Forty is Beginning (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  He understood that. ‘Pasperdu les bagues?’ he enquired.

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ said Miss Marvin, stirred at last to irritation. She was again wondering why in the world she had ever been such a fool as to come to this place. She had taken off her coat some time ago, and now her one idea was to get to the hotel and strip. She would die in this jumper. ‘Vite, vite!’ she said, ‘the Bella Vista!’

  The porter got the hang of this situation. He wobbled into some recess of the station, and brought out a rather low handcart, piling the two suitcases on top of this and, indicating with a jerk of the head that she must follow him. They walked out of the station into the road beyond, and the first thing that she discovered was that the station had been cool compared to the road beyond.

  Now it was very hot. The heat wave had arrived.

  ‘Why ever did I come?’ she asked herself. Yet the surprising perfume of profuse flowers, and the lovely vision of little citron trees hung with bright yellow fruit, the orange trees on which white waxy blossom and luscious fruit blended together, were all enchanting. ‘But I must get out of my jumper,’ thought Miss Marvin, who now had only one idea, which was the unsuitability of cashmere.

  The porter was disturbing; he would talk. It did not matter if she did not understand a word that he said, for that did not seem to bother him at all; he had been born chatty. He went on chattering all the time, and she was humiliated, realising that she had not the faintest idea what he was talking about. Down the road they walked, with very few people about, and those that there were, hardly observing them. Miss Marvin arrived at the conclusion that everybody here used porters’ barrows and that it was the proper thing to do.

  Eventually they arrived at the Bella Vista, which she saw at once was very little more than a boarding-house, with a glass verandah to one side of it, and a garden of the type that you never see in England. Her first reaction was that she was thankful that the place was unlike the enormous glittering glass hotels like crystal palaces which she had noticed as the train had travelled along the Riviera. One of these would have terrified her, and at heart she preferred something more friendly, which this promised to be. At the same time she would have liked to send a postcard of such a place to the Haineses, with a little cross indicating where she was sleeping.

  The porter pulled the two suitcases off the barrow with completed disregard for any fragility of the contents, and he pushed them inside the open door, smiling pleasantly and holding out a somewhat soiled hand.

  ‘How much?’ asked Miss Marvin.

  Of course he did not understand a single word of English any more! If she had asked for the moon, it would have met with the same vague look, she felt sure.

  ‘Madame,’ was all that he said, and so coyly as though he would now make a gallant attempt to entwine himself round her heart.

  She gave him more than she should have done, she knew, and if she went on at this rate it was obvious that the awkward time would arrive when her money would run out before she had completed her full holiday. What then?

  A stout maidservant was now shovelling the suitcases away and beaming with a Breton amiability.

  Madame appeared.

  Madame was small, arriving at the years when a little extra cosmetic gave her a feeling of security, and she availed herself liberally of it. She wore a black dress, that ‘little black frock’ which is really the uniform of the French, and her hair was so prinked and smarmed that it looked exactly like a chocolate blancmange which had been made a shade too firm and turned out on her head. Her eyes were hard; they were black eyes that saw everything; her mouth was a scarlet scimitar. From the very first Miss Marvin knew that she didn’t like Madame.

  ‘Miss Marvin?’ she enquired, and escorted her across the hall to the reception desk, where three enormous books were lying open, indicating that they required attention.

  Two old ladies, one in button boots, and the other with a Deaf-Aid, looked up from their game of patience.

  ‘A newcomer,’ said the lady in the button boots.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘A newcomer.’

  ‘Yes ‒ she doesn’t look much, does she?’ bawled the other in the penetrating voice of one who cannot hear what she says and has passed beyond the active assistance of Deaf-Aids.

  In the distance could be seen an ancient gentleman in a wheel chair, who was being pushed out into the garden by a bedraggled little wife.

