Niall waited for Maria at the end of the platform of the Gare du Nord. He stood behind the barrier. He was waiting there as the train came in. At once there was a jostle of people and porters, and the usual babble of conversation. And the wrong people streamed past him, through the barrier. Chattering Frenchmen with voluble wives, and English tourists, and all the sallow individuals of no known nationality who travel forever upon Continental trains, biting upon cigars.
Niall’s heart thumped under his ribs and he was filled with unbearable anxiety. If Maria did not come, if he had to turn back again, alone… She was there. She wore a loose red coat and she carried her hat in her hand. He could see her eyes laughing at him from ten, from twenty yards away. And although she had only two suitcases with her, she was followed by three porters. She was beside him. She put up her face to be kissed.
“You’ve grown again,” she said. “It’s not fair. Now you look older than I do, instead of younger.”
She took out her handkerchief and rubbed his cheek because she had left lipstick.
“I’ve only a hundred-franc note,” she said. “You must pay the porters.”
He had come prepared. He knew how it would be. As they filed through the barrier people turned to look at her and she smiled back at them. She waved to the engine driver, fat and greasy, who laughed down at her from the step of his cab, wiping his hands upon a rag.
“I love him,” she said. “I love them all.”
“Yes, but not here,” said Niall. “Not on the platform.”
The anxiety had left him, but the beating heart remained, full, happy, ready to burst. He dealt with the porters, overtipping them with Freada’s money. He summoned a taxi, and they bundled in. The driver cocked an eye at Maria, and said something to Niall out of the side of his mouth.
“I’ve forgotten all my French. What did he say?” asked Maria.
“Even if you remembered French,” said Niall, “you wouldn’t know that one.”
“Was it rude?”
“No, complimentary.”
“Complimentary to me, or to you?”
“To both of us. He’s an understanding man. He has perception.”
The taxi swerved away out of the station, and turning a corner sharply pitched Maria into Niall’s arms.
He held her tight and kissed her hair.
“You always smell the same,” he said. “Like mustard.”
“Why mustard?”
“I don’t know. It’s not scent. It’s just your skin.”
She took his hand and measured it with hers.
“That’s grown too,” she said. “It’s cleaner. And you’ve stopped biting your nails. Did Freada stop you?”
“No one stopped me. I haven’t felt like biting them.”
“You’re happy, then. People only bite their nails when they’re unhappy. Are you happy?”
“I’m happy now.” He bit the tips of her fingers instead of his own. She lay back in his arms and laughed.
“Who are your friends?” he asked.
“I have so many. I don’t remember their names.”
“Who is number one at the moment?”
“There isn’t a number one. If there was I shouldn’t be in Paris.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Niall.
“You know what I’m going to do next?” she said.
“You told me, in your letter.”
“I want to do all the Barrie parts. I’m good in Barrie.”
“Who says so?”
“Barrie.”
As the taxi swerved and rattled, she settled herself with greater comfort in Niall’s arms, resting her legs across his knees.
“The thing is,” she said, “people always think I’m ethereal. Wide-eyed and wan. I wonder why.”
“Perhaps you don’t lie about with them like this,” said Niall.
“I do lie about,” she said, “from time to time. The trouble is I go off everyone so quickly. I soon get bored.”
“Bored with the things they say? Or with the things they do?”
“With the things they do. I never listen to the things they say.”
Niall lit a cigarette. No easy matter, in his cramped position.
“It’s like music,” he said. “After all, there are only eight notes to an octave.”
“What about all those sharps and flats?”
“Well, you can play about with them,” he said.
“Think of Elgar,” she said, “Enigma Variations. And Rachmaninoff, having fun with Paganini.”
“You set too high a standard,” said Niall. “You must depress your friends.”
“I’ve never had any complaints up to now,” said Maria. “Where is the taxi taking us?”
“To your hotel.”
“I thought that I was going to stay with you and Freada.”
“You can’t. There’s only one bedroom.”
“I see,” said Maria. “How very sordid.”
She pushed him away and began powdering her nose.
“Why didn’t you go on that tour?” asked Niall.
“The wife,” said Maria. “No fun for anyone. And, anyway, his teeth.”
“What about his teeth?”
