Golden Earrings (42 page)

Charisma? I was astonished. No one had ever described
me as ‘charismatic’ before. ‘Beautiful’ and ‘delicate’, but never more than that.

‘The energy you emanated was contagious,’ said Franchetti enthusiastically. ‘Last year we felt you were holding something back from us. But this year you gave us everything.’

‘You’ve been accepted into the
corps de ballet
,’ said Claude Bessy, who had championed me from the beginning and made all the exceptions for me to take the examination for the second time through the school. ‘You’ve achieved exactly what you wanted.’

I did my best to respond to their comments courteously, despite my utter surprise at the result. I thanked them and turned to leave. Before I reached the door, Arielle Marineau stepped forward. Our eyes met. The other judges turned to one another and started to talk and gather their papers.

‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘I look forward to working with you. If you keep giving me performances like the one in your second variation, you won’t be in the
corps de ballet
long. You are star material.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, not quite able to take in what I was hearing. But while her praise sounded sincere, I detected a touch of frostiness in Arielle Marineau’s manner. She’d been able to rise above her prejudice on this occasion, but I could not afford to get off on a bad foot with the ballet mistress over something that had happened in the past. ‘I believe that you may have some ill feelings towards my father,’ I told her. ‘I hope it won’t get in the way of our relationship. He and I are estranged.’

‘Your father?’ she said, looking genuinely surprised. ‘Why would I have ill feelings towards
your father
? The man is a saint!’

Although I was exhausted after the examination, we celebrated my success with a flamenco party in Mamie’s studio. I was surprised when Mamie joined Carmen in a slow gypsy tango.
I almost begged her to stop on account of her heart, but the doctor had said that mild exercise would be good for her and she seemed to be enjoying herself.

I recalled that she’d had flamenco lessons from la Rusa. I was shaken by my second encounter with the ghost. But I was puzzled too. La Rusa hadn’t given me the impression that she was a malevolent spirit. Nor did I feel that she wanted something from me. If anything, she had helped me. But the same question remained: why?

Of course, the other thing that was bothering me was what Arielle Marineau had said about my father. What did she mean he was ‘a saint’? Those weren’t the words of a woman scorned.

The following afternoon, I went to my father’s apartment in avenue de l’Observatoire. The concierge telephoned Audrey. After a moment’s pause, he turned to me. ‘Madame says to go up.’

I walked up the fleur-de-lis-carpeted stairs to the second-floor landing, where Audrey was waiting for me. She was wearing a powder-blue jumpsuit with white beads and white platform shoes. Her dark hair was teased up behind her white headscarf. Even though it was Saturday, she wore winged eyeliner, thick black mascara and pale pink lipstick. She looked like an aging Bond girl. But I didn’t want an altercation with Audrey today.

‘I’d like to see Papa, please,’ I said to her.

Audrey didn’t reply. She opened the door for me and I followed her into the hallway. The apartment was as chic as I had expected, with terracotta stone floors and ornate moulded ceilings. The white walls were classic raised-panel wainscoting, but the furniture and art were modern. There was a framed print of Tretchikoff’s
Fighting Zebras
above the mantelpiece in the sitting room, which must have been a talking point because the artist was considered by many as rather kitsch. The thing that took me by surprise was that Audrey’s company appeared to
occupy most of the space in the apartment. There was an office for her, plus another two rooms containing desks for employees and filing cabinets. There was a small boardroom too. I hadn’t realised that Audrey ran her business from home.

My father was reading in a room at the rear of the apartment. Audrey obviously hadn’t warned him I was coming. She ushered me into the room and shut the door behind me.

Papa appeared more tired than surprised to see me. He didn’t stand up and kiss me. He didn’t offer me a seat, but I took the armchair opposite him anyway. He looked more like his old self in his reading glasses and jeans. There were cat hairs on his sweater. I glanced around the room and spotted a tiger-striped tabby curled up on the windowsill.

‘I passed the examination yesterday,’ I said. ‘I’ve been accepted into the
corps de ballet
.’

‘Good,’ Papa said matter-of-factly. ‘You deserve it.’

When he didn’t say anything more, I was stumped. The Ballet represented everything I had been working towards since I was eight years of age. Papa took off his glasses, as if he were impatient to hear what I’d come to say.

