And Both Were Young

by Madeleine L'engle

  “Couldn’t you ask?” Gloria rubbed some lip balm over her lips as though it were lipstick.

  “Good heavens, no!” Flip cried, aghast. “Of course she couldn’t ask,” Jackie exclaimed. “What are you thinking of, Glo?”

  “Well, I’d ask if I wanted to know.”

  “Oh, yes, you would!”

  “Well, I would!”

  “Well, maybe you would,” Erna said, “but Flip wouldn’t, and neither would I.”

  This would have crushed Flip, but Gloria merely took her nail scissors out of the manicure box her mother’s Emile had sent her for her birthday, and started to clip her toenails.

  “Sometimes when Percy thinks no one is looking at her she gets the saddest look in her eyes,” Jackie said. “It’s as if she hurt deep inside.”

  “Maybe her husband died on her wedding night and she’s mourned for him ever since,” Erna suggested.

  “Gee, I wish I could put nail polish on my toenails,” Gloria sighed, “but Black and Midnight would spot it somehow. Maybe he was killed in the war.”

  “Switzerland wasn’t in the war, dopey,” Erna said.

  “Well, maybe he was French or something, dopey,” Gloria retorted. “Or maybe he ran away and left her.”

  “Hah,” Jackie snorted. “I bet if anybody left anybody, Percy would do the leaving.”

  “Well, maybe he was an awful drunkard and she left him. I bet she’s divorced.”

  “She wears a wedding ring,” Jackie said. “She wouldn’t wear her wedding ring if she were divorced.”

  “Well, maybe he has amnesia and he’s just wandering about.”

  Jackie snorted again, then said, “I used to think that when she went out every Sunday afternoon maybe he had T.B. or was insane or something and in a sanitarium and she went to see him. But now we know she just goes to see this Paul.” The bell rang and Jackie tucked her hot water bottle carefully under the covers and got in after it.

  Lying in bed after Miss Tulip had turned out the lights, and after she had said her prayers, Flip, too, wondered about Madame Perceval. Often she had noticed the sad look in her eyes and thought perhaps it had something to do with Denise. Why is it, she wondered, that things that hurt people make them deeper and more understanding? She was closer to Erna because of the German girl’s pain than she had ever been before. Gloria had had bad things happen to her, but they seemed to slide off without touching her. Whatever had happened to hurt Madame Perceval had strengthened her, inwardly, outwardly. Madame Perceval, Philippa realized, had a zest for living that was enlarged rather than diminished by whatever had happened to her husband and daughter.

  Am I growing because of Mother? she asked herself. Is it making Father grow? I would like to grow up to be as strong as Madame Perceval.

  Then she slid into sleep, and dreamed that she was running to meet her mother down a long path, and just as she got up to her, laughing with delight, her mother turned into Eunice Jackman, who was saying, “Really, Philippa, you’re too clumsy for words. Can’t you get out of my way?”

  Flip saw the dark man once again on the Sunday before the holidays. She was at the gate house and Paul had sent her out to the kitchen to ask Thérèse for some bread and jam. When she opened the kitchen door, there he was leaning against the sink and drinking a cup of coffee. As Flip pushed open the door he put the cup down quickly and slipped out.

  “What do you want?” Thérèse asked crossly.

  “Some bread and jam, please, Thérèse.”

  Thérèse gave her the bread and jam and when Flip got back to the living room she asked Paul, “Who is that man?”

  “What man?”

  “I don’t know. There was a man in the kitchen drinking coffee, but he went away when I came in.”

  “I’ll go see,” Paul said.

  Flip waited, gnawing away on a chunk of bread and jam while Ariel tried to scramble onto her lap and share it with her.

  Paul returned, saying, “Thérèse says there wasn’t anybody there.”

  “There was,” Flip persisted. “I saw him.”

  Paul sat down on the floor and helped himself to bread and jam. “Oh, well, he was probably one of Thérèse’s boyfriends. She’s always having her boyfriends in and feeding them things and then she pretends that they weren’t there and she gave the food to Ariel. Just think, Flip, next Sunday you won’t have to go back to school. You’ll be living here.”