“They’ve let him down at last. He’s got to have dentures, and he was in a nursing home last week. I sent some lilies.”
“Why not a wreath?”
“I thought about a wreath.”
“Finito, then?”
“Finito.”
He lifted her wrist and looked at the time on the bracelet watch.
“Well, you’ve always this,” he said. “There’s nothing ethereal about this. Did he give it to you for a parting present?”
“No,” she said. “He gave it for enigma variations.”
When the taxi turned into the Champs Elysées she sat up quickly and leaned forward, looking through the window.
“Oh, Niall,” she said. “It’s us, it’s you and me.”
Two children were waiting to cross the avenue. The boy wore a blouse and a beret on his head, and the girl, a little older, tugged at his hand impatiently, her hair blowing about her face.
“You and me,” said Maria, “running away from Truda. Why didn’t I realize it before? London isn’t home. London will never be home.”
“That’s why I came to Paris,” said Niall.
Maria turned from the window and looked at him. Her eyes went dark, without expression, like someone blind.
“Yes,” she said, “but you came with the wrong person.”
The taxi swerved violently to the right, and stopped with a jerk before Maria’s hotel.
Back in the apartment off the avenue de Neuilly Freada was entertaining Pappy and Celia. They were on their way back to England from a holiday on the Italian lakes. Pappy had not liked the idea of Majorca at all. He had been seized with a sudden fancy for limpid water and, in the distance, mountains that he would not have to climb. Black-muzzled cows in the valleys, with bells round their necks that rang.
“But it rained, Freada, it rained,” he said. “The tears of the whole world poured from the dripping sky.”
“What did you do?” asked Freada.
“We played bezique,” said Pappy.
Celia felt Freada’s eyes turned upon hers in sympathy. She looked away. It gave her a funny feeling, sitting in Freada’s flat. She was not certain why, but she thought it must be because the flat was small. The one bedroom, and Niall’s dressing gown hanging on the door.
She tried to think of Freada as a sort of Truda, looking after Niall. But it would not work. “I must be narrow-minded,” she said to herself. “I don’t mind what Maria does, so why should I mind Niall?”
The flat was very untidy. There were sheets of music lying about, and open books, and shoes kicked in a corner. Perhaps it was the shoes… Pappy, who had been so angry once, seemed perfectly at ease. He lay back in one armchair picking his hollow tooth with his gold toothpick, and discussing Freada’s plans.
“Take him about a bit,” he said, waving his hand. “Take him around the world. Let him play all the capitals of Europe, as his mother did before him, and finish in America. I give my permission.”
Celia watched Freada drop ash upon the floor. There was an ashtray on the table which she did not use. It had a bunch of asparagus in it instead, with the ends bitten.
“Niall doesn’t want to travel,” said Freada. “He has no ambition.”
“No ambition?” said Pappy. “No desire to travel? What does he like to do?”
“He likes to eat.”
That explains the asparagus tips, thought Celia, and those empty chocolate cartons. She must remember to tell Truda when she got home.
“What else does he like to do?” said Pappy, curious.
But Freada shrugged her shoulders. She fitted another cigarette into her holder.
“He reads,” she said, “and sleeps. He sleeps for hours.”
“Then all this success, this éclat,” said Pappy, “it has not gone to his head, it has not spoiled him?”
“I don’t think he knows it has happened,” said Freada.
“His mother over again,” said Pappy. “She never cared.”
“But she took trouble,” said Freada. “She worked—heavens how she worked. She had tenacity and drive. Niall has neither. He simply does not care.”
Pappy shook his head and whistled.
“That’s bad,” he said. “That’s his French blood.”
Celia thought of the blue vein on Niall’s hand, and wondered if the vein was French. She looked at her own hands, broad and square like Pappy’s. Her veins did not show at all.
“Maria’s the worker,” said Pappy. “Maria’s the girl. No slacking with Maria. She starts rehearsing again next week. A chip off the old block. Nothing French about Maria, thank God.”
Celia wondered anxiously if there was anything French about Freada. She was bilingual and she lived in France. Pappy could be so tactless.
“I wonder if she has arrived?” said Celia, to change the conversation. “The train was due in an hour ago.”
