Levels of Life Read online

  He saw them as a couple, putting things together, assembling a life. He always imagined them in motion. He was – they were – soaring.

  Though bohemian, and worldly, Fred Burnaby was not sophisticated in the manner of those who came backstage each night and sought ever more refined ways to applaud. But he was intelligent, and had travelled widely. So, after a week or two, awareness came of how others might view his situation; and he spoke their words aloud to himself.

  ‘She is a woman. She is French. She is an actress. Is she on the level?’

  He knew what his friends and fellow officers would say. How they would smirk even as he articulated the question. But their minds would be filled with generality, reputation, rumour. They themselves were perfectly happy chasing Circassian girls and pretty Kirghiz widows for a while, secure in the knowledge that they would return home and marry Englishwomen of good family for whom the practicalities of the heart were no more complicated and mysterious than the practicalities of the kitchen garden. Late at night, over a brandy and soda, they might briefly succumb to nostalgia for a different kind of smile, a darker complexion, and some whispered words in a half-understood language. But then, having done so, they would dutifully go back to the family hearth, squiffily convinced that they had ordered their lives properly.

  Fred Burnaby was not like this. And neither was Madame Sarah. She had not used flirtatiousness with him. Or rather, her flirtatiousness was not a fraud, not a tactic, but a promise. Her eyes and her smile had been a proposal, an offer which he had accepted. The fact that Mme Guérard had subsequently mentioned a pair of earrings to which Madame Sarah had taken a fancy, that he had bought them for her, and that she had expressed gratitude but no surprise: this too was straightforwardness. And to his mocking fellow officers he would reply: but did you not equally buy presents for your virginal rose-cheeked English fiancées, and did they not accept them with such a pretty affectation of astonishment that you were quite deceived? Whereas Madame Sarah had always – even though ‘always’ meant only a few weeks – been straight with him.

  She did not have a suspicious family with whom he had to ingratiate himself. There was Mme Guérard: vanguard, rearguard and état-major all combined. He recognised and appreciated loyalty. She and Captain Fred understood one another; and when events spurred him to generosity, she took his money with a calm gravity. Otherwise, there was only Madame Sarah’s son, a friendly lad who might successfully be taught sports and games. The Continentals still needed such an education in these matters. In Spain they were proud to shoot a sitting partridge. At Pau he had once been invited to join the local hunt. They had used a bagged fox doused in aniseed to make it easier for the dull-nosed hounds to follow; his horse was so abbreviated that his heels dragged the ground as it carried him; and the whole sport was over in a mere twenty minutes.

  He would happily quit England. He had known good fellowship there, but his soul was drawn to heat and dust. And though his blood might be pure English all the way back to Edward Longshanks, he was aware that it did not always show. He knew what some privately thought, because in drink they nearly said it to his face. When he was a young subaltern, there had been a joke in the mess that he looked like an Italian baritone. ‘Sing us a song, Burnaby,’ the fellows would chant. And so, every time, until they tired of it, he would stand and sing them neither operetta nor bawdy, but some plain, lilting song of the English shires.

  And there had been that supercilious young lieutenant called Dyer, always suggesting he might be a Jew. Not in so many words, of course, just the broadest hints. ‘Money? Let’s ask Burnaby about that.’ Not so subtle. After a few such remarks, he had taken Lieutenant Dyer aside and spoken as if they were not wearing uniform. And that had been the end of it. But Burnaby did remember.

  So the fact that Madame Sarah had been born a Jewess was not of great concern to him. Born a Jewess, converted to Catholicism. Burnaby did not absolve himself of strong feelings when it came to preferring one race over another, but he did believe that in the matter of the Jews, he looked on them more benignly than did most Frenchmen he had met. So, in a way, he took such prejudice upon himself, and Dyer might consider them both false Jews if he wanted to. Which made him feel closer to Madame Sarah.

