by Ursula Bloom
‘It is a pity.’ explained the garage hand, ‘but once I can turn him this way up it will be beautiful. He is not hurt.’
‘He’ll ruin my car’ protested Lilias Marvin.
‘He will be all right,’ said Jean and got out to give him a hand. They stopped a lorry which came round the corner, and two stout lorry drivers helped. Lilias could only watch. ‘Really France is awful,’ she thought, ‘they all drive too fast, how any of them are alive I can’t think.’
When he returned she implored Jean to drive her back slowly.
Déjeuner was in progress when she returned. Mrs. Goodway was installed. By now she had heard all about Lilias and was only agog to know more of her, expressing considerable disappointment when Lilias had déjeuner in her own suite. There was a letter from Francis. He was deeply sorry, and desired only to see her; would she permit him an interview, for her note had seemed very terse? He could not bear terseness. Born warm-hearted, he found terseness too utterly utter. Please, would she ring him up? She did not want to hurt him, so in a moment of foolishness she did ring him up. Unfortunately he was in.
‘How wonderful to hear your voice! You know you have the loveliest voice,’ he urged, ‘please can I come and see you?’
‘You behaved very badly.’
‘I am sorry; I had had no food. Sometimes I feel so ill that I cannot take my food, then hunger turns me faint, I take a drink to see me through, and then I pay for it. It is insupportable, but what would you?’
‘Why don’t you fancy any food?’
‘Nausea, my dear, the rake’s curse! Just nausea …’
‘Oh!’ said Lilias, floored.
‘If I could see you for a moment?’
‘Yes, but will you have taken something to get you over your nausea?’
‘Oh no, no, never again!’
‘Then I will have nothing prepared for you, because I don’t want to tempt you.’ The devil in her had prompted that remark, and for the flicker of a second there was silence from the other end of the line, then Francis said, ‘How wise! Nothing prepared.’
‘Tonight?’ she asked.
‘It could not be soon enough for me. Hewlitt isn’t there?’
‘I shall tell him you are coming.’
There was another silence, then rather piteously, ‘Oh, my dear, don’t let him say cruel things about me! The world is so cruel, it condemns too violently. It is soul-eating. I ought to know. My soul has been eaten time and time again.’
‘Oh dear!’ said Lilias, because she could think of nothing else to say. ‘Six tonight?’
She rang off, still a little shattered. Perhaps she was rather a fool. She should have told him haughtily that she was through with the friendship, and thought him dreadful anyway, but being a school marm had taught her that though authoritative with little girls, she simply could not stand up to anybody else. People alarmed her. Maybe it was something from which in time she would recover, but she had not yet arrived at that agreeable stage. She had got to establish herself first in her new niche in life.
Tea was on the balcony, and Maxwell came in with a few questions about the running of the hotel. He was pleasantly reliable. After all, there is none quite so reliable as the Englishman; you did not see him going about in handsome linen trousers with a gleaming bare chest, but he wore khaki shorts, for he had never quite escaped from the army routine. He sat down with the English papers, and had brought with him the plans for the new swimming bath. It seemed far easier to get things done quickly in France than it had ever been in England. When they had finished talking business, he mentioned her new car, admiring it.
‘You’re lucky, you know,’ he said.
‘I do know. I’m happy for the first time in my life; I know that too. Until this happened I never realised how utterly miserable I was. Down-trodden, wretched in those dreadful digs, with no future, only the misery of going on that way until I died.’
‘Now everything is possible.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
He grinned at her. ‘Don’t get yourself involved with too many men,’ he warned her. ‘It’s very easy out here, and one has to be careful. And don’t forget that there’s always me!’
‘You’re a dear.’
He said, ‘The happy ending would be that they lived happily ever after, wouldn’t it?’ and then ‘Would the thought make you very unhappy, my dear?’ he asked.
‘I just don’t know what to say.’
‘You must realise that you are very very attractive. Anyone would want to marry you.’