“Niall said he would take her straight to the hotel,” said Freada. “I suggest you go along down and see if she is there. Niall can come back presently and change.”
It was rather like Truda after all, Celia decided. Freada knowing about when Niall should change. She wondered if Freada did his laundry, counted his shirts. Any moment Freada might call Niall “my boy.”
Pappy and Celia drove down to the hotel in a taxi.
“I wonder how it goes,” said Pappy, curious, “this strange liaison between Niall and Freada. Funny old Freada. I must take her to lunch tomorrow and find out.”
“Oh, Pappy, you can’t!” said Celia, horrified.
“Why ever not, my darling?”
“Think how embarrassing for Niall,” she answered.
“I see no embarrassment,” said Pappy. “These things are of importance. They are medical. I look upon Freada as I would look upon a tutor in Oxford, Cambridge or Heidelberg. She knows her job.”
And he began to reckon up the years he had known Freada, casting his mind back to 1912, to 1909.
When they arrived at the hotel the man behind the desk told them that Miss Delaney had arrived and had unpacked, and had gone out again, leaving no message. She had been gone for half an hour. The gentleman also. Upstairs in the suite—Pappy never traveled unless he could have a suite—they found disorder. Maria’s clothes lay strewn upon every bed. Beds were tumbled. Towels were scattered. Talcum powder was spilt upon the floor.
“Disgusting!” said Pappy. “Like an Austrian servant.”
Celia began to tidy feverishly. Maria was no longer a chip off the old block.
“They’ve been drinking too,” said Pappy, examining the tooth-glass. “Cognac, judging by the smell. I never knew my daughter drank.”
“She doesn’t,” said Celia, smoothing Pappy’s bed. “She always has orangeade. Unless it’s a first night, when she has champagne.”
“Then it must be Niall,” said Pappy. “Someone—and who can it be but Niall?—has been pouring cognac into my tooth-glass. I shall attack Freada. Freada is responsible.”
He filled the tooth-glass with cognac for himself.
“Leave me to change, my darling,” he said to Celia. “If Maria chooses to turn this suite into a brothel, she shall answer for it on her return. I will stop her playing Mary Rose. I will wire Barrie tonight.”
He began rummaging in the wardrobe for his evening clothes, throwing the suits he did not want onto the floor.
Celia went to her own room to change. There was a note pinned on the pillow: “See you at the cabaret. We’re dining out.” Celia’s dressing table drawer was open, and her evening bag was missing. Maria must have forgotten to bring her own and had taken Celia’s. She had taken Celia’s earrings too. The new ones Pappy had bought her in Milan. Celia began to dress, her heart despondent. She had a feeling that the evening would go wrong…
Niall and Maria were seated side by side on a river boat chugging to St. Cloud. Paris, a haze of beauty, lay behind them. They sat on the top deck eating cherries. They threw the cherry stones onto the heads of people down below. Maria wore Niall’s camel coat over her evening dress. The dress was green. Celia’s jade earrings matched it to perfection.
“The thing is,” she said, “we must never part.”
“We never have,” said Niall.
“We’re parted now,” said Maria, “you being in Paris and me in London. It’s hateful. I can’t bear it. That’s why I’m so unhappy.”
“Are you unhappy?”
“Terribly,” she said.
She spat a cherry stone onto the head of a bald old Frenchman down below. He looked up, ready to explode. When he saw Maria he smiled and bowed. He glanced around to see where there was a ladder leading to the upper deck.
“I get so lonely,” she said. “No one ever makes me laugh.”
“You won’t need to laugh in a few weeks’ time,” said Niall. “You will be rehearsing.”
“That’s when I feel the need for laughter most,” said Maria.
The river boat chugged along the twisting river to the shadowed trees. Twilight fell upon the quays. The scents and sounds of Paris hummed about them in the air.
“Let’s go away,” said Niall. “Let’s just chuck up everything.”
“Where could we go?” said Maria.
“We could go to Mexico,” said Niall.
They held hands, staring across the river to the trees.
“Those hats,” said Maria, “with pointed crowns. I don’t think I like the hats in Mexico.”
“You needn’t wear a hat. Only the shoes. A special sort of leather, with a smell.”
