White Sand and Grey Sand

by Stella Gibbons

  Ydette suddenly looked up. Her expression was slightly desperate. Nora—so clever, and older, and rich, with a big flat and a very good job teaching French in a smart private school, the friend of those two frightening mejuffrouws—how to make her understand the miserable loneliness, the silly longing for the streets and towers and light of home? How could she possibly know how frightened Ydette was about Jooris; that she might have made him so angry that he would never ask her to the farm again? (She knew, of course, in her calmer moments, that this idea was ridiculous, because the farm had always been there and so had he, but she could not dismiss, in her lonely fits, the recurring fear.)

  She tried to answer.

  “I like to work at packing the orchids, Mademoiselle; I like it there very much. Monsieur Chris says that I could be a vedette. But——”

  “You don’t think you could be?—is that it?”

  “I cannot——”

  But here her small supply of words failed. What she wanted to say was that she could not possibly imagine such a thing happening to her—the body and spirit that had grown up for nineteen years with those vague friends who were yet now so painfully absent; the Three Towers, and the white sand of the dunes, the big house, and the orchids out at Sint Niklaas. But the words would not come, and frustration brought back her sulky expression.

  “I don’t know, Mademoiselle,” she ended.

  Nora, a believer in the restorative powers of reflection, time, sensible behaviour and all the other resources of civilized people, decided that she could do no more. She felt as if she had been trying to open a stubbornly-shut window that looked out on an unknown landscape; a little bruised, very baffled and curiously hurt, as if the window’s obduracy had been directed against herself. The odd thing was that she did not feel cross with Ydette. She still only wanted to protect her. She looked at the strikingly foreign figure sitting opposite, and felt really rather hopeless. She also began at this precise moment to look forward to tomorrow evening, when (if nothing came of her visit to the studios with Christopher) Ydette would be gone. But one thing she was going to say; whether Christopher liked it or not; it was her duty to say it, and she would.

  “Well, I won’t worry you any more now,” she said, leaning forward again. She struggled with reserve and managed to get out something of what she wanted to express. “But—you know, I like you very much, Ydette, I always have, we all do—Chris and my sister and I—and I want you to have what Chris calls ‘a great, big, lovely success’. So I think I ought to warn you that if you do get a job with Mr Burke—you may not like the cinema studios and the people who work there.” She paused.

  “They want only money, I expect,” said Ydette placidly; her sulky expression had been replaced by one of pleasure, and Nora wondered why.

  “Yes, that’s what it is,” she said, surprised by this unexpectedly penetrating judgment. “That does sometimes make people rather … but you’ll like Mr Burke. He’s an artist.”

  No more was said. She gave it up. She finished her luncheon, conscious that her last remark had been more optimistic than truthful. Did simple people always like artists?—artists, who could be rude, ruthless and selfish? Wouldn’t the kind of person whom Ydette would like resemble more a dog or a horse or a child?

  Nora wished that she were sitting peacefully at home with The Observer. She paid the bill, collected her protégée and took them back to South Kensington by another taxi through the quiet Sunday streets. She had said her say; her conscience was clear; but she could not feel that any good had been achieved at all.

  Monday morning came; fresh, sunny and clear. “Sweet day, so calm, so cool, so bright,” hummed Evelyn, standing at the window.

  “Must you sing?” demanded Hilary savagely, where she sat amidst text-books and notes at the breakfast table.

  “Sorry; it is maddening, I know.” Evelyn slipped back to the seat whence the glow of the morning had tempted her. Hil had never really recovered, she thought, from that business in their last year at Oxford, when she had got herself into that extraordinary scrape with Peter Bayford in Jugoslavia and been three weeks late for the beginning of term—by her own fault, on her own admission, and had consequently been rusticated. Jugoslavia and Peter and Hilary had all been in the Daily Express, with photographs, and to this day Hil had never told them exactly what had happened.

  Evelyn had no wish to be obvious in her suppositions or inquisitive in her thoughts. She took some marmalade made by Mummy Perowne, and turned brightly to Ydette.

