Thalia

by Frances Faviell

  Buddy hadn’t said anything. He had been listening carefully but looking away over the harbour. Now he said simply, ‘I’d better get Judy on the telephone. She’ll be able to tell us about all this.’

  ‘You don’t believe me. It’s true! It’s all true!’

  ‘We have to know,’ I said gently.

  We went to the Post Office. It took a long time but at last Buddy got St. Lunaire. Judy wasn’t at home and they didn’t know when she’d be back.

  As soon as we reached Paris and had reassured Madame Robert, I telephoned Dinard. The journey had been a nightmare with Thalia and the dog. After a long wait and then an even longer continuous ringing, a voice answered. A French voice and one that was vaguely familiar. I asked for Madame Pemberton.

  ‘Elle n’est pas ici!’ said the voice flatly. ‘She’s at the hospital with the little boy. . . .’

  ‘With the little boy . . . with the little boy.’ He was alive! Claude wasn’t dead! I could have shouted with relief. ‘Qui est là à l’apparat?’ I asked. I thought the voice said, ‘Madeleine’, but I couldn’t catch it. I shouted into the instrument, ‘Comment va-t-il, le petit?’ trying to steady myself.

  ‘Assez bien. La jambe est cassée, vous savez, mais ça marche.’ Her voice went on and I couldn’t hear what she was saying when suddenly we were cut off. His leg was broken. His leg was broken. . . .

  I slammed down the receiver, leaving Madame Robert, who was hovering by to know the cost of the call, to inquire for herself. ‘Thalia, Thalia,’ I cried. ‘He isn’t dead. Claude isn’t dead. He’s in hospital—his leg’s broken.’

  She stood there as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘It makes no difference,’ she said stonily. ‘I can’t go back. She’ll know that I pushed him.’

  ‘But you didn’t push him! You didn’t mean him to go over the edge. It was an accident.’

  ‘I was so furious with him that I meant to push him over at that moment. It’s the same thing.’

  ‘No. No. You didn’t.’ I took her and shook her violently. ‘Don’t go dramatizing again. Listen to me. You didn’t mean to hurt him. You were just exasperated with him—as anyone would be. You lost your balance as you caught up with him so that the impetus sent him over.’

  ‘It’s my fault that he fell over. If he had died I would have killed him.’

  She was determined to have it that way. She had lived with the idea of having caused her little brother’s death for several days. She had visualized the trial, the prison—even the execution. The only thing of which she hadn’t been sure was whether she would be hanged or guillotined. Whether she would have been tried by a French or British court. She was vehement as she told me how she had turned it over and over in her mind.

  ‘I’ve told you the truth. Everything,’ she said desperately.

  ‘Tell me now, Thalia, what was the truth about that snake and the despatch affair in India?’ She was silent, looking at me as if to sum up my reasons. ‘Tell me. I must know,’ I urged her.

  ‘The snake was my pet grass snake. He couldn’t have hurt anyone. He loved to curl up in Mother’s hats. They said it was a krait.’ Her voice was contemptuous.

  ‘But you put the snake in your mother’s hat-box? Why?’

  ‘She always looks so calm and dignified. Everyone else gets heated and excited in India. I wanted to see what she’d do when she felt the snake.’

  And Cynthia had had a heart attack.

  ‘And the despatch?’

  ‘That was up in Mussoorie—in the hills. Claude and I had gone there with Mother. There was trouble and Father couldn’t leave the station. Terence came up to see Mother. While he was with us a runner came with the despatch. There were riots. Terence never got the despatch. I found it in the pocket of Mother’s negligee when I was sorting the clothes for the dhobi to wash. It wasn’t my job to sort the clothes—it was Ayah’s,’ she said resentfully.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I kept it and gave it to Father when we got back to Dehra Dun.’

  ‘You ruined Terence Mourne’s career.’

  ‘No. It was ruined anyway.’

  ‘But what made you give it to your father?’

  She looked at me in astonishment. ‘Father could have had his career ruined if I hadn’t. Father sent the despatch. Terence swore he hadn’t. Terence had to resign from the Regiment when it all came out about the week-end.’

