White Sand and Grey Sand

by Stella Gibbons

  Christopher almost began to tremble. He said casually, “What would you like, Ydette?” forcing himself to keep looking at the list he held before him—but then, because in spite of all the bad luck beforehand, the unlikely, the so-desired thing had after all happened, and the most famous director in the Western World was sitting six feet away, with eyes fixed on the girl whom Christopher had first seen as a potential star four years ago on the sands of Zandeburghe—he added in an excited little burst of kindness:

  “How about ice-cream? I know you like that, don’t you?”

  She sprang up from her seat, made a loud sniffling, choking sound, bent her head and, blundering out from between their table and Burke’s, made her way clumsily but quickly down the length of the room and almost ran through the swing doors and out of the restaurant.

  “Here!” Christopher exclaimed, springing up, “Ydette …!”

  Heads were turning, every face in the room, with expressions of amusement, surprise, irritation, was turning to watch the hasty flight; then back to the table where the girl had been sitting. And Christopher saw Jon Burke drop his eyes indifferently, then bend forward to re-arrange the table-cloth, which had been dragged awry by Ydette in her passing.

  Christopher began, without any haste and after a bewildered shrug at the waitress, to make his way down the room and after her.

  I know just what he’s thinking (his furious thoughts raced as he moved composedly between the tables): he thinks it’s a put-up job; that I told her to sit down under his nose and make a scene so that he couldn’t fail to notice her. It’s the one thing that would make him angrier than anything else—the one fatal thing—a gimmick, a story for the admass press—something contrived. The one thing that’ll make him absolutely determined never to think about her, or me, or her face, again.

  When I get hold of her I’ll kill her.

  But when he did get hold of her—standing as if unable to go any farther beside the immense tank of water reflecting the chemical blue sky, and staring out across it with a kind of horror on her face—he wasn’t just angry with her any more. The whole idea had failed stone-dead; perhaps it never could have succeeded anyway, and now the only thing to do was to get her back to Bruges as quickly as possible.

  “Hullo, Ydette,” he said with simple, deadly kindness, slipping his arm through hers. “What was the matter? Were you frightened?”

  She shook her head, and then she turned and looked at him. In a minute, he laughed and gently shook the arm he held.

  “It’s all right, velvet-eyes,” he said; “come on, let’s go home.”

  They did not talk as they walked back to where he had parked the car. The fact was that he had suddenly felt so fond of her—exactly as he was of Dogfight and that poor ass Nolly, and as he had never, not even in their early days, felt of Susan—that he couldn’t feel the faintest anger with her any more.

  WHEN THEY GOT back to the flat in the late afternoon, tired and silent, they found it empty. But stuck against the telephone was an urgent-looking note in the spiky hand of Hilary: “Christopher: I’ve been trying to get you for three hours. Susan telephoned at eleven to say that the baby has started and she’s gone into hospital. Can you ring them at once please? she said it looked like being quick.”

  “Oh my God, that was all that was needed,” Christopher said. He looked distractedly around. “Shall we have a drink? No—better not, I suppose; ‘young father reeking of rum greets newly-born’ wouldn’t look too good, I suppose. Look here, Ydette, Susan is having the baby. I must go round to the hospital at once. You can look after yourself, can’t you—make tea and that sort of thing? One of the girls is sure to be in soon.”

  She nodded. Her face was so pale as to be almost greenish; the white-tinted, unearthly green of certain orchids. He hesitated in rather a distraught way for a moment; he felt that something should be said or done to make her look less stricken. But all he could think about was Sue—darling Sue, being hurt. He went on rapidly:

  “I shall probably be tied up there for hours, so I don’t expect I shall see you again. I’m awfully sorry about everything; I’m afraid you’ve had rather a rotten holiday, too. Don’t mind about the film-star business; it was just an idea of mine; it probably wouldn’t have come to anything anyway.”

  He broke off, remembering that they had sat in almost total silence during the drive home, and feeling that some explanations about the absolutely fatal thing she had done ought to have been given her, to account for his sudden abandonment of the plan.

