It was six months after Nannie had departed that Mummy told Celia a very exciting piece of news. They were going abroad – to France.
‘Me too?’
‘Yes, darling, you too.’
‘And Cyril?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Susan and Rouncy?’
‘No. Daddy and I and Cyril and you. Daddy hasn’t been well, and the doctor wants him to go abroad for the winter to somewhere warm.’
‘Is France warm?’
‘The south is.’
‘What is it like, Mummy?’
‘Well, there are mountains there. Mountains with snow on them.’
‘Why have they got snow on them?’
‘Because they are so high.’
‘How high?’
And her mother would try to explain just how high mountains were – but Celia found it very hard to imagine.
She knew Woodbury Beacon. It took you half an hour to walk to the top of that. But Woodbury Beacon hardly counted as a mountain at all.
It was all very exciting – particularly the travelling bag. A real travelling bag of her very own in dark green leather, and inside it had bottles, and a place for a brush and comb and clothes brush, and there was a little travelling clock and even a little travelling inkpot!
It was, Celia felt, the loveliest possession she had ever had.
The journey was very exciting. There was crossing the Channel, to begin with. Her mother went to lie down, and Celia stayed on deck with her father, which made her feel very grown up and important.
France, when they actually saw it, was a little disappointing. It looked like any other place. But the blue-uniformed porters talking French were rather thrilling, and so was the funny high train they got into. They were to sleep in it, which seemed to Celia another thrilling thing.
She and her mother were to have one compartment, and her father and Cyril the one next door.
Cyril was, of course, very lordly about it all. Cyril was sixteen, and he made it a point of honour not to be excited about anything. He asked questions in a would-be indolent fashion, but even he could hardly conceal his passion and curiosity for the great French engine.
Celia said to her mother:
‘Will there really be mountains, Mummy?’
‘Yes, darling.’
‘Very, very, very high?’
‘Yes.’
‘Higher than Woodbury Beacon?’
‘Much, much higher. So high that there’s snow on top of them.’
Celia shut her eyes and tried to imagine. Mountains. Great hills going up, up, up – so high that perhaps you couldn’t see the tops of them. Celia’s neck went back, back – in imagination she was looking up the steep sides of the mountains.
‘What is it, darling? Have you got a crick in your neck?’ Celia shook her head emphatically.
‘I’m thinking of big mountains,’ she said.
‘Silly little kid,’ said Cyril with good-humoured scorn.
Presently there was the excitement of going to bed. In the morning, when they woke up, they would be in the South of France.
It was ten o’clock on the following morning when they arrived at Pau. There was a great fuss about collecting the luggage, of which there was a lot – no less than thirteen great round-topped trunks and innumerable leather valises.
At last, however, they were out of the station and driving to the hotel. Celia peered out in every direction.
‘Where are the mountains, Mummy?’
‘Over there, darling. Do you see that line of snow peaks?’
Those! Against the skyline was a zigzag of white, looking as though it were cut out of paper. A low line. Where were those great towering monuments rising up into the sky – far, far up above Celia’s head?
‘Oh!’ said Celia.
A bitter pang of disappointment swept through her. Mountains indeed!
After she had got over her disappointment about the mountains, Celia enjoyed her life in Pau very much. The meals were exciting. Called for some strange reason Tabbeldote, you had lunch at a long table of all sorts of strange and exciting dishes. There were two other children in the hotel, twin sisters a year older than Celia. She and Bar and Beatrice went about everywhere together. Celia discovered, for the first time in her eight solemn years, the joys of mischief. The three children would eat oranges on their balcony and throw over the pips on to passing soldiers gay in blue and red uniforms. When the soldiers looked up angrily, the children would have dived back and become invisible. They put little heaps of salt and pepper on all the plates laid for Tabbeldote and annoyed Victor, the old waiter, very much indeed. They concealed themselves in a niche under the stairs and tickled the legs of all the visitors descending to dinner with a long peacock’s feather. Their final feat came on a day when they had worried the fierce chambermaid of the upper floor to the point of distraction. They had followed her into a little sanctum of mops and pails and scrubbing brushes. Turning on them angrily and pouring forth a torrent of that incomprehensible language – French – she swept out, banging the door on them and locking it. The three children were prisoners.
