Frontier Passage

by Ann Bridge

  To nod to, Mr. Crumpaun said.

  Ah. Milcom’s eyes took on that look of desperation which really only meant that he was concentrating on something. “You’ve no idea how she’s situated financially?” he asked at last.

  “No. I’m just a guesser,” Mr. Crumpaun averred. “She has all she needs, and lives well, but what her bank-book looks like I haven’t a notion. Most of them haven’t a bean. But they have ways and means. How’s the Condesa’s?”

  James suddenly smiled, a wry smile which made his gloomy dark face fascinating, Rosemary thought.

  “A small competence,” he said.

  “Well, I daresay she’ll find ways and means too,” said Crumpaun.

  Milcom’s smile left his face—his mouth set.

  “Fortunately, she won’t need to,” he said, rather sourly.

  At this moment, Crossman of the Epoch and Carrow of the New York Moon came up together, and with excuses to the others, began to talk to Mr. Crumpaun. Carrow was a thin sandy irritable American, who presently produced an envelope full of photographs, which he showed with a certain pride to Mr. Crumpaun. “Look at these—pretty good detail, eh?”

  Mr. Crumpaun put on his glasses and studied them.

  “Fine,” he said. “You take these?”

  “Nope—that photographer at the shop in the Rue Gambetta let me have them. Wish I had the guy’s camera that took them.”

  “Whereabouts were they taken?”

  “He swears they’re some place up on the frontier—asked me a pretty long price for them, too. Anyway I shall say they’re the frontier—this spy racket will make quite a story, especially with pictures.”

  Mr. Crumpaun shuffled the photographs together, and turning to Rosemary, handed them casually to her.

  “Hey, Sweetheart, look at these. Can your old man better that?”

  This form of address drew Milcom’s attention to the young girl. Up to now he had regarded her merely as an appanage of Mrs. Jones, and as he disliked women of the Jones type, he had barely looked at either of them. Now he noticed the intelligent glance, the big generous mouth and the amusing nose, and found them a pleasant sight—and he watched the girl for a moment as she bent her curled head over the photographs. He saw her start a little, look puzzled, turn back to a picture a second time, compare one with another, examining them with a most unnecessary concentration—and then he saw a quick flush, as of anger or embarrassment, stain the clear transparent brown of her skin. This aroused his curiosity, and when she had finished looking at them, and put the pile together, he stretched out his hand for it, saying “May I see?”

  She looked up at him, startled, and the colour again flew into her face.

  “Of course,” she said, handing the packet to him—and her mouth took a funny little determined set.

  “Good, eh?” said Mr. Crumpaun—he had been talking to Crossman, and had not noticed her.

  “Very,” she said. “Every bit as good as Daddy’s.”

  James meanwhile glanced at the photographs. There was nothing in them to embarrass the most innocent jeune fille—they were a series of mountain landscapes, and in particular showed two charming little valleys or combes, dotted with small trees, each with its shadow standing obediently at its side, and a col on a ridge with some spectacular groups of rocks. That was all, so far as the casual observer could see—but James, like most journalists, knew something about photographic processes, and the clearness of distant detail in one or two of the views down the combes told him that they had been taken with an infra-red lens. He glanced at the girl again. Why had she flushed like that? And his mind hit on the truth—those pictures were familiar to her.

  He handed them back to Crumpaun. “Does your father photograph much?” he asked her civilly.

  “Yes, he’s rather fond of it,” the girl answered, a little stiffly.

  “Does he go in for it thoroughly—infra-red lenses and all that?” he asked, still in a tone of casual politeness.

  “Oh yes—he has all sorts of gadgets,” said Rosemary, her manner losing something of its stiffness. “He takes some lovely things.”

  Carrow meanwhile was stuffing the photographs back into an envelope with a big blue moon in one corner—M. Durand’s trademark. Rosemary watched him with a baleful gleam in her eye. What business had he to go buying her father’s pictures? But for some reason she decided to say nothing.

