“You’re Denis, I know. You’re not Irish, are you?”
“No — no, I’m not. My grandfather, as a matter of fact, was Scotch — my mother’s father. I believe I’m entitled to wear the plaid of the — —”
“Hop in,” said Buckland. “You can’t wear kilts here, if that’s what you’re after.”
The laughter that followed seemed to Denis unnecessary. He felt rather disappointed in Mrs. Moon, but she looked lovely in a pale moonlight-blue pyjama suit, cut very low, with her thick, fair curls of hair brushed back behind her ears.
Almost like Esther Ralston, or someone, thought Denis. He sat next to Buckland, who, with his accustomed lack of manners, had climbed first into the car and taken his place next to Angie Moon. The car was a wide one, but Denis could feel the hard, swelling thews and sinews of Buckland’s substantial thigh, pressing against his own, and the contact displeased and offended him.
He was glad when the Buick, after flying dangerously round the steep curves of the road, presently drew up with grinding brakes at the entrance to a little white villa, standing in the midst of pines and olives, by the side of the coast.
“I spotted the name on the gate, just as I was going to pass it,” said Mrs. Romayne.
They got out. Denis stood politely at the door of the car, extending a hand to assist Angie Moon, but she did not seem to see it, and again Denis felt snubbed.
It was the first time that he had been to a French house that was neither a shop nor a hotel, and he thought the tiny garden, with a small, romantic fountain splashing in a stone basin, very pretty.
A woman in a black dress and white apron came to the door, smiled at them and said:
“Par ici, messieurs-dames. Sur la terrasse.”
They followed her in single file across a little circular room, evidently a living-room, and then through a side door, to a kind of pavilion, an oblong of white pavement set between white pillars, overlooking the sea and roofed in with thick, twisted vines. Wicker chairs with bright cretonne cushions stood about, and a round marble-topped table held a tray and coffee-cups. Sitting upright in front of it was a rather monumental lady in a black evening dress, talking to a small group of people. She broke off — well she might, thought Denis — at the sight of five visitors coming in, one after another, and there was a good deal of noise, some laughter from Mrs. Romayne, and a few — but not enough — introductions.
An acute attack of self-consciousness invaded Denis. He was amongst those — they were in the majority — who had neither been introduced themselves, nor had anyone else introduced to them, and the absence of these formalities left him uncertain, and afraid of doing the wrong thing.
Moreover there were not nearly enough chairs to go round. This was pointed out by the lady in black. She looked exactly as Denis had imagined that a successful lady-novelist — for so he designated her in his thoughts — would look — dark, and massive, and rather imperious. She might have been any age between forty-eight and sixty. Her voice was deep, and rather commanding.
“Some of you must take cushions, and sit on the edge of the cliff. Don’t fall over.”
Mrs. Romayne threw herself into one of the wicker armchairs. Denis hesitated, looked round for Angie Moon, and saw with disgust that she and Buckland, carrying cushions, had already disappeared into the shadow of the olive trees that fringed the little terrace on the cliffs.
“It’s much nicer outside. Let’s go,” said, in a very soft voice, one of the girls who had stood up when first they came in, and had shaken hands rather indiscriminately.
She picked up some more coloured cushions.
“Allow me.”
Denis became more at ease with the utterance of one of his favourite formulas. It made him feel chivalrous to take the cushions from the girl and carry them out, and she was so tiny that he unconsciously had the illusion of being himself tall, and strong, and protective.
He glanced at her once or twice, as they settled themselves in an angle of wall and tree-trunk, very close to the edge of the rocks, and she lit a cigarette.
She was so small and slight that she could almost have been mistaken for a child, and there was something childish also in her little round head, with the fine, straight dark hair, hanging in a fringe almost to her eyebrows. Her narrow little olive face was striking rather than pretty, but her eyes — enormous and brilliant — shone like dancing amber flames above the glow of her cigarette.
“Won’t you smoke too?”
“Thank you, I think I will.”
