by Angus Wilson
But Prue had denied herself her usual luminal sleep in order to spend with him what really was the last of their endless ‘last few afternoons together’; her head ached violently. To have sat on in the quiet and cool of the little shop would have offered her no martyr’s crown, so they paid the patronne’s daughter with the goitrous neck and emerged into the scorching heat of the afternoon sun.
‘Let’s explore the town’ cried Prue, and when Jeremy demurred – ‘You really are the most horrifyingly uncurious person that ever lived, my sweet’ she said. ‘We’ve been here a whole fortnight and we know nothing but the hotel, the plage and the port. You were born with the soul of a flaneur.’ Jeremy made no reply.
They turned into a side street that led out of the little town, treading carefully between decayed vegetables and rotting offal, which a large mongrel dog was tearing to pieces. There appeared to be no drainage, and dirty water ran between the cobblestones of the roadway. Now and again Jeremy was forced to retch as clouds of gaseous stench overcame him. The heat combined with the smell to increase Prue’s headache, but she was determined not to show her rising ill-temper and Jeremy could but guess at the anger behind her sunglasses, the fury shaded by the broad brim of her beach hat; only at intervals when he spat into his handkerchief did she wince visibly. Suddenly in her determination to appear impassive she gazed too fixedly ahead and trod disastrously in a pool of muddy water, which seeped steadily under her sandal, wetting the sole of her foot and covering her scarlet toe nails with mud. ‘God blast everything’ she shouted, and then turning on Jeremy ‘If you had anything of a normal man’s instincts you’d have known this wasn’t the right direction.’ ‘Don’t worry, duckie’ said Jeremy ‘It couldn’t matter less’, but alarmed that he might have said the wrong thing, he suggested that she should remove her sandal and wipe her foot with his handkerchief. Prue did not reply.
If battle was joined in Jeremy’s mind, Armageddon was being fought within Prue’s. She knew that she could not let Kuno turn to some other woman to pay his debts, could not give up the habit of life with him, yet these few weeks had not been long enough to free her from her wild desire for Jeremy. To know that she must leave him and that he welcomed her going made her long to hurt him, to put terror into those round calf’s eyes, to see those boyish features wince. She knew her own moods so well, could detect already the pattern of physical discomfort, nervous tension, apparently just occurring, yet in reality contrived by herself, that would end in a violent outburst. She anticipated his misery answering her violence, and her own pleasure as she watched unhappiness cloud his face. Finally she foresaw her own agonies of remorse and self-abasement that would end the cycle. Her whole soul revolted from it. Oh God let me leave at least one of these boys with happy memories of me, she thought.
Now they left the town along a glaring road of hard, white stone. Jeremy gazed with relief to the left where the dark lines of the olive trees, broken here and there by a crumbling grey wall, stretched far away into the disorder and savagery of the mountains. Prue walked on silently, with set features, occasionally kicking her foot against the road surface to dislodge stones that were pressed into the fragile soles of her sandals. Every now and again she would stop and move her mouth as though to speak, but nothing was said. Jeremy knew that she was holding herself back from one of those conversations ending in rows which she knew so well how to contrive, and he tried to assist her resolution.
‘I should like to be here when the broom is in flower’ he said.
‘Yes’ said Prue ‘that would be nice. Perhaps we could come together next spring. But, of course I forgot’ she added bitterly ‘1937 is a very special year for you, a year in which you’ll be doing all sorts of important things with your life.’
Jeremy would not compromise on this, would make no promises however vague on which she could build false hopes, so they walked on in a tense silence. He looked to the right at the small bourgeois villas with their hybiscus hedges. Then for a time he could see nothing but the tops of the fig trees above the long white convent wall. Suddenly they came upon a villa garden more ornate than the rest with a fountain and oleander trees, their flowers as sugary a pink and white as the dragées in the tea shop. In front of the white villa itself were beds of cannas and of zinnias, and a large ornamental clock composed of begonias and rock cabbages. All the flowers looked faded and dry in the heat, their petals and leaves covered in dust. On the veranda was seated an old, old woman in a black dress and she too looked dried up and dusty. The whole deadened spectacle connected in his mind with his thoughts about Prue and he shuddered.
