by Helen Harris
Mrs Q told me an odd thing on Sunday, when I said that Rob had got the tickets and we were due to go in three weeks’ time. She didn’t approve one bit, of course. She thinks Paris is ‘not what it’s cracked up to be’. But she was evidently worried that the charm which had failed to work for her and Leonard might do the trick for Rob and me, and that I would come back even further inextricably infatuated with what she has taken to calling ‘that rotter of yours’, ‘that good-for-nothing’. She told me a story clearly intended to put me off the capital of Romance. Apparently, when she and Leonard went there before the War, they stayed in a rather seedy hotel near the Gare du Nord. They arrived quite late in the evening off the boat train and went straight to the hotel, which had been recommended to them by some friend of a friend. It was shabby-looking, but it would do. They went out for dinner. She didn’t like the food, ‘greasy and garlicky. No one could have felt lovey-dovey with that lot inside them’. When they came back to their hotel, they passed what Alicia thought was ‘a certain sort of woman’ on the stairs, but she decided that with Frenchwomen you couldn’t be sure and so she took no notice. But all night they were kept awake by people trooping in and out of the neighbouring bedrooms and by the vile sounds of what she called ‘all manner of goings-on’. By the morning, she felt contaminated. She couldn’t get out of that hotel fast enough. There was nowhere to wash, beyond a bidet which she would not have touched if you had paid her a thousand pounds, and in the light of morning you could see the wallpaper was stained with dozens of unspeakable stains. They stayed their second and third nights in another hotel not far away and there they fared a little better. What seems so odd to me is that Leonard, who sounds very much a man of the world, firstly failed to recognize the hotel for what it was, when I’m sure he must have visited places like that in his time, and secondly that he allowed Mrs Q to spend the night there once they realized what sort of an establishment it was. In Mrs Q’s own words, he ‘put her on a pedestal’. It seems very odd that he should have let her spend the night in an ‘hotel de passe’ if he really held her in such high esteem.
On Monday morning, I tackled Mr Charles about taking the days off. He was very understanding, even though I know it doesn’t suit him. He enquired kindly what I was planning to see in Paris: the Jeu de Paume, the Marmottan? Apparently, there is a very interesting Rococo exhibition at the Grand Palais. I could hardly tell him that with Rob the weekend would be a succession of one avant-garde film after another, with as much drinking and as many good but inexpensive meals as possible squeezed in between. Mr Charles is a perfect gentleman, though. He wouldn’t stoop to enquire who I was going with, even though it must be obvious that I would hardly take off to Paris on my own.
I got a frightful shock when I came back from work. From the street I could see that all the lights in the flat were off so I assumed that Rob was out. But when I got up to our front door the Chubb wasn’t locked, so I knew he must be inside. The flat was in total darkness when I opened the door. I called out doubtfully, ‘Rob?’ I thought he must have gone out in a hurry and forgotten to lock the door after him. It was out of character, but it was possible. There was no answer. It did cross my mind briefly to be frightened; maybe there was an attacker lying in wait for me in the black flat? But once I turned the hall light on, everything looked quite normal and there was no one lurking in the living-room or the kitchen. I left my things in the hall and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. I looked idly at Rob’s newspaper lying on the kitchen table, to see what was on television, and then I decided to change into something more comfortable and get on with my sewing. When I turned on the bedroom light, my heart missed a beat. Rob’s body was lying face down across the bed. For a second, I was numbly certain he was dead. I whispered, ‘Rob?’ and he stirred. ‘Rob?’ I squawked, panic and anger rising in my chest. He rolled over and looked at me blearily, with his eyes unfocused. He’s taken an overdose, I thought wildly, but I’ve come home before it’s had time to take effect.
‘What’s the matter?’ I exclaimed.
He sighed. ‘I feel shitty.’
He didn’t sound drugged. He sounded absolutely normal, in fact, but rather bad-tempered. I came over and sat down beside him on the bed, not actually intending to comfort him but because my legs had gone all shaky with relief. He rolled his head against me. ‘I feel absolutely shitty,’ he repeated, with his eyes shut. ‘I don’t know what’s hit me.’
All I could think was that I had been had. For a minute, I couldn’t say anything. I put my hand automatically to his head and stroked it. His forehead was very hot and sweaty. He took my automatic stroking for deep and silent sympathy and he said, ‘Christ, I feel terrible.’ He shivered.
‘You must have got flu,’ I said drily. I felt his forehead and I said, ‘You ought to get undressed and under the blankets. I’ll make you some lemon and honey.’
‘No, don’t go away,’ Rob said. ‘Just go on doing that to my head. It feels as though there’s a bloody cement-mixer going round inside.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, taking my hand away. ‘You can’t just lie there like that. You must get into bed properly.’
Rob moaned. ‘I can’t. If I sit up, I’ll die. You’ll have to undress me.’
I helped him into bed. He turned out to have a temperature of a hundred and three, which was high enough to give a note of drama to the bedroom scene. I brought him some lemon and honey, but when he tried to drink it he said he would be sick if he had any. ‘You must have something to drink,’ I said petulantly. ‘It’s essential to keep up your body fluids.’
