A Breath of French Air

by H. E. Bates

  ‘Feeling quite peckish,’ he said and hoped everyone else was.

  The evening had begun well, he thought, and most people were laughing as they left the bar and went into the salle à manger. Everyone seemed properly warmed up, companionable, and happy.

  Even Iris Snow, who had eaten nothing but two cream crackers since twelve o’clock midday, felt like a canary.

  After the cooling punch the softer, warmer touch of melon au porto was like a velvety caress. Everyone agreed that that had been very well-chosen. Full marks. Absolutely. Even the twins mopped it up in no time, asking what it was called.

  ‘There it is on the menu,’ Charley said. ‘You can read it. Melon au porto. Melon with port wine.’

  The menu cards had been specially printed in gold and Mademoiselle herself had also ordered little decorations of gold doves to be added at each corner. She had searched for a long time for some suitable symbol of marital love and had finally decided that doves were it.

  ‘Porto! Porto! old mother Shorto! Diddlum dorto!’ the twins started shouting, and a smiling Pop, for once, had no word of reprimand.

  A light white wine of the Loire, a little dry, accompanied the sole. It was colder, if anything, than the punch had been. Charley said he thought they married very well together and Pop said Charley should know. Ma remarked that she thought the sole was the best bit of fish she’d had in France and Mademoiselle Dupont beamed. Pop was sorry about the chips, though, and was on the verge of saying so when he changed his mind and said:

  ‘In front of snails, anyway. Anybody want to change and have snails? Don’t all speak at once. Twins? Snails?

  ‘You’re a snail!’ the twins said. ‘You’re a silly old snail! Snail, snail, put out your horn –’

  Pop, with happy restraint, merely smiled and Mademoiselle Dupont, who had always known how correct, undemonstrative, and reserved the English were, couldn’t help thinking that their children, at table, sometimes enjoyed the strangest latitude.

  Under these pleasantries and the cold white wine of the Loire, Iris Snow began to feel more and more like a singing bird. Now and then she became conscious of one of her protuberances slipping a little under her brown dress and she gave it a bit of a hitch.

  Angela Snow began to wonder if she’d got a flea or something and gave her occasional looks of disapproval. She’d caught a flea once before at one of those wretched pardons. You never knew.

  ‘And what’s next? What’s coming next?’ Pop said, rubbing his hands. Things were going with a bang. ‘The rosbif. Yes? No? I sink so – yes!’

  The roast beef was presently wheeled in on a sort of large, ancient perambulator. It reposed there under a kind of silver shed. This had not been used for thirty years or so and, like the coffee filters, had gone rather brassy at the edges.

  The wheeler-in was Alphonse, complete with white hat, white choker, a gravy spoon of about a quart measure, and a carving knife two inches wide. His too large, too handsome eyes darted rapidly about the room like jets, catching Iris Snow in the act of doing a twitch. This he interpreted as a sign of secret recognition and took good note of it as he turned up the spirit flame that sprang out of the bowels of the perambulator to keep the beef warm.

  Presently Alphonse was carving the rosbif with pride among rising steam and sizzling gravy. Every red slice came off with a lofty, dandyish flourish. The pouding à la Jorkshire was helped to the plates with a touch of fire and almost reverent extravagance – typical froggy, Pop thought.

  Ma was given the first helping, Alphonse standing over her in a suspended bow to ask, in French, if madame would taste and pronounce judgement on the pouding please?

  Mademoiselle Dupont translated this request with bilingual flutterings and Ma took a good mouthful of Yorkshire. Everyone waited in silence while she slipped it down. It wasn’t half as good as she knocked up herself of a Sunday morning, she decided, but it wasn’t bad really and she said, in a strong English accent:

  ‘Très bon. Very nice indeed. Très bon. Nice,’ Ma speared a second piece of Yorkshire on the end of her fork and held it across the table to Pop. ‘Better pass your judgement too, Pop, hadn’t you?’

  Pop, who was feeling in the mood to praise anything, even saucisson à la mode d’ici, accepted the pudding nippily and tasted it with a loud elastic smack of his lips. A moment later, searching for a word to describe what Alphonse had created, he was fired by a moment of happy inspiration, remembering a word the Brigadier had used.