‘She’s done us,’ said Bar bitterly.
‘I wonder how long it’ll be before she lets us out?’
They looked at each other sombrely. Bar’s eyes flashed rebelliously.
‘I can’t bear to let her crow over us. We must do something.’
Bar was always the ringleader. Her eyes went to a microscopic slit of a window which was all the room possessed.
‘I wonder if we could squeeze through that. We’re none of us very fat. What’s outside, Celia, anything at all?’
Celia reported that there was a gutter.
‘It’s big enough to walk along,’ she said:
‘Good, we’ll do Suzanne yet. Won’t she have a fit when we come jumping out on her?’
They got the window open with difficulty, and one by one they squeezed themselves through. The gutter was a ledge about a foot wide with an edge perhaps two inches high. Below it was a sheer drop of five storeys.
The Belgian lady in No. 33 sent a polite note to the English lady in No. 54. Was Madame aware of the fact that her little girl and the little girls of Madame Owen were walking round the parapet on the fifth storey?
The fuss that followed was to Celia quite extraordinary and rather unjust. She had never been told not to walk on parapets.
‘You might have fallen and been killed.’
‘Oh! No, Mummy, there was lots of room – even to put both feet together.’
The incident remained one of those inexplicable ones where grown-ups fuss about nothing at all.
Celia would, of course, have to learn French. Cyril had a young Frenchman who came every day. For Celia a young lady was engaged to take her for walks every day and talk French. The lady was actually English, the daughter of the proprietor of the English bookshop, but she had lived her whole life in Pau and spoke French as easily as English.
Miss Leadbetter was a young lady of extreme refinement. Her English was mincing and clipped. She spoke slowly, with condescending kindness.
‘See, Celia, that is a shop where they bake bread. A boulangerie.’
‘Yes, Miss Leadbetter.’
‘Look, Celia, there is a little dog crossing the road. Un chien qui traverse la rue. Qu’est-ce qu’il fait? That means, what is he doing?’
Miss Leadbetter had not been happy in this last attempt. Dogs are indelicate creatures apt to bring a blush to the cheek of ultra-refined young women. This particular dog stopping crossing the road and engaged in other activities.
‘I don’t know how to say what he is doing in French,’ said Celia.
‘Look the other way, dear,’ said Miss Leadbetter. ‘It’s not very nice. That is a church in front of us. Voilà une église.’
The walks were long, boring, and monotonous.
After a fortnight, Celia’s mother got rid of Miss Leadbetter.
‘An impossible young woman,’ she said to her husband. ‘She could make the most exciting thing in the world seem dull.’
Celia’s father agreed. He said the child would never learn French except from a Frenchwoman. Celia did not much like the idea of a Frenchwoman. She had a good insular distrust of all foreigners. Still, if it was only for walks … Her mother said that she was sure she would like Mademoiselle Mauhourat very much. It struck Celia as an extraordinarily funny name.
Mademoiselle Mauhourat was tall and big. She always wore dresses made with a number of little capes which swung about and knocked things over on tables.
Celia was of opinion that Nannie would have said she ‘flounced’.
Mademoiselle Mauhourat was very voluble and very affectionate.
‘Oh, la chère mignonne!’ cried Mademoiselle Mauhourat, ‘la chère petite mignonne.’ She knelt down in front of Celia and laughed in an engaging manner into her face. Celia remained very British and stolid and disliked this very much. It made her feel embarrassed.
‘Nous allons nous amuser. Ah, comme nous allons nous amuser!’
Again there were walks. Mademoiselle Mauhourat talked without ceasing, and Celia endured politely the flow of meaningless words. Mademoiselle Mauhourat was very kind – the kinder she was the more Celia disliked her.
After ten days Celia got a cold. She was slightly feverish.
‘I think you’d better not go out today,’ said her mother. ‘Mademoiselle can amuse you here.’
‘No,’ burst out Celia. ‘No. Send her away. Send her away.’
Her mother looked at her attentively. It was a look Celia knew well – a queer, luminous, searching look. She said quietly:
‘Very well, darling, I will.’
‘Don’t even let her come in here,’ implored Celia.
