13

How happy were we, when we were young? Perhaps it was all illusion. Perhaps, looking back now, with the forties close upon all three of us, the hours passed then much as they do today, but they took a little longer in the passing. Waking in the morning was an easier thing, we are agreed upon that. Because sleep was heavy. Not the fitful affair it has become. Fifteen years ago we could go to bed, any one of us, at three, at four in the morning, no matter what we had done, and fall like tired puppies onto pillows. Sleep came at once, the deep, forgetful sleep of death. We had our individual ways of lying in our beds. Maria, half-turned, her face upon her hand; the other arm above her head, and her right knee bent upwards. Celia upon her back, arms to her side, like a sentry; but with a fold of eiderdown, for comfort, under her chin. Niall slept always like an unborn child. He lay upon his left side, his hands, crossed on his chest, touching his shoulders. His back arched, his knees drawn to his middle.

They say that when we sleep our sub-conscious selves are revealed, our hidden thoughts and desires are written plain upon our features and our bodies like the tracings of rivers on a map; and no one reads them but the darkness.

These same attitudes are ours today, but we toss and turn more often, hours pass sometimes before we slip away; and when we wake the birds wake with us, sharply, in a slowly creeping dawn. And traffic, in a city street, has a hungry roar, even at seven in the morning, even at half-past six. Once it would be ten, even eleven in the morning, before we shook ourselves, and yawned, and stretched, and the good day opened itself before us like the blank pages of a diary, white and inviting, hungry to be filled.

For Maria, it would be London in the spring…

When the first days of April come, something steals into the air and touches you upon the cheek, and the touch travels downwards to your body, and your body comes alive. The windows are flung open. The sparrows in St. John’s Wood chatter, but the little sooty tree on the pavement opposite has a blackbird on its naked branch. Further down the road there is a house that has almond blossom in the garden. The buds are fat and luscious, ready to burst.

The bathwater runs fresh and freely on such a day, it pours from the taps with a great splash of sound, and as it runs you sing above it, you sing so truly that your voice rises above the flow of water. It’s funny, Maria would think, soaping herself with a loofah, that in the evening, if you have a bath, your tummy is round and rather full, but in the morning it is flat as a board, and hard.

It’s nice to be flat. It’s nice to be hard. It’s nice to be a person with a figure like this, and not one of those people with great fat behinds that jiggle as they walk, and full of bosoms that have to be braced up with something to keep them as they should be. It’s good to have a skin that only needs vanishing cream and powder, and hair that stays put, with just a comb run through it twice a day. Her new frock was green, and a gold-clasped belt went with it. There was a gold clip too, that he had given her. This she did not put on the front of her dress until she left the house because Pappy might see it, and ask who had given it to her. Truda had seen it once, lying on the dressing table.

“You never bought this, with what your management pays you,” she said. “Mind you, I’m not asking questions. I’m merely stating a fact.”

“It’s a bonus,” said Maria. “It’s what they give you when you’ve been a clever girl.”

“H’m,” said Truda. “You’ll have plenty of bonuses by the time you retire from the stage, if you go on through life as you’ve begun.”

Ah, Truda was a crotchety old idiot, you never could please Truda. She even grumbled on an April day, saying the spring was bad for her ulcered leg. The spring was not bad for her leg. It was bad for Truda’s soul, because Truda was old…

Should she wear a hat? No, she would not wear a hat. Even when she did wear a hat, he told her to take it off.

What lie now, for today? Yesterday had been a matinée, no need to lie. But one had to think out something for a Thursday. Thursdays were difficult. There was always shopping, but one could not shop all day. A cinema. A cinema with another girl. But then supposing one said a cinema which one had not seen, and Pappy saw it, and asked one all about it? That was the worst of living at home. The postmortems on the day. And what were you doing at half-past three if lunch was over by two-thirty, and the cinema did not start until five? A flat of one’s own, that would be the luxury. But it cost too much money—yet.

“Well, my Lord, you look like the answer to somebody’s prayer,” said Pappy, as she went in to say good morning. “No hope of your taking your father out to lunch for a change?”

Here it came. “Sorry, Pappy, I’ve got such a full day. Shopping all the morning, and then lunch with Judy—I promised her weeks ago, and we may do a cinema afterwards, I don’t know, it depends on what Judy wants to do, I shan’t be home much before half-past six.”

“Precious little I see of you, my darling,” said Pappy. “Here we are living in the same house, and you sleep in it, but that’s about all. Sometimes I wonder if you do sleep in it.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

“All right. All right. Go off and enjoy yourself.”

And Maria left the room singing, to show she had a clear conscience, and she ran downstairs before he could ask her any more questions. She tried to sneak out of the house before Celia came from the morning-room. Celia had a pen in her mouth, and her preoccupied face. She was busy with Pappy’s letters.