‘There’s something quite horrifying to me in exposing the moribund to the public view’ he said. ‘That old woman ought to be in her grave by now with a respectable glass case of immortelles and a coloured photograph as her sole memorials.’
‘Don’t you ever find people a bloody bore?’ snapped Prue, then she added ‘Books and people and talk, books and people and talk, that’s all life means to you. I sometimes wonder if you’ll ever do anything with your life.’ ‘I don’t think there’s any fear of that now. You’ve taught me what fun doing can be, duckie’ he said, and prayed God that one such statement would suffice for her.
Prue’s grey eyes came alive with pleasure and she pressed the backs of her fingers against his cheek. ‘You’re an awful sweety pie’ she said.
‘I thought you’d like me to say it’ said Jeremy and he tried to cover up the bitterness in his voice with one of the sidelong looks she so adored, but all to no avail.
‘You can also be a bloody little cad’ she said in a hard drawl. ‘My God! when I think what I would do if I was twenty-two again, with all your chances in life.’ Jeremy made no reply, the six weeks had at least taught him the sincerity of her hatred of being thirty-five. He felt intensely sorry for her, wished so much that he could help. Whatever the dismal wreckage events had made of their passion, he could still remember so clearly her gaiety, her beauty, the wonderful variety in life that she had revealed to him when he had first met her in Paris only six weeks earlier. If he could have given her some hope for her future it would have been different, but he knew now how impossible that was. No sooner were the fragments of her life welded together than disintegration began again, sometimes in slow gradual decay, sometimes bursting apart when the splendour of the vessel seemed most bright, always broken by her own fears, by her own insecurity, as she held on to everything she possessed with a tighter and tighter grip until it was smashed to pieces. She would drink to retain her gaiety and wit, drug to secure her sleep, deny herself for fear of losing her money and then waste it for fear of losing what it could give, and above all she must possess her lovers and her friends until she had destroyed herself or them. All he could hope to do for her was to make this last day together a happy one, to stifle his feverish relief as he thought of the future, to bury his bitterness as he contemplated the waste of the past. For himself he knew that he must get away if he was not to be devitalized, must pit his own direct will to live and his youthful vitality against her hysteric attacks, her sick will to hold him.
‘It’s funny’ Prue’s voice broke in on his thoughts ‘when I was young and was surrounded by nothing but foxhunting farmers and young naval lieutenants I used to long to know someone, some man who was clever and sensitive. I imagined that poets and artists, yes and even actors, must lead the most wonderful lives, creative, important. Well I’ve met them now. Christ! What a procession. Wasters, spongers, frauds, perverts, I’ve known the whole bloody circus. Yes, and been their adoring mother to go to bed with and tell their little dreams to. Plenty of those, dreams of all sizes, going to be this, going to write that. “Be my inspiration, let me lay my head in your lap”, and then always the same little squeal “You’re getting in the way of my schemes. I’m a creative artist, I’m above human affections.” All of them going somewhere important, so will dear Prue please pay the fare? Prue paid all right and where the hell have they got to in their dear
little dream boats? Roger a fifth-rate dress designer, Tony a sot in Capri, Bernard on tour in revue …’
Not that category again, thought Jeremy, at all costs he must stop that. He took her hand and held it.
‘Don’t let Kuno get under your skin’ he said ‘If he’s that bad, get rid of him.’
Prue wrenched her hand away and began to shout at him. ‘You’d better pipe down about Kuno’ she cried ‘He has at least got some sense of responsibility – He knows what he wants and he gets it.’