But at that moment the door of the sitting room opened and Mademoiselle, very much becaped, entered.
Celia’s mother spoke to her in French. Mademoiselle uttered exclamations of chagrin and sympathy.
‘Ah, la pauvre mignonne,’ she cried when Celia’s mother had finished. She plopped down in front of Celia. ‘La pauvre, pauvre mignonne.’
Celia glanced appealingly at her mother. She made terrible faces at her. ‘Send her away,’ the faces said, ‘send her away.’
Fortunately at that moment one of Mademoiselle Mauhourat’s many capes knocked over a vase of flowers, and her whole attention was absorbed by apologies.
When she had finally left the room, Celia’s mother said gently:
‘Darling, you shouldn’t have made those faces. Mademoiselle Mauhourat was only meaning to be kind. You would have hurt her feelings.’
Celia looked at her mother in surprise.
‘But, Mummy,’ she said, ‘they were English faces.’
She didn’t understand why her mother laughed so much.
That evening Miriam said to her husband:
‘This woman’s no good, either. Celia doesn’t like her. I wonder –’
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ said Miriam. ‘I was thinking of a girl in the dressmaker’s today.’
The next time she went to be fitted she spoke to the girl. She was only one of the apprentices; her job was to stand by holding pins. She was about nineteen, with dark hair neatly piled up in a chignon, a snub nose, and a rosy, good-humoured face.
Jeanne was very astonished when the English lady spoke to her and asked her whether she would like to come to England. It depended, she said, on what Maman thought. Miriam asked for her mother’s address. Jeanne’s father and mother kept a small café – very neat and clean. Madame Beaugé listened in great surprise to the English lady’s proposal. To act as lady’s-maid and look after a little girl? Jeanne had very little experience – she was rather awkward and clumsy. Berthe now, her elder daughter – but it was Jeanne the English lady wanted. M. Beaugé was called in for consultation. He said they must not stand in Jeanne’s way. The wages were good, much better than Jeanne got in the dressmaking establishment.
Three days later Jeanne, very nervous and elated, came to take up her duties. She was rather frightened of the little English girl she was to look after. She did not know any English. She learnt a phrase and said it hopefully. ‘Good morning – mees.’
Alas, so peculiar was Jeanne’s accent that Celia did not understand. The toilet proceeded in silence. Celia and Jeanne eyed each other like strange dogs. Jeanne brushed Celia’s curls round her fingers. Celia never stopped staring at her.
‘Mummy,’ said Celia at breakfast, ‘doesn’t Jeanne talk any English at all?’
‘No.’
‘How funny.’
‘Do you like Jeanne?’
‘She’s got a very funny face,’ said Celia. She thought a minute. ‘Tell her to brush my hair harder.’
At the end of three weeks Celia and Jeanne could understand each other. At the end of the fourth week they met a herd of cows when out on their walk.
‘Mon Dieu!’ cried Jeanne. ‘Des vaches – des vaches! Maman, maman.’
And catching Celia frenziedly by the hand, she rushed up a bank.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Celia.
‘J’ai peur des vaches.’
Celia looked at her kindly.
‘If we meet any more cows,’ she said, ‘you get behind me.’
After that they were perfect friends. Celia found Jeanne a most entertaining companion. Jeanne dressed some small dolls that had been given to Celia and sustained dialogues would ensue. Jeanne was, in turn, the femme de chambre (a very impertinent one), the maman, the papa (who was very military and twirled his moustache), and the three naughty children. Once she enacted the part of M. le Curé and heard their confessions and imposed dreadful penances on them. This enchanted Celia, who was always begging for a repetition.
‘Non, non, mees, c’est très mal ce que j’ai fait là.’
‘Pourquoi?’
Jeanne explained.
‘I have made a mock of M. le Curé. It is a sin, that!’
‘Oh, Jeanne, couldn’t you do it once more? It was so funny.’
The soft-hearted Jeanne imperilled her immortal soul and did it again even more amusingly.
Celia knew all about Jeanne’s family. About Berthe who was très sérieuse, and Louis who was si gentil, and Edouard who was spirituel, and la petite Lise who had just made her first communion, and the cat who was so clever that he could curl himself up in the middle of the glasses in the café and never break one of them.
