‘It’s an interesting city, Lisbon,’ he said, musingly. ‘I’ll take you there one day.’
In early 1941 he had made his way to London — by seaplane — to join de Gaulle’s government in exile, the Forces Françaises Libres.
‘Yes, and when I was in London I came looking for you,’ he said. ‘I went to your little flat. All closed. No Amory.’
‘I was already over here, in New York.’
He leant back. ‘And here we both are in New York. Now. Isn’t life very strange?’
‘Your uniform doesn’t fit you very well.’
‘We are a very poor army, the Free French. But they think that if I wear a uniform I will be taken more seriously. I borrowed this uniform. Even these medals are borrowed.’ He pointed at the row of medal ribbons over his left breast-pocket. Then he looked rueful and downed his champagne in one gulp. ‘They don’t like us Frenchies in Washington. Roosevelt hates de Gaulle. Churchill hates de Gaulle. My compatriots don’t understand it. Aren’t we allies? But no.’ He poured more champagne. ‘This American civil servant in the State Department said to me: de Gaulle is just a brigadier in the French army, why should we give him all this money, all this support?’ He frowned. ‘It’s a real problem, I tell you, Amory, ma puce.’
Our meal arrived, another repeat: rare steaks with a tomato salad. Charbonneau poured the Duhart-Milon.
‘American meat, French wine, beautiful English girl. The world is at war but life is good.’
We clinked glasses and drank a mouthful. Then he took my hand. I knew what was coming next.
‘I feel it is our fate, our destiny,’ he said, lowering his voice and looking me in the eyes, ‘to meet like this. I want to spend the rest of the night with you. I don’t want to tell you stupid romantic things, talking for hours in this kind of rubbish talk. I respect you too much, I tell you straight, Amory, en toute franchise.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ He seemed genuinely annoyed. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘Nothing. But I’m in love with somebody else.’
He muttered to himself in French, then sighed and looked at me.
‘I will get you one day, Amory. You wait and see.’
I had to laugh.
‘Eat your steak, mon capitaine,’ I said. ‘It’s getting cold.’
I remember exactly when I heard the news about Pearl Harbor. I was in a small deli on 6th Avenue having a late lunch, eating a meat-loaf sandwich with a Dr Pepper to wash it down. I was acquiring American tastes. It was Sunday morning in Hawaii and the first baffled news reports were coming in over the radio to the East Coast. The whole delicatessen fell silent and we looked at the radio on the counter as if it were some demonic instrument of propaganda.
‘John Jack Anthony!’ somebody shouted at the back of the room — an oath I’d never heard uttered before or since. ‘What the heck’s gonna happen now?’
I remember Dido coming to New York towards the end of 1941 to play in a recital at Carnegie Hall — part of a big pro-British, join-our-war push. There was a programme of English music: Elgar, Delius, Moxon, Vaughan Williams.
Dido and I went to the 21 Club after her recital. The room stood and applauded as she entered — twenty-seven years old, my little sister, plucky, pale, beautiful, radiating self-assurance as she blew kisses and bowed gently as the acclaim washed over her. A new Britannia. I took a few steps back from the limelight.
We ate eggs Benedict and drank cold Chablis.
‘I feel I’m in another world, another universe,’ she said. ‘The voyage over was completely terrifying. And you should see London. Blackout, impenetrable darkness. Then as the sun rises, smoking ruins everywhere. People frightened, miserable. Try to buy a box of matches — impossible. People saying to you, “Better dead than defeated.” It’s appalling.’ She looked around the bright, raucous room. ‘We’re losing, Amory. We’re not going to win on our own, not even with the Russians — and they’ll be done for any day now. That’s what’s terrifying us.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Why won’t the Yanks join in? What’s stopping them? Can’t they see the awful danger?’
‘It’s very complicated,’ I said. ‘When you’ve been here, even a day or two, you’ll begin to understand. What’s going on in Europe seems a million miles away. Nothing to do with us.’
‘I’m going to order another eggs Benedict,’ she said. ‘Is that too, too greedy? Eggs, eggs, eggs. What wonderful things.’
I summoned a waiter over and ordered another round of eggs Benedict and another bottle of Chablis.
Dido lit a cigarette. ‘By the way,’ she said. ‘hold on to your hat. Xan has joined the Royal Air Force.’
I remember being sent out by Mode on a fashion shoot to Taos, New Mexico, in January 1942, just before I met Charbonneau again. This wasn’t for ‘As You Were Leaving’, this shoot was to be used as backdrop for the summer fashion issue and we needed sunshine. I assumed Priscilla couldn’t find a photographer of any repute so she had decided to entrust me with the assignment. It rained the entire week we were there and all my photographs were rejected. I offered my resignation. It was accepted and then promptly rescinded twenty-four hours later. Cleveland Finzi running my life again.
What the incident showed me was that I had to stop taking photographs of pretty girls in expensive frocks and I began to search through my small archive trying to assemble a collection of my own work, work that I was proud of. It was not substantial. So I began to take new photographs — a sequence that I called ‘Absences’. Clean plates on a kitchen table. Empty chairs on the gravelled path of a garden square. A hat and a scarf hanging on a coat stand. The human presence was absent but its traces remained. I told myself that the impetus for these pictures arose because I was lonely in America, far from home, but a little further thought made me realise that these photographs of empty or recently vacated places might have had something to do with my infertility. The absence looming in my life.
I remember going into Saks Fifth Avenue and buying a grey suit with green check for $35. I wore it out of the store and went straight to the Algonquin Hotel to meet Cleve. We drank cocktails then went upstairs to the room he had booked to make love. That evening we saw a movie called Dark November and ate at Sardi’s before returning to the Algonquin. As we walked back the streets were full of soldiers and sailors — America at war! — and I recall feeling particularly happy, as if I had won a prize. But as I acknowledged that happiness the thought came that life couldn’t continue like this. Change was in the air for everyone; the world was changing, me included.
I remember the moment when I knew it was over. Cleve and I were staying at a small hotel — the Sawtucket Inn — on Cape Cod Bay. I hadn’t seen him in over a month but somehow he’d managed to secure this two-night break for us. Frances suspected nothing. Cleve had told her he was at a colleague’s funeral and would be away for a couple of days.
We were lying in bed in the morning in that fuzzy self-indulgent mood of bliss you experience when you’ve made love on waking and know you don’t have to get up and go to work, or anywhere, if you don’t feel like it, and are vaguely contemplating the possibilities of one more fuck before a big breakfast. Shall we? When will we be together like this again? I don’t know if I can. Oh, you’ll be fine, leave it to me. .
Somehow the idle conversation turned to a movie. Cleve leant over me and brushed the hair from my brow. I felt his cock thickening against my thigh. He kissed my throat.