Thalia

by Frances Faviell

  ‘Play what?’

  ‘Baccarat. Would you like to have a look at it? I’m afraid you’re too young to play that, but you can have a try at boule if you like.’

  I said I’d like to try. The group round the table fascinated me. My aunt was very fond of telling me that my father liked gambling. He had explained boule to me. I read the various combinations allowed in this casino, and said I’d start with a single number. If it won I would get eight times my stake.

  I chose seven. The ball stopped at seven. I left the winnings on; the ball stopped again at seven. I had put on 100 francs and now had 6,400 francs.

  ‘I’ll leave it on,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t leave all that on a single number—you are only allowed 5,000 francs on a single number,’ said Terence. I left 5,000 on number seven. It came up again. I had won 40,000 francs.

  ‘Try Passe et Manque now,’ suggested Terence. I put 5,000 on Manque. It won. No matter what I chose it won.

  ‘Beginner’s luck,’ said everyone round the table, looking at the great pile of chips in front of me. How Father would have loved to have seen my extraordinary luck!

  Just as I was going to put another 5,000 francs on seven, something compelled me to look up. Behind the croupier, smiling at me, were Philippe Tréfours and his son. He shook his head deliberately. ‘Leave off now. You’ll lose it all,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘He’s right,’ said Terence. ‘The trouble with me is that I simply can’t leave off. But that’s enough for one night. I’ll be accused of corrupting the young!’

  He changed the chips for me. My gold evening bag was stuffed with notes. I’d never had so much money in my hands.

  ‘This is all on a very small scale here. You’ll see real gambling at baccarat,’ said Terence as we danced again.

  When we were watching the cabaret later, I saw that Philippe Tréfours and his son were with Catherine Tracey. She waved to me as soon as the number was over.

  ‘Who is she?’ asked Terence.

  ‘Catherine Tracey. I’m going to paint her portrait—or try to.’

  A change passed quickly over his face at the mention of her name.

  ‘So that’s the lovely Mrs. Tracey!’ he said in a peculiar way, ‘and how did you meet her? You seem to have a positive genius for meeting the wrong people.’

  ‘Wrong people!’ I said indignantly. ‘I suppose you mean Madeleine. Cynthia chose her. And thanks to you she’s gone! As to Catherine, Thalia and I went there to tea the day you turned Madeleine out. The daughter Clodagh is at school with Thalia.’

  I was angry with Terence, and he began laughing. ‘You knew perfectly well what Madeleine was—and you deliberately kept it from Cynthia,’ he accused me.

  ‘Thalia knew—I didn’t know for some time.’

  He frowned. ‘Thalia! She’s precocious, she knows far too much. Take care, Rachel. She’s deep.’

  I wanted to go over and talk to Catherine, but Terence swept me on to the floor again. We were dancing a waltz, and the lights kept changing colour. I found it fun to have a different coloured dress every minute and to have a partner with a green, then violet face. Every time we passed the Tréfours table, Armand’s eyes were on me.

  ‘Who’s the fair admirer?’ asked Terence, who missed nothing.

  I was annoyed. ‘He’s not an admirer. I met him at Catherine Tracey’s—just once. That’s his father with him.’

  ‘And he, if I’m not mistaken, is Monsieur Philippe Tréfours, the great man of the district.’

  When the waltz ended he said: ‘Come along, let’s go and look at the sea.’

  I put my cloak round my shoulders and we went out on to the deserted Promenade. It was as light and tranquil as the night on which we had crossed. The sea was smooth and each wave as it rolled lazily on the pale sand was caught in an unearthly phosphorescent light. About the entire place was the strange hushed peace which moonlight carries. We walked towards the great bend to the right where the cliffs tower above the narrow path round the rocks to the Pointe. I knew that Terence was going to kiss me and I didn’t mind.

  I didn’t exactly like him—but something in him attracted me, and he was a wonderful dancing partner. At home, if a man took you out to dinner and dance he expected to kiss you, or so my friends said. Having never been out alone with one I didn’t know.

