Jezebel Read online

  ‘Nous essayons de la distraire,’ she said, first in French. ‘We’re trying to give her a good time.’

  She sat up even straighter on the hard cushions of the settee; she never leaned against the back of furniture; she never showed signs of impatience. She had unhealthily bright cheeks; she smiled nervously, wearily, and slowly fanned herself. It was getting late; she felt overwhelmed by profound sadness. At first it had given her pleasure to watch Gladys with the indulgent affection of the older woman; but now, she didn’t know why, it was painful to see her so beautiful, so full of life; at one point she felt as if she wanted to grab her by the arm and shout, ‘Enough. Stop. You are too dazzling, too happy.’

  She had no idea that for many years to come Gladys would arouse the same envious sadness in the hearts of all women.

  Teresa felt ashamed; she fanned herself more quickly. She was wearing a satin dress of a dullish bronze colour with a double lace skirt; its bodice was embroidered with chenille leaves and bronze pearls. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought she was ugly; she desperately, hopelessly envied Gladys’s simple white dress and golden hair. She reminded herself that she was married, happy, that she had a son, that this little Gladys was at the threshold of an uncertain future.

  ‘Go on then, my darling, you too will change one day … such daring, such youth: how quickly they are lost, and the triumphant way you look at everyone, that will also fade away. You’ll have children, grow old. You still don’t know what is in store for you, my poor darling.’

  Suddenly she stood up and walked over to Gladys, who was standing in front of the red curtain of a window. She touched her shoulder with her fan. ‘We have to go home now, darling, come along …’

  Gladys turned towards her. Teresa was shocked by the change that a single hour of pleasure had made to this docile, quiet young girl. Gladys’s every gesture was made with great ease and sylphlike grace; her expression was triumphant, her laughter joyful and mocking. She seemed barely to hear what Teresa was saying.

  ‘Oh, no, Tess,’ she said, impatiently shaking her head, ‘no, please, Tess …’

  ‘Yes, darling …’

  ‘One more hour, just one.’

  ‘No, darling, it’s late; imagine staying up all night, at your age …’

  ‘One more dance then, just one more dance …’

  Tess sighed; her breathing became more irregular, more painful, as always when she was tired or irritated; she was wheezing.

  ‘I was also eighteen once, Gladys,’ she said, ‘and not that long ago. I understand that you find the ball wonderful, but you must learn how to leave pleasure behind before it leaves you behind. It’s late. Haven’t you had a good enough time?’

  ‘Yes, but now it’s over,’ Gladys murmured in spite of herself.

  ‘Tomorrow you will be pale and tired because you didn’t want to go home when you should. This isn’t the last ball you’ll go to; summer isn’t over yet.’

  ‘But it will be over soon,’ said Gladys, and her wide dark eyes sparkled with desire and despair.

  ‘Well, then, that will be the time to cry, and you know very well that everything must come to an end. You must learn how to resign yourself to things.’

  Gladys lowered her head, but she wasn’t listening; a voice rose from deep within her heart, a primitive and passionate voice, blocking out all those pointless words, a cruel, powerful voice that shouted, ‘Leave me alone! I want my pleasure! Deny me a single one of my pleasures and I’ll hate you! If you interfere with a single second of happiness that God has granted me, I’ll wish you were dead.’

  All she could hear was that intoxicating fanfare, the voice of youth itself. Was it possible that she would see this night end, watch it disappear into the void, the past? This night – so beautiful, so perfect – to others was nothing more than another summer’s ball in London, ‘a tiresome affair’, as Tess put it, no more than a few hours, soon to be forgotten …

  ‘Come along now, I say,’ Tess said, almost harshly.

  Gladys looked at her with surprise.

  ‘I don’t feel well; I’m tired. We have to go home …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ murmured Gladys, taking her hand.

  Her face had changed; once again it was childlike and innocent; the cruel passion in her eyes had disappeared.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Tess, forcing herself to smile. ‘You’re a good, sensible girl. Come along …’

  Gladys followed her without saying a word.

