by Ursula Bloom
‘Zis town, ’e is full. Maybe it is wise to telephone Nice, or Beaulieu, or Cannes?’
‘I intend staying here,’ he said quite furiously, then swung through the doors and away. But the brightness had gone from his eyes, and Diana realised that he was very angry. Maybe she could not blame him. He returned after some time during which Madame had remained stone deaf to all conversation, but just scratched with the wheezy pen. He came back indignant. ‘I just can’t get a thing.’
Madame looked up and smiled almost provocatively. ‘M’lle,’ she said to Diana, ‘you go eat? Yes? You have the engagement, so must dine. I will make arrangement for m’sieur.’
‘But …?’
One of those wicked black eyes winked at her, and she jerked the curled black head in the direction of the salle à manger. Diana demurred for but one second, then realised that it would be wise, if unkind, to leave this to Madame, and she went through the glass door into the dining-room, the crystal shimmering on her dress as she moved.
I only pray he doesn’t stay, was what she was thinking.
Chapter Eleven
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Diana lingered over the meal half expecting John would come in, take possession, and sit down with her.
She finished her coffee and then came out into the big hall again, seeing Madame still sitting there sucking her teeth, one of her more unfortunate habits and one which was very prevalent on the continent, Diana had discovered.
‘Did you manage to arrange something for the gentleman, Madame?’ she asked, but tremblingly.
Madame nodded, and beamed at her. ‘Mais oui, I have arrange. He ’ave go to Les Fleurs. It is small, but what he require and not so expensive! Naturally it is not like this place, no compare. No good.’ And then, summing it up in a confidential tone, ‘You would not like ’eem.’
‘But he will be all right?’
Madame lifted her eyes to heaven and then brought them down again on the return journey in one and the same act. ‘All ri’. Mais oui. Not so comfortable, but that is ’is beesness, not me. ’E come with no booking, then ’e ’ave troubles.’ Somehow Diana gathered that this woman was doing her best to help her, and according to her own lights was doing it remarkably well. One could not help liking her.
‘Bless you,’ was what she said.
For a single moment their eyes met across the barrier of the reception desk, and Madame lifting a coarse finger scratched her bust, then said, ‘Be ’appy, my leetle one! That is what matter much.’
‘You also, Madame, I wish you happiness.’
For a moment Madame looked at her, then launched herself into one of her outbursts of almost unbelievable rage in which she could indulge so fiercely. ‘The men! Mon Dieu, the men! ’Ow I ’ate them, all of them!’ She hesitated, then changed her mood on the instant into a broad smile, ‘Bonsoir, Chérie,’ was what she said.
Diana took the hint and went straight up to her pleasant room, for she recognised the danger of meeting John again if she stayed downstairs. She took off her dress and put on a negligée, which was comforting. Perhaps, she thought, my greatest trouble is that I do not know what I want from life.
She had sought love and had had a dream week which had betrayed her. She had hoped for happiness and had instead met one of the cruel experiences of reality. She had not returned to Solihull and if possible would never go there again. She knew it had been right to come out here, it was a holiday in which to pet up her convalescence, but what would she do next?
Life lay before her, unplanned.
She thought of Bernard Dante, standing oblivious of the world and working on that magnificent statue in his studio. He was a kind adviser, someone to whom she could turn, and already he had given her complete confidence. So far, she realised, she had made a mess of her life, and the wound still had a scar on it. She had lost the baby. She looked down at her own hands which lay idly in her lap, hands which as yet were not wholly formed, for she was still very young indeed. An adolescent wart, the last of several (and how she had hated every one of them!), told her that she was growing up and coming into maturity later than other girls at Chatterworth had done.
Was growing up a reward? Did the years count, or was it merely that they destroyed? I’m afraid, she thought.