  And Thalia had been only thirteen at the time. ‘You’re very clever. Take care you’re not too clever,’ I said. ‘For a girl of thirteen you took a lot on yourself.’

  ‘I was almost fourteen,’ she corrected me. ‘You can’t imagine what the life is like there. There’s nothing to talk about except Army matters. I heard everything which went on. If I didn’t hear it myself the servants told me. They never thought that I took anything in. But I did!’

  ‘You’re much cleverer than I am,’ I said slowly.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed seriously. ‘I think I am. You’re like those people in mythology—the Cyclops—with only one eye and that one in the middle.’

  I paid Madame for the telephone call.

  ‘Get your things together. We’re going back to Dinard,’ I said firmly.

  ‘No. No,’ she cried, throwing herself upon me frantically.

  I had to force her into the taxi, and without Buddy to help me I doubt if we would have got her to the station. I was full of pity for her muddled, childish and yet unchildish way of thinking, but at the same time I was furious with her. But for her I could have stayed on in Paris a little longer. I was getting on at last with my painting.

  ‘It’s no use putting it off. You’ve got to face it some time. You can’t run away from things,’ I said.

  ‘You ran away. You couldn’t face it. Why should I?’

  ‘Listen, Thalia. I don’t want to go back either. I have no choice. Buddy’s persuaded me to return.’

  I wondered how Cynthia would receive me. It was only just beginning to dawn on me that I’d behaved in a way which she could only see as abominable.

  If it hadn’t been for Buddy, for his patience and sense of humour, the journey back would have been another nightmare. Thalia, either from nerves or from a chill caught on her flight to Marseilles, developed sickness and diarrhoea almost as soon as we left Paris. The train was full of early holiday-makers taking advantage of the sun. She passed more and more frequently up and down the corridor, returning each time greener than the last. She looked ghastly. I didn’t know how to help her in her misery.

  At Laval an old priest got in. His only baggage was a roll of blanket. He took in the situation rapidly. ‘Tiens,’ he said, producing a flask from under his robe. ‘She needs this. Come now, Mademoiselle. Drink deeply . . . more . . . more. Come, my poor child.’ He put an arm round her, encouraging her to swallow the brandy. Then, unrolling the blanket, he wrapped it tightly round her like a cocoon, soothing her with the manner of a firm trained nurse.

  When next I looked at her she was asleep, her head on his chest. He looked sharply at her tear-stained, exhausted face. ‘She’s had something to upset her?’ he said, accusingly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly.

  ‘Poor child . . . let her sleep. No, Mademoiselle, leave her with me. The dog can come here too. Look, he wants to creep under her legs. He knows she’s unhappy.’ He glared suspiciously at me and at Buddy. Everybody in the crowded compartment made room for the priest and his patient. She slept like that until we had to change at Dol.

  XVII

  THE honeysuckle was out—great hedges of it in the garden, the jasmine, a thousand white stars, draped my window-sill. Oleanders, petunias and banks of fuchsias and hydrangeas were everywhere. It was May. At the bottom of the garden on the terrace the yuccas had strange buds on them, and the palms were a fresher, more tender green.

  In his great bed propped up by pillows, Claude lay with his leg in a cradle and I read Babar to him. He was much quieter and sweeter since the accident. On the balcony Kiki was curled in t
he sun; Thalia darned a stocking in the old basket chair by the windows. Madeleine came in with a tray. ‘Le thé pour Monsieur Claude.’

  ‘I don’t like Babar any more, Rachel. It’s too babyish. I want Jungle Book!’

  ‘Yes. Yes, let’s have Jungle Book!’ said Thalia. Her father had brought her up on Kipling and I was beginning to understand a little more of her through re-reading him.

  I put down Babar. It seemed sad to me that Claude had outgrown him. Jean de Brunhoff’s adorable creation enchanted me still. It was true that Claude looked older—thinner and less cherubic. He had suffered a lot of pain and still had more ahead of him. I looked around the room, at him, at Thalia and at Madeleine standing turning the pages of the book I’d put down. It was all as before. But was it?