  But he simply couldn’t spare the time now—and it was surprising how much trouble could be averted—and to what extent a fuss would settle itself—if you just didn’t talk, and left things alone.

  “I really must go,” he said. “Nora’s got your ticket, hasn’t she?” as Ydette slowly nodded, “and she’ll see you off tomorrow morning, of course.” He crossed the room and stood by her where she drooped at the window, “and don’t worry, will you?” She did not move or speak, and suddenly that feeling came over Christopher again of being so awfully fond of her.

  “Oh cheer up, poppet,” he said and gave her a kiss and a great hug. “I shall see you again, of course. I’m—I’m awfully sorry,” he said, and went out without looking back.

  “I hope it will all be good with the baby,” Ydette said just as the door shut, but he did not hear.

  She turned to the window. The brilliance of the early morning had again ended in rain, and she looked out on broad, wet, deserted streets, in which a few figures struggled with wind-tugged umbrellas, and towers and spires, strange to her as any in Turkey or Latvia, stood up darkly against a lowering sky. She saw Christopher hurry across the road, hail a cruising taxi and drive away, and she was just turning back to the room, with a deep sigh, when she heard a key turning in the front door. Dismayed, swallowing a rising lump in her throat, she stood looking towards the sound. A mejuffrouw!—Oh, let it be Nora!

  But the white-faced one came in, walking so quietly and looking so pale that Ydette actually felt frightened. When she saw Ydette, she stopped and looked slightly sick; there wasn’t any mistaking her expression. There followed a pause.

  Then the telephone bell rang. Ydette looked across at it; not without interest, for there was one at the big house and they were all over the packing-plant, but it was a detached interest, for she had never used one.

  In a minute, as she did not move, Hilary went across and snatched off the receiver.

  “Empire 4646. Who? Oh—yes, she’s here. Hold on, will you?”

  She held it out to Ydette. “It’s for you. A man,” she said.

  “A man?” staring. “Is it Monsieur Ruddlin?”

  “No, of course it isn’t; I know Chris’ voice. Here, will you take it, please? I’ve got to go out again; and I should welcome the chance of getting ready if you’ll just take it, please.” She slightly shook the extended receiver.

  “I do not know any man in England except Monsieur Ruddlin,” Ydette said. Cautiously she took the receiver and, holding it a good distance away from her, addressed—by luck—the mouthpiece.

  “I am here,” she said softly. But there was no distant answering cackle, and in a minute she looked at Hilary. “I think he has gone away,” she said.

  “Oh. Well, put it back, then. Put it back on the stand,” as Ydette hesitated, then, in that tone which expresses reasonableness pushed to the last limit before it explodes in fury—“look here, do you very much mind if I leave you now? I’m late as it is—and I’m pretty sure I’ve come down heavily in my exam this morning, thanks to next to no sleep for three nights on end.”

  “I am sorry, Mademoiselle.” Ydette carefully replaced the receiver; she did not quite understand, beyond knowing that something had gone wrong and feeling that she was being blamed for it, and she was too agitated to wonder about the man who had been on the telephone.

  Hilary snatched open the door and went out, slamming it after her.

  Ydette’s throat ached int
olerably. She had been so distressed, so frightened by the tone and the look, that most of her usually quite adequate English had deserted her, and she had only known that she was being violently blamed. Her sense of guilt, of being ungrateful and stupid and therefore unwanted, was unendurable. And the ice-cream! the dreadful moment when the thought of it and the sound of its name—and Jooris hundreds of miles away and cross with her—had made her cry in front of Mr Burke! Monsieur Chris did right to be cross. Oh, he was cross all right; he had been very kind, he hadn’t said anything, but she always knew when people were cross. It wasn’t that she had ever truly wanted to have a job with a picture-company, and all that stuff about her one day being a star was just crazy English nonsense—but she liked the Ruddlins so much! and she had wanted to be with them, and to please them, and now everything had gone wrong and it was all her fault.

  She sat down heavily—plumped would not be too strong a word—on the fragile sofa, which skidded slightly along the parquet under her impact, and put both hands up to her face.

