The affair with Diana did not last long. We could agree on nothing. She admired Tolstoy, Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf, Cocteau, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Mauriac, W.C. Williams and Ezra Pound, none of whom I could stand. I admired Turgenev, Forster, Firbank, Breton, Dreiser, Proust, Eliot, Ransom and Robert Frost, all of whom she despised. Both of us liked Joyce and disliked D.H. Lawrence, but for altogether different reasons. To crown everything, I thought her own work was hollow and mannered, and she thought mine was silly.
We did not even enjoy the same movies. We almost fought over Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible.
‘Darling, it’s the most marvellous modern thing I ever saw,’ she said as we came out of the little Cinéma des Agriculteurs.
‘It isn’t modern, it’s just crass. Worse than De Mille.’
‘Don’t be idiotic. The direction was superb. It has a tremendous scope and grandeur.’
‘It’s addressed to twelve-year-olds. Like a play in the parish hall, down to the false beards.’
‘You missed the whole point.’
‘No, it kept hitting me over the head till I was dizzy.’
‘It has a magnificent visual line.’
‘It’s a piece of monolithic vulgarity.’
We also went to a few concerts on free tickets. We heard Cortot at the Salle Pleyel.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ I said after the Chopin études.
‘Darling, it’s simply vile. This soft, romantic slush—do you really like it? And that nasty effeminate man with his greasy hair and white face. He’s making mistakes all the time too.’
‘But he has the right pace, the lyrical bursts and pauses.’
‘There’s too much moonlight in his bloody garden.’
‘You just don’t like Chopin.’
‘No, give me something clean and sharp, like Stravinsky or Honnegger.’
One day we had free tickets to a concert by Edgar Varése, with the composer conducting.
‘You’ll loathe it,’ said Diana. ‘His music is real, new, vivid, significant, alive.’
The little concert hall was not far from the Folies-Bergére. It was surprisingly comfortable for the avant-garde, with cushions on the seats. The first few items on the program were very appealing—an atonic wailing on massed steel strings. The music seemed to belong in space, like the movement of planets in the ether. There was a good claque, and Varése himself had a fine presence and personality; as the concert went on, however, the percussion section began to assume greater prominence. I had always been alarmed by heavy volumes of sound, and Varése’s music was growing steadily louder. I watched the preparations for the final item with misgiving, as the drums and cymbals were heavily reinforced and an immense hollow wooden box and three sets of mallets were brought in, along with a fire-whistle. The piece itself did not last very long, but towards the end the noise gradually became deafening. The finale was extraordinarily powerful: the drums were all beaten at once, three men attacked the wooden box, the cymbals clashed continuously, an electric bell began to ring and the fire-whistle was turned on full strength, while Varése himself, sweating, his crinkly hair standing straight up, urged the players on. For the last fifty bars I had unobtrusively put my fingers in my ears, hoping no one would notice. When the concert was over the audience almost matched the performance in the volume of applause—cheering, howling, stamping their feet.
As we went out Diana looked at me with disgust. ‘I saw you! You deliberately missed the whole beauty of the finale. With that last marvellous crescendo he actually achieved the effect of silence.’
There was also the difficulty over money. Her cheque for her novel had all gone towards maintaining her baby boy. We had no settled place to make love; she kept moving from one friend’s place to another, each with a narrower and more sagging bed. The affair was doomed.
We had never been really in love, and were able to draw stakes in a friendly way one night in the Select.
‘It’s no use,’ said Diana. ‘We’re even beginning to bore each other.’
‘You could never bore me,’ I said. ‘I think we just don’t respect each other’s minds. You think I’m a nitwit, for example—a kind of bright insect.’
‘I do. And you think I’m a false face attached to an attitude.’
‘You’re quite right. Your wit deceived me. You’re the most amusing woman I’ve ever known. But think how awful it would be if we’d really fallen in love. All the tears, fights, swearing, breaking dishes, partings at midnight—me tramping the streets in a rage—’
‘And me sobbing into a wet pillow. Isn’t this much better?’
‘It is a far, far better thing we do.’
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I could never stand that sophomoric, superior attitude you have. Your book is awful too.’
‘Maybe it is. But yours isn’t much good either. The only difference is, you’re trying harder.’
‘You bastard. That book came out of my entrails. And I got five hundred dollars for it. All you got was about twenty.’
‘For one chapter, yes. But there are going to be twenty-five chapters, which would make us equal.’
