by Rumer Godden
‘Who is Luigi?’ Lise asked Marcelline.
He was the big gentle lorry driver who delivered the ice. ‘In those days of course we didn’t have a freezer,’ and the ice came twice a week in great blocks wrapped in sacks and sawdust; Luigi carried them in on his shoulder down to the trays in the cellar as easily as if they were sacks of feathers. He must have been twenty or twenty-one, thought Lise, and his Italian good looks, the dark curly hair, skin, dark already from his Italian birth, made richer by sun and health, filled the kitchen with colour and life. He often whistled and sang as he went between the lorry and the cellar:
Come prima, più di prima t’amero
Per la vita la mia vita ti darò
More than ever, more than ever ev’ry day,
I will love you more than ever, come what may.
It was Marcelline who saw to him, ‘and saw him off,’ said Marcelline, because to Luigi the house in the Rue Duchesne was a palace of marvels. ‘How much do they cost?’ he whispered to Marcelline.
‘Far too much for the likes of you,’ said Marcelline. ‘Besides, I thought you were a good boy.’
The kitchen at the Rue Duchesne was the most neglected part of the house, stone-flagged, its only window barred, ‘against burglars,’ said Eugenia. ‘As if there were not enough burglars in the house,’ said Marcelline. Its walls had not been painted for ‘a hundred years at least,’ Lise often reproached Emile, who shrugged, yet Marcelline’s kitchen was like herself, cheerful and wholesome in that strange house. It was warm; her rocking-chair with its old red cushion stood by the stove for the rare occasions when she sat down. On the shelf above was a statue of the Mother and Child with a vase of pink paper roses. Clusters of onions, smoked hams, great sausages and bunches of herbs hung from the beams; there were always good pungent smells and good simple work. Coco, if Lise were busy, liked to come down and lie on the rag rug, rather than be petted by the girls. Marcelline would not call him Coco. ‘That’s not a dog’s name.’ She called him ‘Trésor’ – treasure.
After her morning prowls, when Lise met Marcelline just come back from her marketing at Les Halles, Gaston behind her carrying the baskets, they would have coffee together at the kitchen table. Marcelline made Gaston take his into the shed or the empty bar: she would no more have thought of sitting down at table with him than with Patrice. It was she who alerted Lise about Vivi and Luigi.
‘I was chopping onions at the table and my eyes were streaming, so I didn’t see her at once. If I had, that little minx would soon have been sent packing,’ and after the trial Marcelline was in tears. ‘To think, if it hadn’t been for those onions, all this might not have happened.’
‘I think it would,’ said Lise. ‘If it hadn’t been Luigi it would have been someone else,’ but, ‘I’ll never look at an onion again,’ vowed Marcelline.
It had been a Saturday morning; Luigi had just delivered his ice and was waiting for Marcelline to sign, ‘and hoping for that bowl of hot chocolate I was soft enough to give him,’ when Vivi came into the kitchen.
Vivi was greedy and when she woke towards noon – ‘She lies in bed most of the day,’ said Marcelline. ‘She doesn’t have to work, oh no!’ – Vivi could not wait for lunch but came down and raided the larder and took what she wanted back to bed. ‘She’ll eat a gigot with her fingers, gnawing it to the bone, or steal all my tartelines.’ Already she was putting on weight, a plumpness, Lise guessed, that would seem adorable to Luigi’s Italian eyes.
‘She was barefoot, Madame, the little gutter cat, and not only that – there was nothing, absolutely nothing under her negligee, and that you could see through, chiffon edged with lace,’ said Marcelline derisively, ‘open to her legs and more than her legs. “And who is this Monsieur?” she asked, saucy as the princess she thinks she is.
‘The onions were out of my eyes and I said, “Upstairs, Mademoiselle, where you belong,” but do you think she would budge? “There’s nothing for you here,” I said, and, “I think there is,” she said and came round the table to that big owl of a boy.
‘“What’s your name?”
‘“Luigi.”
‘“Luigi!” You know how she can make her voice soft, Madame,’ said Marcelline.
‘“Luigi what?”
‘“Luigi Branzano, Mademoiselle.” The poor fool could hardly stammer it.
‘“Luigi Branzano – you are very very handsome,” and that brazen slut was giving him the look as she went into my larder. I yelled at her to come out; there were my beautiful mousses au chocolat à l’orange there, just setting, and terrines ready for tonight, but do you think she would take any notice? She came out munching, with the end of a baguette filled with butter and ham. “Have a bite,” she said, holding it out to him. “Here where my little teeth have been.”
‘I told her I would call you, Madame Lise, and she only laughed. “La pauvre Balafrée – she can’t do anything to me. He wouldn’t let her.” “He” was Monsieur Patrice and I said indeed he would if he caught her making eyes at Luigi and, “Anyway, Luigi’s going,” I said.
