by Alec Waugh
Beside him at the wheel was Faith. Sweden was sitting in the back.
‘I had meant to come over for you days ago,’ Trumper was explaining. ‘But I lent my car to my secretary. You saw him. Such a charming fellow. He said he was going into Antibes with it. That’s four days ago. I’ve heard nothing of him since. He’ll turn up, of course; he’s the soul of honour. But it is annoying, most annoying. I’ve been impotent without him. I couldn’t do anything, go anywhere, see anyone. I got so desperate that this morning I rang up these nice friends of ours. I said: “Bring along your car, and then I’ll take you out to lunch in it.” Then, when they arrived, I said: “Now, wouldn’t it be nice if we went down and fetched that nice young Englishman?” ‘
‘You can’t imagine how we jumped at that idea,’ said Sweden. Only Gordon’s carefully attuned ear could catch the heightened note to it. ‘Michael wanted to telephone. But no, I said, if we telephone, he’ll say he’s working. We won’t give him a chance of making that excuse. We’ll go and fetch him.’
‘So here we are!’
‘Jump in now, quick, and we’ll be off.’
It was so sudden that Gordon had not time to consider the making of a protest. He was not even sure he wanted to. Why shouldn’t he accept it, after all? Since it was not to his friendship with the Swedens, but to his sister’s title that he owed it.
Gordon had been accurate in that supposition. Trumper was sufficiently familiar with Debrett to realize that the Haystack inheritance was unlikely to support Arabian philanthropy. His interest in Arabian youth was, however, sufficiently secondary to his interest in Debrett for him to regard Gordon as a valuable ally. A second lunch party with the Swedens should smooth the way for an invitation to Haystack in the autumn. He was prepared to spare no expense to make the expedition a success.
And as he considered expense to be the criterion of enjoyment he held six hours later that it had been a highly successful day.
It should have been. It was as perfect a day as even the Riviera in late summer can produce. By a light and intermittent breeze the heat of the day was lessened. Clouds drifted at hazard across the sky varying the grey-green of the hills. Tranquil and self-contained in the subduing sunlight the hill villages brooded upon their past. It was green and lovely in the Gorge with a sense of coolness. In their ears was the sound of running water. High above them was the absurd village of Gurdon to which in her old age a woman whom life had chastened had brought her loneliness. On the house facing the balcony on which they lunched was painted in vast, scarlet letters, Bouillon Kub. In any other country in the world that Bouillon sign would have destroyed the landscape but here it fitted into the picture, just as much as the blue Dubonnet sign in Villefranche. The lunch was in keeping with the prospect. Boulestin could not have served a more delicate truite meunier. And Trumper had chosen to go with it a Graves that was just dry enough for one to do more than sip. It should have been an extremely pleasant day.
And indeed, not only did it seem to have been one to Trumper, but would have done to any uninformed fifth person. There had been an agreeable drive, he would have thought, through lovely scenery: an admirable lunch: an atmosphere of comfort and of leisure; affable and varied talk. It was only to Gordon, to Sweden and to Faith that the whole day was a walking on spiked shoes. So carefully did they conceal the fact that only they themselves were conscious of it. Every subject as it was brought forward had to be handled with kid gloves. Their satin talk was a sparring at each other. By way of Trumper’s interest in Gordon’s sister, the talk had turned to the aristocrat in England.
‘Now I suppose that a person like yourself,’ said Sweden, ‘who’s been brought up in a tradition of titles, would, if he met four men for the first time, prefer to talk to whichever one of them was a lord.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Why naturally, now? That’s just my point. Why should you think a peer better than a commoner?’
‘I don’t say better. I merely said that if all I knew about four people was that one of them had in his veins the blood of someone who had done something once, I should consider him the likeliest of the four to be interesting.’
‘You wouldn’t consider,’ Sweden countered, ‘that the fact you had not heard of him might be a proof that he was decadent?’
They were discussing India.
