Thalia

by Frances Faviell

  Frances Faviell

  Thalia

  ‘You are a virgin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How dull! What’s the use of being a woman if you’re a virgin?’

  ‘One has to begin sometime,’ I agreed.

  RECOVERING from an illness, Rachel, an 18-year-old art student at the Slade in London, is advised to spend a year in a warm climate. She agrees to go to France to act as companion to Cynthia, a delicate, temperamental woman whose husband is in India, and her two children, troubled 15-year-old Thalia and spoiled young Claude. Thalia quickly becomes devoted to Rachel, but their friendship is strained by Rachel’s romance with the son of a well-to-do Breton family.

  Though it’s the awkward, emotional Thalia who lends the novel its title, it’s Rachel on whom the novel centers, poignantly telling the tale of her sad first love, her dawning awareness of the vagaries and dishonesties of social life, and the tragedy she is powerless to prevent.

  Set in Brittany in the mid-1930s, with an excursion to the cafés and artists’ studios of Montparnasse, Thalia is a dramatic and poignant tale by the author of A Chelsea Concerto. It includes an afterword by the author’s son John Parker, and additional supplementary material.

  ‘Mrs. Faviell … writes with grace and sensibility; this young, new world of first experiences is brought back and set down with a fresh touch, and, while shadowed by tragedy, it is eminently pleasant to follow.’ Kirkus Reviews

  ‘She writes with a sharpness of outline which would not shame Simenon.’ J.W. LAMBERT, Sunday Times

  FM7

  FOR

  SIR ERNEST ROCK CARLING

  But when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears,

  How wan her cheeks are, what heavy tears.

  from Thalia, THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page/About the Book

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘The Uninvited Guest’

  Afterword by John Parker

  About the Author

  Furrowed Middlebrow Titles

  The Fledgeling – Title Page

  The Fledgeling – Chapter I

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Dinard of Thalia is the Dinard of almost twenty years ago when the little seaside town had a flourishing colony of Anglo-American residents. Although I have used the names of the streets and local places which to-day are almost unchanged, the names and characters in this novel are fictitious, and do not refer to any living persons.

  PART I

  I

  WHEN the car was approaching the docks I looked at my aunt and it seemed to me that this—a profile—was all we ever knew of anyone. We can never know all the aspects but merely those which are shown to us. Was she as lonely as I was? She appeared suddenly such a small person and one at whom I had never really looked.

  Taking a packet from her handbag she said crisply, ‘This is for emergencies. You never know in a foreign country. I remember being in France when we went off the Gold Standard. It was chaotic! Now where are you going to keep this? You lose everything.’ Her voice and manner were matter-of-fact, devoid of any feeling, but to my own astonishment I was flooded with some violent emotion and couldn’t speak.

  She watched me struggling with tears. ‘There are five-pound notes in this packet, Rachel. Here’s the address of my London bank. They’ll always know where I am. You can write to me at Cairo, Alexandria, and Luxor. A letter to Port Said should reach me on the journey.’

  I took the packet reluctantly. My aunt never gave anything graciously. Perhaps that was why I found it difficult to feel gratitude. ‘You’re too good to me. I don’t deserve it.’ She looked surprised and gratified. ‘No, I don’t think you do. But it would be a poor world if we only got what we deserved.’

  I said I was sorry—sorry about everything.

  ‘If you were really sorry you’d have apologized and come with us to Egypt.’

  Her acid tone dried my tears, scorching them as if with a hot wind. Why couldn’t she see that it was possible to be sorry without the formality of expressing it all in speech? That there were degrees in remorse I had already learned.

  I watched her figure recede as the boat drew away from the quay. She didn’t look back once, and for one split second the strangest feeling of sudden terror overwhelmed me; then I thrust it away, and went up on to the top deck where I sat up in the bows on a coil of rope. The boat was the St. Briac. It was a fine clear night and sheltered here from the wind. A large party of hikers were discussing plans. The craze for walking about with a rucksack, clad in the strangest if most utilitarian of garments, had spread from Germany. The men in this party wore shorts—the girls shorts or slacks. A number of large young women were leaning over the rails, their rear views presenting a solid challenge. I reflected that whereas nude their buttocks could have been beautiful, compressed thus into tight material they were hideous.

  A tall, attractive man who had been looking at me for some time suddenly threw away his cigarette and came over to me. ‘Mind if I sit down there too? Those enthusiasts are making me footsore with their indefatigable journeys on their maps.’

  I said I didn’t mind.

  ‘You’re alone, aren’t you?’ he went on. ‘I saw you being seen off.’

  It was as light as day but with the milky elusiveness of moonlight. I saw that his hair, which I had thought dark, was red, and that the backs of his hands were covered with fine red hairs. I thought it a pity—I don’t like red-haired men.

  ‘Cigarette?’

  I said I didn’t smoke. After the usual exchange of platitudes on the night and the stars he asked me bluntly where I was going. He was clever at putting me quickly at ease, and I began telling him of the recent illness which had interrupted my art training at the Slade and which necessitated my being out of London for the forthcoming winter.