Celia, in her turn, told Jeanne about Goldie and Rouncy and Susan, and the garden, and all the things they would do when Jeanne came to England. Jeanne had never seen the sea. The idea of going on a boat from France to England frightened her very much.
‘Je me figure,’ said Jeanne, ‘que j’aurais horriblement peur. N’en parlons pas! Parlez-moi de votre petit oiseau.’
One day, as Celia was walking with her father, a voice hailed them from a small table outside one of the hotels.
‘John! I declare it’s old John!’
‘Bernard!’
A big jolly-looking man had jumped up and was wringing her father warmly by the hand.
This, it seemed, was a Mr Grant, who was one of her father’s oldest friends. They had not seen each other for some years, and neither of them had had the least idea that the other was in Pau. The Grants were staying in a different hotel, but the two families used to foregather after déjeuner and drink coffee.
Mrs Grant was, Celia thought, the loveliest thing she had ever seen. She had silver-grey hair, exquisitely arranged, and wonderful dark-blue eyes, clear-cut features, and a very clear incisive voice. Celia immediately invented a new character, called Queen Marise. Queen Marise had all the personal attributes of Mrs Grant and was adored by her devoted subjects. She was three times the victim of attempted assassination, but was rescued by a devoted young man called Colin, whom she at once knighted. Her coronation robes were of emerald green velvet and she had a silver crown set with diamonds.
Mr Grant was not made a king. Celia thought he was nice, but that his face was too fat and too red – not nearly so nice as her own father with his brown beard and his habit of throwing it up in the air when he laughed. Her own father, Celia thought, was just what a father should be – full of nice jokes that didn’t make you feel silly like Mr Grant’s sometimes did.
With the Grants was their son Jim, a pleasant freckle-faced schoolboy. He was always good-tempered and smiling, and had very round blue eyes that gave him rather a surprised look. He adored his mother.
He and Cyril eyed each other like strange dogs. Jim was very respectful to Cyril, because Cyril was two years older and at a public school. Neither of them took any notice of Celia because, of course, Celia was only a kid.
The Grants went home to England after about three weeks. Celia overheard Mr Grant say to her mother:
‘It gave me a shock to see old John, but he tells me he is ever so much fitter since being here.’
Celia said to her mother afterwards:
‘Mummy, is Daddy ill?’
Her mother looked a little queer as she answered:
‘No. No, of course not. He’s perfectly well now. It was just the damp and the rain in England.’
Celia was glad her father wasn’t ill. Not, she thought, that he could be – he never went to bed or sneezed or had a bilious attack. He coughed sometimes, but that was because he smoked so much. Celia knew that, because her father told her so.
But she wondered why her mother had looked – well, queer …
When May came they left Pau and went first to Argelès at the foot of the Pyrenees and after that to Cauterets up in the mountains.
At Argelès Celia fell in love. The object of her passion was the lift boy – Auguste. Not Henri, the little fair lift boy who played tricks sometimes with her and Bar and Beatrice (they also had come to Argelès), but Auguste. Auguste was eighteen, tall, dark, sallow, and very gloomy in appearance.
He took no interest in the passengers he propelled up and down. Celia never gathered courage to speak to him. No one, not even Jeanne, knew of her romantic passion. In bed at night Celia would envisage scenes in which she saved Auguste’s life by catching the bridle of his furiously galloping horse – a shipwreck in which she and Auguste alone survived, she saving his life by swimming ashore and holding his head above water. Sometimes Auguste saved her life in a fire, but this was somehow not quite so satisfactory. The climax she preferred was when Auguste, with tears in his eyes, said: ‘Mademoiselle, I owe you my life. How can I ever thank you?’
It was a brief but violent passion. A month later they went to Cauterets, and Celia fell in love with Janet Patterson instead.
Janet was fifteen. She was a nice pleasant girl with brown hair and kindly blue eyes. She was not beautiful or striking in any way. She was kind to younger children and not bored by playing with them.
