‘No,’ I admitted. ‘But he’s a wonderful lecturer. I enjoyed his lectures on the Valley of the Nile because we did Egyptian Art at the Slade last winter. He was very enthusiastic about the Amarna period and the Amarna theory—the “Living in Truth”—but when I embodied those ideals in my portrait of him—he just couldn’t accept it.’
‘“Living in Truth”!’ exclaimed my fellow traveller, looking down at me as I huddled into my coat collar. ‘How young you are if you can believe in such things. God, I remember having the same impossible ideas once.’
‘Akhenaten didn’t think them impossible!’ I retorted. ‘He achieved a tremendous amount. He built the Town of the Horizon.’
‘And lost it all through his intolerance. Don’t forget that!’
‘I like his ideals,’ I insisted. ‘And I intend to try to follow them.’
‘Akhenaten was himself deformed. You’ll become one of those wretched salt-of-the-earth women who tell everyone their faults from a distorted idea of truth.’
I was angry and pulled away my hand which he had been lightly holding.
Go on. Tell me some more,’ he said teasingly.
‘More what?’ I was offended.
‘Why are you going to Dinard? Is your aunt a follower of the “Living in Truth”?’
‘No, she isn’t,’ I said, thinking of her anger over my explanation of the failure of the portrait, and of her ultimatum to me. ‘Do another portrait—a conventional one—if you want to join the party to the Nile Valley.’ I had refused.
‘You live with your aunt?’
‘She gives me a home while I’m at the Slade.’
‘But you still haven’t told me why you’re going to Dinard.’
‘My aunt wouldn’t take me with her to Egypt unless I apologized to the vicar and did another portrait so I’m going to a family in Dinard.’
‘An English family or a French one?’
‘English.’
‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’
‘I hate having to interrupt my studies. I want to be a painter. It takes years. I’m not experienced enough to accept portrait commissions. I should never have accepted the one of the vicar—but my aunt insisted.’
‘You’re going to young people?’
‘I’m going as companion to the daughter of a friend of my aunt’s. I’ve only met her once at a club in London.’
‘You’re very courageous,’ he said, taking my hand again. ‘Suppose you don’t get on with them?’
‘I shall run away.’
‘But your aunt’s going to Egypt.’
‘I shall go to my father in Devonshire.’
‘Tell me about him.’
I told him how disappointed I had been in Father. How he hadn’t understood any more than my aunt had. He said I had been silly to tell the vicar that I had painted him as I saw him—like a pompous egg. He had urged me to apologize. My father, in order to indulge his love of fishing, lived on the wilds of Dartmoor. Fish and their elusive habits were far more real to him than people.
‘So this family you’re going to are really strangers to you?’
‘My aunt knows them quite well,’ I said shortly. I was remembering the woman to whom I was now going as I had seen her in the ladies’ annexe of a famous military club in London. The memory was not reassuring. Superbly dressed in tweeds, her hands busy with the tea cups, her eyes had been at once watchful, aware and appraising as I answered her many questions.
There had been no mirror in the falsely cosy drawing-room but I had been as aware of my badly hung skirt, my untidy hair and unsuitable borrowed hat as if I could see my own reflection in her beautiful guarded eyes. I was being appraised and weighed as a possible companion for her young daughter Thalia.
‘Thalia’s a difficult girl,’ she had said doubtfully. ‘And you look terribly young.’
‘Thalia . . . Thalia. . . . What a lovely, lovely name!’ I had rolled it on my tongue. She had said indifferently that the choice had been her husband’s, not hers.
Thalia was fifteen—three years younger than I. There was a little boy aged six and a half. When his mother mentioned him her face had come alive and into her cold, clipped voice there had come a sudden warmth and colour.
When I had asked my aunt about this friend Mrs. Pemberton all she had said was, ‘Her father was a very famous general. She’s been brought up in the tradition of a great military family. She’s a woman who would never fail in her duty—something you’d do well to emulate, Rachel.’
I was suddenly embarrassed at talking so freely to a stranger. My aunt had warned me not to talk to foreigners. Would she have included Irishmen in this category? On whom did she think I should use the French and German I had learned in the expensive finishing school she’d sent me to in Switzerland?
The stewardess coming up looking for me prevented any further talk. She was determined on doing her duty by me. I said good night.
‘I know that gentleman. He’s often on the boat. He lives in Dinard. You’ll see plenty of him. He’s Captain the Hon. Terence Mourne,’ she said as she hustled me below.
‘The Hon. Terence Mourne.’ I liked the name.
‘He’s a good-looking man. I’ll grant you that. And he’s kept his figure. But he’s old enough to be your father. He’ll risk lumbago to sit up all night with a young thing. Your aunt didn’t tip me for nothing. You’d best get to bed, Miss.’
I was somewhat abashed at her information. I had thought he had found me intelligent. If it was merely youth which attracted him I couldn’t claim credit for that.
‘I’d like some brandy, please,’ I said.
‘You’re not ill, are you?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘It’s as calm as a mill pond.’
