Thalia

by Frances Faviell

  ‘She is still in Egypt?’

  ‘Yes. She’s sending me lovely photographs and books.’

  ‘When is she returning?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘As you have no mother it would be a good thing for her to have a little talk with me. Perhaps she would come and stay with us here when she returns?’

  ‘I’m sure she will be delighted,’ I said suavely.

  ‘I thought that while the girls ride you and I could have a little talk, Rachel.’

  Thalia looked at me in dismay. ‘Oh, but Rachel’s coming riding, too. She’s changed purposely.’

  The thought of sitting here with Suzanne’s sharp little eyes probing me as she questioned was alarming.

  ‘Of course I’m coming—that is if there is a mount for me,’ I said firmly. ‘I love riding.’

  ‘Of course there is a mount,’ said Suzanne stiffly. ‘We have several horses. She can have Crépuscule, Thérèse. Go and tell François to saddle her.’

  Thérèse looked astonished but said nothing but ‘Coming?’ to Thalia.

  ‘Yes. Go with her,’ said Suzanne. ‘Rachel will follow you.’

  Thalia went reluctantly. ‘They’ll soon talk when they get to the stables. Girls of that age are self-conscious.’

  I couldn’t see any signs of it in Thérèse. She already had the poise and assurance of her mother.

  ‘You have heard from Armand?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘He’s coining this week-end. He told you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He wants a date settled for the marriage. I have told him it’s impossible.’

  ‘Impossible?’ I asked, amazed.

  ‘There are very important things to be decided before any date can be settled. Very important matters.’

  ‘Such as?’ I asked, bewildered.

  ‘It takes some time for you to be received into the Catholic faith. Armand doesn’t seem to realize that.’

  ‘The Catholic faith?’ I repeated stupidly. ‘You mean I must become a Catholic? But Armand doesn’t mind. He said so. He says it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘As your children will have to be brought up as Catholics it would be much better if you embrace the faith yourself. You won’t like it later on if your children look on their mother as a heretic.’

  ‘Armand and I have discussed all this. He says it doesn’t matter. We agreed on each of us going our own way in religious matters.’

  ‘If you’re going to become a Tréfours you will have to become a Catholic.’

  ‘If you’re going to become a Tréfours.’ If. If. So that was how it was. There was a price for entering this family.

  ‘Have you any objection? Would your father mind?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said automatically. When I had told Father that I was following the Ankh-en-Maat—the ‘Living in Truth’ —he had been unperturbed. ‘There is Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Confucianism and Hinduism,’ he had said gravely. ‘It’s as well to try all those before you decide on Atheism.’

  ‘You’re teasing me,’ I had said, provoked by his lack of surprise, and he had said, ‘Not at all. You’re following the normal development of a daughter of mine.’

  ‘Then that’s all right. I’ll speak to Father Ignace,’ said Suzanne with satisfaction, ‘. . . and he can call on you in Dinard.’

  ‘Rachel . . . Rachel . . .’ called Thalia. ‘Come on, do!’

  ‘Yes. They’re ready. Enjoy your ride. I’ll come and see you go off.’ She put an arm through mine as I got up and drew me into the wide hall. Outside by the prim hedges and the rockery, Thalia and Thérèse were mounted. A groom stood with Crépuscule waiting for me. She was a lovely little Arab mare.

  ‘Oh, what a beauty!’ I cried, delighted.

  ‘She’s spirited. She needs a firm rein. She’s my own—my special pet,’ said Suzanne. ‘D’you think you can manage her, Rachel?’

  ‘Mother never lets anyone ride her,’ said Thérèse.

  ‘I appreciate the honour very much,’ I said. She watched me mount. Crépuscule wouldn’t stand still a moment. She stood on her hind legs and flung up her head. I set my teeth and after a struggle mastered her.

  ‘Bien! Bien!’ said the groom François, mounting his own horse. ‘But take care, Mademoiselle. She’s a little devil. She always gives trouble.’

  We went out of the drive with Suzanne watching us from the steps of the house. It took me all my time to manage my mount. There was no trick she didn’t resort to in her efforts to unseat me. I had ridden twice with Armand—but not on Crépuscule.

  ‘Give her the whip, Mademoiselle!’ said François. ‘She understands that. You’re too patient with her.’ But after a time when we got into the woods she quieted down a little. Thalia and Thérèse had no trouble. Thérèse, despite Thalia’s remarks, was an excellent horsewoman.