  ‘Delectable!’ he said. ‘Absolutely delectable. Hot stuff. Formidable!’

  As if at a signal, Alphonse started to leap up and down, spontaneously brandishing the carving knife, at the same time darting flaming glances at Iris Snow, who twitched her bosom again in reply.

  A moment later she was astounded to see Alphonse start careering round the table, waving the knife with sweeps of expert extravagance, as if he contemplated chasing her. A sudden transcendent thrill went through her, moving her strangely. It was all a dream. In imagination she suddenly saw herself being pursued by Alphonse over miles of Breton heather, among wild rocks, towards the sea, finally hiding herself from the dark penetrative pursuing eyes in some far-distant allée converte, among secret tumuli.

  Mademoiselle Dupont was horrified. After a single second of relief that with the approval of the pouding à la Jorkshire the second of the night’s ordeals was over, the first having been with the corset, she was now faced with the fact that Alphonse was about to have one of his temperamental fits. Something, as Pop remarked so often of Charley, must have got into him, and she could only think it was the large glass of le punch and two equally large cognacs that Pop had had sent into the kitchen for the purpose of encouraging him. It was too terrible, too effrayant, for words.

  Ma, on the other hand, started laughing like a drain. The children started shrieking too, especially Victoria, who was easily liable to accidents if she pitched her voice too high. Iris Snow was laughing loudly herself, uncertain what to do about the second transcendent thrill that went through her at an even faster, more ecstatically piercing pace than the first, making her quiver from throat to toe. All she could do was to giggle wildly whenever Alphonse brandished the knife, each time having a strange spasmodic recurrence of her dream.

  Suddenly, after Alphonse had run round the table three or four times, the flame under the meat perambulator leapt up and then went out with an unseemly plop that sounded not at all unlike a belch. As if at a second signal Alphonse stopped running. Breathing hard, he abandoned the carving knife in order to relight the flame and in another second, as the glow sprang from beneath the brassy meat cover, Iris Snow experienced a third transcending rush of emotion that took her far beyond rocks and tumuli and even the roast beef and Yorkshire that everyone was now enjoying happily.

  ‘I sank you, ladish and jentlemens,’ Alphonse said. He had learned these few words of English off by heart from the second cook, who had once worked in Whitechapel. ‘Blast and damn, merci mesdames et messieurs, blast and damn, sank you! Vive les Anglais! Vive le Jorkshire!’

  At this he suddenly took off his tall chef’s hat, raised it, bowed politely, and backed out of the salle à manger, giving a final dark undressing glance at Iris Snow, who was trying hard to conceal her emotion by hastily sliding Yorkshire pudding into her mouth. She was not very successful, though she had to admit to herself that she had tasted nothing like the rich red beef and its delicious melting pudding for years.

  Rich food, even more than the unaccustomed punch, the port, the white wine, and the Chambolle Musigny that accompanied the beef, was now having a strange and unprecedented effect on her. Its stimulus was most marked where she might least have expected it. She was beginning to feel queer thumpings in the bosom, with sudden longings for air.

  Her head on the other hand seemed quite light and clear. Her mind retained all its sane, rippling canary-like quality. She was sure she had been perfectly lucid as Alphonse constantly regarded her with those immense, but
tery eyes. Alphonse, on the other hand, thought otherwise and had noted over and over again how often she twitched at him. It was very interesting, that twitch.

  ‘I knew the French’d never do the custard and jelly properly,’ Ma said in a whisper to Angela Snow, who was sitting between her and Pop. The custard’s like bill-stickers’ paste.’

  Angela Snow said she thought the French didn’t really know custard: as custard, that was.

  ‘Then it’s about time they did,’ Ma said, with something like severity.

  She was in fact merely tasting the jelly and custard for the children’s sake while actually waiting for crêpes Suzette to come on.

  It was past eleven o’clock when Alphonse arrived back from the kitchen to make the business of the crêpes Suzette a sacrifice of joy. That was the best part of the evening, Ma thought. So did the children, who sprang out of their chairs every time a pan of golden flame went up and shrieked that it was just like fireworks.

  ‘Ought to have the lights out,’ Ma suggested. ‘Look very pretty.’