‘It would have amused people like Clive and Warren Hasting,’ said Sweden, ‘if they could have been told that in a hundred and fifty years the English would be saying that they’d annexed India so as to run India for the profit of the Indians.’
Said Gordon: ‘We’re in the same position that you are in Haiti. We’ve no right there. We’re not wanted. But there’ll be such a mess if we once get out, that we don’t know how to.’
‘But we aren’t making any money out of Haiti.’
‘In that case I don’t suppose you’ll stay there long.’
They were discussing Empire, and the rise and fall of peoples.
‘England,’ said Gordon, ‘got powerful a hundred and fifty years ago in the same way that America’s got powerful in the last twenty years.’
‘And how was that?’
‘By paying other people to fight her wars for her in Europe.’
‘Power always goes westward,’ Gordon maintained. ‘In two hundred years it’ll be Australia, and she’ll probably stay at the head of things longer than any other people has.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Australia’s keeping herself white.’
They began to talk of the credit that English tradesmen give.
‘A tailor’s quite offended in London,’ said Sweden, ‘when you pay your bill.’
‘No one ever pays his bill till he’s going to change his tailor.’
‘Do they never get paid?’
‘Ultimately, when a man’s estate’s cleared up.’
‘Does every Englishman die in debt?’
‘It’s his ambition to.’
‘It’s a funny system.’
‘We’ve a tradition of ultimate payment at the back of us. That’s what credit means. Englishmen have been paying their bills for quite a long while now.’
‘That’s just a living in the past. I give all that one more generation to see it through.’
Thus it ran: with a great affability upon the surface; a great deference to the other’s views, a putting of points as far as possible in the form of questions, with beneath it all a putting forward of arguments in which each only half believed, which possessed enough of truth to be defensible: arguments advanced that would be a criticism of the other’s country, since each other they could not criticize.
Thus the whole day it ran: while they drove out through mounting roads towards the Gorge, while they sipped their Graves and tasted their grilled chicken, while they walked round the perfume factory, while they drove back towards the coast; with Faith silent and attentive, taking no sides, not showing herself aware of friction but clearly conscious of it, perhaps enjoying it, since it was round her it centred; irritating it and accentuating it by her silent presence, by her refusal to enter the arena, with Trumper, precise, polished, with his carefully uttered ‘Ah’s,’ a slight frown creasing his brows when he remembered his scarlet Ballot and his dark secretary—that charming fellow—but on the whole congratulating himself on the successful conduct of the afternoon. A charming and a profitable day, he considered it.
‘Now, this mustn’t be the last we see of each other; no, not by any means,’ he said, as he shook hands with Gordon. ‘As soon as I’ve my car back, and I think I shall in at the most a day or two, I’ll be coming down to Villefranche to search you out. We might,’ he added, ‘go over to Cannes one day and take Lady Harrow out to lunch. You know her? No? Then I should esteem it a privilege to introduce you to her. A most charming lady, a most dear friend of mine.’
And I wonder, thought Gordon as the car swung southwards out of Vence, how he will speak of me to her. ‘Such a charming fell
ow, and the brother of my dear, dear friend, Lady Haystack.’ He wondered it with a mental twinkle. Then suddenly he felt very tired. They were silent in the car. Faith was driving with her husband at her side, and the sudden silence, the sudden cessation of hostilities, told him how heavy had been the strain. So needless a strain, too; and so purposeless. What was he doing to let himself be drawn into a triangle like this? He felt angry with himself, with Sweden and with Faith.
‘I’ll drop you first, Roger,’ said Faith. ‘Then I’ll take Gordon back.’
Sweden and Gordon shook hands with the greatest cordiality.
‘Come over and see us one day soon,’ said Sweden.
‘Ring me up when you feel like dining at the Cabanon,’ said Gordon.
He had felt peeved and irritable on the journey back, but the moment he was alone with Faith seated beside him at the wheel, an utter peace came to him. Every nerve in his body was soothed and tranquillized. He was very conscious of her scent: half orange-blossom and half jasmine.