She slept badly, and had already risen when Suzette brought in the morning tray and set it on the table in the window. She drank the hot coffee with a hillock of cream on it, and she ate the croissants. When she had arrived she had ‒ like so many English visitors ‒ thought that the first meal of the day was insufficient, now she actually liked it.
The early morning was radiant.
She went into the garden and opened the top gate into the street beyond. She prayed that she would not run into John, but this was a risk which she must take, and usually he was a heavy sleeper.
She walked down to the artists’ colony, the birds singing in the trees, the acacias in flower. The very charm of the day compelled and helped her. As she approached Bernard’s house she heard a man singing as he dressed. The sound of the song intrigued her; there is a certain youthful charm about this part of the world, giving the impression that nothing really matters and that life is ever sweet.
She saw the door open and went into the studio. The place was empty, but she saw the huge piece of sculpture standing there with an enormous soiled dust sheet half over it. The sheet was torn in places, nobody could have mended it, in places tattered at the edges. For a moment the silence of the house, for the song had stopped, deceived her, then she heard a man’s step, and realised that after all he was here, and must have heard her.
‘Who’s there?’ he called.
‘Diana,’ she answered.
‘The huntress,’ and he laughed. ‘One moment, then I will come. One must pay homage to the decencies!’
She waited, and then he entered bared to the waist and with a pair of cotton trousers belted round the middle. But he had slung a vivid silk dressing-gown over the shoulders, a rich amber in colour, something which Diana would have thought he would never choose. He waved from the doorway and then called back to the woman in the kitchen.
‘More coffee,’ he ordered. ‘M’lle is tired, I read it in her eyes. Some more coffee, and strong,’ then he closed the door and turned to her. ‘I knew from the first that that damned fellow would come down here.’
‘I know.’
‘Madame rang me. There is more in that old bird than one would think, and he is staying at Les Fleurs. That should kill him, of course, but he is still there this morning, so the woman tells me. Possibly because he cannot get in anywhere else.’
‘You hear everything,’ and she reproached him.
‘I hear a lot because I like small talk. I adore chatter. It keeps me alive. I gather the visit was not entirely anticipated?’
‘No, and it suddenly boomed down on me. I want him to go home.’
‘And he wants marriage?’
‘I rather think so.’
Bernard gaily laughed again. ‘Then he will even put up with Les Fleurs, as one has to do if I know anything of lovers. They tell me that in that abode they brush up the sweepings from the plates and serve them in the omelettes. They have a keen reputation for tasty omelettes. I know it is true.’
The woman appeared with their coffee, set it down and went off again. They drank it together, talking of everything save the subject nearest to their hearts. She told Bernard of her mother’s last letter, and her anxiety, for she was sure that her husband was worsening, but he would do nothing to help himself, of course. Then Diana purposely went back to the trouble in hand.
‘It was an awful shock seeing John here last night, you know.’
‘I do know. He must be a very persistent chap.’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Well, stick to your guns.’
It seemed that some dam burst within her, and now she could talk freely to him. ‘I shall never marry him, and I mean this. But I seem to have travelled far in
the last few weeks, and I am not seeing him as I did. I wish he had not come here, for he is not the man I could ever marry. Maybe the truth of it is that all of us buy experiences with the top price ticket on them, and pay in full.’
‘Of course we do. Pay full price and have a running account for ever after.’
‘You’re very wise.’
He said, ‘Maybe I learnt the hard way. Some of us do.’
There was a pause, and then she went on in a quiet voice. ‘I suppose when I went on that trip to Devonshire, I was little more than a child. I did not recognise the fact that the difference between that life and the one I knew was too much for me. That after Birmingham, Devonshire could be too much, and in September, perhaps the best time of the year, and in the heart the seeking to make the most of the last days of summer before winter came.’
‘How right you are!’ he said.
‘I’d never stayed in a proper hotel before, because Daddy is the boarding-house type, afraid that a big hotel would cost too much, or show him off badly, I suppose. The few holidays I had were as dull as living at home, and that was awful.’