“We can’t either of us ride,” said Maria. “And in Mexico one has to ride. Mules. And people are always shooting.”
She crumpled up the paper bag that had held the cherries, and threw it away into the river.
“The thing is,” she said, “I don’t think I want to go away. I want to be in London. But for you to be there too.”
“The thing is,” said Niall, “that I’d rather live in a lighthouse.”
“Why a lighthouse?”
“Well, a mill. Or an oast-house. Or a barge.”
Maria sighed, and leaned back against Niall’s shoulder.
“Let’s face it, we shall never be together,” said Niall.
“We can be together sometimes,” said Maria. “From time to time. How much further is it to St. Cloud?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I only wondered. We must not miss the cabaret, and Freada, and your songs.”
Niall laughed and put both arms about her.
“You see,” he said, “running away is just pretence with you. St. Cloud is just another Mexico to you.”
“We could make it a symbol,” said Maria. “Something we always want and never have. Something that is forever out of reach. Isn’t there some poem that begins, ‘Oh God, Oh Montreal’? We can say ‘Oh God, St. Cloud.’ ”
The wind was chilly. She buttoned his camel coat up to her throat.
“I tell you what we can do,” she said. “We can have the best of both worlds by driving back to Paris in a taxi through the Bois. The taxi can go slow on purpose. And perhaps the driver will be tactful.”
“French drivers never look behind; they’ve all been trained,” said Niall.
“All the same,” he added presently, as the taxi drove them through the silent Bois, “I’d rather go to Mexico.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” said Maria. “And anyway…”
“Anyway, what?”
“Do I still smell of mustard?” asked Maria.
Back in Paris, Celia, Pappy and Freada dined amid an atmosphere of strain. Pappy was livid. He had taken the trouble to come to visit his stepson, and his stepson had made not the slightest effort to see him. He had paid his daughter’s fare from London, he was paying her bill at the hotel, and she had gone out on the streets like a Viennese whore.
All this was said aloud to Freada over dinner.
“I wash my hands of both of them,” he said. “Niall is nothing but a pampered pimp. Maria is a slut. Both riddled with bad blood. Both heading for the gutter. Thank God for this child here. Thank God for Celia.”
Freada only smiled, and went on smoking Chesterfields. Perhaps she was like a tutor after all, thought Celia, an indulgent, understanding tutor.
“They’ll turn up,” she said. “I was young myself in Paris. Once.”
The long meal ended. The session for supper, and the cabaret, was yet to come. Pappy paid the bill in silence, and they drove, still in silence, to what Pappy chose to term the “bôite de nuit.”
“They’re all the same, these places,” he said glumly. “Haunts of vice. Very different from my day. You’ve fallen in the world, my dear Freada. Sadly fallen.” He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head.
Because of what he said Celia expected to find the bôite de nuit a sort of cellar, buried underground. Murky and ill-lit. With white-faced, evil people dancing cheek to cheek. She was surprised to walk into a restaurant like the Embassy Club in London. Only smarter. The women exquisitely dressed. Some of them knew Pappy. He smiled and bowed to them. Freada led the way to a table in the corner. Presently a young man with a wasp-waist came up to the table and, clicking his heels, bowed low to Celia, asking for a dance. She flushed and glanced at Pappy. He must be a Marquis at least, or a Bourbon Prince.
“It’s all right,” murmured Freada; “it’s only the pro. You won’t have to talk.”
Celia rose to dance, disappointed. Still, it was a kind of compliment. She was blown away in the young man’s arms like thistledown. The cabaret came later. There were two turns. A Frenchman who told stories, and then Freada. The Frenchman was very small and very fat. As soon as he walked onto the floor Pappy began to laugh and clap. Pappy was that sort of audience. He always enjoyed himself. Celia could not follow a word the Frenchman said, not because her French was rusty, but because it was not the sort of French she understood. But he must have been terribly vulgar because Pappy laughed so much. He laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks and he gasped for breath. The Frenchman was delighted, his turn had never gone so well before. Then Freada got up from the table and went to the piano. Celia felt herself blushing. It was always embarrassing when someone you knew performed in front of you, in a room, and not upon a stage. They were much too close. Freada was clever. First she did her imitations, and although Celia did not know the people she was imitating—they were French—she knew they must be liked, everyone clapped so much.
