The Dangerous Years

by Richard Church

  “Hush!” she said, stooping over the boy, glancing back, and then kissing his silky hair, half in tears. “You must be calm, Adrian. You must not spend yourself.”

  His response was to cling to her with an almost lascivious intensity, rousing her instincts too, a confused rabble of emotions that carried her along unwillingly, though she struggled against them. But in the alertness of mind caused by this struggle, she saw, and in the immediate future, indeed almost present, a certainty of something about to happen, something large, probably inconsequential, certainly devastating. She tried to tell herself it was a mere mood, a touch of fright because everything was happening so quickly since she had come to Paris.

  The tiny lover, the nine-year-old Cupid, meanwhile was murmuring something into her waist, where his head was buried.

  “I love the smell of you!” he said, jerking his head back and laughing up at her. She managed to extricate herself, without hurting him.

  “Play something more to me,” she said, without allowing herself to hear what he had said. And she led him back to the piano, her hand firmly on his neck, the ball of her thumb smoothing the nape, and the silky tail of hair that came down to a point there.

  He now chose a Beethoven sonatina, deceptively simple, and played it neatly, with precision. But she was prepared to suspect even that, so disturbed were her nerves by the recent little outburst of Cyprian paganism. She stared at the child as though to doubt still if he was wholly human, and might draw another arrow against her.

  The rest of the luncheon party came in while the boy was playing, their conversation falling away, then reviving when he stopped. Plans were discussed, and by the time the English visitors departed, everything was in hand.

  The rest of the day was fully occupied in practical matters concerned with the flight into Switzerland, and none of the three people wished to have much to say about events. They were all restrained by their personal moods, the only mood in common being, perhaps, embarrassment toward the other two, for a multitude of intricate reasons, or un-reasons.

  The frost held through the night, and the day of departure was steely. Paris shrank to a monochrome of grey shades; only the faces of her citizens adding touches of pink, red, purple to the metallic scene. Dr. Batten was to have brought the car to the hotel, to collect mother and daughter, John Boys having arranged to meet them at the station. The doctor, however, had been called out and the occupants of the car were Mrs. Batten and the two children, driven by the colonel. He was inscrutable, sitting at the wheel like a taxi-man, avoiding any contact. He got out stiffly, directed the stowing of Joan’s small amount of luggage, and took his place again, with hardly a greeting. Joan found herself with Mrs. Batten, the children between them in the back. Mary sat with the colonel, and he put a rug round her legs, in a shamefaced way.

  ‘I’ve got to see those damned lawyers again,” he said, quietly. “Do you mind?”

  “Should I mind?” she said. “I have no idea what it is all about.”

  “I’m not sure myself. I’ve been swimming out of my depth, perhaps. Dabbling in things I know nothing about. I’ll try to explain when we have an opportunity.”

  “When will that be, Tom?” She spoke without caution, hardly caring to lower her voice. The rest of the world was rapidly becoming a vague body which she had only to defy. “We’ve not had a moment together since …”

  “I know,” he said, glancing guiltily over his shoulder at the family in the back. “It’s rather knocked us over, Mary. I had no idea I was worth it. You see, I had none. Life has been like that for the past few years; no sense of direction; a general failure, maybe. I should not have left the Service. That broke my marriage. Sorry!”

  The car had nearly hit a new Citroën whose proud driver was putting it through its paces, ignoring the morning traffic and the frozen surface of the setts. Batten thrust his foot on the brake, the wheels squealed, and little Jeannette tumbled into the bottom of the car. Nobody minded, however, and with a wave of the hand, the offending driver grinned and rushed on. Batten’s jaw was set, but he said nothing, and resumed the drive to the station without further revelation about his past. The present was demanding his attention.

  The interior of the station hummed with human life, and the reverie of locomotives, with an occasional start to life as a train shrieked, and began to rumble out. Timetables were disregarded, owing to the severe frost, and the party learned that their train might be half an hour late. They found John Boys, with a porter, waiting by the booking guichets, beside his contribution to the luggage, which included the two pairs of skis. He wore his climbing boots, as something less to carry.