She sat on a corner of the dais, her hands clasped, her arms locked around her knees. She looked elfish, in a way changed, and all the time she knew that this holiday had done something for her which Devonshire had never done. She had grown up.
The big clumsy man, at least twenty years her elder, looked at her. He said, ‘I had holidays like that, and then I chose to pick my own life. I ran away from school, which upset everybody intolerably, it was not the thing to do. I went to sea, one could at that time, and it was a period when it was good to be young and adventurous.’
She reminded him, ‘Men can do the things a girl can never do.’
‘How true!’ and he sat down beside her. There was a moment of great comfort feeling he was there, the man she could trust and lean on. Somehow she had been able to give him the impression of exactly what Devonshire had done for her, and the way it had changed her outlook. Devon had been wine-coloured fuchsias, marigolds and colourful dahlias, but France had bougainvillaea, and the clove scent of carnations everywhere.
‘Do you know that I am changing quite a lot?’ she said, and giggled like an enchanted schoolgirl.
‘Of course you are. It is being on your own. Make no decisions yet, for we rush these and then we are disappointed. The only decisions one should ever make are when we are inspired, and that is very different.’
‘You’re very clever.’
‘No, not clever. I learnt the hard way. I am going to make a sculptor of you, because I believe that you were born to create. I am going to help you.’
She told him that he reminded her of Christian James, the doctor who had encouraged her to go on, the man who had wanted her to come right away, down here into another world.
‘James is a good chap,’ said Bernard.
‘He was terribly kind to me. But I think he has seen too many broken marriages in his profession to risk one himself.’
‘We shall probably see his engagement in The Times tomorrow, and his marriage in St Margaret’s, Westminster, a few weeks later on!’ and Bernard laughed. He had the gay inconsequent laughter of a young boy, and it was infectious. ‘You think that I am cynical, but life is a case of tremendous changes. None of us really know ourselves, but we always think we do. It is the chap next to us who knows what we are really like.’
‘You are a cynic!’
‘Or a deep thinker. Which? Now have a go with an attempt at formation. I’d have said this was the right moment.’
She went over to the corner he had indicated to her. There was a pile of old rags there, greyed and gritted by dust, and she looked down at the clay. She touched it fondly, with no idea of what she would do with it, but there was an inspiration in even touching it. She moulded something in the nature of an arm and curved it down to the wrist, then wondered if she should have done the hand first. He is right, a hand is so terribly difficult, she thought, and coaxed a thumb into being. At first too big, too gaunt, too stiff, with none of the grace about it that a hand should have, and she re-moulded it. The third time something of herself seemed to pass out of her and into the work, and she saw the real thing coming. Again and again she coaxed and changed it, and after an hour she got from it something of the gracefulness which she wanted for it.
During the last part of the time she had not realised that he was standing by her side. ‘It’s good,’ he said.
‘But not what I want.’
‘All of us have to begin, and that is what we forget.’
She felt that the shadows which all her life had been in the corners moved towards her and helped her. She had never until now recognised the association between shadow and substance. An hour later she saw something which she recognised as an improvement. He made her stop then. He said that by forcing it she would hinder it; come back tomorrow. She washed her hands, drying them on a coarse towel.
She said, ‘I believe that here I could lose much of myself and then find vastly more.’
‘Maybe, but all that lies in the lap of the gods.’
She did what he said and gave it up.
She was afraid of meeting John, but he had been out most of the day, Madame told her.
‘He come back late. Maybe you are resting. The day is very ’ot,’ she suggested.
She hurried through the meal, realised that the work this afternoon had exhausted her entirely, and went to bed, sleeping the night through and waking late. But she had the feeling that she had set her foot on the right road, that she stood on the verge of understanding, and ahead of her lay something. She took the coffee and croissants into the garden and had them there, then slipped off to the studio before she met John. She did not want to meet him yet, she told herself. Bernard was not there when she walked in, but she got straight down to the work, and seemed to lose herself in it.
