White Sand and Grey Sand

by Stella Gibbons

  You might almost call her moody … and Christopher had small patience with moody girls; Susan had won him finally because she could offer the imperious gaiety and hard good sense which all her rivals had lacked. Perhaps ‘pensive’ was a better word (for Ydette was not exactly moody). But if she were going to be pensive as well as lacking in sex appeal, her chances of ever becoming a star were remote indeed, for pensiveness was in the doghouse, together with chastity, piety and reticence. He began, as the day went on, to feel that his little scheme was really rather ridiculous; flimsy, even impertinent. But not yet had he felt the dismal conviction that it would never come to anything at all.

  He brought her back early to the flat after a nice little dinner during which he had cautiously told her something of Jon Burke, the man who had made that picture about Greece which she had liked so much, The Violet Crown. He ventured to tell her that she was the type that this famous Mr Burke most admired, adding that he might even be at the studios when she was taken to lunch there on Monday!

  Ydette, spooning up ice-cream with a most melancholy expression, answered only, “Thank you, Mr Christopher.”

  It had not been a satisfactory day, and he was nearly a hundred and four pounds overdrawn at the bank.

  “ARE YOU ALL right?” Nora stood there in her dressing-gown, when Ydette opened her door in response to a tap, half an hour or so after the flat had retired for the night; “I thought perhaps you might be …”

  She could not quite get her tongue round ‘homesick’.

  “Thank you; I am very well.” And indeed, at the sight of that face, now greasy with night-cream but endearingly familiar, and those clever eyes that had looked upon the aunts, and Madame van Roeslaere, and even Klaas, to say nothing of Klaartje and the Three Towers, Ydette’s own face widened into a smile that absolutely fascinated Nora; causing an imagination not usually given to flights of fancy to present her with images of grateful giraffes and complacent honeysuckles.

  “Not lonely?” She forced herself to utter the word which must never be used of feelings or people but only of landscapes.

  “I wish all were here,” confided Ydette, “my aunts, and all who are at home.”

  “It would be rather a tight fit, wouldn’t it?” said Nora, and the essay at Christopher’s style of humour when talking to Ydette was rewarded with another delighted smile.

  “Well,” she said, preparing to withdraw, “I just thought that I would make sure you have everything you want.”

  “Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

  “I think you might manage to call me Nora, don’t you?”

  Ydette smiled, but did not answer. Her eyes rested gently on Nora’s, and the latter suddenly felt a strong wish to protect her.

  Without knowing much about the world of the film-makers, the little that she did know, through the conversation and habits of Christopher and his friends, made her suspect that his ‘find’ would not be happy there; that she might even find it impossible, if she went into it, to be good. (By ‘good’, Nora meant the keeping of personal integrity and the abiding by certain standards of conduct which had been very carefully thought out.) A word of warning might be dropped, she thought.

  But it was late, and she was tired, and she really did rather shrink from entering into explanations that might keep them whispering there until one o’clock; besides, wouldn’t it be distinctly unfair to Chris to prejudice his starlet against a film career even before she had started on one? But she did lean forward and gently kiss Ydette.

  “Sleep well,” she said, smiling, and noiselessly shut the door.

  Mejuffrouw Nora, so clever, to kiss her! This was the first time that anyone not an aunt or her granny had kissed her since she ceased to be a little girl (here her thoughts hastily shied away from the memory of the last time she had thought about kissing): and, comforted, and feeling less lonely, she fell asleep.

  Saturday, however, was worse.

  Her spirits had fallen steadily during breakfast, for Nora had returned to her usual manner, and ate in silence while looking for the most part absently out of the window, and the two other girls had chattered away in long words and very fast, scarcely interrupting themselves to shove the sugar at Ydette (they seemed surprised that she drank her coffee with sugar) or to push the bread at her with brief smiles. She was not used to long conversations at any time, least of all during the times when one was eating, but she did not like feeling so out of it all. And she would have liked Mejuffrouw Nora (no, she could not drop the mejuffrouw, it was no use) to talk to her.