  And so, as the weeks passed, he imagined their future more precisely. He would resign his commission. He would quit England, and she would quit Paris. Of course, she would continue to amaze the world, but her genius must not be squandered day after day, night after night. She would play a season here, a season there, and in between they would travel to places where she was as yet unknown. From their shared bohemianism, a new pattern would emerge. Love would change her, as it was changing him. How, he did not exactly know.

  So that was all clear in his mind, and he must bring the subject up. Not now, of course, not between dinner and bed. It was a matter for the morning. High-hearted, he addressed himself to the ballotine of duck.

  ‘Capitaine Fred,’ she began, and he thought that his definition of bliss would be to hear those two words, in that voice, in that French accent, for the rest of his days. ‘Capitaine Fred, what do you imagine to be the future of flight? Of human flight, human beings, men and women, up in the atmosphere together?’

  He answered the question he heard.

  ‘Aerial navigation is a mere question of lightness and force,’ he replied. ‘Attempts – my own included – to propel and steer balloons have failed. And probably will continue to do so. There is no doubt that heavier-than-air flight is the future.’

  ‘I see. I have not yet ascended in a balloon, but I think that a pity.’

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘May I ask why, my dear?’

  ‘Of course, Capitaine Fred. Ballooning is freedom, is it not?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘It is being blown whichever way by nature’s whims. It is dangerous too.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Whereas, if we are to imagine a heavier-than-air machine, it would be equipped with some kind of engine. It would have controls by which it might be steered, which would order its ascent and descent. And it would be less dangerous.’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’

  ‘Do you not see what I am saying?’

  Burnaby reflected. Was it because she was a woman, because she was French, or because she was an actress, that he did not understand?

  ‘I fear I am still in the clouds, Madame Sarah.’

  She smiled again, and not an actress’s smile – unless, he suddenly realised, an actress would, as a normal part of her skills, have a non-actress’s smile at her disposal.

  ‘I do not say that war is preferable to peace. I do not say that. But danger is preferable to safety.’

  Now he thought he might be on to her meaning, and did not like the sound of it.

  ‘I believe in danger as much as you. That will never leave me. I shall always go where danger and adventure call. I shall always seek a skirmish. If my country needs me, I shall always answer.’

  ‘I am happy to know that.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Madame Sarah, the future lies with heavier-than-air machines. However much we balloonatics might prefer it not to.’

  ‘Have we not discussed this and agreed?’

  ‘Yes. But that is not what I intended.’

  He paused. She waited. He knew that she knew where he was going. He began again.

  ‘We are both bohemians. Both travellers, footloose. We live against the common run of things. We do not take orders easily.’

  He paused, she waited.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Madame Sarah. You know what I am going to say. I cannot bandy metaphor any longer. I am not the first man who has fallen in love with you on sight, nor, I fear, will I be the last. But I am in love with you as I have never been before. We are kindred spirits, this I know.’

  He gazed at her. She looked back at him with what he took to be perfect tranquillity. But did that mean she agr
eed with him, or was unmoved by what he said? He went on.

  ‘We are both grown up. We know the world. I am not some parlour soldier. You are not an ingénue. Marry me. Marry me. I lay my sword at your feet as well as my heart. I cannot say it more straightforwardly than that.’

  He waited for her response. He thought her eyes glistened. She put her hand on his arm.

  ‘Mon cher Capitaine Fred,’ she replied – but her tone made him feel more like a schoolboy than an officer of the Blues. ‘I have never taken you for a parlour soldier. I do you the honour of taking you seriously. And I am very flattered.’

  ‘But … ?’

  ‘But. Yes, that is a word life forces upon us more often than we want, more often than we imagine. But – I do you the honour of answering your straightforwardness with mine. But – I am not made for happiness.’

  ‘You cannot say, after these last weeks and months …’

  ‘Oh, but I can say. And I do. I am made for sensation, for pleasure, for the moment. I am constantly in search of new sensations, new emotions. That is how I shall be until my life is worn away. My heart desires more excitement than anyone – any one person – can give.’

