‘I think I can manage it.’
This Charbonneau lived in a serviced apartment off Columbus Circle. He was a solid chunky mess of a man with rumpled clothes — there were food stains on his tie — and a tousled mass of curly dark hair. He had a very heavy beard, his jaws and chin dark with incipient stubble, and a big nose and full lips. There was really nothing attractive about him at all but, mystifyingly, he gave off an aura of facetious charm as if everything he saw around him — including the people he encountered — amused him in some secret way. He spoke good English with a strong French accent.
He looked at me in surprise when he opened the door. ‘Who are you?’ he said.
I held up my camera. ‘The photographer.’
He smiled. ‘I was expecting a man. A mister photographer.’
‘Well, I am not Mister Photographer.’
‘But you are meant to come tomorrow.’
‘But I am here today.’
He let me in and hurried off to put on a clean tie, at my suggestion. His sitting room had no bookshelves but was full of books stacked in random piles like bulky stalagmites growing towards the ceiling. I pulled down the blind, rigged my spotlight at his work table and took the standard portrait shot in strong chiaroscuro but with no smoking cigarette — rookie or not, even I had my standards — but with chin propped in palm, index finger extended to cheekbone. It was all over in half an hour. We chatted about Berlin, where he had recently been posted.
‘What do you think about the new chancellor?’ I asked.
‘Crazy, no? Un fou.’
I said I hadn’t paid much attention but had seen enough Nazis in the few weeks I was in Berlin to last me a lifetime.
As we nattered on, Charbonneau offered me one of his yellow French cigarettes. I declined and he lit my Pall Mall. We stood and smoked for a moment or two, then he said, ‘Now I suppose you expect me to ask you for dinner.’
I showed him my engagement ring. It was Cleve’s idea for me to wear it — bought in a dime-store. The story was that I was engaged to a young man in England; it pre-empted many problems at work with my unmarried male colleagues and explained my absences at parties and after-work get-togethers. It worked — Charbonneau held up his hands in mock apology.
‘I never saw it. I yield to my rival.’
‘On second thoughts — thank you very much. I accept.’
‘Second thoughts — don’t you find they’re often the best ones?’
What made me accept Charbonneau’s invitation? I think it was a product of my lurking discontent. Why should I go home to Washington Square South for another lonely night with my gin, my radio and my book? I found Charbonneau amusing and suspected he’d be good company — I owed it to myself.
Enthused, Charbonneau suggested the Savoy-Plaza Hotel at seven o’clock. I caught a cab up to Central Park South and met him in the lobby. He took pernickety care over the choice of wine and ordered a steak so rare it was effectively raw, to my eyes. He asked me lots of questions about myself — where was I born, who were my parents — and, enjoying this gentle interrogation, and the second bottle of wine, I found myself opening up to him, telling him the story of the Grösze and Greene fiasco and, indirectly (I wasn’t wearing my engagement ring), that I was having something of an affair here in New York.
‘And what about your poor fiancé in England?’
‘Well, he’s more of a friend than a fiancé. It’s a useful ruse.’
We were at the end of the meal. Charbonneau was on his second brandy and second coffee. I was sipping at a glass of port.
‘Enough about me,’ I said, fishing in my bag for my cigarettes. ‘Tell me about your novel.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s just a little thing. A hundred and thirty pages. I wrote it seven, no, eight years ago but now they’ve published it in English so I have to remember what I wrote. . It’s about a man who has stage fright — le trac, we call it — but stage fright whenever he has to make love.’
‘He’s impotent.’
‘No, no. Have you ever had stage fright? It’s a terrible, physical sensation. You can still go on stage, you can still perform but, I assure you, le trac véritable. .’ He gestured with his cigarette, making a tightening spiral. ‘It seizes your entire being.’
‘Is it an autobiographical novel, then?’
He laughed, loudly enough for nearby diners to turn and stare.
‘I think you are a very bad young woman, Miss Clay. Méchante. No, I’ve had stage fright but only in the theatre. When I was very young.’
‘That’s a relief,’ I said.
He stared at me and I saw ash fall carelessly from his cigarette on to his sleeve. He didn’t bother to brush it away.
‘Actually, I’m taking a bit of a holiday from sex,’ he said. ‘Personally speaking.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I’m a bit bored with the whole brouhaha, what do you say? The surrounding nonsense.’
‘I see.’
‘Yes. These days I’d rather have a conversation with an interesting and beautiful young woman’ — he leant forward and whispered — ‘than fuck her.’
It was a test, of course — but Charbonneau could have had no idea that I’d worked with the foul-mouthed Greville Reade-Hill and so I listened unmoved and unperturbed.
‘It’s not an either-or, you know,’ I said, then leant forward and whispered to him myself. ‘You can still have a conversation with the people you fuck.’
He sat back in his chair, an uncertain smile on his face. I think that, for a very rare moment in his life, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau found himself at a loss for words. He said nothing, just pointed his finger at me and wagged it in amused admonishment.
*
THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977
And so my New York, American life progressed in its alternating, vaguely satisfying, vaguely unsatisfying, way. I saw Cleve whenever he could free himself from his wife and family and, as compensation when he wasn’t free, I began to have a regular dinner date with Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau — once a week or so.
I remember a trip Cleve and I made to California for the opening of the Santa Rosa Bridge in Sonoma — one of the first big New Deal projects to be completed — and we managed to spend a whole four days together, the longest consecutive time we’d ever passed in each other’s company. We took a Boeing Air Transport 247 across country, my second flight in an aeroplane, and then my third flight back home to New York. Perhaps because I was with Cleve, sitting beside me, and those four days were bracketed by long cross-country flights with many take-offs and landings, I found I loved flying — despite the rocking turbulence we encountered. I was never alarmed or fearful though I suppose I might have had cause to be so: instead I was intoxicated by the improbability of being in these shiny metal machines powering themselves into the air, looking down on the land we soared over, slicing through clouds into the luminous blue above.
I remember the first night Cleve and I made love. I knew it was bound to happen — it was why I had come to America, after all, though I have to admit that the money was an extra inducement. He drove us north-east out of Manhattan to Westchester County to a roadhouse on Highway 9 called the Demarest Motor Lodge. We ate an indifferent meal but we hadn’t come all this way for the food. There were eight double rooms with attached bathrooms on the floor above.
Cleve said: ‘I could drive you home but I took the precaution of booking a couple of rooms here, just in case we were too tired.’
I said: ‘Now you mention it I am feeling a bit too tired to go back to Manhattan. What a good idea.’
And so we went upstairs to our rooms. Five minutes later Cleve knocked softly on my door.