‘I saw them today when I dropped Joan Stevenson there,’ he said, his mouth full of peach juice.
If Mary had been overcome by David’s pretty gesture, his appalling treachery now turned the daylight to fiery darkness and the summer noises to thunder. He could bring that horrid Miss Stevenson down in his sports car, and then, fresh from her embraces, or, to be fair, fresh from sitting next to her while he drove, could bring Mary a present, throw it at her as if he were scattering largesse to beggars. If it hadn’t been that her present evening bag was distinctly shabby, she would have thrown this Greek gift on the floor. She hated David more than she had ever hated him before. She would take care to fill her programme for the dance, even if it meant sitting out with Mr Holt.
‘What about a walk this afternoon?’ said David.
‘With Miss Stevenson?’ asked Mary. She hoped that her tone expressed a cold lack of interest, but when you are nearly choking with emotion at the sound of David’s alluring voice, your frigidity is remarkably apt to sound like hoarseness.
‘Joan? I should think not. She can’t walk fast, and I must stretch my legs. Come on.’
‘Right, David, that will be lovely,’ said Mary.
The Boulle family and Miss Stevenson came up to tennis after tea. Ursule was already in a state of giggling devotion to Miss Stevenson and insisted on taking her arm as they walked. Miss Stevenson, whom her three years at Oxford had familiarised with every sort of crush, was not displeased by Ursule’s artless homage, but found her weight rather exhausting. As David and Mary were still out walking Madame Boulle took upon her the duty of presenting Miss Stevenson to the rest of the family.
‘Lady Emily,’ she said, ‘may I present to you Miss Stevenson, of whom you have doubtless heard from Mr David. Miss Stevenson is an officer of the broadcasting, and is thus in touch with all the most interesting movements of the day. It is really ridiculous that Miss Stevenson should come to us to acquire French, for she already speaks with astonishing correctness and hardly any trace of that English accent which, although disagreeable when exaggerated, is yet rather attractive to a French ear. I will tell you, Martine, that in France we call English la langue des oiseaux on account of the effect, a twittering and sibilant sound as we may say, which it produces on our ears. German, on the contrary, we call la langue des chevaux, because it has a certain heaviness, a clumsiness, not unlike the neighing of a horse. A horse’s neigh is in French hennir, qui se prononce aussi ha-nir, mais je te conseille d’éviter ce dernier, Martine, which in fact I only signal to you that you may be aware of the fact, for it is a question sometimes asked in exams. The word hennir was doubtless in the mind of your Swift when he wrote about his talking horses, his Houyhnhnms.’
‘Onomatopée,’ said Professor Boulle, but no one took any notice of him.
‘How clever of you to say that word,’ said Lady Emily to Madame Boulle. ‘It is one of the words I have always read to myself and never dared to say aloud.’
Everyone present then explained how they pronounced the word Houyhnhnms, except Ursule, who giggled.
‘At Broadcasting House,’ said Miss Stevenson, ‘the correct pronunciation has been standardised as Winnim. It will probably be in our next authoritative list.’
‘Nevertheless,’ continued Madame Boulle, ‘there are certain faults, small perhaps in themselves, but which would infallibly strike a French ear, which I have already indicated to Miss Stevenson, and of which she will cure herself rapidly, for she has an excellent ear. Martine has not so good an ear, but he is a good lad,’ she added colloquially, to Martin’s horror. ‘I am glad to see that he is much with my young people apart from lessons. Thus will he acquire an easy and natural way of speaking French, which is recognised as the most pure and beautiful language of the civilised world. The French of Touraine is particularly noted for its purity. My ancestors, the de Florels, have lived in Touraine since the eleventh century and have always been renowned for the purity of their speech.’
‘Come on,’ said Martin, unable to bear it any longer, ‘let’s have a set. Me and Ursule, and Pierre and Miss Stevenson.’
While they were playing David and Mary came back. Jean-Claude immediately pounced on Mary and drew her aside.