  Our return had been almost unobserved. Judy had told Cynthia of our coming and had met us and driven us to the villa. The whole place was gay with Union Jacks—in our last heavily filled days we had completely forgotten that May 14th was Coronation Day. When we exclaimed at them, Judy said that everyone was at the Consul’s party in honour of the occasion.

  When the door was opened by Madeleine we were surprised and delighted to see her again. The voice on the telephone had said ‘Madeleine’, but it is a very common name in France. Cynthia was at the hospital; yes, Monsieur Claude was progressing very well. Judy had told us that. The doctors, said Madeleine, were delighted with him. She welcomed us in as if it were her house. Thalia and I were mystified.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked her.

  ‘Since the day of the accident,’ she replied calmly. When I asked her how she had come to return and if Cynthia had asked her to do so, her answer put me to shame.

  Claude had been found lying as if dead on the rocks below the Pointe. He was still clutching his football, on which his name and address were written with indelible ink. The fisherman who found him soon spread the news everywhere. When Madeleine heard of it, she had gone at once to the villa to offer her condolences, for she had been very fond of Claude. She had found Cynthia completely alone, without help of any kind, and had simply stayed there doing what she could for her.

  ‘But I thought you didn’t like Madame?’ I said.

  ‘What has that to do with it?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘Madame was in trouble. That self-righteous old woman had packed up long ago and taken her niece with her. You and Mademoiselle Thalia were in Paris. She had no one. She is very beautiful. A great lady—not used to housework. How can she scrub floors and peel potatoes?’

  Business, she explained, had been poor, and because of it she had again fallen out with her proprietress. ‘But now that you’re back, Mademoiselle Rachel, I’ll go back to her. After all, the season is almost here. I must look to myself.’

  Cynthia’s cool reception of us had been disconcerting. What had I expected? Tears, recriminations, anger? We got none of these. She was so calm, so matter-of-fact, so utterly detached that any kind of emotion or remorse faded. As to Thalia, she greeted her coldly, cut short her stammered inquiries about Claude and her father to comment on her shorn hair. When I tried to help Thalia’s dumb despair by trying to explain that we were both terribly sorry for all that had happened she stopped me. ‘I don’t want to hear anything about it. You’re both back now—and Claude is recovering. No, Thalia, I don’t want you to say anything. Go and give that mutilated hair a good shampoo and brushing. It has certainly not improved you—it will take me time to become accustomed to it.’

  And beyond this she had persistently ignored any reference to our flight or to Claude’s accident.

  I thought of this extraordinary situation now as I waited for Thalia to fetch The Jungle Book for Claude. I had heard Cynthia thanking Madeleine more sincerely than I had ever known her thank anyone. Had Cynthia changed? Or was it I who had been blind?

  ‘I thought you sent Madeleine away because you were told that she’s a prostitute?’ I challenged her.

  ‘And?’ she said coolly, flinching a little at my blunt word.

  ‘She’s back . . .’ I said lamely.

  ‘Terence sent her away because of you and Thalia. She may be what you have just called her—but she’s kind.’

  The accent she put on this word brought a great burning flush over me. It crept up from my neck all over my face. I hadn’t known such an insufferable feeling for years. I felt as I had on that day in the club in London when it was as if she had held up a mirror to me. But then it had only been the outward ugliness of untidiness which the reflection had shown. Now it was the inner spiritual one—and it was just as ugly.

  And Buddy, who had brought us back and helped me on that intolerable journey, had been astounded when he’d seen Cynthia.

  ‘But she’s exquisite! She’s a beautiful person,’ he had said. ‘I just don’t understand how you and the girl can’t get on with her. A woman with eyes like that must be a lovely person.’ And he had looked at me with a new doubtful interest. ‘What she must have suffered with that child lying unconscious so long—and no one here to help her,’ he said indignantly.

  ‘She had Madeleine,’ I said shortly.

  ‘Rachel,’ he said quietly, ‘there’s no deception like self-deception. Get that clear. I’ve been practising it for years.’

