Thalia

by Frances Faviell

  The magic of Paris, with its exhilarating exciting air of expectancy, was a lovely background to my melancholy. The plane trees in the rue Edgar Quinet were in new tender leaf, in the Jardins du Luxembourg the lilacs were out; everywhere there were lovers, in the restaurants, cafés, in the Bois, in the streets. Everywhere arms entwined, tender glances, eyes meeting in some inner understanding; in the evenings open love—heads on shoulders and mouths savouring the impact of one on the other. I couldn’t bear to see them—but could not avoid looking. Every time I saw a pair of lovers a vision of Armand and the enchanted hours with him swept away all concentration on my work. From every window, in every boîte there drifted the strains of the dusky voice of Lucienne Boyer ‘. . . Parlez-moi d’amour . . .’ And all the time I somehow imagined that with the extraordinary feeling in this city anything could happen—that nothing was impossible—that one day I would see Armand. That he would walk into the Dôme—or La Palette, where all the students gathered, or even into the Chaumière itself. He came to Paris sometimes . . . his mother’s relatives were all here.

  And then I would shake myself in anger. I had finished with Armand. It was finished. Even if he wanted to come after me, Suzanne would take good care that he did no such thing. The triumph and satisfaction on her face when we had faced each other across the hideous salon had been unmistakable. At night I couldn’t sleep and it was not only because of the traffic and the stuffiness of my over-furnished, heavily curtained room after the wide-flung shutters and seaweed smell of my room in the villa. The faces of Cynthia and Thalia intruded. Thalia especially . . . Thalia laughing, mocking, imitating someone . . . imitating me . . . teasing me triumphantly about the sordid end of my love affair. ‘Go away. . . . Go away . . . let me forget you . . . just for tonight,’ I would beg. But the face remained . . . mocking . . . intent . . . purposeful. And Cynthia’s was sad, reproachful, wretched. I tossed and in vain flung myself from one side to the other in the bed but the endless record revolved . . . Cynthia . . . Thalia . . . Cynthia . . . Thalia. . . .

  And there were other worries. What was going to happen to me when the fifty pounds my aunt had given me for emergencies had gone? I had rushed away in such a wild impetuous hurry that I had left behind my gold bag still stuffed with the francs I had won at the Casino. My father sent me odd sums of money at rare intervals. I had lent a good deal of it to Cynthia, What should I do? Write to Thalia and ask her to send the bag?

  Eugénie told me not to worry so much. Why didn’t I write to my father and ask him to send me money direct to Montparnasse? I wrote that same evening, sitting with our usual crowd in the Dôme. I told him of the broken engagement, of the reason for my flight. I explained that I was heartbroken and could never go back to the scene of my former happiness.

  His reply was an unpleasant shock. Just a telegram. ‘ADVISE YOU RETURN DINARD IMMEDIATELY STOP FATHER’. No mention of money at all.

  I wrote again, repeating that I couldn’t return. I took a long time composing what I thought was a heart-rending letter. His reply angered me. ‘HEART RESEMBLES THE CAT STOP REMEMBER CONTRACT STOP RETURN DINARD IMMEDIATELY STOP FATHER’. I had been so certain that he would understand. But this nonsense about a cat. What did he mean? In some ways he was like Thalia. He loved jokes and riddles. He was always urging me to develop a sense of humour which would stand me in better stead than talent or beauty. Every day the pile of notes in my purse grew less—and with their dwindling my hopes dwindled too.

  I had been working in the Chaumière for almost a month when Judy’s brother found me there. She had written him as soon as she had returned to Dinard from her tour of the Loire and urged him to look for me in Montparnasse. I had told her about Eugénie, and she was sure that I would make for Montparnasse.

  I would have known him anywhere as Judy’s brother. A large edition of her with the same unruly hair, irregular features and laughing eyes, the same overwhelming generosity. ‘Know who I am?’ he asked, planting himself in front of my easel one morning.

  I looked up from my canvas—Monsieur Prinet had just left me.

  ‘Buddy,’ I said.

  ‘Didn’t take me long to oblige Judy,’ he said, looking appraisingly at my painting. ‘Heard the old boy praising you just now. That’s very strong! Shouldn’t have thought you had it in you. Where you staying?’ abruptly.