  ‘Shall I take Crépuscule?’ she suggested. ‘I’ve never ridden her and I’d love to try.’

  ‘Non,’ said François immediately. ‘Madame has given strict orders that you are not to ride Crépuscule, Mademoiselle Thérèse. She’s too unreliable!’

  So, I thought. The mare’s not safe enough for the daughter —but she’s all right for the future daughter-in-law. I was angry and unconsciously gave her a flick with my whip. She was off like a rocket, dashing through the woods like a mad thing. The low overhanging branches tore my hair and grazed my face, although I crouched low. I couldn’t stop her although I tightened the reins and exerted all my strength and will-power. There was no room to take her round in circles—there was only the narrow path cut for riders through the undergrowth. Behind me I heard Thalia’s horse thundering. She was chasing me, calling wildly, ‘I’m coming. I’m coming. Hang on, Rachel. Hang on!’

  But the hooves of the pursuer merely excited the mare to further efforts. She fairly raced now and it was all I could do to keep my seat. At last we came to a clearing where the trees had been cut down and here I pulled on one rein and forced her into a circle, then into smaller and smaller ones until at last she stopped and began grazing calmly as if she’d never thought of anything else. I dismounted.

  ‘I’ll take her. You’re tired,’ said Thalia.

  ‘Can you manage her?’ I asked. I was exhausted. Thérèse and François came up.

  ‘She’s a devil. Didn’t I tell you, Mademoiselle? Madame never lets up for a moment on her. She keeps her on a tight, hard rein.’

  ‘You’d better ride her home. She’s your mother’s horse,’ said Thalia to Thérèse.

  ‘Not me,’ said Thérèse quietly.

  ‘You’re afraid of her?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘I’ll ride her,’ said Thalia decidedly.

  The groom demurred. The mare had a bad streak. She gave a beautiful ride once you’d mastered her—but she was up to all the tricks. He could never groom her without the little wretch trying to corner him and kick and bite.

  ‘Why does your mother keep her?’ I asked Thérèse.

  ‘She’s a beautiful creature—and Mother enjoys a fight,’ said Thérèse indifferently. ‘I like a well-behaved mount—so that I can enjoy the exercise. I don’t want to fight all the way.’

  Suzanne hadn’t intended me to ride at all—that had been clear. When I’d insisted she’d given me Crépuscule. Papillon was lame—she’d hurt a foot. That was the horse usually given to guests.

  ‘I can manage her easily. I’m used to difficult horses,’ Thalia insisted. She was patting and fondling the now indifferent mare, and suddenly sprang on her back. Immediately the creature began the same unpleasant tricks she had tried on me. Thalia took the whip, administered three sharp blows, tightened the reins and brought her under control.

  ‘You’ll do,’ I said. ‘Keep her well in. Don’t slacken.’

  Crépuscule gave no more trouble. Thalia handled her firmly and with skill. Both François and I praised her horsemanship. Thérèse said nothing. The woods thinned out into open fi
elds and coarse, rough ground and we were able to give our mounts their heads. ‘Take care with that one, Mademoiselle!’ warned François. ‘She’ll go off again if you don’t hold her in.’

  But although the speed which Crépuscule attained alarmed me it didn’t appear to upset Thalia. With her hair flying and her face brilliant with colour she was enjoying herself. ‘She rides like a boy! Like a jockey!’ said the groom delightedly.

  ‘Where did you learn to ride like that?’ I asked Thalia when she came up from several mad gallops round the great sweep of ground.

  ‘On the racecourse at Meerut,’ she said. ‘We rode every morning and every evening. We exercised the polo ponies.’

  ‘You rode with Cynthia, or your father?’

  ‘With them? No. I rode with the grooms and the stable boys. They taught me to jump, too.’

  What a strange life this girl had had. I couldn’t visualize it at all. ‘Didn’t Cynthia mind your riding with them?’ I asked.

  ‘She didn’t know. She was asleep in the early mornings—and dressing for parties in the evenings. You can’t ride during the day, it’s too hot.’

  ‘Well, how was Crépuscule?’ asked Suzanne as we sat at lunch. There were only the four of us to-day, and we were separated by great spaces at the huge table.

  ‘Disgusting, as usual,’ said Thérèse.

