Forty is Beginning (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she told herself, ‘is the day. Tomorrow I shall start on the big adventure. Tomorrow it is!’

  Three

  THE START

  Miss Marvin had to start before it was light in order to catch the first train to London. It was a ghastly journey, and she had to race across London in a taxicab to catch the train from Charing Cross to Dover. When she had just managed to recover a little from that ordeal, she was able to take some notice of the day, and to see that it was pleasant. The air was a great deal warmer in the south, and there were primroses already blossoming along the railway embankment, and trimming the Kentish woods with a carpet of pale tremulous yellow.

  Miss Marvin had hated being up so early, groping for this and that, and going to the station in the dark, though the Haineses had been very decent about it. They had packed her a special breakfast, and he had made her a nice cup of tea to get her going. As he made it, he had sung.

  My drink is water bright,

  Water bright, water bright,

  My drink is water bright,

  Straight from the crystal spring,

  which for some absurd reason had irritated her.

  On the second stage of her journey, from London to Dover, the sparkle of excitement came to her. She was very glad that she had made the effort, and was undertaking the great adventure. She could not believe that it was really happening to her. Never before had she seen Dover, and now as she approached it she saw that a light fog twisted round the castle, but the harbour itself was bright in the fickle Easter sunshine. She went up the gangway of the ship as though she walked in a dream, and of course she was in a dream, for none of this could be really true!

  She stood at the taffrail watching the luggage coming aboard, and the surprising people who appeared. Gradually she saw the space between herself and the quay widening, and knew that she had started. It was a great moment.

  Nothing that she could do would make the boat turn back. The little boat came bravely out of the harbour and entering the Channel itself began to rise and fall, shuddering a shade on the descent. ‘It’s quite pleasant,’ she thought. Dover was changing from a place in every detail to something hidden in a grey fog, fancifully remote, something almost ‘the stuff that dreams are made on’.

  Already a couple of stewardesses were bustling around, and some old ladies were looking queasy. A steward asked Miss Marvin if she was going down to lunch.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said, mistaking him for an officer and thinking how fine he looked! She had with her the sandwiches which the Haineses had cut, and her idea was to spend no more than she could help, because it had undoubtedly been a very expensive trip, much more so than she had originally anticipated when she had decided to venture on it.

  Half way across she went below to tidy up, which was a mistake. The sea had been choppy, and now there was an unassailable queue for the spot Miss Marvin most wanted. The most distressing sounds of activity in these spots told her that everyone was being seasick at once. The brightness of the stewardesses bouncing about the place was almost disturbing. Storm cans were everywhere. Below decks Miss Marvin found herself feeling more than queer. Coming down here had been a bad error of judgment, she knew, and she beat a bold retreat. But returning up the companion was not as easy as going down had been. Several were coming down, all in urgent need. There was never anything like this in Brestonbury, she told herself wretchedly, and hid behind a convenient capstan handy for the taffrail; if the worst happened, there was always the sea.

  They were due in in a quarter of an hour; she started to count the minutes, and she thought she could last out. The ship was late, and that did it. She couldn’t last out, but as she had said, there was always the sea.

  ‘Really,’ she thought later, ‘how do people ever bring themselves to bathe in that thing?’

  Her first sight of the new and promised land was not inspiring. It was a flat country. The quay itself was lined by squat little men in blue cotton coats, mostly possessing dark hair, and eyes like sparkling sloes. They bustled about waving their arms. Tic-tac men, she thought.

  What with being sick, and now watching the tic-tac men, she had forgotten to queue up for her landing pass, which made her almost the last person to get off the boat. One of the men in a blue cotton coat approached her deferentially and took possession of her pair of cases. He smiled at her, doffing his hat obsequiously. ‘The luggage, madame?’ he enquired. ‘I see you through les douanes. Oui?’

  ‘Oui,’ said Miss Marvin a little nervously.

  The porter put the luggage on a barrow which awaited him at the quayside, and they set off together. The cobbles were hard on the feet, and they went into a large and rather smelly shed, furnished only with cheap wooden trestle tables, and on the other side of one of them was another black-eyed gentleman. He handed Miss Marvin a sheet of paper which seemed to be immensely long, and then without giving her time to read it, he whisked it away again.

  The porter glanced at her. ‘Nothing to declare? Non?’ said he.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Marvin, now getting really agitated, for this might let her in for anything.

  ‘N’importe,’ said the porter, ‘nothing to declare. Non,’ and he whisked the bags back on to his barrow. It seemed that they need never have come here at all. ‘Vite, vite,’ directed the porter, gaining speed.

  In the end they were both running, and Miss Marvin was bundled up the immense ascent at the end of the train, and literally pushed into a compartment, porter and baggage after her. He stowed everything in the hat rack, occupying all the room regardless of others who might need it, then he bowed profusely, smiling encouragingly. But would he go? Not he!

  ‘Bon voyage, madame!’ he kept saying until she could have killed him.

  Miss Marvin fumbled in her purse, to produce a couple of francs. Was that the right amount? She really ought to have asked somebody what one did about tips. It would be a shilling in England at the most; what was a shilling in France? She had as a child learnt that a franc represented a shilling, and now she eyed it with suspicion. By the look on the porter’s face the franc was very far from a shilling. ‘Oh dear!’ she thought.

