“I’m sure you are, Mrs. Winterbourne. It’s mutual, I think. I believe you are in deep water. Am I right? Yes, I know I am. That is what we have in common. It has brought us together, maybe. Though perhaps there is something deeper. I hope so. May I say that, Mrs. Winterbourne? We’re not young folk. There is not much time left for either of us. But what am I saying? It’s not like me to …”
He stopped, he was out of his depth. He looked round wildly for the waiter, and waved his hand. Then he took up his empty coffee-cup and examined it. The waiter appeared, and he paid him.
“I think it must be getting late. Are you going back to your hotel? Our hotel?” He stumbled over that, and looked even more uncomfortable. “I mean …”
“No, Colonel Batten,” said Mary gently, “I am calling for Joan at your brother’s flat. She is to meet me there before lunch. Perhaps we should go, or she will be wondering what has become of me.”
Chapter Six
A Child Prodigy
Though Joan knew the streets of Paris well, she found that her mind was obstinate toward their usual attraction. She was so gloomy that she had only to shut her eyes to be convinced that she was walking in the grey labyrinth of an inner suburb of London. Loneliness and misery, a kind of spiritual and physical degradation, overcame her. She stopped once and looked at herself in a long mirror standing in the window of an antique shop in the Rue de Seine, before reaching her first destination. “What is wrong with me,” she demanded, “that I can’t hold him?” Then she reflected that this was not the right question; for she did hold him. There had been no shadow of infidelity. On the contrary, he took all that for granted, far too much for granted. He no more contemplated his relationship with her than a happy schoolboy stops to consider where he stands with his mother. There was almost something geological about it. Mountains do not move; at least, if they do, then the whole of humanity is in peril.
Mountains! Why did that monstrous image always recur when one was thinking about John? Maybe that was the trouble. If so, what had she to worry about? Did not most eager love affairs, after settling into marriage, end that way? No doubt; but then surely the husbands at least took what they wanted, before returning to their masculine obsessions?
Had the war upset him, that he was different? But millions of other men had been through that, and they were certainly normal enough. So the fault must be in herself. She took another look at the figure reflected from the back of the shop window, among the pieces of Buhl, the Normandy dressers, the old clocks and statuettes.
She saw a tall young woman, with an attractive if untidy head of fair hair, under a neat, if old toque with a feather which her mother had stuck in it to break the severity. Her long coat did not look too shabby, she thought; nor did it spoil her shape; a shape that had attracted several other men beside John; long legs, a fine neck, a good bust … but she turned away in disgust. Good God, she thought, isn’t even sexual love something more than that? Is it shame that makes him turn away from me; am I too primitive for him? But that is all nonsense. I have never besieged him. Heaven knows I have been patient enough; waiting, always waiting for something that doesn’t happen.
The problem was stale by now. It had filled her mind for four years, at first only a minor uncertainty, because she had come to marriage with no doubts about herself and her capability to make John happy. Now she was weary of it, and the burden into which it had grown. She no longer blamed herself, as she had done in the beginning, for being too ardent, for having urged John, maybe, into a marriage for which he was not particularly eager. That had been her mistake, for so innocently thinking that marriage must necessarily be impetuous. Romantic ignorance. Nature seen through the eyes of a schoolgirl. She had asked too much, and had been rebuffed. Now she knew better. In a way it almost added to her admiration for men. They, apparently, were not upset by their instincts; if it was so sordid as that, this power which the romantics, and the religionists, called love. In future, she would take men at this cooler valuation,; the value which her own husband had put upon the emotions.
Nevertheless, she took another backward glance at her reflection as she walked away from the mirror. She saw a small bust of Alexandre Dumas standing in front of it. Here was another kind of man; the bull neck, the rolling eye, the great ripe mouth. What did they signify? She shivered, overcome by dread—and something else that made her hurry on angrily, blinded by determination.
By the time she reached the bottom of the picturesque Rue de Seine, the mood was conquered, and she entered the Institut de France quite calmly, to enquire at the bureau for the distinguished novelist and doctor who was resident there. A woman somewhat older than herself entertained her most courteously, and informed her that M. Duhamel was out of Paris, at his country house, but that any letters to him would be forwarded, and that she was certain he would be willing to give any information possible. She offered Joan paper and envelope, to write so that the letter could be forwarded without delay.
Joan consulted her brief-case, and wrote a note with a list of questions. This took her only a quarter of an hour. The lady promised to send the enquiry that day, and then kept Joan chatting, about the comings and goings of the academic world, between the French and English universities. She invited her into the little private office behind, and gave her coffee. They shook hands on parting, and Joan left the Institut with more evidence of the reciprocity of women to each other, and how pleasant it was to be able to carry on one’s life without the interruption of the male element.
She did not hurry. It was a pleasure not to be chased by one’s own temperament. The Rue de Seine had much to show her, with its little print shops, its displays of old furniture and objets d’art. She crossed and recrossed from one side to the other as she made her way leisurely towards the Luxembourg Gardens. Reaching them, she decided that it was more distracting to keep to the main road, rather than to go straight through the Gardens. So she went via the Boulevard St. Michel, feeling very much at home with the troops of students who were wandering up and down the Boulevard, between the colleges, and round the Sorbonne.