‘I had given up all thoughts of marriage.’
‘Why?’
‘I was an old maid.’
‘You will never die one. Perhaps France has made you a new woman; anyway, I’m very proud of the girl to whom I have acted as fairy godfather.’
‘It was all owing to you.’
‘It was all great fun.’ He grinned again. He would be the best husband in the world. He was roast beef and ginger pudding. He only joined good clubs, and only knew the best people. He was King’s Regulations and Debrett, and undoubtedly the man she ought to marry, for they would live happily here ever after.
‘You’re so nice,’ she said.
‘We could be married very quietly one day, go over to Africa for a honeymoon if you like, or Naples, or anywhere you choose.’
‘I want time,’ she said.
‘If I give you time, some not so pukka sahib will run off with you.’ He kissed her then, and it seemed that Lilias Marvin passed into a new stage of her career.
He had slipped his big signet ring on to her finger.
‘I haven’t made up my mind about it, really I haven’t,’ she protested, but it was the moment that she had waited for all her life. She did not know what to say. She cried a little, for at heart she was simple. He was so charming, and she had found a man’s shoulder is the loveliest bastion on which to weep, even if she was afraid that she would make his neck wet!
After he had gone, Lilias wondered if she was in love. Was it the fairy trimming to the tree of life that novelists and artists and all those silly poets had got up between them? She looked at the gold ring with the peregrine falcon on it, carved into the gold, and under it the family motto Nil Desperandum. ‘Never despair’ applied to her too. Once she had slogged with those nasty little swots, or ‒ even worse ‒ those indifferent little girls who did not want to learn a single thing. Never despair, and now she had a man in her life. She had marked herself old maid, and she would not be an old maid. ‘Life begins at forty,’ she told herself, and at that very moment Francis Lorimer was announced.
He came into the room looking elegant in another of those fine linen suits, in a shade of off-white that had something blushingly pink about it. His pop eyes went goggling, his hair brushed back.
‘Darling, I am so deeply sorry. How good of you to see me after all I have done! How delightful to be here with these lovely flowers, this glorious atmosphere, and you! That is what matters most … you!’
He was wonderfully trained in the art of sweeping any woman off her feet. She said, ‘Perhaps you’d like some tea?’ For a second his face fell, and realising that, she added, ‘I hardly like to offer you a drink.’
‘Of course not! Tea would be wonderful. So English, and out here sometimes one lamentably forgets that one is English.’
‘I’ll order some tea.’
He went round the room smelling the flowers until the maid came. Then he picked the best malmaison and tucked it into his buttonhole; she didn’t know why his manner annoyed her, but it was very humiliating that he should have the gift of making the innocent party feel a criminal. At this moment she was the one who was ashamed; he was completely at his ease. When the tea came he sat down.
‘Lovely English tea. They make it here like no one else does; the French cannot make tea. The English are worthy, but they cannot make coffee.’
She said, ‘You wanted to see me?’
‘I had to see you. You swe
et creature, you do make things difficult for me, and that is not what I want. Didn’t my orchids mean a thing to you?’
‘They were beautiful. I wrote and said so.’
‘But they were intended to mean something. The marrons also. Perhaps you don’t eat marrons?’
‘I must say I don’t like them very much, but Maxwell does.’ Instantly she realised that she should not have said that, for the colour stung his pale face, and the pop eyes went lampy with irritation. Could it be that the marrons, invested in a rich future, had gone into the wrong stomach?
‘I bought them for you, darling.’
‘Yes, but if I don’t like them?’
‘Don’t be beastly,’ he answered in a very hurt tone. ‘I came here with the hope that you’d be sweet. I had a little plan. Nothing much, it is true, but I hoped pleasant.’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you going on staying here?’
‘I’ve bought the place.’
‘I know, but surely sometimes you want a change? I was thinking of Naples. It’s a city of pearl. They say “See Naples and die”, and I would suggest that you see Naples and live.’