He took a cigarette from the black enamel case she held out to him, noting from force of habit, as the indigent do, that it, as well as the cigarettes inside it, was of an expensive variety.
He prepared himself to begin the conversation with the enquiry: “Do you know the South of France well?”
He thought this was a very good opening, and had made use of it several times already.
The girl, however, spoke just as he was going to do so.
“What’s your name?”
Denis was startled.
“I beg your pardon — I’m so sorry. Of course, I ought to have introduced myself. My name is Waller. I came with Mrs. Romayne, from the Hôtel d’Azur. I — I happen to be staying there.”
She ignored the last part of his speech.
“What else besides Waller?”
“What else?”
“What other name, I mean?”
“Oh. Denis. My full name is Denis Hannaford Waller.”
“Mine’s Chrissie Challoner.”
“Are you — —”
In the extremity of his astonishment, Denis faced round at her in the moonlight.
“You’re not the — the lady who writes books?”
She nodded, looking oddly like a small child confessing to a misdeed.
“I’d no idea,” said Denis confusedly. “I never thought you’d be so young, for one thing.”
“I’m twenty-eight, but I know I look much younger than that. It’s rather luck for me, isn’t it? You see, I’ve been writing ever since I was nineteen.”
“To tell you the truth, I thought the lady in black — the tall one — must be Miss Challoner.”
“That’s Mrs. Wolverton-Gush — Gushie. She’s doing secretary for me for the time being — only it’s mostly housekeeping.”
“Are you — are you writing a book just now?” asked Denis reverently. He had a tremendous and indiscriminate admiration for any form of creative work.
“I’m correcting the proofs of my last one. It’ll be out in October.”
“May I — am I allowed to ask what it’s called?”
She laughed.
“You may ask anything you like — I don’t mind. But you’re not obliged to pretend you’re interested, you know. It’s not as if I was a celebrity. I don’t suppose you’d ever heard of me, before this evening.”
“Indeed I had,” said Denis quickly. “I know some of your work, in fact.”
Instantly, he wished he had not said it. He didn’t want to tell lies to Chrissie Challoner — he had only done so from habit.
“Do you really?” she said wistfully.
To Denis’s incredulous astonishment, he heard himself replying: “No. That wasn’t true. I haven’t really read any of your books. I don’t know why I said I had, just now, except, I suppose, that I wanted you to like me. But I can’t say what isn’t true, to you.”
Almost as the words left his lips, he would have given anything to recall them. She’d think him mad — loathe and despise him. His whole body was invaded by a burning heat, and then an icy cold.
He had barely time to know it before she answered, in a quick, warm rush of words.
“I think it’s wonderful of you to tell me that. The biggest compliment that anyone has ever paid me.”
A gratitude so intense that it almost choked him, caught Denis by the throat. He had scarcely known, until then, that generosity could exist, for weaknesses such as his.
�
�I didn’t know — I didn’t think you’d understand,” he stammered, the sense of exquisite relief bringing him perilously near to the tears that he always dreaded, because they came to him with such terrible readiness.
“But of course I do,” she said softly. “I know why you wanted to — fib — it’s so easy, isn’t it? — and then how you wished you hadn’t. Lots of people are like that. But not one in a thousand ever does what you did, afterwards.”
“Oh—” said Denis, and to his horror, his voice broke slightly. “I didn’t know there was anybody like you — anybody who’d understand.”
“You poor boy!” she said under her breath, and without surprise, with only an upwelling sense of unspeakable comfort and reassurance, he felt her hand seeking for his, and clasping it.
“You’re marvellous,” said Denis, under his breath.
“Hasn’t anyone ever given you any sort of understanding before?”
He shook his head dumbly.
“Have you been terribly lonely, always?”
“Always. My mother died when I was six. They sent me to a boarding-school where I wasn’t happy — I was bullied, rather—” He shuddered, and hurried on quickly, warding off memories that he had avoided for years. “I wasn’t ever very strong, physically, and I suppose I was sensitive. I was always unhappy, I know.”
