by Ursula Bloom
Lesley married Edgar, sent her father a telegram, then boarded the Golden Arrow for France. She had no qualms. Edgar might have thickened but his fresh complexion was still clear and pink, and the hair that had once been blond was fine as silver sand, the eyes amusedly blue.
Now her one idea was to shut the door on England, and forget. There had been too many mistakes, too many prowlings in the backyards of life, and too much unblessed alliance. She longed to escape.
As the train raced down the Rhone Valley, she thought of the time when she had traversed it in the car, and of that little hostelry in the mountains, where Richard had been so repulsive. She understood older men so much better.
It was late when they got to Cap Roche. The orange trees hardly moved in the wind, and the pleasant warmth made her quite tired. She slept happily.
When morning came, she ate her croisettes and drank the coffee on the balcony where Edgar joined her. She liked his silken dressing-gown, once Richard had worn one, but this was different. Everything about Edgar was different. He walked more slowly. Under his chin there were the marks of time in crevices and cavities, and his eyes had lost that first vivaciousness, they had become older and wiser, like her father’s.
‘Isn’t this Heaven?’ she asked. It was.
For weeks life continued like this. She never saw Edgar angry, for his moods never changed. He was habitually sweet-tempered, even though innumerable matters arose to disturb him. The guests were so difficult; there was the flow of film stars, of actors and actresses and of famous people, but Edgar could manage them. His quietness was commanding, his amiable temper a joy.
Lesley hardly spoke of her father. Then one day when the terrifically hot summer had died away, and the first grateful coolness of autumn blew across the Mediterranean, with the scent of sandalwood and spices in its breath, Edgar mentioned him.
‘Your father, Lesley, why don’t we ask him down here to stay with us?’
The green eyes narrowed.
They were sitting on the terrace taking an aperitif, the hour when everybody else was dressing for dinner. ‘I never want to see him again,’ she said.
‘My dear, that isn’t really true.’ He spoke very quietly. ‘Lesley, you won’t be really happy until you see him again. He stepped out of perspective, that is all, and now you could put it right. Do meet him?’
‘I think you’re wrong,’ and the maddening thing was that she knew he was right! A black and white cat, lean and shaggy like most of the Mediterranean cats, came across the terrace and sat down to wash itself at her feet.
‘My dear, I wish you’d believe me, because I am convinced that I am not wrong. Let’s clear this up. You love your father so much that it isn’t possible for you to love me with all your heart, until that other affection is better balanced.’
She had realised this all along, yet hoped that Edgar did not know. Now she did not deny it. ‘How did it begin?’ she asked.
‘You were a lonely child and ready to give a violent affection to whoever offered himself.’
‘Once he bought me a doll.’
‘It probably began then, because life is so queer. Now you’d find it far easier if you did meet again.’
‘But how could I?’
For a time she did not mention her father, but with the autumn they went for a holiday to Algiers. It was the first time that Lesley had stepped outside Europe, she loved it, and they spent a week there. It was on the trip back that she talked of her father. It was in the afternoon and she was lying in the cabin almost naked, for it was unbelievably hot; the throb of the ship’s engines sounded like a heart, subdued yet distant, but still a heart. Edgar flopped into a chair.
She said, ‘About my father. Edgar? I’ve been thinking over what you said, and couldn’t we ask them down for Christmas?’ and although she tried to say it casually, she felt no one would ever know the effort that it was to her.
‘It’s a good idea,’ he said. No more.
He was sensitive enough to interpret her moods, and let it pass for a few moments, then he spoke very quietly.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I adore you, Edgar.’
‘I’m glad you had all those experiences, different lives as they were.’
‘Cats have nine lives.’
‘I hope you’ll have a hundred and nine. Life together is such fun. Life together is wonderful.’
She turned her mouth to his and kissed him.
Daniel and Helen accepted with pleasure. As the hour came Lesley was no longer nervous, it was Daniel who suffered. He looked older, she knew instantly, but beside him sat Helen, quite different from what she had thought, and perhaps this was the most surprising thing. On the station platform Lesley kissed her father, well aware of his nervous reaction to her, and held out a hand to Helen. Helen drew her into her arms, and kissed her.
‘Oh, Lesley, I’ve wanted to meet you so much. We’re shockingly tired, and your father found the journey over much. He won’t fly. It’s so absurd.’
Lesley prayed it was the effects of the journey that made him look so old, so different; she had not thought that he could have changed so much, becoming almost a stranger, and perhaps for the first time she realised that what Edgar had said was true, their roads no longer ran parallel, they were apart.
At the hotel he had a stiff drink, then went to lie down, Helen with him. Lesley turned to Edgar who was doing something to the traditional Christmas tree and had artificial frost and icicles in his hand. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘Edgar you were right. It’s all different now.’
‘I guessed it would be.’
‘I’m glad he’s married, glad he’s happy, and so glad that I’ve got you.’
‘Dearest, my own sweet.’
That was all.
