Sensible Life

by Mary Wesley

  “To see your sister?”

  “Officially, yes, but in truth the shops.”

  “When is your sister arriving?”

  “Next week. She is getting a bit old for family holidays. She’s seventeen.”

  “Does she play bridge?” asked Blanco.

  “Perhaps she does by now. I don’t know. Why do you want to learn?”

  “Money,” said Blanco. “I’m a poor relation.”

  “I am not interested in money,” said Cosmo. “I am obsessed with girls.”

  “How do you get the one without the other?”

  “Charm?” suggested Cosmo, grinning.

  “Huh!” said Blanco. “Charm won’t hold them, but money will. What’s this story your father tells? His chestnut.”

  “It’s about some woman at a grand reception who curtsys to the King of Egypt; she has this low-cut dress and her bosoms pop out and the King of Egypt says, “Mais, Madame, il ne faut pas perdre ces belles choses comme ci comme ça etcetera,” and he flicks them with his finger.”

  “Eugh.”

  “Mother and I feel eugh, too.”

  They walked on in silence.

  “I heard the manager tell the head waiter that a Dutch baroness is arriving with her five daughters, and to put them at their usual table,” said Blanco.

  “Five girls?” exclaimed Cosmo. “Five?”

  “That’s what he said. It may be a case of Odtaa.”

  “Oh, I hope not. Five beautiful girls, ah!”

  “What about your sister, Mabs?”

  “She’s my sister.”

  “Beautiful?”

  “Passable, I’d say. She’s bringing a friend.”

  “That’s one girl for you.”

  “Mabs will have put her off me. I am too young to be interesting,” said Cosmo gloomily.

  “Better set your sights on the Dutch five, then.”

  “An embarrassment of daughters. Let’s pray they are pretty and speak English.”

  “The quantity makes the quality doubtful,” said Blanco.

  “Why?”

  “If they are of marriageable age there would not be five arriving; some, at least, would have been snapped up. On the other hand—”

  “Yes?”

  “They may have no dowries, poor things.”

  “Your mind runs on money; first it’s bridge and backgammon, now it’s dowries.”

  “Only because I’m strapped. I plan to remedy my plight,” said Blanco cheerfully.

  “There goes my mother,” said Cosmo. “Look! She really is letting rip, two hatboxes!” Further down the street Mrs. Leigh crossed with springing step and disappeared into a boutique. “Father says there has been no holding her since she had her hair shingled, but I believe it’s to do with Mabs leaving school.”

  “Short skirts suit her,” said Blanco judiciously. “Seen from behind, your mother might be you in drag.”

  “Have a heart,” protested Cosmo. “She has not got knobbly knees.”

  “Same hair, same features—”

  “My mother is beautiful,” protested Cosmo.

  “You are a coarser version, that’s all, and you have those terrible spots.”

  “Only two now. French food has done wonders; you have more.”

  “Handicapped in the Dutch daughters stakes. When we are old and rich, shall we look back on our spots with nostalgia?”

  “I am not planning to grow old. I just want to grow up and get at the girls,” said Cosmo boldly.

  “You are terrified of girls.” Blanco was aware of his friend’s shyness. “Perhaps the five Dutch are tiny little girls. You could not be frightened then.”

  “Oh, don’t! What is the Dutch baroness’s name?”

  “It sounded like shove halfpenny. Here, turn right down this alley. We are nearly there.”

  “It’s a bit smelly along here.” Cosmo looked about him.

  “Madame Tarasova is poor; she brought no jewels from Baku. She teaches the piano to dolts like me to make ends meet. Here we are. She lives there, above where the horse’s head protrudes.”

  “Boucherie chevaline,” Cosmo read. “I say,” he said, “how awful.” Then, seeing his friend’s expression of amusement, he flushed and said, “Sorry, I am extremely insular. Lead on.”

  “For insular, read ignorant,” said Blanco angrily. “Don’t come in if you don’t want to, not if you find Madame Tarasova’s lodgings distasteful. I told you she is poor, she teaches the piano and tells fortunes, she dressmakes and alters people’s clothes to keep the wolf at bay. If you must know, I could have given up the piano ages ago, but she needs the money. She teaches, eats, works and sleeps in one small room. Why don’t you go back to the hotel?”

