II
French Lessons
FROM HIS BEDROOM he could just see a corner of the courtyard. His little attic salon gave on to grey slate roofs that had a flat shimmer after the rain (it had rained every day for a week), but the bedroom faced south and caught the sun when there was any to catch. Yet it was not just for the sun that he liked to lie on his iron bedstead and look out of the window with his copy of Cornichon’s Grammaire de la langue française idle on his lap. What amused him were the glimpses he caught of Lilite as she came and went through the big green door into the street. How sweet and regular her habits were. Mass at eight o’clock on Sunday mornings and on saints’ days of which there seemed to be a remarkable number. Such a lot of saints, he teased her, we don’t have half so many in America, it must be because we are so ungodly. Oh, but you will soon discover them, she riposted, America is the land for discoverers, n’est-ce pas? Then she would explain who they all were – St Hubert the patron saint of hunters, St Jude the patron of lost causes. Oh, I’ll take him, William said, that’s what my French is, a hopeless lost cause. Oh, but Monsieur Short, she giggled, you are making such progress. William, please call me William, he said, there must be no ceremony between us, we Virginians cannot abide ceremony. Well then, she said, you may call me Lilite. I have three Christian names, Anne-Hippolite-Louise. I love the middle one best because it is the most singulier but it is too long to be employed en famille, so Maman always calls me Lilite or Lite when she is pressé.
Then there was the music lesson at ten. She went to the ancient Monsieur Renard, whose father had taught the exiled royal family of England and had seen the Old Pretender proclaimed King James the Third at the palace gates. Monsieur Renard was too grand to touch their own inferior harpsichord, insisting that Lilite should come to the apartment he rented in the basse-cour of the chateau.
Then in the afternoon she would take a walk with her friend Cloclo along the two promenades which were the glory of St Germain, the grande and the petite, both with such breathtaking views of the city, then back to the rue de Lorraine through the Jardin Anglais, hurrying a little, her cheeks pink, as she slammed the door behind her so as not to be late for dinner, her mother being impatient to begin, food being one of the few pleasures remaining to her in her frail state of health.
At first Lilite would not let him walk with them at all, let alone replace Cloclo when Cloclo was detained elsewhere. Maman would not approve. But Monsieur Short had a way with mamans, always had had even when he was seventeen or eighteen. There was something about his slender figure and the way his soft sandy hair flopped over his brow and his round questioning eyes that made mothers take pity on him. Or perhaps it was those tremulous downturning lips that did the trick. Handsome he was not and had never thought he was, but he was conscious of a certain melting power where the sex was concerned. Above all, he knew how to make them laugh. He could make men laugh too but in a rowdier style. Back in Virginia he had been a stalwart of the first Phi Beta Kappa and a founder member of the Flat Hat Society where they knew how to enjoy themselves as well as debate the eternal verities in the highest tone you could wish for.
Anyway, it did not take more than a couple of weeks before William had his licence to walk out with Lilite and Cloclo. Then Cloclo came down with la grippe, but Madame Royer granted an extension of the licence. She thought he was looking pale as a consequence of all his studying and in her book health trumped propriety.
So out they went together just the two of them in the damp February air, which really could not be expected to do much for anyone’s pallor. And he strolled beside her on the high terrace under the bare twigs of the pleached limes. Usually they would stop to take an ice on the terrace or a plate of croquignoles, the fancy biscuits the café arranged delightfully in the shape of a fan, or even the pâté de guimauve, a sort of marshmallow he abominated but which Lilite loved best of all. William noted down the cost of all these items in livres and sous in his little grey cloth account book, just as Mr Jefferson had advised him to do.
‘There, monsieur, I mean William, you see Notre Dame, the two towers, and the dome that is the Invalides where the old soldiers go.’
‘I like the way you say it, Wee-yam, as though I were a small sweet potato.’
