Thalia

by Frances Faviell

  I took her box of sleeping pills from the drawer by the bed and went out, pocketing the key. She took not the slightest notice of me. Her paroxysm over, she sat down on the bed again, staring unseeingly into space.

  I went into the kitchen to find Marie, badly needing some human contact to steady me. She peered questioningly at me as I stood against the dresser shaking. I couldn’t stop. Without a word she bent down to a cupboard under the sink and drew out the bottle she kept for Yves’ visits. ‘Il est mort.’ She crossed herself. ‘How pale you are, Mademoiselle Rachel! I listened to her cries. I saw her throw the crucifix.’ She crossed herself again. ‘She didn’t know what she was doing. She’s a good woman. She goes to church. God help the poor soul! Drink this. You’re shaking like Claude’s jellies.’

  The raw spirit pulled me together. I telephoned Judy. She’d gone out to a dinner party and was not expected back until late.

  ‘Watch her door, Marie. See that she doesn’t go out. I’m going to fetch Captain Mourne.’

  I had to go to Terence. It was always hopeless to try and get him on the telephone. The hotel had a number of annexes and they were some distance apart from the main building.

  ‘Don’t leave me alone for long with a woman who throws crucifixes,’ she said, fearfully.

  I pulled her black shawl round my shoulders and ran out of the house. I ran again up the rue de la Malouine and into Terence’s hotel. He was exactly where I expected him to be—sitting on the terrace over the sea, drinking with some retired Army officers.

  He wasn’t at all pleased to see me—he had been drinking a good deal—but something in my face brought him quickly to his feet and away from the group.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Cynthia,’ I panted. ‘Tom’s missing—believed killed in action. She’s so strange. I’m frightened, Terence. You must come. You must.’

  He took my arm and hurried me away. When we were in the shadow of the tamarisks, he said angrily, ‘Why d’you come to me? What can I do?’

  ‘You’re her friend. Tom Pemberton was your friend—your fellow-officer. You must come. She needs you.’

  ‘You little fool! Are you blind? Don’t you see that I’m the last person to go to her now?’

  I couldn’t understand him and as angrily as he, I said, ‘You always talk in riddles. This is no time for it. You must come to her.’

  He hurried me up the avenues, already dusty from a long drought, through one tree-lined street to another. There were puffs of white cotton stuff from some tree whose name I didn’t know blowing all over the place. They settled like snow on Marie’s shawl round my shoulders and all over his immaculate dinner jacket.

  Cynthia’s window was lighted as we went into the hall. Marie met us there.

  ‘She’s still sitting there. She hasn’t moved.’ She took out her rosary and began telling her beads.

  ‘Go up to her,’ said Terence fiercely.

  ‘She doesn’t like me . . . I think she hates me,’ I said helplessly. ‘What can I say? What can I do?’

  ‘In God’s name, girl, are you completely inhuman? Go in to her as you would to anyone in trouble. Help her . . . comfort her somehow . . . God, do I have to tell you what to do? Aren’t you a woman? You’ve known what it is to love. You’re not a child now. Go in.’

  His whisper was so fierce, so insistent that I went up the stairs. He not only had the power of making me obey but of withholding the retort that it was he who should be going.

  She sat on the tumbled bed looking out across the sea.

  ‘Cynthia . . . Cynthia,’ I said softly, and very gently I put my arms round her and pulled her head down to me. She didn’t move at first when she felt my arms, then suddenly she broke free and flung herself face downwards on the bed. Incoherent, agonized words came from her and harsh, tearing sobs.

  I stroked her hair, fallen in a golden cascade over her shoulders and so we sat for a long, long time. Marie looked in twice. I put my finger to my lips and she went noiselessly out again.

  At last Cynthia sat up and buried her ravaged face on me. I held her close, longing to weep with her, but not a single tear would come—my anguish was too deep.

  I felt an aching, limitless pity now, not only for her, but for all my sex. It seemed to me suddenly that I was now completely at one with her in that I had loved—perhaps as hopelessly—certainly as unhappily—as she had. And in that moment, I knew that I was as ageless as are all women in that they must inevitably know sorrow. ‘No longer a child,’ Terence had said. ‘You know what it is to have loved.’