My aunt never allowed me to drink spirits. It always fell to me to offer brandy and liqueurs to guests after Janet the parlourmaid had withdrawn. I was already an expert at savouring their perfume without having sampled their flavour.
‘What kind will you have?’
‘Courvoisier’—I asked her to have one with me.
She departed, amused, to get them.
Before I climbed into my bunk I untied the flat parcel my aunt had thrust into my hands just as she was leaving. It proved to be a sampler which I had admired in an antique shop we’d visited in Southampton. Worked in fine cross-stitch bordered with a faded design of flowers and animals were these words:
How pleasant it is at the end of the day
No folly to have to repent.
To reflect on the past and be able to say,
This day has been properly spent.
Elizabeth Jane Walker,
aged 8 years and 3 months.
The date was 1782.
As I sipped the Courvoisier I did some reflecting. Had she really wished to give me pleasure by giving me the sampler? Or had she intended it to serve a double purpose? Thinking again of the appalling scene over that disastrous portrait it seemed that the latter was the more likely.
We were already in the bay of St. Malo when I woke on the Sunday morning. Through the porthole the great ramparts of the walled city of the old corsairs rose out of the mist like some lovely and impossible mirage. An elusive quality in the light—a cobwebby shimmering veil—made it appear to be suspended in the vastness of the sea and sky like a fairy city. I had never seen anything so beautiful.
When I went on deck the St. Briac lay beside the quay, which was crowded with people waiting for the arrival of the boat. The babel of excitement between those on the quay and those waiting to disembark, their interchange of chaff and greetings in both French and English, fascinated me. I had hitherto only passed through France on my way to school in Switzerland. Now I was actually going to live in it.
Terence Mourne, who was standing near me, inquired after my night’s rest, and whether I was to be met. He looked fresh and alert in spite of his lazy manner. I was searching the crowd on the quay for Mrs. Pemberton. Suddenly I saw her waving to me. She was standing a l
ittle apart from the crowd with a tall man, a little boy and a tall girl.
‘They’ve come to meet me. Look!’ I cried, waving back.
He gave a start of surprise, and muttered something which sounded like ‘impossible’. ‘Is that the family to whom you are going?’ he asked harshly.
‘Yes.’
‘Does your aunt know Cynthia Pemberton well?’
‘You know them?’ I said, surprised. I hadn’t mentioned the name Pemberton to him.
‘Does your aunt know Cynthia well?’ he repeated.
‘I don’t know.’ I was nettled at his insistence.
‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Oh, damn!’ and then apologized.
‘You know them then?’
He didn’t answer and from his sudden peculiar change of attitude I didn’t like to pursue the question. A closed, watchful look had taken the place of the former nonchalant one on his face. I was intrigued—but at the same time apprehensive. What was this? What was the matter? He had been so attentive and anxious to see that I was being safely met, and now when he knew by whom he had completely changed. I was upset at his strangeness.
We were preparing to disembark, crowded together waiting for the gangway to go down. He was smoking rapidly—one cigarette after another—and I saw that one of his long, sensitive hands was shaking a little.
‘How long have the Pembertons been here?’ he asked.
‘Only a week.’
‘Which villa have they taken?’
I told him the name of the villa.
‘We’ll be meeting again. Dinard society is very limited—as you’ll discover—and you may need a friend.’
He put so much emphasis on this last remark that I was very uneasy. What did he mean? I thanked him perfunctorily, resenting his desire to detract from my pleasure in the first exciting impressions of the place. What was he trying to do? To put me off the family or the place?
I turned resolutely away. It was exciting. Wonderfully alive and different with the grey forbidding ramparts with their towers and spires, the masts of the idle fishing boats, the funnels of the ships and vedettes and small steamers, the gulls swooping and screaming above the shouting porters. The swarthy fishermen standing about with their wives in their Sunday clothes had a dignity which was enchanting; and above all the light in the sky—something which was to delight me during my whole stay here.
A sudden surge of excitement so great that it threatened to burst my lungs assailed me. I turned back to Terence Mourne.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Think so?’ he said dryly. ‘Wait until you live here—it’s pretty dull.’
Dull? I thought he must be a very stupid person to find this place dull.
‘Why d’you live here then?’ I asked tartly.
‘For the same reason that the Pembertons and the rest of the Anglo-American colony do—because it’s cheap.’
The gangway was now in position and we were being pushed down it by the surge of passengers. An enormous sailor hoisted my trunk and suitcases on to his back and was bawling something to me from the quay.
Come along. He’s telling you he’ll see you in the Customs shed. I’ll see you through.’
I didn’t think that Mrs. Pemberton was very pleased at finding that I had already made a friend on the journey. She greeted me warmly enough, introducing me to her husband and the children, then turning to my companion she paused, held out her hand and said formally, ‘My brother wrote me that you are living here now. I’ve already met several friends who were in India. Tom, isn’t this a surprise? Who would have expected to meet Terence here?’
To me she said: ‘We were once all stationed in the same place in India.’