It was a wonderful Christmas with the father who was a stranger or almost. She was considerate for his age, she felt warm and kind to him, but never as she had once felt, monopolizing, possessive and jealous. Then, on that strange Boxing Day when the air was balmy and the anemones blossoming in deep rivers of colour which flowed though the garden, she and Helen talked on the terrace. The scent of orange blossom hung over the place and the plage looked quite unlike Christmas. Helen had been talking of her first marriage to Lesley.
‘We all need experience in life, I suppose, and anyway both of us have had it,’ was her comment, ‘it’s over now, and the thing to do is to remember that the past is past. It’s the one great consolation that the future is always our own.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘In the summer come to Holbeins? It’s nice when the weather is good, and we’ve done a lot to the garden.’
For a second the thought flashed through Lesley that it was her garden, then she said. ‘I’d like it.’
‘One day we may need one another,’ said Helen gently, ‘you see, I’ve suffered too.’
And she said it in the tone with which one could not argue. Lesley liked her; she told her father so on the afternoon that they walked towards Antibes, with its clutter of old houses and church towers, the date palms and the pepper trees. He held her arm and he seemed to be faltering at times, beside them was the strip of beach, and the fine loose silvery gold sand which shuffled in heaps.
‘I wanted you to like Helen,’ he said.
‘She’s charming.’
‘I know. In life one loves different people in different ways. I shall always love you in one way, Helen in another. Just as you love Edgar.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed, yet knew that he was boring her, for she could not have believed that they could have grown so far apart. He was no longer the man who had bought her the doll from the toy-shop; he was not a hero any more than any other man.
They walked out of the shadow of the oleanders to the road beyond, bare and vivid in the sunshine, and with Antibes lying close to the sea. The old relationship was dead. Both of them had found the right footing.
Three days later Daniel and Helen went home.
Two years after, Lesley’s baby was born. Somehow they had never thought of children, and were quite surprised when Lesley felt out of sorts and the doctor told them the reason. They were pleased of course, delighted at the thought, and awaited the baby’s arrival with a happy anticipation.
The child was born quite suddenly, with Lesley alone in her room, she had always said that it was simple to have children, and was proved right in this. She clashed the bell violently and a garçon appeared; lifted horrified hands and said ‘Mon Dieu!’ then bolted for help. The curious thing was that Lesley did not even feel ill, but was deeply concerned to know what to do for the tiny daughter to whom she had given birth, until help came.
Little Catherine was large and composed, and about her was the stamina of a sturdy babe. The nurse was in ecstasies over her. When she yawned at the doctor he was amused. She went red in the face with rage if she was offended, she chortled at her father. Within a few hours it was easy to see that she was going to make it a new world for them.
The cable announcing her birth came to Holbeins, when Daniel had been unwell. Recently he had been failing, although Helen had not dared confess this to Cap Roche. He had had one or two small seizures, and the doctor was worried about him, and had stressed the point that he must not try to work in the garden, nor do too much at any time.
Now all he could do was to sit watching the shadows lengthening from the mulberry tree, and the rock garden over profuse and untidy with late summer. He was anxious for Lesley, and when the cable did not come when he had thought, he started imagining things, and fretting about her. It was wonderful weather, with the light on the leaves and the hedges of michaelmas daisies ‒ he had forty varieties in flower ‒ the garden had in fact, never looked better. To him life seemed to be like a perpetual evening, calm and rather lovely after the hard-working day.
Then he thought that he saw Mary coming into the garden again, Mary, whom he had never understood. And with her was that old fool Miss Sprockett. Really, this is too much, he told himself. They walked towards him, smiling at him, and gripping the arms of his chair, he realised that they were all friends. He got up to speak to them. That was how Helen found him a few moments later, when she came out with the cable in her hand.
A daughter, all well, she read.
Daniel was lying on his face on the grass; he had ceased to breathe.
Life on the Cote d’Azur was happy.
If Edgar was ageing, Lesley did not notice it, for to her he was always young. They adored the child who had come to them, and cared for her, and saw her through her sweet infancy, into the hours when she became a little girl, and crawled about the garden, and sometimes into the public rooms of the hotel, to be whisked back again by an agonized bonne. On into the days when one was not for ever after her, a stocky little girl, more like her father than her mother, and with pale blue eyes like his.
‘If I was the cat of commerce, Catherine has the eyes of a Siamese,’ Lesley once told Edgar.
Helen came out for a brief month, but she grew restless for the garden at Holbeins and left them again. The hotel was being worrying, because these days handsomer and more modern places were being built. The whole sea front of the Cote d’Azur seemed to be decorated as with a string of pearls, the magnificent hotels to coax the public here. The competition was keener than when Edgar had first arrived, and he was older.
‘Sometimes I feel that I cannot cope with it,’ he told Lesley.
‘What about a holiday? In a hotel where somebody else does the thinking? It would be nice to be away together for a bit.’
They had actually arranged to go, then two days before the start Catherine became ill, polio was suspected, and there was a panic. When they were quite sure that it was nothing important, it was too late, so the holiday slid away from them yet again.
Six months later Edgar visited a specialist in Nice. He did not tell Lesley about it, he did not want to frighten her unnecessarily, and when he heard what the great man had to say, he decided to keep his peace. He could make arrangements. Lesley would be provided for, and nowadays she was so changed. So different. So at rest. Not for the world would he have changed the happy moment, by mentioning a morrow when he might not be here.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so soon? One always hoped.