  ‘Cynthia, darling . . . don’t cry any more . . . don’t. Perhaps he isn’t dead. Perhaps he’s having to hide out somewhere. Don’t give up hope.’

  ‘He’s dead. I know he is,’ she said stonily and the low sobbing began again.

  A sudden feeling that we were being watched made me look up above her bowed head. I thought Marie was in the room again and was going to ask her for a hot drink for Cynthia. But it wasn’t Marie. At first I couldn’t see anyone; and then in the triple mirror of the dressing-table I saw three faces. Not Marie’s. Thalia’s. Thalia full face, Thalia left profile, Thalia right profile; and in all three I read an incredulous, contemptuous acceptance of this betrayal.

  All those eyes, dark, hostile and watchful were taking in the impact of this scene of Cynthia and me sitting there with our arms round each other; and then, as I moved, the mirror was suddenly empty—she had gone!

  When Cynthia had fallen into a heavy, drugged sleep I went quickly and remorsefully upstairs to Thalia. I was vaguely uneasy. Those eyes! Had I imagined it? It was the contempt and incredulity which stung me—the realization in them of the inevitable thing which had happened to me. I had passed that no-man’s-land between childhood and womanhood.

  But she had locked her door against me and there wasn’t a sound from behind it. She didn’t answer to her name when I called her again and again. I reminded her that she’d had no supper, using all the endearments which she usually couldn’t resist. But the silence persisted. I couldn’t risk waking Cynthia or Claude by making a scene. I went away. I had removed Cynthia’s key—but Thalia’s I had forgotten.

  * Breton harbinger of death, usually an old man with a cart.

  XIX

  IT was three o’clock when I awoke with the insistent knowledge that Thalia was calling me. I awoke to a distinct cry—repeated twice. I pulled on a dressing-gown and went on to the landing. The door of her room was wide open—the room itself empty.

  I ran downstairs to the garden and then I knew what had awakened me. Kiki was barking madly. I went out to the dog in his kennel and tried to soothe him, but he wouldn’t be quiet. He was quivering and excited. As I went back through the hall I saw that there was a chair standing under the great hook on which we kept the key of the gate. I looked up—the key was gone. And suddenly there flashed back to me those words of Thalia’s to her father as she had stood on the steps: ‘I’ll give it to you and to nobody else.’

  It was dark, there was no moon, and a strong wind was whipping the palms. The iron gate was swinging, the steps below, dark and forbidding. They were slippery as I descended, and twice I lost my footing. The tide was almost at full height and half-way down the waves were dashing up on to them. It was as I reached the last unwashed step that I saw the slipper. A buff, woolly, shabby bedroom slipper—and I knew that she was here. And now I began to cry frantically, ‘Thalia . . . Thalia . . . Thalia. . . .’ The wind carried my voice away in an empty senseless echo as I stood there clutching her shoe. She was playing one of her tricks on me . . . I was waiting to hear her laughing and calling, ‘Here I am . . . Rachel, here I am!’ as she had done when she pretended to leap over the cliffs.

  But no laugh and no voice came. Was she hiding up on the terrace under the palms? I ran up the steps again and looked on the seat in the deep shadow there. I called her again, but only the wind answered me. And then, out on the water I thought I saw her head—far out on the wa
ves. I screamed wildly again, ‘Thalia . . . Thalia. . . .’ I ran down the steps, flinging off my dressing-gown and kicking off my shoes.

  The water was black and deep—the rocks jagged and cruel. I was terrified . . . terrified. A cramp of sick horrible fear clutched me in the stomach so that I couldn’t bring myself to dive in, although I knew that if it were indeed she out there, every second counted.

  I have always been a coward in some respects . . . about leaping into the unknown especially. Once, at school, when we had a fire, they had been obliged to push me down the chute. ‘Oh, God . . . oh, God, make me go in! Make me go in!’ I prayed, forgetting my agnostic avowals, and raising my arms above my head, I plunged into the black water.