‘The apartment is very nice,’ I told him.

He nodded. ‘It’s a bit showy, but half of it belongs to Audrey’s company and I guess publicity is all about image. I have a music studio the next floor up.’

‘It must have a nice view.’

He nodded again but made no attempt to elaborate.

I rubbed my hands on my skirt. ‘I met Arielle Marineau after the examination yesterday. She said she thought you were a saint. I guess that means that you didn’t dump her for Mama. But something happened … something more than old rivalry. Otherwise she wouldn’t have rejected me so unfairly on my first attempt.’

Papa looked away.

‘Please tell me,’ I said. ‘I’d like to know the truth.’

My father gave a gruff laugh. ‘Would you, Paloma? You don’t want the truth. You want to live in fantasy land, just like your mother.’

His words stabbed at my heart. But I stayed calm.

‘Mamie told me everything that happened in Spain,’ I ventured. ‘It was terrible to hear it, but it made me appreciate her much better and also realise how much I have to be grateful for. I think the truth is good.’

Papa sighed and shook his head. ‘Really, Paloma,’ he said, ‘it’s much better for you to go on believing that I am a bastard.’

I felt myself pale. In the same way I had sensed I was going to hear something terrible about Margarida, I now began to suspect that there was something about Mama I didn’t know. I lost my courage at that. Perhaps Papa was right: it was better that I didn’t know. Mama was my heroine, my ideal. But I’d set the ball rolling now.

‘Your mother and I …’ Papa began. ‘Well, we loved you very much. In fact, you were the reason we stayed together as long as we did.’

‘But you weren’t happy together?’ I asked.

I looked into my father’s face and saw that it was true. If I was honest with myself, I had sensed it a long time ago. They were not the perfect couple. Mama had seemed happiest when Papa was away, and my father had toured more than his true nature would have wanted.

‘I loved your mother,’ he said. ‘But she didn’t feel very much for me other than as the father of her child. When you were away at ballet school, our lives were empty. She didn’t like me being around, but she didn’t want a divorce either in case it hurt you. We went on for years like that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t understand what it was like for you.’

Papa looked surprised that I was handling an ugly truth so well, but he pursed his lips before continuing. ‘No, because you adored your mother. In your eyes she was everything.’

I nodded. ‘But I loved you too, Papa. And it doesn’t explain why Arielle Marineau held a grudge against me.’

Papa looked away from me again. Mama, I thought, what did you do?

‘Please,’ I insisted. ‘I want to understand.’

Papa hesitated, then said, ‘Your mother … well, she and Christophe Valois … they had an affair.’

Christophe Valois, the choreographer? Arielle Marineau’s long-time lover? Of all the things I had heard in the last few months, this shocked me the most. My mother had an affair? She must have been very discreet, I thought, because although the ballet world thrived on gossip, I hadn’t heard even a hint of this.

‘For how long?’ I asked.

‘About four years before she became ill.’

‘And when did you meet Audrey?’

‘The year before your mother died. She organised the publicity for my Australian tour. Her husband had suffered multiple sclerosis and died of complications a few years before we met. We began talking and we found we had a lot in common. We both love animals. Audrey is a volunteer fundraiser at the Société Protectrice des Animaux.’

I felt as if my life was constantly being torn down and reconstructed. I hadn’t known I had a Spanish cousin; I hadn’t known about Mamie’s family; I hadn’t known my mother had been having an affair. I hadn’t known even trivial things about the woman my father was now married to: that she helped abandoned animals and liked kitsch art. I began to wonder if Audrey was to my father what la Rusa had been to Xavier.

‘But you were still with us when Mama was ill,’ I said. ‘You took her to her medical appointments. You were there until she died.’

Papa stood up and stared out the window. ‘That’s because that bastard Valois abandoned her and went back to Arielle as soon as it was confirmed that Julieta had cancer. She was alone
with only you and Mamie. Your grandmother was in pieces, and you were too young to go through all of that on your own.’

‘But what about Audrey?’

‘She encouraged it,’ he replied. ‘“You must put your daughter first,” she told me. “She’s so young and this is a terrible thing to have happened.” She’d seen how hard it was for Pierre to witness his father’s slow, painful death.’