  At that moment the Duquesa de las Illas and the Condesa de Verdura appeared, stepping onto the pavement between the bay-trees, two black and distinguished figures; they paused, looking round for a place—the sunny stretch of tables was now full of people. Milcom sprang up so quickly that he overturned his chair. “Yes, bring them here,” said Mr. Crumpaun genially, replying to the action, for he had said no word. James nodded, went over, and piloted the two women to the table—chairs were reshuffled, and they sat down, the Duquesa beside Mr. Crumpaun, the Condesa between Rosemary and Milcom. Carrow had moved off at their advent; Crossman remained, rightly guessing that he would now get a free drink; he sat beside Mrs. Jones. Crumpaun made the introductions, casually and easily; Milcom noticed that the little English girl changed colour as she shook hands with the Spanish women. For Rosemary it was, indeed, another of those improbable and wonderful moments with which her days, now, seemed to be crowded—to meet and shake hands with the two refugees, one of them the most famous of Spanish beauties, both of them the wives of Grandes de España. The old phrase, “a Spanish grandee,” had at last taken on for her its real and peculiar meaning; she had already heard the Spanish version often enough for that. “A Greatness of Spain”—lovely words, splendidly evocative of the past; miraculous that she, Rosemary Oldhead, should be sitting at a table with two of their female counterparts. While the conversation got jerkily under weigh she watched them; in their deep black dresses, with their elaborate heads, they looked, she thought, like two funeral horses set down in a field of parti-coloured cows, among the rest of the group—the three journalists, Mrs. Jones, and herself. But Rosemary was soon confronted by one of her perpetual miseries at St.-Jean-de-Luz—the “horas españolas.” In that little community, so near the frontier, so full of Spanish refugees and journalists who ran in and out of Spain, the Spanish hour ruled—lunch at 2 or 2.30, dinner at any hour from nine till half-past ten. Mr. Oldhead however stuck firmly to his English practices—lunch at 1.15, dinner at 7.30. So the fascinating time of drinks and gossip before meals was always, for Rosemary, cut short almost before it had begun. She glanced at her watch, saw that it was six minutes: past one, and resolutely rose. There were protests—“Now, the Sweetheart, don’t tell me you’re going to leave us?”—“Do you have to go so soon?” from the Condesa—“Why, it’s a shame,” from Mrs. Jones. But Rosemary stuck to it. “Well, come and have tea with me—at the Moderne. Half after four,” Mrs. Jones called after her, as she made her good-byes and went.

  Walking back along the narrow street to the Grande Bretagne, meeting the draughty gusts of soft salt air as she neared the little Casino and the sea, Rosemary thought about the photographs, and what she should tell her father. It wasn’t Carrow’s fault, she decided, with belated justice; it was his job to buy whatever he could get for his paper. But it was brazen of M. Durand to sell them, though all French shop-keepers seemed to be pretty brazen—the lies they told in the stoppage about her stockings!—madly cheap as the ladder-mending was here. No, but it was such an odd sort of brazenness, to show and sell prints of other customers’ pictures; there was something funny about it. She would like to find out more; she would ask Mr. Crumpaun, or that fascinating Milcom person, if she met him again. And till she knew more, she wouldn’t say anything to Daddy, or he would kick up a shindy with Durand, and she would learn nothing at all. She went in to lunch.

  Tea with Mrs. Jones at the Moderne was rather a dull affair, and brief; Mrs. Jones had an appointment at 5.15 with the coiffeur.

  “Oh, where?” To Rosemary, as to all the modern female young, hairdressers were
a matter of the utmost importance.

  “Well, Jacques, actually—but I shouldn’t recommend you to go there,” Mrs. Jones said.

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Well—he’s a terribly good coiffeur, but it’s rather a peculiar place,” Mrs. Jones said, gathering up her bag and gloves. “They say”—she lowered her voice—“that it’s a dope den as well as a shop.”

  “But what frightful fun!” Rosemary was enchanted.” “Oh, couldn’t I come with you, and see it?”

  Mrs. Jones was amused at her enthusiasm.

  “All right—come along and talk to me; I’m always deathly bored at the coiffeurs. We’ll see who we see. But don’t go there alone, whatever you do. He costs the earth, too,” she added inconsequently.

