by Jean Rhys
‘In courts and places like that,’ as Mr Valentine said, ‘they learn nice manners. Well, I guess they just have to . . .’
‘I understand, I quite understand,’ the artist said diffidently, but with finality, ‘I will drape the figures.’
Then he handled a bundle of press-cuttings which he was holding to Sara and asked if she could read them aloud.
‘You have so nice, so charming a voice, Miss Sara.’
Sara, overcome by this compliment, proceeded to read the cuttings which were from the English papers of fifteen years before.
‘Mr Yvan Pauloff, the famous Bulgarian artist . . .’
As Sara read Mrs Valentine closed her eyes and seemed to sleep, but Mr Valentine, crossing his legs, listened with great attention; as to the artist himself, he heard it all with a pleased smile, fatuous but charming.
Then he went – radiant – to fetch some photographs of his most celebrated pictures. Mr Valentine said quickly:
‘You see, deary, there you are; he is a great artist. His name on a picture means something – means dollars.’
‘Dollars aren’t Art, Bobbie,’ answered Mrs Valentine loftily.
Mr Valentine muttered something, and walking to the window surveyed the view with a proprietor’s eyes.
‘Come out on the terrace and look at the stars, Miss Sara,’ said he. ‘Now that star there, it’s green, ain’t it?’
‘Quite green,’ she agreed politely, following him out.
He glanced sideways at her, admiring the curves of her figure – he liked curves – the noble and ardent sweep of her nose – that saving touch of Jewish blood!
He proceeded to pour out his soul to the sympathetic creature:
‘My wife’s always talking about Art. She thinks I don’t understand anything about it. Well, I do. Now, for instance: Bottles – the curve of a bottle, the shape of it – just a plain glass bottle. I could look at it for hours . . . I started life in a chemist’s shop – I was brought up amongst the bottles. Now the pleasure I get in looking at a bottle makes me understand artists . . . D’you get me?’
‘Why, that’s absolutely it,’ said Sara warmly in response to the note of appeal in his voice. ‘You understand perfectly.’
‘Would you like to come to Monte with me Sunday?’ asked Mr Valentine in a lower tone, grasping Sara’s arm above the elbow. ‘I’ll teach you to play roulette.’
‘Yes, it would be fun,’ said Sara without a great deal of enthusiasm.
From inside the Villa came the sweet and mocking music of ‘La Bergg´ere Légère’.
‘And there’s my wife playing the Victrola – Time for my billiards,’ chirped Mr Valentine.
He went briskly up the steps and hauled away an unwilling Mr Pauloff to the billiard-room.
‘Sometimes,’ said Mrs Valentine to Sara, ‘I play the Victrola for hours all by myself when Bobbie is in the billiard-room, and I think how strange it is that lovely music – and voices of people who are dead – like Caruso – coming out of a black box. Their voices – themselves in fact – And I just get frightened to death – terrified. I shut it up and run up the stairs and ring like mad for Marie.’
The marble staircase of the Villa d’Or was dim and shadowy, but one or two electric lights were still lit near the famous (and beautiful) portrait of Mrs Valentine.
‘When I see that portrait,’ said the lady suddenly, ‘I’m glad to go to bed sometimes.’
In her huge bedroom where the furniture did not quite match, where over the bed hung a picture representing a young lady and gentleman vaguely Greek in costume, sitting on a swing with limbs entwined in a marvellous mixture of chastity and grace – this was a relic of the days before Mrs Valentine had learned to appreciate Picasso – Sara opened the windows wide and looked out on the enchanted night, then sighed with pleasure at the glimpse of her white, virginal bathroom through the open door – the bath-salts, the scents, the crystal bottles.
She thought again: ‘Very nice too, the Villa d’Or.’
La Grosse Fifi
‘The sea,’ said Mark Olsen, ‘is exactly the colour of Reckett’s blue this morning.’
Roseau turned her head to consider the smooth Mediterranean.
‘I like it like that,’ she announced, ‘and I wish you wouldn’t walk so fast. I loathe tearing along, and this road wasn’t made to tear along anyhow.’
‘Sorry,’ said Mark, ‘just a bad habit.’
They walked in silence, Mark thinking that this girl was a funny one, but he’d rather like to see a bit more of her. A pity Peggy seemed to dislike her – women were rather a bore with their likes and dislikes.