  The place seemed to be old. Naturally it was not what Miss Marvin had expected. As she was signing the third and last of the formidable books (and all the time Madame was watching her with steel in the black of her eye), she saw something that was amazing. A girl came through the lounge, and moving past the door of what she was later to discover was the salle à manger. She was young, beautiful, and attractive; she was nut-brown all over, wearing a single light band round the bust, and tiny three-cornered trunks, so that she allowed one to judge her all over. Never had Miss Marvin seen a girl wearing less! She did not hurry, she made no attempt to put the blue striped cloak around herself. She smiled encouragingly on everyone as though it was the right thing to do, then she hesitated a moment in the main doorway and putting on a dressy pair of dark glasses (in fact there were a lot more plastic flowers and fruit on the sides of the glasses than there was material in her silly little trunks), out she went!

  Madame did not flicker.

  ‘Jeanne will show you the room,’ said Madame, and pinged a bell with one highly manicured finger. Jeanne was the Breton girl, and she led the way to the room that was situated at the far end. When the door opened it revealed the fact that it was quite unlike any room that Miss Marvin had ever entered before. It was decorated in pale pink. Plaster cupids poised themselves over the windows and the doorways, smirking down with rosebuds in their hands, and making no attempt to deposit the rosebuds where it was plain they most needed them. They had no modesty. There was a single bed, which was trimmed rather like an ormolu dressing-table with a great deal of taffeta in a delicate shade of lilac. Talk about buttons and bows! thought Miss Marvin. The french windows opened on to a lawn, for it was a ground floor room. There were lemon trees, and a tangerine, beyond them a vista of junipers going down the hillside.

  Going over to the window Miss Marvin looked down the incline to Cap Rabat itself. A ruined castle stood on one side of a miniature lake, there was more of that intensely blue sea, and a lively beach where nobody seemed to be wearing anything at all. Later she discovered that the optical illusion was due to the fact that it was one of those years when it was the fashion to wear flesh-coloured trunks, which brought blushes to the uninitiated.

  A bathroom was situated next door.

  ‘It is expensive,’ explained Jeanne. ‘It is extra.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Miss Marvin for the anxiety about money was becoming even more disturbing still. Once she had thought of the Consul, but now she was not so sure that he might not be a very frightening old gentleman. It was horrifying. The thing to do for the moment was to get out of these too hot clothes, and try to recover from the effects of the journey.

  She rid herself of Jeanne, then tried to lock the door, but there wasn’t a key! ‘Oh dear!’ thought Miss Marvin. It was bad enough to be sleeping in a strange country, and on a ground floor, but to sleep without the door being locked safely upon her was more than a problem.

  ‘Oh dear!’ she said again.

  Despite the lack of a key, she had to wrench off the cashmere jumper or explode. She contemplated herself in the glass. She was wearing a serviceable serge skirt; she wore a mercerised cotton princess petticoat, faultless if undecorative, and under it the woollen vest to which she remained faithful in all emergencies; she believing that she would catch cold without it.

  She washed and recovered from the journey, even if the bath was extra, a bath she insisted on having, knowing that she had never needed it more.

  She went over to the secretaire and there she found postca
rds; she despatched one to the Haineses to announce that she had arrived safely. She half thought of sending a second one to Mr. Swinnerton and then refrained because the postage was expensive. ‘I must be careful,’ she kept telling herself.

  Jeanne came to inform her that déjeuner was ready. ‘I’m very hungry,’ thought Miss Marvin, ‘and could do with a good meal,’ and she went along the corridor to see what she could get.

  The salle à manger was bijou! It was decorated in pale green and there were delicate gilt baskets of profuse fern on the sideboard, with small tables round the walls covered with pale eau de Nil cloths, and bearing little baskets of cheese ‒ very small cheeses ‒ in the centre. Jeanne assisted with the waiting and escorted Miss Marvin to a tiny table in the corner, and that was very bijou too. There was a small gilt chair fitted with an extremely hard green seat, so hard that Miss Marvin could not think how she would prolong her meals! She sat down and looked eagerly round her.

  At the end of the room Madame was dealing out soup into very charming pale green bowls, but when they appeared on the table there appeared to be very little soup in them. Three croutes of bread jovially rode the solitary tablespoonful! ‘Perhaps,’ thought Miss Marvin, ‘this is what they call the aperitif!’

