The Pursuit of Love

by Nancy Mitford

  One afternoon, looking idly out of the window of her hotel bedroom, she saw them walking up the Quai Sadi Carnot together, completely absorbed, utterly contented in each other’s company, radiating happiness. Linda was seized by an impulse and acted on it. She packed her things, wrote a hasty letter to Christian saying that she was leaving him for good, as she realized that their marriage had been a failure. She asked him to look after Matt She then burnt her boats by adding a postscript (a fatal feminine practice), ‘I think you had much better marry Lavender’. She bundled herself and her luggage into a taxi and took the night train for Paris.

  The journey this time was horrible. She was, after all, very fond of Christian, and as soon as the train had left the station, she began to ask herself whether she had not in fact behaved stupidly and badly. He probably had a passing fancy for Lavender, based on common interests, which would fade away as soon as he got back to London. Possibly it was not even that, but simply that he was obliged, for his work, to be with Lavender all the time. His absentminded treatment of Linda was, after all, nothing new, it had begun almost as soon as he had got her under his roof. She began to feel that she had done wrong to write that letter.

  She had her return ticket, but very little money indeed, just enough, she reckoned, for dinner on the train and some food for next day. Linda always had to translate French money into pounds, shillings, and pence before she knew where she was with it. She seemed to have about 18s 6d with her, so there could be no question of a sleeper. She had never sat up all night in a train, and the experience appalled her; it was like some dreadful feverish illness, when the painful hours drag by, each one longer than a week. Her thoughts brought her no comfort. She had torn up her life of the past two years, all that she had tried to put into her relationship with Christian, and thrown it away like so much waste-paper. If this was to be the outcome why had she ever left Tony, her real husband for better for worse, and her child? That was where her duty had lain, and well she knew it. She thought of my mother and shuddered. Could it be that she, Linda, was from now on doomed to a life that she utterly despised, that of a bolter?

  And in London what would she find? A little empty, dusty house. Perhaps, she thought, Christian would pursue her, come and insist that she belonged to him. But in her heart she knew that he would not, and that she did not, and that this was the end. Christian believed too sincerely that people must be allowed to do as they wish in life, without interference. He was fond of Linda, she knew, but disappointed in her, she also knew; he would not himself have made the first move to separate, but would not much regret the fact that she had done so. Soon he would have some new scheme in his head, some new plan for suffering mortals, any mortals, anywhere, so long as there were enough of them and their misery was great. Then he would forget Linda, and possibly also Lavender, as if they had never been. Christian was not in passionate quest of love, he had other interests, other aims, and it mattered very little to him what woman happened to be in his life at a given moment. But in his nature, she knew, there was a certain ruthlessness. She felt that he would not forgive what she had done, or try to persuade her to go back on it, nor, indeed, was there any reason why he should do so.

  It could not be said, thought Linda, as the train pursued its way through the blackness, that her life so far had been a marked success. She had found neither great love nor great happiness, and she had not inspired them in others. Parting with her would have been no death blow to either of her husbands; on the contrary, they would both have turned with relief to a much preferred mistress, who was more suited to them in every way. Whatever quality it is that can hold indefinitely the love and affection of a man she plainly did not possess, and now she was doomed to the lonely, hunted life of a beautiful but unattached woman. Where now was love that would last to the grave and far beyond? What had she done with her youth? Tears for her lost hopes and ideals, tears of self-pity in fact, began to pour down her cheeks. The three fat Frenchmen who shared the carriage with her were in a snoring sleep, she wept alone.

  Sad and tired as Linda was, she could not but perceive the beauty of Paris that summer morning as she drove across it to the Gare du Nord. Paris in the early morning has a cheerful, bustling aspect, a promise of delicious things to come, a positive smell of coffee and croissants, quite peculiar to itself.