‘Are you coming over to swim tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘When will you come over then?’
‘I’m not going to come over any more.’
‘Won’t that be a pity, rather?’ Then, after a pause, ‘It’ll make things a little difficult for me.’
‘But things are so impossible as they are.’
‘I know.’ She made no attempt to argue. She never combated a point.
‘It isn’t possible,’ he went on quickly, ‘feeling as I do, and with your husband there. I can’t go to your parties as his guest; among his friends as his friend. It isn’t possible. It was appalling, wasn’t it, today?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it can’t get any better, it can only get worse. And the strain. . . .’
‘Do you imagine that I haven’t felt that, too?’
They drove on in silence. The square, as they swung into it, was crowded with Chasseurs Alpins drinking in front of the Palmiers, with tourists on the Welcome terrace: with children tumbling about the streets: with fishermen leaning over the iron railing, pensive and silent. The car drew to a halt. With her hands still on the wheel Faith turned and looked at him. The square seemed empty suddenly. There was nothing in it except themselves.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said quietly. ‘It’ll be all right. You wait. I shall find ways.’
Next morning as he was at work upon the terrace, there was the crunch of wheels on the gravel at his side. The children grouped about his table ran up, eager to welcome any fresh diversion. ‘C’est l’américaine,’ said one of them.
She was in white; bare-armed, bare-legged; with a pink cotton beach hat pulled over her eyes, and a silk-patterned scarf knotted about her neck. She came towards him with her slow, languid grace; with a smile in her green eyes, and in her voice there was the golden tone he loved.
‘I came to see how you were,’ she said, and picking up the manuscript, began to read. His handwriting was clear and neat, like Greek characters; but so small that he could get a thousand words on to one sheet of an exercise book. ‘I’m glad we don’t write each other,’ she said. ‘You’ve none typewritten?’
‘A little.’
‘If you lend it me, there’ll be a good excuse for my coming back. Would you like to order me a glass of milk?’
As though this visit was the most normal happening in the world she sat beside him drinking the glass of milk.
‘Roger’s working,’ she said. ‘He said: “Let me be quiet for an hour!” Whenever he says that I’ll come across and see you.’
‘Is he likely to say that often?’
‘I hope so.’
‘But is he likely to?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘I leave him to look after his business for himself. Business isn’t too good just now from what I gather.’
‘He doesn’t ask you where you are going?’
‘No.’
‘Has he ever said anything about me?’
‘Not much. He’s wise about those things.’
‘How, wise?’
‘Whenever I seem to like a man, he always says, “Fine, let’s have him up here Thursday,” He disarms me that way and them.’
‘It didn’t work so well with the bicyclist.’
‘Ah, that!’
‘That was the person you talked to me about, wasn’t it?’
‘‘Yes.’
‘Do you think about him much?’
‘One thinks of everyone who’s been a part of one’s life; occasionally.’
‘You cared a lot for him?’
‘He was the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen!’
She said it in a quiet, brooding way, as though the square, and the fishing nets along the railing and the Cabanon and the Tribunal de Pêche; as though Gordon himself did not exist for her; as though with the mind’s eye she was re-seeing that man in all the charm that had possessed her. Her abstraction angered Gordon. But he kept his voice on a tone of interested off-handedness.
‘Did you see much of him?’ he asked.
‘Not a great deal,’ she answered. ‘Though in a way I did. I saw much more of him than he ever saw of me. You’ve been to the races, haven’t you? You know what it’s like? That bowl, and the crowd in lines all round, and the little tents where they live for a whole week. It was so curious, my going to watch him; in the evening say, after a theatre; staying for two hours, then going back home, waking in the middle of the night and thinking: “He’s there in Madison Square Garden, pedalling round that track.” First thing after breakfast I’ld rush round there, and he’ld be there, pedalling. And I’ld stay a little, then go off shopping or set out to lunch and all the time I’ld be thinking: “There it is all the time quietly going on there.” It had a sense of something inevitable: something that couldn’t be escaped. I’ld be so impatient to get back to it. I was there always for the sprints. Sometimes I’ld be there when he was resting. I’ld look at that little green tent. “He’s there,” I’ld think, “behind that, dreaming: miles from this prison.” I’ld wonder what he was thinking of, all the time.’ She paused. ‘Six-day bicycle-racing seems ridiculous to anyone who does not care for it.’
