Forty is Beginning (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  He blinked, then pulled himself together with a shudder. He looked at her, his eyes popping disconcertingly and his lower lip dropping, then he said, ‘Oh, my dear! Really, my dear! I see you don’t know when I’m in fun. Of course I have a nice little income else how do you suppose I could live here?’

  ‘That’s what I’m wondering.’

  ‘If you think I get my bread buttered by trouts past their springtime, how wrong you are! So wrong!’ and he reached out for a couple more caviare dainties.

  It was funny that she should feel so angry, but something kept welling up in her. She said, ‘Well, I suppose I’m past my springtime, and whatever you say I’m quite sure that it is the way you live. Anyhow I can’t imagine you choosing bread and butter, for caviare is much more in your line.’

  A new Miss Marvin was being born, and she was able to hold her own. She had not heard Colonel Hewlitt come into the room; she heard nothing, because at the moment Francis’s face was what the novelists call ‘a picture’.

  He began to cry copiously. ‘Oh, how could you! You don’t know how you hurt me,’ he sobbed.

  That was when Miss Marvin became aware of Colonel Hewlitt’s presence. His masculine voice was so truly British, so infinitely Madras Militia, so Die-at-post-but-never-leave-it, as it boomed across the room. ‘Shut up and get to hell out of it!’ and the voice was like a gun firing across a mountain pass.

  Francis got up. He dabbed at his eyes with a wine-coloured silk handkerchief. ‘Cad!’ said Francis. ‘Everyone kicks a fellow when he’s down. It’s so truly British that it makes a man squirm to see it. Why should I get out? I was asked here. I’m a guest, Alice’s guest.’

  ‘And oh, how I wish you weren’t!’ she said before she could stop herself.

  He tried to make an impressive exit. Unfortunately he had had too many of those champagne cocktails and was slightly dizzy, realising this too late; he caught a standard wire basket full of cyclamen in rose and white, and he brought the whole lot crashing to the floor. In an attempt to save it he missed his own footing and landed on the carpet with the flowers. The sight of the light beige suit pressed to the ground amongst mother earth and broken cyclamen, was horrifying. ‘How ghastly!’ thought Miss Marvin, and she turned to Colonel Hewlitt.

  ‘Oh, do get rid of him!’ she said.

  He picked Francis up by the collar of his coat; he made no attempt to sweep away the earth, but opening the double doors pushed him out into the passage and closed the door again. Then he rang for a maid to attend to the debris. In England this would have been a major disaster. In France it did not matter.

  In a short space of time the mess had disappeared and a new basket of cyclamen had been brought in, even lovelier than the last. Apparently Francis Lorimer had vanished. ‘I do hope he isn’t hurt,’ she remarked.

  ‘I very much hope he is,’ said Colonel Hewlitt, and then, ‘I say, is your name Alice?’

  ‘It is,’ she replied. It wasn’t a name that she cared about, because it advertised one’s age, putting on rather than taking off. It was worthily serviceable, and eternally connected with a lady in a once popular song who seems to have disappeared and left someone looking for her without result.

  He looked at her. ‘The French have a charming way of treating the name Alice. They say that it means a lily, here they call it Lily, or Lilias. You look very much like Lilias to me.’

  She looked at him. The gilt-rimmed mirror opposite disclosed her new self; she was pretty; the beauty parlour had done everything it could to make her skin glow like velvet; her hair was now a delicate golden brown, and exquisitely coiffed; also she wore the right clothes, in the right way. It had taken her own modiste a little time to show her the right way, and now she had got it she clung to it. It was right that so perfect a creature, the rich woman who looked young and was now enjoying the joyous St. Martin’s summer that is given to so few, should have a new name.

  ‘I’d like to be Lilias,’ she said.