‘You mean you’re going to write twenty-five times as much of that bilge as you have already? Good God, darling, can you really keep it up?’
‘Certainly.’
‘And who do you think’s going to publish it?’
‘Bob said he might.’
‘By God, I think he’s crazy enough about you to do it.’
‘It’s fun when we’re not serious, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not going to be serious about any man again, ever.’
‘I don’t expect I’ll ever find a girl who’s as much fun as you’ve been. You don’t think we could keep on?’
‘Darling, no! A thousand times no. It’s been marvellous, but as you say we don’t respect each other’s minds. You know what I’ve been thinking is the best part of our affair? It’s the fact we never lived together, and you don’t have to reclaim your toothbrush and shaving stuff. It’s so neat, so uncluttered. I think it’s the nicest affaire I’ve ever had.’
The city was becoming unbearably hot. The studio, with its great skylight and windows, was almost impossible to live in during the daytime. M. Rouvely’s work-room was no better. Worse than this, Montparnasse was now so overrun by tourists it was hard to find a place to sit down. It was clearly time to get out.
‘Let’s go somewhere where it’s out of season,’ said Bob. ‘What about the Riviera? Starting with Marseilles.’
We packed and caught the afternoon train next day, travelling third class. The seats were made of wood and the heat was fearful. We had brought no food with us, and since third-class passengers weren’t allowed in the dining-car we had to rely on the cheap red wine and sinewy sandwiches sold at the stations by the widows of war veterans. The lack of food did not seem to bother Bob; he never ate anything anyway. By the time we reached Avignon my stomach seemed to be sticking to my backbone. There was a ten-minute stop, and without saying anything to us Graeme got down and ran off down the platform.
‘Where’s he gone?’ said Bob, opening his eyes.
‘I don’t know. Looking for something to eat, I hope.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll have lunch in Marseilles. Shrimps, lobsters, whatever you want. It’s only ten hours away.’
Graeme came panting into the compartment just as the train began to move and produced a few chocolate bars and a bag of unshelled peanuts. ‘I had a time getting this stuff. But it’ll keep us going.’
Bob brought out a bottle of whisky and we passed it from hand to hand until we all fell into a drunken sleep on the wooden benches. When I woke it was to a vision of paradise: through the window was the Mediterranean, even bluer than in the postcards. And there were the square sun-baked houses, the red earth, the grey-green vegetation, the palm trees. My throat was as dry as ashes, I was coated with a mixture of soot and sweat and aching all over; but the sight of that tideless inland ocean, mother of gods and men, nurse of poetry, changeless grandiose fact of the ancient world, made me dizzy with joy. The moment was permanent, unforgettable, Keatsian.
‘What are you bawling about?’ said Bob, opening his eyes. ‘Your conscience troubling you?’
He looked out the window and sat up suddenly. ‘Holy Moses, we’ve gone right past Marseilles! This is the line to Nice. What time is it?’
None of us had a watch. I went into the next compartment and asked the time: it was two o’clock.
‘The important thing,’ said Bob, ‘is to stay on this train till we get to Nice. Look, boys, shall we go to Nice or back to Marseilles?’
‘Nice,’ said Graeme, ‘since we’re on the way there now. I don’t like the idea of going back anywhere, it’s bad luck.’
‘Nice, then,’ said Bob. ‘It’s closer to Monte Carlo and Ethel anyway. If the conductor comes through, we just pretend we’re asleep.’
‘How far does the train go?’ I asked.
‘Right into Italy,’ said Graeme. ‘Bordighera, I think.’
‘Why don’t we go to Italy?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Bob. ‘Our tickets are only good to Marseilles. Some bastard at the border will start asking a lot of questions and the first thing you know we’ll land up in jail. No, we’ll get off at Nice if we can make it. Jesus, here’s the conductor now!’
We all curled up on the benches until he had passed.
‘Is there any whisky left?’ asked Graeme. ‘I’ve still got half a bottle of this chemical wine, but I don’t trust it today.’
We were just coming into a small station. He pulled down the window. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said to an unshaven ragged man on the platform, holding out the wine bottle. ‘Could you use this, my friend?’
The man seized the bottle, bowed, smiled, smelled it, then handed it back with a florid gesture. ‘Thank you, sir. I am deeply touched, deeply obliged, but I must think of my health.’ Raising his ragged cap, he moved away.
This was my first experience of the real Proven÷al courtesy. The curious poetic singsong of his speech was also new. Here was a man dressed like a tramp with the manners of a grandee.