“You do look nice,” she said. “I love that green. Was it frightfully expensive?”

“Hellish. But I haven’t paid yet. I shan’t pay until they write that letter saying, ‘Madam, we wish to draw your attention…’ ”

“I suppose there’s no hope of your lunching with Pappy in London?”

“None at all. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s only that he doesn’t seem keen to go to the Garrick today, he’s at a loose end. Such a lovely day.”

“You can go with him.”

“Yes… I did so awfully want to get on with that drawing. You know, the one I showed you, the lost child standing outside the gate.”

“It will be better if you leave it for a day or two. It’s a mistake to finish a drawing in one go.”

“I don’t know. Once I start a thing I like to go on with it. I like to go right ahead until it’s finished.”

“Well—I can’t go with him today. My day is all booked.” Celia looked at her. She knew about it. She did not ask any questions.

“Yes, I see,” she said. “Well—have a good time.”

She went back into the morning-room, with the preoccupied face. Maria was opening the front door when Truda came up from the basement.

“Are you in to lunch?”

“No, I’m not.”

“H’m. In to dinner?”

“Yes, I’ll be in to dinner.”

“Well, be punctual then. We have it at a quarter to seven especially for you, because of the theater, so you might have the kindness to be on time. Your Pappy is always on time.”

“All right, Truda. Don’t nag.”

“That’s a new dress you’re wearing. Pretty.”

“Glad you like something of mine, anyway. Good-bye.”

She ran down the steps, and along the road, and the warm air blew in her face, and the errand-boy on the bicycle whistled and grinned. She made a face at him, and then looked back, over her shoulder, and it was heaven to be out of the house, and away from the family, away from everything, and walking to Regent’s Park full of crocuses, yellow, and white, and mauve; with his car waiting for her, and him sitting at the wheel, the car parked in the usual place between St. Dunstan’s and the Zoo. The hood would be thrown back today, because of the weather. The hood would be thrown back, and there would be lots of rugs in the back, and the picnic things, and as they drove down to the country they would sing, both of them, at the top of their voices. There was no such fun in the world as doing something you knew you should not do, with somebody else who should not be doing it either, on a spring morning with the wind blowing in your hair. And it made it all the more exciting because he was someone older than herself, someone like Pappy, whom people stared at in the street. Instead of driving her to the country he ought to be at a meeting, or at a luncheon, or giving away prizes to a lot of students; and he was doing none of these things, he was sitting beside her in the car. It was this knowledge above all that made her happy inside, and made her sing. It was like the old game of Indians that she used to play with Niall and Celia, when she, as Indian Chief, wore a scalp at her belt. She was playing Indians still… He would talk to her about the theater, and about his plans.

“When the run of this is over,” he would say, “we will do this—and that; you shall play the part of the girl, you’re just right for it.” “Am I?” she answered. “But wouldn’t I be too young? I mean, in the last act, that business when she comes back, much older…” “No,” he said, “you can do it. You can do anything, if I show you how to do it.” He tells me I can do anything, thought Maria, he tells me I can do anything, and I’m only twenty-one.

The car gathered speed and ripped along the hard, straight road into the country, passing other cars, and the winds of April were soft and warm and did not matter, the dust did not matter either, it brought the scent of gorse and broom.

Egg sandwiches tasted good under the sun, so did a cold leg of chicken; and grapes from Fortnums had a lovely bloom upon them. Even gin and vermouth drunk straight from the lip of a silver flask tasted better, and more potent, than it did from some old glass; besides, it gurgled down your throat, and you choked, and you had to borrow a handkerchief. Which was fun. Everything was more fun out of doors. No matter if it rained, there were rugs, umbrellas.

“No, said Robert, when it pours,

It is better out of doors.”

The line from the child’s Strewelpeter came back to her as she lay in the grass hollow when the shower came. And she began to shake with silent laughter, because it was so funny.

“What are you laughing at? What is the matter?” he said. But you could not really say. A man was so touchy and easily offended. He did not understand that laughter rose in you very often, much too often, in a great gulf; and you suddenly thought of the most ridiculous things for no reason at all. His ears, for instance, were keen and pointed, like the china rabbit on the mantelpiece at home, and how was it possible to be serious and intent if you remembered this? Or your thoughts would go shooting off at a tangent—“Damn, I mustn’t forget the dentist Friday morning”—or even idly observant, while he would be intent, so that you noticed the branch of a tree hanging overhead and saw that the buds were sprouting and it would be nice to take it back home and put it in water and watch the buds come into leaf. Not always, though. Sometimes you thought of nothing in this world or in heaven either, and the only moment was the moment now, and an earthquake could have opened up the ground and swallowed you and you would not have known, you would not have cared.