  He looked away from her. This was more than a man could bear.

  ‘You must understand this,’ she went on. ‘I shall never marry. I promise you that. I shall always be, as you put it, a balloonatic. I shall never take that heavier-than-air machine with anyone. What can I do? You must not be angry with me. You must think of me as an incomplete person.’

  He summoned up one last attempt. ‘Madame Sarah, we are all of us incomplete. I am just as incomplete as you. That is why we seek another person. For completion. And I too have never thought I would marry. Not because it is the conventional thing to do. But because I previously did not have the courage. Marriage is a greater danger than a pack of infidels with spears, if you want my opinion. Do not be afraid, Madame Sarah. Do not let your actions be governed by your fears. That is what my first commanding officer used to tell me.’

  ‘It is not fear, Capitaine Fred,’ she said gently. ‘It is self-knowledge. And do not be angry with me.’

  ‘I am not angry. You have a manner which quite disarms anger. If I appear angry, it is because I am angry with the universe that has made you, that has made us, so that this … so that this is how …’

  ‘Capitaine Fred. It is late, and we are both tired. Come to my dressing room tomorrow and perhaps you will understand.’

  (In parenthesis, another love story. In 1893 – the same year he visits Nadar and his aphasiac wife in the Forest of Sénart – Edmond de Goncourt dines with Sarah Bernhardt before a read-through of his play La Faustin. She is still out at rehearsal when he arrives, and he is shown into the studio where she receives her guests. His aesthete’s eye chillingly evaluates the tumultuous decor. He finds it a terrible mishmash of medieval sideboards and marquetry cabinets, Chilean figurines and primitive musical instruments, and ‘flashy wog objets d’art’. The only sign of authentic personal taste is an array of polar-bear skins in the corner where Bernhardt (who often, as this evening, dresses in white) likes to hold court. Amid such artistic rag-and-bonery, Goncourt also notices a small but intense emotional drama. In the middle of the studio is a cage containing a tiny monkey and a parrot with an enormous bill. The monkey is a whirr of motion, zipping around on the trapeze, and constantly tormenting the parrot, pulling out its feathers and ‘martyrising’ it. And though the parrot could easily cut the monkey in half with its beak, it does nothing but utter plaintive, heart-rending cries. Goncourt feels sorry for the poor parrot, and comments on the dreadful life it is forced to endure. Whereupon it is explained to him that bird and beast had once been separated, but that the parrot had almost died of grief. It only recovered after being put back into the cage with its tormentor.)

  He sent flowers ahead. He watched her impersonate Adrienne Lecouvreur, that actress of a previous century, poisoned by a love rival. He went to her dressing room. She was charming. There were the usual faces. They spoke in the usual way, muttered the usual opinions. He sat with Mme Guérard, discreetly quizzing her, trying to find some new tactic, some hidden fulcrum … when there was a slight hush, and he looked up. He saw her on the arm of a stunted little Frenchman with a monkey face and a stupid cane.

  ‘Goodnight, gentlemen.’

  In reply, there was a murmur of complicit unsurprise, exactly as there had been on his own first evening with her. She looked across at him and nodded, then calmly switched her gaze. Mme Guérard rose and bade him goodnight. He watched Madame Sarah depart. He had been given his answer. The water was freezing and he had not so much as a cork overjacket to protect him.

  No, he was not angry. And the dressing-room dandies at least had the good breeding not to draw attention to what had happened, nor to imply that something similar – no, precisely the same – had befallen them on previous occasions. They offered him more champagne and asked politely about le Prince de Galles. They kept their propriety and respected his. In this, at least, he could not fault them.

  But he would never join their number, never be a member of the smiling retinue of former lovers. He considered that sort of behaviour rather beastly, in fact immoral. He refused to be turned from a lover into a dear friend. He was uninterested in that transition. Nor would he club together with others of the same status to buy her some new exotic gift – a snow leopard, perhaps. And he was not angry. But, before the pain set in, he had the time to be rueful. He had laid everything out, the best of himself, and it had not been enough. He had considered himself a bohemian, but she had proved too bohemian for him. And he had failed to understand her explanation of herself.