  Rosemary was not surprised, when they reached M. Jacques’ establishment, that a shampoo and set there should “cost the earth,” for it was the most expensive-looking hairdressers she had ever seen. It was all in pearl-grey, with touches of black; black tables with flowers on them standing on the deep pearl-grey carpet, black satin cushions on the grey velvet chairs, black mouldings round the panels on the pearl-grey walls. Mrs. Jones was ushered into a small pearl-grey shrine, half-draped by black curtains, on the ground floor; Rosemary sat just outside, in one of the grey velvet arm-chairs, and looked about her. The windows were screened to elbow height by grey ninon curtains, so that from within, the disembodied heads and shoulders of the passers-by on the pavement were visible; among these, as she idly watched them, appeared two that she knew—the Condesa’s and James Milcom’s. They paused—she saw Milcom’s right hand move to his breast pocket; then the Condesa came in alone. At the far end of the shop, where the stairs ascended to the upper floor, was a counter with cosmetics, perfumes, and toilet appliances, and conspicuous among them, a pale-pink block of the products of Elizabeth Arden. The Condesa aroused Rosemary’s deep envy by proceeding to select a complete outfit of Arden creams, powders, lipsticks, and toilet-waters—any young girl’s dream! Then she went on to the perfumes, causing first one and then another to be sprayed onto squares of tissue—she would not have them on her hands or dress—and sniffing them delicately with her high gothic nose, smiling and discussing them with the girl who served her. At length she chose two of Worth’s, Je Reviens and another. All this time Milcom, Rosemary observed, was still hanging about outside the shop. The Condesa paid for her purchases at the discreet cash-desk by the door with two thousand-franc notes, put the change in her purse, and went out and joined him. Through the glass above the grey curtains Rosemary, unable to hear any words, saw their meeting—a brief questioning remark on his side—it might have been “Got all you wanted?” and on hers, as she replied, an expression as of one who thanks, and thanks warmly. Whatever it was, he made a gesture of brushing it off—but with a curious gentleness, unlike his usual dour expression. It all passed in a few seconds, before they disappeared together down the street; but to Rosemary, watching them with her usual acute intentness, the meaning of the little scene was clear—he had given her those two billets de mille, and she was thanking him for them. How nice of him, she thought, warming to him.

  By this time, Mrs. Jones’s platinum locks had been washed and were being coiled and arranged all over her head by a glossy-haired man—she demanded loudly of Rosemary what was going on, and whether she had seen “anyone amusing.” Some odd instinct made the young girl suppress all mention of Milcom and the Condesa; but a few minutes later she was able to report, in an undertone, that the Duquesa had just come downstairs and left the shop.

  “Ah—had a set, I suppose,” Mrs. Jones commented.

  “She didn’t look as if she’d had a set—she looked just the same as this morning,” Rosemary observed. “And she didn’t pay, either,” she added after a moment—“she just walked out.”

  “Perhaps she was seeing someone—people do, here,” Mrs. Jones remarked, significantly. But she wouldn’t answer any of Rosemary’s questions as to why people should see one another at the hairdressers; it occurred to her, belatedly, that it was not her place to explain to a young girl that M. Jacques’ establishment also ran to “cabinets particuliers” upstairs. It would not have surprised Mrs. Jones to learn that the Duquesa had been keeping an assignation—she looked just the type, the American thought.

  Presently Mrs. Jones’s head was finished, and she was set under the drum—pearl-grey, like all the rest of the shop—to dry. She asked Rosemary to bring her a Vogue, and the girl went over to the black table on which the papers lay. This table was just opposite the foot of the stairs, and as she hunted for a Vogue, she saw the academic Spaniard standing on the half-landing in conversation with M. Jacques, the patron, whom Mrs. Jones had pointed out to her when they arrived. She was near enough to hear their conversation—they were speaking in French. “Then you will obtain for me four examples of each, in this size,” the Parrot said, pointing to a photograph which M. Jacques held in his hand—“the detail in that size will be sufficiently clear.” M. Jacques bowed his acquiescence, and the Parrot came slowly downstairs, buttoning his pepper-and-salt overcoat. M. Jacques followed him, and hastened respectfully to open the street door, putting down a small packet of post-card-sized photographs on the table by Rosemary as he did so. But as he bowed the Spaniard out, a gust of sea-wind blew in; caught the little pile of photographs and showered them all over the floor. Rosemary instinctively stooped to gather them up—as she did so, in the bright electric light, she saw for the second time that day her father’s pictures of the col, the striking groups of rocks, and the small combes full of those little trees with their attendant shadows.