  He saw my hesitation. ‘All right. Don’t tell me. I only want to help. I know the ropes here. How’re you making out?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said shortly. Was he a spy sent to find out my whereabouts and get me sent back? But Judy had sent him. That was different. She would approve what I had done. She saw things as I did. I had wanted to rush out to St. Lunaire to her when I’d discovered Armand’s treachery but she had been away touring the Loire valley.

  ‘Judy’s worried about how you’re getting on. She’d appreciate a few lines to reassure her.’ He looked directly at me as if to see what kind of mood I was in. ‘How about coming for some lunch—we’ll talk this out.’

  We went to a small restaurant on the Boulevard and ate. In twenty minutes we were talking like old friends. He was working at Julien’s but came sometimes to the Chaumière for short poses. ‘I saw you in the vestibule there last week,’ he said, ‘with the lugubrious disciple of Gauguin. When I got Judy’s letter I felt sure it was you talking to him.’

  ‘The blonde model objected to his making her so dark-skinned.’ I began laughing at the recollection. ‘She made an impassioned speech from the model throne saying that she hadn’t a drop of native blood in her and that none of her forbears had ever been to the South Sea Islands. What d’you think of him? I’d give anything to know if he has hypnotized himself into seeing the world as Gauguin did—I’d love to be able to do the same.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Buddy slowly. ‘Some of Gauguin’s Brittany paintings are pretty dreary. Has the ex-hairdresser ever been to the Pacific?’

  ‘This is the first time he’s left his native Basle,’ I said. He had shown me photographs of his plump, pleasant-looking wife and his four stolid children; even one of his shop which the wife was now running for him. When I asked him how she had taken his desertion of his business he said simply, ‘She understood. I am an artist—whether with the hair or paint-brushes.’

  I promised I’d write to Judy and he agreed not to reveal my address in Paris. Letters sent to me at the Chaumière would find me—or even to the Café Dôme. I was reluctant to write, even to think of Dinard. Surely Cynthia would ask Judy for my address. And Thalia? Had she found that slip of paper on my dressing-table with Eugénie’s address on it? Of Armand I wouldn’t allow myself to think at all. Armand was dead as far as I was concerned.

  With Buddy I fell at once—perhaps because he reminded me so much of Judy—into an easy friendship. We could and did talk about anything and everything. He took me to all the art galleries and museums, showed me the sights of Paris which I hadn’t even thought of visiting. With him I felt none of the inferiority and inadequacy which my love for Armand had given me, and none of the tantalizing attraction which Terence Mourne aroused in me. His steady, sensible attitude to life was something I’d not as yet encountered.

  ‘It’s all right to be enthusiastic about things—but don’t for Christ’s sake get drowned and submerged in them,’ he kept telling me. ‘You’re too passionate, too impulsive. Try and take things as they come. Don’t rush out to meet them. You’ll never come to satisfactory terms with life like that—what’s more, you won’t develop your talent that way. Talent wants nursing. Steady nursing.’

  We would sit every night outside or inside the Dome or the Rotonde or some smaller, cheaper café with our fellow students; and I would soon be involved in some exciting, stimulating squabble. ‘Don’t take it so hard . . . take it easy . . .’ Buddy would urge me when I got excited over the Abdication.

  ‘I can’t be any other way.’

  ‘You will. You’re still green. Wet behind the ears,’ he said undisturbedly. About
the ‘Living in Truth’ he was cautious. ‘Could be a very dangerous theory,’ he said finally, ‘and hurt a lot of people.’

  I was angry. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘It was an intolerant concept—and it’s making you intolerant—you’re angry because I say it’s a dangerous theory. It doesn’t fit in with human relationships and the necessity to live with other people harmoniously.’

  We talked about Thalia.

  ‘That girl interests me,’ he insisted. ‘Have you any younger sisters?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Did you never have some older girl or teacher you thought perfection? That you were nuts about?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You had only boy-and-girl affairs?’

  ‘There was only Armand,’ I said angrily. ‘He was the first. I shall never love anyone again.’