  The pain was to last several years. He eased it by travelling and skirmishing. He never talked about it. If someone enquired into his black mood, he would reply that the melancholy of the padge-owl was afflicting him. The enquirer would understand, and ask no more.

  Had he been naive, or overambitious? Both, probably. In life, you might be a bohemian and an adventurer, but you also sought a pattern, an arrangement to help you through, even if – even as – you kicked against it. Army regulations gave you this. But elsewhere: how could a man tell which was a true pattern and which a false? This was one question which pursued him. Here was another: had she been on the level? Had she been natural, or feigning naturalness? Constantly he went back over the evidence of his memories. She had said that she always kept her promises – unless she didn’t mean to keep them in the first place. Had she made him false promises? None that he could pin down. Had she told him that she loved him? Yes, of course, many times; but it was his imagination – the prompter’s voice at his ear – which had added the words ‘for ever’. He hadn’t asked what she meant when she told him she loved him. What lover ever does? Those plush and gilded words rarely seem to need annotation at the time.

  And now he realised that if he had asked her, she would have replied, ‘I shall love you for as long as I shall love you.’ What lover could ask for more? And the prompter’s voice would again have whispered, ‘Which means for ever.’ Such was the measure of a man’s vanity. Was their love, then, merely the construction of his fancy? That he could not, did not believe. He had loved her as much as he was able for three months, and she had done the same; it was just that her love had a timing switch built into it. Nor would it have helped to ask about her previous lovers, and how long they had lasted. Because their very failure, their impermanence, would only have seemed to promise his success: that is what every lover believes.

  No, Fred Burnaby concluded, she had been on the level. It was he who had deceived himself. But if being on the level didn’t shield you from pain, maybe it was better to be up in the clouds.

  He never tried to make contact with Madame Sarah again. When she came to London he found reason to be out of town. After a while he became able to read of her latest triumph with a steady eye. Mostly, he could go back over the whole business like a rational man, to remember it as
something that had happened, that was nobody’s fault, that had not involved cruelty, merely misunderstanding. But he could not always hold on to such calmness and such explanations. And then he saw himself as the stupidest of animals. He felt like that boa constrictor which had taken upon itself to start eating sofa cushions, until it had been shot dead by Madame Sarah’s own hand. Shot dead, that was how he felt.

  But he was to marry, at the advanced age of thirty-seven. She was Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitsed, daughter of an Irish baronet. Yet if he sought, or expected, a pattern, it was again denied him. After the wedding, the bride went down with consumption, and their North African honeymoon was relocated to a Swiss sanatorium. Eleven months later, Elizabeth presented Fred with a son, but was confined to the High Alps for much of her life. Captain Fred, now Major Fred, and subsequently Colonel Fred, returned to travelling and skirmishing.

  Also, to his passion for ballooning. In 1882, he took off from the Dover Gasworks, bound for France. Marooned above the Channel, he thought inevitably of Madame Sarah. He was making the flight he had always promised himself, but now it was not, as she had flirtatiously proposed, towards her. Though he had never spoken to anyone of their liaison, a few suspected it, and occasionally – after a game of cards at Pratt’s, followed by a late supper of bacon and eggs and beer – some allusion was nudgingly attempted. But he never rose to the bait. Now, suspended, he heard only her voice in his ear. Mon cher Capitaine Fred. It still cut him, after all these years. Impetuously, he lit a cigar. It was a foolish gesture, but at that moment his entire life could explode, for all he cared. His mind drifted back to the rue Fortuny, to her eyes of transparent blue, her hair like a burning bush; to her great cane bed. Then he came to his senses, tossed the half-smoked cigar into the sea, threw out some ballast and sought the higher altitudes, hoping to catch a northerly breeze.