The slighting gesture with which he indicated his smart new beach-wear was directed towards Mrs. Morgan, who smiled in reply.
Mr. Bolham, not smiling, produced matches.
“Thanks. My wife remembered to bring down her cigarette-case, but forgot the matches. Here you are, Angie.” His wife had joined them.
He lit her cigarette.
“Thanks a lot,” said the girl, not looking at any of them.
There was a moment’s pause.
“Well — I think we’ll go and have a dip,” said Mr. Moon. “It’s a bore not having brought a car. We didn’t know this Hotel was so far from the sea.”
“It’s a disadvantage,” Mary Morgan agreed.
Mr. Bolham, whose large Sunbeam was in the Hotel garage, said no word, and the Moons, swaying slightly from the hips as they walked, went away.
(3)
“Pretty bloody, weren’t they?” observed Hilary.
“Oh, quite. Still, one’s got to begin somewhere, and the concierge says the Morgans have been here longer than anyone. They’re sure to know everybody in the Hotel.”
“Well, I shall go round to those villa people this evening. I suppose it might be as well to try and remember their name first.”
Angie made no reply. The Moons seldom held sustained conversations with one another.
She cursed the heat, and the uneven surface of the winding road, and decided within her own mind that the old stick-in-the-mud — this was Mr. Bolham — was worse than useless, though Hilary might stand a possible chance with him, provided he didn’t swank. She knew this by instinct, as she also knew by instinct that Mr. Bolham was a rich man whose wealth had been inherited rather than earned.
Mrs. Morgan was not rich, and she clearly belonged to a world about which the Moons practically knew nothing whatever, and which knew nothing whatever about them.
Angie dismissed her.
The pink-pyjama’d woman was the person to cultivate — Mrs. Romayne. She obviously shared Angie’s own predilections for free drinks, the society of men, and an atmosphere of talk and laughter, and noise, and general looseness.
The French people were no use.
Buckland and Waller were both young, more or less unattached, and each had certainly remarked Angie. They would be easy.
The American, Muller, was obviously most worth while, but he would also be far more impervious to her attractions than the younger and less experienced men. Angie had no illusions, and she knew very well that a rich and travelled American would have met her type over and over again.
CHAPTER II
(1)
The rocks, to which Mrs. Romayne’s new and superb Buick conveyed the party at break-neck speed, formed a small bay where a section of the Mediterranean splashed gently and tidelessly.
Buckland pulled the car up by the side of the road, and everyone got out and began the descent, which was steep and necessitated climbing.
The children, already in bathing-suits, negotiated it easily. Patrick Romayne hung back, and put out his hand doubtfully to help his mother.
“Don’t touch me,” she screamed. “I shall overbalance if you do.”
“I’ll go first,” volunteered Denis Waller, clinging in a most uncertain fashion to a ledge of red rock, and inwardly terrified lest he might be going to make a fool of himself by slipping, and breaking the glass of his wrist-watch. It was a new wrist-watch, set in a broad gold band, and it helped to bolster up his deficient self-assurance, because he secretly felt that it lent him individuality.
Mrs. Romayne screamed again, this time with derisive laughter.
“There wouldn’t be much left of you, if I fell on you,” she said crudely but accurately.
Waller privately winced. He was sensitive about himself in every possible aspect, but perhaps most of all where his small and skinny physical appearance was concerned.
Buckland, big and strong and hairy, thrust himself forward.
“Come on,” he ordered masterfully. “I’ve got you.”
He grasped Mrs. Romayne by the arm — the shoulder — the ankle — anywhere — half pushing and half lifting her down.
Denis Waller gritted his teeth.
He disliked Buckland intensely, and thought him a cad; nevertheless he envied him.
Why couldn’t he have some of Buckland’s self-confidence, his loud efficiency, and his easy success?
Denis slipped a little further down the rock, glanced round surreptitiously to see if anyone had noticed it and was despising him, and continued to slither, slowly and carefully — for he was rather frightened — in the rear of the party.