  Flip sighed, curled on the fur rug with Ariel licking her ear, and the warmth from the fire flickering over her body. “That will be wonderful. I can ski all day long and we can talk and talk and talk—” She had almost forgotten her disappointment at not being with her father.

  The last day before the holidays really was as much fun as Erna and Jackie had told Flip it would be. The girls packed all morning and even Miss Tulip turned a deaf ear when they ran shouting up and down the corridor. Erna and Jackie chased Flip, who crashed into Madame Perceval at the head of the stairs and apologized abjectly, though her face was still flushed with pleasure and fun.

  “Just a little more quietly, Flip,” Madame Perceval said, but she smiled with satisfaction as she sent Flip running back to the others.

  After lunch they were all sent out for a walk. Signorina took the walk and she didn’t make them march in line but let them throw snowballs and tumble about in the snow. And she, too, smiled as she watched Flip gather up the snow in her scarlet mittens and hit Esmée Bodet square in the face. Of course Esmée spoiled it by pretending there was ice in the snow and trying to cry, but Signorina said briskly, “Now, Esmée, don’t put on. You know you aren’t hurt in the least. You just wish your aim were as good as Philippa’s.”

  Esmée stuck out her lip and drew Gloria and Sally aside to read them her latest epistle from André, who was at school in Villeneuve.

  After tea the term marks were read out in Assembly Hall. Flip was third for her class with Solvei Krogstad first, and Maggie Campbell second. Then there was a scramble to change for dinner, and when they got down to the dining room the huge fireplaces at either end were blazing and there was a big lighted Christmas tree in one of the bay windows. There was chicken for dinner, and all kinds of unaccustomed delicacies, and the tables were lit by candlelight, and Erna and Jackie called to Flip to come and sit with them so she didn’t have to stand miserably around looking for a vacant seat as she used to do whenever there were unsupervised tables. All through the meal they sang Christmas carols in all languages. As each group started a carol of its country, the others would try to join in, sometimes just humming along with the tune, sometimes picking up the words of the chorus. And the big room was full of warmth and light and happiness and Flip wanted to push back her chair and go about the room and hug everybody.

  If it could just be like this always, she thought.

  After dinner the faculty gave their annual play. They had written it themselves and in it they were all inmates of an old ladies’ home. They had chosen girls from the different classes to be matrons and maids. Liz Campbell, Maggie’s sister and one of the older girls, was the nurse, and convulsed them all by telling Fräulein Hauser she was just pretending to have a sore throat to get out of her walk. Kaatje van Leyden with a black wool wig and a uniform borrowed from Miss Tulip was the matron and scolded Madame Perceval for not making her bed properly and having untidy drawers. The girls took off the teachers and the teachers took off the girls and the audience screamed with laughter during an all-too-brief half hour.

  Then, while the actors got out of costume, there was a wild game of musical chairs played by the entire school, from the youngest to the oldest. Flip astonished herself and everybody else by being left by the last chair with Gloria, who had got there by the simple method of pushing everybody else out of the way, but finally Flip sat down in triumph while Gloria sprawled, defeated, but grinning, on the floor.

  Then the phonograph was turned off and Mlle Desmoulins, the music teacher, took her place at the piano. They sang more Christmas carol
s and the school song, during which Martha Downs and Kaatje van Leyden went about quietly turning out all the lights until the room was lit only by the fire and the candles on either side of the piano.

  Mlle Desmoulins started playing Auld Lang Syne and Gaudeamus Igitur, and the girls all crossed their arms and joined hands, making three big circles, one within the other, and sang in gentler voices than they had used all evening. And it did not seem strange to Flip, standing between Erna and Solvei, that tears were streaming down Erna’s cheeks and her mouth was trembling, so that she could scarcely sing, nor that there was a quaver in Solvei’s usually steady voice.

  As they were getting ready for bed Erna turned to Flip and said with serious eyes, though her voice was bantering, “Flip, do something for me, will you?”

  “Okay, what?”

