by Alec Waugh
Americans are happiest in crowds. They like general conversation. In a big city such as New York the interests that are had in common are innumerable. Active people leading active lives, touching at every hour of the day various aspects of politics, art, finance, can move the conversation quickly from a continent to a book, from a book to a political problem, from politics to political personalities. But in an expatriate Riviera world there is no such range of subjects. The English expatriate is still a European; he has not lost touch with his own country. If he does not actually revisit it, he reads his country’s newspapers only a day late, and is in constant touch with those who are still active in his country’s life. Though there is a probability that his choice of living out of England implies an inability to fit into his country’s life and consequently a lack of interest in it, he is not, as is the American expatriate, severed from it. The Riviera group of American expatriates is recruited from every State of the Union. Its members have lost touch. They know nothing about each other beyond the fact that they have lost touch. They have nothing in common except the immediate life they share; a life that is unrooted, that is without aim, without responsibilities; that is in its essence parasitic. The only interests that can be held universally in common are money, sex, and drink. Many individual expatriates have their separate interests in art, history, literature, archaeology. But because of the American instinct to live in crowds and to keep conversation general, you do not become aware of this when meeting expatriate Americans in the mass. Their conversation deals with money; the stock market, what rent they pay, what they pay their servants, what their chauffeur charges; with drink, how they feel, how they felt that morning, how they expect to feel next morning; how best to treat a hangover. Gordon had not realized how vast is the difference between the life that is led by Americans in America and that which is led by Americans abroad till he had compared the dinner party at the Swedens’ house on Cap Ferrat with the dinners that he had attended in Hyde Park and in their New York apartment. The talk in America had been witty, significant, informed. But here, though it had the unfailing American quality of gusto, not one thing worth saying was said; not one subject worth discussing appeared. Sweden, seated at the table’s head conducting in his usual fashion the conversational orchestra, never introduced topics of conversation. He merely presented opportunities for repartee. And repartee was not Gordon’s strong point. A poor debater, he could never think of the spur of the moment of the fast retort. ‘Most novelists,’ Ida Wylie had once said to him, ‘write from the wrist down.’ Such epigrams as went into his work came to him when he had a pen in his hand. He grew irritated at his inability to take an effective part in the conversation; particularly as Sweden kept turning the talk towards him, feeding him as a centre feeds his wing at football. And as an indifferent wing will by dropping, overrunning, or taking his passes standing, delay or destroy the movement, so would the talk whenever it came round to Gordon be slowed down or stopped, and the swift flow had to be taken on by someone else. He almost wondered whether Sweden wasn’t flinging these passes at him purposely for the mere amusement of seeing them dropped: with himself appearing all the time as the good-natured, hospitable, good-hearted host. As the evening passed, Gordon found himself growing sullen and dark-browed.
Dinner over, they moved out on to the veranda; there was a piano; one of them began to play; a couple danced; the others assorted themselves in fluctuant groups.
‘Talk to me,’ he said to Faith.
Rather like a child obeying a master’s summons, she followed him to the stone veranda. A rug had been flung over it and they sat down. In her presence as always his irritation left him. It was wistfully, not angrily that he said: ‘Didn’t I tell you? It’s the same here as it was there. It’s always in crowds we’re meeting.’
At the back of them there was the music playing, people laughing, people dancing, people drinking. They seemed very much alone, sitting there on the stone veranda, looking out over darkened Beaulieu. But they only stayed together for a moment.
‘I wonder how things are going on in there,’ she said. ‘I must go and see. Wait for me. I’ll be back.’
She was away a full twenty minutes. Gordon grew restless waiting. His back to the view’s beauty he sat watching her move slowly from group to group. Would she never come. She might say she wanted to be out of crowds: but she was really only happy in them. When she did come it was to call him back into the room. They were going to play ‘truths,’ she said. He must come and join them.
‘Truths’ is a difficult game to play well: particularly with strangers. Gordon found himself contributing very little to the evening’s entertainment. When a suitable pause came, he rose to his feet.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m feeling desperately tired. I must be going.’
‘So soon?’
‘It’s late.’
‘Barely eleven.’
‘I’m not holidaying here.’
‘It’s as you like. If you care to wait, I’ll drive you home.’
‘There’ll be a bus, I think.’
Though he had taken such little part in the evening’s fun, though he had been, he suspected, a surly and ungracious guest, the others were full of hope that they would be meeting again soon. Where could they find him? At the Welcome?
Roger Sweden laughed boisterously at that.
‘The Welcome’s where he keeps his trunks,’ he said. ‘But if you want to find him you’d better look for him in the Summer Bar. They all know what it is that brings him so often down to Villefranche.’
There was a hearty laugh at that. ‘So he’s one of those dark horses, is he? Still waters, what?’
Gordon flushed uncomfortably. He was aware of Faith’s eyes fixed on his face appraisingly, with a withdrawn look as though she were planning things.
It was well after twelve before he got to bed.
At five next morning a motor-boat came into Villefranche harbour and rattled noisily round the bay. By the time the motor-boat had gone, a motor-bicycle had begun to snort below his window. ‘I’d better get up,’ he thought. ‘I’m not going to manage much more sleep.’
