I thought about this as I slipped the print back into its buff envelope.
‘How do you know about my show? It was years and years ago.’
‘Cleve Finzi told me.’
The Cleve connection, once again.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘It was worth a try.’
‘Just keep up the good work, Amory,’ Priscilla said, beginning to rummage through papers on her desk. ‘We’re all very pleased with you.’
It didn’t take long to make me realise that I was no fashion photographer — time and again I looked at my photographs for American Mode and I saw only stiffness, fakery, self-consciousness — mediocrity. The few snapshots that I managed to take of the models as they changed or grabbed a cup of coffee or chatted at the end of a session seemed a thousand times more full of life. However, nobody wanted those images.
The American Mode years. The best and the worst.
But I dutifully fulfilled my assignments when I was called upon and I lived the good life that the USA effortlessly provided. I was earning $300 a month and was living on the Upper East Side (I didn’t want to go back to the Village). I was well, weight regained, hair glossy. No bleeding at all, apart from the odd smear or speckle on my knickers, and my menses had never restarted — stopped altogether, just as Sir Victor had predicted. Some months I would get the familiar cramps, the sensations, the scratchiness, the mood change — but nothing happened. Snub-Nose Lenny’s boot had done its damage.
As time went by I sometimes asked myself why I had come back to New York. The main reason, so I rationalised, was that it was a symbol of my return to health. My old life had resumed, Amory Clay was taking photographs again and being paid to do so even if it was strange to be in America as the war in Europe unfolded. I read about it in newspapers, heard bulletins on the radio; I had letters from home; I started sending parcels of food to Beckburrow — it was undeniably there, undeniably taking place, but somehow far in the background.
In the morning I would leave my apartment on 3rd Avenue and 65th and walk to the subway, picking up a newspaper in which I read about the Blitz, that Japan had invaded Singapore, that the Afrika Korps had retaken Tobruk, that the US Navy had triumphed in the Battle of the Coral Sea, but it was as if I were studying something in a dusty historical tome. Here in Manhattan all the lights were turned on, America’s profligacy was on tap and there was fun to be had.
Of course, the real reason I came back was Cleveland Finzi. Our affair restarted within two weeks of my landfall, though it was not like the old carefree days. I was worried, also, that first time we made love — it was the first time since my accident, however, to my relief, all seemed well — no pain, just pleasure. My libido was working as normal.
I may have felt the same but Cleve was different — so watchful he seemed almost terrified. We had to meet under conditions of secrecy that an expert spy would have been proud of.
‘Frances doesn’t even know you’re in the country,’ he explained to me when I moaned about the preposterous lengths we went to in order our tracks should be covered. ‘If she did, it would finish her.’
‘That would be a start,’ I said. ‘Sorry, not funny.’
We were lying in my bed drinking Scotch and soda. We had made love. It was lunchtime.
‘She can never know you’re in the city,’ he said. ‘You can’t imagine the consequences.’
‘All right,’ I said, reaching for a cigarette. ‘Got the message.’ I didn’t want to talk about Frances Moss Finzi.
Cleve found a lighter and lit my cigarette and then lit his own.
‘We just have to be very careful, Amory. Very.’
‘Of course. I don’t want to jeopardise your happy marriage.’
He seemed to relax when I said this, as if I were being serious.
‘But you’re here and you’re well and we’re together, that’s the main thing.’
He held me and kissed me and I felt the familiar lung-inflation, the headspin. He had that effect on me, Cleve. He still moved and disturbed me, whatever guilt he was experiencing, or trying to assuage, or fooling himself, or however irritated or dissatisfied I was at his self-regarding complacency. I could see him for what he was but couldn’t resist him. Or at least I couldn’t be bothered resisting him, to be more precise. I didn’t care: I was in that one-day-at-a-time mode. I owed it to myself, I thought, as recompense for all I’d suffered since that awful day at the Maroon Street Riot. If I wasn’t entirely happy, I was at least not entirely unhappy, and that state of affairs wasn’t to be disparaged.
The Pearl Harbor cataclysm had altered everything, instantly, like a vast weather system sweeping across the country. Pressure changed, social barometers went crazily awry. In New York I felt it was as if we were suddenly instructed to become serious and responsible; the long endless vacation was over, duty was calling, the conflicted world had come knocking at our door. It was as if the nation collectively grew up and assumed adulthood overnight.
I had exultant letters from my mother and Dido. At last, at last! What took you so long? From my point of view — however happy I was at the change in the military balance of power — the major effect of Japan’s surprise attack on the American fleet in Hawaii was that it brought Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau back into my life.
I was in my apartment, one Saturday afternoon in January 1942, when the telephone rang.
‘Amory Clay?’
‘Yes, speaking.’
‘I don’t believe it! Putain!’
‘Who is this?’
‘Who do you think? Charbonneau!’
In honour of our first dinner together we agreed to meet again at the Savoy-Plaza the following evening. I was deliberately early and sat in the lobby waiting for him, in a good mood, anticipating. Perhaps Charbonneau was what I really needed, now — a true friend.
A tall thin man with a moustache and an unusual military uniform came in through the revolving doors and looked around. Was it? Yes! Charbonneau, a soldier — impossible. He saw me and strode over, arms wide. We embraced then he took my hand and ducked his head over it, not kissing it, in that formal, symbolic French manner. Then he embraced me again and I felt him press himself against me in an overfamiliar way.
I pushed him off.
‘Steady on!’
‘You look beautiful.’
‘You look bizarre.’
‘I’m a captain in the Free French forces. You should salute me.’ He stepped back and assessed me, up and down, like a farmer inspecting livestock.
‘Yes. Your hair is shorter,’ he said. ‘And you’ve lost weight.’
‘So have you.’ I shrugged. ‘I’ve been ill — for quite a long time. But now I’m better.’
‘And I’ve been running away from Nazis.’
We walked into the dining room. Charbonneau didn’t like the table we had been given so we tried another two until he was finally happy. He then ordered a bottle of champagne and a bottle of Château Duhart-Milon 1934 to be decanted, ready for the main course.
He raised his goblet of champagne to me and smiled.
‘I feel I’m alive again, Amory. As if nothing has happened since the last time we were sitting here.’
We both savoured the irony. The century was galloping away without us.
Then he told me about the fall of France, the flight from Paris to Bordeaux where the interim government had established its temporary capital for a couple of weeks. After the Armistice, he had thought about staying on in France but had decided it was better to trust his luck abroad, so he headed for Spain and then Portugal.