Singing Waters

by Ann Bridge

  Gloire continued to puzzle Warren during the next day or so. Except at meals, he saw little of her; she was either going round the chemists’ shops with Cyril, returning laden with packages, or else borrowing his typist and dictating long letters to other chemists in Rome. And she made rather a fuss about seeing the General and getting a letter sent off by hand to Dr. Crowninshield—though what it could possibly contain to give it that much importance was a mystery to Warren. He was genuinely anxious to find out what had happened between her and Larsen up at Torosh; that something had passed between them he was convinced, and he tried once or twice—very tentatively and with elaborate circumlocutions—to draw Gloire on the subject. But Warren seldom had the courage of his intuitions, and he shrank from the friendly directness that might have achieved a direct response—Gloire rather sweetly eluded him, as so much of life had eluded him always, and always would.

  Of Larsen, on the other hand, he saw a great deal; and the more he saw of the Swede, the more his respect and liking for him grew. There was an honest simplicity and openness about the man which was very bracing to Warren’s shivering delicacy and, baffled by Gloire, he turned at last to him for enlightenment. It was a tribute to Nils’ quality that the Bostonian found it almost easy to say to him, one day in the garden-room—“I feel it might be quite a plan if you were to marry Gloire.”

  Nils, who was smoking and drinking, comfortably extended in a long chair, never turned a hair. He took another sip from his glass, smiled equably, and said, with great deliberation—

  “I had rather marry Miss Glanfield.”

  Warren was thoroughly flummoxed.

  “Why—but hasn’t she a husband?—and a family?”

  “I believe so—unless he is dead. I only said I had rather,” the Swede pursued imperturbably, still smiling.

  So that disposed of that. Larsen was a pretty smart guy, Warren conceded inwardly—too smart for him, anyhow. But it left him convinced, just the same, that there had been something there. Poor Gloire! What was all this racket with chemists, anyhow? However, twice baffled, he fell back onto the much more congenial subject of international politics. He and Larsen ranged over the whole field, coming back, always—as was natural enough in their case—to Albania and her specific problems, and to her main menace, Italy.

  “This is insane, what England does, to call off sanctions,” the Swede said at one point. “If she had put on oil sanctions in the winter, the Abyssinian campaign would now be over. Your country would have come in?”

  “I guess so. But whether we did or not, as the British and the Dutch control over seventy per cent of the world’s oil tankerage, they could have cut off fuel supplies effectively themselves.”

  “Yes. True. Or Britain could now, this spring, have closed the Suez Canal. This would have had the same effect.”

  “The French wouldn’t have liked that.”

  “Possibly not. But what could they do against England? To me, this is incomprehensible! England is not Finland.” Warren laughed. “No, but Mr. Langdon, this is such dangerous folly. To give Italy a free hand in Abyssinia is to invite gangster practices everywhere. Germany shall follow suit—you will see; and then Italy will come here.”

  Warren frowned worriedly.

  “I know. You’re plumb right. It was such a chance, last September, getting all those nations in on sanctions together; it looked as though the conscience of the world had really wakened up and gone into action. People at home were very much impressed.”

  Larsen smoked.

  “France again,” he said at length. “She had her secret agreement of January ‘35 to give Italy la mano libera in Ethiopia. But Britain had no need to give in to France. It is a mystery.”

  “I guess Britain’s foutu” Warren said gloomily.

  “On no—no, she is not. Britain is never foutu” the Swede replied, tranquilly. “Though the good God alone knows why not! But this country here,” he went on—“I care so much for it. Could America not help? For twenty million dollars you could set the place on its feet, start your fruit-farms, buy out the Italians, and make it an American sphere of influence. Could not the money be spared for this?”

  “My dear man, you forget the Monroe doctrine—and still more the Monroe doctrine in reverse!—no Old-World entanglements. Congress fears Europe’s ancient wickedness more than it fears the devil!”

  Larsen sighed.