  That night they celebrated the christening of Lilias. They did not go back to the casino, for she had a nasty feeling about the casino with its crowds, and the pleading eyes of those suffering severe losses, and the hard triumphant eyes of those making great gains! She had a hunch that if she committed herself frequently in the casino, one of these days she would lose the lot, which would send her back to Manchester, and perhaps to school life, which after this would be additionally awful. She very much doubted if Miss Halifax would give her a reference, but if the doors of St. Helena’s were barred to her, there were lots of other schools; lots of places with inadequate heating, frugal meals unlikely to give the girls ideas, wretched badly furnished common rooms, energetic gyms, and worthy headmistresses with frustrated outlooks. She must be careful. She didn’t want to have more money, already there had been far too much publicity, for whenever she opened an English paper there seemed to be some reference to her.

  Tonight they took Colonel Hewlitt’s car and drove along the Grande Corniche until they climbed high above Monaco and could see it lying beneath them in strings of dazzling yellow lights jutting out into the sea along the caps, and doubling themselves there, for they lay mirrored in the still water like so many drowned topazes. The moon itself was brilliant. Up here it seemed to her that the air was rare as wine, and equally intoxicating.

  He stopped the car under a great pepper tree, hardly stirring in the wind, and together they looked down side by side.

  ‘It’s heavenly,’ she said.

  ‘I’m so glad that you like it; it’s a little world of its own, it has everything to offer you, and I’m very glad you came out here. That indeed was your lucky day.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘my very lucky day. If I hadn’t gone out to that patisserie to tea, and met you there, nothing might have happened.’

  ‘Yet everything happened,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘Everything.’

  He said, ‘And now you are Lilias, quite a different woman with quite a different name, and by the by, I can’t agree that Alice was ever your cup of tea! And isn’t it time you dropped the Colonel Hewlitt? My name is Maxwell, and you are my friend, so call me Max. If I’m to manage the hotel for you, I’d prefer to be Max.’

  It was a very long time since any man had been encouraging to Lilias Marvin; she felt a young girl again, she might have been just leaving the top form and going out into the world to plunge into her first affair! It was the very first time that she had loved the romantic stars illuminating the sentimental night. It was heaven!

  ‘I’d like to call you Max,’ she said.

  They sat in the car still staring at the beauty of the view, and there came the sound of the cicadas. ‘It couldn’t happen in Manchester,’ she thought.

  ‘Your little hands are cold,’ he said at last, and laid his big man’s hand over them. That moved her too. She didn’t know what to say, and somehow he sensed her shyness.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ he suggested. ‘I know how you feel. It’s great fun to begin life again, isn’t it? Fun to be a girl once more, because that’s what it amounts to!’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Oh well, I did know,’ he answered. ‘I do understand and admire your joy at everything that you are experiencing. I don’t mind betting that you’ll make a big success of Les Papillons, because you’ve got the money to put into the place, and that makes a difference. It needs capital, and my legacy being spent I have nothing more to give it. Together, you and I could do so much.’

  She felt romance stirring in her veins. What would Miss Halifax say? Damn Miss Halifax! was the instant response to that. ‘I’ve grown up,’ she told herself.

  ‘I know,’ was all she said.

  He was quiet for a moment, and out of the distance there came the sound of someone singing a little French song. The voice was gay, it was a young girl happily rejoicing in her springtime.

  Sur le pont

  D’ Avignon,

  L’ony danse,

  L’o
ny danse

  Miss Marvin, with her heart sounding like the echo of the cicadas purring in the dark, hoped and prayed that he would not kiss her. Then she would have to say something, and for the moment she did not want to say something and break the loveliness of her dream with reality. The dream must go on just a little longer. Perhaps now she realised how much she had changed in these last few days, and how far she had travelled from the smell of ink spilt on dirty desks, from the grubby little exercise books with the ghastly essays scrawled therein of no possible interest to man or beast, author or critic.

  He did not kiss her.

  He held her hand lovingly in his own, and he said the most charming and comforting things. Life was beautiful and he himself was delighted that they had met. Their friendship should be one of those lovely gifts which go with you through life and make it much happier than it could ever otherwise have been.

