The cynicism of her tone was horrible. I hadn’t thought of the reason for Catherine’s prolonged absence. But Thalia had—or she had overheard gossip on the subject. Only when we were running on the beach or wandering in the woods would she sometimes resume her old merry companionship—as if in spite of herself she had forgotten her resentment against me.
Cynthia had relapsed again into that strange silence I had known before I went to Paris. She spent a lot of time in bed and this I understood, for she’d tired herself with Claude. I would look at her lying there and long to know what was going on under that lovely calm mask. I understood Thalia having wanted to shake her mother’s composure, to break that distant, tantalizing composure. Hadn’t I often wanted to throw a stone into a still pool? Only Thalia had done it with a snake, and Cynthia had suffered a heart attack and still believed it had been a krait.
Sometimes when I stood there with the kitchen slate, waiting for her to make up her mind or answer a question, I longed to shake her or throw the slate at her. And yet I admired her. What control she must have to be able to hide every emotion, thought, hope and fear under such flawless beauty. Terence Mourne was by no means her only escort. Cynthia was the favourite of a whole host of retired Army men and indeed of most of the men in the Colony. As I never accompanied her to her social engagements I never saw this. But they would call for her, sometimes she would talk afterwards; and what she didn’t tell me, Judy did.
One Saturday, Thalia said she would like to go sketching with me. I was delighted and went to ask Cynthia if she had any plans for the day.
‘None,’ she said languidly. ‘I think I’ll stay in bed this morning. Claude can have his lunch with me and you and Thalia could take yours out with you.’
I asked her if there were any news from Tom. She shook her head. ‘Nothing. It’s over three weeks since I heard from him.’
The papers had been full of the trouble on the Frontier. The elusive Fakir had been using his religious fanaticism for political purposes. I had asked Terence about it and he had explained some of the difficulties under which the Army laboured there. The delicacy of religious corns, on which treading was forbidden, prevented any drastic action being taken. Everything had to be done tactfully—and there was now a movement to choose and retain only officers well versed in the political and religious factors in the country. Men who were both sympathetic and objective. Such a man was Tom Pemberton, who was liked and trusted by many of the tribes. To him were entrusted some of the most delicate and dangerous operations on the Frontier.
‘He knows the languages and the men. He was born and brought up in India. His family have been there for three generations. His son is destined for India, too,’ said Terence.
But Claude was lame now. Might be lame permanently. Terence saw me looking doubtful.
‘There are other ways of serving than in the Army. There’s the I.C.S. and the Political.’
‘You liked Tom Pemberton.’
‘Liked! Liked! Why the past tense?’
‘Well. . . . You didn’t seem at ease with one another when you met on the Quay.’
‘No.’ He frowned. ‘I hadn’t seen him since I resigned the Regiment.’
‘Are you sorry?’
‘When I read these accounts of the Frontier trouble in the paper, yes. Like hell I am!’
We went to the Vicomté. I didn’t really want to go there, but wishing to placate Thalia and to make a serious attempt to recover some ground in our deteriorating relationship, I agreed. It was painful to me to revisit those places where I’d been so intensely happy with Armand. And I now knew from other sources that what Thalia had said about his being there frequently with other women had been true.
We sketched the far banks of the Rance in the wide estuary from the Rond Point. My painting was dull—lacking either design or life. Thalia, on the contrary, did a very quick, highly original conception of the whole panorama laid out before us from this angle. It was very good—and I told her so. She was pleased and said off handedly, ‘Have it, please. You don’t like my poems—perhaps you’ll like this better.’
We ate our sandwiches sitting amongst the gorse looking out on the water. As the sun’s strength grew so the scent of the gorse increased. There were wild flowers in profusion and I found a small bush of broom. I showed it excitedly to Thalia. ‘You remember Marie’s story of why broom is so rare in Brittany?’
She nodded. ‘Of course. I’ve made a play out of it. A comedy.’
‘A play. A comedy? D’you know how?’
‘Of course. I wrote two plays for the children in the Cantonments. They did them at Christmas. They were all right.’
‘How could you make a comedy out of a legend of a saint and his mother and broom?’