  When the lights were put out the flares of flaming liqueurs danced about the darkened salle à manger. The bright leaping light gave to the front of Angela Snow’s skin-tight dress a remarkable effect of transformation. Her body looked no longer blue but silver and it would have been almost too much for Mademoiselle Dupont to bear if Pop, who was sitting next to her, hadn’t thought it as good a moment as any to caress her thigh.

  After that the dinner never seemed quite the same to her again. She gradually lost all hope of concentration. From that moment she never knew whether it was the fourth bottle of Chambolle Musigny they were drinking, or the fifth or what it was. In contrast to Iris Snow she had begun to feel quite lightheaded and there was still champagne to come.

  It came at twelve o’clock, together with the cake that Alphonse had made. Alphonse, more buttery-eyed than ever, bore the cake into the salle à manger himself and set it down, with pride and a flourish, before Mariette and Charley.

  The cake was iced in bright soapy pink, with a single large red candle on it, and on top of it were the words imprinted circularwise, in red:

  HAPPY BIRDSDAY ANNIVERSAIRE AND GOOD LOOK

  When she read these words Ma felt very touched and then everyone toasted Mariette and Charley in champagne. Even M. Mollet had crept out of hiding again, mole-like and shy, to take part in the toasting, staring with filmy eyes at the blue vision of Angela Snow that had troubled him so much, and so increasingly, ever since he had first seen it at eight o’clock.

  All through the toasting, Pop stood with swelling paternal pride, watching Mariette. No doubt about it, she was sumptuous: even more beautiful, he thought, than Ma had once been. Charley-boy was lucky all right and Pop could only hope that he would, in the shortest possible time, show his appreciation of the fact in the right and proper way. Pop couldn’t help thinking too of the day, perhaps not all that far ahead, when Primrose, Victoria, and the twins would begin to develop too on those same impressive, luscious lines. Perhaps by that time Mariette and even Montgomery would be having children and – who knows? – him and Ma following suit again. He was all set for that. That would be the day.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, as the hotel’s old brassy gramophone started playing for dancing, he heard a soft voice say:

  ‘Wouldn’t you dance with me, Pop? I’d love to have the first dance with you.’

  It was Primrose. There was an indefinable half-sad smile on her face, the sadness heightened by the fact that she had, Pop thought, put just the faintest touch of lipstick on and had crimped her dark hair down over her forehead in a curious little fringe, in the way the French girls did.

  Course he would dance, he told her, and she at once held up her slim sun-brown arms, again with a touch of sadness, the fingers rather drooping.

  ‘Thought you wouldn’t ask me,’ she said sadly as he swung her away to the tune of an old favourite, La Vie en Rose, ‘I’ve been hoping you would.’

  Pop said he was sorry and also that it hadn’t struck him that he’d been expected to ask his own daughter to dance. Laughing merrily, he said he reckoned she ought to have asked him.

  Oh! no,’ she said and again the voice was full of her plaintive sadness, ‘I couldn’t do that. Pop, it just shows how much you know.’

  Oh! and what about? Pop asked her.

  ‘Women.’

  It was some seconds before Pop recovered from this withering blow. When he finally did so he suddenly thought it diplomatic to side-step a second one – in case one should be coming – by neatly changing the subject with a ripple of a laugh.

  ‘Well, home tomorrow. Old home sweet home.’

  Primrose, unsmiling, wasn’t deceived a bit and showed it by looking him full in the face, her dark soft eyes full of sad disapprobation.

  ‘Why do you have to sound so glad about it?’

  Glad? Pop said. Glad? Why not? It was nice to go on holiday but it was nicer still to go home. Everybody said so.

  ‘Everybody?’ she said. ‘Who’s everybody? What do they know?’

  Pop, unable to think of a sensible answer to this crushing question, found himself looking down at his daughter’s bright yellow dress. He was surprised to find it cut rather wide and low at the neck, where she was wearing a double row of pearls. He was even more surprised to discover that the body underneath it was no longer quite that of a little girl, and that she had beautiful little salt cellars, very like Angela Snow’s, just at the base of her olive neck, where the pearls were.

  ‘Don’t you want to go home?’ he said.

  He was up against it now all right, he thought. He remembered what Ma had said. He’d got a handful now.