  The villa had been in a frightful mess, for while Claude had been in the little Bénéfice hospital with his life in the balance, Cynthia hadn’t the time or heart to bother about anything else. Madeleine was no great cleaner, but she had prepared some kind of meals for Cynthia when she had returned each night from her vigil at the hospital, had seen that there was warmth and that her bed was ready for her.

  Thalia and I set to work to clean the place. We scrubbed, swept, polished and dusted madly, putting all our misery at leaving Paris into the exercise as if it were part of our penance. So far there had been no mention of the accident. It had been thrust aside as something disgraceful. Thalia was very quiet. She went about silent and intent. I knew that this was but the lull—and that at any minute the storm would break. Claude was definitely turning the corner, Dr. Cartier was delighted with him. The spoilt child had shown great courage, he said. Cynthia had merely said that Claude had behaved as a soldier’s son should.

  Local opinion was weighted heavily against Thalia and me. We had deserted the Madame, as had Marie. Cynthia had come in for a tremendous amount of sympathy and attention for the few days when Claude’s life was despaired of. We had come in for much criticism. True, we were all back now—but the damage was done.

  Marie had simply turned up in the cart, on top of her bedding, a week after our return. Madeleine had left the following day, begging Thalia and me to visit her in St. Malo. She would give us thé à l’anglais, and it would all be very correct, she assured us. There was a little salon in the ‘hotel’ where they could receive their friends and she would see that it was at our disposal.

  Marie walked in stiffly without a word, and asked me unemotionally if Madame wanted her back. She was unbending with me—then suddenly relented and embraced me warmly. I was overjoyed to see her and hugged her again and again.

  ‘So you’re back from that Hell of Wickedness!’ she remarked tartly, examining me curiously. She didn’t, I noticed, ask me her usual question as to my virginity. Having been a resident in a city ranking in her mind with the abode of the Devil himself, what would have been the use?

  I asked Cynthia if she could come back.

  ‘Oh, let her come if she wants to,’ she replied indifferently. ‘I don’t know why she left—I couldn’t understand a word of her explanation. Let her come. But tell her she must stay now until the lease of the villa is up. I don’t want any more upsets or changes.’ She looked meaningly at me as she said this.

  The only reference Cynthia made to the whole episode of Thalia and the accident was to insist that she accompany her mother to church on the Sunday after her return.

  ‘It’s essential that we are seen together. All kinds of malicious rumours have bee
n circulating. I should have preferred Rachel to have been with us too—but she must stay with Claude.’

  Thalia was sullen and unwilling. She had been aloof and distant to me since our return. She resented bitterly my having forced her to return with me.

  ‘Church to Mother is a kind of Union Jack. The family of the great Empire and all that. She uses it as a shield. I don’t believe a word of it. Why should I go?’

  ‘It’s not a great deal to ask of you. It must have been pretty awful for your mother while we were both away and Claude so ill.’

  She mimicked my last words—but in Cynthia’s voice—cold, clipped and colourless.

  ‘Yes,’ she said when I stared at her, ‘it could have been her speaking.’

  Marie settled in again and took some of the burden of the house off my shoulders. Outwardly life went on much as it had been before I had gone to Paris. Inwardly the tension was worse. There was now a subtle difference in all our relationships. Claude, because he clung in his weakness, had become closer to me—and Cynthia too. It was impossible not to be moved by the look of fragility, the little lines of fatigue and anxiety now beginning to show in her face. To me she was infinitely more beautiful now. But between Thalia and me a gulf was widening.

  I asked Marie why she had left. She looked gloomy. Hadn’t the Madame explained? She’d told her all about it but had been afraid that she hadn’t understood. It was the niece—Elise. She’d got herself into trouble. Yes, with a good-for-nothing type like that young Tréfours. She didn’t know what the girls were coming to. They seemed to have no discrimination. There was a good, steady young farmer wanted Elise and would she look at him? No. She’d had to behave like that with the electrician from the Midi. Now he’d vanished and Elise was going to have his child. She’d had to take her out to the farm and see that she was out of harm’s way. I thought of Elise out at that dreary place from where we’d rescued Kiki.

  ‘You’re very good to her,’ I said mechanically.