Melaine was a small boy who looked after sheep. His mother couldn’t find him when he wandered away. She was so angry when she found him that, in her relief, she seized the nearest thing with which to beat him. It happened to be a bush of broom. When the flowers discovered that they had beaten a saint their shame was so great that they produced a shower of tears and tried to hide themselves under the earth. From that day, broom has been very rare in Brittany. How could she make a comedy out of this?
But it is a comedy. I’ve made the boy an ordinary naughty little boy, the mother a nagging, tiresome woman and the broom flowers and the sheep are the Chorus, the commentators.’
‘I should like to read it,’ I said eagerly.
‘You can,’ she said indifferently.
I thought it strange that Cynthia hadn’t told me of Thalia’s plays. She must surely have been proud of a daughter who’d had two plays produced, if only by children, when she was only thirteen.
‘She wasn’t there,’ said Thalia. ‘She was up in Kashmir.’
‘But your father?’
‘Oh yes, he was pleased. There was a man—Robin Thorne—in the Regiment, the one who was killed. He helped me a lot and produced them for me. He said I was to go on writing them. I like funny things best. When I feel most unhappy I write something funny.’
‘Have you those plays here?’
‘Yes,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘But they’re no good really. One day I may write a good one. I should like to act in it myself. The chief comic part!’ and she began to laugh quite horribly.
‘Thalia,’ I said, hurt and upset. ‘What is the matter lately? I know you’re angry because we had to come back, but what else could we have done?’
‘Worked!’ She spat the word out. ‘Washed dishes in the cafés. Oh, I know you’re supposed to have a permit. But they’d have taken us on somewhere.’
‘There’s something else,’ I insisted. ‘It’s not only that.
‘It’s Father. He hasn’t written to me for a long time. And I haven’t written to him. Marie saw the Ankou* last night.’ She shivered a little.
‘Why haven’t you written?’ I said, ignoring determinedly Marie’s superstitions.
‘You know. Mother says I’m not to tell him about Claude. The only person who will understand about the whole thing is Father. And she says I’m not to tell him.’
‘She doesn’t want him worried just now.’
‘He ought to know. I’m his daughter.’
‘And Claude’s his son.’
‘That’s why he ought to know I almost killed him. I did push him, you know.’
‘Thalia, for goodness’ sake try and forget it. Come on, let’s race to the top. It’s time we started back.’
On the way home she said, ‘Let’s go round by the St. Enogat road. There’s probably a wedding in the church. They always have them on Saturdays.’
We both loved watching the fishermen’s weddings, in which there was often a bridal procession to the quay.
‘What about Kiki?’
‘We can tie him to the railings.’
‘He’ll howl.’
‘It won’t matter—they’ll have music.’
The church was cool and inviting. We tied Kiki to a
post and went into the white stone building. It wasn’t very old but the dome pleased me, and although the altar was over-ornate, the side chapels were beautiful. There was a lovely St. Thérèse with a cerulean blue silk background. As we went in I saw that to-day for the wedding she had masses of pink lilies at her feet.
The church was very full and at first I didn’t realize that this was no ordinary wedding. The guests weren’t fisher-folk or peasants or local townsfolk. They were smart, well-dressed, sophisticated people.
I shut my eyes and began dreaming a little, when something unusually alert and tense in Thalia’s interest in the proceedings made me look sharply at the group in front of the altar. At that very moment the bridesmaids stepped back, leaving the bride and groom kneeling there alone.
The arches of the dome began to spin strangely, the whole vaulted space was closing in on me. I bit my lips until they hurt and put my head down between my legs. When the faintness had passed I looked at Thalia. She was gazing straight ahead at the altar, but something in her awareness told me that she had observed the shock I had sustained. We were near the side door. Had she suggested our entering by the main door in the square, I couldn’t have failed to have been forewarned by the Tréfours cars. For the groom was Armand!
