Love, Again

Sarah did not go to bed on the night before she was due to meet Stephen Ellington-Smith. For one thing, she had not finished cleaning until three in the morning. Then she decided to do the programme notes after all. Then she reread Julie's journals, preparing herself for what she believed would be a fight with Julie's Angel.

'Look,' she imagined herself saying, 'Julie never saw herself as a victim. She saw herself as having choice. Until 1902 and her mother's death, she could have gone home to Martinique. Her mother actually wrote saying she was welcome any time. There's even a rather silly letter from her half- brother, who took over the estate when the father died, making jokes about their relationship; it was insulting in a sort of schoolboy way. He said the father had told him to "look after" Julie. But she didn't reply. She wondered whether she should be a prostitute — don't forget this was the time of les grandes horizontales. But she said she had no taste for luxury, and that did seem to be essential for a high- class tart. She was offered a job as a chanteuse in a nightclub in Marseilles, but she said it would be too emotionally demanding, she would have no time for her music and her painting. Anyway, she hated provincial towns. She did actually have the chance of going to Paris in a touring company as a singer. But this was nothing like her dreams of Paris. She said in her journal,If Rémy asked me to go to Paris and live with him there… we could live quietly, we could have real friends… The underline there says everything, I think. She goes on. Of course it is out of the question, though I saw him with his wife at the fete. It is clear they do not love each other. She was invited to go as governess in a lawyer's household in Avignon: he was a widower. Several men wanted to set her up in Nice or Marseilles as a mistress. These offers were merely recorded, as she might have written, It was hot today, or, It was cold.

'We could easily present Julie in terms of what she refused. And what did she actually choose? A little stone house in the forest. "The cow-byre", as the citizens contemptuously called it. She chose to live alone, paint and draw and compose her music and, every night of her life, write a commentary on it.

'Yes, I agree it is not easy to make of this a riveting drama. Not easy even if we keep the form you have chosen. Act One: Paul. Act Two: Rémy. Act Three: Philippe. Yes, you could argue that she did write, I don't think I could bear to move away from my little house where everything speaks to me of love. As George Sand might have written. But don't forget she went on, I live here exactly as my mother did in her house. The difference is that she has been kept all her life. By one man — myfather. She always loved him and never had choice. She could not leave his estate because if she did she could have earned her living only as a brothel-keeper (like her mother and her grandmother, or so she hinted). Or as an ordinary prostitute, or perhaps as a housekeeper. What were her accomplishments? She could cook. She could dress. She knew about plants and herbs. Presumably she knew about love but we never discussed love, that is, the making of it, because she destined me to be a young lady and she didn't want to raise thoughts in my mind about her, about what she is really like (and that is in itself so touching it could almost break my heart, because how else could I have defined myself, what I am, if not by understanding her?). But I am very much afraid, if we sat alone and talked like women, I would hear her say, I live here in this house because everything in it and near it reminds me of love. And included in this love would be memories of shadows of great trees on her walls, and in the mirror of her sitting room and on the ceilings of her bedroom, and the damp, the everlasting humidity, and the heavy smell of flowers and of wet vegetation, and a smell something like the wet fur of animals that filled the house when it rained. But the fact is, my mother could not have left her house and her life even if she wanted to, but I can leave here at any time.

'Where in all this do we see the victim?'

It was not that she was afraid of any financial consequences of refusing his play, because he had written, 'I am sure it goes without saying that my support for the play will not be in any way affected if you all decide my little attempt is not good enough.'