As he went, he comforted himself with a series of phantasies that had sustained him, varying hardly at all through the years, ever since his little boyhood.
The assumption on which most of these phantasies rested was to the effect that Denis Hannaford Waller had, in a past existence, been one of the world’s Great Teachers — (which of them, he hardly liked to formulate even to himself, although he had his own secret convictions on the subject). Deliberately, on returning once more to earth, he had elected to embrace humiliation, an insignificant position, a frail and unimposing physique. Through the medium of these disadvantages, he would not only attain to a higher spirituality, but would continue his mission to humanity.
It was a large, indefinite mission, that embraced general understanding, and helpfulness, and service, and soon after attaining his seventeenth year, Denis had found that all these could be offered to, and welcomed by, girls of his own age or rather younger, of an intelligence slightly inferior to his own. Often and often these alliances of the spirit had landed him in difficulties, but he sincerely believed, on each occasion, that the difficulties had only been occasioned by the unworthiness, fickleness, or weakness, of the people whom he had tried to help. His own integrity he felt to be intact, and indeed morally — in the common acceptance of the term — he had remained impeccable, for he was both undersexed and inclined to a physical fastidiousness that he mistook for spirituality.
Mrs. Romayne, coarse-tongued and flamboyant, repelled rather than attracted him, but it was so essential to Denis Waller to be approved, and if possible liked, by all those with whom he was thrown into contact, that he always behaved exactly as if he admired and respected her very much. Dimly, he excused this insincerity to himself whenever he realised it — which occasionally happened if he woke up suddenly in the middle of the night — on the grounds that Mrs. Romayne might one day be Influenced by him.
Denis had a pathetic belief in the power of Influence, especially his own. He had often dreamed of obtaining a post as tutor in a private family, where he would have profited by his opportunities in a manner very different from that of Buckland — but the dream had remained a dream, in spite of tentative visits to various scholastic agencies, for his educational attainments were not very much more distinguished than were his athletic capabilities. Nevertheless, he continued to think of himself as an Influence, and it was, in fact, true that he had several times occasioned a temporary psychic disturbance in the lives of various young women with whom he had held long and personal conversations — in the course of which he had made frequent, and usually inaccurate, use of the word “psychological.”
It would have required much less intelligence than Denis possessed, to suppose for one instant that he would ever be permitted to influence his employer. Denis did not fall into this error. But he still hoped, though ever more faintly, that one day Mr. Bolham — if he did not sack him first — might come to like him. Unfortunately, he had obtained the post of temporary secretary to Mr. Bolham partly by inducing a woman friend to write a glowing testimonial to his abilities, based almost entirely on what he had himself told her about them, and partly by undertaking, with an air of modest efficiency, to do a great many things of which he was, actually, more or less incapable. This incapacity had become obvious, almost at once, to his employer, and Denis lived in daily terror of being sent back to England, jobless and wi
thout a reference.
It was partly from a panic-stricken desire to have a possible second string to his bow that he took pains to ingratiate himself with the other visitors in the Hotel. One never knew when, and in what way, social contacts might become of practical use.
On a more exalted plane was his perfectly genuine wish to fulfil his own vision of himself as helping and influencing less evolved souls.
Lowering himself cautiously to the rocky plateau from which they were all to bathe, Denis reflected how terribly the boy Patrick Romayne needed help.
Perhaps he could win his confidence....
“So you’ve got here at last,” observed Buckland, not very kindly.
He was changing into his bathing things without any particular regard for privacy.
Denis, more modestly, sought a pinnacle of rock and went behind it, when he instantly found himself face-to-face with Mrs. Romayne, half-in and half-out of a backless, and nearly frontless, emerald green swimming-suit.
“You can’t come here,” she shrieked.
“I’m most frightfully sorry — I beg your pardon.”