The girl kneeling at his side was small—shorter than I. She was very dark, as far as I could make out under the bridal veil merging into a cascade of lace flowing down the altar steps. She turned in the ceremony to her groom, so that their two profiles were clear cut against the grey stone. And when I saw Armand there with her—his head bent down to her—a stab of anguish such as I’d never experienced shot through me. I hated her! hated her! This Marie-Laure, this girl who to-night would share his bed, would bear his children—I hated her.
I couldn’t stay in the place. Getting up, I began pushing past the guests in the pew. They were astonished and outraged at the commotion, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was that I got out—away from a scene which was torture to me. When I reached the fresh air I sat down on the stone wall round the church.
Thalia followed me out. She stood looking curiously at me, as if she were surprised and irritated at my feelings.
‘Come on. They’ll all be coming out soon.’ She pulled me up.
‘Don’t touch me!’ I cried furiously. ‘You knew. You knew it was his wedding. You brought me here on purpose.’
‘But you said you didn’t care any more. You said so in Paris,’ she said, using the maddeningly patient voice which some adults use to children.
I had a furious desire to hurt her . . . to hurt her terribly.
‘Go away,’ I cried. ‘I never want to see you again.’
Without a word she untied the dog and walked quickly away up the rue St. Enogat, her footsteps ringing on the cobbled square. From the church came the sound of boys’ clear voices singing the anthem. I must get away. I must. At last, with a tremendous effort, I got up and walked in the opposite direction to the one she’d taken.
It was as if all the bones in my legs had bent—as if they were the legs of a very old woman. I couldn’t bear the thought of facing any human. It felt as if my face was old, too—fixed and set into lines of crumpled distress. I walked along the beach without seeing the surf-line, or the gulls swooping over some dead fish. The tide was going down, leaving the sands hard, white and inviting. So they had been when Armand had run on them. I didn’t see the children playing in the pools. I saw only Armand running again. Armand in his shorts, his hair blown in the wind. And he was married. Married to that girl whom Thalia said had a little moustache and whose neck was too short.
What a fool I’d been. What an utter fool. And Julie Caron? Would she hate that Marie-Laure as I did? Or would it make no difference to her? Would they go on making love in that rose-lit flat when the old woman was out, or, as Thalia had said, on the flower-covered banks of the Rance?
How could he? How could he? When I had asked him how he could do that with Julie when he professed to love me, he had looked astonished and said it had nothing to do with love. But Cynthia had called it the act of love . . . the act of love. What then had she meant? And Catherine? She had said extraordinary things about love—but she had meant that. I longed for her—but she was in the Midi and in the church they had whispered that the bridal couple were going to the Midi for the honeymoon.
I walked and walked until the turmoil in me had died down—and then returned slowly by the rue de la Malouine.
As I went through the gate of the villa, a boy from the Post Office was waiting with a telegram. I took it from him and saw that it was for Cynthia. I think I knew before I took it. Tom Pemberton had been in our thoughts for the last weeks; to-day we had all been talking of the absence of news from him. Cynthia exclaimed at my pallor as soon as I entered the salon. Then she saw the telegram. She blanched too.
‘Open it. Read it out to me, Rachel,’ she said faintly.
‘REGRET INFORM YOU COLONEL THOMAS PEMBERTON MISSING BELIEVED KILLED IN ACTION NAHAKKI PASS’. There didn’t appear to be a date on it and several words were wrongly spelt. The telegram had been sent from London.
‘Read it!’ she repeated. I couldn’t. I handed it to her in silence. She read it and let it flutter to the floor.
‘Missing! They mean dead. You can’t be missing there on that barren, treeless place. He’s dead! Tom’s dead! Killed by those vile, treacherous tribesmen! And he loved them. He was always trying to learn more of their beastly languages, always trying to make excuses for their treachery. And this is what he gets for it. They murder him. The brutes!’
I picked the telegram up again, staring at the words. ‘Missing . . . believed killed
‘Bring Claude down here.’ Cynthia’s voice was harsh. Her face, although calm, frightened me.
‘He’ll be asleep,’ I protested.
‘Bring him!’ she said imperiously, in what Thalia called her Kohi-hai voice. Her face was so peculiar that I was even more frightened and went up to the child’s room. He was asleep and scarcely stirred when I lifted him in my arms and carried him downstairs wrapped in a blanket.