Rob lay back and didn’t answer. Feeling conscience-stricken, I lay down beside him and went on stroking his head. After a minute, he pushed my hand away and mumbled, ‘You’re making me hotter.’
He spent a very bad night, tossing and turning, and he kept waking me up too. Eventually, I slipped out and made myself a makeshift bed on the sofa in the living-room. I didn’t want to be worn out for work in the morning.
On Sunday, Mrs Q said straight away that she thought I looked peaky. I’d obviously been wearing myself to the bone nursing ‘that good-for-nothing of yours’. ‘And not a word of thanks, I’ll be bound.’
It had been a trying week. Rob is not the easiest of invalids; he manages to be both demanding and resentful at being mollycoddled.
‘They’re just big babies when they’re ill,’ Mrs Q said. ‘Leonard and his ailments – my goodness me! You’d have thought we were all threatened by doom and destruction.’
We giggled together. But it still seemed an awful pity to think of all my past fantasies of soothing Rob’s fevered brow. Now he has finally done me the favour of falling ill, I find the whole thing is nothing like as satisfying as I used to hope.
As I was leaving, Mrs Q advised me, ‘Put your feet up. Don’t always be at his beck and call. Let him sing for his supper.’
He was on the phone when I opened the front door, standing hunched in his dressing-gown in the hall, and I could tell from the cryptic conversation that it was Andy Ellis at the other end.
He gave me a weak wave. When he had finished speaking, he shuffled back into the bedroom and collapsed on to the bed, where he lay on his back with his eyes shut.
‘How was her ladyship?’ he asked wearily.
He opened one eye when I didn’t answer him at once and pleaded, ‘Oh, come on, Alison, I’m a deserving case too. Be nice to me for once, for Christ’s sake, can’t you?’
*
‘I don’t know if you know Eastbourne. There’s the Grand Parade and then, walking east, Marine Parade and Royal Parade and, walking west past the Wish Tower, King Edward’s Parade. Three miles of sea-front – it’s known for it. Well, the property Leonard found for us was on Marine Parade, not ten minutes’ walk from the pier. Regency Villa: Number 112, Marine Parade.
‘We were in two minds about going back to Eastbourne. When you’ve got fond memories of a place, you wonder if you shouldn’t let them be. But it
was such a lovely site and they were asking a low price for a quick sale. Leonard was keen. Mind you, I don’t mind admitting I fell for it when he took me there. It had bay windows at the front from floor to ceiling, with metal awnings over them at first-floor level. They reminded me of eyelids, d’you know, because they had pretty little zigzag edges, just like lashes. It was painted a bright white, with royal blue. Regency Villa, our first home of our own, after all those years.
‘Well, it’s one thing to see a place on a fine summer’s day, isn’t it, and quite another to have to live there in the winter when the weather’s unspeakable and there’s a storm at sea. That Regency Villa might as well have been built of cardboard; it let in every draught. And when the spray came up over the esplanade and battered against your windows and you couldn’t see as far as the pier for the fog, that was when we should have seen it. When there was a wind blowing, you couldn’t get the taste of salt off your lips. It got into everything; salty toast and marmalade at breakfast, salty tea and cakes. And everything would be ever so slightly sticky. You could wash and clean the place until you were blue in the face, and I did; there was nothing you could do about it. The sea got in everywhere. And there’d be sand too. Don’t ask me where it came from, because there’s barely a grain of sand to be found on the beach at Eastbourne. It’s shingle from one end to the other. But it’d be there, crunching in the sponge cake you’d put out to cool by an open window, staring up at you from the bottom of the bath-tub you’d only just scrubbed. I’d lie awake in bed at night sometimes, or I’d wake in the early morning, and the sound of the seagulls would be enough to set me crying into my pillow. It can be such a pitiful sound when you’re feeling low. You’ll laugh, but I imagined they were flying around Regency Villa and mourning my lost youth with me. There, ridiculous, isn’t it? But I’d lie there in that bedroom, one at the back, because we had to leave the sea view for our guests, with Leonard fast asleep beside me, and, believe me, I’d weep for what I’d given up. I felt as though I’d been banished, yes I did, banished to the edge of the country, to the edge of the earth, and that one day, I might just topple off.
‘It must have been my time of life, I suppose, although I wasn’t much this side of forty. I mean, there was such a lot to be thankful for, but I just couldn’t seem to be glad. Leonard always knew when I was low. He could sense it. He put it down to my nerves. He used to say, “No one ever died of nerves, Alicia.” He wanted me to be perfectly happy in his castle and it riled him that I wasn’t. At the beginning, of course, he thought I’d get used to it, and so did I. In spite of the cooked breakfasts and the lack of privacy, I told myself I would grow to love the life. We had our teething troubles with the business side of things, which cast a cloud. We never really got them straight, of course. But there was no reason to be unhappy. There we were, with a place of our own at last, and living in the spot we liked best on earth. We could take a walk past the Queen’s Hotel where we’d spent our honeymoon any time that we pleased. Maybe that was the trouble; you were reminded all the time of the passage of the years and what they hadn’t granted you. Living in Eastbourne rubbed it in somehow.
