The Suitors

Friday, 12:30 p.m.



My mother had a strange look on her face when we got back from Juan-les-Pins shortly after noon.

“Flokie, what’s wrong?” said Frédéric.

“It’s Roberto. He fell. I’m afraid he’s broken his hip. Roland and Pauline just left with him in the ambulance.”

“Oh, shit, the poor man! Is there anything you want me to do?” I asked her.

“Yes. If you could find me a new head butler, that would be a big help, because with our guests already here and now your friends arriving …”

“I’ll take care of it,” I promised quickly, refusing to respond to her insinuation, although I figured that at this rate, my guests—a definite thorn in her side—would soon be held responsible for tripping up Roberto.

“And what about Roberto? Would you like—”

“I’ll handle that,” she answered brusquely.

On that point, I had complete confidence in her. She was fantastic in difficult situations. I knew that she would reassure Roberto, pay all his expenses, and have him cared for by the best specialists, even if it meant moving him to another hospital.

I considered my options. Our staff had already been requisitioned for the summer at L’Agapanthe. Streaming in from my parents’ other residences, these chambermaids, cooks, and butlers, who had worked for my parents for ten or twenty years, seemed happy to come back to fulfill their assigned tasks. In fact, some retirees even returned to service for the occasion, to plump up their savings and renew old ties.

With a long weekend coming up, my only course was to find an open employment agency. I had no illusions: finding another treasure like Roberto would be a miracle. He’d been with my parents for twenty-eight years, a paragon of kindness, professionalism, and refinement. And it would not be easy to find a head butler who would share our approach to domestic service.

As we saw it, the expertise of our staff depended on years of apprenticeship and experience. The servants were expected to perform their duties appropriately and without any instruction from us. It would never even have occurred to us to advise our employees regarding their work, and why would we have done so, since we knew ourselves to be incapable of ironing a fluted sleeve or whipping up a soufflé Mornay? The new butler would have to be up to the job, because our long acquaintance with impeccable service made us excellent judges in the field.

He would also have to understand our devotion to protocol. We were never on familiar terms with our staff, because displaying any growing affection or general sympathy for them would have smacked of demagoguery. That was our way of showing them respect and appreciation for their skill. Sticklers for form, we addressed our cook as “Chef.” And we would never have disturbed the servants during their meals or leisure hours by entering their living or dining rooms, or have meddled in their personal affairs of the heart, family, workplace, or pocketbook. In short, we left them to their own devices. We kept a distance we considered ideal for a long-term relationship. Familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes. So we all stayed where we belonged: we, by behaving like employers, by giving orders respectfully, unemotionally, without any attempt to manipulate our employees; they, by sheltering behind a tradition requiring them to address us in the third person—“Would Madame like …?” Behind that facade, they were free to think whatever they wanted, and even not to like us.

Our staff enjoyed, if not our affection, our esteem. And so they deserved consideration and pleasant working conditions. L’Agapanthe was a “good house” for them as well. The laundry, kitchen, and pantry were air-conditioned. The servants received excellent wages, had everything they needed for their jobs: professional-quality appliances, the latest model steam ovens, workstations worthy of the very finest restaurants, plenty of sous-chefs, even a raft of “scullions” to do the washing up. They had a private beach at their disposal, dining areas both inside the house and on a patio outside, simple but tasty food, a television lounge, comfortable bedrooms with their own bathrooms, and cars available for going out in the evening. And judging from the noise and laughter from their dining room at mealtime, the atmosphere “belowstairs” was good.

But our family ideal of service was possible only in a house like L’Agapanthe, where we could all live together. Because the social gulf between us was not as wide as the chasm between city centers and their suburbs, fashionable neighborhoods and slums, elegant town houses and tenements—although the town houses were becoming increasingly middle class, doing away with the social distinctions formalized by the parlor floor and the maids’ rooms up under the eaves.

Nevertheless, the invisible barrier between us was impossible to cross. The servants, so close to us and seemingly as varied and picturesque as our houseguests, formed a mysterious tribe whose proximity aroused my curiosity. I sometimes wondered how they lived and thought, like a student in a girls’ boarding school dreaming about the boys’ school next door. When I was younger, I’d even ventured out on a few nocturnal expeditions into the unknown realm behind the forbidden doors, but I felt distinctly like a trespasser when I studied the staff menu notebook, the cupboard inventories, or the recipe boards hanging on the kitchen walls, or when I tried to eavesdrop from convenient rooms on their conversations during mealtime.