  “Ah yes. However, a time will come. The world is one world now, however little we may like it.” He leaned towards his host. “I am glad you are here—you and that old Doctor.”

  “Dr. Emmeline’s a whole heap more use than I am!” Warren said, with a gloomy smile.

  Over at Durazzo, too, there was curiosity about Gloire.

  “Well, and how did your glamour-girl enjoy herself in the wilds?” Sir Arthur asked, when Miss Glanfield’s own experiences had been thoroughly canvassed.

  “Quite enormously. She got more out of it than any of us.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “She made tremendous friends with the Lek-Gionaj girl, Lisa—in fact with all of them; and ran about doing whatever they did. She got a real insight into their life.”

  “But how did she talk to them?” Helen Carruthers asked.

  “Oh, she picked up quite a bit of Albanian, and made signs and so on; she’s very good at languages.”

  “But did she enjoy it? Didn’t she miss the fleshpots and the fashion-plates?”

  “No, Arthur. I was right about her and you were wrong. She really enjoyed it—except the flies, which no one could enjoy! And she was absolutely invaluable, as it turned out. She waited on me hand and foot, gave me my bed-baths and made tea and things—I should have been wretched without her.”

  “Well, you surprise me,” said Sir Arthur.

  “That’s only because you’re so silly, Arthur. You’re frightfully borné and unexperimental about people—diplomats always are,” said Miss Glanfield with finality.

  But the writer, lying out on a sofa at the far end of the long terrace, under the awning, spent a lot of time thinking about Mrs. Thurston. She was sure that she had done a lot more than enjoy herself and be useful up at Torosh—she was convinced that some re-orientation had taken place and, always practical, she wanted to ensure some useful outcome from it. Gloire had better do something—and start doing it at once; and if she had really suffered a bit of heartbreak over Larsen, she would probably be quite ready to start, the writer thought shrewdly. But what on earth could she do? Miss Glanfield turned over possibilities and schemes in her head, but nothing seemed quite to fit. The only thing to do was to talk to her, sound her out and see what she felt like. And pulling the worn despatch case which Gloire had first seen on the boat to Cattaro onto her lap, she indited a note, asking her young friend over to tea.

  Miss Glanfield’s own plans were taking shape. A pair of crutches had been procured from Italy, and she was learning to hobble about on them; the Military Attaché was coming over from Rome for one of his flying visits, with his wife—and on their return they would escort her to Bari, and put her on the Paris train in Rome. She would be met in Paris, and would manage all right. Miss Glanfield usually managed all right; the counterpart of her own constant impulse to put total strangers in the way of seeing Roman remains and iconographic paintings was that other total strangers, when she had need of help, sprang up from between the paving-stones to her assistance. With the measure that ye meet withal, it is measured to you again.

  Her note—a kind, clever, affectionate little note—reached Gloire soon after she had received a second letter from Dr. Crowninshield. The old Doctor had come down to Kruja on another baby case, so a wild-faced boy in goat-skin sandals popped over with it. It was neither so clever nor so expansive as the writer’s, but it filled Mrs. Thurston with a profound satisfaction.

  Why yes [the old woman wrote],—I will love to have you. I was hoping you would say just that. Come right along when you have got some kit together. You will want your
own bed and tent and sleeping-bag and basin and what-have-you. Get some soft luggage—strong canvas hold-alls. They are easier for the ponies. And some appropriate clothes. These people appreciate skirts! Maybe you could wait and bring my things along with you, when they come.

  I will be very glad of your help.

  The young woman took a curious pleasure in burning her boats. Without a word to Warren or anyone else, she telegraphed to book a room at an hotel in Rome, the nearest place where she could acquire “appropriate clothes” and canvas hold-alls and camping equipment. She telegraphed notice and a large compensatory sum to Fraser, her maid, still languishing at the Lido; and she telegraphed a comprehensive and peremptory order to her husband’s bailiff in Northamptonshire for a ton of seed potatoes, an armchair, and a radiogram “with heaps of batteries” and “enough paint and distemper to fix a small house”—all to be consigned to Durazzo via Trieste. When she had done all this, and not before, she wrote warmly to Susan Glanfield, promising to come over to tea. And two days later she borrowed Cyril and the Cadillac and went.

