While she was speaking Charley saw the waiter go up to a girl who was sitting on one of the benches and speak to her. His eyes had been wandering and he had noticed her before. She sat strangely still, and you would have thought that she was unconscious of her surroundings. She got up now, gave a glance in their direction, and walked slowly towards them. There was a singular nonchalance in her gait. When she came up she gave Simon a slight smile and they shook hands.
“I saw you come in just now,” she said, as she sat down.
Simon asked her if she would drink a glass of champagne.
“I don’t mind.”
“This is a friend of mine who wants to know you.”
“I’m flattered.” She turned an unsmiling glance on Charley. She looked at him for a time that seemed to him embarrassingly long, but her eyes held neither welcome nor invitation; their perfect indifference was almost nettling. “He’s handsome.” Charley smiled shyly and then the faintest suspicion of a smile trembled on her lips. “He looks good-natured.”
Her turban, her baggy trousers were of gauze, pale blue and thickly sprinkled with little silver stars. She was not very tall; her face was heavily made up, her cheeks extravagantly rouged, her lips scarlet and her eyelids blue; eyebrows and eyelashes were black with mascara. She was certainly not beautiful, she was only prettyish, with rather high cheek-bones, a fleshy little nose and eyes not set deep in their sockets, not prominent either, but on a level as it were with her face, like windows set flush with a wall. They were large and blue, and their blue, emphasized both by the colour of her turban and by the mascara, was like a flame. She had a neat, trim, slight figure, and the skin of her body, pale amber in hue, had a look of silky softness. Her breasts were small and round, virginal, and the well-shaped nipples were rosy.
“Why don’t you ask the Princess to dance with you, Charley?” said Simon.
“Will you?” said he.
She gave the very faintest shrug of one shoulder and without a word rose to her feet. At the same time Mademoiselle Ernestine, saying she had affairs to attend to, left them. It was a new and thrilling experience for Charley to dance with a girl with nothing on above the waist. It made him rather breathless to put his hand on her naked body and to feel her bare breasts against him. The hand which he held in his was small and soft. But he was a well-brought-up young man, with good manners, and feeling it was only decent to make polite conversation, talked in the same way as he would have to any girl at a dance in London whom he did not know. She answered civilly enough, but he had a notion that she was not giving much heed to what he said. Her eyes wandered vaguely about the room, but there was no indication that they found there anything to excite her interest. When he clasped her a little more closely to him she accepted the more intimate hold without any sign that she noticed it. She acquiesced. The band stopped playing and they returned to their table. Simon was sitting there alone.
“Well, does she dance well?” he asked.
“Not very.”
Suddenly she laughed. It was the first sign of animation she had given and her laugh was frank and gay.
“I’m sorry,” she said, speaking English, “I wasn’t attending. I can dance better than that and next time I will.”
Charley flushed.
“I didn’t know you spoke English. I wouldn’t have said that.”
“But it was quite true. And you dance so well, you deserve a partner who can dance too.”
Hitherto they had spoken French. Charley’s was not very accurate, but it was fluent enough, and his accent was good. She spoke it very well, but with the sing-song Russian intonation which gives the language an alien monotony. Her English was not bad.
“The Princess was educated in England,” said Simon.
“I went there when I was two and stayed till I was fourteen. I haven’t spoken it much since then and I’ve forgotten.”
“Where did you live?”
“In London. In Ladbroke Grove. In Charlotte Street. Wherever it was cheap.”
“I’m going to leave you young things now,” said Simon. “I’ll see you to-morrow, Charley.”
“Aren’t you going to the Mass?”
“No.”
He left them with a casual nod.
“Have you known Monsieur Simon long?” asked the Princess.
“He’s my oldest friend.”
“Do you like him?”
“Of course.”
“He’s very different from you. I should have thought he was the last person you would have taken to.”
“He’s brilliantly clever. He’s been a very good friend to me.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but then seemed to think better of it, and kept silent. The music began to play once more.
“Will you dance with me again?” she asked. “I want to show you that I can dance when I want to.”
Perhaps it was because Simon had left them and she felt less constraint, perhaps it was something in Charley’s manner, maybe his confusion when he had realized that she spoke English, that had made her take notice of him, there was a difference in her attitude. It had now a kindliness which was unexpected and attractive. While they danced she talked with something approaching gaiety. She went back to her childhood and spoke with a sort of grim humour of the squalor in which she and her parents had lived in cheap London lodgings. And now, taking the trouble to follow Charley’s steps, she danced very well. They sat down again and Charley glanced at his watch; it was getting on towards midnight. He was in a quandary. He had often heard them speak at home of the church music at St. Eustache, and the opportunity of hearing Mass there on Christmas Eve was one that he could not miss. The thrill of arriving in Paris, his talk with Simon, the new experience of the Sérail and the champagne he had drunk, had combined to fill him with a singular exaltation and he had an urgent desire to hear music; it was as strong as his physical desire for the girl he had been dancing with. It seemed silly to go at this particular juncture and for such a purpose; but there it was, he wanted to, and after all nobody need know.
