Who I Am Read online

  CHARLOTTE RAMPLING

  with Christophe Bataille

  translated by William Hobson with Charlotte Rampling

  WHO I AM

  Published in the UK in 2017

  by Icon Books Ltd,

  Omnibus Business Centre,

  39–41 North Road,

  London N7 9DP

  email: [email protected]

  www.iconbooks.com

  Sold in the UK,

  Europe and Asia

  by Faber & Faber Ltd,

  Bloomsbury House,

  74–77 Great Russell Street,

  London WC1B 3DA or their agents

  Distributed in the UK,

  Europe and Asia

  by Grantham Book Services,

  Trent Road,

  Grantham

  NG31 7XQ

  Distributed in Australia and

  New Zealand

  by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd,

  PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street,

  Crows Nest, NSW 2065

  Distributed in South Africa

  by Jonathan Ball, Office B4,

  The District, 41 Sir Lowry Road,

  Woodstock 7925

  Distributed in India

  by Penguin Books India,

  7th Floor, Infinity Tower – C,

  DLF Cyber City,

  Gurgaon 122002, Haryana

  Distributed in Canada

  by Publishers Group Canada,

  76 Stafford Street, Unit 300,

  Toronto, Ontario M6J 2S1

  Distributed in the USA

  by Publishers Group West,

  1700 Fourth Street,

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  ISBN: 978-1-78578-193-3

  Text copyright © 2017 Charlotte Rampling with Christopher Bataille

  Translation copyright © 2017 Will Hobson

  All photographs in this book are from the private collection of Charlotte Rampling, with the exception of the portrait appearing on page 87, which was taken by Tim Walker and is used with his kind permission.

  The authors have asserted their moral rights.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  Typeset in Granjon by Marie Doherty

  Printed and bound in the UK

  by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  For Barnaby, Émilie, David.

  Today, Charlotte, you seem worried and you say with a laugh, ‘I don’t know what this book is anymore … What did we say, that it would be my childhood or a sort of portrait, I’ve lost track. One thing it definitely can’t be is a biography. I’ve tried telling my life story, it doesn’t work.

  And it would be good if I actually liked the book we make together. Is that possible? To genuinely accept it, like it? I recoil from definitions, narrations, you know that, Christophe. I don’t open up.’

  Who I Am: not a biography, or a song, or a betrayal, barely a novel – let’s say a ballad, one of those ones you hum, like The Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past. You are one of those ladies whatever era you come from: I see you in photographs, haughty, often naked in your twenties, in a short skirt, black stockings, playful, in your own world. With that effortlessly elusive smile.

  You make your gaze clear-eyed. Dive into me: you’ll never see what I see.

  Everything is true in our book. Or rather: everything has happened. Dialogue, images, memories. Occasionally I’ve changed the clothes people were wearing. I’ve added some colour to the silence, and some words – just a few.

  It all starts at an editorial meeting. A typical Wednesday: we are dreaming aloud in the office where Radiguet signed the contract for The Devil in the Flesh. Parquet floor, classical mouldings, wallpaper sky. Dreaming is the word for it. There is something unreal about great books.

  On this particular Wednesday one of us brings up your name; he met you at a dinner. You are difficult. Dangerous. Bristling with lawyers. The word cruises between us like a shark. But who isn’t difficult? An editor announces that your official biography has been taken on by a talented, formidable female American journalist and already sold to a French publisher. For a fortune. We drop the subject.

  I ask a friend for your address. He shrugs genially and I dash off a letter to you that same evening. The challenge, the game. Your defiant solitude. To be you. To understand. To find the right words.

  You were sweet, really, the first time we met, Charlotte; years ago now. Of course this expression makes you bristle. ‘Sweetness, no … Christophe, don’t overdo it … It’s only the third page! Why not throw in my kindness, my even temper while we’re at it?’

  I can feel your reticence. Your wary shyness. How familiar all this is to you. How tired you are of being stared at, desired. Imagined. And second-guessed. What better way could there be of not listening to you? It is as if there is someone imprisoned in your legendary name.

  Men come and see me in the night. Men watch me and steal my secrets. I leave a fleeting image, fragments of feeling, sensations … I watch the men, I see them in the half-light, I listen to their breathing. The screen separates us. And who knows … who knows what is transformed by these images.

  I am waiting for you, I feel a little afraid – of your intelligence, of your challenging gaze, of your fear. Here you are. Long beige coat. We order quickly and quietly.

  You break into a smile. Your ‘celebrity memoirs’ will never be published. The moment you saw the first chapters, you put a stop to it. All those details, those anecdotes, those empty words. You give me the names of publishers and agents in Paris and New York, as if I needed proof. No book will be done without Charlotte Rampling and no book will be done with her. Wanting everything, forbidding everything.

  So does that mean I have to obey? Keep my distance? Be a wallflower?

  I look at your delicate, fine-skinned hands, which seem to be searching for something. Time has passed through those fingers, desire, playfulness, wisdom, I don’t know, children’s laughter.

  When it’s my turn, I say my piece: ‘I haven’t come here with advances or contracts. I just want to give it a go. Head towards childhood. And if you call this off too, if you swallow the key to the safe, so be it. The pages will remain. That’s the way it is with books you dream of.’