  ‘You’ll get over it.’

  It was only on these two points that I fell out with Buddy. The Living in Truth’—and Armand. He laughed at both of them.

  ‘No. I’m not sorry for you. You’re only suffering from growing up. Now Thalia—that’s the child I’m sorry for.’

  And then there came a letter from Judy. ‘I don’t know that I have any right to advise you, Rachel, but I think you ought to come back. Cynthia looks ill—she’s getting very worrying news from her husband. Thalia looks like a ghost. I am worried about them both. I expect you have got over the worst of your unhappiness. Don’t you feel that you ought to come back?’

  This letter made me angry, too. How could she think that I’d ever get over a thing like that just to please her because she was worried about the Pembertons? I didn’t answer it—nor did I tell Buddy about it. And then one evening when I returned tired and dirty after a long day’s work, Madame Robert handed me a telegram. ‘Enfin! Something for you!’ she said with satisfaction. She was always suspicious because I never got letters and parcels as the other three girls did.

  I opened the telegram slowly. ‘INSIST YOU RETURN DINARD IMMEDIATELY STOP FATHER’.

  ‘Bad news?’ Her voice was hopeful.

  ‘No. Excellent news,’ I said, tearing the telegram into pieces and throwing them in the stove in the kitchen. That night I dreamed of Thalia. She was chasing me over the cliffs towards St. Briac. I ran and ran on the soft, peaty turf and couldn’t stop when I came to the edge of the cliffs. I began to fall. Down, down, down. I woke with a terrible start and lay sweating in bed. I slept again and a similar nightmare woke me. Again I was falling, falling. . . . There was a sharp pain in my left shoulder-blade. Just like the one I’d had when I’d been ill with pleurisy. I was shivering and wretched. I went and knocked at Madame’s door. She hustled me back to bed, asked me to show her where the pain was, and came back with a box. From it she took a lot of little glass bottles with methylated spirit and a wick in them. She lit them all.

  ‘Lie on your back and take off your night-dress,’ she commanded. I was too frightened of her to disobey. She put the bottles on the place where I felt the pain and let them bum until I screamed.

  ‘A little longer . . . a little longer . . .’ she insisted.

  My screams brought the others from their rooms.

  ‘Hold her down. She’ll be ill with pneumonia unless I bum it out now,’ said Madame Robert firmly. They willingly—especially Mademoiselle with the goitre—held me; and the atrocious counter-irritant of the scorching of my flesh went on mercilessly.

  When at last it was over, and pieces of skin had come off, the new pain was much worse than the old one.

  ‘But this isn’t a dangerous pain,’ insisted Madame. ‘The first one was. I’ll put some ointment on you and you’ll sleep it off.’ She gave me aspirins and a tisane and presently I slept; and although sore and irritable when I woke the next day the frightening pain in my left side had completely gone. But in the afternoon there came another telegram—this time from my aunt, now back in England. ‘INSIST YOU RETURN CYNTHIA IMMEDIATELY’.

  And now I couldn’t paint at all. Everything went wrong. Monsieur Prinet was exasperated and disappointed. Where my former approach had been vigorous and strong it was now weak and feeble. The colours were all squeezed out on my palette but they didn’t register on the canvas. He was impatient and urged me to concentrate, to discipline myself to a method of work.

  ‘Discipline . . . that’s what you need, Mademoiselle. Discipline . . . not this unconsidered mess!’

  And only a few weeks ago he had urged me to let myself go . . . to be freer. . . .

  ‘Too tight . . . too tight . . .’ he had said. What did he mean?

  I was in despair, and found the hot rooms, the heavy air, the long hours unendurable. I had very little money left. Father had remained resolutely silent about it. Madame Robert didn’t supply a mid-day meal on the pension rates, we had to find that ourselves. If I didn’t pay promptly at the end of the month I would be out, that was obvious.

  Should I write to Thalia and ask her to send my gold bag with the francs? It looked as if I would have to.