They, of course, knew a lot more about us. The butlers witnessed our conversations and how we behaved at the table. The chambermaids could tell a great deal from the quality of our garments, the way we packed our suitcases, or the state in which we left our rooms. And they evaluated us according to how demanding and polite we were, the generosity of our tips, and our general behavior. But they also judged us by the benchmark of too-daring a décolleté, an arrogant attitude, a tendency to drink too much or to spout unreasonable opinions. And I felt that they were rather conservative, preferring couples to single people, moderates to reformers, people who kept busy to those who lounged around. They had a moral viewpoint on people and things. And I would have been willing to bet that they preferred employment with a traditional family like ours rather than with a Russian mafioso or a movie star.

Denounced at one time under the banner of class struggle, this rigid social barrier between servants and employers now evoked a certain nostalgia for the past. Having died out elsewhere, it was no longer really under attack, especially since nothing more equitable or persuasive had replaced it. Such an organization was now an anachronism, a weird and wonderful curiosity. And that’s what made it precious.

One had only to look at the servants of our nouveaux-riches neighbors. Because although we still accepted invitations inland, from around Monte Carlo or Saint-Tropez, we no longer had much to do with the houses on the bay, which now belonged to Greeks, Arabs, or Russians whose security concerns required an army of bodyguards with walkie-talkies and machine guns. Aping the aristocracy, some of our neighbors in their Palladian villas kitted their servants out in white gloves, gaudy uniforms, and even full livery, delighting in the spectacle of entire brigades of costumed minions marching at attention into a dining room, subjecting a captive audience to their ostentatious choreography. Other neighbors, envisioning their staff as an advertisement of their own fortunes and cultural savviness, hired young and beautiful people whose irreproachable “look” complemented the designer furniture and clean, pure lines of their employers’ glass-and-concrete houses.

Whether they aspired to splendor or to the very latest fashions, our neighbors had one thing in common: all were all jumped-up vulgarians in our eyes. Their desire to broadcast their status and lifestyle betrayed way too much social insecurity. They might be rich, hip, swooned over by the press, pursued by paparazzi, and courted by the owners of art galleries and clubs, but they hadn’t a clue how to run what we considered an inherently gracious household. And they didn’t impress us with their noisy hired help, who brayed their announcements or demanded immediate replies to their questions, not to mention those flunkies who looked us over like maître d’s in trendy restaurants, just long enough to decide if we were worthy of the lousy service they might deign to bestow on us.

Such parvenus, however, had every right to show off to their guests instead of demanding proper household service. And we would have bowed before the onslaught of history, feeling simply out-of-date, like dinosaurs, if these people hadn’t all mistreated their staff. They did so for various reasons, but chief among them was their contempt for underlings who were in essence interchangeable yet burdened with the task of enhancing their employers’ standing. Lashing out, the nouveaux riches could savor the full exercise of their power only by oppressing their hirelings, whose beauty, inexperience, and sheer numbers they found wearisome in the end. Demanding of them anything and everything, our neighbors played their roles as lords of the manor by being condescending, capricious, and abusive.

The funniest part was that we inspired exactly the same disapproval in these upstarts. Our conception of luxury was too subtle for them to grasp: they recognized neither its standards nor its stereotypes. And they despaired over our refinement, which they saw as an appalling lack of comfort and luxury. Where were the massive flowerbeds, the statues, the fountains they considered the sine qua non for any self-respecting garden? What about our cars, our boats, our helicopters? And where was our staff? Had we no security personnel? No control rooms with plasma screens and intercoms, no loudspeakers on the grounds? What was behind this inadequate, ridiculous, pathetic setup? Were we broke, or just cheap? And so we seemed as vulgar to them as they seemed to us.





Friday, 3:00 p.m.



Someone named Gérard, bristling with references, was assuring me over the phone that he had always dreamed of working “in a bourgeois house” when the sound of a diesel engine out on the front drive informed me that a taxi had arrived. Just what I needed! I hired our new butler then and there, arranged for him to get here in time for dinner, and went downstairs.

“Talk about a warm welcome!” remarked my sister. “Did we miss Roland at the airport, or did you simply forget about us?”

“Sorry, we forgot about you, because it’s total chaos here. Poor Roberto has just broken his hip, and Roland went to the hospital with him. Which means he must have forgotten to alert the caretaker about your arrival, so no one came to pick you up.”

“Poor Roberto! A broken hip, that’s not good, is it.… I’m sure you remember Bernard and Laetitia Braissant?”

Although Bernard looked rumpled and sweaty, he seemed pleasant enough, but I took an instant dislike to Laetitia in spite of her glowing complexion and masses of dark hair. There was something vaguely superior about her attitude. She was wearing a tank top with a long peasant skirt in the Provençal style, and I would have sworn that the affected simplicity, the fake “local color” of this outfit had been intended simply to give a lesson in authenticity to us rich people, whom she was visiting only reluctantly.

“Where are you putting us?” asked Marie, looking exquisite in beige and white pants and a bush jacket.

