Thalia

by Frances Faviell

  ‘You’ll soon get accustomed to my way of dancing,’ said Armand, ‘because we’re going to dance together a great deal.’

  The fact that I had seen Terence Mourne, sitting at a table with a very attractive Frenchwoman, watching my poor progress made me acutely nervous.

  ‘Relax! Let your body relax!’ said Armand. ‘Forget everything except the dance itself. . . .’ But how could I with the cynical, amused eyes of Terence Mourne following me round the room? When we sat down in the interval he strolled slowly over to us. I introduced Armand.

  ‘May I have the next dance with Rachel?’ he said suavely. ‘Perhaps you would allow me to introduce you to my friend Madame Delcros, she’s a beautiful dancer. . . .’

  Armand didn’t seem enthusiastic but he gave in with a charming smile and allowed himself to be introduced to Madame Delcros.

  ‘You do better with me than with your blond runner,’ said Terence as we danced to ‘I’ve got you under my skin’. ‘He’s too intense for you. I’m a lazy, nonchalant fellow and better for your impetuous temperament!’

  I was angry—but there was something in what he said. The easy grace with which he held me and piloted me had something to do with our steps matching so perfectly.

  ‘How do you know he is a runner?’ I asked.

  ‘Seen him. Running with his blond hair against the blue sea—very romantic. Watch out, Rachel!’ He laughed down at me with that cruel, foxy look. ‘Does Cynthia know you’re here to-day?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She’s coming here with my party to-night.’

  ‘Don’t I know it! She’s at home putting a yeast pack on her face.’

  ‘Don’t be a cat. It doesn’t become you. You’re more like a small rabbit.’

  ‘And you’re the fox, I suppose?’

  ‘Don’t cast aspersions on my colouring. I loathe it.’

  ‘Then don’t compare me to a rabbit. My teeth don’t stick out and I’m not hairy.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said laughing. ‘I’ve seen you in a bathing suit. Don’t hold yourself so aloof from me. You’ll never dance well like that.’

  I wanted the dance to end. I could see Armand dancing with Madame Delcros and it upset me that I couldn’t do as well as she did.

  ‘Armand,’ I said, when we were trying a tango, ‘I don’t want to dance again with Terence Mourne.’

  ‘And I,’ he said, his arm tightening round me, ‘have no wish to dance with that well-corseted widow.’

  We laughed a lot and after that the tango went better.

  I had to leave early to put Claude to bed as Cynthia needed several hours to dress. Armand took me back in his car but he wouldn’t come in. He was going on to Catherine’s. I wondered a little at the obvious intimacy which existed between Catherine and the Tréfours. I had noticed that the Anglo-American colony kept very much to themselves and mixed very little with the French residents, whereas in Catherine’s house I had not only met Philippe and Armand Tréfours but several delightful Frenchwomen. There was a plaque on the rocks of the cliff walk commemorating a hundred years of British and American residents in Dinard, and it seemed to me extraordinary that they didn’t associate more.

  ‘They do—at the top and bottom levels,’ Armand said. ‘It’s the middle ones—and the colony is mostly composed of them—who don’t mix.’

  ‘Enjoyed your dance?’ asked Cynthia when I got back. She still had a yeast pack on her face and was sitting very still in case it cracked and peeled off before the correct time to remove it.

  ‘Very much,’ I said. ‘Terence Mourne was there.’

  ‘Alone?’ asked Cynthia sharply.

  ‘With Madame Delcros.’

  ‘A Frenchwoman?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Was he dancing with her?’

  ‘Yes. He danced once with me.’

  ‘What was she like, this Madame Delcros?’

  ‘Attractive—Armand called her a well-corseted widow!’

  Cynthia would normally have taken me up on this. Now all she said was: ‘He must have held her pretty closely to know that.’

  ‘Not as closely as Terence does.’

  ‘How did your young French friend dance?’

  ‘He’s good. But I dance better with Terence Mourne. It’s sickening.’

  Cynthia laughed, then, remembering her face, stopped abruptly. ‘Help me get this off, Rachel.’