  “When you say your prayers tonight please pray that I won’t have to go home for the spring holidays. I know they won’t let me stay with Jackie, but please pray that I can at least stay at school.”

  “Okay, Erna,” Flip said. “If that’s what you want, I’ll pray for it. But I’ll pray that the holidays won’t be as bad as you think they will, too, if you don’t mind.”

  “It won’t do any good,” Erna said, “but go ahead and pray for it.”

  On the first day of the Christmas holidays Paul drove over with Monsieur Laurens to get Flip. He would not come into the school but waited outside, standing tall and straight beside the car, and as ready to flee as a mountain chamois. Most of Flip’s classmates were standing with her in the hall, surrounded by coats and parcels and suitcases, and when they heard Monsieur Laurens tell Flip that Paul was outside they all made excuses to drift toward the window.

  “What a dream boy,” Flip heard Sally whisper to Esmée. “How did Flip ever get to know someone like that?”

  “He must be younger than he looks,” Esmée whispered back, and Flip repressed a grin.

  Jackie and Erna came over to say good-bye to her. “Have wonderful hols, Flip,” Erna said, shaking hands with her.

  And Jackie squeezed her arm and whispered, “See you next year, Pill. Your Paul looks divine!”

  Smiling and happy, Flip followed Monsieur Laurens to the car.

  Paul took her up to her room in the gate house. It was a tiny cupboard of a place across the hall from Paul’s room, painted a soft blue, with immaculate white curtains at the window. It was so small a room that the four-poster bed took up the entire space; there wasn’t even space for a bureau or a chair, and Flip was given a carved sea-captain’s chest in the hall in which to keep her things.

  “And remember, don’t close your door, Flip,” Paul warned her. “The room’s so small I guess you wouldn’t want to, anyhow, but the latch is broken and you can’t open the door from the inside.”

  “I’ll remember,” Flip promised.

  As soon as Flip was unpacked she changed out of her uniform and into her ski clothes. Madame Perceval, who had stayed at the school until the majority of the girls were safely off on their various trains, had arrived, and they spent the day skiing. They took a funicular up the mountain and skied until dark, stopping at an inn for lunch. Then, at Flip’s favorite time of day, when the sky was an intense green-blue and the bare branches of the trees were a delicate filigree against it and the first stars began to tremble above the mountain, they skied back to the gate house.

  “Are you having a good time, Flip?” Paul asked anxiously. “Is everything all right?”

  “It’s wonderful!” Flip assured him. “I’m having a beautiful time.”

  After dinner she brought her sketch pad and pencil downstairs with her and sat in front of the fire, idly sketching Paul and Monsieur Laurens. Monsieur Laurens was easy, with his peaked eyebrows, his long thin nose, and his pipe, and his slippers run down at the heels, but she could not caricature Paul.

  “Let me see,” Paul said.

  She showed him the pad. “I can’t do you,” she told him. “I can do your father, but I can’t do you. I can’t do Madame either. Why is it, Madame, that I can’t do you and Paul?”

  Madame Perceval did not answer the question. Instead she said, “Someday you must try a real portrait of Paul. I’ll let you use my oils.”

  “Oh, would you, Madame!” Flip cried. “I’d love to try. Paul would make a wonderful portrait. Would you really sit for me, Paul?”

  Paul grinned rather shyly. “If you’d like me to.”

  “Come on out in the kitchen,” Madame said, “and we’ll have a snack. And then it’s time for you two to be in bed, holidays or no holidays.”

  After Flip was in bed, Paul crossed the hall and knocked on her open door.

  “Hello,” Flip whispered.

  “Are you sleepy, Flip,” Paul asked, “or shall we talk for a few minutes?”

  “Come and talk.”

  Paul had his eiderdown quilt wrapped around him and he climbed up onto the foot of the bed and sat at her feet.

  “You look like an Indian chief,” Flip said, laughing.

  Paul laughed, too, and then sighed. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

  “Me, too,” Flip said.