To Celia the only joy in life was some day to grow up to be like her idol. Some day she too would wear a striped blouse and collar and tie, and would wear her hair in a plait tied with a black bow. She would have, too, that mysterious thing – a figure. Janet had a figure – a very apparent one sticking out each side of the striped blouse. Celia – a very thin child (described indeed by her brother Cyril when he wanted to annoy as a Scrawny Chicken – a term which never failed to reduce her to tears) – was passionately enamoured of plumpness. Some day, some glorious day, she would be grown up and sticking out and going in in all the proper places.
‘Mummy,’ she said one day, ‘when shall I have a chest that sticks out?’
Her mother looked at her and said:
‘Why, do you want one so badly?’
‘Oh, yes,’ breathed Celia anxiously.
‘When you’re about fourteen or fifteen – Janet’s age.’
‘Can I have a striped blouse then?’
‘Perhaps, but I don’t think they’re very pretty.’
Celia looked at her reproachfully.
‘I think they’re lovely. Oh, Mummy, do say I can have one when I’m fifteen.’
‘You can have one – if you still want it.’
Of course she would want it.
She went off to look for her idol. To her great annoyance Janet was walking with her French friend Yvonne Barbier. Celia hated Yvonne Barbier with a jealous hatred. Yvonne was very pretty, very elegant, very sophisticated. Although only fifteen, she looked more like eighteen. Her arm linked through Janet’s, she was talking to her in a cooing voice.
‘Naturellement, je n’ai rien dit à Maman. Je lui ai répondu –’
‘Run away, darling,’ said Janet kindly. ‘Yvonne and I are busy just now.’
Celia withdrew sadly. How she hated that horrible Yvonne Barbier.
Alas, two weeks later, Janet and her parents left Cauterets. Her image faded quickly from Celia’s mind, but her ecstatic anticipation of the day when she would have ‘a figure’ remained.
Cauterets was great fun. You were right under the mountains here. Not that even now they looked at all as Celia had pictured them. To the end of her life she could never really admire mountain scenery. A sense of being cheated remained at the back of her mind. The delights of Cauterets were varied. There was the hot walk in the morning to La Raillière where her mother and father drank glasses of nasty tasting water. After the water drinking there was the purchase of sticks of sucre d’orge. They were twirly sticks of different colours and flavours. Celia usually had ananas – her mother liked a green one – aniseed. Her father, strangely enough, liked none of them. He seemed buoyant and happier since he came to Cauterets.
‘This place suits me, Miriam,’ he said. ‘I can feel myself getting a new man here.’
His wife answered:
‘We’ll stay here as long as we can.’
She too seemed gayer – she laughed more. The anxious pucker between her brows smoothed itself away. She saw very little of Celia. Satisfied with the child being in Jeanne’s keeping, she devoted herself heart and soul to her husband.
After the morning excursion Celia would come home with Jeanne through the woods, going up and down zigzag paths, occasionally tobogganing down steep slopes with disastrous results to the seats of her drawers. Agonized wails would arise from Jeanne.
‘Oh, mees – ce n’est pas gentille ce que vous faites là. Et vos pantalons. Que dirait Madame votre mère?’
‘Encore une fois, Jeanne. Une fois seulement.’
‘Non, non. Oh, mees!’
After lunch Jeanne would be busy sewing. Celia would go out into the Place and join some of the other children. A little girl called Mary Hayes had been specially designated as a suitable companion. ‘Such a nice child,’ said Celia’s mother. ‘Pretty manners and so sweet. A nice little friend for Celia.’
Celia played with Mary Hayes when she could not avoid it, but, alas, she found Mary woefully dull. She was sweet-tempered and amiable but, to Celia, extremely boring. The child whom Celia liked was a little American girl called Marguerite Priestman. She came from a Western state and had a terrific twang in her speech which fascinated the English child. She played games that were new to Celia. Accompanying her was her nurse, an amazing old woman in an enormous flopping black hat whose standard phrase was, ‘Now you stay right by Fanny, do you hear?’
Occasionally Fanny came to the rescue when a dispute was in progress. One day she found both children almost in tears, arguing hotly.
‘Now, just you tell Fanny what it’s all about,’ she commanded.
‘I was just telling Celia a story, and she says what I say isn’t so – and it is so.’
‘You tell Fanny what the story was.’
‘It was going to be just a lovely story. It was about a little girl who grew up in a wood kinder lonesome because the doctor had never fetched her in his black bag –’
Celia interrupted.