‘He’s certainly got you all right’ said Jeremy. ‘It’s a curious thing’ replied Prue ‘with really dishonest people like you. They always love to harp upon other people’s money motives. Do you really think it matters a damn to me that I pay Kuno, at least I know it’s within my income. The price I pay for unbought love like yours is far too high, there’s such a thing as being bored to death, you know.’
Jeremy thought of his own wasted vacation, the books unread, the places unseen, even the failure to acquire spoken French, but he was determined not to prolong the scene so he merely smiled at her. ‘We’ve both said far too much for one afternoon’ he mumbled.
‘My God you’re right’ Prue shouted ‘I don’t think I want to hear any more talk for the rest of time.’ It’s true, she thought, he does bore me, I’ve heard it all before so often – the young idea. Well, why the hell go on with it? she asked herself, the seduction’s over, duckie, the bedroom scene’s through, clear out. But immediately she realized that without Kuno to go to, she would have hung on to Jeremy as she had to all the others, as she must hang on so long as Adonis kept one look of virginity for her still to outrage. Thank God for Kuno then with his debts, his sponging, his violent jealousy and his rages. There would be plenty of them all when she got back to Paris, visits to lawyers, talks with tradesmen, searching his suits to get the story straight, the furniture flying about – no possibility of Jeremy when Kuno was around, but for all that she would be glad to get back to the old gossip, the old round of bars, to Kuno’s expertise. Or would she? My God, she thought what a bloody fool I was to stage the big exit from home; but it was all broken up now – her mother in a hotel at Cheltenham, Eve married to a major in Simla. The convent days had been her only happy ones, with Sister Anne Marie and the Reverend Mother. Prudence Armitage had been one of their prize pupils.
‘God knows how you Protestants can be expected to have any sense of direction’ she said. ‘It’s different with us, I haven’t been to mass for years, I’ve got every mortal sin on my conscience, but I know when I’m doing wrong. I’m still a Catholic, it’s there, nothing can take it away from me.’
‘Of course, duckie’ said Jeremy who had met this mood so often now ‘once a Catholic always a Catholic’ and he reflected with satisfaction that that particular act would probably not have to be repeated before they parted.
The road had begun to narrow now and suddenly they found themselves in a small farmyard. Some meagre brown hens, with here and there a bantam, were scratching in the dust. Guinea fowl gleamed black and white against the shining leaves of the figtree in which they roosted, their pin-heads with their scarlet eyes trembling and nodding like those of palsied old women. At the sound of intruders they let forth their raucous screams, turning the farmyard to jungle. Two large dogs came out from a barn and began to run towards Prue and Jeremy, barking wildly. Jeremy threw some stones at them. ‘Away Cerberus’ he said, and to Prue ‘We’d better retrace our steps.’
The restorative effect of a luxurious bathroom upon jaded nerves is astonishing; both Prue and Jeremy faced each other with genuine pleasure across their table on the hotel terrace. Almost immediately beneath them the rocks ran down to a deep clear sea, still blue, but darkening with the evening sky. Away across the bay the bright red cliffs were changing to a sombre brown; far inland as it seemed they could see the yachts jostling and crowding each other in the harbour, whilst here and there a brightly coloured light began to shine forth reminding them of the approaching Quatorze Juillet festival. Here at the end of the cape they seemed far out at sea, isolated from the world, but there was no sense of loneliness.
Jeremy had ordered champagne and Prue’s evident delight at the tribute gave him great pleasure.
‘Poisson du golfe again, duckie’ he said ‘oh! the fishbones that litter these shores. Gott sei Dank it’s not that awful bouil-labaise. The horror of that saffron. I shall never praise crocuses again as long as I live.’
‘I’m so hungry I could eat anything’ said Prue ‘Even the eternal gulf fish.’ Looking at him with his black hair running in points from his ears, his look of a little boy playing the homme du monde, she knew where her appetite came from.
‘Oh! Prue, only you could think of saying gulf fish. It’s lovely, so distinguished, like Gulf Stream.’