  She kneaded her feet against her hot water bottle and pulled her blankets up under her chin and the moonlight came in the window and the snowlight and the room seemed very bright and cold. She burrowed into the pillows and Paul wrapped his eiderdown tightly about him so that only his face and a lock of dark hair showed, and they giggled with pleasure at being there together, warm and comfortable and awake, with all the days and nights of the holidays stretching out before them.

  “I’m hungry again,” Paul whispered.

  “I am, too,” Flip whispered back.

  “Are you hungry enough to do anything about it?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.” Then, after a moment, Paul whispered, “Flip—”

  “What?” She turned toward him, and gently his lips brushed against hers.

  “I can talk about anything with you,” Paul said, and again his lips touched hers. “I know you care about me, and that you understand how I feel about not—about not remembering.”

  The feel of Paul’s lips still tingled against hers. “Some day you’ll remember.”

  “Will I? The way you remember your mother?”

  She put her hand lightly on the softness of the down quilt that covered his shoulders. “You know, Paul, you’ve made remembering my mother a good thing. I think of her, now, and it still hurts that I’ll never see her again, but remembering is, well, it’s a privilege. You’ve made me realize that.”

  “Tell me, then,” Paul urged. “Tell me some more of the good things you remember. What was she like? Was she like Aunt Colette?”

  Flip shook her head. “No. And—yes. I mean, they both make you feel you can be and do more than you think you can. And they both make you feel they can make everything be all right. Or at least bearable. They don’t look a bit alike—Mother was very blond, but her hair was soft and curly, not a bit like mine, and her eyes were like women’s eyes in Renoir paintings, soft and dark and tender. And she laughed a lot, and it sounded like spring. She told me lots of stories, and we read aloud together.”

  “Go on,” Paul said. “Tell me something else. I think maybe, maybe hearing you tell about your mother might help me to remember. When you talk about her I get what feels like flickerings at the edges of my mind.”

  “Well—” Flip thought for a moment. “She really did have a way of turning things around and making them all right. Once when we were spending the summer with my grandmother in Goshen, one of the houses in the center of town burned. The sirens went off in the middle of the night. The firemen—they’re all volunteers—got everybody out before anybody was hurt, and Mother took all the kids—there were four of them—home with us, and there they were in our kitchen, in their nightclothes, and Mother was feeding them sandwiches and cocoa, and making them all laugh, and they stayed with us, oh, for weeks, until they could get in their house again.
I was little, maybe five, but I remember the way they all stopped being frightened the night of the fire just because Mother was there and they knew she’d make everything all right. They were alive, and their parents weren’t hurt, and—” she stopped as Paul raised his hand.

  Then he shook his head. “For a moment I thought I remembered . . . but it went away. Go on. Please.”

  “In the morning she used to come in to wake me, and her hair would be all around her, like a cape. Father painted her and painted her. She was about the only grown person he ever painted. He’s never painted Eunice. Only sketches. I’ll show you a picture of her tomorrow. Mother, I mean. And she took me to movies and plays and concerts and museums. On weekends and holidays we played together like two kids.”

  Paul did not respond, and Flip looked over the moonlight and there he was, sound asleep, his mouth a tiny bit open. She crawled out from under the covers and shook him gently. “Paul. Paul. You’d better wake up and go to bed.”

  He rolled over sleepily and slid off the bed, and stood there, clutching his eiderdown, and swaying as though he were still asleep. “Good night, Flip. Thank you.” He bent down and kissed her again, then crossed the hall to his room.

  Flip clambered back under the covers and put her feet against the warmth of the hot water bottle. She still felt the gentleness of his lips against hers as she slid into sleep.

  A few days after the holidays began Flip and Paul were skiing alone. Madame Perceval had gone to spend the day with some friends in Ouchy, and Monsieur Laurens was deep into his book. Flip and Paul, their skis over their shoulders, had climbed a good distance up the mountain and were preparing to ski down when a voice behind them called, “Paul.”

  They turned around and Flip saw the dark man with the too-brilliant black eyes.

  “Paul,” he said again.

  Paul stared at him blankly.

  “Don’t you know me?” he asked.

  “No,” Paul said.