‘That isn’t true. Marguerite says babies are found by doctors in woods and brought to the mothers. That’s not true. The angels bring them in the night and put them into the cradle.’
‘It’s doctors.’
‘It’s angels.’
‘It isn’t.’
Fanny raised a large hand.
‘You listen to me.’
They listened. Fanny’s little black eyes snapped intelligently as she considered and then dealt with the problem.
‘You’ve neither of you call to get excited. Marguerite’s right and so’s Celia. One’s the way they do with English babies and the other’s the way they do with American babies.’
How simple after all! Celia and Marguerite beamed on each other and were friends again.
Fanny murmured, ‘You stay right by Fanny,’ and resumed her knitting.
‘I’ll go right on with the story, shall I?’ asked Marguerite.
‘Yes, do,’ said Celia. ‘And afterwards I’ll tell you a story about an opal fairy who came out of a peach stone.’
Marguerite embarked on her narrative, later to be interrupted once more.
‘What’s a scarrapin?’
‘A scarrapin? Why, Celia, don’t you know what a scarrapin is?’
‘No, what is it?’
That was more difficult. From the welter of Marguerite’s explanation Celia only grasped the fact that a scarrapin was in point of fact a scarrapin! A scarrapin remained for her a fabulous beast connected with the continent of America.
Only one day when she was grown up did it suddenly flash into Celia’s mind.
‘Of course. Marguerite Priestman’s scarrapin was a scorpion.’
And she felt quite a pang of loss.
Dinner was very early at Cauterets. It took place at half-past six. Celia was allowed to sit up. Afterwards they would all sit outside round little tables, and once or twice a week the conjurer would conjure.
Celia adored the conjurer. She liked his name. He was, so her father told her, a prestidigitateur.
Celia would repeat the syllables very slowly over to herself.
The conjurer was a tall man with a long black beard. He did the most entrancing things with coloured ribbons – yards and yards of them he would suddenly pull out of his mouth. At the end of his entertainment he would announce ‘a little lottery’. First he would hand round a large wooden plate into which every one would put a contribution. Then the winning numbers would be announced and the prizes given – a paper fan – a little lantern – a pot of paper flowers. There seemed to be something very lucky for children in the lottery. It was nearly always children who won the prizes. Celia had a tremendous longing to win the paper fan. She never did, however, although she twice won a lantern.
One day Celia’s father said to her, ‘How would you like to go to the top of that fellow there?’ He indicated one of the mountains behind the hotel.
‘Me, Daddy? Right up to the top?’
‘Yes. You shall ride there on a mule.’
‘What’s a mule, Daddy?’
He told her that a mule was rather like a donkey and rather like a horse. Celia was thrilled at the thought of the adventure. Her mother seemed a little doubtful. ‘Are you sure it’s quite safe, John?’ she said.
Celia’s father pooh-poohed her fears. Of course the child would be all right.
She, her father, and Cyril were to go. Cyril said in a lofty tone, ‘Oh! is the kid coming? She’ll be a rotten nuisance.’ Yet he was quite fond of Celia, but her coming offended his manly pride. This was to have been a man’s expedition – women and children left at home.
Early on the morning of the great expedition Celia was ready and standing on the balcony to see the mules arrive. They came at a trot round the corner – great big animals – more like horses than donkeys. Celia ran downstairs full of joyful expectation. A little man with a brown face in a beret was talking to her father. He was saying that the petite demoiselle would be quite all right. He would charge himself with looking after her. Her father and Cyril mounted; then the guide picked her up and swung her up to the saddle. How very high up it felt! But very, very exciting.
They moved off. From the balcony above, Celia’s mother waved to them. Celia was thrilling with pride. She felt practically grown up. The guide ran beside her. He chatted to her, but she understood very little of what he said, owing to his strong Spanish accent.
It was a marvellous ride. They went up zigzag paths that grew gradually steeper and steeper. Now they were well out on the mountain side, a wall of rock on one side of them and a sheer drop on the other. At the most dangerous-looking places Celia’s mule would stop reflectively on the precipice edge and kick out idly with one foot. It also liked walking on the extreme edge. It was, Celia thought, a very nice horse. Its name seemed to be Aniseed, which Celia thought a very queer name for a horse to have.