It happened on the day of the carnival in Antibes. Catherine wanted to go to it. She was six now, ecstatic and vigorous, an enthusiastic little girl who wanted to be everywhere at once, and because Edgar had been very tired today, Lesley sent her daughter alone with her bonne. She went up to Edgar’s room and sat beside him.
He said, ‘My sweet, you should have married somebody much younger, you know.’
‘I married the man I loved.’
‘You have been so good to me, always so good,’ and then, ‘I keep thinking that I hear bells. It’s the blood running into my head, I suppose?’
‘Not really. The bells are ringing, for it is the carnival in Antibes; there is a battle of flowers.’
‘You should have taken Catherine.’
‘I sent her with Marie, I wanted to be with you,’ and she laid her head beside his on the pillow.
The bells went on ringing in their crazy jangle, and a roman candle spat into the sky. She lay beside him holding his hand, until suddenly she realised he no longer knew that she was there. Then she got up very quietly. It was strange that with this, the greatest loss of her whole life, she could not weep. Now it seemed as if everything slowly petered away from her. It was evening.
She went to the window to draw the rose silk curtains, and as she thought about it, she saw Marie and Kitty coming back down the road hand in hand. They wore funny hats, and Edgar was dead!
That was when Lesley burst into tears.
Chapter Nine
THE LAST LIFE OF ALL
After it was over the first tangible thing that Lesley knew was that by some means known only to herself, Helen was coming into the room and Helen represented peace. At first she said nothing. She just sat down beside Lesley, and took her hand. Then, after a time she said, ‘How lovely it is to be here after England! It is drab there just now, but you have the flowers and the sunshine. It is very refreshing.’
She was looking out upon the plage, with merely a handful of its previous flow of visitors, but with cinerarias in purple and puce, and deep banks of violet.
Lesley lay there dully watching Helen, as though she could not visualise what had happened, and did not know what to do next.
‘I think you ought to stay on if you can,’ said Helen, ‘it would not be wise to sell this hotel when there is so much competition, whereas if you stay on, you may make a lot of money.’
‘It’s the memories.’
‘I know, but time deals kindly with us, and draws a gentle haze over them. The first few weeks are the worst, though that may seem strange to you.’
But the first weeks shaped things, and somehow the hotel drove her on. The hotel and Catherine. The child was going to be very pretty. In some ways she had a lot of Daniel in her, she was provocative and inclined to fight against authority, and went her own way, but she was passionately devoted to her mother.
‘I love you, Maman,’ Catherine would say.
‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket; love others too.’
‘I only want you.’
‘Nonsense; I have my own friends, you have yours,’ and on this point Lesley was definite. Whatever happened she must not love her mother too much.
For a couple of years Lesley worked on with the hotel, but she found it a hard job. For her Edgar still lived, and she still loved him. He was like a stained glass window saint in her life, looking down upon her with those mild and sympathetic eyes of his. Daniel had been her hero, but Edgar had been a saint, and here at Cap Roche everything she saw reminded her of him.
When Helen came to stay with them that late spring, she said so.
‘Helen, I believe I want to come home. Holbeins has something of magnetic attraction, I thin
k of it so much.’
‘It’s lonely there for me. How lovely it would be if history repeated itself, and Catherine could be brought up there as you were, and I should have charming companionship.’
‘Funny that at first we started off on the wrong foot. I hated the thought of you.’
‘I never hated you, Lesley,’ she answered.
‘It’s strange but I’m tired of the everlasting sunshine. I don’t know how it is but one does tire of it, and there are moments when one thinks quite enviously of rain and fog, and the grey days you get in England.’ Lesley paused, ‘besides this is not the right background for Catherine.’
‘I know.’
She thought it over a great deal; the guests spoil the child, and Catherine was too pretty to risk spoiling.
‘I have green eyes like emeralds, Madame Varre says so,’ she told her mother for her eyes had changed much. ‘You have green eyes like a cat, we both have.’
Then there was that time when there was a scene over the carnival she wished to attend, and she got out of a window and went with some wicked old Marquis, who longed to give her a treat. This has got to stop, Lesley told herself, and she set about the work of selling the place. Two months later she sent her telegram to Helen.
I’m coming back to Holbeins.
In a sense Lesley envied the kind of people who lived their allotted span in one house, pursuing the act of living complacently and against the one background, but her own life had never been like that. It had been a series of backgrounds, and she was passing into yet another, or slipping back again to the original one.
She felt tired with the hard work of the hotel; she hated the thought of leaving, yet knew that it was the right thing to do. Purposely she took the train to Paris. Purposely because she wanted to travel back through the Rhone Valley again, because in her mind there was the constant picture of it. That first journey which she had made in the car with Richard. The apricot orchards and the fat rosy peaches against the sun-drenched walls, with the honey scent of fruit ripening in the orchards. The little groups of trees like dark screens straddling the plains which had all intrigued her so much. All of these were the things that she could not easily forget.