“You’re in Ada’s Room; Bernard and Laetitia are in Sasha’s Room,” I told her, consulting the room assignments posted in the secretary’s office just off the entrance hall.

“And I suppose you’re in Flora’s Room, and Jean-Michel Destret has the Yellow Room?”

Marie had supposed correctly, and I smiled in reply, because this distribution of bedrooms observed an unspoken hierarchy we both recognized. By giving us the two smallest and least attractive rooms in the house, my mother was reminding us that we were merely her daughters, not honored guests, and that our friends would receive nothing more from her than a carefully calculated graciousness.

Had we been in a hotel, my parents’ room would have qualified as the presidential suite. A vast room with four windows and a fireplace, it had a linen closet, a dressing room paneled in cedar, and a spacious bathroom worthy of Hollywood. Half boudoir, half ballroom, this bathroom was where the family often got together to chat, far from our staff and guests. With its pearly pink light, the veined yellow marble sinks, the bronze faucets shaped like dolphins, and the 1930s furniture laminated in beveled mirror with valances of raw silk, the room seemed to await a visit from Lauren Bacall or Katharine Hepburn in satin slippers, trailing the fragrance of tuberose and rice powder.

Next in grandeur came the Peony and Lilac rooms, which had perfect proportions and a fantastic view of the lawn and the sea. Less sumptuous, the Turquoise Room looked out over a small terrace that seemed to relegate the sea to the background. Although they were huge and enjoyed an oblique view of the water, the Yellow and Chinese rooms were one notch below the Turquoise, since they overlooked the staff’s outside dining area, a nuisance that in a hotel would have justified a distinct reduction in their rates. Finally, dead last, came a trio of rooms at the entrance to the hall leading to the servants’ quarters, rooms that no amount of remodeling could change into bona fide guest rooms and now named after Flora, Ada, and Sasha, frequent guests in the house in my grandparents’ time.

L’Agapanthe had originally had so many more staff rooms than guest rooms that my parents had built what we called the annex, over by the entrance to the property. The annex so lacked the charm of the main house that guests lodged there sometimes felt slighted, but others were flattered, because my parents gave those rooms only to previous visitors whom they were inviting back for another stay.

Colette, a lovely young woman from Normandy with a Louise Brooks bob, was already in Sasha’s Room when Marie and I escorted the Braissants upstairs. Laetitia stiffened with indignation when the smiling chambermaid asked her, “Would Madame like me to unpack her suitcase?”

“No, thank you, I’ll manage by myself,” she replied, with the studied manner of someone who, scandalized, refuses to participate in a degrading ritual from another era.

The dismayed Colette was about to withdraw when Marie returned her smile and asked, “Colette, would you be good enough to unpack mine?”





Friday, 6:30 p.m.



I heard the sound of crunching gravel again. Was it Odon Viel arriving, or Jean-Michel Destret and his chauffeur? (It turned out to be Jean-Michel.) While Marie and I were heading for the front door, I remembered a sidewalk game we used to play when we were younger: you had to pick, from the first ten men who came toward you, the one who would be your husband for life. I always panicked; should I be cautious or optimistic? Take the first one who wasn’t either elderly or repulsive, or wait for a good-looking boy, at the risk of missing the boat and getting stuck with the tenth passerby, who might well be a ghastly old man?

Sex was a topic often and broad-mindedly discussed in our presence by my parents and their friends, who for the sake of appearances would pretend to lower their voices around our innocent ears. They treated sex with the humor and relaxed detachment expected of cultured people, because a light, bantering tone was to them an essential ingredient in any civilized conversation. Artful and amusing, amorous dalliance was thus a required subject, just like literature or the opera. Compared to my friends’ parents, who never broached the subject and certainly not in front of children, my own parents sometimes even struck me as obsessed. Marie and I were privy, as it turned out, to a real education. Whether down-to-earth or laced with literature, those conversations instilled in us the vocabulary and aesthetic nuances of a libertine freedom of thought that never stooped to a vulgar familiarity, ranging from the naughty, spicy, smutty, and just slightly perverse language of a Choderlos de Laclos, to sensual and voluptuous concupiscence, or brazen Rabelaisian ribaldry—and from the grandiose debauchery of a Sade to the crudest, ugliest, most unsettling pornography and all the raunchy, sordid, lubricious, salacious, libidinous depravity drawn along in its wake. Thus educated in indecency by proxy, as we had been in wine and painting, we ended by appreciating this cultural inheritance passed down by parents who were most unusual, to be sure, but who had the merit of being emancipated and nonconformist.

Which by no means meant that in our family sex was allowed, authorized, or approved of. The sexual education my sister and I received from our mother was summed up in a few principles: we were to begin our lives as women only after a visit to the doctor, and only if (she always said if, not when) we were in love—the sine qua non, she said, for making love, thus making the gift of oneself out of what otherwise would be simply an easy lay.