  ‘She was too much for you?’ Suzanne turned to me.

  ‘She was as much as I could manage—she tired me. I was glad to give her to Thalia.’

  ‘Thalia rode her?’

  ‘Yes. She was splendid with her.’

  ‘I hadn’t expected you to ride—I’d hoped you would have stayed with me. There were things I wanted to discuss—Papillon is lame. I’m sorry that my mare behaved so badly.’

  ‘She didn’t,’ I said warmly, ‘she was just lively. I couldn’t manage her. Thalia can.’

  Suzanne looked at Thalia, who had relapsed into her usual indifferent apathy. ‘She’s much stronger than you,’ she said resentfully. ‘You don’t appear to be very strong, Rachel.’

  ‘She’s been ill,’ said Thalia quickly, ‘that’s why she’s here.’

  ‘I’m perfectly well now,’ I said, irritated at Suzanne’s air of annoyed concern.

  ‘Armand is never ill. He enjoys perfect health.’

  ‘He’s lucky,’ I said.

  ‘He’s a wonderful athlete—and a wonderful horseman,’ said Thérèse.

  The girls began talking of school. They used mixed English and French and were discussing the various teachers. The lunch was simple—but perfectly cooked and served.

  ‘You’ll have to learn to make some of our dishes,’ observed Suzanne as I praised one of the ones we were eating. I said that Marie was teaching me some Breton dishes.

  ‘She’s an excellent cook,’ said Suzanne. ‘And a cousin of Rosalie’s.’

  This was news to me—and not such pleasant news. It explained how Marie had known about Armand and me long before anyone else had.

  ‘Everyone’s related to everyone else round this piece of the coast. I mean those of us who reside here—not those who come for a time. What d’you think of Thérèse’s English, Rachel?’

  ‘It’s excellent,’ I said politely.

  ‘I’ll arrange with Father Ignace to call on you, Rachel—when would suit you?’

  ‘Father Ignace?’ said Thalia.

  ‘Our family priest,’ said Thérèse. ‘You’ve seen him. He came to the school last week.’

  ‘But what has Rachel to do with him?’

  She’s going to be a Catholic,’ said Thérèse.

  ‘But she can’t. She’s an agnostic like me—we believe in a sort of universal God but we’re not Christians.’ Thalia said this in English.

  ‘Be quiet,’ I said quickly.

  ‘What did Thalia say? Translate for me please, Rachel.’

  I saw Thérèse’s amused eyes on me and I dared not translate anything but what Thalia had actually said. Under Suzanne’s astonished, incredulous stare I grew hot and uncomfortable.

  ‘Do I understand rightly that you and Thalia are not Christians—that you believe in some sort of Egyptian cult?’

  ‘I believe in God—but . . . we follow the Ankh-en-Maat—“Living in Truth”.’

  ‘But what is this Ankh-en-Maat?’

  ‘It’s a theory—a way of life. It means that we live as we believe—that we don’t lie to make things look better.’ I trailed off . . . it wasn’t easy to explain at all. It no longer sounded as strong and simple as it did.

  ‘Your aunt—does she follow this too?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But she’s in Egypt.’

  ‘We attended lectures on Amarna Art and she’s gone to the Nile Valley.’

  ‘But you—have you told Armand of this extraordinary belief?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘That I would think differently later.’

  ‘But you attend the Anglo-American church here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  I was about to say that Cynthia insisted, when I saw Thalia’s amused eyes. She was delighted at my predicament.

  I gave it up and remained silent.

  ‘I don’t know what Father Ignace will have to say to this. It puts a very different light on what I’ve already told him.’ Her voice was frosty—her face outraged. I was angry with Thalia for putting me into this position. After lunch when we were packing up our riding things, for we had changed for lunch, I told her so.

  ‘You wouldn’t become a Catholic just to please her?’ she demanded incredulously. ‘Rachel . . . how could you?’

  ‘It’ll be all over your school to-morrow,’ I said angrily.

  ‘What’ll be all over the school?’

  ‘That we’re agnostics and follow the “Living in Truth”.’

  ‘The Christians were persecuted,’ said Thalia staunchly. ‘I don’t care what they say at school.’

  I looked at her in astonishment. Only a few months ago she had been too nervous to go into the school building.