  When he took me in his arms I looked at the moon—not him. And when he kissed my mouth I shut it very tightly.

  ‘You’re a cold little fish,’ he said. ‘Kiss me, don’t just behave like a passive martyr.’

  This made me laugh and I opened my mouth. Immediately he kissed me again savagely, hurting me, and at the same time bending me back against the rock. My cloak fell off, and I felt such a revulsion and fury that I struggled wildly. But he held me, laughing down at me; and I thought of Madeleine’s words, ‘He is cruel, that one. Life has hurt him and he wants to hurt.’

  ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ I hit wildly at him.

  He released me contemptuously. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Rachel. You look passionate—you’ve all the signs. But you’re about as responsive as cold porridge.’

  ‘Try Cynthia! Perhaps she’s the reverse,’ I said angrily, wiping my mouth with my handkerchief. He had bruised my lips and my chin felt sore.

  For a moment I thought he was going to strike me. He was furious.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly. What had I said to bring such a look of fury to his face?

  ‘Don’t say that again. There are things little girls don’t understand—and never will.’

  His accent on the little girls was contemptuous.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so disappointing,’ I said meekly. ‘I’ve not had much experience. Let’s go back and dance. You dance divinely.’

  He was pleased. ‘You’re not so bad yourself. Better than you are at kissing.’ And then he caught my hands and we both began to laugh and I kissed him lightly on the cheek. He showered little kisses on my neck and I liked this better than when he had kissed my mouth.

  It was Thalia, not Cynthia, who had waited up for me. I let myself in with the key entrusted to me and crept upstairs, but when I reached my room, Thalia was crouching by the window.

  ‘I saw you come back,’ she said, and then she stared. ‘He’s been kissing you,’ she said accusingly.

  I wondered how she knew, and glanced in the dressing-table mirror. There were red marks round my chin, and my lipstick had smeared badly, and Cynthia had been dead right about the hair. It looked appalling, hanging down in wisps round my neck. There was an ugly stain on the back of my frock where Terence had pressed me against the damp rock, and I had caught my foot in one of the frills of my skirt and it hung in a forlorn hoop!

  Thalia continued to stare. She was bunched up now on my bed in an all-enveloping childish nightgown. ‘How can you let him? How can you?’ Her voice was hysterical.

  ‘Go to bed,’ I said crossly. I was mortified at what the mirror revealed. ‘It’s none of your business what I do. Get that clear.’

  She got up without a word, then as she reached the door she said: ‘That’s how Mother came home when he took her out.’

  I flung off the frock, and scrubbed my face with soap and water, and then my neck, and everywhere his mouth had touched me. I hated myself so much that I felt physically ill.

  Marie woke me the next morning. She wore a stiffly starched white apron over a grey stuff gown and a tiny white coif on the crown of her head. Her hair in its severe knot was perfectly dressed and her face had that look of soap-and-water cleanliness which was rapidly becoming rare.

  ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle Rachel. May God guard you to-day!’

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ I asked politely.

  ‘Yes, after I’d disinfected the room after her! I haven’t brought you that water and leaves they call tea. I’ve brought you a bowl of café au lait—like I drink myself.’

  I appreciated this way of being awakened. She stood there by the window looking out
at the sea: ‘There’ll be a storm to-day. The wind’s already high. More for the Cimetières des Naufrages!’ and she sighed deeply. ‘Where’s the crucifix which was in this room?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There was none here when I came.’

  ‘Every room in this villa has a crucifix. Have you looked in the armoire?’

  She went over to the huge carved Breton cupboard and pulled open the doors. On the top shelf on which I had placed my hats she thrust her arm right to the back and held up a crucifix in triumph. ‘Là voilà!’

  ‘How d’you know there is a crucifix in every room here?’ I was curious.

  ‘I used to work here,’ she said quietly.

  ‘With an English family?’

  ‘No. With the owner.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘In Paris. She’s married again—a Frenchman.’

  ‘Wasn’t she French then?’

  ‘She’s a Breton.’

  ‘That is French.’