“Your father wasn’t any good to you?”
“He married again. My stepmother didn’t like me. She said I was deceitful, and told lies. I dare say it was true — in fact I know it was. You see, I was frightened.”
“I know.”
The passionate pity in her voice entranced him. He could scarcely believe it was really for him.
“You were frightened because you knew they wouldn’t understand, and you thought they’d laugh at you, or despise you,” she added softly. “And sometimes, those fears come to life again now, and make you say and do things you don’t really mean — poor Denis!”
She called him by his name so naturally that it was not until afterwards that he realised she had done so.
“Hasn’t there ever been anybody with whom you’ve dared to be really yourself?”
“No. Never really. Sometimes, for a little while, and in patches — but not always and about everything — oh no.”
There was a sudden burst of noisy laughter from the group round the table, and a scuffle that overturned a wicker stool.... Denis, involuntarily, half stood up. Chrissie’s small fingers, shifting to his wrist, gently forced him down again.
“It’s all right, dear — don’t go.”
He sat down again, but the spell was broken. His terrible self-consciousness invaded him, he asked himself in an agony what all this meant — why he was giving himself away like this to a girl whom he didn’t know, whom he had met for the first time half an hour ago?
“It’s all right,” repeated Chrissie urgently.
She seemed instantly to have sensed his change of mood.
“Denis, listen. I knew directly I saw you that we had something to do with one another. I can’t tell you why, or what it means exactly. I expect after you’ve gone away to-night, you’ll be frightened again, and wonder how we could ever have talked like this — two people who’ve only just met. But I want you to trust me. Do you think you could?”
“Chrissie — —”
He didn’t know what to say, unable to believe in what had befallen him, and fearful of alienating her sympathy either by word or silence.
The other people — he thought of them in a sort of collective confusion — were moving about, talking and laughing, and making a lot of noise. Somebody started a gramophone, and the catchy refrain of a new dance-record blared out into the night.
The cheap appeal of it acted as a direct stimulus to Denis’s already quivering emotionalism.
“Do you really mean it? Do you really want us to be friends?” he asked, still half incredulous.
“Really, really, Denis. I’m lonely, too — not like you’ve been, but quite enough. I’ll tell you, some day. I know it sounds absurd, but I think you and I have been looking for one another, all this time.”
“I used to think there must be someone like you in the world, and that some day we’d meet,” he murmured. “But I’d given up any hope of it — even now, I don’t feel it can really be true.”
“Anyone want a drink?” shouted a man’s voice.
“You don’t, do you?” whispered Chrissie.
Denis shook his head, still dazed.
The gramophone record came to an end, and the sound of voices surged up again, interspersed with loud laughter and the chink of glass.
“Chrissie!” someone cried.
She gripped Denis’s hand tighter, and did not stir.
“Where’s Chrissie?”
“Fallen over the cliff, perhaps. I thought I heard a splash.”
“No, she’s had an idea and rushed away to put it on paper.”
“Gone for a moonlight bathe.”
“Who with?”
“Why not by herself? We’re not all like you, Coral, trotting about with boy-friends all the time.”
“Damn it, I think someone ought to find Chrissie,” objected a voice — masculine, and not entirely sober. “She’s our hostess, after all. Why, she may be drowned for all we know.”
“She was here when we arrived. I saw her.”
“I shall have to go in a minute,” Chrissie said, speaking low and quickly. “Tell me — how long are you staying at the Hôtel d’Azur?”
“I don’t know — about a fortnight or three weeks, I expect. I’m with a Mr. Bolham—” Denis gulped. “I — I’m his temporary secretary, you know.”
He minded saying it. He would have liked to pretend that he was staying at the Hôtel d’Azur independently, for a holiday. But Chrissie did not seem to notice the admission of his subordinate position.
“Do you have a certain amount of free time — in the afternoons, for instance, or after dinner?”
“I can usually get off in the afternoons. He works in the mornings, and sometimes between tea and dinner. I could get most of my stuff done in the evenings, if I wanted to.”