It was just before noon when she reached the flat in the Rue Boissonade. The elderly maid answered to her ring, and welcomed her smilingly, taking her coat, and inviting her to go into the sitting-room. Joan stopped at the door, however, hearing piano music. She did not recognise it, except that it was period stuff, gay and delicious. Surely, she thought, Mrs. Batten is a more expert performer than I thought she was last night. But perhaps it is the music; so light, so sparkling. She could not imagine that rather heavy woman, so placid and imperturbable, giving way with such gaiety as this, and with so dexterous a touch.
She waited at the door, her head bowed as though the better to listen through the panels. Her head; but not her heart, for this was delicious, compelling. She wanted to thank the performer; it was a gift, a reassurance. And then the music stopped. Now was the moment to offer that thanks.
She paused for a few moments, then knocked and entered, the words, “Dear Mrs. Batten” on her lips.
Mrs. Batten was not in the room. Joan saw a small child, a boy, bent over the end of the bed that protruded from behind the huge screen. He was turning swiftly, impatiently, the pages of a volume of music. A toy engine stood beside the reading desk of the piano, and the string attached to it dangled over the keys.
Joan hesitated, bewildered. The boy looked up, saw her, jerked his head nervously, and came forward.
“Good-morning,” he said, in English. “Are you one of the visitors from London who came last night?”
“I am,” said Joan, shaking his tiny hand, which was as hard and bony as a bird’s claw. “I and my mother. We have just arrived in Paris. I saw your sister, I think.”
“Yes, she always likes to meet people. Then she tells me what they are like.”
“Oh, I hope she approved of us?”
“Approved? What does that mean?” He frowned, puzzled and a little suspicious.
“I mean, I
hope that she gave a good report of us. I know that she would like my mother. Everybody likes her.”
“Doesn’t everybody like you, then?”
Joan was nonplussed. She could not answer. The little boy stood before her, gravely studying her from head to foot. He was an ordinary urchin, not too tidy. One hand was smeared with paint, a dab of blue. He saw Joan look at this.
“I’ve been painting my engine,” he said, and broke the spell by running to the piano and taking up the toy, to show it to her.
She jerked herself out of the discomfort his question had brought.
“You did that while your mother was playing to you?”
He looked puzzled.
“Mother wasn’t playing. She has gone to Mass, I think. She often goes just before lunch.” He frowned, and continued. “Oh! You mean that? I was playing. It is a sonata by Scarlatti. I like him more than Mozart or Haydn. His music makes me laugh more. Oh, it’s marvellous. Just listen to that last movement again!”
He ran back to the piano, perched himself on the stool, with the locomotive on the seat beside him, paused with his grubby hands over the keys, while he recollected the notes, then touched the keys. His feet could not reach the sustaining pedal, so the music was crisp, remote, tiny. But it was the voice of fairyland; seeming, at least to Joan’s very uneducated ear, unerring in its precision. The adapted harpsichord music of Domenico Scarlatti, foreshadowing sonata form, moulded itself exactly to the mind and fingers of the child, from whom it now poured almost embarrassingly, like water from the penis of a stone cherub on an Italian fountain. Joan found herself blushing. She could hardly bear to look at the boy as he sat, staring at his hands and becoming gradually more and more immersed in the excitement, the fever, of his own talent. The toy, which had been hastily set down on the edge of the stool, crashed to the floor. A spasm of dismay crossed his face, but on he went, returning to his own rapture. Joan crept forward and picked up the engine, standing with it in her hand, stationing herself beside the prodigy, and watching the back of his head and neck as he sat almost immobile, only his arms and hands at work. But how expressive that nape, that mop of hair, those sturdy little shoulders! She found it much less disturbing to watch him from this angle. The full face, that of an infant, but an infant transformed by a spirit which she felt had no right to be lodged there, had frightened her. The incongruity was beyond her understanding.
Suddenly the rivulet of sound stopped, disappeared. The boy looked up at her, breathing heavily, as though he had been running beside those rapid and tiny waters. He smiled, and she saw that his eyes were exactly like those of his father, grey, deep-set, burning, the light in them darting about so rapidly that they might have been furtive, had they not been so authoritative and enquiring. The little face, with its miniature features already exquisitely defined, was one that demanded an answer to implied questions, and searching questions. Joan wanted again to rebel.
“Well!” she exclaimed, as though she had discovered him pulling the cat’s tail. But he ignored her inference that he had no right to be so precocious, or that what he had done was out of the way.
“You see what I mean?” he asked eagerly, and breaking into a peal of happy laughter, rocking himself to and fro, and gradually becoming self-conscious, prolonging the movement until it was mechanical, while the laughter died away and left him swinging there like the beam of a metronome. Joan could see his eyes calculating the movement, as his interest fastened on it. She was forgotten.
“Tell me,” she demanded, “how do you … what do your parents do…?”
But she could not frame her enquiry clearly. It seemed almost indecent even to suggest that the boy had done anything abnormal. So she came down to convention, and said, “But how old are you?”
He had obviously heard that question before. His eyes looked bored, though the rest of his features had not the firmness to add to that register.