  ‘Yes. It’s French—but only after Breton. Française, oui! mais Breton surtout!’

  ‘Was her first husband Breton?’

  ‘Of course. A God-fearing man. This new one is from Paris.’

  She spoke the word Paris as if it were Hell.

  ‘Where’s the first husband then?’

  ‘Where should he be but in his grave?’ She crossed herself and murmured something.

  ‘Drink your café, Mademoiselle.’ She took the small crucifix tenderly in her hand and dusted it carefully on the immaculate apron.

  ‘It belongs over the bed. See, the hook is still there.’ She reached over me and hung up the cross. ‘You are a Catholic?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you’re a Christian?’ She peered at me anxiously.

  ‘Yes . . .’ I said doubtfully. I was thinking of the Amarna theory and my rather agnostic views.

  ‘You attend the Anglo-American church with the Madame?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She seemed satisfied with this. ‘It’s a good church,’ she said grudgingly, and looking approvingly again at the crucifix above my bed she rustled out.

  Thalia came in. ‘You’ve got coffee,’ she said enviously, ‘and a great bowl! Marie brought me a cup of tea—all water and milk.’

  The bowl was of thick Breton china from Quimper with two little handles. The café au lait was delicious.

  ‘Have some,’ I offered. ‘You can drink from the other side.’

  I turned the bowl round. But she turned it back, and looking at me with her strangely opaque dark eyes she deliberately put her lips to the place from which I had drunk. But when she returned the bowl to me I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. I dressed quickly and went down to awaken Claude. He lay in an enormous bed like a tiny flaxen doll, his arms flung out, and his face so beautiful in sleep that I hated to wake him. I decided to get up early the next day and to creep in and draw him while he slept. He awoke instantly when I shook him lightly. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Silly old Rachel! I dreamed a crocodile had bitten you up,’ but his warm little hands were stroking my face as I sat on his bed and his eyes were full of mischief.

  Marie came in with a parcel. ‘For Monsieur Claude. . . .’

  ‘Ooh! Ooh! It’s a football. It’s the football Daddy promised me from London!’

  I signed the paper for it and together we fell upon the wrappings. The football was deflated, the bladder and an extra one enclosed. Claude was disappointed.

  ‘I want it blown up. Now! Immediately, Rachel. Blow it up for me. At once!’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to get a pump—I can’t.’

  ‘Do it at once. At once!’ he screamed in a fury, kicking me as I sat on the bed.

  Marie was scandalized. ‘Il est gâté, ce petit!’ she said. ‘Yves will blow it up for him presently—but tell him not unless he stops this noise.’

  Claude went on screaming, so I shut the door of his room and left him. I heard Cynthia’s voice calling me.

  ‘What’s the matter with Claude?’ She was sipping her tea and reading a letter.

  ‘His football has come—and it isn’t blown up. He wants it done at once.’

  ‘Can’t you do it? A child always wants things done at once. . . .’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It needs a pump. Marie says her brother will do it after breakfast. . . .’

  ‘Hurry with yours, then, Rachel, and take it along. Claude has been looking forward for so long to the football.’

  ‘I don’t think he ought to have it done as soon as he wants it,’ I said. ‘He’s been screaming and kicking—he’s too old for that . . . he must learn that he must wait sometimes.’

  Her face was suddenly thin and hard. ‘It’s bad for him to scream. . . . What do you know about children? You’ve not had any. . . .’

  ‘There hasn’t been much time . . .’ I retorted. ‘I’m only eighteen. . . . But I wouldn’t let a child of mine kick and scream as much as he liked—I would let him wait.’

  Her eyes had narrowed. ‘Eighteen! I thought you were twenty.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You may as well know now—you’d know anyhow when my passport has to go to the police for my residence permit . . . I’m eighteen. . . .’

  ‘You deceived me.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t see what difference it makes. It’s better for Thalia that I’m young.’

  ‘But it’s not better for me. It explains why you’re still in this silly giggling stage, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said lamely.