Denis in reality was hardly more shocked or disturbed by the sight of a semi-naked woman than a child might have been, but he mistook his terror of having offended Mrs. Romayne for outraged masculine susceptibility, and retired in great discomposure to another projection of rock, where he undressed as quickly as possible.
The children were already in the water.
He watched the two younger Morgans, Gwennie and David, with some envy and admiration. They were only eight and ten years old, and swam well and fearlessly in water in which they were nowhere within their depths. He could see them moving steadily forward, shouting to one another in a conversational manner, and guessed that they were making for a rocky islet some sixty yards away, where a man’s figure — that of their father — could be seen.
The eldest Morgan was not visible, neither was Patrick Romayne. As Denis emerged from behind his shelter, in a pair of blue bathing-pants without any top — for his desire to acquire a virile bronze was intense — he met Dulcie Courteney, whom he had forgotten all about, for she had not much personality and would certainly never rank as a social asset to anybody.
But he was at his best with children, whom he genuinely liked, so he smiled at her and said: “Hallo.”
“Hallo, Mr. Waller. Are you going in immediately?”
“No, I don’t think so,” replied Denis, guessing that this was what she wanted him to say.
“Oh, good. Will you sit on the rocks with me, and sun-bathe, Mr. Waller? I don’t mean really sun-bathe, of course.”
“I quite understand. This would be rather a good place, wouldn’t it? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten to bring any oil.”
Denis had carefully forgotten to bring any oil ever since his first, rather expensive, bottle had come to an end. Other people were always sure to have plenty.
“I’ll lend you my bottle,” Dulcie volunteered eagerly. “You see, I don’t really need it, do I? I’ve been here all the summer, so of course I’m brown. Though I don’t think very fair people like me ever go quite as dark as if they weren’t so fair, do you? Though of course, you’re very fair yourself, Mr. Waller.”
She gazed at him critically, and Denis threw back his shoulders, then felt that this was a very cheap and obvious gesture, so pretended that he had only meant to lie down flat on the rock, and did so, at the expense of some pain to his shoulder-blades and the back of his head.
Dulcie continued to prattle. It was evidently her idea of good manners, to permit no interval of silence.
“It was sweet of Mrs. Romayne to bring me down in her car, don’t you think, Mr. Waller? She’s always awfully sweet to me. So’s everybody in the Hotel, really. My Pops says I’m ever such a lucky girl to have such heaps of friends. Of course, I do what I can to help people — like talking French, or anything like that — I’ve taught the Morgans ever such a lot of French.”
“They’ve been here a long time, haven’t they?”
“A whole month, and they’re staying on for ten days more. I think they must be quite well off, really, you know. Oh” — she clapped her hands over her mouth— “oh, I forgot! Pops says I’m never to talk over other-people-in-the-Hotel’s business. You won’t say anything, will you?”
“No, of course not. I’m a particularly safe person, as it happens. I get a great many secrets confided to me, and it’s just as if they were dropped into a great well.”
The rock seemed to be growing harder and harder, and moreover the glare of the sun was still strong enough to necessitate closed eyes, which might look rather silly — besides, he had been lying on his back long enough to preclude any suspicion of not having chosen the position on purpose — so Denis rolled over on to his front, and felt far more comfortable.
“Oh, look, Mr. Waller! Gwennie and David have got right out to that rock where their daddy is. They’re waving.”
Dulcie agitated a bathing-cloak, and Denis, under pretext of waving his hand, was enabled to sit up again.
“Gwennie swims awfully well, I think, for a little child of eight; don’t you, Mr. Waller? Look, she’s going to dive. I wish I could dive as well as she can. I dive awfully badly. Pops always says he’s going to give me some lessons, but he never has time.”
She looked wistfully at Denis, and his immediate impulse was to say that he would give her diving lessons. Only a caution born of experience restrained him. There was at least one serious impediment in the way of teaching Dulcie to dive.