  Now you finish my glass of burgundy. ‘You don’t mind? It’s a good way to begin, don’t you think?’ Yes, Charlotte, it’s a good beginning. Then you laugh.

  You’ve given me writings from different periods of your life, contemplative paragraphs, meditative thoughts. I’ve tried to be you, Charlotte. To know you a little. Never to hurt you. I thought that, come what may, your name would be on this book. That you would be the sole source of whatever is in it. That it would be a portrait and a self-portrait. A pact, that was what I said.

  My name is Tessa Rampling. Charlotte is my middle name, but it took over. Tessa became Charlotte.

  Ever since I was born, I have been haunted by this feeling of what comes into your life and is then gone, what wounds you, what you can’t control. Children imagine things, they make up stories.

  The laughter and the tears become indistinguishable. We lock them away. For the Ramplings, the heart is a safe. Kept by generations, the family secret becomes a legend. We only know how to keep silent.

  People stare at you. They come closer. They back away.

  No hint of trembling as you stand naked in the galleries of the Louvre where La Tour and Fra Filippo Lippi dream. The Mona Lisa is looking at you through her bulletproof glass case. There’s no half-light here. Everything is hidden by the dazzling light of the photographer. Now you break into a smile: where are the museum attendants, the works of art, the silk dresses, the togas and jewels, t
he symbols, the crucifixes and headdresses? Where is the history of art, in all its infinite seriousness …?

  The Madonna, c’est moi.

  Come and get me if you can.

  I show up at your address, ring the bell and wait. A few doors down there’s a shop that makes knives. A Chinese chemist. An antiquarian book dealer. I daydream as I wait.

  Then you appear, black trousers, worn trench coat: So Christophe, are you lost? Are you looking for me out here, on the street?

  Spring has come. We’ve arranged to meet in the Luxembourg Gardens. We walk through the park in silence. I look at your sandals, which are dusty, like a child’s. There is a little stain on your trousers. We end up sitting at a metal table. Bad coffee. A girl signals wildly – Is it her? Is it her? – she asks you for an autograph. You give her a sweet smile. She can’t believe it.

  ‘It’s fine, really …’ you whisper. I walk you back to your front door two hours and three sentences later. Shattered portrait.

  I look in the mirror and see a woman I do not recognise. A mosaic face made up of random pieces chosen by chance. A collection of expressions chosen and rearranged to form a face.

  It must be hard being Charlotte Rampling. Talking is hard. Writing is hard. The words don’t come.

  So you have to meet a writer, a mild-mannered vampire, a tenacious creature with four hands and two heads. Don’t invent. Don’t steal. Talk a little. Listen. Then take that part of you that doesn’t open up.

  Your secret apartment. It’s so you, I think: the white rooms, the sloping parquet floor, the bound novels of Thomas Mann and Charlotte Brontë above the fireplace.

  I ring the bell. Here you are. Shoulder-length hair. Bare feet. Shy smile. Clear gaze. ‘Hello, come in …’ you hold out a hand stiffly, like all English women who don’t kiss hello.

  We go through the shadowy hall; to my right, I make out a kitchen. An abandoned cup. On the left, a sideboard, a few art books, a painting. I feel like a thief in an empty house. But I haven’t stolen anything yet, no photos or notebooks, no pieces of your soul.

  Your office in the attic. A divan covered with a rough woven fabric. Wordlessly you point me to a chair ten feet away.

  We talk and laugh in French, occasionally in English.

  Off to one side, a stained drafting table. Some soft brushes. A few tubes of paint. Everything is immaculate. Give the walls your paintings that bear the mark of your knife.

  When it’s time to leave, I say:

  ‘I like this adventure. Like a secret.’

  We choose a date. Next time I’ll take notes. You smile:

  ‘You know, Christophe, I like disappearing. That’s how it is. I see people for a while, then I don’t see them. Maybe we’ll never see each other again.’

  I think of your paintings: always the same graceful, anxious silhouette caught in black gouache. How many times have I wanted to take one of them with me as I was leaving? But I’m not as brave as you: I didn’t do it.

  I can wait. I have the time and I have the choice,

  I am even spoiled for choice.

  Only chance can heed the call of my choice.

  When it comes, by chance, it’s the absolute proof of my choice.

  One day, it’s not the day. The door is open on the fifth floor. I cross the long living room. Sitting on the edge of the divan, legs splayed like a boy, you hold a record in your hand. We dive deep into words, guitars, dreams. I don’t say much. In front of us, the hi-fi, as it used to be, the old material world in black and yellow casing with its heavy remote control. The era of cassette tapes is not far off.

  We listen to a song in silence, then two, then five. You bow your head, clasping your hands. I feel weak, my muscles ache. When the music ends, you say, ‘Well, Christophe, when shall we see each other again?’

  The family safe was sealed forever by Godfrey, your father, who won gold at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. As for me, my role is clear. I’ll write, narrate, interpret, but as you know, Charlotte, the Knight never sets the Maiden free.