  “Everything behind time,” he said, “except ourselves. Don’t you wait, sir.” But the colonel ignored this suggestion.

  “Time’s our own,” he said, and glanced at Mary for confirmation. She, however, was occupied with little Jeannette, who had suddenly discovered that her brother was about to be torn from her, and took exception to this fact. She had begun to demand to go too, and a scene loomed ahead. Mary walked her away from the party, and fortunately found a flower-stall, where she bought her a small bunch of violets, whose odour so ravished the infant that her tears were checked, though they remained ready for action.

  Everybody succumbed to the universal blankness of mind and spirit which attends these ceremonies of departure and farewell. Questions about luggage, comfort, connections, were asked and answered again and again. Feeble jokes were cracked, passports and tickets were patted to ensure their safety. The minutes were marked ironically on the station clock.

  “When are we going?” demanded Adrian, for the tenth time; and for the tenth time Jeannette looked doubtfully at her mother, and hovered on the brink of lamentation.

  Just at the moment when patience began to fail, there was a bustle and hurry along the platform, and out of the semi-darkness under the dome, came Mr. Aloysius Sturm, waving his arm.

  “Well now, should I make it, I said to myself! And if that fool of a porter at the Meurice did not give me the wrong correction on time. And I gave a hundred and twenty dollars for this watch last time I was in Zurich. You know, Mrs. Batten, there is something about me that upsets watches. Time does tricks where I am concerned. It must be an extra dose of magnetism, I guess.”

  “Have you tried an hour-glass?” said Joan. She found herself increasingly antagonistic toward this man, and she suddenly knew why. He and she were contending for the soul and safety of Adrian Batten.

  Mr. Sturm would not be drawn by that. He grinned at her, recognising the challenge almost in a professional way.

  “I have learned not to distress myself with time, Mrs. Boys. The man who can wait is the man who will win.”

  Further truisms were cut short by a shrill whistle, a waving of arms, slamming of carriage doors, and a scrambling of passengers into their places, while friends and relatives crowded round the windows and doors for a last farewell. Joan found herself being kissed by her mother, and she shuddered again, averting her eyes from the colonel who stood with Jeannette in his arms, who had begun to weep, with the violets clasped in her tiny fist. But she was persuaded to wave her flowers as the train began to move. The last Joan saw of the party was the child held aloft in the colonel’s arms. Her mother stood hidden behind him, while Mrs. Batten remained in the background, one arm raised aloft, as though she were a statue carrying a torch. Mr. Sturm had temporarily disappeared.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Embarkation for Cythera

  The anti-climax, the foreboding and sense of emptiness, that always follow a train departure, were warded off by the need to console Jeannette, whose grief suddenly became tempestuous. She had to be passed to her mother, and in that capacious retreat she gradually recovered, though the bunch of violets was shattered in the process.

  “Well now,” said Mr. Sturm, “if that’s not too distressing! Let us take a cup before we part. May I escort you, Mrs. Winterbourne?”

  He gallantly took her
under the arm, steering her towards the café. Mrs. Batten, however, had an appointment, one of her many committees, and with a smile and wave of the hand, she was gone, having returned her daughter to the care of the colonel.

  Mary sipped her Dubonnet, trying to bring home to herself the fact that Joan had gone. Everything had happened so quickly since they arrived in Paris. The speed of events alone might have hypnotised her. But in addition was their momentousness. After fifteen years of placid life, tethered by reminiscent sorrow and acceptance of loss, here she sat with change and passion whirling round her. The only coherent reaction that she could recognise was her complacence, and indeed eagerness.