“Look,” he said, with an engaging smile, “I’ve got a date. I must go away now, but I shall be back in an hour. I shall still find you here, shan’t I?”
“I’m here all night.”
“But you won’t get fixed up with anybody else?”
“Why have you got to go away?”
He smiled a trifle shyly.
“I’m afraid it sounds absurd, but my friend has given me a couple of tickets for the Mass at St. Eustache, and I may never have another opportunity of hearing it.”
“Who are you going with?”
“Nobody.”
“Will you take me?”
“You? But how could you get away?”
“I can arrange that with Mademoiselle. Give me a couple of hundred francs and I’ll fix it.”
He gave her a doubtful glance. With her naked body, her powder-blue turban and trousers, her painted face, she did not look the sort of person to go to church with. She saw his glance and laughed.
“I’d give anything in the world to go. Do, do. I can change in ten minutes. It would give me so much pleasure.”
“All right.”
He gave her the money and telling him to wait for her in the entrance, she hurried away. He paid for the wine and after ten minutes, counted on his watch, went out.
As he stepped into the passage a girl came up to him.
“I haven’t kept you waiting, you see. I’ve explained to Mademoiselle. Anyway she thinks Russians are mad.”
Until she spoke he had not recognized her. She wore a brown coat and skirt and a felt hat. She had taken off her make-up, even the red on her lips, and her eyes under the thin fair line of her shaven eyebrows looked neither so large nor so blue. In her brown clothes, neat but cheap, she looked nondescript. She might have been a workgirl such as you see pouring along side streets from the back door of a department store at the luncheon hour. She was hardly even pretty, but she looked very young;
and there was something humble in her bearing that gave Charley a pang.
“Do you like music, Princess?” he asked, when they got into a taxi.
He did not quite know what to call her. Even though she was a prostitute, he felt it would be rude, with her rank, on so short an acquaintance to call her Olga, and if she had been reduced to so humiliating a position by the stress of circumstances it behoved him all the more to treat her with respect.
“I’m not a princess, you know, and my name isn’t Olga. They call me that at the Sérail because it flatters the clients to think they are going to bed with a princess and they call me Olga because it’s the only Russian name they know besides Sasha. My father was a professor of economics at the University at Leningrad and my mother was the daughter of a customs official.”
“What is your name then?”
“Lydia.”
They arrived just as the Mass was beginning. There were crowds of people and no chance of getting a seat. It was bitterly cold and Charley asked her if she would like his coat. She shook her head without answering. The aisles were lit by naked electric globes and they threw harsh beams on the vaulting, the columns and the dark throng of worshippers. The choir was brilliantly lit. They found a place by a column where, protected by its shadow, they could feel themselves isolated. There was an orchestra on a raised platform. At the altar were priests in splendid vestments. The music seemed to Charley somewhat florid, and he listened to it with a faint sense of disappointment. It did not move him as he had expected it would and the soloists, with their metallic, operatic voices, left him cold. He had a feeling that he was listening to a performance rather than attending a religious ceremony, and it excited in him no sensation of reverence. But for all that he was glad to have come. The darkness into which the light from the electric globes cut like a bright knife, making the Gothic lines grimmer; the soft brilliance of the altar, with its multitude of candles, with the priests performing actions whose meaning was unknown to him; the silent crowd that seemed not to participate but to wait anxiously like a crowd at a station barrier waiting for the gate to open; the stench of wet clothes and the aromatic perfume of incense; the bitter cold that lowered like a threatening unseen presence; it was not a religious emotion that he got from all this, but the sense of a mystery that had its roots far back in the origins of the human race. His nerves were taut, and when on a sudden the choir to the full accompaniment of the orchestra burst with a great shout into the Adeste Fideles he was seized with an exultation over he knew not what. Then a boy sang a canticle; the thin, silvery voice rose in the silence and the notes trickled, with a curious little hesitation at first, as though the singer were not quite sure of himself, trickled like water crystal-clear trickling over the white stones of a brook; and then, the singer gathering assurance, the sounds were caught up, as though by great dark hands, and borne into the intricate curves of the arches and up to the night of the vaulted roof. Suddenly Charley was conscious that the girl by his side, Lydia, was crying. It gave him a bit of a turn, but with his polite English reticence he pretended not to notice; he thought that the dark church and the pure sound of the boy’s voice had filled her with a sudden sense of shame. He was an imaginative youth and he had read many novels. He could guess, he fancied, what she was feeling and he was seized with a great pity for her. He found it curious, however, that she should be so moved by music that was not of the best quality. But now she began to be shaken by heavy sobs and he could pretend no longer that he did not know she was in trouble. He put out a hand and took hers, thinking to offer her thus the comfort of his sympathy, but she snatched away her hand almost roughly. He began to be embarrassed. She was now crying so violently that the bystanders could not but notice it. She was making an exhibition of herself and he went hot with shame.
“Would you like to go out?” he whispered.