  The people welcome a new day as if they were certain of liking it, the shopkeepers pull up their blinds serene in the expectation of good trade, the workers go happily to their work, the people who have sat up all night in night-clubs go happily to their rest, the orchestra of motor-car horns, of clanking trams, of whistling policemen tunes up for the daily symphony, and everywhere is joy. This joy, this life, this beauty did not underline poor Linda’s fatigue and sadness, she felt it but was not of it. She turned her thoughts to old familiar London, she longed above all for her own bed, feeling as does a wounded beast when it crawls home to its lair. She only wanted to sleep undisturbed in her own bedroom.

  But when she presented her return ticket at the Gare du Nord she was told, furiously, loudly, and unsympathetically, that it had expired.

  ‘Voyons, madame–le 29 Mai. C’est aujourd’ hui le 30, n’est-ce pas? Donc – !’ Tremendous shruggings.

  Linda was paralysed with horror. Her 18s 6d was by now down to 6s 3d, hardly enough for a meal. She knew nobody in Paris, she had absolutely no idea what she ought to do, she was too tired and too hungry to think clearly. She stood like a statue of despair. Her porter, tired of waiting beside a statue of despair, deposited the luggage at its feet and went grumbling off. Linda sank onto her suitcase and began to cry; nothing so dreadful had ever happened to her before. She cried bitterly, she could not stop. People passed to and fro as if weeping ladies were the most ordinary phenomenon at the Gare du Nord. ‘Fiends! fiends!’ she sobbed. Why had she not listened to her father, why had she ever come to this bloody abroad? Who would help her? In London there was a society, she knew, which looked after ladies stranded at railway stations; here, more likely, there would be one for shipping them off to South America. At any moment now somebody, some genial-looking old woman might come up and give her an injection, after which she would disappear for ever.

  She became aware that somebody was standing beside her, not an old lady, but a short, stocky, very dark Frenchman in a black Homburg hat. He was laughing. Linda took no notice, but went on crying. The more she cried the more he laughed. Her tears were tears of rage now, no longer of self-pity.

  At last she said, in a voice which was meant to be angrily impressive, but which squeaked and shook through her handkerchief:

  ‘Allez-vous en.’

  For answer he took her hand and pulled her to her feet

  ‘Bonjour, bonjour,’ he said.

  ‘Voulez-vous vous en aller?’ said Linda, rather more doubtfully, here at least was a human being who showed signs of taking some interest in her. Then she thought of South America.

  ‘Il faut expliquer que je ne suis pas,’ she said, ‘une esclave blanche. Je suis la file d’un très important lord anglais.’

  The Frenchman gave a great bellow of laughter.

  ‘One does not,’ he said in the early perfect English of somebody who has spoken it from a child, ‘have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess that.’

  Linda was rather annoyed. An Englishwoman abroad may be proud of her nationality and her virtue without wishing them to jump so conclusively to the eye.

  ‘French ladies,’ he went on, ‘covered with les marques extérieurs de la richesse never never sit crying on their suitcases at the Gare du Nord in the very early morning, while esclaves blanches always have protectors, and it is only too clear that you are unprotected just now.’

  This sounded all right, and Linda was mollified.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I invite you to luncheon with me, but first you must have a bath and rest and a cold compress on your face.’

  He picked up her luggage and walked to a taxi.

  ‘Get in, plea
se.’

  Linda got in. She was far from certain that this was not the road to Buenos Aires, but something made her do as he said. Her powers of resistance were at an end, and she really saw no alternative.

  ‘Hotel Montalembert,’ he told the taxi man. ‘Rue du Bac. Je m’excuse, madame, for not taking you to the Rite, but I have a feeling for the Hotel Montalembert just now, that it will suit your mood this morning.’

  Linda sat upright in her corner of the taxi, looking, she hoped, very prim. As she could not think of anything pertinent to say she remained silent. Her companion hummed a little tune, and seemed vastly amused. When they arrived at the hotel, he took a room for her, told the liftman to show her to it, told the concierge to send her up a café complet, kissed her hand, and said:

  ‘A tout à l’heure – I will fetch you a little before one o’clock and we will go out to luncheon.’