  As though unwilling to betray these feelings in front of a third person, she took the child on her knee, and busied herself with chatter and small attentions, to which Jeannette responded freely, already comforted by the fullness of the passing moment. The colonel sat brooding, studying the picture of this handsome little lady, her silvered head bent over the gold of the child’s, her clothes neat and appropriate, her small and well-kept hands moving with expressive confidence. From time to time he glanced with suspicion at the American, wondering if his own obsession had been noticed by that shrewd opportunist. But why, he told himself with pride, should he disguise his folly; if it could be called folly, to abandon himself to this eleventh-hour love for a woman so desirable still. It was not as though he had delivered himself into the hands of a young girl who might pretend to humour him, and cheat him in the end. He was sore still, in this matter of being cheated because of his own simplicity, and ready to associate the tricks of men in the City with the caprices of women, young women at least. Mary Winterbourne was different. She beckoned him to safety: but more than that. Her beauty, and the quick responsiveness of her character; he had never known such riches, so readily offered. He looked at her now, and the blood in his elderly body throbbed. Good God! he said to himself, good God! with no meaning to the words; but a wealth of emotion.

  Nor was Mary unaware of this concentration of feeling. She did not look up, for she too was shy, at present, of acknowledging to the world this new force, strange yet familiar, which had caught her up and pulled her out of all the dull assurances, the safety and even the self-respect with which she had surrounded herself during her widowhood. A delicious patience held her back, the patience of the senses once indulged, and now certain of their power and ascendency. She caressed the little girl; but she was still in the arms of the man sitting near her, still urging him with those small physical persuasions that are love’s perpetual surprise. Love! No doubt of that, she said to herself, with such conviction that she had to look up, to see him there. And he caught the glance, absorbed it into himself.

  The signal made them both restless.

  “We’d better get back,” said Batten. “Can we drop you anywhere, Sturm?”

  The impresario, however, had other fish to fry. He had done what he wanted to do in this direction for the time being.

  “I guess I’ll get along to the Opera House by the Metro,” he said. “I may have to go out of Town for a while. It depends where Schnabel is. I’m hoping to sign him up again. He went over big last trip. You know, Mrs. Winterbourne, it’s the solid worth that I go for; not the flash stuff. I can smell that quality, mind you. I can believe only in that; it’s the commodity I want to deal in.”

  He had much to say about this as they found their way back to the car. Mary listened, but her attention flickered under the wind of this excitement that came out of the spring-time of the universe, driving her on to recklessness and, if necessary, martyrdom.

  The drive back to the flat, the delivery of Jeannette to the care of the governess, left the elderly lovers free to explore this youthful world which they had re-discovered.

  They walked back to the Rue d’Assas, under a burst of sunshine which had triumphed over the frost. Shafts of dusty light fell upon the rime, melting a medallion here and there, releasing drops of moisture on twigs, that instantly froze again as soon as they gathered on the underside. Vagaries of brightness cut across the monotone of misty air, giving it life, a laughter of light.

  “This is good, Mary,” said Batten, tucking her gloved hand under his. “This is something we had not reckoned upon, eh?” He drew her into a doorway and kissed her cold cheek, then her colder lips. The contact roused them both. She murmured indistinctly, then controlled herself.

  “We are like children,” she said, smiling up at him with a slyness that was wholly candid. He saw her eyes, the brown warmer than ever, an autumnal confidence in them; of ripeness, of harvest.

  “Look, Mary!” he said, his voice troubled, “it had to come. It had to!”

  “I know,” she whispered, tightening her grasp of his arm, “but what are we to do? What is to be done? We know nothing of each other, really. It is all folly, Tom. You are not free. That is all important. We can only take illicitly. I am not used to that. I cannot realise it, even.”

  He was distressed by this intrusion of reality.

  “Don’t,” he pleaded, “let’s forget that to-day. The whole truth is that we have found each other like this. It’s something of a miracle, late in life, when all was finished. Yes, finished, Mary. You ought to know. I was done for. I’ve been a fool; wasted my life since I came out of the Service. Tried to go into the City, was duped by a gang of people whose ways and standards I knew nothing of. They put my name on their notepaper, a respectable soldier with a good record. That is all it amounted to, Mary. I was used as a bit of shop-window bluffing. Nor was I paid overmuch for it. But the truth is, I have sold my respectability. Yes, sold it for a living; a fool’s trick!”