At last he said:
“I think I could give you a few hints myself.”
“Oh, Mr. Waller, would you really? I do think it’s sweet of you. I can do it in a sort of a way, you know — only not well — and if only you’d show me — I’m sure you dive marvellously yourself.”
“No, indeed I don’t.”
“People always say that.”
“I shall teach you the theory,” Denis explained earnestly. “It’s much the soundest way of learning — far more use than just watching somebody else doing it. As a matter of fact, my doctor’s advised me not to do any diving this summer.”
“Oh, Mr. Waller, what a shame, just when you’ve come to the South of France!”
“It is, isn’t it?” said Denis with a melancholy smile, and at once began to feel that it was.
“Are you delicate, Mr. Waller?”
“Not in the least. I’m rather exceptionally strong, as it happens. Muscularly, that is. But ever since a fall I had, out hunting last year, I find that diving or — anything of that kind — is apt to give me a violent headache.”
“What a shame.”
“Please don’t say anything about it to anyone, will you?”
Denis was frequently impelled to end his conversations in this manner. It made him feel safer. On this occasion, however, he really did not know whether or not he hoped that Dulcie would take him at his word. He had only been at the Hôtel d’Azur a week, but he had seen almost at once that it would be necessary to find a convincing and creditable reason for his great disinclination to practise diving — a disinclination due far less to physical cowardice than to his terror of looking foolish over his first attempts.
“Are you very keen on hunting, Mr. Waller?”
“Yes — that is, I haven’t done a great deal,” hastily said Denis, wishing that he had chosen the Row as mise en scène for his catastrophe.
“I say, Dulcie, don’t you think it’s time we went in?”
“Oh yes, Mr. Waller,” cried Dulcie, who always agreed, with every sign of eagerness, to suggestions made by Hotel visitors.
They moved to the edge of the rock and slid, in postures of safety rather than of elegance, into the warm blue water.
(2)
On quite another rock, separated from the main plateau by a narrow channel of mildly surging sea, sat Olwen, the eldest Morgan, with Patrick Romayne.
She was a child of grave-eyed, slender beauty, with blu
e, deep, intelligent eyes like her mother’s, and bright, thick hair, cut into a square gold frame for her small sun-browned face.
She wore a very faded and scanty blue bathing-suit that exposed her soft, childish neck, and long slim legs and arms, all uniformly tanned to a smooth, polished bronze.
Patrick, much fairer than she was, had only achieved an uncomfortable scarlet that made his light hair and eyelashes look almost white.
“Shall I oil you?” Olwen enquired.
“Yes, please. Only go frightfully carefully where it’s blistered, if you don’t mind.”
“All right.”
She tipped some coconut-oil out of the bottle that lay beside Patrick and applied it carefully to his shoulders and back.
“Thanks awfully. Sure you don’t want to go in and swim with David and Gwennie?”
“Quite sure, thanks.”
There was a silence. Then Patrick said:
“Where’s that Dulcie person?”
“Oh, somewhere or other. She’s all right, I expect.”
“Why did you ask her to come?”
“Mummie made us. She’s sorry for her or something.”
“Well, I’m much sorrier for the people who’ve got to be with her,” said Patrick.
“Yes, so’m I.”
“I expect the wretched kid has a pretty mouldy existence, on the whole. Isn’t she the child of a sort of Polytechnic agent or something?”
“Yes. At least, I don’t know what he is exactly, but he speaks marvellous French and German and English, and when he’s here he arranges dances and excursions and things, in the Hotel, but part of the time he’s dashing about between here and Paris, or Paris and London. I think he brings people over who don’t want to travel by themselves — old ladies and things. Dulcie just stays here all the time.”
“Even in the winter? I say, I saw a fish then.”
“They do show up sometimes. There are masses of them in the Réserve, just in front of the Hotel where they give you bouillabaisse. No, in the winter they go to the Winter Sports places.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 383