  Bowling along the dusty road, she leaned back thinking of the first time she had driven along it, and the idle mood of boredom and pre-contempt which was her normal state of mind before a party with people she didn’t know. She did feel different now, Gloire thought. There was a solid lump of pain in her, connected with Larsen—Gloire’s mental similes were of the simplest—but the rest of her was pretty content. And sort of tough. She was going to have a real job, something to do, instead of floating about like a jelly-fish, carried here and there by any old current of whim or emotion. Even that lump of pain was a sort of anchor, she thought. The car topped the rise, and there before her was the lagoon, with a white fleet of pelicans on its blue surface, mere specks in the distance; and beyond, the piled-up pinkish-buff rectangles of the old houses of Durazzo, climbing the side of the pale little hill—the hill at which she and Susan Glanfield had stood looking from the Legation terrace on that momentous day when she asked if she could join the party to Torosh. Gloire sat up, recognising fully at last just how momentous that day had been. Susan had made a whole lot of difference—first taking her along, and so causing her to meet the old Doctor, but also in herself: all those things she had said about Tony, and about doing something for mankind. That had given a pointer, had directed the—well, the new feeling she had about things, that Albania and Nils between them had given her. It would be nice to see her and say goodbye, and tell her the new plan. Gloire was still entirely without resentment against Miss Glanfield on Larsen’s account—so much so that as they drove along the causeway she peered anxiously out, trying to identify the spot where they had seen her standing with Mr. Hickson, all wet and muddy; because that had been a momentous meeting too. She couldn’t be sure, and sat back as they entered the town, still in that strange security and contentment that was yet half pain, and went on thinking about the work that lay before her. It wasn’t a very grand job—not glamorous in any way. Planting potatoes and washing things for an old American woman and waiting on peasants—that was what it would amount to, mostly. All very humble things—beginning at the bottom. Gloire had always hitherto despised the bottom, and those who either began or stayed there—she had despised the humble too, whether things or people. Yet she contemplated joining their ranks with a very positive satisfaction, at this moment. It made her feel safe, and somehow strong. This struck her as very queer, and she was still pondering in her untutored way on how queer it was when the car pulled up in the narrow lane, and she got out and went in through that funny little courtyard under the city wall, climbed the outside stair, and was ushered through the long cool passage dining-room out onto the terrace, where the blue glare of sea and sky hit her once again under the striped white-and-orange awning; and there at the far end, on a sofa by a spread tea-table, lay her friend—she felt that indubitably— Susan Glanfield.

  They took tea, and talked of this and that. The Carruthers were out, to Gloire’s relief. They both frightened her, called her old tiresome defences into action—and she didn’t want to be on the defensive today. Susan alone was charming—amusingly gay, as she had come to know her.

  But after tea Miss Glanfield got down to it. She did it very nicely and carefully, and of course with her usual rapidity, which made interruption almost impossible.

  “Gloire dear, I’ve been thinking such a lot about you. I feel you’ve gone a long way lately.” Gloire nodded obediently and sympathetically. Well, she had gone a long way! It was like Susan to know it.

  “And I feel you will want to express that, somehow, in action—do something; something concrete.” Gloire nodded again. Susan, as usual, was quite right. She was generally quite right.

  “But just what? I’ve been wondering. Is there a job, do you think, on your husband’s property? Infant Welfare, and the miners’ wives, and all that?”

  Gloire was quite unprepared for this organisation of her future. She stammered, rather feebly—

  “No. I don’t think that would do. I’m too American to be any good to the British. And anyway the property all went to Tony’s brother, as we had no child.” Her mouth twisted a little. “Tony wanted me to learn to climb and a pregnancy would have cut into that so. And there seemed such lots of time.”

