimly, a shade selfconsciously, looking out to sea, avoiding my eyes, as if she now was shy. I looked round. Conchis was out of hearing.
‘Have you been here long?’
‘I have not been anywhere long.’
She gave me a quick look, softened by a little smile. We had gone round the other arm of the terrace, into the shadow cast by the corner of the bedroom wall.
‘An excellent return of service, Miss Montgomery.’
‘If you play tennis, I must play tennis back.’
‘Must?’
‘Maurice must have asked you not to question me.’
‘Oh come on. In front of him, okay. I mean, good God, we’re both English, aren’t we?’
‘That gives us the freedom to be rude to each other?’
‘To get to know each other.’
‘Perhaps we are not equally interested in … getting to know each other.’ She looked away into the night. I was nettled.
‘You do this thing very charmingly. But what exactly is the game?’
‘Please.’ Her voice was faintly sharp. ‘I really cannot stand this.’ I guessed why she had brought me round into the shadow. I couldn’t see much of her face.
‘Stand what?’
She turned and looked at me and said, in a quiet but fiercely precise voice, ‘Mr Urfe.’
I was put in my place.
She went and stood against the parapet at the far end of the terrace, looking towards the central ridge to the north. A breath of listless air from the sea washed behind us.
‘Would you shawl me, please?’
‘Would I?’
‘My wrap.’
I hesitated, then went back for the indigo wrap. Conchis was still indoors. I returned and put it round her shoulders. Without warning she reached her hand sideways and took mine and pressed it, as if to give me courage; and perhaps to make me identify her with the original, gentle Lily. She remained staring out across the clearing to the trees.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘I did not mean to be unkind.’
I mimicked her formal tone. ‘Can, may I, ask you … where you live here?’
She turned and leant against the edge of the parapet, so that we were facing opposite ways, and came to a decision.
‘Over there.’ She pointed with her fan.
‘That’s the sea. Or are you pointing at thin air?’
‘I assure you I live over there.’
An idea struck me. ‘On a yacht?’
‘On land.’
‘Curious. I’ve never seen your house.’
‘I expect you have the wrong kind of sight.’
I could just make out that she had a little smile at the corner of her lips. We were standing very close, the perfume around us.
‘I’m being teased.’
‘Perhaps you are teasing yourself.’
‘I hate being teased.’
She made a little mock inclination. She had a beautiful neck; the throat of a Nefertiti. The photo in Conchis’s room made her look heavy-chinned, but she wasn’t.
‘Then I shall continue to tease you.’
There was silence. Conchis was away far too long for the excuse he had given. Her eyes sought mine, a shade uncertainly, but I kept silent, and she looked away. Very gently, as to a wild animal, I reached out my hand and made her turn her head. She let my fingers rest on the cool skin of her cheek; but something in her now steady look, a declaration of inaccessibility, made me take my hand away. Yet our eyes lingered, and hers conveyed both an indication and a warning: Subtlety may win me, but force never will.
She turned to face the sea again.
‘Do you like Maurice?’
‘This is only the third time I’ve met him.’ She appeared to wait for me to go on. ‘I’m very grateful for his asking me over here. Especially –’
She cut short the compliment. ‘We all love him very much.’
‘Who is we?’
‘His other visitors and myself I could hear the inverted commas.
‘ “Visitor” seems an odd way of putting it.’
‘Maurice does not like “ghost”.’
I smiled. ‘Or “actress”?’
Her face betrayed not the least preparedness to concede, to give up her role.
‘We are all actors and actresses, Mr Urfe. You included.’
‘Of course. On the stage of the world.’
She smiled and looked down. ‘Be patient.’
‘I couldn’t imagine anyone I’d rather be more patient with. Or credulous about.’
She stared out over the sea. Her voice was suddenly lower, more sincere, out of role.
‘Not for me. For Maurice.’
‘And for Maurice.’
‘You will understand.’
‘Is that a promise?’
‘A prediction.’
There was a sound from the table. She glanced back, then into my eyes. She had the face I had first seen in the music-room door: both amused and conspiratorial, and now appealing as well.
‘Please pretend.’
‘Okay. But only in his presence.’
She took my arm and we moved back towards him. He gave us both his little interrogatory headshake.
‘Mr Urfe is very understanding.’