‘But I’m probably going to Naples with somebody else.’
Complete silence came; he looked at her; it seemed that the pop eyes were a couple of those dreadful permanent tin wreaths veiled in convex glass, of which cheap churchyards boast so many. The eyes wandered to her hand and saw Maxwell’s ring which she had forgotten to remove. When he could speak, he said, ‘You don’t mean that …?’
‘Don’t let’s talk about it. You came here only because you wanted to apologise in person …’
‘I came here because I intended to ask you to marry me.’
‘What?’
‘I came to ask you to marry me.’
She didn’t believe it. Somehow or other she was growing right away from the little dears walking in twos. They had disappeared over the horizon of her life. Sophistication was in her veins.
‘If I had never won that fortune, would you have wanted to marry me?’ she enquired.
‘My dear, one cannot marry without money. I’d be a fool to suggest it. Everybody knows that is true. But at the same time, if you had been the usual type of woman who wins money I should not have wanted to marry you. That also is true. You are exceptional. You know that?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Lilias firmly. ‘I’m dead ordinary, and I’m very sorry that I ever let you come and see me.’
He burst into tears again. ‘I’m shattered,’ he declared. Really, he was the most impossible man. With one finger on the bell push, she remonstrated with him.
‘Why do you have to do this? Why can’t you behave yourself? You really do behave so oddly.’
‘I dreamt of Naples with you; the blue bay, Pompeii and the statues.’
‘I’ve heard funny things about those statues,’ observed Lilias, quite surprised at her own change of front. Up to date she had been trained never to refer to anything rude, but now she had actually said this!
Before he had recovered from that one, Maxwell appeared. Maxwell had been told by the maid what was going on; now he strode into Lilias’s suite.
‘What’s all this?’ he asked. ‘Oh God, It’s you again!’
‘Everybody is being beastly to me,’ commented Francis. ‘If you turn me out once more, this’ll be where we came in!’
It was exactly where they had come in. Late that night Maxwell drove her out along the high road into the mountains. The trees were very still. They did not talk about the future and themselves, but of matters which were far more encouraging. Her world was suddenly lovely. She really could not understand Francis; he said he was hard-up, but he had money to spend. Maxwell said the Riviera was full of such young fools; they lived on their wits and they lived uncommonly well. Now probably he would give up all thoughts of Lilias, whom he had been prepared to marry rather than let pass her considerable fortune. Now he would undoubtedly turn his attentions elsewhere.
Had they only known it, that very evening he was at the casino with stout Mrs. Goodway, who thought he was delightful. He was in his best suit and bursting with romantic fervour. He was drawing on her exchequer for his bets and losing on every stake he made.
Mrs. Goodway had a nephew at the Foreign Office, holding down just the sort of job Francis would have liked for himself, if he could have stooped to a job. They discussed the details of that career, and present diplomatic crises; and Mrs. Goodway, stimulated by him, confided the official secrets with which she occasionally came in contact, for she was a proper busybody. He laid a cautionary finger to his lips.
‘Ssh! You mustn’t tell me!’ he warned her. ‘Dumb’s the password,’ so she told him more, just to show him that she knew.
Later he would suggest a drive together, and a champagne supper at a restaurant where he got a rake-off. He would go home to bed happy in the knowledge that he had a new client.
Lilias went to her hotel and slept well. Every day here was so much more enjoyable than its predecessor, and so well worth living. She had launched herself into the true delight of living for the moment.
She opened the morning papers and was startled by what she saw there. Somehow or other the Press were suspecting her secret engagement to Maxwell, and here were the headlines, accompanied by photographs of both of them, herself as she now was, Maxwell in uniform taken some years back, cap worn a little sideways, moustache magnificent. Horror came to her as she realised that what Monaco had today, Manchester would have tomorrow. Already the printing presses at home would be telling the Haineses and Miss Halifax and all the little dears of St. Helena’s, that she intended to get married.