Then the lights went low and she began to sing Niall’s songs.
They had written the words between them; the music, of course, was Niall’s. Some were in English, some in French. She had a low, rather husky voice that sometimes went off key, but it did not matter. There was so much warmth and expression to the voice, you did not mind. The songs, which were new to Celia, were not new to the people gathered at the tables. They began to hum, in accompaniment to Freada; softly at first, and then louder, as she swung into the tune, and smiled. Celia felt proud and happy, not because of Freada, whom she barely knew, but because the songs belonged to Niall, her brother. They were his possession, like the drawings that belonged to her. She found herself humming under her breath, like the rest of the people, and glancing at Pappy she saw that he was humming too. There were tears in his eyes as well, but this time the tears were not champagne. They were tears of pride for Niall, the stepson with the bad French blood…
Outside in the vestibule Niall waited for Maria, who was powdering her nose in the cloakroom. He had hoped they would be late enough to miss the cabaret, but they were still on time. He could hear Freada and the piano. She was guying the last line of the song, which always made a prick of irritation. Better that way, perhaps; he could not judge. And, anyway, who cared? Maria came out of the cloakroom.
“How do I look? All right?” she asked.
“I’ve seen you look worse,” he answered. “Must we really go inside?”
“But of course,” she said. “Listen, I hear your song.”
They went through the door and stood beside the entrance, watching Freada. The people were singing with her now, and some of them beat time upon the floor. A few heads turned in the direction of Niall and Maria, and Maria heard a murmur, a faint whisper of applause.
She smiled, stepping forward, not conscious that she did so; it was second nature to smile and move when she heard a movement of applause. Then she noticed that the heads were not turned to her at all, they were turned to Niall. People were smiling and pointing at Niall. Freada, turning from the piano, laughing, jerked her head to him, and the murmur from the people came insistent, loud.
“Le p’tit Niall… Le p’tit Niall…” somebody called, and Maria, alone, ignored, standing against the wall, saw Niall, bored and indifferent, walk across the floor to the piano and, pushing Freada off the seat, sit down and play. Everyone began to clap and laugh, Freada among them, and leaning against the piano she sang while Niall played.
Unnoticed, Maria threaded her way among the tables to the far one in the corner where Pappy and Celia sat. She began to apologize, in a low whisper, for being late. “Hush!” Pappy said impatiently. “Listen to Niall.” And Maria sat, her hands folded in her lap, twisting Niall’s ring on her right finger. She, alone among the audience, did not sing.
Later, when the cabaret was over and they were all sitting around the table having supper, Pappy and Freada deep in technicalities, Maria turned to Niall and said: “You looked awful. I felt quite ashamed. You were the only man in the room who was not dressed.”
“Why should I dress?” said Niall. “They would not mind if I wore a vest and hobnailed boots.”
“The thing is,” she said angrily, “you’ve got a swollen head. I thought it could never happen, but it has. They would not stand for it in London. You’d be a flop in London.”
She shook her head when the waiter offered her champagne.
“Iced water, please,” she said.
“You see my point,” asked Niall, “about a lighthouse or a barge?”
Maria would not answer. She turned her back on him.
“Did I write and tell you about Lord Wyndham’s son?” she said to Celia.
“Yes,” said Celia. “You said he was attractive.”
“He is. He likes me very much. Not married either.”
Out of the corner of her eye Celia saw the wasp-waisted professional dancer approach their table once again. She pushed back her chair in readiness. But the professional did not look at her at all. He bowed low to Maria.
Maria got up from the table, smiling. She floated away with him talking rapid French. For the first time since the cabaret finished the people at the other tables looked away from Niall, and watched Maria.
The earrings suit her, thought Celia sadly, they suit her better than they suit me. I wonder whether she will want me to give them to her.
Beside her, Pappy was talking excitedly to Freada.
“Proud of the children? Of course I’m proud of them,” he was saying. “They only bear out what I have always said. Showmanship is in the blood. I don’t care if it’s a milch cow or a stallion—breeding tells.”
Maria circled past their table in the arms of the professional. Looking over her shoulder, she put out her tongue at Niall.