In that department, though, Marie and I have always been different. Marie is romantic and dreams of meeting her soul mate, but that doesn’t stop her from collecting lovers. She has never found it compromising to sleep with whomever she pleases. It gives her pleasure, especially when she comes across a hardy and enthusiastic partner with self-assured moves but no real emotional involvement. In short, nothing to write home about. Sometimes she even has to think twice about her scruples when she turns down men who seem to attach great importance to sex. But she’s too sought after to yield to her admirers just to be considerate, so to rein herself in she has come up with some inhibitions and apprehensions: unseemly, occasionally embarrassing noises made by interlocking bodies, and self-consciousness about her nakedness, or about the folds and bulges created during the choreography of love’s embrace. And these barriers keep her from giving in to just anyone, without preventing her from letting herself go whenever she feels like it. Particularly with her pals in the security details for summit meetings, guys for whom my sister, who’s crazy about officers and uniforms, feels a guilty fondness.

I’m the opposite of Marie. Men never leave me indifferent. Arousing desire or disgust, their skin, their bodies wield a power over me that proves sometimes inconvenient. I’m incapable, for example, of dancing cheek to cheek with a man who doesn’t appeal to me. And I make sure I never touch or brush against a man, even by accident—in the back of a car, say—for fear of shuddering with desire if he attracts me or with aversion if he doesn’t. In my life, sex has always intruded in an unexpected and uncontrollable way. Falling in love is an invitation to chaos and commotion: I feel immediately on fire, overwhelmed by a painful desire for the man who fills my thoughts. Sleepless, I lie moaning, writhing with longing, capable of climaxing or becoming prostrate with frustration at the memory of a word, a gesture. So it goes without saying that I set great store by physical love. Without any “technique,” I abandon myself to my partner and lose all sense of time. For me, sex is like an elixir that cures me of everything, of both worry and pain. It’s like a prodigious journey that sweeps me up from head to toe, a journey on which I cannot embark unless I love the man to distraction, even if only for a few hours.

Like the narrator’s aunts in Remembrance of Things Past, who thank Swann so obliquely for the case of Asti wine, I tried to be tactful by not looking Jean-Michel Destret straight in the face, so that he wouldn’t feel too ill at ease upon arriving at a strange house. I did sneak a peek at him while he was getting out of his car and noticed that he’d sat next to his driver instead of in the backseat.

Marcel, who was in charge of the luggage, welcomed the chauffeur and led him off to his room, while Marie and I escorted Jean-Michel into the loggia, where the other guests were chatting over their tea.

“Jean-Michel Destret, delighted,” he said to my mother, bending crisply to kiss her hand before adding, “Allow me to thank you for your invitation, Madame Ettinguer. I’m very happy to be here.”

Marie and I looked at each other, stunned by the disastrous impression he had just made. Managing to cram so many gaffes into one greeting was in fact a kind of triumph. Beginning with “Delighted,”1totally provincial, at least when trotted out for an introduction—an absurd rule, perhaps, but an unbreakable one, which none of us would have dreamed of contesting since it was completely without rhyme or reason. One might say “Delighted to be here,” “What a delightful ambience,” or “You are delightful,” but certainly not “delighted.” Like the verb “to eat,” unthinkable when used intransitively (“What are we eating?” or “I’ve eaten well”), whereas “I’m eating some chocolate” was perfectly fine. Or the word “flute” when used to offer champagne, brimming with inelegance in the expression, “You’ll have a little flute?”—a massive no-no, unlike “A glass of champagne?” or “Some champagne?” which went down as smooth as silk.

As for his “Madame Ettinguer,” it was a double faux pas. For although his use of “Madame” was timely and even welcome, the addition of our family name was jarring because, according to French etiquette, it implied that my mother was his social inferior. And he had fallen into the usual trap with our name, which is written Ettinguer, but pronounced Ettingre, something only those in the know would know, as they know that La Trémoille is pronounced La Trémouille, that one says Breuil for Broglie, Crouy for le prince Cröy, and Beauvau-Cran instead of Beauvau-Craon. (Just as one should pronounce English names the English way in France, saying Charlie instead of Sharlie, and Johnny, not Zhonny.)

In conclusion, Jean-Michel had been too solemn and earnest, revealing his ignorance of the fact that elegance is created like a cake, with a mixture of varied and complementary ingredients. He had just kissed the hand of the mistress of the house and should therefore have balanced that homage with a hint of humor, the way the stodginess of a tea biscuit is lightened with whipped cream. Another point: his allusion to my mother’s “invitation” was too formal, just as his “allow me” was almost emphatic. As for “I’m very happy to be here,” it was a pat expression and fell flat: any sincerity in the words lost all importance, since his compliment was too obvious to sit well. He would have been better off with a gracious exclamation along the lines of, “A true pleasure!” or a seemingly spontaneous—and more difficult—casual remark like, “Such a lovely surprise: it’s a marvel, this house!” All in all, he seemed unaware that he had already said too much. His clump of compliments betrayed an eagerness to please that stamped him from the get-go as a clod.