‘Here’s my hotel,’ said the funny one. ‘Doesn’t it look awful?’
‘You know,’ Mark told her seriously, ‘you really oughtn’t to stay here. It’s a dreadful place. Our patronne says that it’s got a vile reputation – someone got stabbed or something, and the patron went to jail.’
‘You don’t say!’ mocked Roseau.
‘I do say. There’s a room going at the pension.’
‘Hate pensions.’
‘Well, move then, come to St Paul or Juan les Pins – Peggy was saying yesterday . . .’
‘Oh Lord!’ said Roseau rather impatiently, ‘my hotel’s all right. I’ll move when I’m ready, when I’ve finished some work I’m doing. I think I’ll go back to Paris – I’m getting tired of the Riviera, it’s too tidy. Will you come in and have an aperitif?’
Her tone was so indifferent that Mark, piqued, accepted the invitation though the restaurant of that hotel really depressed him. It was so dark, so gloomy, so full of odd-looking, very odd-looking French people with abnormally loud voices even for French people. A faint odour of garlic floated in the air.
‘Have a Deloso,’ said Roseau. ‘It tastes of anis,’ she explained, seeing that he looked blank. ‘It’s got a kick in it.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mark. He put his sketches carefully on the table, then looking over Roseau’s head his eyes became astonished and fixed. He said: ‘Oh my Lord! What’s that?’
‘That’s Fifi,’ answered Roseau in a low voice and relaxing into a smile for the first time.
‘Fifi! Of course – it would be – Good Lord! – Fifi!’ His voice was awed. ‘She’s – she’s terrific, isn’t she?’
‘She’s a dear,’ said Roseau unexpectedly.
Fifi was not terrific except metaphorically, but she was stout, well corseted – her stomach carefully arranged to form part of her chest. Her hat was large and worn with a rakish sideways slant, her rouge shrieked, and the lids of her protruding eyes were painted bright blue. She wore very long silver earrings; nevertheless her face looked huge – vast, and her voice was hoarse though there was nothing but Vichy water in her glass.
Her small, plump hands were covered with rings, her small, plump feet encased in very high-heeled patent leather shoes.
Fifi was obvious in fact – no mistaking her mission in life. With her was a young man of about twenty-four. He would have been a handsome young man had he not plastered his face with white powder and worn his hair in a high mass above his forehead.
‘She reminds me,’ said Mark in a whisper, ‘of Max Beerbohm’s picture of the naughty lady considering Edward VII’s head on a coin – You know, the “Ah! well, he’ll always be Tum-Tum to me” one.’
‘Yes,’ said Roseau, ‘she is Edwardian, isn’t she?’ For some unexplainable reason she disliked these jeers at Fifi, resented them even more than she resented most jeers. After all the lady looked so good-natured, such a good sort, her laugh was so jolly.
She said: ‘Haven’t you noticed what lots there are down here? Edwardian ladies, I mean – Swarms in Nice, shoals in Monte Carlo! . . . In the Casino the other day I saw . . .’
‘Who’s the gentleman?’ Mark asked, not to be diverted. ‘Her son?’
‘Her son?’ said Roseau. ‘Good Heavens, no! That’s her gigolo.’
‘Her – what did you say?’
&nb
sp; ‘Her gigolo,’ explained Roseau coldly. ‘Don’t you know what a gigolo is? They exist in London, I assure you. She keeps him – he makes love to her, I know all about it because their room’s next to mine.’
‘Oh!’ muttered Mark. He began to sip his aperitif hastily.
‘I love your name anyway,’ he said, changing the conversation abruptly – ‘It suits you.’
‘Yes, it suits me – it means a reed,’ said Roseau. She had a queer smile – a little sideways smile. Mark wasn’t quite sure that he liked it – ‘A reed shaken by the wind. That’s my motto, that is – are you going? Yes, I’ll come to tea soon – sometime: goodbye!’
‘He’s running off to tell his wife how right she was about me,’ thought Roseau, watching him. ‘How rum some English people are! They ask to be shocked and long to be shocked and hope to be shocked, but if you really shock them . . . how shocked they are!’
She finished her aperitif gloomily. She was waiting for an American acquaintance who was calling to take her to lunch. Meanwhile the voices of Fifi and the gigolo grew louder.