  I was angry at having the religious aspect of my marriage forced to an early issue. Armand had made it quite clear that he did not want me harried or bothered over it. I felt that Suzanne had taken an unfair advantage—and Thalia had deliberately played into her hands. Even now she wouldn’t leave it alone. ‘But you wouldn’t become a Catholic, would you, Rachel?’ she insisted.

  ‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ I said firmly.

  When I saw Father Ignace a few days later he wasn’t in the least perturbed.

  ‘If you don’t believe in anything except that, it makes my task easier,’ he said smilingly. ‘It means that we start right from scratch.’

  XIV

  THE painting of Thalia as Nefertiti went easily from the very start and the sittings in the attic at the top of the villa were some of the happiest memories I have of that fateful year in France.

  Armand was away a great deal in the weeks immediately after the New Year; and as Claude no longer had the services of Julie Caron, Cynthia was persuaded to send him to school. Here he was happy when after some stormy fights and many tears he found his own level. He was mastering French so fast that he found it no trouble to learn everything in that language.

  Thalia was now attending school every day and I had more time to myself. I made a drawing of Cynthia. It was cold and expressionless and pleased neither her nor me. She had been delighted with the drawings of Claude which I had given her as a surprise for Christmas. I don’t think I had ever seen her face so alight with pleasure as when she untied the parcel and saw the drawings of her sleeping son. She had thanked me warmly and spontaneously, but then she had spoilt it all by remarking that they would have been so much nicer had he been awake. Nothing was ever quite right for Cynthia. She simply hadn’t the capacity for enjoyment—at least not as I knew it.

  Thalia sat for me with a patience which I found astonishing. She had t
hat power her mother had—rare in English people —of being able to be perfectly motionless and still. Immobile, quiet, as if in a dream she sat there in the window so that she was in shadow against the light and only her forehead and the sensitive line from the nose and upper lip were lit up. There was from the beginning something mysterious and compelling in the portrait.

  I worked in an excitement as intense as that when I had begun the one of Catherine, as fast and as passionately, and this time it seemed to me that something of the quality of what I was wanting so urgently to say was appearing on the canvas. There was the sea, dark and stormy behind her, as I saw it from the window where she sat, and the almost green sky in the winter light. The problems of tone, colour and line were maddeningly difficult but I battled with them in a frenzy—and it was apparent to me that whether good or bad I was getting nearer to that which I wanted.

  And the whole sittings as well as the painting had an enchantment and delight which bewitched us both. I couldn’t have explained what it was—but it was something far beyond the usual passionate desire to create beauty, to catch its fleeting magic. As I worked I talked to Thalia about Nefertiti. The book which my aunt had sent me had added a good deal to my knowledge of her. We talked of her and Akhenaten and of their daughters . . . of the Ankh-en-Maat—the ‘Living in Truth’ concept which he loved—and of the new city he built, Akhetaton. Whether it was partly the magic of the place itself which had gripped me from the moment I landed, or whether it was sheer delight in the realization of a dream, I don’t know, but when at last the portrait was finished and I laid down my brushes I felt that all that was best in me had gone into the picture and there was nothing left but the shell.

  Xavier was staying with friends at Pont Aven. I wanted to show him the painting and Armand took me there. Armand had not said one word about it himself. I knew he didn’t like Thalia but I was hurt at his silence. Cynthia had looked at it for a long time; then she said, ‘It’s your conception of Thalia—it’s not her as she really is.’ Couldn’t she see that a painting must always be an artist’s conception? And that this was how I did see her then?

  The first time I had seen Pont Aven I had been bitterly disappointed in the place. I don’t know what I expected—from the lives of Van Gogh and Gauguin certainly far, far more—but on this second visit it seemed to me that there was some quality in the air of the place which emanated from all those men who had striven and battled there with the problems of the painter. Xavier was staying in a studio down by the bridge when we visited him, and he had a handsome buxom model with him. I showed him the painting of Thalia, asking him for his honest opinion. He said nothing for a long time, looking at it with his head on one side and an arm round the woman whom he had been painting. Suddenly he swung round to me. ‘You are an artist, child. You’ll have to give up this idea of marrying Armand and get to work. Work, work. That’s what the future means for you. Work and more work—all your life—it never ends—you’ll never be happy until you’ve achieved something of what you’re after! Perhaps you never will achieve it—but you’ll have to try. Go to Paris and get down to it. This is good—very good.’