‘Not that, when I think about it, I would rather have lived anywhere else. Oh, there are other resorts all up and down the South Coast, I know, and everyone has their favourite. But Eastbourne had class. Then. I don’t know what it’s like now, of course. Maybe ruined, like everywhere else. But in those days, when you walked along the front in Eastbourne you felt you ruled the waves. There was one beautiful hotel after another: the Burlington, the Claremont, the Bellevue, all shining white in the morning sun. A long line of shining white, like a vision above the waves. And all along, above the beach, the floral displays which were our pride and joy. You could walk from one end of the Parade to the other and on the way you wouldn’t pass a single person who wasn’t smartly dressed. All summer, we had the band playing in the bandstand. You could treat yourself to a deck-chair and sit and listen amid the floral displays, and close your eyes or gaze out to sea. On the one hand you had the pier, rising up out of the waves. Between you and me, it was at its best from a distance. And on the other, the Wish Tower and the gardens. Everthing was blue, everything was white. It was a small portion of heaven.
‘But I almost liked it best at night, you know. It came into its own then, after dark. You’d have the lights blazing from the big hotels and the strings of coloured bulbs twinkling on the waves. You could walk along and look at the lights of the ships out at sea and you’d hear nothing but the gentle shushing of the waves, and every now and then a waft of dance music from one of the hotels. When you looked back at the town, it was all decked in jewels of lights. We thought that none of those famous foreign places, Paris or anywhere, could hold a candle to it then.’
*
We went by train and ferry. It is one relic of Rob’s student days that he likes to travel everywhere by the cheapest possible method. I would have thought that, after his flu, he might have made some concessions to comfort, but of course he would have hated that. We got to Paris in the early evening on the Thursday, a bit the worse for wear, and booked into our hotel. Rob had chosen somewhere quite near the Gare du Nord, so at least we didn’t need to have that thing about whether to take a taxi or whether we should fight our way there with our bags on the Metro. I had said, ‘Ooh la la!’ when he told me it was near the Gare du Nord and he had got rather annoyed. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said, ‘you’re years out of date! Those little hotels have been perfectly OK for years. Anyway, I hope you don’t really imagine I’d take you somewhere like that.’
Our room looked out on to what I thought of as a classic Parisian courtyard; all the other windows thickly cloaked in net-curtains and the occasional troglodytic figure of a bowed woman scurrying through down below. Our bed was terminally lumpy and it squeaked. Rob shouted laughing to me from the bathroom about the plumbing and he came out rubbing his hands gleefully. ‘This is your original dirty weekend, isn’t it?’ he said with relish.
He caught me in his arms in the little asthmatic lift as we were on our way out to dinner. ‘I’m going to give you a really great weekend,’ he promised.
We were too tired to go very far for dinner that first night, and we ended up in a quite ordinary brasserie just two or three streets away from the hotel. Rob made a display of his greater knowledge of France by telling me that a brasserie should be cheaper than a restaurant. But I was annoyed that, as we passed a number of restaurants while walking, he wouldn’t even stop to read their menus.
We had a nondescript meal although, as Rob pointed out more than once, it was very cheap. There was another English couple at the next table, which was disappointing, and it meant we didn’t talk very much, so they shouldn’t hear our English voices and spoil the novelty of our first evening abroad by speaking to us.
Rob virtually fell into bed when we got back and he was asleep before I’d even finished in the grubby bathroom. I couldn’t help feeling a bit peeved. It was hardly his fault, of course, but I knew how he would want to start the next day and I’m not as fond of that in the morning as he is.
But, despite a tricky beginning, the weekend went well, far better, in fact, than I had anticipated. On the Friday morning, Rob bought Pariscope and read it over the croissants in the café where we had our breakfast. (Rob said the café would be more authentic and cheaper than room service in the hotel.) He ringed all the films he wanted to see and I ringed the exhibitions. We reached a healthy compromise of not more than one film a day and one exhibition. We would have stuck to it too, if two of the exhibitions hadn’t been in such inaccessible parts of the city and closed on Mondays. But I saw the two I most wanted to see, and I splashed out on the expensive full-colour catalogue of the Rococo exhibition to show to Mr Charles. Most of the films were not too painful and, until our very last day, it was really quite a pleasant break.
On the Monday evening, which was our last night, Rob decided we should have one really splendid dinner and hang
the cost. I got dressed up, even though he didn’t, and we went to a restaurant in Montparnasse which Jean and Eddy had recommended to him.
I wasn’t very taken with its appearance – it was run-down and dark – but it was pretty packed and Rob said that was a sure sign that it was good.
Over the meal, he drank a good deal and he took my hand across the tablecloth. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you’ll like this. I think I must be turning into a closet romantic in my old age, but I feel like drinking a toast. Listen!’ He raised his glass mock-dramatically and his eyebrows went up into their twin peaks of query and derision as he searched for the witty words he wanted. ‘L’amour,’ he pronounced theatrically. ‘L’amour!’
‘Oh, stop it Rob,’ I said quickly. I didn’t want to be teased and anyway his voice sounded too loud to me in the crowded restaurant.