  After breakfast the white mejuffrouw with the big eyes went into her bedroom with a great pile of books and shut the door, and Mejuffrouw Nora and the Austrian-dress one went out together.

  Christopher arrived a little later, disliking the hot weather and irritable because Susan had come home unexpectedly, very lively, and demanding to be taken out. He wanted to take her (she was one of those girls who look very beautiful in the last stage of pregnancy, and he was proud of the respectful admiration she attracted when they walked abroad) and he had planned to make Nora entertain Ydette that day. His annoyance, when he found that his sister had gone creeping off into the country with Evelyn, was considerable. He had to telephone Susan and break it to her that Ydette must make a third for lunch.

  If Evelyn and Hilary had alarmed Ydette, Susan puzzled and irritated her. She thought Susan’s dress—an elegant olive-coloured modification of the sack line—as ugly as it was revealing, and her quick, high-bred voice contemptuous. Susan, after saying a few nice things to her with the flashing smile due to a possible future star discovered by Susan’s husband, talked entirely to Christopher, who occasionally asked Ydette if she would like another pineapple-juice, but simply could not resist the fascination of his wife, and hardly took his eyes off her. It happened to be a day when Ydette was looking almost plain, and he knew with resigned annoyance that Susan was wondering what all the enthusiasm had been about.

  In the afternoon he drove them up to Hampstead Heath, and they trailed silently about in the thundery heat, looking at London spread out in the valley; and lack-lustredly admiring the rose-garden at Kenwood House. By the time they were having tea in the Old Stables there, he felt as though the day had been going on for six weeks, and the sight of Ydette’s expressionless, milky face and black crescents of lowered eyelashes, as she sat winding her long pink tongue unhurriedly round the ‘lolly’ she had with quiet obstinacy insisted on buying, was almost unbearably irritating.

  In fact, she was enjoying one of the few moments of peace which she had experienced that day, largely because she had been able to secure this object, which, while satisfying her longing for an ice-cream, did not remind her too painfully of the kind she was accustomed to eat with Jooris. All her thoughts, now, were either of what they might be doing at home, or occupied with counting the hours until she got back there, and although England was beautiful, she did not like it because it was unfamiliar.

  Susan, feeling belatedly that she had been neglectful of her wifely duties towards Christopher’s career, exerted herself in the car on the way home to charm Ydette. She sparkled; she asked interesting questions; she made sensible remarks (neither too frivolous nor too plainly taking it for granted that Ydette’s life might soon be entirely altered) concerning the possibility of her getting a small part in a film directed by this Mr Burke, and she told Ydette what a lot she might then be able to do for her family.

  Ydette did not make any reply.

  “I think it would be a good idea if you got to bed early tonight, Ydette,” Christopher said, very masterfully indeed, as the car stopped outside Imperial Court. “If I were you I should just have some—er—some milk or something and then tumble in.”

  “Tomble——?” She was standing there, looking about seven feet high in her long black coat, staring at him.

  “Into bed, I mean.” He was conscious of Susan’s far-from-stifled giggle. “Here—I’d better come up with you, just in case all those wre
tched—in case none of the girls are in.”

  The door, however, was opened by Hilary, with an even whiter face than usual. No, they hadn’t really disturbed her; she had only been resting; not asleep; she had been working all day and had rather a headache; it was this wretched Biology on Monday that she was rather dreading; it was her weakest subject.

  Christopher, who saw no reason why a young woman should require a Research Fellowship with the Nature Conservancy, murmured, “Oh, is it?” and the atmosphere was not lightened by Hilary adding that she was taking Biology to help her with the theme she was working on for her Ph.D.

  Ydette had wandered into the kitchen and was staring fearfully at the electric stove. Feeling rather like a good Pagan leaving a Christian to the lions, Christopher repeated his advice about milk or something and went quickly away.

  “For God’s sake kiss me—I’m starting to loathe women,” he said to Susan as he shut the door of the car.