She shook her head angrily. Her sobbing grew more and more convulsive and suddenly she sank down on her knees and, burying her face in her hands, gave herself up to uncontrolled weeping. She was heaped up on herself strangely, like a bundle of cast-off clothes, and except for the quivering shoulders you would have thought her in a dead faint. She lay crouched at the foot of the tall pillar, and Charley, miserably self-conscious, stood in front of her trying to protect her from view. He saw a number of persons cast curious glances at her and then at him. It made him angry to think what they must suppose. The musicians were hushed, the choir was mute, and the silence had a thrilling quality of awe. Communicants, serried row upon row, pressed up to the altar steps to take in their mouths the Sacred Host that the priest offered them. Charley’s delicacy prevented him from looking at Lydia and he kept his eyes fixed on the bright-lit chancel. But when she raised herself a little he was conscious of her movement. She turned to the pillar and putting her arm against it hid her face in the crook of her elbow. The passion of her weeping had exhausted her, but the way in which she now sprawled, leaning against the hard stone, her bent legs on the stone paving, expressed such a hopelessness of woe that it was even more intolerable than to see her crushed and bowed on the floor like a person thrown into an unnatural attitude by a violent death.
The service reached its close. The organ joined with the orchestra for the voluntary, and an increasing stream of people, anxious to get to their cars or to find taxis, streamed to the doors. Then it was finished, and a great throng swept down the length of the church. Charley waited till they were alone in the place they had chosen and the last thick wedge of people seemed to be pressing to the doors. He put his hand on her shoulder.
“Come. We must go now.”
He put his arm round her and lifted her to her feet. Inert, she let him do what he liked. She held her eyes averted. Linking her arm in his he led her down the aisle and waited again a little till all but a dozen people had gone out.
“Would you like to walk a few steps?”
“No, I’m so tired. Let’s get into a taxi.”
But they had to walk a little after all, for they could not immediately find one. When they came to a street lamp she stopped and taking a mirror from her bag looked at herself. Her eyes were swollen. She took out a puff and dabbed it over her face.
“There’s not much to be done,” he said, with a kindly smile. “We’d better go and have a drink somewhere. You can’t go back to the Sérail like that.”
“When I cry my eyes always swell. It’ll take hours to go down.”
Just then a taxi passed and Charley hailed it.
“Where shall we go?”
“I don’t care. The Select. Boulevard Montparnasse.”
He gave the address and they drove across the river. When they arrived he hesitated, for the place she had chosen seemed crowded, but she stepped out of the taxi and he followed her. Notwithstanding the cold a lot of people were sitting on the terrace. They found a table within.
“I’ll go into the ladies’ room and wash my eyes.”
In a few minutes she returned and sat down by his side. She had pulled down her hat as far as she could to hide her swollen lids and had powdered herself, but she had put on no rouge and her face was white. She was quite calm. She said nothing about the passion of weeping that had overcome her and you might have thought she took it as a natural thing that needed no excuse.
“I’m very hungry,” she said. “You must be hungry, too.”
Charley was ravenous and while he waited for her had wondered whether in the circumstances it would seem very gross if he ordered himself bacon and eggs. Her remark relieved his mind. It appeared that bacon and eggs were just what she fancied. He wanted to order a bottle of champagne, thinking she needed the stimulant, but she would not let him.
“Why should you waste your money? Let’s have some beer.”
They ate their simple meal with appetite. They talked little. Charley, with his good manners, tried to make polite conversation, but she did not encourage him and presently they fell into silence. When they had finished and had had coffee, he as
ked Lydia what she would like to do.
“I should like to sit here. I’m fond of this place. It’s cosy and intimate. I like to look at the people who come here.”
“All right, we’ll sit here.”
It was not exactly how he had proposed to pass his first night in Paris. He wished he hadn’t been such a fool as to take her to the Midnight Mass. He had not the heart to be unkind to her. But perhaps there was some intonation in his reply that struck her, for she turned a little to look him in the face. She gave him once more the smile he had already seen two or three times on her. It was a queer sort of smile. It hardly moved the lips; it held no gaiety, but was not devoid of kindliness; there was more irony in it than amusement and it was rare and unwilling, patient and disillusioned.
“This can’t be very amusing for you. Why don’t you go back to the Sérail and leave me here?”
“No, I won’t do that.”
“I don’t mind being alone, you know. I sometimes come here by myself and sit for hours. You’ve come to Paris to enjoy yourself. You’d be a fool not to.”
“If it doesn’t bore you I’d like to sit here with you.”
“Why?” She gave him on a sudden a disdainful glance. “Do you look upon yourself as being noble and self-sacrificing? Or are you sorry for me or only curious?”
Charley could not imagine why she seemed angry with him or why she said these wounding things.
“Why should I feel sorry for you? Or curious?”
He meant her to understand that she was not the first prostitute he had met in his life and he was not likely to be impressed with a life-story which was probably sordid and in all likelihood untrue. Lydia stared at him with an expression which to him looked like incredulous surprise.
Christmas Holiday Page 6