‘Our banner is nearly finished,’ he said excitedly. ‘Ursule has sat up two nights to finish it. We have slightly changed our plans. Instead of bringing it on a stick, which is more difficult to hide, I shall have the flag folded inside my coat. When you stop the band, Martin, Ursule and I shall advance up the ballroom. Pierre will call from the gallery “Vive le roi,” and we shall answer “Vive le dauphin” and I shall unfurl the flag. It will make an effect, don’t you think?’
‘It will be splendid,’ said Mary. ‘But I thought the dauphin died in the French Revolution.’
‘Louis the seventeenth undoubtedly died in the infamous prison to which his father’s murderers had sent him,’ said Jean-Claude passionately, ‘but so long as a King of France has a son, that son is the dauphin. You have heard of the comte de Paris.’
‘Wasn’t he a son of Louis Philippe or something?’
‘Your history is very old-fashioned,’ said Jean-Claude pityingly. ‘The comte de Paris is the son of the duc de Guise, Jean the Third, the lawful king of France. His name is Henri, like my father’s. How does that strike you? Here in the family Boulle we have an Henri and a Jean. Striking, is it not. The Boulle family has always been celebrated for its loyalty. So has the family of de Florel, my mother’s family. The de Florels have been celebrated for their loyalty since the days of Clovis.’
Mary, reflecting with sorrow that Jean-Claude would probably get more and more like his mother as he got older, apologised for her ignorance and expressed profound approval of the royalist plans. She asked what they would do after the demonstration.
‘Nothing,’ said Jean-Claude simply. ‘That will be enough. The English will recognise our courage and our convictions and rally to us. The English have a great admiration for courage. Except for the French they are doubtless the bravest and most courageous nation in the world.’
‘Come on, Mary, and have a game,’ said Martin, suddenly appearing. ‘That Miss Stevenson can’t play for nuts. You and I will take on David and Ursule. We’ll have a nursery set for Jean-Claude and Miss Stevenson afterwards. Is everything all right,’ he added, looking significantly at his fellow-conspirators. Jean-Claude, who did not appear to bear any grudge for Martin’s opinion of his tennis, nodded portentously.
‘I’ll let you know any further plans by a note on your table,’ said Martin to Mary, as they went on to the court. ‘It is not safe to talk.’
‘Why did you have a Boy Scout’s badge on your letters about the meeting in the Temple?’ she asked.
Martin looked at her with lofty contempt.
‘Don’t you know a fleur-de-lis when you see one, my good girl?’ he inquired.
‘Sorry, Martin.’
After two more sets, in neither of which Jean-Claude or Miss Stevenson were asked to play, the party broke up. Miss Steven son had made a great success with Mr Leslie, who liked to hear how things were done, by telling him all about her work at Broad casting House. Pierre had sat with Agnes, feeling like Geoffroy Rudel with the Princesse Lontaine, though he would have been hard put to it to explain exactly why. Agnes, finding in him a sympathetic audience, had told him all about Clarissa saying dickybob for apricot, and how James’s hair seemed to grow much longer when it wasn’t cut, and how Emmy had been none the worse after Monsieur Boulle had so kindly rescued her from the pond.
‘I do hope you didn’t get cold,’ she said, for the sixth or seventh time. ‘I always think it is so annoying to be wet. I remember when James was little we went to the Isle of Wight and I got quite wet. We were out walking and it came on to rain, and I hadn’t Nannie with me, so I put my umbrella over James and my husband turned his coat collar up. It was so disagreeable.’
Pierre went home quite intoxicated by the thought of the lovely young matron protecting her lo
vely child, even getting so far as composing parts of a line of poetry which was to begin, ‘Dieu pluvial!’ and to end, by a pretty fantasy, ‘ce doux agneau’. But as for the middle, the muse was unfavourable.
12
Many Happy Returns
On the morning of Martin’s seventeenth birthday the sun rose in an unclouded sky. Haze lay over the garden and meadow, foretelling a perfect August day. Martin’s room faced east and sunlight poured through the uncurtained windows on to his bed, where he lay deep in slumber, the bedclothes kicked off during the hot night, his pyjama jacket cast aside. As the sun crept over his bare skin he began to move and stretch luxuriously, still half asleep. A wasp flying round the room pinged angrily about his head. Rousing himself Martin made a slap at it and missed it. It sailed angrily away, hit itself violently against the window, discovered the open casement and flew out. Lulled by the silence Martin was just dropping off to sleep again when he remembered what day it was.