  ‘No, Pop,’ she said. ‘That’s it. I didn’t sleep a wink all last night for thinking about it. Nor the night before. Nor the night before that.’

  Pop, in his airy way, said for crying out gently whatever was it that had done that to her? For the life of him he couldn’t imagine.

  ‘Pop,’ she said and again she looked up at him, this time no longer with sadness but with a glance so swift that it had swung away again before he could catch it, leaving him looking down at nothing but the dark oval of her hair. She had very pretty hair and it curled fluffily in the nape of her neck, just like Ma’s did. ‘I want to ask you something.’

  Ask on, Pop said. Fire away. Money, he supposed.

  ‘Pop,’ she said and her voice was sad again, with something like low passion in it, ‘do I have to go home? Must I go home?’

  Didn’t mean to tell him she wanted to stay here, in France, did she? Pop said. All on her lonesome? All by herself?

  ‘Not by myself,’ she said. ‘I won’t be alone.’

  It wouldn’t be much fun in the hotel, he reminded her. The season was practically over.

  ‘I’ll have someone to stay with,’ she said.

  Before answering, Pop permitted himself the luxury of humming a few bars of La Vie en Rose. Very good song, La Vie en Rose. Good thing Mademoiselle Dupont had fished out some of these old favourites. They got you.

  Oh?’ he said. Who?’

  ‘My boyfriend.’

  For once unsurprised, Pop was back as quick as a bird, laughing.

  Thought you had two?’ he said.

  Pained dark eyes held him for a sharp second or two, but whether in renewed sadness or sheer scorn for his brief burst of laughter and the little he understood about women he simply never knew.

  ‘I’ve given one up,’ she said. ‘I had to. I had to make the decision.’

  Though he’d always held that there was safety in numbers, Pop hummed what he thought were a few consolatory, approving murmurs, mostly mere wordless echoes from La Vie en Rose, but somehow they didn’t seem to impress her. She was silent for once, unconsoled.

  ‘What’s this one’s name?’ he said.

  ‘Marc-Antoine.’

  Typical Froggy, Pop thought. Very fancy.

  ‘And how old’s he?’

&nbs
p; ‘A year older than me. Twelve.’

  ‘H’m,’ Pop said, heavily, quite unlike himself. ‘H’m.’

  A second later he found himself looking down at her, but she at once looked away.

  ‘He says I can go and live with him,’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’ Pop said. He spoke faintly. Good grief, bit early wasn’t it? He knew from experience that Ma had been well forward and all that for her age, but dammit. After all, there were limits –

  ‘I mean with his parents. His father keeps a confectioner’s shop. pâtisserie. I could – Oh please, Pop’ – suddenly he couldn’t help thinking that the voice was uncannily, disturbingly like that of the loveliest and most insinuating of all his daughters, Mariette – ‘please, Pop, couldn’t I? Please?’

  Pop, giving what he thought was a sagacious wag of the head, a gesture meant to be taken seriously, said simply:

  ‘You’d better ask your Ma.’

  Primrose, who like Mariette wasn’t her father’s daughter for nothing, was back as quick as a swallow.

  ‘I asked her. She said I was to ask you.’

  Cornered, Pop took refuge in a few further light bars of La Vie en Rose, but he knew that that lark couldn’t go on much longer. There was a crisis about somewhere.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said, his voice heavy again. What the devil could he say? He simply didn’t know. He could only wonder, in an unprofound moment, what Ma would say? Perhaps Ma didn’t know either? ‘Well, I don’t know –’

  Profounder instincts than his own kept Primrose silent. She hadn’t even another pleading, imploring please to offer and he knew he was in a spot.

  ‘This wants thinking about,’ he told her in another heavy but not very deep excursion – dammit, what was all that psychology lark that Ma talked about? Didn’t that come in somewhere? With something like a flurry of desperation, utterly unusual in him, he made an effort to sum up the kernel of the matter in a single phrase and came out with half a dozen words of brave simplicity that struck even him as being not quite what was wanted: ‘Long way from home, you know.’

  A second later she withered him with a glance both needlelike and wretched. Really downright wretched. He expected any moment to see big, sorrowful tears welling from her eyes. That would be the end. That would get him. Dammit, he was slap in the middle of it now all right.