  You’ve always written, like your mother. When she was fifteen she recorded her daily activities in purple ink in a pretty notebook. Today – but what is this never-ending today? – you want a book to exist and you want it to be your heart.

  I stare into your grey eyes: only part of you is there. You are looking beyond me.

  This is how secrets are made. Place yourself at the centre of the world and stare at us from behind those eyes.

  You want to escape the history of film, which tells its own story anyway. You want childhood. The poetry of childhood. From our first meeting those words came to me.

  I walk forwards, I walk backwards, one step behind the other. I walk backwards towards myself. Endlessly returning to the point of departure. The start of the beginning. The beginning of my life. Who I am.

  I was born in my maternal grandparents’ home and spent the first months of my life there. A big Victorian manor house all brick and greenery, near Cambridge. They had given it a strangely romantic name: ‘Coupals’. The war was ending. My father came home on leave from Malta, kissed me and within a day had returned to the island, scanning the sea and the sand. The history of men.

  I can see my mother approaching, radiant, in almond green tulle and taffeta, her makeup glowing. She loves fairy tales, kings and queens, dresses with trains, crystal tears. The feeling that all is good in the world.

  She is dressed for a ball. Is she always this elegant?

  It’s the early 1950s. My mother takes me in her arms, kisses me briefly as if there is no time, no lasting happiness, no promises for the girl who clings to her dress, searching for a way to be loved. And then she disappears into the night.

  When you have a secret, you cherish it. You hold it close. The secret grows, never fades. Sometimes it slips out, a word, a look. And it becomes a memory.

  I like looking at little girls. I listen to them, I look at their tangled hair, their innocent hands: I see my secret in their eyes.

  My mother is the heroine of a romantic novel. Her carefree youth is mirrored in the happy pages of The Great Gatsby.

  It’s spring and the party of the season is about to begin. Everything is satin and perfumed silk. A photographer catches the moment. Fitzgerald wasn’t dreaming. This side of Paradise is all too real. That long car drawn up beside the steps of an elegant mansion is not some relic from a distant past: it is my mother’s youth.

  Alongside her sister, three years older, my mother lived the glamorous heyday of the 1920s. Both were pretty and pampered, young debutantes whose affections every eligible bachelor in Cambridge dreamed of winning at the ball. Before the carriages came and carried off their grace and delight and my childhood dreams …

  My mother loved to laugh, to dance, to play. She was entrancing. She let life carry her along. She was a butterfly by day and a princess by night.

  She was at the glittering heart of the social whirl. Naturally she never worked. There was no question or need of such a thing.

  The Gurteens were not aristocrats but they were a prominent family. Highly respected weavers by trade, they still have their factories at Haverhill two centuries later. They started off making religious vestments, then moved on to army uniforms, and ended up dressing the whole town. Today, my cousin Christopher manages the factory, which is listed as a site of historical significance. Modern machinery has been installed in its workshops of glass and steel.

  One day my mother’s brother William invites one of his friends home. They are both twenty. In a startling coup de foudre, my mother realises that the man standing there, a stiff figure in his military uniform, will be the love of her life. She is just twelve. The handsome athlete, a saturnine, distant young man, ill at ease with the world, is already training for the Olympics.

  Godfrey Lionel Rampling’s entrance into her life is feverishly recorded by Isabel Ann Gurteen in her journal in flowery ink.

  My father was six when his father was killed in battle in Basra, then
under British mandate. It was 1915. Between heaven and hell. Between the Tigris and the Euphrates. His mother Gertrude was left a widow with three children. She was penniless but brave and tenacious. She remarried fairly quickly, but her new husband didn’t want to take on three children.

  So they decided to keep the two youngest, Barbara and Kenneth. My father was sent to his maternal grandmother in her Victorian manor in the countryside. A radical, devastating separation. A reasoned act of abandonment. That’s how it was back then and you didn’t argue.

  My great-grandmother was a severe woman. My father found himself not only orphaned but sent to boarding school. He was only seven.

  Such, therefore, was the lonely childhood of the great Godfrey Rampling, colonel in the Royal Artillery. How many times did he see his family? He never said. He was impenetrable. And I never dared ask.

  I love this child who will emerge victorious, always angling for a smile, the slightest sign of affection. He is reaching for the sky where he can forget the world and start all over.

  I love this man who keeps the world at a distance: never give anything to those who betray you.

  Little, so little, so wild that I am.

  Silent witness of out of control gestures.

  I use silence as a voice without using words.

  And wait for the spring to surround me.

  What is the world? A bed on four legs.

  What is a hero? A child on an island of cotton and sheets.

  What is a man? A child who closes his eyes and sees his past.

  And you, the crowd cheers you on, gold glints in your hand and you take refuge in the glory that maybe forgets but never forgives.

  The trees envelop us, arching low and green over the avenues of the park. You speak in a whisper. I think I hear you say you’re just back from several months in California, where you’ve been playing the part of a psychiatrist.

  Under your arm, a big photograph album from your childhood: a stout, yellowing volume annotated by your mother. It had been in storage in South London, in an iron trunk. A street in Fontainebleau. Dunes where two little girls are playing. Forgotten images. Handwritten captions.