  “I don’t want to go back to the hotel,” said Cosmo.

  They stood facing each other in the mean street, Blanco white-faced and angry, Cosmo confused and pink. After an uncomfortable pause Cosmo said: “Perhaps I should have piano lessons too?” Both he and his friend doubled up with laughter.

  “Here comes my pupil,” said Madame Tarasova, looking out from the window on the first floor of the house in the Rue de Rance.

  The room where she prepared to meet her pupil held an upright piano, a square table covered with a red baize cloth, four upright chairs, a chaise longue, a pedal sewing machine and a bookcase stuffed with Tauchnitz paperbacks. Balanced on top of the books were piles of sheet music and a crystal ball wrapped in a black velveteen cloth. Under the table there was a dog basket and reposing in it a small Pomeranian dog, asleep.

  “Time you took Prince Igor for his walk. Do not bring him back tired and wet, as last time his beautiful fur was full of sand,” she said in heavily accented French.

  “Who is the pupil?” Flora peered out, following Madame Tarasova’s gaze. “Oh golly,” she said. “Is it one of those boys?”

  “The one with the dark hair is Blanco. The other, the fair one, I do not know.”

  “I’ll get out of the way.” Flora pulled a jersey over her head. “Come, Prince Igor, buck up.” She snapped a lead onto the little dog’s collar. “How long will the lesson last?” she asked, making her way through impeding furniture to the door.

  “An hour. I wonder why Blanco brings a friend? Does he too require lessons? What do you think, child?” Madame Tarasova’s voice rose hopefully, but Flora was already catapulting out of the room and down the stairs, dragging the dog behind her. She brushed past Blanco and Cosmo on the doorstep and disappeared running.

  “That’s Madame Tarasova’s only luxury,” said Blanco, prodding the bell button with his thumb.

  “The little girl? I’ve seen her somewhere—I know, she was with another—”

  “The nauseating Pom. Just touch the piano and it starts howling. Madame T. has to send it out whenever she gives a lesson.”

  Cosmo was not listening: “She was with another animal, a great big—”

  “Come on, it’s up this way.” Blanco led the way. “Bonjour, Madame, this is my friend Cosmo Leigh,” he said, as they reached the landing. “I am staying with him for the holidays.”

  “In the hotel? C’est chic. And how is your maman?”

  “She’s well. Cosmo would like lessons too. No, not the piano, backgammon. What’s the matter, Cosmo?” For Cosmo had crossed the room through the jungle of furniture and was peering out of the window. “He seems to be interested in dear little Igor. I apologise for his uncouth manners, Madame.”

  “He is perfectly couth, he is welcome.” Madame Tarasova shook hands with Cosmo as he turned back into the room. “So you too are a player of backgammon, my national game.”

  “No, but I’d like to learn,” said Cosmo, looking down at Madame Tarasova who, less than five feet tall, looked up at him. She was tiny, with miniature hands and feet, greying hair pulled severely back in a bun, a paper-pale skin, large black eyes and an enormous arrogantly hooked nose above a sweet-tempered mouth. She looked considerably older than her twenty-nine years. “Blanco tells me y
ou play a demon game, are a great gambler,” he said, smiling.

  “The wicked fellow seduces me from his scales, and the bridge too! I play as reward for his piano if he tries hard. Alors, Blanco, we make a debut?”

  “If we must.” Blanco sat astride the piano stool.

  “And your friend? Will he be happy waiting? After some Chopin, some bridge. Shall you be patient, Monsieur Cosmo?”

  “I shall be quite happy.” Cosmo edged himself onto a chair by the window.

  Blanco, sitting side by side with Madame Tarasova, embarked on his scales.

  I could do better than that, thought Cosmo, watching for the reappearance of the child with the dog, wincing at Blanco’s false notes. Those heavy lidded brown eyes last seen when the child had come out of the sea, half-naked and shivering, had made him jump. Half-listening to the excruciating sounds his friend was creating, he wondered whether the child’s eyes, briefly glimpsed, were as mysterious and mischievous as they seemed. Was it perhaps the effect of enormously long lashes? Could the term voluptuous be applied to the eyes of such a small and skinny child?