  “Poor love. Let’s go and have daiquaris somewhere.”

  “The O. is up to a hundred and four. I told you. (How lovely you smell. I suppose that cost the earth, too.)”

  “(No, it didn’t, I pinched some of Mummy’s ‘Joy’.) Never mind, Ydette’s going to make our fortune, and we’ll soon be rich.”

  The evening passed exceedingly quietly at Imperial Court. Hilary worked in her own room, and Ydette, having brewed herself some milk under Hilary’s snappish instructions, slowly had a bath and went to bed. Nora and Evelyn, returning sunburnt and peaceful about eleven o’clock, found both their doors shut.

  Nora had been asleep for perhaps two hours when she was aroused by a light, imperious tapping, and when, in answer to her sleepy call, her door opened, Hilary was revealed, looking younger than she did during the daytime because her hair was in two plaits, and exceedingly cross.

  “Can you come and do something about that Belgian creature? She’s crying,” she said.

  “Oh lord,” said Nora, feeling for her dressing-gown.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Hil—has it been keeping you awake?”

  “I’d just got to sleep when it started.”

  “Oh, I am sorry.” And indeed she felt it, and rather apprehensive too, for a broken night upset Hilary as did nothing else.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, getting out of bed, and feeling miserably guilty.

  “Don’t you bother, I can manage,” she whispered as she turned the handle of Ydette’s door.

  “No, I’ll come too; I can probably manage better than you would,” and to Nora’s relief, Hilary smiled. Nora smiled too, and opened the door.

  At once the sniffling and the sobbing, which had certainly sounded rather unrestrained, stopped. The room was dark, but the subdued glow from the hall showed the bed and a surprising quantity of dark hair, presumably damp with tears, scattered all over it. Hilary and Nora were both conscious of the same distaste, and Nora’s voice was brisker than usual as she said:

  “Ydette? What’s the matter?”

  An alarmed heaving, and the long, white shape surrounded by showers of black sat up. There was a gasping interrogative sound.

  “Is there anything you want? Are you ill?”

  They thought, although they could not be sure, that she was shaking her head.

  “Well, if there isn’t anything you want and you don’t feel ill …” began Nora. But she felt rather unkind and was relieved when Hilary interrupted, in the voice she had been accustomed to use on juniors who had a ‘rave’ on her.

  “I expect you’re rather homesick, aren’t you?—miles away from your family—especially if it’s the first time you’ve stayed away from home. But do cheer up, Chris is going to take you over the studios on Monday, and that will be fun, won’t it? And tomorrow you can have a nice quiet day.”

  Silence. The head was apparently bent down into the showers of hair.

  “Won’t it?” Hilary repeated, winningly.

  “Yes, Mademoiselle.” They caught the whisper.

  “And you mustn’t cry any more, because I’ve got a terribly difficult examination on Monday, in my very weakest subject. And if you cry, you’ll keep me awake,” Hilary ended on an appealing note.

  “I am sorry, Mademoiselle.” Now they thought that she was busy with her handkerchief; she was moving her hands about near her bent head.

  “So now you’ll go to sleep, won’t you? … Do you think you’d feel more comfortable if I got you a Disprin?”

  A shake of the head. Hil was being marvellous, Nora thought.

  “Sure? All right then … now you go to sleep, like a good child.”

  “Yes, Mademoiselle.”

  They waited a moment, but there was no further movement or sound. She only sat there, with her head bent.

  “Good night,” said Hilary firmly, and they withdrew.

  Outside in the hall she opened both eyes widely upon Nora.

  “How very surprising. One would think that we were nine rather than nineteen.”

  “Ydette is very childish in some ways,” said Nora. Although Hil had been both tactful and kind, she felt irritated with her. “It’s one of the things one likes the tiresome little creature for.”

  “‘Likes’? Don’t you mean that one feels superior, and therefore pleased with her?”