There could be no languor like the aftermath of a spring day under the sun. The drive back to London. The passing cars. You had no thoughts and very little feeling, and you did not talk at all. You sat wrapped in a rug like a cocoon. Then the yawn, the jerk into reality, and the growing sound of traffic brought the world too near.

Lighting-up time, and the shops were bright in the suburbs, the people jostled one another on the pavements. Women with shopping-baskets, women with prams, lumbering great buses and grinding trams, and a man with one leg advancing with violets on a tray: “Fresh vilets—sweet bunch of fresh vilets.” But they were dusty, they had been on the tray all day. On the top of Hampstead Heath the people still lingered by the pond. Boys with sticks, and girls without coats, calling to barking dogs. One little sailing boat, abandoned by its owner, rocked in the middle of the pond, with sails limp.

Down the hill straggled the people to the Underground, weary and fractious, while London lay below, like a vast backcloth on an empty stage.

The car stopped at the routine stopping-place in Finchley Road. “See you presently,” he said, touching her face, and then the car gathered speed and went away, and she heard the clock at the corner chime the half hour. She would just make it in time for dinner.

What a good thing it was, Maria thought, that when you had been making love it did not show. Your face did not turn green, or your hair drop off. God might so easily have made this happen. And then, you would be sunk. There would be no hope. Pappy would know. In a way, up to a point, God was on your side…

Pappy was back. The garage doors were shut. If he had been out still, the garage doors would be open. As she let herself in at the front door she saw Edith carrying the tray with glasses and silver into the dining room. Five minutes to spare. The rush to the bathroom, the rush to do the face. And then the inevitable boom-boom of the gong.

“Well, my darling? What sort of a day?”

Celia was an ally. She came to the rescue, always, with what they had been doing themselves, she and Pappy.

“Oh, Maria, you would have laughed, we saw the funniest little old man… Pappy, tell Maria about the little old man.” And Pappy, happy to talk, happy to plunge into his own day, would forget about Maria’s, and the dinner, hastily swallowed, that might have been a strain, passed swiftly, safely, with no direct questions, no direct replies.

“Golly—it’s half-past seven; I must fly.” The kiss on Pappy’s forehead, the smile and the nod to Celia, the shout to Edith to know if the taxi was at the door. Only Truda to make a damper to the day with her glance at Maria’s shoes. “Been in the country, haven’t you? You’ve got mud on the heels of your shoes. What a shame to crease your coat like that.” “The mud’s nothing, and the coat will iron. And for goodness sake tell that fool of a girl to put my thermos of Ovaltine beside my bed, but hot, not tepid. Good night, Truda.”

Down to the theater, in at the stage-door, “Good-evening” to the door-keeper, “Good-evening, miss,” and up along the passage to her dressing room, with a glance at his closed door. Yes, he was there already, she could hear his voice inside. The languor of the day was shaken off. She was excited now, and fresh, ready for the evening. And it would be exciting too to say to him presently, “Hullo, what a lovely day,” in front of the others, as though they were meeting for the first time, and had not parted only two hours before. Let’s pretend. Always the game of let’s pretend. And fun too, just to hint now and again that she knew him rather better than they did, just to say, “Oh, well, he said we were going to have an extra matinée, anyway.” “When? When did he tell you that?” “Oh, I don’t know. A day or two ago, at lunch.” Then silence. An expressive silence. An unmistakable hostility. Maria did not care. What did their hostility matter to her?

A tap at the door. Someone said, “It’s a wonderful house tonight. They’re standing at the back of the circle. My young friend is in front.” “Really?” said Maria, “I hope he enjoys it.” Who cared about the silly woman’s friend?

In half an hour she, Maria, would be standing in the wings, waiting for her cue, and she would hear his voice, as he stood by the open window on the set—his back was to the audience and he used to make a face at her—and the lines he said, just before, were laugh lines so that the warm, friendly sound of the laughter came flooding up to her, as she waited to make her entrance. The warmth and the friendliness used to fill the whole house, it filled the stage, and as she stepped forward she would make a face back at him, at the open window; once more they would be hoodwinking someone. No matter whether it was Pappy, or Truda; or his dreary wife, or his boring secretary; or the rest of the company, or the whole of the audience; they would have thumbed their noses at the world, at life in general, because it had been a spring day in April and Maria was twenty-one and did not care.

For Niall, it would be Paris in midsummer…

The apartment was in rather a drab quarter, off the avenue de Neuilly, but the rooms were large, and had balconies to the long windows, and if it got too hot you shut the shutters. There was a little court inside the entrance, where the concierge lived; there were always things airing inside the court, which was dim and dark and got no light, and cats prowled there, and sometimes made a smell, but the smell of garlic was stronger than the smell of cat, and the husband of the concierge, who was bedridden and lay all day propped up with pillows, smoked Caporal tobacco, which nearly killed the garlic.