I looked at him. There was nothing special about him. No aura, no presence. He was commonplace. His eyes, his features—nothing handsome about him. Nothing ugly, either. And it was hard to tell his age, because with his helmet of hair, you would have said a choirboy or a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. But, well, it was too soon to conclude that he had no powers of seduction, for he might turn out to be a paragon of wit, intelligence, and charm once he had stepped out of the social spotlight. And yet, the first thing that struck me about him was how carefully he was following the line of behavior he seemed to have chosen, which was to vamp my mother, and so assiduously that he had not yet even looked at my sister or me, so much closer to his own age.

Logically speaking, my mother should have cold-shouldered a nobody like him. So I was dumbfounded to hear her reply with a most unaccustomed friendliness. Now Marie and I exchanged even more astonished glances as our mother gazed benevolently at him, maternal as you please. He seemed to have charmed her, making her forget her displeasure over his tagalong chauffeur. She appeared to find him irresistible! And then I understood her delight: my mother couldn’t stand that her daughters or their guests might upstage her so she was relieved to find him a clod! The only thing that would truly have upset her? If Jean-Michel Destret hadn’t been a jerk and had instead outshone my father and her friends with his superiority and success.

Marie took the plunge: “Did you have a pleasant trip?”

My mother, however, swooped in to commandeer our guest, launching into some background about the house, as if he really had marveled at its beauty only a moment before.

“It may interest you to know that L’Agapanthe was not actually named after the agapanthus, a handsome African plant commonly called lily of the Nile, but from a contraction of three first names: those of Agathe, my mother-in-law; Patrick, my father-in-law; and Thérèse, their first daughter, who died at an early age before the birth of Edmond, my husband.”

“I hope we’re not going to explore the entire family genealogy before showing our guest to his room,” I ventured, gently sarcastic.

“Oh, but this is interesting,” Jean-Michel Destret assured me before turning back to my mother. “So it was your parents-in-law who built the house?”

“No, some people from Boston,” continued my mother, with the ghost of a triumphant smile. “They called in American architects. And as you will see, the house is an exceptionally comfortable one for the thirties, very American, with its walk-in closets and pocket windows, and bedrooms all with their own bathrooms. Moreover, it was the Americans who launched the Cap d’Antibes—the Murphys, for example, the models for Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. But it was an English couple, the Normans, who discovered the bay in 1902, when they were combing the coast from Naples to Marseilles to find a place to build their house, the Château de la Garoupe, which now belongs to Boris Berezovsky.”

I tried again. “Well, now Jean-Michel knows everything he needs to about the bay, so that’s taken care of, and I can …”

Wasted irony. Ignoring me completely, Jean-Michel picked up the challenge: “As was only fitting—unless I am mistaken—because Antibes did not blossom as a seaside resort until the end of the nineteenth century with the arrival of the English and the Russian aristos. The latter, poor things, had their wings clipped with the revolution, though, which certainly turned off the faucet-gushing grand dukes …”

Was it his “unless I am mistaken” that pricked up my ears? Or his “faucet-gushing grand dukes,” which sounded suspiciously prefabricated? I was suddenly convinced that he’d learned that little speech by heart and was gumming things up with his fake spontaneous remarks, like that “poor things.”

I looked at my sister, who was clearly as dismayed as I by Jean-Michel’s performance, but I didn’t know if he had irritated her as well with his choice of words. His “as was only fitting” was a snobbish convention, while “did not blossom” was as precious as it was pretentious. But what I simply could not bear was the use of diminutives, those relaxed little words that ring so false. People who say “teens,” “nabes,” and, in this case, “aristos” strike me straightaway as suspect. People’s vocabularies and ways of expressing themselves often attract or repel me more than their behavior or physical appearance, doubtless because their words reveal, better than any confessions, what they are trying to show or to hide. And I didn’t have a problem with the fact that Jean-Michel was ignoring my sister and me, or that he had crammed for his visit, the way he surely prepared for everything. What bothered me was that he was incapable of taking any critical distance, unable to employ the humor that would have allowed him a breathing space, by admitting, for example, that he had done his homework before coming. Instead of which, he forged ahead.

“As you were saying, the Riviera only became really Americanized in the twenties, when Fitzgerald stayed at the Hôtel Belles Rives, which wasn’t actually called that at the time. Did you know that the Hôtel du Cap was already constantly fully booked? That water skiing was invented at Juan-les-Pins, and that La Garoupe was awash in bathing huts?”