She was standing by the writing table before a large photograph of Tom Pemberton in uniform.
‘Put him down.’
He stood there swaying, more than half-asleep, and I had to support his warm little body.
‘Claude,’ she said sharply. ‘Wake up. Wake up!’
‘Cynthia!’ I was shocked. ‘He’s only a baby—and he’s been so ill. Don’t tell him. Don’t.’ But I needn’t have worried for the boy was already asleep on his feet, his head lolling forward on his chest.
She shook him. ‘Claude! Claude! Your father has been killed.’
He opened his eyes and began to cry. His mother had a voice and face which were strange to him. He stumbled piteously to me, clutching at me. I picked him up, thinking how frail he had grown.
‘He shall grow up to hate those tribes. Treacherous turncoats! They’ve killed the one man who worked for them. I always told him they weren’t worth his worry and trouble.’
‘Cynthia,’ I said gently, ‘we don’t know yet that Tom’s dead. It says missing.’
‘It always means dead. It’s a way the War Office have of breaking it. As if it made any difference. It’s worse—some poor fools might hope!’
She looked so queer now that I moved towards the door with Claude in my arms.
‘I’ll call Thalia,’ I said.
‘No,’ she said harshly. ‘I don’t want her.’
As I reached the door I saw Thalia in the hall. She had heard Cynthia’s words.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, looking in surprise at Claude in my arms.
I deliberately handed her the telegram. ‘Go in to your mother. I’ll be down in a minute. I must take Claude to bed.’
She read the telegram slowly, looked at me with eyes opaque and wide, then ran past me up the stairs. I heard her door slam and the key turn in the lock as I laid the child back in his bed. I was tre
mbling as if I were cold, and there was a strange sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I went down and looked through the glass doors of the salon. Cynthia was still there sitting on the couch. She didn’t move when I touched her arm. She seemed oblivious of everything.
Marie stood twisting her apron at the kitchen door.
‘Help me get her to bed. She’s had a bad shock,’ I said.
‘Le Colonel—il est mort?’
‘Il paraît qu’il est mort!’
‘I knew it. I knew it. Twice this week I’ve seen the Ankou. What else can you expect after that bone was brought into the house?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said impatiently.
We had visited an Ossuary with Judy a few days before. Claude, unobserved, had taken a little bone from the shelf. On his return he had shown it proudly to Marie. She had been outraged and terrified. ‘It must go back. It must go back at once!’ she had insisted. ‘It will bring terrible things on this house if it isn’t returned at once.’
Judy and I had driven back to the Ossuary. It was late and the place was shut. The old caretaker whom we knocked up had taken a poor view of our worrying about it. He had looked at the little finger bone and said crossly, ‘All that fuss for that. No one would have missed it.’
But Marie had been somewhat appeased. Claude had told me that he’d seen plenty of bones and skulls in India. He’d taken the finger bone because he’d decided to become a doctor not a soldier. He had an immense admiration for Dr. Cartier who had mended his leg.
‘Cynthia,’ I said gently. ‘You must come to bed.’
She stood up as if she were a sleepwalker and, brushing aside my arm, went slowly and stiffly up the stairs. She sat down on the painted bed. Marie had followed us and stood hesitating in the doorway.
‘Some tea? Some wine? Better, some brandy?’
‘Some hot-water bottles,’ I said, feeling Cynthia’s hands and feet. They were icy cold.
Suddenly she began talking as if she were addressing a meeting. In a hard, clear, ringing tone.
‘Duty. Always the same. Nothing else matters. That comes first. If you’ve made a mistake you must stick to it. It’s your duty. Oh, God, how funny it all is. How funny!’ And she began laughing—and springing up, snatched the small black crucifix from the nail on which Marie had hung it in the alcove and flung it wildly across the room. I heard it crash as it hit the floor. Her face was contorted now—broken like a lovely mask can be—so that I scarcely recognized her. In the throes of some emotion which I didn’t understand—certainly not grief as I knew it—but an emotion which racked and ravaged her, she was no longer beautiful. She was ugly.
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