The apartment was on the fifth floor, and looked out over the street, and over the roofs of Paris, while away to the right you could see the tops of the trees in the Bois, and you could see the avenue de Neuilly rising to the Etoile. The living room was bare but friendly. Freada had turfed out the stiff furniture and had bought bits and pieces of her own, things she had collected about her from time to time; like the old Normandy dresser in the corner, and the gatelegged table, and of course the pictures, and the rugs, and the piano. The piano was a Steinway baby grand, and the only thing that mattered, as far as Niall was concerned. The room could have been furnished with bamboo for all he cared.

In the bedroom, which also looked out over the street, there was Freada’s bed, large and comfortable, and a hard little divan that she had bought for Niall, because she could not always have Niall in her bed; she said it prevented her from sleeping.

“But I don’t kick,” argued Niall. “I lie still, I never budge.”

“I know, lamb, but I’m aware of you, just the same. I’ve always had a bed of my own, and I’m not going to change my habits now.”

Niall christened his hard divan Sancho Panza. It was just like the Gustave Doré illustrations to Don Quixote, the small bed beside the large bed was like the little white pony next to the long yellow steed. He would wake in the morning in Sancho Panza and look across to Freada’s bed to see if she was there, but there was never a sleeping rounded form under the sheets, the sheets would lie limp and crumpled. Freada would be up. Freada was an early riser. He would lie for a little while, blinking, looking at the blue sky through the open window, and listening to the familiar Paris noises, known from childhood, inbred in him, never forgotten.

It was going to be another scorching day. It smelled hot already, the white heat of August; the roses Freada had bought yesterday were limp and drooping in their vase. The woman in the apartment beneath was shaking a mat out of her window. Niall could hear the regular thud, thud, of the mat over the balcony. And then she called her little boy playing in the street below, her voice sharp and shrill.

“Viens vite, Marcel, quand je t’appelle.”

“Oui, Maman, je viens,” he answered back, a pretty little boy in the inevitable black pinafore, with a beret on the side of his head. Niall stretched his feet to the end of Sancho Panza. He had grown another inch, his feet dangled over the edge.

“Freada,” he called, “Freada, I’m awake.”

She came in a few moments, carrying a tray. Although she must have been up for some time, she was not dressed yet. She was still wearing her dressing gown. The breakfast had a goodly smell to it. There were croissants, and two fresh rolls, and twists of very yellow butter, and a jar of honey, and a steaming pot of coffee. There was also a new packet of Toblerone chocolate, and three sucettes on sticks, all of them different colors. He ate all the sucettes, and half the Toblerone, before he started on his breakfast. She sat on the side of her own bed, watching him, while he sat up in Sancho Panza, balancing the tray upon his knees. “I don’t know what to do with you,” she said. “You’ll be eating the furniture next.”

“I need building up,” he said. “You said so, ages ago. I’m too thin for my age and for my height.”

“I said that once. I don’t say it now,” she answered, and she bent down and kissed the top of his head. “Come on, lazybones, eat up your breakfast and then take your shower. You’ve got to do some work on the piano before you eat again.”

“I don’t want to work. It’s too hot to work. I’ll work in the cool of the evening.” The soft, melting croissant tasted good with the tang of honey. “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” she answered. “You’ll work this morning. And if you behave yourself, like a good boy, we’ll have dinner somewhere in Paris and walk back afterwards, after the heat of the day.”

The heat of the day… Surely no other city in the world threw such a haze of heat from the pavements to the sky. The rail on the balcony blistered to the touch. Niall wore nothing but a pair of workman’s dungarees, with bib and brace, but he was sweating even in them, even in walking from the bedroom to the balcony.

He could have stayed all morning looking down onto the street. The flat hard sun did not worry him, nor the white haze rising, making a mist around the Tour Eiffel in the distance; he stood on the balcony because the sounds and the smells of Paris came to his ears and his nostrils and lost themselves inside his head and came out again as tunes. The little boy, Marcel, had gone down again from the next apartment, and was whipping a top on the pavement, talking to himself; the top kept going in the gutter. A coal cart lumbered along the cobbled street—who wanted coal in August, for heaven’s sake?—and the driver called out in his rather angry voice, “Ho, la—Ho, la,” while the harness bells jingled on the horse’s back. Someone in the house next door kept calling, “Germaine? Germaine?” and then a woman came and piled a heap of bedding on the balcony to air. There was a canary singing. The coal cart lumbered away towards the avenue de Neuilly, where the traffic sounded; the bells of the trams, the high-pitched, hooting taxis. An old chiffonier wandered down the street poking his stick in the gutter, calling his trade in the thin, high voice that quavered at the end. In the kitchen Niall could hear Freada talking to the daily cuisinière, who had just returned from market, her morning purchases bulging in her string bag.