‘Good Lord,’ he said, sitting up in bed and pushing his hair back, ‘I’m seventeen.’
He contemplated this fact for some moments, sitting hunched up with his arms round his knees. To be seventeen was practically as good as being grown-up. One could now drive the Ford, or indeed David’s sports car if he would let one, with impunity. Seventeen was an age at which anything might happen. Romance, adventure lay before one. Everything was going to be perfect. John had come down yesterday, and it had been a ripping evening with David singing his amusing songs and playing the piano for them to dance after the grandparents had gone to bed. There was to be cricket all today. He could hear the distant noise of hammering as the men finished putting up the extra seats in the field. It was amusing how, if one bothered to get up, one could look across the garden at the men working and see the hammers fall long before the noise they made reached one; something to do with science. Then after the cricket a dinner party and one’s health drunk. Then the dance—
Martin straightened his arms and legs and shot out of bed. He had almost forgotten. Not only was it his birthday, but it was The Day. The flag with fleurs-de-lis was finished, though pressure had had to be put on Ursule, who had suddenly transferred her interest to that Miss Stevenson and been found giggling at her feet when she ought to have been working. All plans were made and his seventeenth birthday would also be a dedication of himself to the cause of fallen royalty. From a pocketbook on his dressing-table he drew a newspaper cutting about the duc de Guise and the comte de Paris. What though the peculiarities of newspaper photographs made the duke look like a bald man disguised in a beard and the comte like a lowbrow criminal? Martin knew better. Even the English press recognised the power in these two men.
‘French Government,’ he read aloud to himself, ‘take duc seriously as they did his father. Duc de Chartres was retired from the French army forty years ago because he was its most brilliant general. Duc de Guise is tall, good-looking, sixty. Owing to father’s brilliance was forbidden to serve in French army.
‘Tyrants!’ he muttered. Then placing the newspaper cutting on the mantelpiece he stood erect.
‘Mon roi,’ he said, with devoted respect, to the duc de Guise, and saluted.
‘Mon dauphin,’ he added, with chivalrous respect, to the comte de Paris, and saluted.
He then observed a moment’s silence to the memory of young Daudet, basely done to death by traitors. How it made one’s blood glow to feel that Pierre, Ursule and Jean-Claude were doing the same thing, possibly at the same moment. While such loyal hearts beat, the cause of the golden lilies was not lost.
Had Martin been able to fly over the vicarage and look in at the windows, his faith would have received a shattering blow. Pierre was indeed worshipping a photograph, but it was not of king and dauphin. It was a cutting from the Tatler representing Mrs Robert Graham chatting to a friend at the Buckingham Palace garden party. Agnes’s beauty was of that rare kind that can survive even a press camera. The delicate proportion of her features, her lovely, all-embracing smile, her exquisite figure, to all these the Toilet’s photographer did full justice.
‘“Moi, j’aime la lointaine Princesse,”’ murmured Pierre, locking the photograph away in a drawer so that it should not see him shave.
Ursule, in dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, was sitting on the foot of Miss Stevenson’s bed, listening to words of wisdom.
‘Marriage is such a large subject,’ said Miss Stevenson as she drank her morning tea. ‘We must talk it over together. I believe immensely in getting views on every subject from every angle. Yours will interest me very much, Ursule. I believe that in France the companionate marriage is not yet fully recognised, but it will doubtless come. We naturally have to be careful at Broadcasting House, as the great mass of our listeners are still full of prejudice. We find it particularly necessary to keep the personnel of the Children’s Hour on a high moral standard. In my department the standard is officially very high, but the mere fact of divorce does not attach the same stigma as it does in the Children’s Hour.’
Ursule giggled admiringly.
As for Jean-Claude, he was still asleep.