  “No. I mean ‘likes’. You must get back to bed, Hil; you’ll be dead tomorrow. Thanks most awfully for managing, and I’m terribly sorry about letting you in for all this.” She gestured helplessly with both hands. “It’s only until Tuesday, thank heaven.”

  “It does prove, though, doesn’t it, that girls must be educated?” Hilary said thoughtfully. (She never noticed when you were irritated with her.) “You know, she makes me feel quite bad—all that wetness, and softness, and helplessness—it’s revolting, in some queer way. Don’t you agree?”

  “Hil, you’re trying to start a discussion,” said Nora, not welcoming one at this hour, and unable to feel quite as fond of Hilary as usual, “we really must get back to bed.”

  She lay awake for a little while, trying to hear whether Ydette was still crying. But there was complete silence throughout the flat. She felt sorry for Ydette; sorrier, actually, than she did for Hil.

  But of course, Hil’s exams were rather more important than the fantods of a Belgian peasant.

  Nora fell asleep.

  Sunday was spent more quietly than either of the preceding days, but Ydette did not find in it much refreshment. And by evening—it began to rain about three o’clock, an event pointed out by her three hostesses as being typical of that peculiarly bright kind of late summer day in England—she was feeling more depressed than ever.

  After they had all risen late, and dawdled over breakfast in a way that to Ydette seemed rather shocking, Nora took her to Westminster Cathedral and left her to go in alone to hear Mass, promising to call back for her.

  This left Ydette with at least a clear conscience, but the familiarity of the service only emphasized the strangeness of her surroundings; she could not keep her eyes on the altar and off the unfamiliar faces on every side, and would even have been glad to see the rusty cape of the old woman who performed certain humble tasks connected with prayer-books and candle-selling at Our Lady’s, much as she usually disliked that sour and toil-hardened countenance. Nor could she, she felt, say her prayers properly when they did not go straight up through the roof to circle about the head of the Person in the pointed hat. They seemed to fall back again, as if baffled. And when she came out again, into the strange streets of very tall buildings, full of solemn-faced people idling past the closed shops and cafés, and saw Mejuffrouw Nora standing aloofly awaiting her at the corner, and realized that it was only half-past twelve—her heart sank indeed.

  The sinking was shown so plainly on her face that Nora’s subconscious misgivings about the situation suddenly took shape, and she resolved to talk to her. Firmly announcing that they would lunch out today, she took a taxi to Soho, where they found a re
staurant that was open, and soon Ydette was looking more cheerful as she confronted a large piece of fried veal. (Nora noted the exact price of the latter, determined that Chris should pay both for it and for the taxi.)

  “Now,” she began, determined to waste no time, “that’s better, isn’t it? I’m afraid you haven’t been enjoying your visit very much, have you, up until now?”

  Ydette neither looked startled nor made any attempt at denial. She kept her eyes down, and Nora in a moment was compelled reluctantly to recognize the expression creeping over her face. Sulks, now. That was all that was needed.

  “You must find it all rather strange,” she doggedly continued. “London is so big, and this is the first time you’ve been abroad, isn’t it? And of course, I and my friends are always so busy—I’m afraid you’ve been rather lonely.”

  “No, Mademoiselle,” Ydette said, after a pause just long enough to be rude. She still did not look up, and, apparently uninterested, continued to masticate veal.

  “What do you really think, Ydette,” Nora, feeling surprisingly rebuffed, ignored her own sensations and leant persuasively across the table, “about this plan for working in the cinema? Do you believe you can become a star? My brother believes it, you know. He’s absolutely convinced that you can, if you want to. Has he ever talked to you about acting?” But as she spoke she knew that acting, where a ‘waxlet’ was concerned, didn’t come into it. Jon Burke preferred malleable, teachable girls, Christopher had said, without the histrionic temperament.

  Ydette shook her head, cutting up a piece of veal.

  “Well, I don’t suppose you would have to do much of that—anyway, not in the accepted sense.” Nora paused, and called home her straying vocabulary. “It would all depend really on whether this Mr Burke thought he could make you into the kind of person he wants. Would you like that?”