“I’m nine, and my sister’s seven. She’s a wild thing, but everybody likes her.”
He appeared to be obsessed by the problem of being liked or disliked. Twice in this short acquaintance he had referred to it. Joan suddenly felt sorry for him. “But everybody likes you, too, I’m sure. You are Adrian, are you not?” She had recalled this bit of information given by his sister the night before.
The boy’s mind leaped ahead. Looking at Joan almost slyly, he asked, “Then you met my Uncle Tom? Did you like him?”
Joan could not answer at once because she saw the boy’s attention wandering off again. He had ceased rocking himself to and fro, and now began doodling at the piano, striking abrupt chords, tinkering with them, his head turned down sideways as though testing the chords for cracks, then breaking away with running passages and delicious modulations, coming back after a while to the original chords. The meander was a nice piece of improvisation.
“That’s what my uncle wants me to do,” he said.
“Tell me more about it,” said Joan, trying in vain to maintain her suspicion of all this abnormal conduct. The child was so disarming in his candour.
“He wants Father to let me play at concerts, and go on tour.”
“And what does your mother say to that?”
“She doesn’t say anything. It is Father who says.”
“Oh, and he disapproves?”
“Disapproves? What does that mean?”
The boy frowned, as he had done before at meeting this word outside his own vocabulary. Joan concluded that he was not intelligent in everything, and this made her meanly triumphant. She began to tease him.
“But I told you that word just now.”
He frowned more savagely, and his face flushed. Oh, temper, she thought; and that again was one up for her. But immediately she was abashed, for he turned back to the keyboard as he replied:
“Oh yes. I know. Approved, disapproved. I see what they mean. They mean this!” And he broke out again into an improvisation, first a gay dance measure, then a pause, followed by a heavy series of chords, with a shifting dissonance that dragged the tone down and down. “That’s it, I know! I know! I soon learn things. That’s what Father wants. He says he wants me to learn a lot more before I play in public.”
Joan was too curious to change the subject, though she believed that the child ought not to be talking about his abilities in this confident way.
“And what do you think about it? Would you like to be a pianist?”
She could not bring herself to suggest that he might want to perform now in public. Her mind switched from this reluctance to the consideration that something must be wrong with that Uncle Tom who was urging this premature publicity.
The boy was tired of the matter, however, and did not answer. He sidled down from the piano-stool and approached Joan, holding out the blue-stained hand for his engine. Joan gave it to him, and he looked up at her, peering under his mop of hair.
“You don’t make a fuss, like most people,” he said. “Would you like to see my boat as well? I sail it in the Gardens. Uncle Tom is good at that. He goes with me a lot now he is staying in Paris. Mother and Father are always too busy, and Jeannette’s a nuisance.”
He seized her hand, and again she was conscious of a bird-claw, tight in grip, firm and absolute. A tiny shiver of animal magnetism went up her arm.
“Yes, I’ll come,” she answered, docilely, and allowed herself to be dragged eagerly through the communicating door to the smaller sitting-room. It was Uttered with toys, like a million other nurseries, picture-books scribbled on with coloured crayons, a doll’s house, a pile of tin railway-lines, bent and battered, fragments of rolling-stock, and the pot of paint, standing on a chair protected by a newspaper, the source of the blue paint on Adrian’s person. Under the french window stood a model sailing-boat, with the sails set. The boy rushed to it, and began to demonstrate proudly how the sails were worked. His quick fingers pulled the lilliputian ropes, and switched the tiller to and fro, while he chattered to Joan about the prowess of his craft on the pond i
n the Luxembourg Gardens.
She studied him meanwhile, more sympathetic now that he was in normal childlike mood and scene. He was really a nice little boy. What a pity that he had to grow up to become a man! At this the old misery swept over her, and she turned away, fearing that her conflict might be seen by him. It was.
“Don’t you like my boat?” he asked, in a pitiable little voice.
“Oh, Adrian, yes, of course I do,” she cried, and to her own horror she took him in her arms and hugged him, putting him down almost instantly and withdrawing again as though she were a wild creature who had stumbled close to a trap.
Chapter Seven
Airing a Prejudice
Colonel Batten did not offer to accompany Mrs. Winterbourne back to the flat in the Rue Boissonade, and she walked thoughtfully through the Gardens, still intrigued by this man after she had left him, asking herself what it could be that made him so fugitive in his social approach. Was he really running away from something? If so, he was poorly equipped to disguise his fears. She believed he needed help. That hunted look: it was almost childlike. She smiled gently, and once stopped under the bare trees of the long avenue, to say to herself, “Poor man.”
Thus preoccupied, she arrived at the flat to find Joan sitting with Mrs. Batten, who was in outdoor clothes, not patently French in chic; indeed, she looked like a stage version of a happy English landlady, genial, bland, with her hat tumbling off the back of her head. There she sat, chatting away happily, from time to time putting up a plump hand and pushing the hat back approximately into position: a vain effort that did not dismay her.
Joan looked pale, as though she had been overworking the whole morning. Why was that, wondered her mother. Is it that John again? Is she fretting after him?
The Dangerous Years Page 5