  THREE

  FLORA TREVELYAN RAN FAST, twisting and turning through alleyways and short cuts, down the hill to the plage. No longer in his prime, over-indulged on succulent scraps from the horse butcher, Prince Igor had trouble keeping up. He trotted protestingly, his neck twisted sideways by the taut lead. When they reached the beach Flora let him free. He snapped at her hand before running across the sand to prance, yapping, as the sea rippled in and out. He advanced and retreated with the water, afraid of getting his paws wet. Flora kept watch in case the German Shepherd who had pounced on the Pom and rolled it into the water the week before should reappear and terrorise it afresh. When Igor tired of his futile pastime, she re-attached the lead and proceeded at a sedate pace across the town to the quay where the vedettes came in from St. Malo, laden with returning day-trippers and passengers from the Southampton ferry. She had friends among the crews of the vedettes and would chat with porters sent from the various hotels to meet arriving guests.

  “When does your mama return? Will she be accompanied by your papa?” Gaston, the porter from the Hôtel Marjolaine, threw the butt of his cigarette into the water.

  “I do not know. She has not written.”

  “Does she know that your Mademoiselle lets you run free about the town and adventure into the countryside without protection?”

  “I have a dog with me.”

  “You call that a dog? That specimen? Is a Bolshevik toy sufficient chaperone for a child, one asks?”

  “Madame Tarasova is not a Bolshevik; I often have a larger dog; Igor has teeth.”

  “Igor has teeth.” Gaston snapped his fingers derisively at the Pomeranian, who leapt up snarling shrilly. Gaston stepped back. “Bolshevik,” he hissed at the little animal.

  “Don’t tease him.” Flora loosened the lead so that the dog could close up on the man. “If you go on, I will let him loose.”

  “Does this courageous animal bite your Mademoiselle? Does Mademoiselle know the animal?” Flora did not answer. “Your maman was expected back weeks ago. I was told so by Mademoiselle, who sits in the hotel reading love stories and eating chocolates while you run wild,” teased Gaston.

  “She changed her mind and stayed with papa. He has business in London. He goes back to India soon; she wants to be with him as long as possible,” said Flora defensively.

  “One understands. But you, do you not wish to be with your papa?” The porter from the Hotel Britannique, lounging beside Gaston, joined in the quiz.

  “Sometimes,” said Flora cautiously, “not always.” She sensed that Gaston and the other porter might be surprised if she told them that she hardly knew her father and was not all that keen on knowing him better. These family men were unlikely to understand or approve the mores of an Indian civil servant and his casual acceptance of constant separation.

  “I am all right,” she said.

  “And your lessons? You do your lessons with Mademoiselle?” queried Gaston, whose eldest son was working for his baccalaureat.

  “Of course I do,” lied Flora, conscious that with Mademoiselle’s connivance lessons had dwindled to a bare minimum. The porter from the Hôtel d’Angleterre, younger than his colleagues and unmarried, now remarked: “She amuses herself, this English child, she runs wild with old women’s dogs. It is laughable.” He laughed. “C’est fou.”

  “Madame Tarasova is teaching me Russian. In exchange, I exercise Igor.”

  “Of what use is Russian, a filthy Bolshevik language? Your situation is not comme il faut.”

  “Not convenable,” agreed the porter from the Hôtel Britannique, who had so far not contributed his opinion.

  “I wish you would all mind your own business,” said Flora unhappily. “What visitors are you expecting?”

  “English families,” said the porter from the Hôtel Britannique.

  “For me the same,” said the porter from the Hôtel d’Angleterre. “There are too many; I spit on them and their money.”

  “And I,” said Gaston, “am here to meet General Leigh, husband of the beautiful Madame Leigh.” Unconsciously Gaston drew himself up.

  “Lots of spit for him?” suggested Flora. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “look! Here comes the vedette! Quick, Igor, run, I must get you home.”

  The group of porters watched her disappear, dragging Igor behind her. “Has she seen the devil?” asked one.