  Mary did not know what to say. She too had no experience in this financial world of which he hinted so vaguely, acknowledging his incompetence half-shamefully, half with a sense of virtue, as though it were to his credit to be ignorant of the responsibilities to which he had lent his name and reputation.

  “Let me come with you,” was all she could say, augmenting her plea by clinging to him, turning her face up to his and letting him see the certainty of her trust and admiration. “Let me help you, darling. That is what you need me for, isn’t it? Not only … not only the other thing…?”

  She did not know why she added that rider. It was not quite honest. She knew she was prepared, now, to abandon all the past restraints, all that negative way of life. She had lived and loved before. This fullness of living was no novelty. Why should she pretend to a modesty she did not feel? But habit was too strong. The pretence had to be made.

  “Tell me,” she added, “you know that if I did not love you, I could not have given …”

  He put his fingers over her lips, and drew them together.

  “Don’t say that,” he urged. “You’re talking nonsense. Be quiet, Mary. Leave well alone. Look at it this way. I’ve found you; all too late. But I’ve found you. And by God, I am grateful for it. I intend to keep you. Nothing shall part us now, my dear. Nothing! Nothing! That’s a certainty.”

  He quickened his pace, almost lifting her off the ground as he defied the fates.

  “Here we are, now,” he said, stopping at the entrance to the lawyers’ offices opposite the gate of the Luxembourg Gardens in the Rue d’Assas.

  Mary did not hesitate. With her hand still on his arm, she held him back on the threshold of the offices.

  “May I come in with you?” she asked, quite simply.

  He was startled. He took both her hands in his, turning to her with a tenderness that almost frightened her, because of its fragility in contrast with what life had offered for so many years.

  “You can’t do that, I think, my dear. You don’t understand. Here in France that would be given only one construction. You see what I mean.”

  “I don’t care! I don’t care!” she whispered, moving closer to him and making him wince by the pressure of her fingers round his. “I want to share it all. I’ve given you so much now. I must go the whole way. It is all I can do, to show
I’m not irresponsible, frivolous.”

  He laughed, teasing her.

  “You frivolous? What an idea! Why, Mary, you’ve made my life solid again. I begin to feel that I’ve got a purpose after all, and some confidence in myself. And it has taken only that one … one …”

  But he did not care to put into words what had been exchanged between them; what to them was sacred, unexampled; the experience suspected by Joan and withdrawn from as something unclean, repellent.

  “I only want to help you, Tom. I can’t do much because I am ignorant of these things, and you have not told me what it all is, and what is involved. Did you leave England solely because of this? Did your brother urge you?”

  He was uneasy.

  “Look, my dear. I must go in, I’m already late. But what are you to do? Will you go and have a coffee? But it’s so cold for you to wait. No, damn it all, you shall come in with me. You are right, Mary. We’ll sink or swim together.”

  They entered the vestibule, and finding themselves alone there, and nobody about, they kissed, clinging together while waiting for the lift.

  “I hope we can see Wilson,” said Batten, as they entered the lawyers’ office. “I find it impossible to follow the legal jargon in French. You see, Mary, these people here are acting for the solicitors I have enlisted in London. They are all for my staying out of the picture. But I don’t know … I don’t know.”

  Mary said nothing. She knew that if he decided to go back to London, some important decisions would have to be made by her; and she had no strength to do so, at present. Everything was so new, so overwhelming.

  They were ushered into the inner office, where the French partner, Lepage, rose from his desk to greet them. He was a tall, thin man, made of old leather, including his eyes, and the very whites of his eyes. They flickered when they observed that his client was accompanied by a lady. He bowed over her hand and invited her to a varnished chair. Mary could almost smell his thoughts; the suavity, the cynical acceptance of the relationship which he did not for a moment doubt.