It was midday when they reached the summit. There was a tiny little hut there with a table in front of it, and they sat down, and presently the woman there brought them out lunch – a very good lunch too. Omelette, some fried trout, and cream cheese and bread. There was a big woolly dog with whom Celia played.
‘C’est presque un Anglais,’ said the woman. ‘Il s’appelle Milor.’
Milor was very amiable and allowed Celia to do anything she pleased with him.
Presently Celia’s father looked at his watch and said it was time to start down again. He called to the guide.
The latter came smiling. He had something in his hands.
‘See what I have just caught,’ he said.
It was a beautiful big butterfly.
‘C’est pour Mademoiselle,’ he said.
And quickly, deftly, before she knew what he was going to do, he had produced a pin and skewered the butterfly to the crown of Celia’s straw hat.
‘Voilà que Mademoiselle est chic,’ he said, falling back to admire his handiwork.
Then the mules were brought round, the party was mounted, and the descent was begun.
Celia was miserable. She could feel the wings of the butterfly fluttering against her hat. It was alive – alive. Skewered on a pin! She felt sick and miserable. Large tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
At last her father noticed.
‘What’s the matter, poppet?’
Celia shook her head. Her sobs increased.
‘Have you got a pain? Are you very tired? Does your head ache?’
Celia merely shook her head more and more violently at each suggestion.
‘She’s frightened of the horse,’ said Cyril.
‘I’m not,’ said Celia.
‘Then what are you blubbing for?’
‘La petite demoiselle est fatiguée,’ suggested the guide.
Celia’s tears flowed faster and faster. They were all looking at her, questioning her – and how could she say what was the matter? It would hurt the guide’s feelings terribly. He had meant to be kind. He had caught the butterfly specially for her. He had been so proud of his idea in pinning it to her hat. How could she say out loud that she didn’t like it? And now nobody would ever, ever understand! The wind made the butterfly’s wings flap more than ever. Celia wept unrestrainedly. Never, she felt, had there been misery such as hers.
‘We’d better push on as fast as we can,’ said her father. He looked vexed. ‘Get her back to her mother. She was right. It’s been too much for the child.’
Celia longed to cry out: ‘It hasn’t, hasn’t. It’s not that at all.’ But she didn’t because she realized that then they would ask her again, ‘But then what is it?’ She only shook her head dumbly.
She wept all the way down. Her misery grew blacker and blacker. Still weeping she was lifted from her mule, and her father carried her up to the sitting-room where her mother was sitting waiting for them. ‘You were right, Miriam,’ said her father. ‘It’s been too much for the child. I don’t know whether she’s got a pain or whether she’s overtired.’
‘I’m not,’ said Celia.
‘She was frightened of coming down those steep places,’ said Cyril.
‘I wasn’t,’ said Celia.
‘Then what is it?’ demanded her father.
Celia stared dumbly at her mother. She knew now that she could never tell. The cause of her misery would remain locked in her own breast forever and ever. She wanted to tell – oh, how badly she wanted to tell – but somehow she couldn’t. Some mysterious inhibition had been laid on her, sealing her lips. If only Mummy knew. Mummy would understand. But she couldn’t tell Mummy. They were all looking at her – waiting for her to speak. A terrible agony welled up in her breast. She gazed dumbly, agonizingly, at her mother. ‘Help me,’ that gaze said. ‘Oh, do help me.’
Miriam gazed back at her.
‘I believe she doesn’t like that butterfly in her hat,’ she said, ‘Who pinned it there?’
Oh, the relief – the wonderful, aching, agonizing relief.
‘Nonsense,’ her father was beginning, but Celia interrupted him. Words burst from her released like water at the bursting of a dam.
‘I ’ate it. I ’ate it,’ she cried. ‘It flaps. It’s alive. It’s being hurt.’
‘Why on earth didn’t you say so, you silly kid?’ said Cyril.
Celia’s mother answered: ‘I expect she didn’t want to hurt the guide’s feelings.’
‘Oh, Mummy!’ said Celia.
It was all there – in those two words. Her relief, her gratitude – and a great welling up of love.
Her mother had understood.