  For a moment she stood looking at them, too stupefied to speak. Then M. Jacques was at her elbow, his hand outstretched.

  “Merci, Mademoiselle,” he said.

  In a flash, Rosemary forced a smile for him.

  “Comme elles sont jolies,” she said, casually shuffling them over; she got a good look at each of them before she handed them back. Yes, they were Daddy’s, beyond any doubt. This would take some thinking about. Very slowly, then, she found a Vogue, and took it to Mrs. Jones—and soon afterwards she said that she must go home and do her Spanish prep. But it was a very thoughtful Rosemary who walked back in the wave-sounding dusk along the sea-front, through the empty echoing arcades of the closed modern Casino, and on by the narrow path behind the new sea-wall, still a-building. For what could Daddy’s old Parrot want with those photos? What did he want them for? And just as she reached the little semicircle of tarmac outside the Grande Bretagne she stood stock still, under the arc-light which drowned the last green sunset glow out to sea. But it had been the Parrot who told Daddy about the little col, and the two combes and the big rocks! Then he meant him to go there! He meant to have his pictures of just that place. And—the Duquesa hadn’t had a set; she was sure of that; her head wasn’t even very tidy. Had she been talking to the Parrot upstairs? He hadn’t been shaved, either—his chin was grey-ey-blue. Rosemary went into the hotel more thoughtful than ever.

  If the mere fact of staying at Perpignan with her had made James Milcom feel the impact of human society on his relation to Raquel de Verdura, he felt it infinitely more strongly when he got over to St.-Jean-de-Luz. During the few days that he spent there they two seemed to him to be moving all the time in a positive crowd, surrounded by his colleagues, by the Duquesa and her friends, and by all sorts of miscellaneous people like Mrs. Jones and the English couple with the nice little girl—so he mentally characterised the Oldheads. In Olivia de las Illas he confronted the family, he felt; and though she was perfectly civil, and indeed professed the warmest gratitude for all that he had done for her sister—her little sister, she sometimes called her—he was aware of an almost inquisitive scrutiny, occasionally, in her bold restless glance. Among his colleagues he was also aware of a certain interest, aroused by his suddenly turning up with “a beauty in tow,” as he overheard Crossman phrase it. But though for the most part they were quite sensible a
nd discreet, the mere fact of their presence, of sitting talking shop with them threw a quite altered light onto him and Raquel, gave him a different yardstick with which to measure himself and her. Here he was not her only friend, her one companion and support—he was forced to see himself as just a journalist among a group of journalists, while she was a distinguished refugee, the wife of a grandee, with a Duchess for a sister. Even her beauty arose now to utter its mute testimony, to set her away from him as her own remoteness had never quite succeeded in doing; the heads that turned after her, as she walked into the Bar Basque, made him feel that the days when he knelt on her palliasse in a cellar and sawed wood for her, while she washed up the supper-things, and her clothes hung from a nail on the wall, were really phantoms of the memory, as unrelated to the actual world as the life of dreams. Then, too, when they had moved like ghosts wandering in a world of shadows, their emotions had been gentle, shadowy, frail; now, coming with her into the world of men, the practical factual world of relations and acquaintances and money and arrangements, he found that this gentle undisturbing relationship had taken on flesh and blood, had become a harsh, throbbing, painful reality. And all the time an idea that was half a question pulsed through everything else in him—whether she did not, perhaps, feel the same?

  They dined together his last night. He took her to Gaston’s, a small restaurant on the Place Louis XIV, down by the harbour, where the cooking is good and the fish superb. They sat outside—it was a warm evening; the wind had fallen after sunset, and only light draughts of air from the water sent the fallen leaves from the plane “trees scuffling along the dusty cobbles. Sitting out there they overlooked the whole pretty, rather theatrical scene—the closely-trimmed plane trees yellow in the lamplight above their mottled white trunks, the blue and green sardine-boats bobbing gently on the dark water beyond, the two green lights winking at the narrow harbour entrance, down which, at intervals, a big swell rushed, making the gaily-coloured boats dance afresh under the arc-lights. Now that it had come to the point of actually leaving her, he found that he minded it to a degree that almost surprised him. He had not known that it would be like this, would cause this almost stifling pain, that took away one’s breath.