  Linda had her bath and breakfast and got into bed. When the telephone bell rang she was so sound asleep that it was a struggle to wake up.

  ‘Un monsieur qui demands madame.’

  ‘Je descends tout de suite,’ said Linda but it took her quite half an hour to get ready.

  17

  ‘AH! You keep me waiting,’ he said, kissing her hand, or at least making a gesture of raising her hand towards his lips and then dropping it rather suddenly. ‘That is a very good sign.’

  ‘Sign of what?’ said Linda. He had a two-seater outside the hotel and she got into it. She was feeling more like herself again.

  ‘Oh, of this and that,’ he said, letting in the clutch, ‘a good augury for our affair, that it will be happy and last long.’

  Linda became intensely stiff, English, and embarrassed, and said, self-consciously:

  ‘We are not having an affair.’

  ‘My name is Fabrice – may one ask yours?’

  ‘Linda.’

  ‘Linda. Comme c’est joli. With me, it usually lasts five years.’

  He drove to a restaurant where they were shown, with some deference, to a table in a red plush corner. He ordered the luncheon and the wine in rapid French, the sort of French that Linda frankly could not follow, then, putting his hands on his knees, he turned to her and said:

  ‘Allons, racontez madame.’

  ‘Racontez what?’

  ‘Well, but of course, the story. Who was it that left you to cry on that suitcase?’

  ‘He didn’t. I left him. It was my second husband and I have left him for ever because he has fallen in love with another woman – a welfare worker, not that you’d know what that is, because I’m sure they don’t exist in France. It just makes it worse, that’s all.’

  ‘What a very curious reason for leaving one’s second husband. Surely with your experience of husbands you must have noticed that falling in love with other women is one of the things they do? However, it’s an ill wind, and I don’t complain. But why the suitcase? Why didn’t you put yourself in the train and go back to Monsieur the important lord, your father?’

  ‘That’s what I was doing until they told me that my return ticket had expired. I only had 6s 3d, and I don’t know anybody in Paris, and I was awfully tired, so I cried.’

  ‘The second husband – why not borrow some money from him? Or had you left a note on his pillow – women never can resist these little essays in literature, and they do make it rather embarrassing to go back, I know.’

  ‘Well, anyhow he’s in Perpignan, so I couldn’t have.’

  ‘Ah, you come from Perpignan. And what were you doing there, in the name of heaven?’

  ‘In the name of heaven we were trying to stop you frogs from teasing the poor Epagnards,’ said Linda with some spirit.

  ‘E-spa-gnols! So we are teasing them, are we?’

  ‘Not so badly now – terribly at the beginning.’

  ‘What were we supposed to do with them? We never invited them to come, you know.’

  ‘You drove them into camps in that cruel wind, and gave them no shelter for weeks. Hundreds died.’

  ‘It is quite a job to provide shelter, at a moment’s notice, for half a million people. We did what we could – we fed them – the fact is that most of them are still alive.’

  ‘Still herded in camps.’

  ‘My dear Linda, you could hardly expect us to turn them loose on the countryside with no money – what would be the result? Do use your common sense.’

  ‘You should mobilize them to fight in the war against Fascism that’s coming any day now.’

  ‘Talk about what you know and you won’t get so angry. We haven’t enough equipment for our own soldiers in the war against Germany that’s coming – not any day, but after the harvest, probably in August. Now go on telling me about your husbands. It’s so very much more interesting.’

  ‘Only two. My first was a Conservative, and my second is a Communist’

  ‘Just as I guessed, your first is rich, your second is poor. I could see you once had a rich husband, the dressing-case and the fur coat, though it is a hideous colour, and no doubt, as far as one could see, with it bundled over your arm, a hideous shape. Still, vison usually betokens a rich husband somewhere. Then this dreadful linen suit you are wearing has ready-made written all over it’

  ‘You are rude, it’s a very pretty suit.’