  She got up and, throwing on a négligée went into Claude’s room. ‘My darling, don’t cry. Don’t. Rachel will get it done for you as soon as you’ve had your breakfast. I promise you.’ She held him close to her, rocking his head to her breast. He turned a baleful eye towards me.

  ‘She didn’t want to do it. She only likes doing things for Thalia,’ he shouted.

  Cynthia hushed him. ‘I don’t want Rachel to dress me. I want you to. I want you to.’

  ‘He ought to dress himself,’ I said angrily. ‘He’s almost seven.’

  ‘When I want your advice, Rachel, I’ll ask for it.’

  ‘Little beast!’ said Thalia, who had been listening from the landing above. ‘Ali always dressed him, he used to throw his toys about just to make Ali pick them up. . . .’

  ‘Your mother’s just discovered that I’m eighteen, not twenty —and she’s a bit peeved.’

  ‘You’re only eighteen! Oh, Rachel, how lovely. I’ll be sixteen soon. Funny, I always think of you as younger than me.’

  She was standing in a pair of striped knickers pulling at the straps of a white brassiere.

  ‘How does one manage these things?—they are either squashed together into one mound in the centre—or one falls out and the other stays in . . . I liked it much better when I was flat like a boy. . . .’

  I agreed with her. Life had been much simpler before one grew a figure. She was angular and at the same time fat in bits—just as I had been—the only thing was that she was doing it all at the proper age whereas I had done it very late.

  ‘Come here,’ I said. ‘I’ll adjust those straps for you, they’re too tight.’

  We faced the small mirror at her dressing-table, and as I was bending over her to fix the shoulder strap she suddenly seized my hand and covered it with kisses. I snatched it away as if she had bitten me.

  ‘Don’t! Don’t!’ I was unpleasantly reminded of last night’s kisses by the Pointe du Moulinet.

  VI

  MY aunt had spent a great deal of money on clothes and never looked smart. Cynthia had very little money to spend and invariably looked elegant. She would stand in front of her mirror studying a hat from every angle before she would buy it. Dresses would come from the couturier’s in exciting striped boxes and she would try them on, walking about, sitting down, bending and stretching in them before choosing one. She always called me in to ask me my opinion.

  I admired her
slender elegance but I did not envy it. I found Catherine a type which appealed to me far more. I began the portrait of her the following week.

  ‘What shall you wear?’ I asked her.

  ‘Nothing. I want it in the nude—three-quarter length.’

  The nudes I had hitherto painted had been professional models, ugly and uninspiring, so that when Catherine said this I was upset. But when she let the wrap drop off her shoulders I was startled. Her flesh was of a warm creamy whiteness and she was very lovely. The clean canvas waiting and the beauty of my subject intoxicated me. I could not paint fast enough. I worked furiously at white heat, the afternoon going by in a flash. What can I say of Catherine sitting there against the white wall except that for me it was a new concept of the human body?

  She talked lightly and gaily and I felt completely at ease with her. When the sitting was over and I stepped back from my easel to look at my work I could have wept. The colour was there—fresh and clean, and I had caught her look—but the drawing and the whole form of the thing were so far from what I intended that all my exhilaration was swept away. Too late I remembered the advice of the Slade professor that for me the drawing was far more important than the colour.

  But Catherine was excited with it.

  ‘I like it, Rachel. It’s so fresh! I like it. The colour’s lovely.’

  I sat down. As always, after working hard and furiously, I felt as if I were dying. A complete lassitude came over me and I could not move. Catherine was concerned, and Aunt Phoebe brought some tea, which revived me. Thalia, who had accompanied me, came in with Clodagh, a tall girl with a mass of chestnut hair and hazel eyes. Clodagh exclaimed in pleasure when she saw the painting, but Thalia looked from Catherine with the wrap thrown round her shoulders to the canvas.

  ‘Where will you hang it?’ she asked disapprovingly.

  Catherine was delighted at this.

  ‘That’s my business,’ she said laughing and pulling a jersey over her head. ‘Do you know, Tintoretta, one day when you’re very famous I shall point to this and say: “Yes, she did that when she was very young in my villa by the sea.” ’