  “This is the great day, isn’t it? Are you feeling excited?” she brightly asked.

  Ydette’s lugubrious shake of the head was interrupted by the arrival of Christopher, so nervous that he had cut himself while shaving, and irritably playful in manner.

  “Hullo, girls! Everybody happy? Hilary, surely you’re too much of an old sweat to have text-books for breakfast before an exam?”

  “I can’t help it; I can’t sleep; you know I’m no use at anything when I can’t sleep; I go absolutely to pieces,” she said crossly.

  Christopher shrugged, Nora looked conscious, and Evelyn pitiful, and then Ydette reappeared, in coat and scarf and wearing an expression of apprehension mingled with stubbornness that caused his heart to sink.

  “Cheer up,” he said to her, when, their farewells having been made and luck wished to the unresponding Hilary, they were driving away; “look here, you know, you mustn’t look like that. Jon Burke doesn’t go for sullen girls. You just think how lucky you are—you think of the hundreds and thousands of girls in England and Italy and America and France—and Russia too, I expect—who would give absolutely anything to have the chance you’ve got. You’re one girl in hundreds of thousands—in millions, really—who’s had the luck to have this wonderful chance, and now what I want you to do is just to be natural. Don’t feel afraid (no-one’s going to be cross with you) or try to be any different from what you always are. Just enjoy yourself, and everything will be perfectly all right. Will you do that, Ydette, to please me?”

  He had never been more aware of how completely brotherly were his feelings towards her as he made the plea. As he looked into the lovely dark eyes with their feathery black canopies he did experience a momentary inward quiver, but it was because he had suddenly realized how much a director would have to do to her in order that those eyes might learn to convey the passions and desires of what the world calls maturity. And there was not going to be any help from her. … She … he certainly had put off facing this fact until the last moment … she definitely wasn’t teachable.

  Oh well, Burke had tackled even more hopeless propositions, possessing the right kind of face, before now. (At least, Christopher hoped that he had.) He said no more, but drove as fast as traffic would permit towards Kent.

  The studios of Commonwealth Association Films, which they reached just before twelve o’clock, filled what had fifteen years previously been some excellent farming land, then divided into five or six large meadows. These were now occupied by buildings: some new, of white concrete well designed and well built; others dingy, and displaying the truncated angles and inferior materials of the ’thirties. There were also the lofty, rickety-seeming, barn-like structures where the actual shooting was done, and small sheds, cloakrooms and offices; and the whole was surrounded by gravelled walks and beds of flowers looking as if set down by nurserymen rather than planted by gardeners. In the near distance were the surprisingly high and green Kent hills. There was nothing shabby or going-downhill about the place. It exuded prosperity, and even paid some tribute to Beauty and Craftsmanship; the wrought-iron gates through which all visitors must enter were as graceful as they were well made.

  “Now—what would you like to see?” Christopher said to her, when he had parked the car; “we’ve got about half an hour before lunch. Mr Burke usually lunches at half past, and I want to be certain of getting a table near the one he always has, so we must be in there in good time. But we can stroll around a bit, if you’d
like to. Don’t you think it all looks interesting?”

  Ydette merely nodded, while seeming doubtful. She was in her natural state of being unable to say what she was feeling. That did not matter at home, where no-one ever asked her what she felt, and where in any case her feelings were usually pleasant. But here——! The stark-white buildings and squat little sheds were ugly. The sky seemed to be sitting on top of you. The hills were pretty, but she never had been one for hills, preferring to any picture of mountains the placid levels, through which the eye could wander here and there recognizing a spire or a farm, of home. And when she thought about the places she had seen on the pictures, where beautiful and wonderful people lived, and remembered that it was here those films were made—she felt so bewildered that it was actually painful; her mind seemed to be aching inside her head.

  “Let’s go and look at the Pacific Ocean,” Christopher said.