  ‘And last year’s. Jackets are getting longer you will find. I’ll get you some clothes – if you were well dressed you would be quite good-looking, though it’s true your eyes are small. Blue, a good colour, but small.’

  ‘In England,’ said Linda, ‘I am considered a beauty.’

  ‘Well, you have points.’

  So this silly conversation went on and on, but it was only froth on the surface. Linda was feeling, what she had never so far felt for any man, an overwhelming physical attraction. It made her quite giddy, it terrified her. She could see that Fabrice was perfectly certain of the outcome, so was she perfectly certain, and that was what frightened her. How could she, Linda, with the horror and contempt she had always felt for casual affairs, allow herself to be picked up by any stray foreigner, and, having seen him only for an hour, long and long and long to be in bed with him? He was not even good-looking, he was exactly like dozens of other dark men in Homburgs that can be seen in the streets of any French town. But there was something about the way he looked at her which seemed to be depriving her of all balance. She was profoundly shocked, and, at the same time, intensely excited.

  After luncheon they strolled out of the restaurant into brilliant sunshine.

  ‘Come and see my flat,’ said Fabrice.

  ‘I would rather see Paris,’ said Linda

  ‘Do you know Paris well?’

  ‘I’ve never been here before in my life.’

  Fabrice was really startled.

  ‘Never been here before?’ he could not believe it. ‘What a pleasure for me, to show it all to you. There is so much to show, it will take weeks.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said Linda, ‘I leave for England to-morrow.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Then we must see it all this afternoon.’

  They drove slowly round a few streets and squares, and then went for a stroll in the Bois. Linda could not believe that she had only just arrived there, that this was still the very day which she had seen unfolding itself, so full of promise, through her mist of morning tears.

  ‘How fortunate you are to live in such a town,’ she said to Fabrice. ‘It would be impossible to be very unhappy here.’

  ‘Not impossible,’ he said. ‘One’s emotions are intensified in Paris – one can be more happy and also more unhappy here than in any other place. But it is always a positive source of joy to live here, and there is nobody so miserable as a Parisian in exile from his town. The rest of the world seems unbearably cold and bleak to us, hardly worth living in.’ He spoke with great feeling.

  After tea, which they had out of doors in the Bois, he drove slowly back into Paris. He stopped the car outside an old house in the Rue Bonaparte,
and said, again:

  ‘Come and see my flat.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Linda. ‘The time has now come for me to point out that I am une femme sérieuse.’

  Fabrice gave his great bellow of laughter.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, shaking helplessly, ‘how funny you are. What a phrase, femme sérieuse, where did you find it? And if so serious, how do you explain the second husband?’

  ‘Yes, I admit that I did wrong, very wrong indeed, and made a great mistake. But that is no reason for losing control, for sliding down the hill altogether, for being picked up by strange gentlemen at the Gare du Nord and then immediately going with them to see their flat. And please, if you will be so kind as to lend me some money, I want to catch the London train to-morrow morning.’

  ‘Of course, by all means,’ said Fabrice.

  He thrust a roll of banknotes into her hand, and drove her to the Hotel Montalembert. He seemed quite unmoved by her speech, and announced he would come back at eight o’clock to take her out to dinner.

  Linda’s bedroom was full of roses, it reminded her of when Moira was born.

  ‘Really,’ she thought with a giggle, ‘this is a very penny-novelettish seduction, how can I be taken in by it?’

  But she was filled with a strange, wild, unfamiliar happiness, and knew that this was love. Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can’t imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening. She tried to remember how she had felt when she had first loved her two husbands. There must have been strong and impelling emotion; in both cases she had disrupted her own life, upset her parents and friends remorselessly, in order to marry them, but she could not recall it. Only she knew that never before, not even in dreams, and she was a great dreamer of love, had she felt anything remotely like this. She told herself, over and over again, that to-morrow she must go back to London, but she had no intention of going back, and she knew it.