Internet, travel guide, or chamber of commerce brochure? I wondered, gazing heavenward for the benefit of my sister, I was that ticked off by his patter. Entranced by his erudition, my mother had stopped pretending to be impressed and had sincerely succumbed to his charm.

Resignation gave way to fascination as Marie and I watched Jean-Michel and our mother together, spreading their tail feathers for each other like peacocks. We didn’t want to miss a second. After all, we had the entire weekend to have a go at the fellow. And if it amused them—Jean-Michel reciting his homework, hoping to shine, and our mother poaching our Honored Guest—then so much the better. Making faces, my sister and I would look over at each other occasionally, on the verge of hysterical laughter, while teatime became the cocktail hour before we’d even noticed. Guests in Bermuda shorts, sarongs, or dressing gowns, fussing around teapots of beaten silver, slices of pound cake, cherries, and pistachio macarons, had discreetly slipped away in relays to go change. Suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by women in cocktail frocks and men in bright jackets ordering pink champagne, mojitos, or cosmopolitans while nibbling on fresh almonds, black Nice olives, and peanuts. It was Marcel who roused us from our torpor by offering us champagne.

“Heavens, whatever time is it? Marie, take Jean-Michel up to his room so that the poor man has a few moments to settle in before dinner!” exclaimed my mother, leaping up, while Marcel came over to let me know that the new head butler was asking to see me.





Friday, 8:00 p.m.



“Does Madame wish me to serve à l’assiette?” he asked me pointedly when I entered the butler’s pantry.

Marcel and I exchanged pained looks; Gérard was way off the mark. Le service à l’assiette was the least of our preferences for serving at table, far behind the already debatable service à la Beaumont (named after Jean Beaumont, who laid claim to its invention), in which the attendant presents the serving platter between two guests, who must serve themselves at the same time. The rule on this point is very simple, however: this service is all the less elegant for being the most practical method and requiring the fewest servants. The most refined and, moreover, the most convenient service for the guest therefore requires the attendant to present the platter on the guest’s left, unlike le service à l’assiette, in which serving and clearing are done on the guest’s right.

“Gérard—it is Gérard, is it not? Perhaps it would be best for Marcel to explain to you our way of doing things …”

“It’s just that that’s how I served at the Khashoggis’. Adnan Khashoggi,2 I don’t know if you know him?”

Shamelessly tossing out the name of a former employer like that was just not done! Gérard was decidedly lacking in judgment, citing an arms merchant as a reference on questions of taste! Given the circumstances, however, I couldn’t pick and choose. After ascertaining that he had been shown his room and introduced to the staff, I left him to muddle through and hoped for the best.

Marie and I met for a moment in my room.

“Are you sure we should go through with this?” I asked.

“Listen, we said we would, and we will.”

“Yes, but how?”

“Surely you don’t expect me to explain to you …”

“What—that seduction isn’t rocket science, that it’s a question of feeling, right? But I’m too nervous for that to work, so help me out.”

“Well, we start by dolling up. You swan out in décolleté, while I convey the idea of smoldering passion beneath my icy exterior. That way, there’ll be something for everyone. And then we’ll see!”

“Fine, but we stick together, right?”

“Obviously!” replied Marie. “Would you be a dear and keep an eye on Mummy’s seating arrangements while I go dress, because she’s quite capable of putting Jean-Michel right next to her, with Gay on the other side. I’ll come relieve you as soon as I’m ready.”

I knocked at my mother’s door: “Would you like any help with the seating arrangements?”

It would be a seated dinner, with assigned places, at two candlelit tables on a terrace used as a summer dining room. Such seating arrangements, along with responsibility for the menus and dealing with the staff, comprised my mother’s essential concerns as the mistress of the house. She usually sat in her bathroom and made her seating charts while doing her makeup, quickly sketching two circles on a notepad—one for my father’s table, the other for hers—before writing the date, the guest list, and rotating everyone in such a way that they would sit between different people every evening.

“Do you want me to put Jean-Michel next to you?” she managed to ask through lips clamped around hairpins, which she was slipping into the low, tight chignon she preferred for evening dress.

“Yes, if you like.”

“Then I’ll take the other one, what’s his face, Braissant; I haven’t said a word to him yet. And he looks like a tough one, too. In any case, I’m going to stick his wife with your father. What’s he like, the new head butler?”

“Not great, you’ll see. But better than nothing.”

“Bring me my dress, will you …”

“Which one?” I shouted from her dressing room, standing before an entire closet of evening gowns.

“Right under your nose!” she replied testily. “I’m sure Pauline has laid it out for me already.”

“If only,” I muttered. “What do you want: yellow chiffon, gold lamé, or duchess satin?”

