When Mr Beckett returned from his Christmas break, Giorgio and I had already moved out of Robiac Square to stay with Mrs Helen Fleischman. Her husband was away; Mama was in hospital and Mrs Fleischman had offered to look after us, saying she would be ‘like a mother’ to us. Babbo had accepted with an alacrity that took me by such surprise all my words about Giorgio being twenty-three and me being twenty-one died on my tongue. I hoped Giorgio might put up more of a fight and convince Babbo we were quite capable of living alone at Robiac Square for a few weeks. But he didn’t. Instead he nodded and mumbled something about Mrs Fleischman’s generosity.
“Why didn’t you insist on staying at Robiac Square?” I asked Giorgio later. “I thought you were tired of Babbo treating us like children. And you know I can’t stand Mrs Fleischman.”
“Why would I want to stay here without Mother? At least Mrs Fleischman has a houseful of servants.” And with that Giorgio had slapped the tip of his cane against the doorframe and marched out.
So our apartment at Robiac Square was shut up and Giorgio and I packed our suitcases and headed to Mrs Fleischman’s apartment on rue Huysmans. Spacious and sumptuous, it was quite unlike our homely flat. Canary-yellow silk curtains framed the tall windows. Oriental rugs in muted ochres and emeralds lay neatly on the parquet floors. The walls were lined, on one side, with oil paintings in gilded frames and, on the other, with thick shelves of leather-bound books. The thin winter light streamed in and fell in pleats on the polished antique furniture, the collections of fine porcelain bowls and the carefully placed bronze sculptures. Every room smelled of freshly polished shoes and Mrs Fleischman’s eau de cologne. House maids flitted silently from one room to another, removing a dead flower, closing a window, placing a log on a fire. Even the maids were perfect, their hair pulled tightly back from their scrubbed faces, their black and white uniforms starched, their tiny feet in glossy black slippers.
Babbo refused to be away from Mama while she had her operation. He moved into the hospital, taking all his books and papers with him. Mr Beckett spent most of his time running between the hospital and Robiac Square and Miss Beach’s lending library, finding misplaced books and papers or returning encyclopaedias and dictionaries that Babbo no longer needed. I yearned to see him, but Mrs Fleischman kept our evenings full, with theatre outings and dinners and ‘socials’ that I found unutterably dull but which Giorgio found riveting.
During the days I danced and danced, preparing for the International Festival of Dance. Monsieur Borlin made me perform my solos to him every day and I was determined to be a finalist. Babbo had already invited Mr Beckett to join him. And knowing I was to dance in front of Mr Beckett had given a new impetus to my practice. As I stretched and sprang, I imagined Mr Beckett’s admiring eyes upon me, and his long thin hands clapping with such vigour he’d be unable to write for days. Babbo warned me that Mama might not be well enough to attend after her operation, and although that saddened me I couldn’t help remembering all the performances she’d watched, always squinting into the audience to see who was there, her eyes small and hard like coins, her hands resolutely clasped in her lap. No – this performance would be different. Mr Beckett would be there!
As I practised early one Sunday morning, I became aware of something that unsettled me, that tossed a shadow over my new bloom. I was standing with my hand on the back of a chair practising my pliés, pushing down through my thighs until I felt every muscle taut and contained. I let go of the chair and raised both arms above my head, counting my breath as I did so. I paused, head back, arms outstretched. I could hear nothing but my breathing, even and controlled. Every sinew was still and at perfect pitch. As I held the pose I imagined Monsieur Borlin and Mr Beckett watching me.
It was then that I heard laughter, muffled and smothered, from the room next door. Giorgio’s room. I held my breath and waited. The laughter stopped. I exhaled, my nose wrinkled in confusion. Was I imagining things? Perhaps Giorgio had gone out and the maids were sharing a joke as they tidied his room and made his bed. I looked at the clock. Half-past seven. Not like Giorgio to be up so early. Not like Giorgio at all. He and Mrs Fleischman and some of her friends had had a late night at the jazz clubs in Montmartre.
I took hold of the back of the chair again and thrust one leg out, before raising it in front of me as high as I could. I then swung my upturned leg out and back, releasing my arms as I did so – my own variation of a turn en attitude. I began counting my breath in and out again. It was coming faster now, in little gulps and I could feel a faint fluttering in my muscles. And then I heard it again. The distinctive sound of laughter, Giorgio’s laughter, intermingled with furtive giggling. Someone was in Giorgio’s room. Did he have a maid in there? A woman he’d picked up in Montmartre? Surely he wouldn’t bring a whore back to Mrs Fleischman’s apartment?
I padded down the hall to Giorgio’s room and knocked softly on the door. Giorgio opened it slightly, his body wrapped round the door so I couldn’t see beyond him. Was he – was he – naked? He raised his eyebrows enquiringly.
“Giorgio? Are you all right?”
“I’m busy. I’m getting dressed.” He tried to close the door but I felt a surge of unexpected and inarticulate hatred, as if hundreds of furious firecrackers were exploding in my head. I knew he was lying to me and in that moment I loathed him.