He touched her arm as he tried to explain the joke, which was not easy because pomme de terre douce was not the equivalent of sweet potato. But how huge the city was. Boston and Philadelphia were small towns by comparison. And how it was growing. Even at this distance you could see the dust and the smoke and the scaffolding of the great new hotels and offices that were spreading out along the boulevards. The Comte d’Artois had on his own account registered building plans covering three or four acres north of the Champs-Elysées, a couple of blocks down from the villino that Mr Jefferson had fixed on for his ministry.
‘It is called the Hôtel de Langeac,’ William’s master had written, ‘though I fear the poor Marquise de L. had but little joy of its possession, for scarcely was the construction complete when she was forced into exile for reasons I may tell you when we next meet. But it is a fine modern building that I wager will remind you somewhat of my dear Monticello. The design is by Monsieur Chalgrin, one of the coming men who regard the architecture of their elders such as Gabriel as but an insipid parody of the true tradition of Vitruvius.’
How characteristic it was of his master to rhapsodise thus over architectural matters and to delay to the end of the letter the more germane intelligence: that William, having mastered the French language, was soon to begin on his duties as Mr Jefferson’s secretary, for Mr Jefferson had finally received his appointment to succeed Mr Franklin as minister to France. The previous secretary, the saturnine Mr Humphreys, was off to London and it was time for Wm (as we may call him now and then, for that was how he signed his name) to start earning the thousand dollars a year that Mr Jefferson was paying him out of his own pocket until the Congress could be persuaded to stump up.
There was but a week left to try his luck with Lilite. So far all he had managed was to plant a kiss on her slender fingers as he was helping her on with her mantle.
‘There, am I not learning a few French courtesies, Lilite?’
‘But you must not linger so long, it is not polite.’
‘Not linger so long when I baiser you, how could I not?’
‘And you must not say baiser, that is not polite either.’
He chose his moment to tell her that he was leaving. It was in the late afternoon and the little upper landing was almost dark; in fact, Lilite had just brought up a fresh candle to place on the old commode that stood there.
He could see her catch her breath as he told her and her bosom heaved with what he immodestly assumed to be deep emotion. He took the candle from her and put it down and embraced her with such vim that she gave a dear little gasp. He kissed her on the lips and for an instant she made as if to break away, then she kissed him back.
Twice more he managed to kiss her, once on the landing again and another time behind the café on the terrace (when her lips tasted of marshmallow) and both times she responded, there was no doubt of it.
But then the very next morning after the marshmallow kiss as they were sitting over breakfast Madame Royer said, ‘Monsieur Short, I have some joyous news to impart.’
‘I am very glad to hear it, madame, please do not keep me in suspense.’
‘My daughter Hippolite is engaged to be married.’
He could scarcely get out the words of congratulation, let alone enquire who the lucky man was to be, but Madame Royer needed no egging.
‘He is a most serious young man, Monsieur Henri Denis, he is a juré-prieur by profession.’
‘A juré-prieur? Forgive me, madame, I fear my French is not yet …’
‘He sells objects, like so, biff.’ She mimed the action of a hammer falling.
‘You mean he is an auctioneer.’
‘Quite so, monsieur, in France it is a most respectable profession,�
� she said defensively.
But Wm was no longer listening. He had eyes only for the treacherous, secretive Lilite who was sitting opposite him blushing as well she might. How had she managed to carry on her courtship under his eyes? Or perhaps there had been no courtship worth the name and she had merely been knocked down to the highest bidder, as the serious Monsicur Denis would doubtless put it. Why, even so, had there been no word at Madame Royer’s table of the impending contract? Back in Virginia there would have been joshing for weeks before the announcement, not to mention endless financial discussions. But here in France, not a word, not a gesture and apparently nothing to prevent a marshmallow kiss. He would never understand the French and he certainly could not understand the cheerful smile that Lilite was now giving him.
‘We very much hope that you will honour us with your presence at the wedding ceremony, monsieur, I need not say how welcome you will be.’