The two men, both very tall, shook hands stiffly. They were eyeing each other as my aunt’s spaniels eyed strange canines. I sensed immediately that whereas to Colonel Pemberton this meeting with Terence Mourne was completely unexpected, to his wife it was, in spite of her words, no surprise. And yet she was momentarily disconcerted. I was intrigued that this woman who, in London, had been so cool, poised and distant that she had put me at an immediate disadvantage was now herself uncertain and at a loss. But it was only for a moment. She recovered herself quickly and thanked Terence Mourne for having looked after me on the boat. He looked at her with the same suppressed cynical amusement with which he regarded me—but said nothing.
Colonel Pemberton said stiffly: ‘It’ll be nice for Cynthia to have you here, Terence. I’m off in a few days—back to the regiment. My leave’s almost up.’
‘Thank God I’ve finished with all that,’ Terence Mourne said lightly, and he and Colonel Pemberton busied themselves with the baggage.
I had turned to the two children, who were staring at me with unabashed interest. Thalia shook hands formally. She was, as my aunt had said, a very plain girl, and at the worst age. She had dull mousy hair worn in two thin, untidy tails, eyes which didn’t stay quiet, a long but straight nose and a sulky mouth. She was covered in freckles—not the pretty powdery kind but ugly brown patchy ones, and was all arms and legs like a spider, and had a stoop as if she were afraid of her height. But when, after studying me gravely, she suddenly smiled, her whole face changed as if a high-light had transformed a dull patch of colour.
The little boy, Claude, offered me a demure hand. He looked an angel with his mother’s golden hair in tangled curls and her violet-blue eyes, but his chin and mouth were astonishingly firm, and the look with which he appraised me from under sweeping black lashes showed me that he was already a person with whom one would have to reckon. A disturbing child—and in spite of his striking beauty he sent a little shiver through me.
We stood on the quay waiting for the porters to bring the baggage. Before we turned to board the vedette which the children told me would take us to Dinard I saw as in one of those hyper-sharp silhouettes this family group. Lovely mother, lovely son, plain father and the still plainer daughter who was somehow out of focus. Against the grey ramparts and the swirling wings of the gulls they looked curiously out of place—even alien; whereas the tall lounging form and amused sardonic face of Terence Mourne fitted into this background quite perfectly.
When we were all piled in the vedette with the baggage, waiting to set off across the bay, I saw that Terence Mourne had been claimed by a gay party of French people and was in the other vedette.
‘He’s gone in the green one,’ screamed Claude. ‘I hope we’ll race him! I hope we’ll win.’ He was jumping up and down with excitement. A strong wind was rising and the water was quite choppy. The little boat rocked like a cockleshell and Mrs. Pemberton looked pale and uneasy.
‘She’s going to be sick,’ announced Claude hopefully. ‘She almost was coming. Are you sick too, Rachel? I’m not, but when I see Mummy sick then it makes me sick and that makes Thalia sick . . .’ He paused for breath and I said firmly that I was never sick.
‘But you’ve never been on big boats to India, so you don’t know.’
I said I’d been often on small yachts and Channel steamers and that as they didn’t make me sick I saw no reason why big liners should.
Claude was unconvinced. ‘Can you sail a boat?’ he demanded.
‘If it’s a small one, yes.’
‘All by yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you row?’
‘I can get along.’
‘And swim. Can you swim?’
I said I’d been able to swim since I was six.
‘I’m six and a half and I can’t swim,’ he said resentfully. Can you teach me? Mummy can’t swim and there were sharks and crocodiles in India so we couldn’t learn. You’ve never seen sharks and crocodiles, have you?’
‘Only in the Zoo,’ I said mildly.
‘If you were in India and you went swimming you’d soon be eaten up. They’d scrunch you up bones and all—nothing left but your wrist-watch which they couldn’t digest!’
‘Shut up, Claude, you’re enough to make us sick. . . .
Don’t talk like that—it’s babyish.’ Thalia was looking determinedly away from her mother, who was holding smelling salts under her nose.
They pointed out the landmarks as we went across the bay. The sun was now out strongly and the water the clear, translucent green of my favourite colour, emerald oxide of chromium. Waves were splashing right over the small vedette as, rocking violently, she chugged her way through them.
‘There’s St. Servan! There’s Paramé! There’s the Rance up there on your left! Up there is La Vicomté. It’s lovely. You’ll see it to-morrow.’ Thalia was pointing out the lovely wooded slopes of the Rance.
‘Here’s Dinard! Here’s where we get off. See the lift up from the vedettes?’ screamed Claude excitedly. ‘Ooh! Look, we’re racing the green vedette. Go it, white one! Come on, white one! Good! We’ve won.’
And so, with both children hanging on my arm, and the parents following slowly behind, we stepped on to the Bee at Dinard—one minute ahead of our green pursuer. From the gangway of the other vedette Terence Mourne waved good-bye.
A Furrowed Middlebrow Book
FM6
Published by Dean Street Press 2016
Copyright © 1955 Frances Faviell
Afterword copyright © 2016 John Parker
All Rights Reserved
The right of Frances Faviell to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her estate in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 1955 by Rupert Hart-Davis
Cover by DSP
Cover painting by Frances Faviell
ISBN 978 1 911413 82 0
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk
A House on the Rhine Page 33