  She did not know what on earth he meant. But when they were standing before the enormous tank of water which filled all the foreground and was backed by a tremendous sheet of metal, chemically stained to a tender, tremulous and unchanging blue, that represented a tropic sky, she actually turned pale.

  “This is where they take the shots for scenes at sea,” Christopher volubly explained; “they can whip up quite a storm, with various machines, on that, you know, and if they want a blazing hot day, there’s the sky. It’s been up there for two years now and it’s as blue as ever. Pretty good, isn’t it? Look at the reflection in the water.”

  Ydette looked; it was an exquisite colour, the more so for the background of common greys and greens and browns behind it. Then she gazed up at the smiling incorruptibility of the sheet of tinted metal; unchanged, undimmed or damaged by the rains and fogs of two winters, looming with a kind of incongruous beauty and permanence over the dull scene. Something about it frightened her very much.

  “What?” said Christopher, turning.

  “It is frightening,” she said in an almost inaudible voice, and turned away.

  “And there are the models they use if they want a long shot across the tank,” he said, thinking that her present expression and pallor were not becoming and hoping she would have cheered up by lunch-time; “they’re exact models of the people acting in that particular scene. Look, there’s——” and he named a world-famous male star who was one of Ydette’s favourites, and indicated one of several little figures that had been dumped on a bench beside the tank.

  “No!” said Ydette, after a quick, fearful glance.

  “No?” he repeated, amused. “Don’t you like them?”

  “No—no—no. They are——” She had an expression of absolute distress and her lips were trembling as she struggled hopelessly to say what she was feeling.

  “Yes, I suppose they are a bit startling, if you haven’t seen any before.” He casually drew her arm into his own, and felt it shaking. “If you were given to practising black magic, they’d be very useful, I feel. But you don’t know what I mean, so let’s come and have some lunch, and do cheer up. Just think—in a few months you may be able to buy your aunts a washing-machine.”

  He had chosen this contemporary symbol of delight as being the one most likely to ravish the senses of the aunts: it was perhaps as well that Ydette was now feeling too frightened, confused and wretched to bring out the ungrateful “They don’t want one” which was trembling on her lips. But she knew they didn’t, because Aunt Marie had often said where on earth would they put one if they had it? and electricity costing so much, too …

  “There’s no need to be frightened,” he went on; “you haven’t got to do anything. Just be perfectly natural and enjoy your lunch. I’ll do the rest.”

  “I am not frightened,” she said, with an intonation and expression that was suddenly all stubborn Flemish, “I am hungry.”

  “Splendid. Come along, then.”

  They passed several people on their way to the restaurant, who hailed Christopher. But those glances of startled interest at Ydette, followed by longer ones of professional appraisal and topped up by a look of envious respect at himself as discoverer of a potential new ‘big one’—these simply did not occur. Bryan Martin did give Ydette a once-over but, with his reputation with women, that didn’t count. For the first time, Christopher began to wish that he had never carried his plan any further than the day-dream stage.

  He also began to blame Ydette. Why must she look so uninteresting just today? His colleagues no doubt supposed she was some wholesome Dutch lassie whom he was escorting to an au pair job with his aunt. And why must she be so unexcited, so almost shocked, by the studio devices which he had been showing her? Really, he was inclined sometimes to think that she was very slightly mentally deficient. An incipient neurotic, perhaps. But if once she became a ‘big one’, that might easily be an advantage.

  However, as they sat down at a table actually next to the one always occupied by Burke, he realized that none of the people who had ignored her held any important status in the studio. None of them possessed sufficient imagination to see what possibilities lay in that profile, those cheek-bones, eyes and length of neck. Let Burke once get a look at her and his reaction, Christopher still felt almost sure, would be very different.