There would be fresh gruyère cheese, and radishes, and a great bowl of salad, presently, for lunch, and possibly foie de veau, fried in butter, with a sprig of garlic. The door from the kitchen opened, and the smell of Freada’s Chesterfield cigarettes floated down the passage. She came into the room and stood beside him on the balcony.

“I have not heard that piano yet,” she said.

“You’re a slave driver,” said Niall. “That’s what you are. A ranting, ruddy slave driver.” He butted his head against her, sniffing the amber, and bit the lobe of her ear.

“You’re here to work,” she said. “If you don’t work, I’ll send you home. I’ll go and buy your ticket this afternoon.”

This was a joke between them. Whenever he was more than usually idle she would tell him that she had been on the telephone to Cook’s, that Cook’s had taken reservations for him on the express to Calais.

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Niall. “You wouldn’t dare.” He pulled her round so that she faced him, and he put his hands on her shoulders, and he rubbed his cheek against her hair.

“You can’t bully me any longer,” he said. “I’ll soon be as tall as you. Look, put your feet next to mine.”

“Don’t stamp on my toes,” she said. “There’s a corn on the little one. That comes from wearing tight shoes in a heat wave.” She pushed him away, and, reaching forward, she pulled the shutters close. “We’ll have to keep the room cool somehow,” she said.

“It’s a fallacy, that business of closing the shutters,” said Niall. “They used to do it when we were children. It makes everything much worse.”

“It’s either that, or sitting in the bath all day with the cold tap on my tummy,” said Freada. “Don’t pull at me, Niall, it’s too damn hot.”

“It’s never too hot,” said Niall. She pushed him onto the seat in front of the piano. “Go on, my baby, do what you’re told,” she said.

He stretched out for a piece of Toblerone chocolate on top of the piano, and broke it in two, so that he could have two pieces, one in either cheek, and he laughed, and began to play.

“Slave driver,” he called over his shoulder, “stinking slave driver.”

Once she was out of the room he did not think about her anymore, he thought only of what he wanted from the piano. Freada always cursed him for laziness. He was lazy. He wanted the piano to do the work for him, not the other way about. Freada said nothing was worth doing without effort. Pappy used to say that too. Everyone said it. But when things happened easily, what was the sense in driving yourself, in sweating blood?

“Yes, I know that first song was a winner,” said Freada, “but you can’t just rest on that. And you must remember that the life of a song-hit is short. A couple of months, at best. You’ve got to work. You’ve got to do better still.”

“I’ve no ambition,” he told her. “Oh, yes, if it was real music, then I’d be ambitious all right. But not this nonsense.”

And in one hour, two hours, it would come; out of the blue, from nowhere, a song that you could not help singing, a song that did something to your feet and to your hands. It was easy, so damn easy. But it was not work. It was the call of the chiffonier poking with his stick in the gutter, and the angry coalman saying, “Ho, la,” pulling the jingling reins as his horse stumbled on the cobbled stones.

The song hit the ceiling, and echoed from the walls; it was fun to do, it was play. But he did not want to write it down. He did not want to have the sweat and toil of writing it down. Why not pay someone else to do that part? And, anyway, once he had thought of a song, and played it, and sung it to himself and Freada about fifty times, it was out of his system, he was bored with it, sickened of it, he did not even want to hear it anymore. As far as he was concerned, the song was finished. It was like taking a pill, and the pill having worked, he wanted to pull the plug on it. Finish. Now what next? Anything? No. Just lean over the balcony under the sun. And think about the foie de veau there was going to be for lunch…

“I can’t work anymore today,” he said, at half-past one, when he had eaten the last radish. “It’s cruelty to animals, and anyway it’s the siesta hour. No one in Paris works in the siesta hour.”

“You’ve done very well,” said Freada. “I’ll let you off this afternoon. But play the song to me once, just once; because now I’m not an old pro anymore, trying to train a pupil. I want to hear your song for sentiment’s sake, because I love it, and I love you too.”

He went to the piano again and played it for her, and she sat at the table dropping ash from her Chesterfield cigarette onto the plate where the radishes had been, and the slab of gruyère cheese, and she shut her eyes and hummed the song in her husky voice that was always a little off key, but it did not matter. As he played, and looked at her, he thought suddenly of Maria, and how Maria would sing the song; she would not sit slumped there, in a chair, smoking a cigarette, over the remains of lunch; she would stand straight in the middle of the room and smile. Then something would happen to Maria’s shoulders, and her hands would move, and she would say, “I want to dance it. It’s no use standing here and listening. I want to dance.”

Which was what the song was for, which was why it came like that, out of his head. Not to be sung, not to be echoed in a husky voice by Freada, or by anyone; but to be danced to by two people who moved as one person only, like himself and Maria, in some old back room at the top of a house; not in a restaurant, not in a theater. He stopped playing and shut down the lid of the piano.