‘“He isn’t – he’s coming upstairs with me.”
‘Upstairs! Think, Madame! A lorry driver!
‘“You would like to come, wouldn’t you, Luigi?” and she went close to him – you know that scent she has. I thought he would fall down in a swoon; then he looked at her, not with greed, Madame, but as if she were a vision.
‘“Upstairs,” and, believe me, she actually gave him the little jerk of her thumb.
‘I ran across from my stove. “Mademoiselle Vivi! You can’t.”
‘“Why can’t I? Anyone can come – if they have the money.”
‘“That settles it then,” I said. “He hasn’t any money.”
‘“Mademoiselle …” and still Luigi could only stammer. “It’s true – I haven’t. In any case …”
‘And that little strumpet,’ said Marcelline, ‘with the tips of her fingers, took a wad of notes out of her sash, right there in front of us, and peeled off three and held them out to Luigi.
‘I was paralysed Madame, but that dear boy – he didn’t take them. He backed away and his big face was full of blushes, and he said, “I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly – not here.” Then, “I have my lorry waiting. The flics …” He ducked his head and was gone.
‘I burst out laughing, but Vivi … she put the notes back and, “You’ll laugh the other side of your face,” she said to me like the vicious little vixen she is, and then, “He comes on Wednesdays and Saturdays, doesn’t he?” said my lady. And Madame,’ said Marcelline, ‘when I went into the larder I found – from spite, spite, Madame – she had put her fingers into every mousse and flattened each terrine!’
Luigi is like Stefan – only he isn’t gone in the head – and yet in a funny way he reminds me of Pom-Pom, only he isn’t a poor little ugly like Pom. Luigi’s beautiful.
Lying in her bed, licking butter and ham off her fingers, Vivi thought about Luigi, Stefan and Pom-Pom.
Why should I remember Pom? Perhaps because he was the first one – no, the only one – I loved. I called him my little dog. Madame Lise’s Coco has a look of him, that crinkled up face and little puzzled eyes. It was because of Pom-Pom that I didn’t do what I thought I would – to get even with Madame. I thought I would ask to take Coco for a walk, then take him down the metro and, in the crowd, lift him off the platform with my foot just as the train came in. ‘Hue! Hue! my little dog – he jumped.’ They would have taken me home in tears, hysterics, and Madame Lise could not have said a thing … but I couldn’t do it because of Pom …
Oh, I’m so tired of old men … Monsieur Patrice, when he’s undressed, with that big white belly he wants me to stroke. He looks all right when he’s dressed and he smiles, but ugh! Oh, I want to do it for fun. Luigi’s so handsome and fresh and firm I could bite him, bite him all over. That would be fun because he would be so surprised – he’s so shy. I could tease him. Perhaps we could run away and have a room where we co
uld do what we liked. I could go with him in the lorry.
‘You can’t,’ said Luigi. I had waited for him in the cellar where there’s no Marcelline. He was so surprised, he almost dropped the ice. ‘Of course you can’t. It’s not allowed.’
‘I could sit on the floor.’
‘You! On the floor of a lorry,’ and he wouldn’t. If I were with Luigi I might be a good girl – like with Monsieur Grebel.
‘Never,’ Marcelline would have said. ‘You’re bad to the bone.’ Perhaps I am, but I want Luigi. I want him and I’m going to have him.
‘But Mademoiselle Vivi had a surprise,’ Marcelline told Lise. ‘She took to waiting for him in the cellar and he wouldn’t stay there with her, not for five minutes. He marched her up to me. I think it was the first time in her life our Vivi had met with that. She was furious. “What do you think I’m here for!” she said to him as if she spat, and he … Madame, that great big young man was almost in tears. “Tell her why I can’t,” he said to me. “Make her understand. To me,” he said, “she’s like her …’ and he pointed to my Virgin Mary. “Our Lady!’” Marcelline was shocked.
‘Vivi couldn’t only wheedle – she could diddle me,’ Lise told Soeur Marie Alcide.
‘Madame Lise, will you help me – us?’
‘Us?’ Lise was alert. ‘Who do you mean by “us”?’
‘Luigi and me.’
‘Luigi?’
‘Luigi Branzano, the ice delivery man.’
‘The ice delivery man?’
‘Yes. He has been courting me all summer. Ask Marcelline.’
‘It’s true, Madame,’ Marcelline said when Lise asked her. ‘Nothing will turn him from it, but it’s been proper courting. I can answer for that.’