  “Of course.” Miss Glanfield was all sympathy. “But I have a feeling that it would be sound to do something almost at once,” she went on, “while the impulse is fresh. Forgive me for being so sure the impulse is there,” she said, smiling.

  “Sure,” Gloire said, “but—”

  “But then, what?” Miss Glanfield pursued rapidly, thinking of secretaryships to Almoners in hospitals, or school Care Committees. “Can you type?” she asked. “And have you thought where you would want to be?” It was awkward if Gloire wouldn’t work in England—she could so easily have fitted her into a job in England.

  “Yes, I’d like to work here,” Gloire said, beginning to smile— this was getting quite funny.

  “Here? Good gracious! But my dear child, what could you do?”

  “I’m going to teach the Albs to grow potatoes,” Gloire said, grinning. “I’ve ordered a ton of seed. But that’ll only be part-time—what they call ‘seasonal occupacion’.” She grinned more broadly than ever. “The rest of the time I’m going to help old Dr. Crowninshield—do chores for her. I’m going across to Rome in a few days to get my kit. It was her idea,” Gloire ended cheerfully. “I do hope you approve.”

  If Miss Glanfield didn’t actually blink at this information, her expression amounted to it.

  “Good Heavens!” she exclaimed, and for once had no follow-up.

  “Don’t you think it’s a good idea?” Gloire asked. She was too firm in her own conviction of the excellence of the idea to be damped by the writer’s surprise, but she rather wanted Susan to think it a good idea.

  Miss Glanfield recovered herself—she was as quick at that as at everything else.

  “Actually, yes—I think it’s a marvellous idea,” she said warmly. “I think you’ll be a great help—and pleasure—to her; and she’s getting old, and needs help. And I think you’ll enjoy it—and there couldn’t be a greater need anywhere.” Suddenly she laughed, her loud spontaneous laugh. “Have you really ordered a ton of seed potatoes? Where on earth from?”

  “From England,” Gloire said, smiling happily—“I’ve told the bailiff to send them. I said he should write to Kew or the Ministry of Agriculture or somewhere and find out what potatoes grow best in South-East Europe. And he will—he’s very smart. Tony thought the world of him.”

  “And when was all this hatched up?” Miss Glanfield was genuinely curious.

  “Oh, she suggested it in that letter she wrote the last evening, with the list of drugs. So I wrote back and said I’d go. And I heard two days ago from her—she sounded pleased.”

  “I’m sure she did.”

  “You see,” Gloire pursued, earnestly now as well as happily, “actually this could be a much bigger
thing, if money were put into it. I don’t know, but I don’t fancy Dr. Emmeline is all that rich. Well nor am I, but I have quite a bit of money. And when I’ve been here a year or so and know the whole set-up, I don’t see why I shouldn’t finance two or three more units to go around. Dr. Emmeline could help me to choose the personnel. The ideal thing, I guess, would be to train Albanians to do it—doctors and orderlies and nurses. It would be quite an organisation.”

  Miss Glanfield fairly gaped at her.

  “My goodness!” She paused, digesting it. “Gloire, you really have got onto something there,” she said, as the possibilities unfolded in her mind. Yes, that was a thing Gloire could do extremely well; she could cajole anybody to do anything already, and if she gave her mind to organising something, doubtless she could do that too. Anyhow cajolery was always the better part of any form of really successful organisation! She leaned back on her sofa—excitement had caused her to sit up—and gazed thoughtfully at her young friend. Gloire was looking delicious today, fresh and finished in a tailored frock of some heavy expensive white stuff, with green-and-white sandals, green belt and turban, and emerald clips; but Miss Glanfield, who had seen her in tunic and trousers and a black fringed shawl, looked beyond the Parisian figure before her to that other Gloire, and noted with real gladness the firm confident expression on the pretty square face, that was so reminiscent of the typical faces of South-East Europe. Funny that Gloire’s bones should be the most European thing about her!