“That’s all for today,” he said. “They’ve turned the gas off at the main. Let’s go and sleep.”

“You can sleep for two hours,” said Freada. “After that you must put on a shirt and a pair of pants that hasn’t a hole in them. We’re meeting people for drinks at five o’clock.”

Freada knew too many people, that was the trouble. You always had to be sitting round a table in a café talking to a bunch of people. They were most of them French. And Niall was lazy over French, as lazy as he was about putting sound on paper. Freada was bilingual, she could rattle on for hours, discussing music, songs, the theater, pictures, anything that came into her head, and her friends sat round closely, laughing, talking, having one drink after another, telling interminable stories about nothing. French people talked too much. They were all wits, they were all raconteurs. Too many sentences started off with “Je m’en souviens…” and “Ca me fait penser…” They went on and on. Niall said nothing, he tilted his chair, his eyes half-closed, drinking iced beer, and now and again he would frown at Freada, and jerk his head, and sigh heavily, but she never took the slightest notice. She went on talking, biting on her cigarette-holder, dropping ash all over the table, and then someone would say something that was funnier than ever, apparently, for there would be a throwing back of heads, a scraping of chairs on the floor of the café, and more laughter, more flow of conversation.

Sometimes, if he was close to Freada, he would kick her under the table, and then she would come to, she would smile across at him, and say to her friends, “Niall s’ennuie,” and everyone looked at him and smiled as well, as if he were two years old.

They called him “L’enfant,” or even “L’enfant gâté,” and occasionally, worst of all, “Le p’tit Niall.”

At last they got up and went away, the last of them disappeared, and Niall heaved a great sigh of relief and exasperation.

“Why do you ask them? Why do you do it?”

“But I love talking, I love my friends,” said Freada. “Besides, that man who came with Raoul this evening has a lot of influence, not only in the musical world in Paris, but in America too. He has contacts everywhere. He can help you a lot.”

“I don’t care if he has contacts in Hell,” said Niall. “He’s a most deadly bore. And I don’t want to be helped.”

“Have another beer.”

“Don’t want another beer.”

“What do you want then?”

What did he want? He looked across at her and wondered. She lit another cigarette from the stub of the last, and thrust it in the holder. Why did she have to smoke so much? Why did she allow the coiffeur to put that silly yellow streak on the top of her hair? It got yellower and more dried-up each time she went, and spoiled her. It made her hair like hay.

As soon as the comparison struck him he felt a pang of remorse. What a beastly thought. How could he have thought of such a thing? Freada was a darling, so good to him, so kind. He loved Freada. He put his hand out to hers across the table, and kissed it, on sudden impulse. “What do I want? Why, to be by ourselves, of course,” he said. She screwed up her face at him, making him laugh; and then she called to the garçon to bring her the bill.

“Come on, then,” she said; “we’ll walk a little before dinner.”

She took his arm and they strolled along the boulevard, slowly, pleasantly, watching the other people, without talking. Even now, with the sun away in the west, and the first lights showing in the cafés, it must be eighty degrees, or near it. No one wore a coat. Nobody wore a hat. The Parisians proper were all away en vacances. These were shopkeepers, out for the evening, to take a breath of air less stifling than they had breathed all day; they were people from the country, from the Midi. Everyone walked languidly, lazily, with a smile; everyone had shiny, greasy faces, and their clothes clung to them damply, and the heat of the boulevard hit them as they walked. The sky turned an amber color, like Freada’s scent, and an amber glow came upon the city, spreading from the west, touching the roofs and the bridges and the spires.

Suddenly the lights went on everywhere, over all the bridges, and the sky was not amber anymore, it was purple, like a grape, but the heat still hit you as you walked. The taxis rattled across the bridges, filled to bursting-point with heated, sweating adults, and little pale-faced children, tired from a day’s outing. The taxis hooted, and screamed, and swerved, and the gendarme blew his whistle violently, and waved his baton. It was like Sullivan, years ago, waving his baton to the orchestra. The lights were going on. The lights were going on in the theater, the curtain was going up, Mama was going to dance…

“I can’t walk any further, pet, my feet ache,” said Freada. Her face was lined and weary, she felt heavy on his arm.

“Please,” he begged, “just a little further. There’s a new sound come with the evening, and the lights have brought it. Listen, Freada, listen.”

They stood by the bridge, and the lights were reflected in the Seine, making shining hoops of gold, and in the distance the long line of gold traveled up the Champs Elysées to the Etoile. The taxis went past them in a gathering stream, flowing to right and left and center, and as they passed the warm air lifted and blew in the people’s faces, gentle as a fan. Niall could hear something like the beat of a pulse, and it was all part of the screaming taxis and the beckoning lights and the hot pavements and the darkening sky.

“I want to go on walking,” he said. “I could walk forever.”

“You’re young,” said Freada. “You can walk alone.”