‘Audrey let you pretend that you and Mama were still happily married! Why?’

‘I think she hoped that one day you would be the daughter she had always wanted but never had. I don’t think many women would have behaved so nobly.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘No, not many women would put a man’s wife and daughter first even in that situation.’ I looked up at him. ‘Is that why you married so quickly after Mama’s death? To make it up to her?’

Papa shook his head. ‘Audrey said we should wait, but I wanted to give you a stable home life as soon as possible. I thought that you and Mamie could both come here. I believed you’d like having a brother in Pierre and a mother figure in Audrey. But it went terribly wrong. I underestimated how badly you would take things. You think I always do what Audrey wants? Well, that was an occasion when I should have listened to her.’

I was so astounded by what I was hearing that at first I couldn’t say anything.

Then it occurred to me how badly I had misunderstood my father’s intentions. ‘But you didn’t explain any of this to me,’ I said. ‘How was I to know?’

I was about to stand up and embrace him, so that we could begin our reconciliation, but Papa frowned.

‘How
were
you to know? Indeed!’ he said. ‘You moved out to go live with Mamie as soon as I mentioned Audrey. You walked away from me every time I went to see you to explain.
I assume that you didn’t read any of dozens of letters I sent to you and you even convinced Mamie I was so terrible that she hung up the telephone whenever I called. When Audrey tried to speak with you, you treated her with contempt. What else could I have done? When I tried to explain, you didn’t want to listen!’

I stared at my hands, feeling as if a heavy weight was bearing down on my shoulders. It was true. Every time he’d tried to speak to me, I’d pushed him away. I hadn’t even given him a chance.

‘You’re right,’ I told him, tears choking my voice. ‘I don’t understand why I did that.’

My father put his hands on his hips. ‘I didn’t understand why either,’ he said. ‘Until I drove you home from the hospital after Mamie’s heart attack … and I realised how much you despised me. If you had any kind of love for me, you would have demanded an explanation. Instead, your expectations of me were so low that you assumed that I was simply a bastard.’

‘I’m so sorry!’ I said. I almost couldn’t bear to hear any more. Yes, I had been upset about Mama’s death, but why had I been so cruel to Papa?

‘You’re sorry?’ my father continued, his voice growing louder. ‘I lived with a woman who was cold to me for seventeen years, Paloma! I did it for nobody’s sake but yours! What a fool I am! All so you could look down on me with the same contempt your mother did!’

There had once been a time when Papa couldn’t stand to see me cry. But even though the tears were streaming down my cheeks, he looked away from me and out the window. Avi had often said that there are some things in life that a mere apology couldn’t fix, and it was obvious that my relationship with my father was one of them.

My father’s revelations about my mother and my own realisation at the lack of understanding between us was as devastating as
my failure to get into the
corps de ballet
the year before. It was difficult to adjust my picture of my mother. I didn’t love or miss her any less, but I could see that she wasn’t as perfect as I had thought. If I hadn’t held my mother on such a pedestal, I might have been more generous to Papa.

‘I feel as if I’ve been knocked down and gone over a few times by a steamroller,’ I told Jaime. ‘How could I have been so wrong about my own father?’

‘Your father was hurt,’ he said, putting his arm around me and kissing the top of my head. ‘But it sounds to me like you both love each other very much. I’m sure now you’ve gone to see him that he will think things over. Just give it a bit of time.’

I wanted to believe Jaime, but the truth was that I had never seen Papa look at me so dispassionately. It was as if the feelings he had for me had died. And after the way I had acted, how could I blame him?

My rehearsals with the Ballet would begin in a few weeks and I had to be in good form. But one thought kept playing over in my mind: I had been wrong about my father, completely wrong, and that convinced me that I didn’t know everything about la Rusa’s betrayal of Xavier either. The only way to find out more was to try to make contact with her ghost myself.

The light shimmering through the trees of cimetière du Père-Lachaise gave the place an atmosphere that was both tranquil and tragic. Chopin, Proust, Colette and Édith Piaf were buried here, along with Molière, Oscar Wilde and Honoré de Balzac.