  “Her parents,” said Gaston. “I recognise the mother; the man with her must be papa, that one in the black hat who feels the cold. The tall robust one beside them will be my client, the General, husband of the lady who spends so much of the money you despise patronising our modistes. Does not your sister work for the hat shop in the Rue de Tours?”

  The porters stopped lounging against the wall, straightened their caps and adopted obsequious expressions.

  While Flora raced through the town to deliver Igor to Madame Tarasova’s and on, panting, to rouse Mademoiselle from the sofa where she lolled with her novel, in the annexe of the Hôtel Marjolaine, Denys Trevelyan only marginally looked forward to meeting his daughter. He had disliked the crossing from Southampton and felt cold crossing the bay. He took his wife’s hand and tucked it against his side. She had introduced herself to Angus Leigh and was questioning him about the likelihood of a General Strike as though he were a politician or a trade unionist, in spite of his modestly explaining that he was a retired Army man, no better informed than anyone who read The Times or listened to the news on the wireless. If there were a General Strike, he said, he proposed leaving his wife in Dinard and motoring back by himself.

  “Just in case of trouble I’d like my wife to be out of things. One never knows these days whether things may not get rough.”

  “Oh, Denys. Did you hear that?” Vita looked up at her husband. “What shall we do if there is a strike? Will there be a revolution?”

  Denys Trevelyan repeated for the benefit of the General what his wife perfectly well knew. Come what may, his leave was up at the end of June and he must sail for India. Anyway, he said, more for the benefit of the General than his wife, he thought talk of revolution was alarmist. He did not add that he wished to God that Vita was coming with him, that he loved her jealously and passionately, that the prospect of leaving her made him feel ill, that he thought it unnecessary for her to stay with Flora until the autumn. In India she could go to the hills for the hot weather, as she usually did, where he would know what she was up to. He thought the child could have been deposited in the school they had picked at once, instead of at the start of the school year. Pressing his wife’s arm against his ribs and his lips into a tight line, he wished that when Vita nearly miscarried, five months pregnant, she had lost the child. Children and the Indian Civil Service did not mix. It was not, he thought bitterly, as though Vita liked children. Flora was the result of a passing and regrettable fancy. The child was an expense, an inconvenience, a wedge between hims
elf, his wife and his career. He was an uxorious man; he flinched from sharing any part of her. Spending the summer with Flora, Vita was bowing to the convention that this was what parents did. She had been happy to leave her with the governess all the weeks they had spent in London, he thought grimly. He knew Vita, alone with Flora, would get bored. And what then? At least when she was in a hill station, and he not too far away, there was some control. Most wives could be counted on not to do more than flirt with bachelor subalterns. Vita was welcome to that, but alone in France—

  Beside him, Vita was telling the General that they had a daughter and the idea was that she should learn to speak French before she went to school; that she already spoke good Italian after a year in Siena with an Italian governess. “Denys is keen on languages,” she said. “She is also learning Russian.”

  “Ah, hum, yes, a good thing, I suppose. Are you yourself a linguist?” Angus included Denys in the conversation.

  “Native languages.” Denys did not specify how many. “In my job, you have to.” He despised Vita for her falsity, and perversely loved her for it. Flora’s year in Italy and her present sojourn in France were nothing to do with the acquisition of languages, everything to do with the rate of the lira and franc to the pound. He had no independent means (the sight of General Leigh’s rather splendid luggage annoyed him). Standing up in the vedette, looking towards the quay, he decided Vita could manage without Mademoiselle until Flora went to school. While despising his wife’s manipulation of the truth, Denys felt a sharp lust for her. She may be silly, he thought, but I desire her.

  “Is your daughter meeting us?” he asked, disassociating himself from parenthood. Then, noticing Angus Leigh’s quick glance, he laughed. “Our daughter is so unlike either of us, I make a joke of it, but since discovering a portrait of my great-grandmother I have put aside doubts of her provenance.”

  Angus Leigh said, “Oh,” on a polite note.

  Vita said, “Oh, Denys, you are the limit,” and to Angus, “We are both fair, you see, and Flora is dark.” Then to Denys she said, “No, darling, I don’t think she will meet us. It seemed better not to tell her we were coming today; the sailings might have been delayed by the strike.”