‘I should be honoured, madame,’ Wm replied, offering a frigid bow from his sedentary position.
But Wm’s months at St Germain were not entirely passed in a state of despondent chastity. By way of exercise, he had taken to riding an old hack from the livery stables through the rolling chestnut woods of Marly. The retired captain of cavalry who kept the stables was most helpful, giving him the address of a house just outside the gates of the park where other forms of exercise might be obtained.
‘I suggest you try Wednesday,’ Captain Pommeau said, ‘towards the end of the week they are very busy and as for Sunday, oh mon Dieu.’
It was a little white house on a steep cobbled street where the wet leaves gathered and his horse slipped on the leaves although they were only going at a walk because he was looking for a green lantern in the shape of a dolphin as instructed by the Captain. Wm jumped off and tied the reins to the hitching rail and tugged at the iron bell rod. There was a mournful jangle, more like the tolling for a funeral than the promise of pleasure.
A long interval. Wm felt his heart thumping against his heavy coat. It had been quite a time, after all. The thought of the first time came back to him, every second of it, from the moment when he had been fooling around with his Skipwith cousins out at Green Bluffs and one of them – it must have been George, he was always the forward one – squeezed him down there in his crotch and said, why, Cousin Will is quite grown up, I think he’s ready, and he had said, ready for what? And George had said, why, Ma Scranton of course, and the two of them had laughed when they saw he had no idea what they meant.
They took him to Richmond that same afternoon, a hot dusty August afternoon when the Queen Anne’s lace was so tall you could scarce see over the low hedges of the pastures. They went towards the river, the end where the gloomy brick warehouses stood. It was a part of town he had never been to, irregular rows of shabby clapboard houses with patches of mangy grass between them and glimpses of the sluggish dirty water beyond. He remembered how he had stood disconsolate in the front parlour, while George explained their requirements to Ma Scranton, who looked a severe sort of person, more like a governess than someone in her line of business, although Johnny Skipwith claimed that he had had her when he was a couple of years younger than Wm and she was a real goer. Anyway, he remembered her looking at him ruminatively, like a tailor sizing up a client, and saying, ‘Yes, I think Dolly would do.’ She had a little varnished wooden board beside her chair with bell pulls fixed to it, about half a dozen of them. And what he also remembered was the way she selected the cord she wanted and pulled it without needing to look at it or interrupt her conversation which was about the terrible state of the roads and how the mayor had a growth in his stomach and wasn’t expected to last the week.
Dolly was small and friendly-looking, with ginger curls. When she put out her hand to him, he shook it like a clumsy country boy, and she laughed but not unkindly because what she intended without much in the way of ado was to take his hand and lead him off upstairs. So she took his hand again while they were still laughing and off they went up the polished wooden stairs, she turning brightly to ask had he driven far. They weren’t in the little bedroom above a minute before she had unhooked her green taffeta dress and had nothing on but her shift and was putting a fresh towel on the bed. He began fumbling with his buttons and hopping on one leg to kick off his shoes, but she said, ‘Don’t worry, there ain’t no rush. Besides, I kind of like slowcoaches.’ And after he finally managed to shuck off his underclothes, she slowly drew the shift over her head and there she was.
That was the moment he remembered with the sharpest pang of pleasure – no, it was too intense to be called pleasure exactly – her standing there with her small madder-tipped breasts staring back at him, and the carroty fuzz down below. And the way she leant forward to cup him as George had done, only infinitely more gently – well, she hardly had to lean, she was so tiny – and murmured, ‘I think you’ll do, George’s cousin, what did you say your name was, I think you’ll do nicely.’
As for what followed, that went like a breeze or a blur, he scarcely had time to register his surprises, how slippery the whole business was and how rough, he had not imagined it would be so rough but he was glad, proud even, that he somehow knew this was the way it had to be and judging by her exclamations of pleasure he had just about hit it on the head (he smiled now to think how innocently he had judged her cries). And when it was over she patted him on his damp back and said, ‘You see, I knew you would do, I can always tell.’ And the room was full of the scent of rotten lime blossom.