  Jeanne advanced to enquire what wine Madame desired. ‘Water,’ said Miss Marvin.

  Jeanne was so staggered that she reeled. ‘Evians?’ she asked. In France they did not appreciate the fact that the Almighty gave water to His flock and water was what one most desired to drink.

  ‘No, I want some ordinary water,’ said Miss Marvin.

  That was undoubtedly one satisfactory way in which to save money, she told herself, and anyhow she didn’t like Evians at all.

  Several fellow guests had arrived; there were some old ladies, and some old gentlemen, and some middle-aged ones, and several young girls in bathing dresses escorted by young men in shorts. It seemed to be a strange hotel, she told herself, and she knew that she was for the moment disappointed, but was trying to reserve her judgment.

  Jeanne reappeared with another delicate plate. On it lay a very small piece of veal, some beans cooked in butter, a quarter of a hard-boiled egg, and one tiny potato, looking very delicious but very small; pretty, but hardly filling. There was no toast or bread, and she was ravenously hungry; Miss Marvin would have given more than she liked to think for one of Mrs. Haines’s good and inspiring meals. Hot meat or rabbit with two abundant vegs, an apple pud sprinkled with demerara sugar to follow. However, she ate it hopefully, thinking that maybe the pudding would be better.

  There wasn’t a pudding.

  The last course was the fragment of cheese admirably presented in a tiny basket with a very large vine leaf, tied with a tinsel bow. Miss Marvin went back to her room, deciding to lie down and rest and think this one out. It was very hot indeed, and this got her, so that she dozed off almost at once, waking to find a pert little postman standing beside her offering her a letter.

  ‘Bonjour, madame,’ said the postman in a friendly manner; he was apparently entirely accustomed to walking into ladies’ bedrooms and proffering his goods under intimate conditions.

  Madame was horrified. She tried to pull up a taffeta spread with which to cover the fact that being a careful woman she had taken off her frock and was only wearing her princess petticoat. The postman smiled understanding completely, and obviously not caring.

  It took Miss Marvin ten minutes to recover; really she must tell Madame that whatever else happened she must be supplied with a key, because she couldn’t have this sort of thing going on; she really couldn’t.

  The card was from the Haineses. It was a picture postcard of the illuminations at Blackpool, and it bade her welcome and wished her a very happy holiday. ‘What a very kind thought!’ she told herself.

  She dressed and went in search of tea. The great peace had descended on the Bella Vista and as far as she could see there was not a soul about. Jeanne had disappeared. The salle à manger was quite empty, for she opened the door to see. At last she saw the two old ladies who had been playing patience this morning, now sitting on the verandah, fanning themselves with wickerwork hatchets. They wore the sort of stern blouse that allows no nonsense.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but what time is tea?’

  ‘Me?’ said the one with the Deaf-Aid, ‘what about me?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Clara,’ said the other, ‘she asked what time is tea.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Marvin.

  Apparently there wasn’t any tea; that was one of the things no French hotel supplied, and all the guests went out to a patisserie for tea.

  Much as Miss Marvin disliked the idea of going out anywhere in this strange country, her passionate desire for a good cup of tea was too much for her.

  She walked down the street, and turning the corner came somewhat abruptly on a scene she presumed was called the plage. Mamselle at Brestonbury had assured her that there would be a plage. There were woolly palm trees, a profusion of stocks, and little dark roses in exquisite flower beds. A few confidential shops, all on bijou lines, displayed a single piece of intimate lingerie in the window. On the corner of the street she saw a charming-looking hotel with Les Papillons on its signboard, it looked so infinitely preferable to the Bella Vista that she was furious, but she couldn’t change now, and Les Papillons looked expensive.

  The patisserie was full, but she found one empty place, and hurriedly sat herself down at a little table. The garçon came along; he was one of those gaily flippant French garçons with a merry face that was out for fun.