  When they started very slowly for home, the girl was still singing, and he drove quietly, one hand still holding hers in her lap. She wished that the drive could last for ever, all part of the wonderful new dream in which she had suddenly lost herself. The night was balmy, the warmth very pleasant, like a summer’s night in June. They came down the road to Les Papillons, she slightly bemused with happiness. ‘How lovely life is,’ she thought.

  ‘I never knew that it could be so nice. I just never knew …’

  Before she finally went to bed, she attended to some of the letters on the side. She would never have done it at Brestonbury, for there bedtime was a set hour, but here it was not like that at all. It was no rule here; very few people went to bed until it was already morning, and all of them slept late. Something must have happened to her, because she had suddenly changed. She could stay up till dawn, and sleep until déjeuner à la fourchette. And she liked doing it.

  She opened a small cellophane box in which a couple of perfect white orchids curled, and she read the card that had been attached to them, Francis had sent them with apologies and regrets. He did not know what had come over him, and begged her to wear these for him, remembering that they had been watered with his tears.

  ‘He overdoes things,’ she thought, pushing them aside.

  There was a letter from the travel agency. Mr. Swinnerton had read the newspaper accounts with the greatest interest. He was surprised, of course, but awfully pleased and he wished her the best of luck; he was very glad to think that he had been the one who had made her go on this trip. His letter kept returning to this theme, so that it was plain that he wanted to remind her that he had been the one who had brought this joy into her life. He also conveyed to her the information that (much as he hated to mention it) he was rather badly in debt; he had had a couple of new suits, believing that wool was going up ‒ there he had been quite right ‒ and what with other difficulties, the quinsy he had had last spring, the changing of his flat and having to pay a disgraceful deposit on the new one, he was really in rather a jam. Everything came at once, didn’t it? But she had found that out with her extraordinary good fortune at the casino. Still, it was nice to know that she was enjoying herself. He wanted her to realise that he, a mere hard-up, again wished her all the best and was jolly glad that he had been the person who had set her on the road to getting it.

  Lilias was horrified at Mr. Swinnerton’s behaviour, yet equally horrified that he should be so hard up. She wanted to help him, because ‒ as he had been clever enough to let her know ‒ he had been the one who had persuaded her to come here; yet at the same time all her principles warned her that it was intolerable to encourage such bad behaviour, and if she started this sort of thing there would be no end to it.

  ‘Oh dear, what do I do?’ she asked herself.

  The last letter was from Miss Halifax.

  She had returned home at precisely the wrong moment and blamed Lilias Marvin for the whole thing, and she did so with venom. If that fool of a woman had never put her money into those despicable pools and had not won a prize (all very wrong as an example to the little dears who should learn the degradation of games of chance), this could never have happened.

  As far as Miss Marvin was concerned the job was closed and her lips were sealed; nothing would induce her to speak to Miss Marvin again, but she would like her former teacher to know that she suffered a very praiseworthy grief at the disgraceful behaviour that had been exhibited.

  She went out that morning for another of her driving lessons with Jean. Jean was an extremely charming man. He drove the little grey car into the exquisite country that lies behind the Côte d’Azur, and there he stopped under an avenue of eucalyptus trees to change places with her.

  ‘Surely I recognise this smell?’ said Lilias Marvin snuffing it in.

  ‘Eucalyptus! The cold in the head!’ and he laughed.

  ‘Of course! It sounds silly, but I had no idea that it grew out here.’

  ‘It does grow here. I do not like the smell so much, so let us start for the drive.’ He tapped her shoulder imperiously, for he had a masterful way. Solemnly and with infinite caution she started to follow his instructions, and the car bucked like a broncho.

  ‘I wish it didn’t jump so much.’

  ‘Always at first it is the kangaroo; you must take more care. Un moment. Encore.’

  ‘What do I do wrong?’

  ‘It is the gears.’

  ‘And I thought car driving was like riding a bicycle!’