  I put a towel round her and took the stuff off as she told me. When we’d bathed her face with some lotion which looked like milk she held a mirror anxiously to her.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I said. ‘Why d’you bother to do all this? You don’t need it.’

  ‘Do I look better than Madame Delcros?’

  ‘There’s no comparison,’ I said. ‘She’s just a smart, well-dressed Frenchwoman. She’s not beautiful like you.’

  She was pleased—so pleased that I didn’t add that Terence Mourne, who spoke exquisite French, had obviously been enjoying the witty repartee of his attractive companion. Somehow I doubted if beauty were enough for Terence Mourne.

  ‘Well, how does he dance?’ asked Thalia.

  ‘Very well,’ I said.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Not so well with him. Better with Terence Mourne.’

  ‘You can’t dance with him because you like him. It makes you nervous.’ She was resentful.

  How did she know? She was sitting on the window-sill of the schoolroom. Claude was doing transfers. The table was covered with gaily coloured little stamps which he was transferring with the help of water into a book. ‘Do some of these soldiers for me, Rachel—they just won’t come off whole. All their legs stay behind.’

  I took up a small square of a Guardsman. ‘Where did you get these?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ali gave them to me. He got them in the bazaar. Look! All the Indian regiments as well!’

  ‘Is your father’s here?’

  ‘I spoiled them all. Not one came off properly. I’m going into the Guards. Not an Indian Regiment like father’s.’

  ‘They won’t have you. Nor will any Indian one!’ taunted Thalia.

  ‘Why d’you want to be a soldier?’ I asked him as I began cautiously peeling off the transfer.

  ‘Father’s a soldier. Grandfather was a soldier. Great-grandfather was a soldier,’ said Claude. ‘Oh, Rachel! Goody! Goody! It’s a beauty. Do another. Please.’

  ‘One more, and then bed. Which will you have?’

  ‘Wait a minute. I’ll find a Guardsman. A Grenadier! That’s the regiment I shall join. Here it is!’

  ‘D’you really want to be a soldier?’ I insisted.

  ‘Yes, I do. I want to shoot and mow down the enemy. And all those tribesmen Daddy goes after. Bang! Bang! Down they go!’ He had his toy gun in his hand and was firing at imaginary enemies.

  ‘Silly! Silly little ass!’ said Thalia contemptuously. ‘It’d be you who was mown down. The army’s hateful.’

  ‘Look! Here’s the Grenadier. He’s very smart,’ I cried.

  Claude was enraptured and allowed himself to be carried off to bed clutching the page with the transfers on it.

  When Cynthia was ready to go out and waiting in the salon for Terence to fetch her Marie came in grumbling. There was constant trouble between her and Cynthia, and I was always wretchedly involved as interpreter. ‘Tell Madame that unless I can have my niece to help me I won’t stay. I’m not accustomed to so much work. I’m a cook. Not a bonne à tout faire!’

  ‘Tell her her niece wants too high wages. I cannot afford all that.’

  ‘I’m quite willing to go on helping her with the bedrooms, and I’ll do the children’s tea,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not only that. I want help with the salon and the salle-à-manger and the wash.’

  ‘Tell her I can’t discuss it now. I’m just going out. She must wait until to-morrow.’

  Marie went off grumbling. She was a person who invariably got her own way. She never argued. She just got
what she wanted by sheer will-power. I knew that the niece would be on the doorstep to-morrow morning and Cynthia would have to give in and agree to the wages. Every room now had its crucifix restored. Even Cynthia’s. Marie simply put them back every time they were taken down. She didn’t hang the one in Cynthia’s room over the bed. She considered the bed ‘heathen’. It was an importation from Paris of Madame’s new husband.

  ‘The honeymoon bed!’ she had called it contemptuously. ‘The old carved Breton one her first good man brought her to as a bride wasn’t good enough for this man from Paris. No. He must have this heathenish painted horror.’ She wondered Madame could sleep in it. There was a spare bed up in the attic and she had offered to change it for Cynthia. But Cynthia liked the bed. I think she rather fancied herself under the cupids holding the heart, and in any case, as she said, it was the only modern bed in the villa, and the most comfortable. Marie had brought her own feather mattress. She had arrived sitting on it in the cart drawn by Napoleon. She couldn’t sleep on any other, she told me. Marie put the crucifix in a little alcove at the side of Cynthia’s bed. Cynthia had removed it four times and hidden it each time in a different place, but it was no good—Marie always found it and restored it to the alcove.