Nor were Mary’s thoughts of a nature proper to the day. The previous days had been a tumult in her breast. She had had glorious walks with David, who had helped her over several stiles in an unnecessary way, though if he cared for her enough to help her over when she could obviously quite well get over alone, it would have been more tactful, she thought, to have done it in a more lingering way. Merely to hold out your hand with your back almost turned and say, ‘Jump, my good girl,’ could hardly be read as an expression of deep devotion, however hard one tried. Against this must be set the fact that he had given her that lovely bag. But one could not forget that he had brought Miss Stevenson to Rushwater. On the other hand, he had taken no notice of Miss Stevenson since their arrival, had not played tennis with her, nor looked her up at the vicarage, nor talked about her.
Then John had come down yesterday, as kind and reliable as ever. He had played tennis with her and David and Martin, and played very well. He had been very kind at dinner and hadn’t said anything about her singing, for which she was profoundly grateful. David had been the singer, and after the grandparents’ departure for bed had entertained them all with the latest songs, including some new and very indelicate verses to his spiritual of drinking treacle, drinking rum. Then he had played jazz music quite divinely for the others to dance.
‘How well you dance,’ John said to her. ‘You are the most feather-footed person I ever met.’
‘But how very well you dance too. Even better than David.’
‘You see I had the advantage of being in the Navy. I had to leave it because I was too tall and banged my head on everything, but before I left they taught me how to dance. You will dance with me again tomorrow night, won’t you?’
David had asked her if she had her present quite safe.
‘Rather,’ she said, ‘it is put away, wrapped up till tomorrow. I’m going to use it for the dance.’
‘Oh, the bag,’ said David, ‘that’s nothing. I meant the present I gave you in your perfect hand. Is it quite safe?’
Flaming with embarrassment Mary had escaped to Agnes with an incoherent mumble. How dared he think that she cared for a kiss in her hand? How adorable of him to remember what she had thought so lightly given. And, thank heaven, he would never know that she had kept her hand under her cheek when she went to bed that night until the position became too uncomfortable.
Agnes’s only thoughts on Martin’s birthday morning were a mild regret that Emmy and darling Clarissa were not old enough yet to come to the dance, and a determination to do some more match-making for John. She had been pleased to see John and Mary dancing together last night, and had even faintly exerted herself to keep Martin as her own partner, that John might have more opportunities.
To Mr Leslie and Lady Emily, Martin’s seventeenth birthday must inevitably bring the thought of Martin’s father. Mr Leslie looked in on his
wife on his way down to breakfast.
‘Morning, my dear,’ he said. ‘Lovely day for Martin’s cricket. D’ you know what it reminded me of?’
‘Yes, Henry. It reminded me too. It was a hot day like this, and I remember the noise of the men hammering at the seats over in the cricket field.’
‘It brings it back,’ said Mr Leslie, looking out of the window. ‘Wish it could bring other things back. Martin gets more like him every day, Emily. When I heard Martin’s voice on the stairs this morning, I could have believed—Oh, well, must get down to breakfast,’ said Mr Leslie, blowing his nose. ‘Don’t get up too soon, my dear, you’ve got a long day.’
At the door he met John, coming to say good morning to his mother.
‘Morning, John,’ said his father, going out.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said John. ‘Good morning, Mother darling. Many happy returns of Martin’s birthday. Anything wrong with Father?’
‘Thoughts, John. Martin gets more like his father every day. There are things you remember all the time, and then you find you are only remembering them now and again, but they don’t hurt the less.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘One has to get one’s happiness from seeing the joy of the young,’ said Lady Emily, half to herself.
‘You get your joy by making joy for other people, darling,’ said John.
‘I wish I could make it for you.’
‘Perhaps as one gets older one takes one’s joy altruistically,’ said John, in his turn thinking aloud. ‘I must say though I sometimes wish I could get it selfishly, just for myself, as Gay used to give it to me, when I was young.’
Lady Emily found nothing to say. John’s last words fell dead on her heart. It terrified her that he could speak of his youth as a perished thing. She was conscious of the age-long mother’s cry, ‘What do you know of grief who have not lost your child?’ The vision to which she had so often, so steadfastly barred the way rose before her: her first-born, wandering somewhere beyond life, wanting her, thinking she had forsaken him, not knowing that it was he who had left her to grow old without him. She thrust it away, remembering that John was in need of help and was alive.
Wild Strawberries: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Page 17