  A subdued, decently muffled sound crept out on the air. The large, chaste faces of the white dahlias in the Venetian glass goblets looked as if they disapproved. It continued.

  Suddenly the door opened and Hilary’s head came round, wrapped in a stole.

  “Sorry,” she said; “I lost my temper. Overwork.”

  Then, as she saw and heard, in a tone of disgust, “Oh lord—I can’t cope, really I can’t,” and she withdrew.

  Ydette settled herself to relieving her grief. The clock ticked on and the dahlias stared.

  Suddenly the front-door bell rang imperiously, long and loud. She ceased crying, and fearfully listened. Oh, who? Some English friend of the mejuffrouws? Monsieur Chris back again? She kept very quiet. If she took no notice the person might go away.

  But in a moment there came another ring, louder and longer. It sounded as if someone were standing there with bad news, and now she was afraid not to answer it. She did not want to do more wrong things and make more mistakes. She got up, and went out of the room and down the long hall.

  She opened the door in the middle of the fourth furious ring. She was drooping, damp-cheeked, smarting-eyed; and at first she could scarcely see, for the afternoon light that filled the well of the staircase was rainy and dim and her wet eyelashes were entangled. But when she did see who was standing there, she gasped, and her woebegone face broke into a wide smile.

  “Oh mijnheer,” she said, grasping his coat sleeve with both hands, “I’m so glad—I’m so glad. You’ve come to take me home!”

  She spoke in her broadest Flemish, and it was in Flemish that Adriaan answered. All he said was:

  “Oh, hullo, Ydette. Yes, I suppose that’s what I’m here for,” and for a moment he made no attempt to come into the hall. He carried a small briefcase, and had a light overcoat across his arm; rain-drops were on his pear-shaped face beneath his dark, thinning hair.

  “I am so pleased … so pleased …” she said in her very softest tone, “come in, mijnheer—do come in.”

  “Are you alone?” he asked, throwing his coat and case down on a chair. “They’re all out, are they?”

  “Yes, mijnheer.” Her tone was now more respectful. She had not been able to hide her delight at seeing, so utterly unexpectedly, someone from home, but now that he was actually here, in the mejuffrouws’ room, sitting on the most comfortable chair and looking around him with his familiar expression of superciliousness, she felt more conscious of his status as heir of the big house. She stood before him, very long in her black dress and white collar, and with her lovely hands linked. He was lightly touching his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “Sit down, sit down, for God’s sake,” he said.

  But his tone was not cross—and it was almost the first voice that had spoken to her for three days without an impatient undertone. She did not resent the apparent rudeness, because, although this was now the voice of a man, and neither musical nor amiable in tone, it was familiar in sound; and familiarity, the sense of home, of something long known and long accepted, was what she yearned for at this moment. How often in the past had this grating voice, with its soft, clear consonants and flawless vowels, so different from the voices of anyone else she knew, broken the quiet of winter mornings in the plaats, carrying, for Ydette, a charm and authority exceeded only by the voice of Madame van Roeslaere herself.

  He was staring at her. “Why on earth did you ever come? And you’ve been crying.” (He used the Flemish equivalent of blubbering or howling.)

  “Monsieur Chris wanted me to—and it was my holiday, so …” She broke off. Impossible to tell anyone, and especially not Mijnheer Adriaan, how the spell exercised by the big house extended to the friends of its owners.

  “Well, you were a fool. But then you always were, weren’t you? Haven’t I always told you you were a fool?” banteringly.

  “Yes, mijnheer,” and she smiled.

  There it was again, the soft, bright, bemused expression on the face that was irretrievably stamped into his mind’s eye; so deeply impressed there that whenever he was attracted by the face of another woman, this face (whose tiny gradations separating cheekbone from brow, and upper lip from chin, effortlessly built themselves up into purest beauty) immediately floated before him, often chilling him in the full heat of anticipation and pursuit. It’s as bad as God, he thought suddenly, meaning that her face had a similar power of laying something delicate and questioning upon the heated pulse. But now, as he sat opposite to her, where she drooped before him in the last light of the rainy summer afternoon, for almost the first time in his life he felt no resentment against her.