Then came the awkward moment which he cursed himself for not having consulted George about. He thanked her and then he mumbled, so as not to be thought to be sneaking off, should he pay her up here and the only time in all the time he knew her (because he came back half a dozen times for a refresher) her good humour snapped and she said, ‘Didn’t they teach you nothing? I don’t talk to my gentlemen about money. Ma handles the business side.’
That was all years ago now, long before he went up to William and Mary and started moral philosophy, which was a very modern course including economics, political science and something newfangled called sociology, and that was when he took up with Louisa Gedding who was a very modern kind of girl and had the run of her house most of the time because her widowed father travelled in leather goods – saddles, bridles, portmanteaus and the like – and was on the road upstate half the year. He fancied himself to be hopelessly in love with Louisa and bemoaned the difference in their social stations (though it beat her why he had to refer to it in the first place) and he wished they could run away to Kentucky and live as man and wife on the frontier, which she said was stuff and nonsense. She didn’t believe him either when he said that without her Richmond was the gloomiest place in the world and if she would not go with him he would go out West anyway and die a rich frontier bachelor with a broken heart.
Something of those first feelings of apprehension and desire came to him again as he stood for what seemed an unbearable eternity on the damp step of the house with the green dolphin, with the autumn leaves blowing about him in the dusk and his tethered horse snorting steamy breaths under the chilly light of the moon, which was near the full.
By now both he and the horse were stamping their feet to keep out the damp. He pulled the bell again and this time the door half opened almost immediately, and a flustered little maid peered out. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, m’sieu. I was upstairs helping the ladies.’
He started up the lower step expecting her to open the door fully to him, but she did not budge. ‘I’m afraid we’re closed tonight. They’re all going out. It’s a special order.’
‘Couldn’t I just come in and arrange, you know, another time.’
‘Well …’
‘Who’s that, Boubou?’
‘A gentleman, madame, I think he’s foreign.’
Which Wm did not care for, having been so often complimented on his accent.
‘A foreign gentleman? Well, don’t leave him freezing on the doorstep.’
Boubou opened the door, muttering that she had been told to admit no one, so how was she to know.
As he came into the hall, a woman in a swirling silver evening gown came down the stairs to greet him with both hands outshetched. If she was indeed the madam of the house, she was a far cry from Ma Scranton. For a start, she was no more than thirty-five and she had golden curls to toss about her heart-shaped face. Her nose might be a little thin and suspicious-looking and her eyes were somehow disconcerting too, but she seemed full of sport and Wm thought, as Dolly had once thought of him, that she would do.
‘You could not have come on a worse night, monsieur. I am so sorry’ (she said this last in English). ‘One of our best patrons has commanded the entire establishment to follow him on some mad excursion of his devising. The girls are beside themselves with excitement. They don’t get out enough, you know. I am always telling them but they would die rather than put one foot in front of the other. He is such a fine gentleman, I fear I cannot give his name, I am under strict instructions – I am to call him Monsieur R. Oh, he is a man of such a generous and amiable character that I would not disobey him for all the world.’
As she was rattling on, Wm could hear the chattering and giggling from upstairs and she was still talking when they started to come down, five or six of them, laughing as they descended in a rustle of skirts and a cloud of perfume. He was gawping at them, so lost and so enchanted that he scarcely heard madame enquire after his own name so that he might be better received in future, if he could find it in his heart to forgive her and come another time.
‘You may call me Mr S,’ Wm said with a confiding grin.
Just then the doorbell rang again and this time Boubou was quick as a whippet and had the door open, and a tallish gentleman in a blue riding coat decanted into the hall in no time. The blue gentleman stared about him as lost in admiration as Wm had been.
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