  The stout man in the corner seat helped her. ‘Ten francs,’ he said. ‘If you don’t give it him we shall never get started.’

  ‘It seems an awful lot of money.’

  ‘No, it isn’t really; it’ll be all right,’ he urged. ‘Get rid of him for God’s sake! You’re holding up the whole train.’

  Miss Marvin did not see why she should get rid of him at her own expense, for this was what it amounted to. She pushed ten francs towards him, and instantly his haughtiness melted; he became most appreciative, staying still longer to wish her happiness and a safe return, in a language that she did not understand.

  Then she sank down. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said to the stout gentleman in the corner seat. ‘I don’t know what I should have done without you.’

  He grinned. ‘The Englishman abroad can be useful to his fellows,’ he said, and then sat back beaming with the sporting papers.

  The countryside was not inspiring, in fact it was downright disappointing. Staring out of the carriage windows and hoping to see one of those views to arrest the imagination, as shown on the posters decorating the office of the travel agency, Miss Marvin felt depressed. There were long stretches of Lombardy poplars beside bleak roads; also she noted rather large bony horses who wore the most peculiar collars as they pulled a plough or wagon.

  Much later, the first sight of Paris came into view. The man opposite, having finished his papers, proffered her the Sporting Times, which she accepted because she did not like to offend him, and then wished that she had offended him, because there was nothing in it that she could read. The man opposite was glancing out of the left window, and suddenly he said, ‘Ah, the Eiffel Tower at last!’

  ‘Where? Where?’ gasped Miss Marvin, for now eager excitement had replaced the ennui which had made her so bored. She s
tared in the direction of his finger. In the haze on the horizon, rising gracefully grey like an enormous spike, the Eiffel Tower raised itself.

  All she could think of saying was, ‘It isn’t as good as the tower at Blackpool!’

  The city was emerging out of the mist with surprising rapidity. It was larger than she had expected, and different. Oh, so very different! It was when the train got into the outer suburbs that she recognised how unlike London it was. You could never look out of the carriage window on Paris and confuse it with London. There were more trees, there were children in flirtatious pinafores with lots of frills on the shoulders, and large, somewhat bulky, young boys wearing the type of dress that only under-fives wear in England. The train roared into the city itself.

  ‘Going to stay here? Folies Bergères and all that?’ asked this man.

  Coldly Miss Marvin said, ‘I’m going through to the Gare de Lyon, and am bound for Cap Rabat.’

  ‘That ought to be fun,’ said he. ‘You’ll get a porter at the station and he’ll fix you with a taxi. It’s very easy.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it is,’ said Miss Marvin. If it had been as easy as that, undoubtedly it would have been fun, but of course it wasn’t.

  Before the train stopped, the platform was swarming with porters; they were the same little squat men in blue coats and all of them talking much too much. They spoke so fast that no one could understand a word that they said and one of them bounced into the carriage and took control of her.

  ‘Gare de Lyon? Oui, madame. Vite!’ He dived at the hatrack utterly regardless of what other people might require. He seized her two cases, arming himself with both, and pushed his way out of the carriage and back on to the platform. The unfortunate part was that as she hadn’t his nerve she could not trample people ruthlessly underfoot, and standing back to be polite, she lost sight of him. Presuming that she had lost him for good, she became frightened, and losing her English courtesy, she literally beat her way forth. The porter was on the platform exchanging an agitated conversation with a blonde girl whom he seemed to admire.

  ‘Ah, madame,’ he said, ‘ici.’

  Off they went up the platform, she endeavouring to keep pace with his sturdy little legs and finding it extremely difficult.

  Paris was very full. She fell over people, and was practically mown down by trolleys and porters. She wanted to see everything and could see nothing, because it was all too worrying. ‘Never mind,’ she told herself, ‘I can see everything I want to see out of the taxi window.’

  The porter was bustling her into a taxi which he had managed to entrap for her when everybody else seemed to be fighting madly for one. She got into it. ‘Gare de Lyon,’ she said.

  ‘Oui, madame,’ replied the driver.

  She sat back much relieved. Already she felt to be a new woman; already she knew that she had changed, for nobody is quite the same in a foreign country, they can’t be. She tipped the porter generously, for this time she had not the same agitation about the value of the franc. She was beginning to learn.

  To her horror, the taxi started on the trip. She had never known anything like it. If she had thought that she could see everything she wanted to see out of the taxi window, she was wrong. She could see nothing. Once she had been on the ‘Figure Eight’ in the Belle Vue Gardens at Manchester but the taxi in Paris was much worse. They shot out of the station yard and into a busy street completely disregarding the oncoming traffic.

  Just at first she could only shut her eyes and pray; watching was out of the question. She held on to the seat until her hands went white and she hurt herself. Then, as they had not run into anything so far, though she sat back waiting for the crash, she came to the conclusion that there was just a chance, a very remote one, that they would not have an accident; one couldn’t be sure! She looked out cautiously. Taxis flew this way and that, paying no attention to anyone or anything. In the centre of the street a smart little man in a navy blue suit and with a magnificent handlebar moustachio, stood with what appeared to be a fat white candle in his hand. He was either conducting an imaginary orchestra, or trying to control the traffic.