  ‘She says she can’t work in a house which isn’t protected from the Devil,’ I told Cynthia. ‘She says the Devil can get in any window and only the crucifix can keep him out.’

  ‘These Bretons are ridiculously superstitious,’ said Cynthia. ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to put up with her.’

  ‘She’s a wonderful cook,’ I urged. ‘And she’s very economical.’

  I knew this would weigh with Cynthia, who was always short of money. Her allowance came monthly to the Jules Boutin bank—but she had always spent it by the third week. And why should she mind the crucifixes? Thalia and I liked them. But I needn’t have worried. Cynthia had given in. There was nothing else to do.

  When she had gone and Claude was asleep, Thalia and I sat talking to Marie and Yves in the kitchen. Yves had come to borrow some money from Marie. She wouldn’t give it him. ‘He only wants to drink. The dirty drunkard!’ she grumbled. ‘I’m not throwing away my money. I have to work hard for it.’

  Yves only laughed. ‘She’ll give it,’ he said. ‘She’s not a bad old hen. A bit stringy now—but what can you expect?’

  ‘Be silent, you wretch!’ cried his sister.

  ‘I was wondering,’ said the old man, ‘if you and Mademoiselle Thalia would care to come for a little ride. Napoleon’s outside.’

  ‘Non! Not unless I accompany you,’ said Marie firmly. ‘Don’t go, Mademoiselle Rachel. He’ll stop at every bistro and boîte and he gets so sozzled that he can’t drive home. If it weren’t for that clever horse who brings him home every Saturday like a sack of potatoes he’d be picked up and put in a cell.’

  ‘I should love to go—perhaps another time,’ I said.

  ‘Do let’s go!’ cried Thalia.

  ‘There’s a Pardon in a fortnight. A special one,’ said Marie. ‘He could drive us all there.’

  ‘But the cooking?’ I asked.

  ‘My niece is arriving to-morrow, she can do it,’ said Marie calmly.

  Thalia and I laughed. We had guessed correctly. Yves coaxed and coaxed and at last Marie went upstairs and came down with an old black leather purse. She drew a hundred francs grudgingly from it: ‘Here, you good-for-nothing idle old wretch!’ she scolded. ‘I’ll never see that back again. It’ll go down the drain.’

  Yves gave her a resounding kiss. ‘You should be grateful to me for this kiss,’ he chuckled. ‘For no other man will give you one. You’re nothing but an old stringy hen cooked in vinegar!’

  ‘Be off with you. Salaud!’ she screamed angrily, thrusting him out of the kitchen door. ‘And don’t show your ugly face in here again unless you bring me back that hundred francs.’

  ‘Ah, but he’s not a bad old thing,’ she said, watching us laughing helplessly. ‘But he’s a man. They’re all good for nothings—and you, Mademoiselle Rachel, meeting that Tréfours boy each day on the plage! Have a care. That’s a wild godless family. The mother’s from Paris.’

  ‘But what’s wrong with Paris?’ I asked her. ‘It’s the capital of France.’

  ‘It’s the capital of wickedness,’ said Marie lugubriously. ‘And although I love my mistress, the Madame who owns this house, I wouldn’t accompany her to that godless city. Brittany is good enough for me—as it was for her first dear husband.’

  ‘But he’s dead. She can’t help her new husband being a Parisian.’

  ‘One husband should be enough for any woman. What’s she going to do in Heaven when they both turn up? Answer me that one.’

  The prospect of this spectacle was so amusing that I drew a picture on the kitchen slate of the Madame with wings standing between two Monsieurs with wings. Both had their arms outstretched towards their wife and she with tears rolling down her plump face was tom by the dilemma of whose wife she now was. Marie and Thalia laughed heartily at this. ‘But it’s not a laughing matter,’ Marie said gloomily. ‘I often pray to the Virgin about it. For she’s a good mistress and how she could be so foolish as to take a second husband I can’t think.’