‘Just as cricket does.’ And there came back suddenly to Gordon the picture of Joan Malcolm at Wimbledon, and her eyes, dark and long-lashed and luminous, and all that she had stood for. ‘Where is she now?’ he wondered. Then once again there was Faith’s voice beside him.
‘It was like hypnotism,’ she said. ‘For hours I used to sit there watching him; seeing the way his muscles moved.’
‘You loved him?’
‘He was glamour. When he left New York for Montreal I drove down Park Avenue to Ninety-eighth Street. I sat there in my car waiting for his train as it leapt out of the tunnel. I had it timed. I waited there so long. It went by so quick. As I watched it go I thought, “There’s youth going. That’s good-bye to it.”’ She paused. ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘but I was thinking of you then.’
‘You’d never met me.’
‘I’d read your books. I’d just read “Likeness.” I said to myself, “He’ld understand. If nobody else in the world could understand, he would. He’ld know,” I said, “how a woman happily married, loving her husband and respecting him, perfectly happy with him, can be so intoxicated with another person that when he goes, it’s like having her heart torn out with him.” I so wanted you there then, to confide in you. I never thought I’ld ever meet you.’
She talked as though she were speaking to herself. And, ‘It’s silly of me to be jealous,’ he thought. ‘There’ve been other men in her life as there’ve been other women in mine. We’re not children. We’re mature people, the flower of our experience. We’re what events have made us. If she had not met that man she’ld be different from what she is. I don’t want her different.’ So he argued. But later, after she had gone with the promise to return soon, the spasms of jealousy returned.
He could n
ot rid himself of the picture of the strong, tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired giant of a man bicycling round the Madison Square Garden track with Faith watching the muscles of his shoulders move. He understood what she had felt. And the fact of that understanding increased his jealousy. For he knew by understanding, that this man had touched a side of her that he himself would never touch. There were other sides of her, more essential sides, possibly, that he could touch and which were outside the other’s scope. There was some part of her, however, that for all his trying would go hungry always: unrealized, unfulfilled. But that’s nothing, he told himself. Can anyone suffice completely for another? There’s always, inevitably, something left over somewhere. So he argued. But his argument left him unconvinced. He had the feeling that Faith, should she wish, could completely suffice for him; in a way that he never could for her.
Chapter Four
It was a curious life that began for Gordon from that day. She had said that whenever she was free, she would come over for him. He had no idea when she would be free, nor had she. Her life on the Riviera was as fettered as ever it had been in New York, with parties and engagements. Her spare time came intermittently and uncertainly. She might have a spare hour in the morning, before she went to a picnic or to bathe; between lunch and cocktails; on her way back from an early dinner, or on her way to a casino or a gala night at Cannes. Neither she nor Gordon had any means of knowing in advance how her day would run. The only way to make sure of not wasting any of those hours was for Gordon always to be in a place where she could be sure of finding him. ‘One of us,’ as she put it, ‘must stay put.’
And so, day after day, Gordon remained within the narrow radius of Villefranche. As long as he was between the sea and the Corniche road he could be certain of not missing any of Faith’s too few hours of freedom. He must be where she could find him. He never knew when she might come. Even when he knew where she was; when she had said to him the day before: ‘We’ll be on the plage tomorrow,’ or ‘We’re going to Cannes or into the hills,’ even then he was reluctant to trespass beyond the limits of that road. Once he did, and he regretted it.