  It was so cold that the shock of its impact all but sent me under again when I came to the surface. I was clear of the rocks and struck out in the direction of the object I thought I had seen, calling again and again. But now the tiling had gone. Fear made my limbs heavy and my strokes weak, and as my pyjamas hindered me so I thought with dismay of Thalia’s voluminous night-gown. I hadn’t stopped to look if her dressing-gown was missing. The blackness of the water filled me with an agony of apprehension—what monsters lurked beneath its depths? Again and again I imagined I caught sight of an arm, or a movement as a wave broke made me imagine that some portion of her body was coming above the surface. It was as if I were chasing a mirage and I began to grow weaker and weaker.

  The tide was pulling me out all the time and swimming against it, trying now to get back, was an appalling body-racking battle. Suddenly a searing, shooting pain gripped me, leaving me helpless. A huge wave dashed me against the rocks below the steps. I tried to grab something solid, but before I could do so, the strong undercurrent sucked me back into the sea and once more the terrible pain seized me. I floated a little until it lessened and, making a tremendous effort, when the next wave flung me against the rocks I clutched on to them wildly, my arms and legs bruised and cut through the thin silk of my pyjamas. Again and again I grabbed some sharp edge of rock, only to be sucked back by the fierce, savage force of the ebb tide.

  And then I heard a cry. Thalia? Was she on the steps after all? I looked up. Marie was there. She shouted something to me, but I couldn’t hear it. Then she disappeared.

  My strength was almost gone, my fingers unable to sustain their hold. I began sliding, slipping back into that black whirlpool; but now it seemed to be beckoning me, no longer icy and repellent but warm, inviting. ‘I am drowning . . . drowning . . .’ I thought. ‘They always say it’s warm and peaceful once you stop struggling.’ And then Marie’s shrill harsh cry aroused me. ‘Courage! Courage! Tenez! Tenez!’ And there was a rope flung to me. I grabbed it—there was a loop on the end and after what seemed an endless, agonizing struggle, during which she shouted, admonished and encouraged me in rough, fierce commands, I managed to get it under my armpits. Holding the rope against the violence of the waves, she hauled me in bumping, agonizing, sprawling jerks over the rocks and on to the submerged steps, where her strong old hands, accustomed to pulling in the boats, dragged me to safety. I lay there collapsed, a dead thing. Then the warm, drifting feeling came over me again and all was blackness.

  I came to myself in agonized, violent pain. I was face downwards on the step and Marie was working on my back. I was vomiting up sea water and half my inside with it. Each spasm was a fresh agony. . . . Marie turned me over suddenly and, supporting my head, looked at me. . . . ‘Dieu remercie! Elle vive encore!’

  I struggled up. ‘Thalia . . . Thalia . . .’ I tried to say, but my voice was so weak that no sound was audible. I tried again. ‘Thalia. She’s gone. She’s in the sea. We must find her. We must.’ But only a cracked whisper came from me.

  ‘Don’t talk . . . he still.’ She began massaging me, kneading my back and chest, rubbing my hands and wrists, my ankles and my stomach. Every touch hurt as if she were using a knife. I clung to her in great gulping, sobbing breaths as she worked. She must understand and get help. She must.

  ‘Thalia . . . Thalia. . . . We must find her. . . .’

  ‘Mademoiselle Rachel,’ she said gently, ‘if she is in that sea she is dead. No one, unable to swim, could live in it for this long. . . .’

  ‘Her shoe. It was on the steps. You saw it?’

  ‘I have it here. I heard the dog barking and found you both gone from your rooms. I saw her shoe. Come, do you think you could get up the steps now? Lean on me . . . I’m strong . . . don’t be afraid to put all your weight on me.’

  And so, in what seemed an interminable journey, we ascended the steps, halting at each new one, and at last reaching the terrace, where I collapsed again on the seat. But I wouldn’t rest longer than enabled me to get my breath, which was still painful and still coming in great, audible sighs.

  ‘Thalia. . . . Marie, we must get help. She may be drifting somewhere out there. I’m sure I saw her arm in the water. . . .’

  ‘It was a mouette—a seagull!’ said Marie firmly. ‘I saw it too. In the dark it looked like a white arm . . . but it was only a gull. Come now . . . lean on me and we’ll get to the house.’