  2

  To Gladys, the last ball of that summer was a whirl of dancing, sound and colour that caught her up for a few hours then abandoned her, throwing her back down to earth feeling weary and disappointed. She had to leave the next day.

  She returned to the Beauchamps’ house at dawn. A milky fog lit up London; the pale, glistening streets were empty; the morning was almost cold, and the breeze left the taste of rain and damp coal on the lips, though now and again wafts of scent filled the air from the roses blossoming in the parks.

  Gladys slowly touched her face; her cheeks burned as if on fire. She could feel her heart beating quickly, anxiously, to the rhythm of the last waltz she had danced. She hummed it absent-mindedly, gently stroked her hair, leaned towards Tess and laughed, but she was sad. It was always the same: her joy suddenly disappeared and left her feeling deeply, bitterly melancholy. She dreamily thought about a handsome gentleman she had found attractive and with whom all the young women had fallen in love that summer. He was a young Polish man who worked at the Russian Embassy; his name was Count Tarnovsky. She thought of all the beautiful women she had seen and the fortunate young girls whose lives were already mapped out for them, while she had barely any social status, she who was the daughter of divorced parents, the daughter of Sophie Burnera, ‘an unhappy woman, a wicked woman’, as Tess called her. She looked over at her cousin who was sitting beside her and felt sorry for her: she seemed so frail, so tired, so ill; every now and again she would cough painfully. Claude Beauchamp had closed the car window and turned towards the two women. She smiled at him shyly, but he didn’t seem to notice her.

  He had a long, delicate face and thin cheeks, as if he were drawing them into his mouth beneath his cheekbones; his beautiful mouth had fine lips that formed almost a single straight line across his face when they were closed. He was very tall and not very strong looking, and he normally stood hunched over with his head slightly forward. He was polite, cold, reserved and quiet. He was young, but to Gladys he seemed nearly an old man. She admired him but had never set out to be attractive to him.

  The car stopped in front of the Beauchamps’ house. Downstairs, in Claude’s library, some drinks had been set out. It was a cold house; the fires were always lit when Teresa was to get home late. A few logs were still burning, lighting up the very tall old furniture: it was old-fashioned, made of antique dark wood, polished as brightly as ebony.

  Gladys opened the window and sat down in front of it.

  ‘You’ll catch cold, darling,’ Tess said with a sigh.

  ‘No I won’t,’ murmured Gladys.

  ‘At least throw a coat over your shoulders.’

  ‘No, no, my love, I’m not afraid of the cold, I’m not afraid of anything in this world.’

  Both women had the Victorian English habit of addressing each other in affectionate terms. They only ever called each other ‘darling’, ‘my sweetheart’, ‘my love …’. They smiled at each other when saying these words, but their eyes were harsh.

  Gladys took the flowers from her belt and breathed in their scent.

  Tess made an angry gesture. ‘Leave them alone,’ she said, ‘they’ve wilted.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Only these little red roses manage to wilt the way they should: they don’t wither away, they burn from within. Look,’ she said, showing her the flowers in her hand, ‘smell them, what a delicious perfume …’

  She held them to Teresa’s nose but she turned her head away. ‘The smell of flowers makes me fe
el ill,’ she said sadly.

  Gladys smiled; she felt ashamed; she could see she was upsetting Tess. ‘Poor little Teresa,’ she thought. She felt sorry for her, but she also felt a restless cruelty, the desire to know, to calculate the extent of her power as a woman for the first time. Her small face was pale from staying up all night, tense and trembling.

  ‘What am I doing?’ she suddenly thought, ‘and why?’

  They heard the voice of a child waking up from the floor above; it was Olivier, the Beauchamps’ little boy. Teresa immediately stood up. ‘Six o’clock already. Olivier’s getting up …’

  ‘Don’t go to him now; go and get some rest.’