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought Brittany would be exactly the place for you,’ he said, when I told him I was to spend the winter in Dinard. ‘You should be going with the lady who saw you off. I heard her talking to you about Egypt.’

  And then I began telling him about the disastrous portrait of our vicar, the Reverend Cookson-Cander. I told him how I hadn’t wanted to do it but that my aunt had insisted—of how I disliked the pompous little man—and of how the painting in spite of my efforts grew with each sitting more and more like a disagreeable egg. I could still feel the smart of the furious criticism which had been hurled at me by the admiring ladies of the ‘Friends of the Past’ circle who had commissioned the portrait from me.

  I could still hear my aunt’s ‘It’s outrageous!’ when I had reluctantly pulled the coverings off the canvas and displayed it in the scented luxury of her crowded drawing-room.

  My companion was much amused at my description of my sitter.

  ‘I gather that you didn’t like him?’ he said laughing.

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘But he’s a wonderful lecturer. I enjoyed his lectures on the Valley of the Nile because we did Egyptian Art at the Slade last winter. He was very enthusiastic about the Amarna period and the Amarna theory—the “Living
in Truth”—but when I embodied those ideals in my portrait of him—he just couldn’t accept it.’

  ‘“Living in Truth”!’ exclaimed my fellow traveller, looking down at me as I huddled into my coat collar. ‘How young you are if you can believe in such things. God, I remember having the same impossible ideas once.’

  ‘Akhenaten didn’t think them impossible!’ I retorted. ‘He achieved a tremendous amount. He built the Town of the Horizon.’

  ‘And lost it all through his intolerance. Don’t forget that!’

  ‘I like his ideals,’ I insisted. ‘And I intend to try to follow them.’

  ‘Akhenaten was himself deformed. You’ll become one of those wretched salt-of-the-earth women who tell everyone their faults from a distorted idea of truth.’

  I was angry and pulled away my hand which he had been lightly holding.

  Go on. Tell me some more,’ he said teasingly.

  ‘More what?’ I was offended.

  ‘Why are you going to Dinard? Is your aunt a follower of the “Living in Truth”?’

  ‘No, she isn’t,’ I said, thinking of her anger over my explanation of the failure of the portrait, and of her ultimatum to me. ‘Do another portrait—a conventional one—if you want to join the party to the Nile Valley.’ I had refused.

  ‘You live with your aunt?’

  ‘She gives me a home while I’m at the Slade.’

  ‘But you still haven’t told me why you’re going to Dinard.’

  ‘My aunt wouldn’t take me with her to Egypt unless I apologized to the vicar and did another portrait so I’m going to a family in Dinard.’

  ‘An English family or a French one?’

  ‘English.’

  ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’

  ‘I hate having to interrupt my studies. I want to be a painter. It takes years. I’m not experienced enough to accept portrait commissions. I should never have accepted the one of the vicar—but my aunt insisted.’

  ‘You’re going to young people?’

  ‘I’m going as companion to the daughter of a friend of my aunt’s. I’ve only met her once at a club in London.’

  ‘You’re very courageous,’ he said, taking my hand again. ‘Suppose you don’t get on with them?’

  ‘I shall run away.’

  ‘But your aunt’s going to Egypt.’

  ‘I shall go to my father in Devonshire.’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  I told him how disappointed I had been in Father. How he hadn’t understood any more than my aunt had. He said I had been silly to tell the vicar that I had painted him as I saw him—like a pompous egg. He had urged me to apologize. My father, in order to indulge his love of fishing, lived on the wilds of Dartmoor. Fish and their elusive habits were far more real to him than people.

  ‘So this family you’re going to are really strangers to you?’

  ‘My aunt knows them quite well,’ I said shortly. I was remembering the woman to whom I was now going as I had seen her in the ladies’ annexe of a famous military club in London. The memory was not reassuring. Superbly dressed in tweeds, her hands busy with the tea cups, her eyes had been at once watchful, aware and appraising as I answered her many questions.

  There had been no mirror in the falsely cosy drawing-room but I had been as aware of my badly hung skirt, my untidy hair and unsuitable borrowed hat as if I could see my own reflection in her beautiful guarded eyes. I was being appraised and weighed as a possible companion for her young daughter Thalia.

  ‘Thalia’s a difficult girl,’ she had said doubtfully. ‘And you look terribly young.’

  ‘Thalia . . . Thalia. . . . What a lovely, lovely name!’ I had rolled it on my tongue. She had said indifferently that the choice had been her husband’s, not hers.

  Thalia was fifteen—three years younger than I. There was a little boy aged six and a half. When his mother mentioned him her face had come alive and into her cold, clipped voice there had come a sudden warmth and colour.

  When I had asked my aunt about this friend Mrs. Pemberton all she had said was, ‘Her father was a very famous general. She’s been brought up in the tradition of a great military family. She’s a woman who would never fail in her duty—something you’d do well to emulate, Rachel.’