  ‘Café, mademoiselle?’ enquired the garçon. So far they had never called her anything but madame, and to hear mademoiselle was a little encouraging. It must be her hair! Really she could not think how she had ever allowed that naughty hairdresser to play such tricks with her hair. It looked very nice, but as she told herself, ‘It isn’t me.’ It certainly wasn’t the ‘me’ of Brestonbury, but it might become the ‘me’ of Cap Rabat.

  ‘No, I’d like some tea, please,’ she directed.

  The garçon shrugged his shoulders; he had the dimmest idea of tea, but mon dieu these English! ‘The China?’ he enquired.

  ‘No, I prefer Indian, please, and some cake.’

  After a suitable delay the garçon reappeared with a charming little pot of something that certainly wasn’t tea, pale yellow and very weak, accompanied by coquettish sugar wrapped in cellophane, some cream in a large bowl, and a trolley of some things that had never been cake.

  ‘The rhum baba, m’lle?’ he suggested.

  His eyes were wicked and she ought of course to be ashamed that a young man could look at her that way, but oddly enough at this particular moment she wasn’t ashamed for she was actually enjoying it. She accepted the rhum baba, which he set on her plate with a couple of rather ridiculous forks; she also accepted a white thing with cherries on top of it and sprigs of angelica, which the garçon assured her was très gentille. She sat back with this collection. It was not the tea with a relish as supplied by the Haineses after a meeting of ‘Blood and Fire’, but it was something.

  That tea was the beginning.

  She had the pleasant feeling that something delightful was about to happen; she felt warm and very happy. The tea was vile, but the rhum baba was a new world. It was intoxicating, of course, but she had arrived at the stage in her life when an intoxicating trifle was not to be quibbled at. Something would happen next; what would it be?

  France has only one thing up its sleeve, always the same thing, but very admirable. It is the gentleman!

  The gentleman appeared, perhaps a trifle older than Miss Marvin. She watched him approaching across the road from Les Papillons, so that she had time to notice. He was tall, clean and very erect. Undoubtedly the army, thought Miss Marvin, and added the British army, with an infinite sense of pride. He was good-looking in that Saxon manner, with light brown hair ‒ growing a little sparse ‒ and the type of blue eyes that have twinkles i
n them. He had a swarthy skin, she would have said that he had been out East by the look of him, and to carry out this idea he wore a khaki cotton bush jacket and drill shorts. But he looked noble (yes, ‘noble’ was the word, she knew), and seeing the patisserie was so full he came straight over to her table and looked smilingly at her.

  ‘Mind if I sit here? There doesn’t seem to be anywhere else,’ he asked. He knew she was English. How nice of him! she thought, unaware of the fact that the cotton frock with the unadventurous heliotrope stripe and the gym shoes hallmarked her English without a doubt. Only her hair had a tale to tell, and her hair was a lovely colour, curling exquisitely. He had noticed her hair!

  ‘Of course I don’t mind. I should be rather glad. I’ve only just arrived in Cap Rabat and I find it bewildering,’ she explained.

  Down he sat. ‘I’ve been here ever since the war ended; bought a little hotel with a legacy,’ and he jerked his head in the direction of it. ‘Les Papillons.’

  ‘Oh, I noticed it on my way here,’ she remarked, ‘it looks very nice, much nicer than where I am staying.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘The Bella Vista.’

  ‘They starve you there,’ he commented.

  Before she could stop herself, she had said, ‘Don’t I know it! The lunch was a disgrace. I came out to get some tea, but even the tea is not like the tea at home.’

  ‘You shouldn’t drink tea, it’s filthy in France; you should always ask for coffee. The coffee is superb here, none better in the world, but the tea is the end,’ and he whistled up the garçon.

  The garçon treated him as an old friend. He knew exactly what would be required, and he brought it.

  The name of the new arrival on the scenes was Colonel Hewlitt, and he was very well known in Cap Rabat and much respected. Over his coffee he told Miss Marvin quite a lot about himself.

  He came from Winchester, one of an old army family, all of whom had gone into the forces. He had served in India, and that had taught him a lot, for he believed in discipline and the call-a-spade-a-spade attitude. It wasn’t the same these days, dear me, no, not at all the same, and that was the pity.