“No,” moaned my mother: “It’s black, lace, an Oscar!”

“Got it!” I cried, bearing my trophy triumphantly into the bathroom, where Marie had just made her entrance.

“Wow, you look stunning!” I whispered to her, admiring her palazzo pants and red bustier.

“Am I too late for the seating rodeo?” she exclaimed, winking at me in thanks.

“No, you’re just in time. And I’ll leave you with Mummy, because I really must go change.”





Daylight was still lingering. Glimpsed through the pines, the moon seemed a touch early, suspended in the sky by an overzealous stagehand. The night-blooming jasmine, however, had followed her cue by perfuming the salty sea breeze, breasted from time to time by a flight of seagulls, whose cries drowned out the shrill sound of crickets. I went down to the terrace, where I found Odon Viel and the Braissants.

“Odon, how are you? I see you’ve met Bernard and Laetitia,” I said, receiving the distinct impression that I had just plunged into a chilly mountain stream.

Admittedly, Bernard Braissant and our nattily attired astrophysicist had nothing in common. And yes, our cocktail ritual did sometimes smack uneasily of the waiting room. Like patients sitting around in a doctor’s office, our guests examined one another discreetly and with more or less goodwill, sitting in a circle around a table bearing olives and peanuts instead of tired magazines. They stared shamelessly, however, at every new arrival emerging from beneath the arches of the loggia, who approached with a composed spontaneity with one eye on the uneven stones of the terrace, to avoid catching a heel, while the other eye braved the glare of the audience’s gaze.

This Jean-Michel learned to his cost when he realized what a stir he had created by appearing in salmon slacks and a matching shirt, an outfit in which he seemed much less at home than in his CEO suit. Was he already regretting this summer outfit for a bourgeois conqueror, so ill suited for his nerdy physique? The childish pastel color made him look like a chubby baby, anything but sexy, and frankly I wasn’t at all sure I felt up to making a pass at him. Without giving me a moment to consider him from that angle, however, he reprised his role as the model guest.

The first thing he did when my mother appeared was hand her a gift. As a precaution, she went into ecstasies over the wrapping, in case she couldn’t compliment him on his present, so she was pleasantly surprised to unwrap a framed photo of General de Gaulle on the beach at L’Agapanthe during the winter of 1946, when he had come here to consider his options before giving up power and retiring to Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.

“Jean-Michel, you couldn’t have given me anything that would have pleased me more! I did know that the general had come to L’Agapanthe. But to have actually unearthed pictures of his stay … How did you find out, how did you manage?”

“You’re too kind, Madame, really, it’s nothing …”

“Oh, please, call me Flokie!”

Arm in arm with my sister, Frédéric had just arrived, and he murmured in my ear, “It’s unbelievable—he’s a total suck-up, your guy!”

Marie leaned close to my other ear, as I bit my lips to keep from laughing. “ Frédéric is right, and our boy’s beginning to piss me off with this eager-beaver crap. What about you?”

“And how!”

“Mind you, so much the better, because the Queen of the Night is waltzing off with him right before our eyes,” she added, while our supposed suitor warmed to his task.

“I looked into a few things when I learned that you’d been kind enough to invite me here. And I found out that the bay had been recommended to the general by unusually choice word of mouth, because it was through Churchill, alerted to the charms of the place by the Duchess of Windsor, that Eisenhower came here in 1944 and 1945, after having requisitioned the house, which was American property. He then urged de Gaulle to come here for a quiet stay in 1946, when the house was requisitioned by the French government.”

“You’re a darling!” gushed my mother, suddenly eager to thank him once and for all.

Had she had enough of billing and cooing with him? Or was she changing the subject to avoid embarrassing the Braissants, in case they’d brought her only chocolates? Because she had no doubt whatsoever that Bernard and Laetitia would now offer her something. Was it not customary for a guest’s visit, like a citation framed by quotation marks, to begin with a gift and conclude with a thank-you note? The Braissants, however, just kept sipping their champagne. The idea of bringing a hostess gift had clearly never crossed their minds. Nonplussed, my mother took another tack.

“Can anyone tell me why the Bellini at the Hôtel du Cap, made with peach purée, is not as good as the one at Cipriani’s in Venice, where they use peach extract?”

Coming out of the blue, her question seemed enchantingly frivolous to me but shocking to Bernard and Laetitia, for I caught a pained look exchanged between them. What right had they to judge my mother? That was my prerogative, and I couldn’t bear it when others did so in my place, especially pretentious people who confused prejudices with convictions, disdain with clear-sightedness.

Just then Gay sailed in, spectacular in a femme-fatale lamé sheath and holding a yellow plastic toy that Popsicle was trying to snatch away by leaping in every direction, but my mother serenely pursued her train of thought.