  I was suddenly embarrassed at talking so freely to a stranger. My aunt had warned me not to talk to foreigners. Would she have included Irishmen in this category? On whom did she think I should use the French and German I had learned in the expensive finishing school she’d sent me to in Switzerland?

  The stewardess coming up looking for me prevented any further talk. She was determined on doing her duty by me. I said good night.

  ‘I know that gentleman. He’s often on the boat. He lives in Dinard. You’ll see plenty of him. He’s Captain the Hon. Terence Mourne,’ she said as she hustled me below.

  ‘The Hon. Terence Mourne.’ I liked the name.

  ‘He’s a good-looking man. I’ll grant you that. And he’s kept his figure. But he’s old enough to be your father. He’ll risk lumbago to sit up all night with a young thing. Your aunt didn’t tip me for nothing. You’d best get to bed, Miss.’

  I was somewhat abashed at her information. I had thought he had found me intelligent. If it was merely youth which attracted him I couldn’t claim credit for that.

  ‘I’d like some brandy, please,’ I said.

  ‘You’re not ill, are you?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘It’s as calm as a mill pond.’

  My aunt never allowed me to drink spirits. It always fell to me to offer brandy and liqueurs to guests after Janet the parlourmaid had withdrawn. I was already an expert at savouring their perfume without having sampled their flavour.

  ‘What kind will you have?’

  ‘Courvoisier’—I asked her to have one with me.

  She departed, amused, to get them.

  Before I climbed into my bunk I untied the flat parcel my aunt had thrust into my hands just as she was leaving. It proved to be a sampler which I had admired in an antique shop we’d visited in Southampton. Worked in fine cross-stitch bordered with a faded design of flowers and animals were these words:

  How pleasant it is at the end of the day

  No folly to have to repent.

  To reflect on the past and be able to say,

  This day has been properly spent.

  Elizabeth Jane Walker,

  aged 8 years and 3 months.

  The date was 1782.

  As I sipped the Courvoisier I did some reflecting. Had she really wished to give me pleasure by giving me the sampler? Or had she intended it to serve a double purpose? Thinking again of the appalling scene over that disastrous portrait it seemed that the latter was the more likely.

  We were already in the bay of St. Malo when I woke on the Sunday morning. Through the porthole the great ramparts of the walled city of the old corsairs rose out of the mist like some lovely and impossible mirage. An elusive quality in the light—a cobwebby shimmering veil—made it appear to be suspended in the vastness of the sea and sky like a fairy city. I had never seen anything so beautiful.

  When I went on deck the St. Briac lay beside the quay, which was crowded with people waiting for the arrival of the boat. The babel of excitement between those on the quay and those waiting to disembark, their interchange of chaff and greetings in both French and English, fascinated me. I had hitherto only passed through France on my way to school in Switzerland. Now I was actually going to live in it.

  Terence Mourne, who was standing near me, inquired after my night’s rest, and whether I was to be met. He looked fresh and alert in spite of his lazy manner. I was searching the crowd on the quay for Mrs. Pemberton. Suddenly I saw her waving to me. She was standing a little apart from the crowd with a tall man, a little boy and a tall girl.

  ‘They’ve come to meet me. Look!’ I cried, waving back.

  He gave a start of surprise, and muttered something which sounded like ‘impossible’. ‘Is
that the family to whom you are going?’ he asked harshly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does your aunt know Cynthia Pemberton well?’

  ‘You know them?’ I said, surprised. I hadn’t mentioned the name Pemberton to him.

  ‘Does your aunt know Cynthia well?’ he repeated.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I was nettled at his insistence.

  ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Oh, damn!’ and then apologized.

  ‘You know them then?’

  He didn’t answer and from his sudden peculiar change of attitude I didn’t like to pursue the question. A closed, watchful look had taken the place of the former nonchalant one on his face. I was intrigued—but at the same time apprehensive. What was this? What was the matter? He had been so attentive and anxious to see that I was being safely met, and now when he knew by whom he had completely changed. I was upset at his strangeness.

  We were preparing to disembark, crowded together waiting for the gangway to go down. He was smoking rapidly—one cigarette after another—and I saw that one of his long, sensitive hands was shaking a little.

  ‘How long have the Pembertons been here?’ he asked.

  ‘Only a week.’

  ‘Which villa have they taken?’

  I told him the name of the villa.

  ‘We’ll be meeting again. Dinard society is very limited—as you’ll discover—and you may need a friend.’

  He put so much emphasis on this last remark that I was very uneasy. What did he mean? I thanked him perfunctorily, resenting his desire to detract from my pleasure in the first exciting impressions of the place. What was he trying to do? To put me off the family or the place?

  I turned resolutely away. It was exciting. Wonderfully alive and different with the grey forbidding ramparts with their towers and spires, the masts of the idle fishing boats, the funnels of the ships and vedettes and small steamers, the gulls swooping and screaming above the shouting porters. The swarthy fishermen standing about with their wives in their Sunday clothes had a dignity which was enchanting; and above all the light in the sky—something which was to delight me during my whole stay here.