  On the day when I was at my lowest ebb Terence Mourne appeared at the Chaumière. Immaculately dressed and groomed, he looked out of place in the atelier. He was on his way to London, he said. My one suit which I had brought with me was now much the worse for wear. I had taken to a pair of the workman’s blue trousers with bib and brace which were at present much favoured at the Chaumière. I was fetched out of the painting room by Madame Rose. Terence was waiting in the hall. He looked me up and down. I wiped the paint on my trousers as did everyone else.

  ‘Christ! You’re a sight, Rachel!’ he exclaimed. ‘Go and put on some decent clothes and I’ll take you out to lunch.’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Judy,’ he said briefly.

  My first instinct was to refuse rudely—but I was very hungry and could no longer spare the money for a mid-day meal. We went back to the Place Delambre and he waited while I changed. The suit was impossible. I put on the black dress and Cynthia’s fluffy white jacket.

  ‘I like the dress,’ he said approvingly. ‘Haven’t you got a hat? Or gloves?’

  I hadn’t either.

  ‘We’ll get you some,’ he said resignedly.

  ‘If you can’t take me like this I won’t come at all.’

  Madame Robert, who had been hovering round, came eagerly, proffering a pair of her gloves. I accepted them. Her hat—a toque—was clearly impossible.

  ‘Brush your hair if you’re coming hatless.’

  Angrily I brushed it, hating myself for this stupid obedience which Terence always invoked in me. ‘You’ll do,’ he said, grinning. ‘Come on. I’m hungry.’

  I saw Madame Robert’s inquisitive eyes watching our taxi from her window. My side was still horribly sore from her ministerings. I winced when Terence put his arm round me.

  ‘Well, you’ve made a nice mess of things,’ he said half an hour later, when we sat opposite each other under lilacs at a restaurant in the Bois attended by half a dozen eager waiters. I hadn’t said anything much until now—I’d been too busy eating.

  ‘What d’you mean by a mess?’

  ‘You’ve behaved abominably to Cynthia—not that I hold any brief for her—but you’ve broken your word. Because you found that the world isn’t quite what you imagined in your half-baked adolescent way you rush off to Paris and generally behave like an idiot.’

  ‘You know nothing about me,’ I said hotly. ‘I’m working very hard.’

  ‘But look at you! Untidy, pale, half-starved, and all for what? Pique over a worthless young man.’

  ‘You don’t understand. That’s all finished. I’m going to be a painter. Nothing else matters.’

  ‘You don’t have to go about advertising the fact by displaying your trademark on your clothes.’

  I said coldly, ‘Why have you come to see me?’

  ‘Because I have a weakness for you—silly as you are—and to ask you to go back to Cynthia. She needs you.’

  ‘She has you,’
I said spitefully.

  He ignored this. ‘D’you know that Marie has left her—and taken Elise with her? Cynthia can’t manage things. She isn’t strong enough. You agreed to stay a year with her. Go back. If you need money I’ll give it you. I’ll buy your ticket and settle up with your landlady.’

  ‘Cynthia hasn’t asked me to go back.’

  ‘She’s proud.’

  ‘So am I,’ I retorted. ‘And I’m staying here. I want to paint.’

  ‘Rachel, can’t you ever think of anyone but yourself?’

  ‘Art is selfish. It has to be.’

  Now you’re quoting something you’ve read. D’you know that Cynthia’s so worried about you that she’s written to your aunt and to your father?’

  So that explained the telegrams. I was furious. The only person Cynthia ever worried about was herself—and Claude. It seemed to me that she was the selfish one. I wouldn’t go back. I said so vehemently.

  ‘I see it’s hopeless. Well, I’ve kept my promise.’

  ‘Let’s forget it and enjoy our lunch. You’re a darling to bring me here.’ I looked round the place, which enchanted me. I was lunching in the Bois! It was incredible. I adored everything about it.

  ‘What I love about you are your mad enthusiasms,’ said Terence. ‘You amuse me enormously. If I were twenty years younger I might be tempted to marry you—just so that I would never be bored.’

  ‘But you are twenty years older, and you’re not in love with me,’ I said crossly. It isn’t funny to be told that a man might marry you in order to avoid boredom.

  ‘It’s time I got married,’ he said seriously. ‘I’ve come into quite a bit of money and property. That’s why I’m going to London. I’m thinking of settling down.’