‘I tell you,’ said the gigolo, ‘that I must go to Nice this afternoon. It is necessary – I am forced.’
His voice was apologetic but sullen, with a hint of the bully. The male straining at his bonds.
‘But mon chéri,’ implored Fifi, ‘may I not come with you? We will take tea at the Negresco afterwards.’
The gigolo was sulkily silent. Obviously the Negresco with Fifi did not appeal to him.
She gave way at once.
‘Marie!’ she called, ‘serve Monsieur immediately. Monsieur must catch the one-thirty to Nice . . . You will return to dinner my Pierrot?’ she begged huskily.
‘I think so, I will see,’ answered the gigolo loftily, following up his victory as all good generals should – and at that moment Roseau’s American acquaintance entered the restaurant.
They lunched on the terrace of a villa looking down on the calmly smiling sea.
‘That blue, that blue!’ sighed Miss Ward, for such was the American lady’s name – ‘I always say that blue’s wonderful. It gets right down into one’s soul – don’t you think, Mr Wheeler?’
Mr Wheeler turned his horn spectacles severely on the blue.
‘Very fine,’ he said briefly.
‘I’m sure,’ thought Roseau, ‘that he’s wondering how much it would sell for – bottled.’
She found herself thinking of a snappy advertisement: ‘Try our Bottled Blue for Soul Ills.’
Then pulling herself together she turned to M. Leroy, the fourth member of the party, who was rapidly becoming sulky.
Monsieur Leroy was what the French call ‘un joli garçon’ – he was even, one might say, a very pretty boy indeed – tall, broad, tanned, clean looking as any Anglo-Saxon. Yet for quite three-quarters of an hour two creatures of the female sex had taken not the faintest notice of him. Monsieur Leroy was puzzled, incredulous. Now he began to be annoyed.
However, he responded instantly to Roseau’s effort to include him in the conversation.
‘Oh, Madame,’ he said, ‘I must say that very strong emotion is an excuse for anything – one is mad for the moment.’
‘There!’ said Roseau in triumph, for the argument had been about whether anything excused the Breaking of Certain Rules.
‘That’s all nonsense,’ said Mr Wheeler.
‘But you excuse a sharp business deal?’ persisted Roseau.
‘Business,’ said Mr Wheeler, as if speaking to a slightly idiotic child, ‘is quite different, Miss . . . er . . .’
‘You think that,’ argued Roseau, ‘because it’s your form of emotion.’
Mr Wheeler gave her up.
‘Maurice,’ said Miss Ward, who loved peace, to the young Frenchman, ‘fetch the gramophone, there’s a good child!’
The gramophone was fetched and the strains of ‘Lady, be Good’ floated out towards the blue.
*
The hotel seemed sordid that night to Roseau, full of gentlemen in caps and loudly laughing females. There were large lumps of garlic in the food, the wine was sour . . . She felt very tired, bruised, aching, yet dull as if she had been defeated in some fierce struggle.
‘Oh God, I’m going to think, don’t let me think,’ she prayed.
For two weeks she had desperately fought off thoughts. She drank another glass of wine, looked at Fifi sitting alone at the mimosa-decorated table with protruding eyes fixed on the door; then looked away again as though the sight frightened her. Her dinner finished she went straight up into her bedroom, took three cachets of veronal, undressed, lay down with the sheet over her head.
Suddenly she got up, staggered against the table, said ‘Damn’, turned the light on and began to dress, but quietly, quietly. Out through the back door. And why was she dressing anyway? Never mind – done now. And who the hell was that knocking?
It was Fifi. She was wonderfully garbed in a transparent nightgown of a vivid rose colour trimmed with yellow lace. Over this she had hastily thrown a dirty dressing-gown, knotting the sleeves round her neck.
She stared at Roseau, her eyes full of a comic amazement.
‘I hope I do not disturb you, Madame,’ she said politely. ‘But I heard you – enfin – I was afraid that you were ill. My room is next door.’
‘Is it?’ said Roseau faintly. She felt giddy and clutched at the corner of the table.
‘You are surely not thinking of going out now,’ Fifi remarked. ‘I think it is almost midnight, and you do not look well, Madame.’
She spoke gently, coaxingly, and put her hand on Roseau’s arm.
Roseau collapsed on the bed in a passion of tears.