  Teresa picked up her fan from the chair and left the room. Claude and Gladys were alone. Gladys opened the balcony doors. ‘It’s so light out …’

  Claude switched off the lamp. They went outside and stood on the stone balcony that ran round the entire house. It was a very beautiful morning, very quiet; they could hear birds singing in the garden next door, the sharp, joyous, intoxicating songs that welcome the sunlight.

  ‘Aren’t you tired?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she replied impatiently. ‘You too, Claude, all you ever talk about is being tired, getting some rest. Don’t you find that staying up all night makes you feel as light as air? It’s as if you’re no longer made of flesh and blood, as if a gust of wind could carry you away …’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘look at how that tree is swaying in the wind.’

  ‘Yes, it’s beautiful.’

  She leaned over the balcony, half closed her eyes to feel the morning wind brush against her eyelids. ‘This is the most beautiful time of day …’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking at her. ‘The only two moments of any real value, “worth considering”,’ he said in English, ‘are the birth and death of things, the beginning and the end.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Gladys said suddenly, her voice low and passionate, ‘I don’t understand why the old man in that book you like so much insists that he’s never once in his whole life been able to say, “Stand still!” ’

  ‘Oh, because he was an old fool, I imagine.’

  She smiled and breathed in the wind, tilted her lovely head, looked at her bare arm. ‘Time,’ she said softly, ‘stand still.’

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

  She laughed, but he was watching her with an intense, passionate expression. He seemed less to admire her than to fear and almost hate her.

  ‘Gladys …’ he said at last.

  He said her name again with a kind of astonishment, then leaned over and took her hand: it was still the hand of a child, thin and unadorned, hiding among the folds of her dress. He kissed it, trembling. He kissed her slim arm that still had traces of bumps and scratches, for she was sometimes rough, like a tomboy, and she loved difficult horses, obstacles, danger. He stood bowed before her, as humble as a child. Gladys would never, ever forget that moment, the intoxicating arrogance and divine satisfaction that filled her heart.

  ‘This,’ she mused, ‘this is happiness.’

  She didn’t pull away her hand; only her delicate nostrils flared slightly and her youthful face suddenly transformed into the face of a woman, a face that was cunning, greedy and cruel. How wonderful it was to see a man at her feet. Was there anything better in this world than the dawn of her power as a woman? It was this she had been waiting for, this she had sensed was about to happen for so many days now. Pleasure, dancing, success: all these things paled into insignificance before this stinging sensation, this kind of biting she felt within her now.

  ‘Is this love?’ she mused. ‘Oh, no! It was the pleasure of being loved … it was almost sacrilegious …’

  ‘I’m only a child,’ she said, ‘and you are Tess’s husband.’

  He looked up at her and smiled. They watched each other for a moment.

  ‘A child, yes …’ he said painfully, ‘but already a jaded, dangerous flirt …’

  His face had become impassive again. Only his hands were shaking. He wanted to leave, but she asked him quietly, ‘Are you in love with me, then?’

  He didn’t reply; his thin lips took the shape of that pale, straight line that cut across his face and which she knew so well.

  ‘He’ll give in,’ she thought and she felt a desire to recreate that sensation of sharp, strange, almost physical joy.

  ‘Answer me,’ she said, touching his hand. ‘Say it: “I love you”, even if it isn’t true. I’ve never heard anyone say those words. I want to hear them. I want to hear you say them, Claude. Tell me …’

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  She pulled away from him with a weary, happy little laugh. That moment of piercing desire had passed; she felt a kind of shame combined with pleasure; she slowly lowered her beautiful eyes, moved away from the trembling arms that wished to clasp her to him and smiled.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘what’s the point? I don’t love you …’

  He walked away and left the room without looking at her.

  3

  Some time later, while travelling, Gladys happened to meet Count Tarnovsky again, the young Polish man who had pleased her at a London ball. She married him and lived with him for two years. He was handsome and as vain about his good looks as a young girl; he was unfaithful, a liar, affectionate and weak. Their married life was unbearable to both of them, because they used the same feminine weapons against each other: lies, ruses and whims. Afterwards, she could not forgive him for having made her suffer; she hated suffering; like children, she expected and demanded to be happy.