She felt that she herself stood back to let her hands do what they would. It was easier than yesterday, perhaps in life there are always moments when we go suddenly forward into life, do more, think more, and in return learn more. As she worked, a shadow came closer, a young madonna. She drew the delicate formation of the young girl out of the clay, formed it, and changed it. It was still not what she wanted, but far better than yesterday, she knew. She had not heard Bernard come into the studio bare-footed as he often did, and he stood behind her watching.
She turned, surprised. ‘You made me jump.’
‘You’re doing well.’
‘Not yet, but give me time. It steals from oneself, doesn’t it? As though part of self had to die for this to live. But it is different, it is what I want from life.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘You see, so far your whole life has been a mix-up. Loved mother, hard father, dull home. On the top of it a lover in the beauty of Devon in autumn. Remember most of us can get drunk on beauty, when it comes to it.’
‘I’m feeling rather like that myself.’
She went on working, but the incentive of the moment had passed, and eventually she laid it by. ‘I so regret that John has followed me down here,’ she said sadly, knowing that she turned to this big clumsy man, conscious of his extra years, and with them his knowledge, that acute sense of perception which put power behind him. ‘Guide me?’ she asked.
He looked at her, half dismayed. ‘I’ll do whatever I can, but it is not possible for others to guide you in a matter of this kind. We have had very different lives, and maybe we do not see alike because of it.’
‘We do, you know. I hate being hard on John, but I think the whole affair was due to the complication of being hard-up and having no job to do. I want him to go away again.’
Bernard’s pipe had gone out, and he re-lit it. She saw for a moment the heavy pungent smoke blurring his face, leaving just the outline, then he spoke. ‘When my wife was killed, I saw alternative roads lying before me. One to eternal self-reproach, for one always feels responsible for the death of a dear one, even if it is an
accident. That, or the road to fame. And I chose fame. Not only for myself, but because I felt that it could give others pleasure. I was lucky, for my first big job was for Rheims, the St Joan statue, and I did not believe that I could ever do it.’
‘But you did?’
‘Yes, for I believe that in such moments someone else guides the hands. When it was done I was amazed at the beauty of the finished work and hardly recognised it as being my own.’ The light hazel eyes were half sad. ‘The acceptance of the statue, and the press which it gave me, put me on the map. I went on. You will have to go on, Diana.’
‘I realise that. That is the reason why I want to stay here.’
‘I’ll teach you all I know, and mind you, the more I learn the less I find of my knowledge. I ‒ I may have to go over to Corsica for a week. Before then perhaps we can mould your life.’ He paused, then in a low voice he said, ‘You will be a great sculptor, I know that.’
She said nothing.
Later she walked out of the studio into the amiable evening air, freshly warm with the sweet perfume of mimosa everywhere. She walked down the road, with the artists’ houses still about her, and coming to the last one she heard the echo of a terrible row going on inside. She had to admit that when the French had a row, it was ever intense. It passed by more quickly than ours do, but whilst at it they exaggerated it.
She knew the occupants by sight; he was a young Frenchman, a marine artist, and the girl who was said to be his wife came from Marseilles. Their raised voices carried out sharply on to the still air.
In a fury the man said ‘Right! I’ll go tonight, damn you. But this blasted studio is a millstone round my neck. I still have three months to run. Oh, my God, how hard money drives a chap, harder even than women!’
She hesitated beside the broken door, for in this part of the world nobody distressed themselves about any repairing save for the main essentials, and not always then. She saw the young man in the duck trousers, his body naked from the waist up. His skin was nutty brown, and fluffed with light golden hair; by his whole manner she knew that he was indignantly angry. In the corner of the room the girl was packing a valise, with the tempestuous there-it-goes-and-what-do-I-care? of someone in a fury. The thought of how it would turn out at the other end horrified Diana, who was by nature extremely tidy.