“I don’t believe you,” I shouted, putting my foot between the door and the frame so he couldn’t close the door without trapping my foot.
“Oh Lucia, grow up! I’ll be out in a minute.” He nudged the door purposefully against my dancing shoe.
“What are you doing in there?” Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed the black and white of a maid, head bowed, scurrying silently down the hall behind me. But even that didn’t bring me to my senses and snap me from the ungovernable emotions sweeping through me.
“I’m getting dressed!” Giorgio’s face was black with rage. “Now bugger off!”
I withdrew my foot from the door and Giorgio slammed it in my face. Dazed and unable to move, I stood there with my eyes fixed on the door handle. And then it opened again and there was Mrs Helen Fleischman in her violet cashmere dressing gown, smiling her serpent smile and beckoning me in.
“Sit down, Lucia.” She gestured to a chair.
Speechless and stiff with anger, I moved towards the chair, noting the clothes strewn across the floor, the bed with its covers flung back, the salty odour that hung in the air. Giorgio had pulled on a dressing gown and was sitting on the bed glaring at me.
“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.” Mrs Fleischman coughed delicately and fiddled with the sash of her dressing gown. “But with your mother in hospital and …”
Another spark of rage exploded inside me. Blinding light flashed behind my eyes. My lungs rattled with the effort of each breath. How long had this been going on? All this deceit and treachery – behind my back, behind Babbo’s back, behind Mama’s back. Mrs Fancy Pants Fleischman pretending to look after us while she seduced Giorgio.
“You’re married. You’re old enough to be our mother!” I jabbed my finger at her with undisguised ferocity. “You’ve got a husband! You’ve got a child! You’ve got money! You’ve got everything! Why do you have to take Giorgio?”
“My marriage is over, Lucia. It’s all just a formality now, the divorce I mean. And I’m not old enough to be your mother. Not quite.” She gave an embarrassed gulp of laughter.
“Mama and Babbo won’t like this. They won’t approve and you know it, Giorgio.” I paused and turned to Giorgio who had lit a cigarette and was now pulling hard on it. My eyes cut back to Mrs Fleischman. “Babbo doesn’t need you. There are hundreds of women out there who want to type his manuscripts and read to him. He doesn’t need you.”
“You may be right, Lucia, but we haven’t done anything wrong have we, Giorgio?” Helen turned to Giorgio who exhaled a thin jet of cigarette smoke and grunted.
“You’re married and you’ve got a child! And you’re too old! And now you’re trying to take Giorgio because you couldn’t get Babbo. Just because you’ve got lots of money you think you can do what you like.”
“Lucia!” Giorgio stabbed me with his eyes. “Don’t be so bloody rude! What’s got into you?”
I ignored him. “I know why you started working for my father. I saw you batting your eyes and trying to touch his hand when you took his papers off him. I saw it all. I could see what you were trying to do. Worming your way into our lives. Wanting a little bit of ‘genius Joyce’ all for yourself. You didn’t fool me!” I could hear my voice rising, becoming louder and shriller, as if someone else was speaking, someone full of bitterness and savagery. “And now you’re buying Giorgio with your filthy American money. Just because you couldn’t bribe my father away!”
“Actually,” said Mrs Fleischman tersely, “it was the other way round. But I don’t think we should talk about that. Giorgio and I just want to calm things down so we can all carry on living sensibly together until your parents get back from the hospital. So why don’t we be grown up about this?” She was standing proprietorially over Giorgio as he sat stooped on the edge of the bed, dragging furiously on his gold-filtered cigarette.
“You can start by apologising to Helen.” Giorgio was talking more calmly now, but his face was still a cold mask of rage.
“I’m sorry if you feel betrayed.” Mrs Fleischman’s manicured hands moved distractedly from the cord of her dressing gown to the pearls at her neck. “As soon as your parents are home you can go back to Robiac Square. But we need to let your mother’s operation go ahead first. Until then we’re just going to have to muddle along.”
I glowered at Giorgio. “And who’s going to tell them about you two?”
“I will, when I’m ready. It’s really nothing to do with you.”
I stumbled to the door, slamming it behind me. Once in my room I fell onto the bed, choking back my bitter sobs. For I knew that Giorgio had gone. That whatever it was that had stitched us so tightly together had gone. Mrs Fleischman was to blame, of course. She had persuaded Giorgio to lie to me, to deceive Mama and Babbo. The air around me was no longer heavy with beeswax and perfume. Now it seemed thin and white and tarnished. But as my sobs subsided, it struck me I was wrong – and that it wasn’t necessarily Mrs Fleischman who had seduced Giorgio. What if Giorgio had seduced Mrs Fleischman? A shiver of anxiety ran through me. Had I got everything wrong? Was he, coldly and deliberately, using her for his own ends? His words of the previous month, when I turned down Emile, surfaced reluctantly in my memory. He had accused me of being mad and selfish. Was I? Was this my fault? No! I shook my head so hard my eyes popped. This, I told myself, was Mrs Fleischman’s fault. Anything else was unthinkable ….