Really, he decided, she was extremely lovely with her straight green gold hair, large grey eyes, and full sensual mouth. The excitement he had known when he first saw that soignée head came back to him. Diana huntress fair but no longer chaste, he had thought, and when he had known of her Irish girlhood and her later life of boites and lokals the mystery had been solved.
‘I’m more than half-way through the “Awkward Age”’ said Prue. ‘You’re quite right about how good it is. For the uneducated like myself it’s so much easier than the longer ones, tho’ I’m sure you’re right about “The Ambassadors” too if I could only have finished it. But I know all the people in the “Awkward Age” so well, there are hundreds of Vans among the Americans in Paris and Mrs Brook of course is Georgia Wright to the life, and as for that terrible Aggie I once had a young art student to live with me, she looked like Heaven itself, but, my dear, that girl’s mind.’
‘You see how hipped James was on innocence’ said Jeremy ‘I must say I find the spectacle of the pure Nanda among all those ravening wolves and tarnished women very moving.’
‘Yes’ replied Prue in a doubtful tone ‘if one didn’t feel James enjoyed the spectacle so. Oh! I know he makes innocence the ultimate virtue, and destroying it the ultimate sin. But how he does love watching the sinners at work. Innocence by itself would leave him cold, but put it in the wolves’ den and watch his mouth water.’ She spoke almost savagely – let James be the whipping boy for her own prurience.
Jeremy waved his hands in acquiescence ‘You’re absolutely right, Prue’ he said ‘We’ve got so many dons like that. Pimps with eunuchs’ voices and black silk ribbons to their glasses. You should hear one of them say “Heaven forbid that you should understand, my dear young lady” to some girl in Eights Week.’
Prue laughed delightedly. The champagne, the langouste, the pine-scented air, the lapping of the sea on the rocks below them were making of this dinner one of those unexpected, never-to-be-forgotten hours of happiness that so often form the penultimate of a love affair.
‘Yes, it’s all those people and what goes with them that put me on your side against Franco’ said Prue. Jeremy’s face darkened, Prue put her hands on his ‘I know what you’re thinking, pie’ she said. ‘You feel you’ve no right to talk about it unless you’re out there fighting with them. I’m sure it’s crazy of me and only because I don’t understand the value of what you’re doing at Oxford, but I wish you were. I think if you did join the International Brigade, I’d get out there somehow as a nurse or an ambulance driver.’
‘What about the Church?’ said Jeremy.
‘Aren’t there priests and all and good men too with the Basques?’ said Prue, Irish in her excitement.
Jeremy pressed her hand; he felt very fond of her at that moment. His historical sense blurred by the champagne, he saw himself carried from the barricades, Camille Desmoulins with a few published poems to survive him, and Prue bending over his stretcher, her grey eyes earnest, her hand steady as a rock, a sort of Madame Roland with a past. Into Prue’s mind came a vision of the Countess tending Cherubino, his fair white flesh torn and bathed in his own blood. Their fingers entwined more closely. I
t was such a happy evening.
They were both pleasantly drunk as they left the hotel, holding hands and rubbing against each other as they descended the hill. Jeremy was entranced by the rhythmic high-pitched buzzing of the cicadas and the regular, deep croak of the bullfrogs. As they drew nearer to the harbour the strains of one of the thousand indistinguishable French quick foxtrots became louder, predominantly the noise of accordions piercing and receding in their heads, occasionally also the wail of a saxophone throbbing in the pits of their stomachs.
‘It’s going to be rather hell, duckie’ said Jeremy ‘that awful French jazz.’
‘Well, at least it is gay, sweet’ said Prue. ‘Not like that terrible bogus American band at the hotel. I shall never forget the playfulness of that man singing “Qui a peur du grand loup?”’
‘But still they gave us our tune, darling’ Jeremy said sentimentally, and as they passed the implanted square with its surround of plane trees where the old men in their blue shirts and straw hats and walrus moustaches were chatting after the last game of bowls, he began to croon