‘I’m just looking at you. A cat may look at a king.’
‘Have you found us a restaurant?’
‘No.’
His exasperation was obvious.
‘All right. So we don’t eat. We call for a Chinese meal.’
‘Afterwards.’
He looked at me, understanding now what was going on. He closed his eyes and did a little shimmy on the spot, shuffling his feet, rolling his shoulders. He looked at me.
‘So?’
‘The answer is yes.’
I lay in the dark of my bedroom beside Charbonneau — who was sleeping the sleep of a satiated man — thinking about Cleve. Had I done this because of what I’d discovered about the other woman, whoever she was? Perhaps. Then I thought: maybe it’s more complicated, like everything, as Charbonneau said; maybe it was a way of showing myself that I was free.
In the morning I brought Charbonneau a cup of coffee as he lay in bed.
‘Is this “light” coffee or “dark” coffee?’ he asked.
‘I think it’s light. Lots of hot milk.’
‘Only in America.’
I sat down beside him.
‘I want you to know something,’ I said. ‘I told you I’d been very ill. One of the consequences is that I can’t have any children.’
He shrugged, put his coffee down and took my hand.
‘Well, you know, it could be worse. I have a child. I never see her.’
‘You have a daughter?’
‘From my first marriage. She’s called Séverine. She’s ten years old.’
‘I don’t know very much about you,’ I said.
‘And I don’t know very much about you,’ he countered and flipped back the sheet. ‘Shall we get to know each other better?’
*
THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977
I suppose I should add, in the spirit of fair comparison with the other men whom I have made love with, that Charbonneau’s penis was quite small and stubby, though he had a surprisingly and disproportionately large and heavy scrotum. What shook me first, though, when he was naked, was his hairiness. He had a great pelt of black hair over his chest and belly and loins. Out of this thicket his small, darkly pigmented penis protruded. He had hair on his back also and of course on his arms and legs. I was initially in a state of some alarm — I’d never seen such a shaggy monster of a man — but as soon as he embraced me I realised that the hairs on his body were soft and yielding, like a fine expensive fur, and after a while I found his hirsute presence quite stimulating.
Today, I took out my old Leica and went down to the end of the bay where the rock pools are. It was sunny, with just a few speeding clouds going by and I wanted to take pictures of the rock pools with the sun bright and glaring overhead — spangling, dazzling. I intended, in other words, to take pictures of light in such a way that you would never know it was light reflected in rock pools. This was my new plan, my new obsession. Snapshots of light-effects were what I wanted to capture — luminescent starburst abstract moments that no painter could reproduce. Windows reflecting street lamps; close-ups of chrome bodywork in full sunshine; shallow puddles clustering dappled sunspots. Light stopped — light static. Only the automatic eye could do this. I had a new book in mind.
*
It seemed to me that, after my intermittent affair with Charbonneau had been going on for a few weeks, Cleve was beginning to sense something. He sensed a change in me — but it would be wrong to say that he was suspicious.
About two days after Charbonneau’s latest visit from Washington and his ‘projet inutile’ I received a telephone call from Cleve late at night. I was alarmed as he never called the apartment.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I want us to meet. But at the office. A proper meeting.’
‘What if Frances hears about it?’
‘It doesn’t matter any more.’
‘What’s changed?’
‘Come and see me. I’ll explain.’
We met the following day at GPW’s offices in Midtown. I passed Phil Adler in the corridor on the way to Cleve’s office. He had a wax paper cup of water in his hand and he stopped so abruptly on seeing me that it slopped over the rim and splattered on to the floor.
‘Amory! You’re back. My God! Call me, we have to get together.’ He kissed me on the cheek. ‘This is great.’
‘Back after a fashion,’ I said. ‘But I’ll call you.’
Cleve sat me down across from his desk and we both lit cigarettes. I was still in Charbonneau mood and found that I could look at Cleve objectively with no miasma of emotion blurring the view. He was wearing mauve braces — suspenders — over his pale blue shirt and his cerise tie was loosened at the neck. He looked every square inch the handsome magazine editor in his corner office but I wasn’t quite so beguiled by it in the way I used to be. It struck me that this was what pleased and satisfied Cleve about his life and it explained why he would never leave Frances. It would be too inconvenient, too hard and awkward to maintain the image, otherwise. And of course I was part of that perfect big glossy picture, also. Thank you, Jean-Baptiste. I was seeing Cleveland Finzi plain.
‘What’s going on, Cleve?’
‘We’re reopening the London office.’
‘Really?’
‘And of course I want you to run it again.’
‘Why?’
‘There are hundreds of thousands of American servicemen in England. Pouring in. Soldiers, sailors, airmen. We’re missing out — Collier’s, Life, Saturday Evening Post — everyone is running over there. I put it to the board — they agreed we should reopen. You’ve done the job before; you have all the contacts. We can steal a march.’
I sat there in silence for a few seconds then tapped the ash off my cigarette. I knew at once I was going to say yes but I wanted him to earn it.
‘I like it here,’ I said. ‘And I’ll miss you.’
‘I’ll be coming over all the time. And when I’m over it’ll be different — better. No ducking and diving, none of this secret-agent stuff.’
‘But my apartment, American Mode—’
‘I’ll take care of everything. Seventy-five pounds a month, plus expenses.’
I thought to myself: Diana Vreeland is on $500 a month and she’s the fashion editor of Bazaar.
‘Can I think about it?’
‘No. Absolutely no. It has to be you. I can’t send anybody else.’
‘When would I have to leave?’
‘Yesterday.’
Charbonneau poured himself another glass of wine, and then emptied the bottle at my invitation.
‘Let’s have another,’ he said. ‘I leave chiant DC and I come here to New York to see you — and life has some meaning, at last. It makes me want to get drunk. Like a fish.’
‘As drunk as a fish — I like that. But don’t get too drunk. We want to enjoy our last night together.’
He actually spluttered, then dabbed at his chin with his napkin and set his glass down carefully.
‘What are you saying to me, Amory?’
‘I’m going back to London. I’ve got a new job. Sorry to bring you the bad news on our lovely evening.’
‘Well, not so bad.’ He smiled, his big, tigerish, pleased-with-himself smile. ‘One reason I’m drinking so much is that I didn’t know how to tell you my own news.’
‘Which is?’
‘I’m going back to London, also.’
BOOK FIVE: 1943–1947
1. TYPHOON
‘FLIGHT LIEUTENANT CLAY, PLEASE,’ I said.
‘Ah, yes. . Yes, Miss, we’re expecting you. And the name of the organisation again? If you don’t mind?’