The morning paper contained little news beyond the defeat of Gloucestershire by Sussex. He did not know why it should annoy him, but it did. Later a letter from Stanley contained a royalty statement. He had imagined that it would be ten per cent, better than he had reason to expect it would. It was actually some ten per cent worse than he need have hoped. ‘I’m going to be pretty short of cash quite soon,’ he thought. ‘I’d better hurry hard to get this novel finished.’
But the white page stared whitely back at him. For half an hour he sat looking at it. Then he turned back the leaves. He had written ten thousand words in the last six days. He could certainly take a day off now. He could put a call through to Antibes, and try and make his peace with Masters. The call took twenty minutes to get through. A rather fretful voice answered him.
‘You know I’m not properly up till ten,’ it said.
‘I was wondering if I could come over and take you out to lunch?’
There was a pause.
‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t.’
Possibly as a result of the old division between Savoie and France, coastal communication breaks at Nice. Trams and buses have to be changed. The average train stops there for half an hour. The journey along the coast took Gordon ninety minutes. A hot sun beat on the parched, yellow road. His shirt was damp against his skin by the time he had reached the cool and winding length of the Chemin de L’Ermitage that led by a grass-grown path to Masters’ villa.
His villa was one of the few old ones on the coast.
It had the comely proportions of things that are built to last. Its walls were thick, giving it a cool, cave-like quality during the torrid months. The garden was wide-hedged with spergum; fronted with plane trees; gay with roses. Over the front of the villa trailed the mingled brick-red and purple of the bougainvillaea. On the lawn
Masters was taking his invariable morning sun-bath.
‘Am I forgiven?’ Gordon asked.
Masters smiled. Red-haired, small but well and strongly built, it was in his smile that his charm lay; or rather, it was in his smile that his charm was most completely self-expressed. It was an affectionate, friendly smile, ‘Why worry?’ he seemed to say. ‘We all annoy each other in some way or another. We make allowances for one another.’ He patted the yellow mattress at his side.
‘There’s a guest’s bathing-drawers in my bedroom,’ he said. ‘There are some books in the drawing-room. Come and join me.’ It was to be such a morning as Gordon had often spent in Masters’ villa. Frank Masters, the younger son of a long-distanced family, with a comfortable independent income, political ambitions and a resolve to see the world thoroughly before legislating for its welfare, led as static a life in Antibes during the summer as he led a dynamic one during the remainder of the year in England. From May to September he did little except bathe and read. Gordon had enjoyed those lazy hours lying out there on the lawn; feeling the sun’s warmth through his body; chatting from time to time as his reading suggested some casual train of thought. But this morning he could not concentrate his attention on the print.
No sooner had he settled himself on the yellow mattress than he felt restless. Where was Faith, he wondered. Was she bathing at Lutitia or rushing along the coast in her grey-green Chrysler. Was there no chance of his seeing her.
‘Where are we going to have lunch?’ he asked.
‘We could go down to the plage.’
It was what they usually did when Gordon came across, picnicking according to the wind’s direction either at the Provençal or at La Garoupe. If they went to the plage, however, there was no chance of seeing Faith. If she were going to spend her morning on the beach she would certainly spend it at Cap Ferrat.
‘Why don’t we have a bathe here and then go out and lunch?’ he suggested. They might then be lunching at the same restaurant. They might talk to each other afterwards.
‘We might do that,’ said Masters.
‘Then what about our swim now?’
Masters glanced at his watch.
‘Much too early,’ he said; then rolled over on his face, so that the sun might burn his back.
Gordon looked with irritation at the browned back. The sweat had congealed into a glistening pool half an inch above the bathing-drawers. He knew the inexorably fixed routine of Masters’ mornings. At nine o’clock his breakfast arrived. For half an hour he would munch his toast, read his letters, meditate on his replies. At half-past nine, in pyjamas still, he would come downstairs, consult with his maitre d’hôtel, instruct his cordon bleu, make a tour of inspection of the garden, interview the gardener. At ten o’clock he would begin his shaving and his bath. He loved dawdling in a bathroom. It would be eleven o’clock before he came down to take his sun-bath. The bath lasted an hour and a half. At twelve-thirty he went down to swim. At one-thirty lunch was served; on days when he visited the plage he curtailed his sun-bath by half an hour. In the same way that it is easier to write verse in a fixed form like the Ballade or the Sonnet than in a fluid form when you are forced to make decisions for yourself, this rigidity of routine made Masters ordinarily the easiest of companions. You had something fixed to arrange your own plans round. This morning, however, to accept that routine was the one thing that Gordon could not do. He was restless and needed movement. But he knew that the one way not to get action out of Masters was by suggesting it. For ten minutes he controlled his impatience. Then:
‘I think I’m going to bathe now,’ he said.
‘What’s the hurry?’
‘The morning’s getting on.’
‘Is it?’
‘It’s close on twelve.’
‘That’s early.’
‘Anyhow, I think I’ll go.’
‘All right.’
If he had suggested to Masters that he should join him, nothing could have persuaded him to come. By going in himself he would as likely as not, by a campaign of passive resistance, force him to. His strategy succeeded. He had not been in the water five minutes before he heard a splash behind him, and Masters was swimming at his side.