  “You’d better tell me all about it,” he commanded roughly, leaning back, and she began to tell him.

  If there had never passed between them any words but those mocking insults which he had paused to throw at her on his way to school, she might have felt some difficulty in talking, in spite of her veneration for what he represented. But there had been those other occasions—when he had been constrained by the presence of his mother to speak to her courteously, or when, passing her in the corridors or on the stairs of the big house on a day when she had ‘come in to help’, he had felt himself compelled to be polite because he was then in a sense her host, ‘the young master’—and these were the times that she now remembered. Indeed, they returned to her so strongly that she felt he was indeed ‘the young master’, sitting listening in silence while she tried to make him understand her unhappiness; extending to her by his attention, and his mere presence there (so strange! Why, why had he come?), some of the kindly protectiveness and the interest in her small affairs which she had always enjoyed from his mother.

  She spoke slowly, and occasionally he had to help her by asking questions, for no amount of distress or loneliness could ever have made Ydette eloquent. Indeed, watching her as the words came slowly from the pink, unformed, child’s mouth, he doubted whether any passion whatever could have unlocked that tongue. He was thinking more about her than about what she was saying. She was a fool; oh yes, there wasn’t any doubt about that. But perhaps only in a certain kind of way. A fool about the things of the mind (hadn’t she, he had always heard, been very stupid at school?), and perhaps a fool about people (imagine sucking in Chris’ stuff about being a film star—yes, and what exactly had Chris really been up to?) and slow on the uptake.

  But was she finally and completely one? Could a face that suggested some very early version of one of the oldest of the fairy-tales, belong to an utter fool? What was floating through the brain behind that exquisite surface? What thoughts might the heroine of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ be imagined as thinking? He remembered Jean Cocteau’s film, and for a moment his own thoughts played about its images. Then another train of thought began to emerge, but vaguely, and from so far at the back of his mind, that it did not come upon him clearly until Ydette was well into her story and very haltingly trying to explain something of what she had experienced at the s
tudios of Commonwealth Associated Pictures:

  “And there was a whole street, mijnheer … a whole street of houses … where you could walk or a car could drive. But … just fancy! those houses, they had no backs! Not like streets that have been bombed … all in ruins, I mean … but real … I mean, they were made, those houses, like that. Oh, it was—I don’t know—I was frightened!”

  She paused, and he said impatiently:

  “Well. You knew that the houses you see on the screen weren’t real ones, surely?”

  She was silent for a moment. No, he thought, studying her, she didn’t know. She believed that every place she saw, in every rubbishy third-rate film, was a real place—and probably that ‘real’ people were walking about in it, too. She believed that it was another world somewhere. He smiled.

  “It must have been quite a shock,” he said, but he felt that his dry intonation was wasted.

  “Oh yes, mijnheer,” gratefully, and lifting her eyes to his, “it was so strange. And there were the little images too that Mr Christopher showed me. Little figures of the stars … when they … I didn’t understand what they do with them quite … but it’s for something to do with a long way away … and there was a big tank of water, with a blue sky. The day we were there … this morning, why! it was only this morning … there was sunshine, but not like that … the sky was blue, blue, always blue.” She shuddered as if at the taste of something bitter, then murmured something, and was silent.

  Now why is she so upset? he was beginning to wonder (endeavouring, with a sense of condescension, and for one of the few times in his life, to put himself into another person’s place) what might seem horrifying to such a girl, brought up as Ydette had been?—when his attempt was checked by the soft but imperative stealing upon him of an exquisite sensation.

  As it invaded him, he was so charmed by it that he neither wondered whence it came nor in what part of him—senses, heart or spirit—it was unfolding. It was not completely unfamiliar, but never before had he felt it so strongly. He had felt it when he stood in the Louvre, looking at a statue of the goddess Diana with a young deer; once it had come upon him on an evening at home in late summer, when he had happened to glance down one of the canals, where St Mary’s tower was reflected out of a golden haze on the dark water, while every bell in the city was chiming for a fête. And once again, he now remembered, when he was looking at the portrait of an Englishwoman painted by the Italian, Annigoni.