“If you don’t mind the heat — —”
“I love it,” put in Denis eagerly.
“ — Then come down here — no, you haven’t got a car. I’ll pick you up at the bottom of the Hôtel d’Azur drive, at two o’clock to-morrow. Bring your bathing-things. We’ll go to a place I know along the coast. There’s never anybody there. We can talk.”
“Chrissie, how wonderful! Do you really mean that you want to talk to me?”
Her great dark eyes looking full at him, she answered softly and deliberately:
“Much more than I want anything else in the world.”
His head was reeling. It couldn’t really be true — presently he would wake up, and life would be what it had always been — a nerve-racking, anxious, unsatisfying affair, shot through with continual shafts of fear — the fear of poverty, of failure, of disgrace — above all, the continual fear of being found out in one way or another.
“Denis, are you happier than when you came here to-night?”
He drew a long breath.
“Oh, my dear. It’s like being in another world altogether. Everything’s changed.”
They looked at one another with enchanted eyes. In hers Denis saw the reflection of his own newborn sincerity. A glowing exaltation seemed to envelop him, persisting all through the riotous hour that followed, when he and Chrissie Challoner were drawn into the vortex of noisy talk and laughter that raged up and down the little dark garden and the stone pavilion.
Angie Moon, dancing languorously with Buckland to the strains of the cheap and raucous gramophone, Coral Romayne screaming gynæcological confidences at Mrs. Wolverton-Gush, Hilary withdrawn in sulky superiority behind the pages of a French novel, other people unknown to him, talking interminably to Chrissie about literary scandals and rumours of scandals — Denis saw and heard them through a haze.
For the first time in his life, he was utterly happy.
(3)
It was one o’clock in the morning when the Buick stopped in front of the Hôtel d’Azur. A single light was burning in the hall, over the desk of the concierge. Madame, sallow-faced and with eyelids puffy from fatigue, sat there making entries in her ledgers. She raised her head and smiled at the noisy entry of Coral Romayne and the Moons, but there was a gleam of hatred in her black eyes.
“Vous avez passé une bonne soirée, messieurs-dames?” she said in an amiable voice, and glanced meaningly up at the clock. “Tout le monde est couché depuis longtemps.”
No one answered. Angie said: “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” and walked, with her swaying gait, to the lift.
Buckland was following her, but Mrs. Romayne called out sharply: “It won’t take more than two people. It sticks. You can just walk up, Buck.”
She went into the tiny lift and slammed the gate. It ascended weakly and jerkily, bearing her and Angie Moon out of sight.
“No hope of a drink, I suppose,” grumbled Hilary. He had had a disappointing evening, no one had taken any particular notice of him, and Chrissie Challoner, after all, wasn’t his type at all. He suspected her of being a Lesbian, as he did all intelligent women to whom his own masculinity obviously made no immediate appeal. Sulkily he went upstairs.
Denis found himself in his own room, on the third floor, without the slightest recollection of how he had got there. In a trance, he undressed himself, and switched off the light. Then he knelt down by the bedside, as he did every night of his life, and hid his face in his hands. Happiness surged over him, until he felt as though his spirit must drown in bliss.
Chrissie ...
Incoherent words of thankfulness formed themselves on his lips — he was praying half aloud.
Denis’s belief in a personal God had grown up with him. Often and often it had been his only defence against despair, and self-condemnation, and the overwhelming inward certainty of his own inability ever to rise above circumstances. He clung ardently to his conviction that God understood him, and would help him when things became unendurable, and not allow him to remain for ever unfriended, and lonely, and obscure. This faith in God was on a par with Denis’s secret dramatisation of himself as a reincarnated soul, sent to help others less evolved. He had neither the mentality nor the temperament that analyses before accepting, and his passionate adherence to a God who cared profoundly and individually for Denis Hannaford Waller was in proportion to his supreme need of reassurance, his deadly and corroding fear of being somehow inferior to the rest of humanity.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 386