‘Race you to the pier,’ he shouted.
The pier was half a mile away. It was not a swim beyond Gordon’s strength. But there was the question of time.
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘I’ll watch you.’
He half thought that Masters would not go alone, but Masters, having been deprived of his sun-bath, was not to have his swim shortened.
‘I won’t be long,’ he said.
Seated on the rocks at the roadside, Gordon watched the red-brown head bumping its way towards the pier.
His chin leant forward on the heel of his hand he looked out to Nice. It was a view he had gazed upon innumerable times. It was the loveliest thing east of Panama, he had maintained. But today he drew no delight from its beauty. There at the edge of the Cap in the far distance was the lighthouse of Cap Ferrat. At this very instant she might be looking at the lighthouse. She was in the bay, perhaps, hidden behind the promontory of Nice. Somewhere along that coast she was: a part, somewhere, of its beauty.
With a rattle and a roar a sage-green super-charged Bugatti tore along the road behind him. A woman was at the wheel; a moment later another sage-green super-charged Bugatti tore after it. A man was at the wheel. He was an Argentine millionaire; possessing the most expensive car in the world, he had made the gesture of presenting his mistress with its exact replica. Summer through they would chase each other along the Corniche road. There were no fashionable bars between San Remo and St Raphael that had not seen their two cars parked, demurely, side by side, like boots outside a hotel bedroom. If only he had one of those cars, so that he could comb the length of the coast in half an hour.
By the time Masters had returned, ambling wearily up the grass path from the beach, he was dried and dressed. Masters made no comment. He proceeded to do Muller exercises on the path.
‘It takes longer to get dry this way,’ he explained, ‘but it’s better for one. The salt does one’s skin good.’
His skin was benefited to the extent of eleven minutes of sun and salt.
‘Come up and talk to me while I dress.’
Masters was aware that Gordon was in a hurry to be off. He was also angry with Gordon for being in a hurry. It was not yet one. Gordon knew him well enough to know his habits. Gordon had invited himself over. If Gordon had not been in the mood for a leisured day he should not have come. There were hundreds of people who wanted to be restless, if that was Gordon’s mood. When he invited people over, Masters argued, he put himself at their disposal. When they invited themselves over, they should put themselves at his. He was resolved to take as long over his dressing as he could. He handed Gordon a photograph that stood beside his bed.
‘Do you think she’s pretty?’ he asked.
Gordon looked carelessly at it. Masters’s life was well stocked with gallantry.
‘Quite,’ he answered.
‘I proposed to her three days ago.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘But she didn’t think as well of the idea as I did. She said I wasn’t the marrying type. Now, what do you think? Do you think I am?’
He sat on the bed, the sole of one foot clasped meditatively between his hands. ‘Now, I wonder. I’m not really the sort that wants to settle. At the same time. . . .’ For three minutes he discussed what manner of man he was or wasn’t. Then, still discussing it, he walked over to the mirror and began to arrange his hair. The man who takes an hour to shave, can take a long time to arrange hair that is thick, wiry and has a kink in it. Masters made three attempts before he got the parting to his satisfaction. Then the curl went wrong. When the final effect had been achieved, ‘Heavens!’ he said. ‘I’ve done my hair before I’ve put my shirt on.’ His shirt ruffled his hair as it went over. In a fury of impatience Gordon waited. He knew Masters too well
to attempt a protest. Masters was never late. However he dawdled, however he hurried, he would be ready to start for lunch at twenty-two and a half minutes past one. He was.
‘Now, dearies, I’m ready. Where’re we lunching?’
It was what Gordon himself had been wondering. Where was Faith likeliest to be? If she decided to lunch away from Cap Ferrat she would probably choose Cannes or Monte Carlo. Nice was too close and was illstocked of restaurants. She was not sunburnt enough to bathe at Eden Rock. Monte Carlo was too far away for himself and Masters. There was no alternative to Cannes.
‘Let’s go to Cannes,’ he said.
Masters whistled. ‘It’s a long way off,’ he said, ‘but as long as you’re in no hurry, I’m not.’
He certainly did not hurry over the degaraging of his yellow Hotchkiss. The engine had been running for minutes, it seemed to Gordon, before he was satisfied with it.
‘I don’t quite like the sound of that, do you?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know anything about motor-cars.’
‘You can tell if an engine’s running well.’
‘How can I, if I don’t know anything about cars?’
‘I don’t know anything about novel writing, but you ask me my advice about your manuscripts.’
They were half-way through Juan before Gordon realized what the answer to that was.
‘I suppose it’s Robert’s?’ said Masters, as they swung their way to the Croisette.
‘I thought the Palm Beach.’
‘Now whatever for?’
One of the things that had considerably helped the smooth running of their relations as travelling companions was their similarity not only of taste but income. The same things were extravagances to them both; and though they were ready enough to waste money on occasions, in London they would always lunch each other at their clubs, and in Cannes when they were together they would choose a restaurant like Robert’s, where the food is excellent, French and unpretentious. But there was no likelihood of finding Faith at Robert’s.