  On either side of the streets there were gardens, and budding trees, women with enormous baskets of flowers for sale at corners, and the little pavement cafes busy with people having their coffee, and chattering pleasantly one with another.

  If only she could have gone slowly so that she could see everything, but no Paris taxi can go slowly! On they went, zigzagging round busy corners, chugging up little hills, and confronting any emergency. Once Miss Marvin fell off the seat on to the floor when they scudded round a corner and met an approaching lorry. It was the nearest thing to a head-on crash that she was ever likely to see. How they survived she didn’t know.

  ‘We shall never get there,’ wailed Miss Marvin to herself. But they did get there.

  The taxi stopped with alarming abruptness, an abruptness that precipitated Miss Marvin into a somewhat overdone vase of spurious silver, into which pink paper roses were stuck. Before she had extricated herself, another porter was opening the door, with the taximan all graciousness, hoping for a good tip.

  It seemed a very long time since she had been sick in the Channel, and much had happened. Travel broadens the mind, she thought rather grimly.

  She wanted the luggage put into the Left Luggage office whilst she got her supper. She prayed that the porter spoke English, and he seemed to understand. In the next few minutes he and she walked what seemed to be miles through the Gare de Lyon, to a tiny office where they exchanged several francs for a little ticket. She would be back at half past eight; it was now six. She felt extremely tired and the thought of the bath and supper at the Palais hotel, as suggested by Mr. Swinnerton, was a good one. She asked for the hotel.

  It was not like a London street at all. It was far busier. It echoed with chatter. It caught laughter, the grind of brakes, and the skid of wheels, all in one vibrant noise. The chestnut trees were fat with sticky buds. She stopped to admire the shop windows and when she came to the Palais hotel itself she did not know that she would dare to go inside, because it was so impressive. There was a great deal of frilled organdi curtain, lush baskets of smilax, and well-dressed people going and coming. However her need being great, she penetrated the portals and approached a small office that was all mirror glass and pink tulips. A genteel-looking young man smiled.

  ‘Good afternoon, madam,’ he said in perfect English.

  She said, ‘I am travelling through Paris on my way to the Riviera; is it possible to have a bath? I am very tired and I am afraid rather dirty.’

  ‘Certainly, madam.’ He pressed a bell. ‘You will be taking dinner afterwards?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Miss Marvin.

  It must be a cautious dinner, of course; it would be shocking to eat something that made her ill in the night; she had the gravest doubts about French food; and now she recollected that they ate snails, and was not at all sure that she would care for them as an article of diet.

  In reply to the bell a chambermaid tripped along; that is, if you could call her a chambermaid, for she looked more like a film star. She was small, vivaciously dark and absurdly slender.

  ‘This way, madame,’ she said.

  ‘This way’ was long!

  They went upwards in a lift that had so many crowns to decorate it that one would have thought that it was reserved solely for kings. The maid tipputed ahead along a corridor where above everything there was handsome carving, and the cornice was liberally trimmed with immodest cupids making no effort to conceal their sex, with bowls of flowers and hovering birds, and nude ladies apparently enjoying being nude.

  She opened a bathroom door, on to a magnificent bathroom. It must have cost a fortune. ‘Ici, madame,’ she said, and indicated the bell which could be rung when ready. The moment Miss Marvin had got rid of her, she locked the door. ‘Ah!’ she said gratefully to herself.

  There were three large shell-pink towels, with more crown
s embroidered on them. There was a pale pink marble bath, and about twenty silver taps, each indicative of something. But what? Cautiously Miss Marvin closed the plug hole and gently turned a tap. A jet of ice-cold water spurted out of it. Reducing the stream, she turned its fellow, and a jet of boiling water came. Having got both taps under proper control, she began to undress. The bath was leisurely; it was most comforting. After all, she had got up long before dawn, she had been sick, and she had crossed Paris. The day had held far too much.

  The soap smelt far more beautiful than any soap that she had ever used in England; it was reminiscent of lilies-of-the-valley, one could recognise the delicious perfume; whereas half the lily-of-the-valley soaps in England may lay claim to the scent, they have little more than the claim.

  Lying in the warm comforting water, she began to relax. The nastier memories of the trip all dispersed, and she felt completely happy at last.

  As she eyed the taps, a certain curiosity came to her. What did they do? Curiosity took action; she advanced a finger with caution and touched a tap; she had not been cautious enough; instantly a cold sleetish shower descended from the clouds, a shower that was no respecter of place or person, for it drenched her, including the hair that she had had set two days ago. Suddenly she was submerged. The shower was so deadly in its effect, so blinding in its efficiency, that for one awful moment she could not even find the tap to shut it off, which added considerably to her plight. Never again! she said, trying to dry her hair with one of the pink towels.

  However, within a few minutes she had touched another tap, and this time delightful little jets of warm water came from the sides of the bath. That was so pleasant that she tried another, to find that at lightening speed the bath water disappeared.