  ‘You don’t like men?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘They have their uses.’

  ‘Without doubt!’

  ‘But . . . no, Mademoiselle, I don’t like them. They’re all animals. It’s the women who have the souls and the men the bodies.’

  ‘What did she mean about the Tréfours?’ asked Thalia when we were listening to the radio later.

  ‘I don’t know. She’s a man-hater,’ I said.

  ‘But they’re not liked here.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘At school. The girl Thérèse comes in for English lessons twice a week.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘His sister. Armand Tréfours’s sister.’

  ‘Where does she come from?’

  ‘A convent in Dinan.’

  This was news to me and for some reason it excited me. ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Very pretty . . . fair like him,’ said Thalia grudgingly, ‘but she’s stuck up. No one likes her. They say, the other girls, that she’s got no cause to put on airs. They say her father’s a bad man.’

  ‘Don’t listen to such talk.’ I was angry—and again I didn’t know why. ‘You should know better.’

  ‘We have to talk about something,’ said Thalia resentfully, ‘why not the Tréfours? They are the richest people round here, it seems.’

  This was also news to me—and news which I didn’t like. I hadn’t thought of Armand as a rich man’s son. I suppose I should have known from the sports car. Not many boys in this part of France had their own expensive car.

  ‘And Thérèse—d’you like her?’

  ‘No,’ said Thalia. ‘I don’t like her. I shouldn’t like her anyway even if she weren’t stuck up. She’s Armand Tréfours’s sister.’

  ‘I’m going to write to your father to-night,’ I said.

  ‘Tell him Mother has gone dancing with Terence Mourne,’ she said viciously.

  Cynthia had gone in a party. She hadn’t gone dancing with Terence Mourne. ‘Why d’you distort things?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t know Mother,’ said Thalia.

  I was meeting Armand every day now—on the beach in the afternoons, on the wild wooded slopes of La Vicomté and sometimes even slipping out at night to meet him in a little bistro in the nearest square. Cynthia didn’t allow me a key and it was Marie who let me in after these meetings. I would throw a pebble up at her window and she would come padding down in her old grey coat with a shawl thrown over her head. And she would scold and grumble at me, ‘Take care. . . . Take care what you’re doing. Every time you go to him I light a candle to Ste. Thérèse for your safety! Men are all the same. No! they won’t be content until they’ve got what they want—and then they no longer want it.’ Every time s
he let me in she would peer into my face and ask anxiously, ‘Vous êtes encore vierge? I lit a candle for you again. It was very expensive.’ And she would scold and upbraid me soundly, but I would coax her and give her the money for the candles she burned.

  Cynthia did not appear to notice my state of mind. She was immersed in herself, absorbed in some secret worry or trouble connected with her beauty. It was Thalia who intruded and forced herself into the dream in which I now lived. She would not be put off; she begged and persisted and followed us wherever she could. I couldn’t refuse her often for I was after all there because of her. No matter where I was meeting Armand she invariably turned up somewhere in the offing. If he were reading to me—for he shared my love of poetry and was introducing me to his favourite poets—suddenly I would see Thalia’s head bobbing up behind a bush or above a rock. It infuriated Armand. The only time when we could count on being free of her were the early mornings when she was at school or when I could slip out at night and he would be waiting for me down the road in his car.

  I hadn’t stopped to think what was happening to me until the day Marie came into my room when I was getting ready to go out with him. She had dressed for the afternoon in a stiff black dress with a small lace apron. She stood looking at me, her arms akimbo, her shrewd old eyes watchful as I fastened my dress.

  ‘You meet him every day now, hein?’

  I bowed my head. ‘Almost.’

  ‘In the woods above the Vicomté?’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Nothing is hidden in this place. Take care, take care, Mademoiselle Rachel. Youth is so impetuous—always in such a hurry. I must light a candle to Ste. Thérèse for you.’

  I said nothing. I was silent.

  ‘You are in love with him?’