“Anyway, the hotel bar no longer even has splits of champagne. Impossible to fix your own cocktail anymore! It’s so much less jolly …”

“No!” Frédéric exclaimed indignantly, torn between solidarity and sarcasm.

“Oh, yes, and just imagine, now they serve sushi in the restaurant near the swimming pool. This mania for raw food—wherever will it strike next? Sushi in the Midi! It’s ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous,” agreed Laszlo Schwartz, sitting down on the low wall overlooking the lawn.

My mother’s face brightened.

“Laszlo! But you haven’t yet met my daughters’ friends. Here are Laetitia and Bernard Braissant, and Jean-Michel Destret. Laszlo Schwartz.”

Jean-Michel almost fainted when he heard Laszlo’s name. At sixty-two, the German painter was indeed a star of the contemporary art scene, whose exhibitions at the Grand Palais and the Guggenheim in Bilbao had been highlights of the season. And one of his paintings had sold for two and a half million euros a month earlier. Even the Braissants looked impressed. Laetitia, who hadn’t bothered to open her mouth until that moment, crinkled her eyes and cranked up a smile in an obvious effort to charm.

“I read in the papers that you live in Le Gard …” cooed Jean-Michel.

“Yes, I have my studio in Barjac, not far, in fact, from Kiefer’s La Ribaute, but I’ve been thinking about going abroad.”

Practically gurgling with delight, nodding at everything he said, Laetitia seemed almost ready to dissolve, so keen was her absorption in his presence. In any case, she had definitely ditched her leftist intellectual’s contempt for my oh-so-bourgeois mother, whom she now treated obsequiously, having understood her bond with the famous artist. Bernard, evidently on the same wavelength as his wife, now tried to establish direct and gratifying contact with the great man.

“Did you know that Jean-Michel is a passionate collector of your work?”

“Oh, really? I’m flattered,” replied Laszlo.

And yet, I would have sworn that he found them irritating, these newcomers whose sanctimonious admiration appealed to his weaknesses, pushing him to conform to their image of him. Because he already knew that he would play the great man to please them, the way people mimic sadness at the funeral of a relative whose death leaves them indifferent, and he felt pained at this impending imposture.

“And what do you do?” he asked Jean-Michel, to change the subject.

Marie and I had been flitting about, chatting, but now we fell silent, suddenly attentive to a conversation that might prove instructive regarding our “blind date.”

“I’m the director of a company that deals in arms and audiovisual equipment.”

“Good Lord! And I gather that you’re a prime example of the French self-made man?”

“Yes, well, that’s what the press says. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of us. It’s becoming harder and harder to make it on your own. Passing exams isn’t enough anymore to guarantee entrance into the corridors of power—you must have several generations of success under your belt. Consider the fact that the CAC 40, which lists the top forty companies on the Paris Bourse, is the European index that comprises the greatest number of family firms. As in India.”

Not too bad, I thought, reevaluating his rising stock value, as if he’d been undervalued but was suddenly showing potential. What he’d said was articulate, perceptive, fair, reflecting no class resentment.

“There’s nothing hereditary about good business sense, though. You know the Bamileke proverb: The father was a fortress, the son, a buttress, and the grandson, a butthole!”

“I’m not familiar with the Bamileke, but they’re forgetting that a solid network of contacts makes up for many things.”

“I saw your girlfriend!” Bernard broke in, flashing a naughty smile.

To general astonishment. Because his nonsensical interruption couldn’t have come at a more awkward time, right in the middle of the discussion. Still, now we were curious: Whom did he mean? And what connection could that person possibly have with what they were talking about?

“Who’s that?” replied Jean-Michel, clearly annoyed.

At this point, in spite of Jean-Michel’s less than captivating manner, I’d have bet that Marie was on his side and feeling as annoyed as he was at Bernard.

“Françoise.”

“Françoise who?”

“Françoise Hardy.”

“The singer? Who’s married to Jacques Dutronc? But I hardly know her! I only met her that one time, and she was with you!”

It took us all a moment to recover from Bernard’s incredible gall. Name-droppers usually try to take part in a discussion and show a little finesse, leading the conversation in a convenient direction before they make their move, thus posing as people with important connections and clout. Bernard had simply skipped all that.

He really had some nerve, and my indignation made Jean-Michel more sympathetic in contrast. I was almost looking forward to sitting next to him at dinner.

Instead of making his announcement correctly, in a dignified manner, the new head butler let out a shout: “Dinner is served, Madame!”

My mother glared at me for a microsecond before saying lightly, “Girls, time to fetch your father. He must still be on the phone with Sotheby’s in New York, in the library with the Démazures.”

“Where did you dig up the hog caller?” said Marie sweetly as we set out on our mission.

“Watch out. I’d advise you to put a cork in it, because I could return the compliment with those brown-nosing Braissants!”