  And soon she had me before the stove in the kitchen, had pulled off my pyjamas, wrapped me in warm blankets and forced some hot brandy and sugar down me, for now fresh shivering and vomiting had seized me. But I had to get to the telephone somehow. Kiki was still barking loudly and I could hear him jumping wildly against the wall of his kennel. ‘Loose him!’ I said to Marie. ‘He must have seen her. He’ll show us where she went!’

  She loosed him, and without a moment’s hesitation he tore down to the gate and raced down the steps barking more and more excitedly.

  ‘You see? He knows. He saw her go. She probably spoke to him.’

  It was almost four o’clock, but I picked up the telephone receiver and asked the operator for Judy’s number. She answered immediately and her voice showed no surprise at being awakened at such an hour.

  ‘Give me half an hour and I’ll be with you,’ she said, without asking any of those aimless and time-wasting questions which most people do.

  Sit down! I’ll telephone the police,’ said Marie. ‘They will give the coastguards the alarm.’

  It was Judy who helped me through the horror of the police inquiries. Judy who staunchly denied that I could be held in any way responsible for the tragedy. Judy who insisted that Thalia had rushed out, completely unbalanced by the realization of her father’s possible death, and in her wild grief had slipped on those steps. But the key? No one asked about the key. We had hung it back on the hook afterwards. When I wanted to explain about it, Marie had checked me fiercely. ‘Leave well alone,’ she had hissed.

  It was Judy who sent for Miss Pemberton, Tom’s unmarried sister. She was so like Thalia that her appearance had startled me. She was capable and practical—and she was kind.

  ‘It’s no use crying; it’s done! And she probably did it all for nothing. Tom’ll turn up yet. I know my brother. Poor unbalanced child. Always imagining that she was being wrongly treated! What else can you expect from the child of a woman like Cynthia, who allowed her to be brought up with a tiger, snakes and heathens?’

  And she swept up the whole mass of papers I had found in Thalia’s room. Poems, pages of them, some short stories and the plays of which she had spoken. These last were curious in that the characters in them were all animals commenting on the stupidities of humans. I wanted to keep them.

  ‘A lot of morbid drivel! Outpourings of adolescence. Better burned. Into the kitchen stove with the lot!’

  But I had found Thalia’s diary and this I hid from Miss Pemberton, for it was full of entries about me. My name was on every page. Rachel . . . Rachel. From the time of my meeting with Armand until the final break with him, there was a complete record. The only time the diary had not been kept had been during the Paris period. She had resumed it as soon as she returned.

  I noted the change in her comments on me; from the first wild, extravagant praise
to gradual bitter disappointment.

  All these caused me anguish—but it was that last page, the day of Armand’s wedding, the day of the telegram, which burned into me as if it would never disappear.

  ‘She’s angry with me—furious.’

  Then later, added in a different ink: ‘I’ve just read the telegram. She gave it me without a word.’ There was a smudge of tears here and some dirt on the place. And then the last entry—that final one which I could not forget:

  ‘I went to tell Rachel I am sorry. I wanted comfort because of Father. I saw them together. Her arms round Mother!’ And after a blank line, she had begun again: ‘I’ll get her back. I must. I must . . .’ and here it broke off.

  Did she try? Did she intend to frighten me as she had so often done? And indeed as I had thought she was doing then? Did she rush down the steps calling my name loudly, intending to hide from me? Or did the long nightgown cause her to slip, so that calling my name in real terror she fell to her death in the swirling waters?

  On the day of the inquest, Xavier Tréfours came to see me. Shocked at the news of the tragedy he had hastened to offer his help in my ordeal. Cynthia was too ill to be subjected to any of it and it fell on me to answer all the searching questions about Thalia’s last hours. Xavier was known in the district—known to all the authorities—and his warm, sympathetic handling of me, and his tactful help to the police, was as balm on the agitation of the whole affair. He made it all as easy for me as he could, so that there was nothing expressed but sympathy for the young English girl whose friend had met with this terrible accident after hearing the news of the probable death of her father. Almost demented with grief she had clearly fallen down the steps. Great sympathy was expressed for the beautiful mother who was the victim of this double tragedy.