R Raichev - The Death of Corinne

‘Yes. She can’t imagine going on stage, stepping out under the spotlight, looking haggard, her face collapsed.’ Payne pulled a demented grimace. ‘She cancels one concert, then another. None of the intensive beauty treatments seems able to erase time’s satanic footprints. She grows desperate – decides on a radical solution. She’d have something major. A total image reconstruction. Nothing less would do. She disappears from view. She books herself into a superior Swiss clinic, from which she is confident she will emerge spectacularly rejuvenated from under the knife, thirty years younger – a girl once more!’

‘Only she doesn’t.’

‘She doesn’t… The surgery goes spectacularly wrong – some dreadful infection sets in – she nearly dies. Well, the doctors save her – she recovers – but she loses her face. It is patched up – however, she can no longer be recognized as Corinne Coreille. She looks like Godzilla. Something has gone terribly wrong with her vocal chords too, maybe as a result of the shock. The famous voice – the beautiful voice that had once charmed General de Gaulle – is no more – gone! Corinne Coreille has suffered a permanent extinction de voix.’ Payne started relighting his pipe and he waved his hand as though to say, ‘Over to you.’

He’s enjoying this as much as I am, Antonia thought. She took up the tale. ‘Corinne spends the next five years in the wilderness. She suffers severe depression, has a nervous breakdown, starts hitting the bottle, puts on weight. She becomes a hermit, leads a twilight existence, which for her, after so many years in the spotlight, is a living death. She ages – now she looks ten years older. Maybe she assumes a different name. She realizes that she is finished. She is haunted by the thought – tormented – crazed by it. Her mind becomes somewhat unhinged. Then – then something unexpected happens -’

Payne put up his finger. ‘Corinne meets her daughter. She hasn’t seen her for quite a while, maybe she’s never seen her as a grown-up woman at all, so when they stand face to face, she is struck by the remarkable resemblance her daughter bears to her young self. Then she hears her daughter sing. She is stunned – she can’t believe her ears – that unique voice, the Corinne Coreille voice – her voice, as it was in her prime! She has the uncanny feeling that she is hearing one of her own early recordings -’

‘Actually Corinne saw her daughter on video. It was the nuns who recorded the tape,’ they heard someone say. ‘Two flighty soeurs who had got tipsy on absinthe. It showed Monique dressed up as Corinne, singing one of Corinne’s songs. The title of the song, prophetically enough, was “Je Reviens”.’

Peverel had entered the library without either of them hearing him.

A Star is Born

They looked at him in silence. They had no idea how long he had stood there.

‘You might as well know the exact details. Corinne hadn’t been in touch with her daughter for sixteen years,’ Peverel went on. ‘She was a terrible mother. She should never have had children. She was monstrously egocentric – dangerously self-obsessed.’

He spoke with great bitterness and ferocious passion. Antonia had never imagined Peverel capable of any strong emotions. He looked even paler than when they had seen him last.

‘She wasn’t like that to start with, when I first knew her. Of course not,’ Peverel continued. ‘She was a very confused child, true, but she had sweetness and gentleness as well as the capacity of giving and receiving love. Well, all that evaporated over the years, thanks mainly to her Svengali – the great Mr Lark. It was he who turned Corinne into this stylized, exquisite, equivocal creature. He stunted her emotional development quite on purpose – like those bonsai trees that forever remain the wrong size – like the feet of Chinese women of noble birth that were kept bound so that they could remain small and dainty! That was what the audience seemed to want, that’s what he gave them. More and more of the same.’

‘La petite fille with the upturned nose and the big bows and ruffles?’ Payne murmured.

‘Yes. Papa Lark made sure Corinne didn’t grow up. He stopped her from seeing me. I believe that made her unhappy – I am sure she loved me – but she did give me up and accepted her lot, eventually. She did as Papa Lark decreed. I am sure it was under his dictation that she wrote the letter informing me that our daughter had died.’

‘How did you know that it wasn’t true?’

‘One of the nuns told me. Sister Felicia.’

‘So I was right,’ Antonia said. ‘Corinne’s daughter was brought up by nuns.’

‘Yes… She was sent to the convent outside Lourdes, where Corinne’s aunt was Mother Superior at the time.’

Sister Felicia had discovered some papers in her Mother Superior’s desk after her death, Peverel explained. There was a birth certificate – also letters sent to Corinne’s aunt by Mr Lark. Mr Lark had written that on no account should Peverel be contacted and told that his daughter was alive. Mr Lark had made the convent a number of generous donations… The Mother Superior had complied with his wishes and she had preserved Corinne’s guilty secret for more than quarter of a century, but now that she was dead, Sister Felicia saw no reason why the truth shouldn’t be told. Sister Felicia had managed to find Peverel’s address and written to him. ‘She was a good and decent soul,’ Peverel said.

‘Was Monique a nun?’

‘No. She had never taken a vow or anything of that sort, but she lived and worked at the convent. She worked on the administration side – a secretarial job. She seemed to be content. Sister Felicia wrote to me two years ago, on the day after Monique’s thirtieth birthday. She also told Monique about me. She believed a great wrong had been perpetrated and she had made it her mission to set it right.’ Peverel paused. ‘I went to France to see Monique. Sister Felicia met me at the station and she took me to the convent – in an incredibly battered Citroen… Monique and I got on extremely well. She was very shy and reserved to start with, but she relaxed eventually. She clearly loved the idea of having a father.’ Peverel smiled. ‘She even asked me for a photograph!’

‘The photograph on her dressing table?’ Antonia said.

‘Yes… You do seem to know an awful lot… I didn’t let my bitterness about Corinne spill out. Monique hardly knew her famous mother. She bore a striking resemblance to Corinne, only she was blonde. She could also sing like her. She had the same voice. You were right about that too… As it happens, Sister Felicia and Sister Fortunata had just recorded the video – Monique made up as Corinne. The resemblance was uncanny. The nuns were in their early sixties and they were both great fans of Corinne Coreille. No one else knew what they had done… I understand they have died since. Pity. I liked them enormously. They played the tape for me – danced to it. They were totally eccentric. Terribly sweet.’

‘You said they sent a copy of the tape to Corinne too?’

‘Yes – care of her record company. In fact they asked me to post it. We wondered about the effect the tape would have on Corinne. It was sixteen years since Corinne had last seen Monique. Monique had been fourteen then – a gawky, awkward teenager. I learnt that Corinne had been sending money to Monique regularly, so she couldn’t be faulted on that count.’

‘So you have known about the impersonation all along?’

‘No – not all along. Monique only told me this morning. Corinne had sworn her to absolute secrecy. Corinne, you see, went to the convent as soon as she saw the video. Under an assumed name, though no one would have recognized her anyhow. She passed herself off as an aunt of Monique’s. She asked Monique to do a repeat act. Make herself up as Corinne, put on the wig and so on, and perform once more. She was stunned by the result and, I expect, she had her brainwave there and then. That same day she took Monique to Paris with her.’