As a matter of fact Marcelline could not; between four in the afternoon, when Luigi finished his round, and six o’clock was a dead time in the Rue Duchesne; there was often quite a trade at lunchtime but now everyone was asleep; even Marcelline rocked herself off in her chair with the red cushion. Lise had seen the dressed head sink back with its combs and curls and Marcelline snored almost as loudly as Coco who lay at her feet. If the courtship was ‘proper’, that was due to Luigi. ‘We sit in the lorry and hold hands; he won’t do any more.’ Vivi was virtuous. ‘Sometimes we go to a café but he won’t let me have anything stronger than a grenadine – usually it’s a citron – and he won’t let me smoke. He brings me back to the corner just with a kiss and that not on the mouth.’
‘And he wants to marry you.’
‘He’s been asking me all summer.’ Vivi knew how to be demure. ‘He wants to take me to his home in Italy, but we have to be married first. It’s the only way I can get him, Madame.’ That, at least, was honest, but Lise had been too perturbed to listen.
‘But,’ said Lise, ‘he’s a respectable boy.’ That sounded such a strange objection from someone older to a young girl. ‘What will his family say to you?’
‘They won’t know. Luigi says they won’t know. He says they could never imagine a place like this.’
‘I’m not so sure. I think he’s a peasant and peasant mothers are shrewd.’
‘He’ll tell them I have been in service in Paris; so in a way I have,’ and Vivi pleaded. ‘Madame Lise, please, please. You have always wanted me to be good. I could be, with Luigi.’
‘And I, like a fool, believed her,’ Lise told Soeur Marie Alcide.
‘Do you love him?’ she had asked Vivi.
‘I’m mad for him.’
‘Which perhaps was the right answer,’ said Lise.
‘Luigi has arranged it. We can’t be married in a church because I haven’t been baptised.’
‘But you must have been baptised; you have a rosary.’
‘Then I don’t know where it happened.’ Vivi had turned taciturn. ‘So we must be married in a register office. Luigi says he can get a licence.’
‘Vivi, you will have to tell your proper name. You can’t be married as Vivi Ambard.’
‘Why not? Luigi says I have to have a tuteur – guardian, – because I’m under age, and if anyone’s my tuteur, it’s you.’
‘I thought you had changed me for Monsieur Patrice. Besides, Ambard is not my name either,’ said Lise.
‘You use it.’
‘Not on documents.’
‘Why do there have to be documents?’
‘Because marriage is a contract between two people and it must be true. Who are you, Vivi?’
Vivi was sullenly silent. What stories she had told the other girls about herself, Lise could imagine; indeed, some she knew: ‘My mother was a duchess.’
‘Where did you get those manners from then?’
‘My mother was a well known concert singer.’
‘Odd that you have a voice like a crow and can’t tell one note from another,’ or, more dramatically, ‘I was born in the street at night, under a lamp post and on a gendarme’s cloak spread on the pavement.’ ‘That’s Edith Piaf, not you.’ Vivi told these tales to the girls, perhaps to Eugenia, never to Marcelline or Patrice or Lise and now, ‘I’ll tell Luigi,’ said Vivi, ‘but I won’t tell you.’
‘Vivi. Why not?’
‘Because you’re clever and will want to rescue me and pry and probe. Luigi won’t. He doesn’t even dream he should do that.’
‘And even then,’ Lise told Soeur Marie Alcide, ‘it didn’t dawn on me that she hated me,’ but Marcelline knew. ‘Madame, don’t ever let that street arab take Coco for a walk.’
‘Vivi? But she dotes on Coco.’
‘Does she? And, if I were you, I wouldn’t let her into your room.’
It had been Marcelline Lise had been curt with then and, as usual, she gave way under Vivi’s cajoling.
‘It was you who found me, you who tried to take me out of this place,’ Vivi pleaded. ‘I know because he told me – Monsieur Patrice. You said I was to go to school and I laughed but now I wish I had gone – only I wouldn’t have met Luigi. Luigi doesn’t mind if I don’t know much – he doesn’t know much either. We’ll be so happy – if you let us, Madame Lise. It’s only you who can do that. You could tell Monsieur Patrice I have the toothache and you have to take me to the dentist. Tell him anything. By the time he finds out I shall have gone.’
‘But I shan’t,’ said Lise.
‘He doesn’t do things to you.’
He does – at times. But Lise would not say that.
‘We won’t tell you where we’re going, so he can’t make you tell. Luigi and I will be grateful all our lives long. I’ll write to you sometimes – through Madame Chabot at the little tabac on the corner. Madame Lise, it’s my only chance. Please. Please.’
It was an oddly touching wedding – because, of Luigi – and dismaying – because of Vivi.