  After they separated she met Richard Eysenach, a famous financier of dubious origins and President of the Mexican Petroleum Company. He was feared for his sharp, ruthless intelligence. He was ugly, with a heavy, powerful body, muscular arms and a wide forehead that was partially hidden by his thick black hair. Beneath his full eyebrows his piercing green eyes would stare at a rival, scrutinising him with scornful, amused tolerance. He only found women attractive if they were beautiful, docile and knew how to keep quiet. He trained Gladys to obey him, to appear happy and cheerful when he looked at her a certain way, to think of nothing in life apart from being beautiful and finding pleasure. He never grew tired of watching her getting dressed, choosing slowly between two pieces of jewellery, studying her features in the mirror. He found sharp, sensual pleasure in treating her like a child. When she pressed herself against him, when she whispered ‘I’m so small compared to you, so weak …’, when she looked at him in a certain way, raising her sweet, mocking face towards him, a flash of desire and almost madness shot across his cold, impassive face. Then he would throw himself on top of her, passionately biting her lips, calling her ‘My little girl, my sweet child, my little one …’

  This unspoken vice that was appeased through her was the source of pleasure for both of them and, for Gladys, the secret of the power that she wielded over him and over others. She loved it when he caressed her roughly, savagely. Later in life, all the men she would find attractive resembled Richard in some way. For a long time she had a lover, Sir Mark Forbes, the English statesman who was very famous just before the war. He was hard and ambitious, educated to follow a routine and with a love of power; but with her he was lonely, weak and defenceless. That was what she liked; that was what annoyed him; she constantly had to prove to herself that she could dominate men.

  In the years preceding the war her beauty attained the point of perfection that only happiness and the fulfilment of every desire can bring about in a woman. Olivier Beauchamp, the son of Claude and Teresa, met her when she was passing through Paris. It was 1907 and he was barely out of adolescence. He saw a woman whose face and body were as beautiful as they had been when she was twenty, but who exuded the air of self-confidence and peace that comes from happiness. She was surrounded by men who were in love with her. She had become as accustomed to promises, pleading and tears as a drunkard was to wine; she never had enough and such sweet poison was so essential to
her that she would not have been able to live without it. She made no secret of it. She believed that a real woman is never blasé, but rather an indefatigable little creature: an ambitious man might grow weary of accolade and a miser of gold, but a real woman could never forsake her femininity; when she thought about growing old, it seemed so far away that she could consider it without fear, imagining that death would come to her before her life of pleasure was over.

  Meanwhile, her daughter, little Marie-Thérèse, was growing up. She was a beautiful little girl with a pale, fresh complexion, long straight blonde hair and the touching gracefulness of an age when beauty is not yet found in one’s expression but in the shape of the features, the texture of the skin; it is a time of life when the flickering in the eyes and at the corners of the mouth announce the future blossoming of emotions rather than emotions themselves. ‘She’ll never look like her mother,’ people said, ‘never be her mother’s equal.’ She lived in the shadow of her beautiful mother and, like everyone else who knew Gladys, she strove only to please her, to serve her, to love her.

  4

  In 1914 Gladys lived near Antibes in a beautiful but uncomfortable house, built in the Italian style; it had belonged to the Counts Dolcebuone and was named ‘Sans-Souci’.

  ‘I only rented it because of its name, ‘Care-free’, for it encapsulates all of life’s wisdom,’ she would say.

  The rooms were vast and cold, the furniture covered in threadbare red damask. But the dark walls softened the glaring light of the Midi and Gladys liked that. Every day, just after she woke up, she would pick up her mirror and study her features, and she would find pleasure in the glowing shadow that softly lit up her face.

  Spring was just beginning; it was warm but a wind blew in from the mountains, a swift, biting wind.