‘I am glad.’
‘All will be well.’
She smiled at me and sat down and remained thoughtfully for a while with her chin resting on her hand. Conchis had poured her a minute glass of crème de menthe, which she sipped. He pointed to an envelope he had put in my place.
‘The manifesto. It took me a long time to find. Read it later. There is an anonymous criticism of great force at the end.’
29
‘I still loved, at any rate practised, music. I had the big Pleyel harpsichord I use here in our Paris flat. One warm day in spring, it would have been in 1920, I was playing by chance with the windows open, when the bell rang. The maid came in to say that a gentleman had called and wished to speak to me. In fact, the gentleman was already behind the maid. He corrected her – he wanted to listen to me, not speak to me. He was such an extraordinary-looking man that I hardly noticed the extraordinariness of the intrusion. About sixty, extremely tall, faultlessly dressed, a gardenia in his buttonhole…’
I looked sharply at Conchis. He had turned and, as he seemed to like to, was looking out to sea as he spoke. Lily swiftly, discreetly raised her finger to her lips.
‘And also – at first sight – excessively morose. There was beneath the archducal dignity something deeply mournful about him. Like the actor Jouvet, but without his sarcasm. Later I was to discover that he was less miserable than he appeared. Almost without words he sat down in an armchair and listened to me play. And when I had finished, almost without words he picked up his hat and his amber-topped stick
I grinned. Lily saw my grin, but looked down and refused to share it; as if to ban it.
‘ … and presented me with his card and asked me to call on him the next week. The card told me that his name was Alphonse de Deukans. He was a count. I duly presented myself at his apartment. It was very large, furnished with the severest elegance. A manservant showed me into a salon. De Deukans rose to greet me. At once he took me, with the minimum of words, through to another room. And there were five or six harpsichords, old ones, splendid ones, all museum pieces, both as musical instruments and as decorative objects. He invited me to try them all, and then he played himself. Not as well as I could then. But very passably. Later he offered me a collation and we sat on Boulard chairs, gravely swallowing marennes and drinking a Moselle that he told me came from his own vineyard. So began the most remarkable friendship of my life.
‘I learnt very little about him for many months, although I saw him often. This was because he had never anything to say about himself or his p
ast. And discouraged every kind of question. All that I could find out was that his family came from Belgium. That he was immensely rich. That he appeared, from choice, to have very few friends. No relations. And that he was, without being a homosexual, a misogynist. All his servants were men, and he never referred to women except with distaste.
‘De Deukans’s real life was lived not in Paris, but at his great chateau in eastern France. It was built by some peculating surintendant in the late seventeenth century, and set in a park far larger than this island. One saw the slate-blue turrets and white walls from many miles away. And I remember, on my first visit, some months after our first meeting, I was very intimidated. It was an October day, all the cornfields of the Champagne had long been cut. A bluish mist over everything, an autumn smoke. I arrived at Givray-le-Duc in the car that had been sent to fetch me, I was taken up a splendid staircase to my room, or rather my suite of rooms, and then I was invited to go out into the park to meet de Deukans. All his servants were like himself-silent, grave-looking men. There was never laughter around him. Or running feet. No noise, no excitement. But calm and order.
‘I followed the servant through a huge formal garden behind the chateau. Past box-hedges and statuary and over freshly raked gravel, and then down through an arboretum to a small lake. We came out at its edge and on a small point some hundred yards ahead I saw, over the still water and through the October leaves, an oriental tea-house. The servant bowed and left me to go on my way alone. The path led beside the lake, over a small stream. There was no wind. Mist, silence, a beautiful but rather melancholy calm.
‘The tea-house was approached over grass, so de Deukans could not hear me coming. He was seated on a mat staring out over the lake. A willow-covered islet. Ornamental geese that floated on the water as in a silk painting. Though his head was European, his clothes were Japanese. I shall never forget that moment. How shall I say it – that mise en paysage.
‘His whole park was arranged to provide him with such decors, such ambiances. There was a little classical temple, a rotunda. An English garden, a Moorish one. But I always think of him sitting there on his tatami in a loose kimono. Greyish-blue, the colour of the mist. It was unnatural, of course. But all dandyism and eccentricity is more or less unnatural in a world dominated by the desperate struggle for economic survival.