A debate with Maxwell did not help. He said that without a doubt it was Francis Lorimer, and just the sort of thing he would do! When he could find the little skunk he would wring his neck! But for the moment the harm was done.
‘What do we do?’ she asked.
‘We deny it,’ he said.
‘But why, when it may be true?’
‘Because one always does deny such things. One cannot let them pass.’
Lilias did not want to interfere, but now the pressmen were gathering in their nosey little groups about the gateway of the hotel. She would never be able to get out this morning in her new car, she realised, and wished that something could be done to stop all this publicity.
‘You must let me do what I think best,’ he said, and taking her hand he patted it. ‘You’re far too nice for this world, my dear; go out for a drive with Jean and leave me to wring Lorimer’s neck, and deal with the Press. This is my affair, and I’ll promise that you will not be made uncomfortable by it.’
So she went.
Jean was charming. They drove into Menton. The sea seemed to be even bluer there, the shops more select, and the roses even redder. It might be very hot, but it was very beautiful. Jean also had seen the announcement. She tried to explain how it had happened, but somehow or other he seemed to know. It did not worry him. Here, he said, people were always getting engaged and breaking it off again, it was one of the habits of the Côte d’Azur. He had wondered if tomorrow she would care to come to the château to see his maman? If they started early ‒ and the south was very beautiful first thing in the morning ‒ it would be a delightful trip.
‘Oh, I’d love it,’ she said, for she would love it enormously.
They sat talking on a terrace, looking down at the transparent blue of the sea. He threw stones into it and they spun across the surface of the water in a most unusual manner. He had learnt that art with the Maquis, for one learnt so much with the Maquis, he said. Gay little sailing boats were skimming on the water, their sails of different colours that caught the sunshine. Here with Jean she could forget the troubles which appeared to be rising in the hotel. She did hope that Maxwell had not wrung Francis’s neck.
When she returned, he hadn’t.
Francis had not even put in an appearance; he never rose until midday, having usually spe
nt the entire night up. Maxwell had sent him a rude letter, and had told him what would happen if ever he put his nose inside the hotel again. The answer had been a beautiful pair of embroidered gloves for Lilias, and a tiny note :‒
My sweet,
Isn’t the world grossly misunderstanding?
So nauseatic!
Francis.
She re-packed the gloves and returned them, but not before she had noted the shop where they had been bought, so that she could get another pair exactly like them. The maid was helpful. The maid apparently had a lot of trouble with her beaux. It seemed peculiar that Lilias could think of herself as having beaux, a dream that she had long dismissed as being altogether outside her life. Yet here she was with them without a doubt.
‘Call me early in the morning,’ she said that night.
She got up whilst the stars were still out. There was a certain delightful freshness about the air, and a new perfume about the flowers; never had the stars looked lovelier than now, when their lights were already beginning to pale against the increasing beauty of the dawn in the sky. Jean was waiting for her with the big car. She had taken the light breakfast that she was now beginning to like. She put on a little pink linen frock with a collar made of muslin gardenias, for suddenly she realised that in all probability his maman would not be like any other chauffeur’s maman, and that her background would be exquisite. When she got into the car she found a basket of fruit on the seat, and a box of superb chocolates. Jean had been born thoughtful; he expressed the opinion that she might feel hungry during the drive, and so he had provided something. The fruit was in a gilt basket with a cellophane hood to it, and through the paper which gave the mirage effect of ice, she could see large luscious grapes, peaches and apricots.
‘That was kind of you, Jean.’
‘I thought you might need refreshment; now I suggest that you sleep a little. Then I go fast, and you will not know.’
She dozed as he had suggested, and when she woke they were travelling through a dense forest. The fir trees came down on either side of the mountains to the verge, and beyond them she could see glittering white points piercing the dazzling sunshine of the sky. Rivulets splashing down in silver cut into the darkness of the roadside.