It was no use, the magic was not with them, the magic was away there, up the Champs Elysées, and if you reached the top of the hill by the Etoile it would be gone again, to the heavy scented trees in the heart of the Bois, in the deep trees, in the soft grass. The magic was elusive. You could never touch it. It escaped you always.

“All right,” said Niall, “I’ll get a taxi.”

Now they were just like all the other people, whirling along in a tumbled stream. Hooting, screaming, rattling over the streets. Leaving the magic behind. Letting the magic escape.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Freada.

“Nothing,” said Niall.

He sat forward, leaning out of the window, so that the air blew on his face, the warm exciting air, and he could see the long trail of lights like a winding ribbon, vanish and reappear.

Freada leaned back in the taxi and yawned, kicking off her shoes.

“There’s only one thing I want,” she said, “and that’s to plunge my feet into a tepid bath.”

Niall did not answer. He nibbled his nails, and watched the flickering lights of Paris wink at him and curtsy. He wondered, a little sadly, whether Freada said this as a gentle hint that he would have to stay put the whole damn night in Sancho Panza.

For Celia it would be any spring, or any summer. Whatever the season, the routine would be the same. Early tea, at half-past eight. She made it herself, on a little spirit stove, because she did not want to put the servants to extra trouble. Her alarm clock would wake her with its shrill, impersonal summons, and she reached out her hand to bury it at once beneath the eiderdown. Then she allowed herself five minutes to enjoy the luxury of bed. Five minutes, but no more. Up, to make the tea, to have her bath, to take the morning papers in to Pappy and to sense his mood and wishes for the day. There was always the little ritual of enquiring how he had slept. “A good night, Pappy?”

“Fair, my darling, fair.” And from his tone she would have to gather whether the hours that stretched ahead for both of them held placidity or doom.

“I’ve had that old pain under the heart again. We had better send for Pleydon.”

Then she knew where she was. Then she knew it meant a day at home, very probably in bed, and there would be no hope of going to the Art School that morning, or that afternoon.

“Is it bad enough for that?”

“It was so bad at three this morning that I thought I was going to die. That’s how bad it was, my darling.”

She was onto Pleydon at once. Yes, she was reassured, Pleydon would come round as soon as he could. He had one urgent call to make, but he should be with Mr. Delaney by half-past ten for certain.

“It’s all right, Pappy. He’ll come. Now, what can I get you?”

“There’s a letter there, my darling. We shall have to answer it. From poor old Marcus Guest, living in Majorca. Haven’t heard from him for years.” Pappy reached across the sheets for his horn-rimmed spectacles. “Read what he says, my darling, read what he says.”

Then Celia took the letter—it was closely written, and there were six pages of it, very hard to read. She could hardly understand a word of it, the allusions were to people and to places of whom she had never heard. But Pappy was delighted.

“Poor old Marcus Guest,” he kept repeating, “who would have thought he was still alive? And in Majorca. They say it’s very pleasant in Majorca. We ought to try it. It might be good for my voice. Find out about Majorca, my darling. Ring up somebody who can tell us about Majorca.”

They passed the time until the doctor came discussing plans for travel. Yes, there must be trains that went through France. They could take Paris on the way. See Niall. See how Niall was getting on. Perhaps persuade Niall to come with them. Or better still, not go by train. Go by boat. There were so many shipping lines, they all passed through the Mediterranean. Certainly the best way would be to go by boat. Ah, here was Pleydon. “Pleydon, we are going to Majorca.”

“Splendid,” said Dr. Pleydon, “do you the world of good. Now let’s listen to that chest of yours.”

And out came the stethoscope, and the unbuttoning of the pajama jacket, and the listening, and the putting away of the stethoscope.

“Yes,” said Dr. Pleydon, “there may be a little murmur. Nothing much. Nothing to worry about. But you can have a quiet day. Got plenty to read?”

Good-bye to Art School. It was the life class today. But never mind. It did not matter.

“Celia will be here,” said Pappy. “Celia will look after everything.”

She took the doctor to the door and stayed with him a moment in the passage.

“Probably a little flatulence,” said Pleydon, “a touch of wind round the heart. But he’s big, it’s uncomfortable for him. Keep him quiet, and a light diet.”

Down to the kitchen. The cook was newish, only been with them for six weeks, and she did not get on with Truda.

“Well, if Mr. Delaney isn’t well, I should think something in the fish line would be best,” said the cook; “steamed, I could do it steamed, with potatoes lightly boiled.”

Truda passed through the kitchen, with some sheets over her arm. “Mr. Delaney doesn’t care for fish,” she snapped.

The cook’s mouth tightened. She did not answer. She waited until Truda had gone out of the kitchen and then she spoke. “I’m sorry, Miss Celia,” she said, “but really I do my best. I know I haven’t been with you long, but if I as much as open my mouth Truda nearly bites my head off. I’m not used to being spoken to in such a way.”