  He giggled at that. ‘I ride a bicycle with the Maquis. It never go fast enough for me when the Boches come quick, quick, behind. I pedal and I pedal, and mon Dieu what I would give for the car! Then I get a jeep. A jeep go vite before the Boches. It go like ’ell! Maintenant.’

  He was so different from anyone Lilias Marvin had met before, that she could hardly grasp what was happening, and they spent an enchanting morning driving along the narrow roads.

  He stopped once to show her a monastery old and mellow and lying in a dip, surrounded by olive trees and blue cypresses. The sunlight tinged the old stone with a brilliant yellow, and there came the echo of a bell ringing there.

  ‘It is for the good boys,’ said he, and giggled delightedly, for the Frenchman has the eternal impertinence.

  ‘What happens if they are not good?’ she asked.

  ‘You English say you can be very naughty but it is still good if not found out.’

  ‘I’ve never heard that.’

  He laid a finger confidentially along the side of his nose, laughing at her with those merry eyes. ‘Ecoutez! I have a young brother in the monastery. Oh yes! He was so good that we did not want him in the ’ome. My maman used to sigh and say, “Ah well! Guillaume is a nice boy, but too nice for the family life. There is always the monastery.” And so he go!’

  He pointed down to the field sprawling beyond the monastery, and here and there in the grass browning in the sunlight they could see splotches of colour from the wild anemones. A couple of monks in brown habits were walking side by side across the grass.

  ‘They must not talk. They are Trappist,’ said Jean, and again he burst into laughter. ‘’ow you like? I hate the world without talk. The worst of being with the Maquis was when we lie in the ditch and hide and must not talk. Oh, it is a poor world when one must not talk.’

  ‘I think so too,’ agreed Lilias Marvin.

  In the shadow of the trees he told her little scraps of his life, and gradually she was able to piece together the whole canvas. His had been a noble family, one of his ancestors had died on the same guillotine as Marie Antoinette, but through all the difficult times they had managed to keep their hold on the château. Now when the times had become impossible, la maman had the guests. It was an hotel but very expensive. It was not too far away, if they started very early one day, maybe he could show it to her. It was absurd to want to see it, but she did. It sounded very charming.

  People liked staying with a Comtesse in a château, he told her, and mothers of bourgeois English girls brought them out, and stole the notepaper to write home
and so give the neighbours a good impression. He giggled a lot about them, for undoubtedly Jean was a great giggler. He had been educated in Paris, at a school where only the best people went. In France they worked boys hard, harder than in England, he believed, demanding a very high standard of education from them. Sport was not so important, which was a great pity really, because he happened to have been born with a sporting mind.

  He had served in the army, as did all young men, and after that there had been an enjoyable time between the wars. He had coquetted in Paris, and how he had taken to it! But he had not married as his mother had urged, because he did not feel that the time was ripe for marriage. Apparently she had soundly upbraided him.

  ‘When shall I see the grandchildren with you unwed and your brother in a monastery?’ she had insisted.

  The war had come and for him there had been the great adventure. He hated the Boches with a detestation that had been born in him, for there is no Frenchman who does not loathe them. He had lived like an animal for a year, in the forests relying on the peasants to help him when they could, and never knowing when he would ask help and be betrayed. He had either fed magnificently or been deathly hungry. There had been times when he had eaten the roots and berries, and even the grass itself. But then who was there who did not suffer in that war? Who? At the same time it had been exciting and enthralling. Perhaps men find war the greatest game there is, and Jean had been born with adventure in his blood.

  Afterwards he had come down to the Côte d’Azur because he liked the climate and thought that he had earned a little relaxation. He taught car-driving well; he had only had to buy himself a dust coat and a cap and he was equipped.

  On the Riviera the rich ladies ‒ ‘Comme vous même,’ he cheerfully announced ‒ paid more than in other places. He had a little flat, and occasionally he went along to the casino to enjoy an evening out.

  ‘In England they say “Lucky at cards (and that also is the roulette), not so lucky in love”,’ he giggled.