Had Luigi, Lise wondered, ever worn shoes before? She thought it would have been boots, heavy boots, or else barefoot, as he would have been as a child. Now he had smart patent-leather shoes which obviously drew his feet so that he walked as if he were on hot coals; instead of the dark blue peasant Sunday suit Lise had expected, he was in pale grey checks, his big muscles bulging under the cloth, unexpectedly light, and Lise realised with a shock that Vivi had made him dress in imitation of Patrice; Luigi’s tie, purple and grey, was a foulard Lise recognised; Vivi must have filched it from Patrice’s drawer. Some things, though, were Luigi’s own idea – the white carnation in his buttonhole and the hair oil that shone on his dark curls and filled the office with overpowering scent; and he looked at Vivi with such adoration in his eyes that Lise had to turn her own away.
Vivi had wheedled a new dress – from Patrice, ‘of all people!’ Lise exploded.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s cheating.’
‘Tant pis! He’s had plenty out of me, so why shouldn’t I have what I can out of him?’ It was in her favourite pink and she had bought a pink veil, ‘That’s even more cheating,’ but, fastened with rosebuds, it looked ravishing. Luigi had bought her a bouquet of ros
es too, stiffly wired, and offered Lise a camellia. Round Vivi’s wrist was the pale pink rosary. ‘I must have my beads,’ ‘Yes, her chapelet,’ Luigi said it tenderly, and, ‘I shall take her to our priest,’ he assured Lise. ‘As soon as she’s baptised we’ll have a proper wedding.’
Lise took them to a little restaurant for a wedding breakfast where Marcelline joined them. Vivi ate like an eager piglet, Luigi scarcely at all. Then Lise saw them off on the express to Milan. Luigi wrung her hand so that she thought she would lose it; Vivi flung her arms round her and showered her with kisses. The train pulled out and Lise went back to the Rue Duchesne to face Patrice.
‘It was a good thing they didn’t tell you where they were going,’ said Marcelline as she applied the famous steak. ‘Those bruises! Madame, he has tortured you!’
And Patrice knew how to torture, thought Lise, but she remembered that it was he who had collapsed in her arms weeping, not she in his.
No one else was taken into the apartment after Vivi. ‘I came in and out but only to feed Patagon and the fire seemed to have gone from the big bird too. He grew dull, no longer stabbed and scolded; presently he died – and Patrice began to look old; he hardly mentioned Vivi’s name and avoided the other girls. ‘I had not known you would grieve like that,’ Lise could have cried and, now, ‘Patrice! Patrice! If only you could know that I shall never stop loving you; all I can do now is pray for you, as I do for Vivi too, while this new love grows in me …’
‘I’m afraid I’m not all that sure that I want to stay at Saint Etienne.’ Lise heard aspirant after aspirant say that.
‘My fear is that they won’t let me stay,’ was her only answer.
After studies came the chief meal of the day when aspirants and nuns sat down together. Formal grace was said: ‘Donne, Seigneur, du pain à qui a faim,’ ‘Give, O Lord, bread to anyone who is hungry. Give, Lord, to all who are hungry,’ then a reader read to them during the dinner.
The aspirants took it in turn to serve, putting the tureens of soup on the tables. In the old days, each nun carried her knife in her pocket, so there was only a fork and spoon at her place; between courses she wiped these with bread and when dinner was over washed them and her plate and bowl herself – there were bowls and jugs of hot water on the tables. The food was simple but good. ‘Well, most of it comes from our own growing, our own poultry or beasts,’ said Soeur Théodore. Every day there was soup, mostly vegetable, then meat or fish served in the French way that still, after all these years, Lise found trying, with the vegetables coming after the meat as a separate course. There were exquisitely fresh salads; cheese, sometimes goat cheese; on feast days a special dessert. The nuns and girls, too, were hungry, which is the best sauce, ‘And doesn’t God give us our food? So it’s our duty to enjoy it,’ old Soeur Anne Colombe at Belle Source used always to say. At Saint Etienne Lise, remembering her jaded appetite in Paris and Vesoul, was amazed at what she could eat. It’s because the days here are so busy, she thought. On some, instead of studying, the aspirants were recruited to help in the house or garden, orchard or farm, ‘planting, picking, plucking,’ said Lise in dismay when she and Bella, the coloured woman with whom she had made friends, were first shown how to pluck poultry. Sometimes it was sorting potatoes, smelly, disgusting work; some might help in the laundry – the big wash that took place once a week. There might be lorries to unload, hay to make, bonfires to stoke, ‘anything, everything, no matter if it’s pouring rain, the heavy rain of the Gironde,’ and, too, they ate in silence, ‘so that you really taste what you eat,’ as Lise said to Bella, while the voice of the reader went on – the book, not necessarily spiritual, sometimes on current interests, even a novel – until the Prioress gave the knock; then there was a scraping of chairs and another grace was said: ‘Lord, for our faith, you have given us these things to eat; we beg you, in your justice, to give the same to others. Amen.’
