Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

I closed my eyes in despair. We were having too peaceful a time of it, it just couldn’t last!

‘Quick, tell us who it is!’ exclaimed Elsa, who was always keen to hear about what was going on socially.

‘It’s Anne Larsen,’ said my father, and he turned to face me.

I just looked at him, too astonished to react.

‘I told her to come if her season’s collections left her exhausted and, well, she’s coming.’

I would never have thought it. Anne Larsen had been an old friend of my mother’s and had had very little to do with my father. Even so, when I had left boarding school two years previously, my father, having no idea what to do with me, had packed me off to her. Within a week she had dressed me tastefully and had given me some lessons in life. As a result I had become imbued with a passionate admiration for her, which she had skilfully deflected on to a young man of her acquaintance. So it was to her that I owed my introduction to elegance and my first flirtation, and I was most grateful to her for that. At forty-two she was a very attractive woman, much sought-after, with a beautiful face that was proud, world-weary and aloof. This aloofness was the only thing that could be held against her. She was pleasant yet distant. Everything about her denoted an unwavering will and a serenity that was actually intimidating. Although she was divorced and, in that sense, free, she was not known to have lovers. In any case, we did not move in the same circles: she spent her time with people who were sharp, intelligent and discreet, whereas the people we spent time with were noisy and insatiable – all that my father asked of them was that they be either good-looking or amusing. I think she rather despised us – my father and me – because of our fondness for entertainment and frivolity, in the same way that she despised anything taken to extremes. The only things that connected us were business dinners (she worked in fashion and my father in advertising), the memory of my mother and my own efforts to keep in touch, for, even though she intimidated me, I greatly admired her. In short, her sudden arrival seemed somewhat inconvenient, bearing in mind Elsa’s presence and Anne’s views on education.

After asking a host of questions about Anne’s social standing, Elsa went up to bed. I remained alone with my father and came and sat on the steps, at his feet. He leant forward and placed his hands on my shoulders.

‘Why are you so skinny, my pet? You look like a little wildcat. I’d rather have a beautiful, blonde-haired daughter, quite buxom, with china-blue eyes and …’

‘That’s not the issue,’ I said. ‘Why have you invited Anne? And why has she accepted?’

‘Maybe she wants to see your old father. You never know.’

‘You’re not the type of man that Anne is interested in,’ I said. ‘She’s too intelligent, she has too much self-respect. And what about Elsa? Have you thought of her? Can you imagine the conversations Anne and Elsa would have? I can’t!’

‘I didn’t think of that,’ he confessed. ‘I admit it’s a horrifying thought. Cécile, my pet, what if we just went back to Paris?’

He was laughing softly and rubbing the back of my neck. I turned to look at him. His dark eyes were gleaming. They had funny little wrinkles round the edges and his mouth turned up slightly. He looked like a faun. I began to laugh along with him, as I always did when he created complications for himself.

‘My old accomplice,’ he said. ‘What would I do without you?’

And I knew, from the conviction and tenderness in his voice, that without me he would have been unhappy. Late into the night we talked of love and its complications. In my father’s eyes these were purely imaginary. He categorically rejected all notions of fidelity, earnestness or commitment, explaining to me that they were arbitrary and sterile. Coming from anyone else, these views would have shocked me. But I knew that, in his case, they did not rule out either tenderness or devotion, these being feelings which he entertained all the more readily because he believed them to be, indeed knew they were, transient. I was greatly attracted to the concept of love affairs that were rapidly embarked upon, intensely experienced and quickly over. At the age I was, fidelity held no attraction. I knew little of love, apart from its trysts, its kisses and its lethargies.

Two

Anne was not due to arrive for another week. I made the most of those last few days of real holiday. We had rented the villa for two months but I knew that, as soon as Anne arrived, complete relaxation would no longer be possible. Anne gave things a certain shape and words a certain sense that my father and I preferred to disregard. She set the standards for good taste and discretion and you couldn’t help detecting what these were in her sudden withdrawals, her lapses into pained silence or her use of particular expressions. It was both energizing and exhausting, and ultimately it was humiliating, because I sensed that she was right.

On the day of her arrival it was decided that my father and Elsa would go to meet her at the station in Fréjus. 2I categorically refused to take part in the expedition. In desperation my father picked all the gladioli in the garden to be able to present them to her as she got off the train. I merely advised him not to get Elsa to carry the bouquet. Once they had gone, at three o’clock, I went down to the beach. It was oppressively hot. I stretched out on the sand and fell half asleep, only to be woken by the sound of Cyril’s voice. I opened my eyes: in the heat, the sky was a white blur. I made no reply to Cyril; I did not want to talk to him or anyone else. The strength of that summer heat kept me pinioned to the sand, with arms that felt heavy and a dry mouth.

‘Are you dead?’ he asked. ‘From a distance you looked abandoned, like a piece of flotsam.’

I smiled. He sat down beside me and my heart began to beat with a dull thud because, in sitting down, he had brushed my shoulder with his hand. A dozen times in the previous week my brilliant maritime manoeuvres had thrown us entwined together right into the water without my feeling remotely disturbed. But today all it took was that heat and my drowsiness and his clumsy movement for something within me to come gently adrift. I turned to face him. He was looking at me. I was beginning to get to know him: he was sensible and more virtuous than perhaps was usual for someone of his age. That was why our family situation – I mean, the odd threesome that we formed – was shocking to him. He was either too kind or too shy to tell me so, but I sensed it in the resentful sidelong glances he cast at my father. He would have liked me to be tormented by the situation. But I wasn’t; the only things tormenting me just then were his looking at me and the thumping of my heart. He leant towards me. I had a vision of the last few days of the week just gone, recalling the sense of trust and the serenity I had experienced in his company, and I felt a pang of regret as his wide, rather full mouth came close.

‘Cyril,’ I said, ‘we were so happy …’

He kissed me gently. I looked up at the sky. Then, eyes tight shut, I saw under my lids only bursts of red light. Long minutes passed, filled with heat, giddiness, the taste of our first kisses and our amorous sighs. The sound of a car horn caused us to separate as if we were being caught red-handed. I left Cyril without a word and went back up towards the house. I was astonished at the thought of their having got back so soon, since Anne’s train was not due to have arrived yet. But I found her on the terrace just getting out of her own car.

‘This is like the house of Sleeping Beauty!’ she exclaimed. ‘How brown you are, Cécile! I’m so pleased to see you.’