Bob laughed. ‘Now have a real drink,’ he said. Rummaging in his bag, he produced another full bottle of whisky.
We arrived at Nice a few hours later in an alcoholic haze, quietly slipped off the train with our luggage, and piled into a taxi.
‘Promenade des Anglais,’ Bob told the driver. ‘And then go east. We’re looking for a pension.’
‘An excellent idea,’ said the driver. ‘And the further east you go, the cheaper and better they are.’
We drove down the Avenue Victor-Hugo till we reached the sea and then turned right. I loved the city immediately, with its wide streets, ornate buildings and Edwardian air. I had never seen so many fat men or so many beautiful women; every fourth person was leading a dog.
We passed the Ruhl, the Savoy, the Negresco—hotels like white wedding-cakes. The stony beach was dotted with bathers, there were the white sails of the little boats, the clouds of seagulls, the palm-trees, and embracing it all the beautiful curve of the Bay of Angels.
After the big hotels came the wealthy villas with their hedges of laurel and acacia—all of them square, flat-topped, with round-topped Moorish windows and encrusted with ornaments. Then came the long, low houses, all with gardens—more modest but still incredibly spacious—with their signs: Pension Miramar, Pension Beaurepas, Pension Suisse, Pension Mon Rêve.
‘Pension Mon Rêve sounds good,’ said Bob. ‘Stop here, driver. No, boys, don’t you come in. I can smell a good pension better by myself.’
He came back in five minutes. ‘No good.’
Pension des Anglais, Pension du Grand Bleu, Pension Anita, Pension Jeff, Pension Le Hôme. Bob got out, went in, came out shaking his head.
Pension Poggi, Pension Russe, Pension Dora Melrose.
‘I think Dora Melrose has the right sound,’ he said.
It certainly looked well—a long two-storey house of peeling stucco, set far back from the road with a big dusty garden surrounded by a low stone wall.
‘This is it,’ said Bob when he came back. ‘125 francs a day for the three of us. With wine. Wait till you see the rooms. Holy Moses, it’s a dream.’
We unloaded our bags and carried them in. The proprietress, a tall, stout woman in black, came forward with a harried smile.
‘Madame Melrose,’ said Bob. ‘These are the two others. Like me they are clean, quiet and honest. We already love your place.’
‘You are indeed welcome. But excuse me, I am not Dora Melrose. She died in 1880. I am called Madame Gyp. There is a whitebait pie for dinner tonight, and all the cooking here is done with butter; not oil, mind you, butter.’
We went upstairs and into three large bright rooms forming a suite that occupied the whole top storey facing the sea. There was even a private toilet.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said Bob. ‘It’s a palace. I can pick them. I don’t even have to see the rooms.’
Thinking of Schooner’s recipe for a good restaurant, I asked him how he could do this.
‘Simple. The patronne must look worried: it means she’s human. There’s no porter: it means no chichi. And the stairs were scrubbed.’
‘Then the name Dora Melrose didn’t mean anything?’
‘Of course it did. It showed the force of tradition.’
‘After all,’ said Graeme, ‘she could hardly call the place the Pension Gyp.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Bob. ‘If she did it would be only another good sign, showing she didn’t know U.S. slang. Now we’ve just got time for a swim.’
‘We haven’t got bathing suits,’ I said.
‘Rats, we’ll buy them tomorrow. Just now we go in in our underwear.’
Ten minutes later we were out on the empty beach. The first dip in the ocean was like a baptism: all the grime and sweat and alcohol seemed to wash away in the embrace of the Mediterranean. We frolicked like dolphins—Graeme and I in shorts and Bob in his B.VD’S—and then stretched out on the ancient waveworn shingle to let the sinking sun dry and warm us. Hot, crowded Paris, the abominable trip, the sandwiches, peanuts, chocolate, wine and whisky were a thousand miles away. The sun on our skins was a kind of blessing: we had escaped and were happy.
I lay with my hand on my arm, looking out at the Bay of Angels. The little sailboats had all disappeared, the seagulls had gone to roost somewhere, only a few scattered walkers paced the broad promenade; the sky was turning from cerulean to indigo. This was happiness, I thought, licking the salt from my hand. Happiness was still the rule of my existence, a thing to be grasped and enjoyed by right; and hunger and sensuality too. All at once my desire became centred on the image of a woman—calm, warm, voluptuous, and willing—and then by an association of pleasure that was absurd but impossible to resist, on the mysterious prospect of a whitebait pie, something I had never tasted.