  The restaurant awed Ydette, yet she liked it. None of those to which she had been with Christopher or Nora had been as grand as this, with its walls and ceiling dappled in cloudy gold and a plushy gold carpet covering the floor. And at tables near to them there were surprising hats above vivid faces to look at; there were even one or two that she had seen on the pictures, although she did not recognize them until Mijnheer Chris pointed them out to her. She could not really enjoy her first mouthfuls of English roast beef, because she was wondering when this bioscoop man would come in and look at her, but undoubtedly she did begin to feel a little better. The picture of that blue sky, uncanny as some enchanter’s mirage against the everyday background, was beginning to fade.

  Christopher, finishing his own roast beef with an eye on the door, was not feeling better. He had to keep telling himself not to become agitated; nothing solid was actually at stake. But it was useless; for although hundreds of thousands of pounds couldn’t exactly be regarded as lost if Burke didn’t like her looks, they would undoubtedly be set in circulation if he did. And there were certain to be pickings, as there was certain to be the prestige attached to him as her discoverer.

  He did not calm himself by hastily beginning an explanation (long meditated but frequently deferred) about the reasons for Ida’s not coming to London to see Ydette: half term and its excursion to town was just over; work for summer examinations was in full swing; there were tennis matches at the school, and so forth. But in fact, his father had severely forbidden Ida to go, saying that fares mounted up and Christopher’s friends were not suitable for someone aged eleven.

  He had wondered why Everard’s voice had sounded so annoyed, but it was probably only part of his father’s general reaction against Belgium which seemed to have set in ever since that holiday at Bruges.

  Ydette listened with a dejected expression. The photograph of Ida on Nora’s table, in shorts and shirt and racquet, several inches taller, well-developed and frowning menacingly against the sun, looked almost totally unlike the square and friendly child of four years ago and she wasn’t really sorry that this stranger had been unable to come. But it was another sad little thing to happen; another thing to increase her loneliness.

  And suddenly loneliness absolutely burst within her, like something starting to cry. She turned cold with it, and actually glanced up at Christopher in desperate appeal.

  “What on earth’s up?” he demanded, staring. “Are you feeling ill?”

  She shook her head. But the fatal lump was coming up in her long throat, and at that precise moment, and no other (it would be, Christopher thought savagely, staring at her), there was a stir at the entrance to the room; heads turned, there wasn’t exactly a murmur but people were whispering, and then, in a kin
d of procession, down the long room came Marcus Elver, Frank Page and Jon Burke, followed by a very large American publisher in a suit of the very finest dark wool that could possibly be dreamed up and bought, and wearing on his wide yellow face an expression that seemed to be saying: go on, amuse me. Make me want something that I can’t buy. Convince me that someone exists who isn’t buyable and rotten. Go on, I’m waiting. Not that I should care if you did.

  They approached, wafting before them a smell of cigar-smoke and alcohol, and as they settled themselves at the next table, Burke just caught Christopher’s eye and gave him a tiny nod.

  So far, so good. But it was plain to Christopher that they had been having one of their rows, in which the American had presumably been the guest-artist. They gave their orders in a glum undertone, and, being served, proceeded to shovel the food in, or somnolently pick at it, according to their natures. People accustomed to venerate the artistic temperament would have said that their creative urges were being frustrated: others, accustomed to nursery behaviour, might have murmured sulks. But whatever explanation was given to their overclouded looks, anyone would think twice about choosing this occasion to introduce someone to them.

  “What sweets, sir?” the waitress asked.

  Christopher, in an extraordinary mixture of hope and rage that had the curious effect of making him feel as if he were watching the scene from somewhere a long way away, took the menu. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ydette’s pale face, her head well lifted and her large eyes fastened sadly on his own. Her head and her braids well displayed, anyway, on top of that ravishing white giraffe’s neck. But how odd she looked, how—almost silly. The typical queer, laughable foreigner.

  And then, as he picked up the menu, he saw Jon Burke lift from his plate his long, rangy head with its thinning, bright hair and look round the room. His eyes, with the one famous drooping passerine lid, travelled slowly past the humorous faces and the challenging hats as if they were not there, and came to rest—on the face of Ydette. His glance alighted, and it lingered. The glance became a stare.