“I know,” said Celia soothingly, “but you see, she isn’t so young as she was, and she’s been with us for so long. It’s because she’s so fond of us that she talks so freely. She knows all our ways.”

“It’s a funny household,” said the cook. “I’ve never been anywhere before where the dining room wanted a hot dinner at a quarter to seven. It’s most unusual.”

“I know it must be trying, but you see, with my sister at the theater…”

“I really think, Miss Celia, that it would be best if you looked for someone else. Someone more suited to your ways.”

“Oh, come, don’t say that…” And on and on, the smoothing down of the cook, with one eye on the pantry door, because André would be hearing it all, and take infinite delight in repeating it to Truda. Pappy’s bell rang once, twice, urgently. Celia fled upstairs.

“My darling, you know those photograph albums stacked in the morning-room?”

“Yes, Pappy.”

“I feel like going through them all again. And putting in the mass of odd snapshots that we took in South Africa, and got mixed up with the ones from Australia. Will you help me, my darling?”

“Of course I will.”

“You haven’t got anything else to do?”

“No, oh no…”

Down to the morning-room, and up with the heavy albums, and down again to look for the forgotten snapshots. They were underneath a pile of books at the back of a cupboard. In the middle of sorting them she remembered that she had given no final orders about the lunch. Back to the kitchen and to be firm this time and order chicken.

“There’s hardly time now, Miss Celia, to get a chicken on.”

“Is there anything over?”

“There’s that piece of beef we had for lunch yesterday.”

“Mince it,” said Celia, “mince it, and put a poached egg on top.”

She went upstairs again to Pappy. He was up, he was pottering in his dressing gown. “Would you make me some tea, my darling?” he said. “They stew it below. They don’t make it as you do.”

Along to her bedroom to make the tea, and while she knelt on the floor beside the kettle Truda came in. Her eyes were red. She had been crying.

“It’s easy to see when you aren’t wanted anymore,” she said.

Celia jumped up from the floor and put her arms round Truda. “What do you mean? Don’t be so silly,” she said.

“It will break my heart to leave you,” said Truda, “but leave you I must if things go on the way they’re going. Nothing I do seems right anymore. Ever since I was in hospital with my leg I’ve felt a kind of coldness, right through the house, from you all, and now my boy is here no longer…” The tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Truda, you mustn’t say such things, I won’t let you,” said Celia. And on and on, until the old woman was pacified, and went off to put new ribbons in Maria’s nightgown.

Maria. Where was Maria? A shout, a wave of the hand, a slam of the front door, Maria was gone…

“Will you have lunch with me, my darling?”

“Yes, Pappy, if you want me to.”

“Well, you wouldn’t leave me to have it up here all alone.”

Trays. Several trays. Curious how if you had a meal upstairs there had to be so many trays. And André hated carting trays. The old story would be trotted out. He was Mr. Delaney’s valet. Mr. Delaney’s dresser. He had never been a carrier of trays.

“Eat your mince, Pappy.”

“It’s cold, my darling, it’s stone cold.”

“That’s because it’s such a long way from the kitchen to this floor. I’ll send it down to be hotted up again.”

“No, my darling, don’t bother. I’m not hungry.”

He pushed the tray away. And moved his legs under the blankets. There were so many things strewn around. All those heavy albums.

“Take them away, my darling, take them away.” Bundle the albums to the floor, straighten the bed.

“Is the room very hot? It seems very hot to me.”

“No, I don’t think so. It’s because you are in bed.”

“Open the window, I’m stifling. I’m going to choke.”

She flung the window wide, and a stream of cold air blew down across the room. She shivered, and moved towards the fireplace.

“Yes, that’s better. I think I’ll have a little shut-eye. Just for five minutes. Just a little shut-eye. You won’t be going out?”

“No, Pappy.”

“We’ll play bezique, presently, my darling. And then you must get down to answering that letter from old Marcus Guest.”

The quiet, cold room. The steady, heavy breathing. The albums piled on the floor. And a sheet of blank paper, peeping out from between the pages of one of them. A piece of blank paper, doing nothing at all. Celia took the sheet of paper, and balanced it upon one of the albums. She fumbled in her pocket for a pencil. There was no Art School today, perhaps no Art School tomorrow, but if you had a piece of paper and a pencil you were not entirely lost, not entirely alone. From the open window she could hear the sound of the children in the playground of the Council school. They came out always at this time and shouted and called to one another, and skipped with skipping ropes, and hopped, and played. She hoped they would not wake Pappy. He slept on. His mouth a little open. His spectacles on the end of his nose. The children from the Council school went on shouting and calling, and their voices were like something from another world. But the faces that she drew were children’s faces. And she was happy. And she did not mind.