‘Ma petite,’ said Fifi with decision, ‘you will be better in bed, believe me. Where is your chemise de nuit? Ah!’
She took it from the chair close by, looked rapidly with a calculating eye at the lace on it, then put a firm hand on Roseau’s skirt to help her with the process of undressing.
‘La,’ she said, giving the pillow a pat, ‘and here is your pocket handkerchief.’
She was not dismayed, contemptuous or curious. She was comforting.
‘To cry is good,’ she remarked after a pause. ‘But not too much. Can I get anything for you, my little one? Some hot milk with rum in it?’
‘No, no,’ said Roseau, clutching the flannel sleeve, ‘don’t go – don’t leave me – lonely –’
She spoke in English, but Fifi responding at once to the appeal answered: ‘Pauvre chou – va’, and bent down to kiss her.
It seemed to Roseau the kindest, the most understanding kiss she had ever had, and comforted she watched Fifi sit on the foot of the bed and wrap her flannel dressing-gown more closely round her. Mistily she imagined that she was a child again and that this was a large, protecting person who would sit there till she slept.
The bed creaked violently under the lady’s weight.
‘Cursed bed,’ muttered Fifi. ‘Everything in this house is broken, and then the prices they charge! It is shameful . . .’
‘I am very unhappy,’ remarked Roseau in French in a small, tired voice. Her swollen eyelids were half shut.
‘And do you think I have not seen?’ said Fifi earnestly, laying one plump hand on Roseau’s knee. ‘Do you think I don’t know when a woman is unhappy? – I – Besides, with you it is easy to see. You look avec les yeux d’une biche – It’s naturally a man who makes you unhappy?’
‘Yes,’ said Roseau. To Fifi she could tell everything – Fifi was as kind as God.
‘Ah! le salaud: ah! le monstre.’ This was said mechanically, without real indignation. ‘Men are worth nothing. But why should he make you unhappy? He is perhaps jealous?’
‘Oh, no!’ said Roseau.
‘Then perhaps he is méchant – there are men like that – or perhaps he is trying to disembarrass himself of you.’
‘That’s it,’ said Roseau. ‘He is trying to – disembarrass himself of me.’
‘Ah!’ s
aid Fifi wisely. She leant closer. ‘Mon enfant,’ said she hoarsely, ‘do it first. Put him at the door with a coup de pied quelque part.’
‘But I haven’t got a door,’ said Roseau in English, beginning to laugh hysterically. ‘No vestige of a door I haven’t – no door, no house, no friends, no money, no nothing.’
‘Comment?’ said Fifi suspiciously. She disliked foreign languages being talked in her presence.
‘Supposing I do – what then?’ Roseau asked her.
‘What then?’ screamed Fifi. ‘You ask what then – you who are pretty. If I were in your place I would not ask “what then”, I tell you – I should find a chic type – and quickly!’
‘Oh!’ said Roseau. She was beginning to feel drowsy.
‘Un clou chasse l’autre,’ remarked Fifi, rather gloomily. ‘Yes, that is life – one nail drives out the other.’
She got up.
‘One says that.’ Her eyes were melancholy. ‘But when one is caught it is not so easy. No, I adore my Pierrot. I adore that child – I would give him my last sou – and how can he love me? I am old, I am ugly. Oh, I know. Regarde moi ces yeux là!’ She pointed to the caverns under her eyes – ‘Et ça!’ She touched her enormous chest. ‘Pierrot who only loves slim women. Que voulez-vous?’
Fifi’s shrug was wonderful!
‘I love him – I bear everything. But what a life! What a life! . . . You, my little one, a little courage – we will try to find you a chic type, a –’
She stopped, seeing that Roseau was almost asleep. ‘Alors – I am going – sleep well.’
Next morning Roseau, with a dry tongue, a heavy head, woke to the sound of loud voices in the next room.
Fifi, arguing, grumbling, finally weeping – the gigolo who had obviously just come in, protesting, becoming surly.
‘Menteur, menteur, you have been with a woman!’
‘I tell you no. You make ideas for yourself.’
Sobs, kisses, a reconciliation.
‘Oh Lord! Oh Lord!’ said Roseau. She put the friendly sheet over her head thinking: ‘I must get out of this place.’
But when an hour afterwards the stout lady knocked and made her appearance she was powdered, smiling and fresh – almost conventional.