There began an ineffectual conversation, with the lawyer doing most of the talking, about the situation in London, and the name of the Public Prosecutor recurred again and again. It appeared that the investigation of the company’s accounts was proceeding slowly, but ruthlessly, like a rising tide over a child’s sand-castle. Emphasis was laid on the necessity for Colonel Batten to keep in close consultation with his solicitor through this French office. He was told that he was well advised to remain under cover, in view of the delicacy of his position. It was, of course, unfortunate that he had not done so and so, or taken expert legal advice before accepting … The voice rose and fell with studied rhetorical effects, while the dull, leathery eye roamed over Mrs. Winterbourne’s person, implicitly congratulating the colonel on his good luck.
Mary listened, without understanding. From time to time she wafted away the strong cigarette smoke which drifted over from the lawyer, who was a chain-smoker, as his amber-coloured claws indicated. Through the window she could see the naked trees of the Luxembourg, and the cold sky above them. The conversation was punctuated by distant sounds of traffic below, the honking of motorhorns, the small cries of children at play in the Gardens. From the floor above came the thudding of a typewriter.
Mary found herself nodding in the warmth. For one moment her eyelids closed, and she had an inward vision of herself as a cat, basking before a fire, purring to itself. Furtively, she stroked herself down one thigh, and a tiny smile played about her lips as she realised that indeed she was basking. Oh wait! wait!’ she said to herself, and then, realising her shamelessness, dared to look openly at the lawyer, making him pause in the spinning of his web round the colonel’s future actions. She knew that she wanted him to persuade Tom to stay. That was enough for the moment. Hardly a trace of uneasiness lingered in her mind.
“Ask him about your wife!” she heard herself say suddenly.
Both men stared at her. Terror, the terror of finding oneself out of control, moved her to rise. She dared not look at either of the men. What on earth had made her say that? Then she realised the extent of her hunger, and of the danger into which she was plunging.
“Oh, Tom!” she tried to whisper, but Monsieur Lepage, foreseeing more fees, interrupted.
“I can assure you, Madame, that if I can be of any assistance to Monsieur … you may be sure …” He waved his Caporal in the air, leaving a little figure of eight in smoke above his head.
This interruption broke up the interview, and the lovers found themselves walking down towards St. Germain-des-Prés, both silenced by the intensity of their feelings after that unexplainable outburst from Mary. At last she found courage to speak.
“I am so sorry, Tom. I don’t know what made me say that! What was it, tell me, tell me, I am so ashamed…?”
“I know what it was,” he said. “I know all about it. Everything comes out in this fierce light. I’m not sorry. It makes me realise. It makes me reassured, you see? Doesn’t it mean that you want me; tell me that!”
The storm of this stopped them in the street, turned them to each other, careless of passers-by, one or two of whom gave them a passing glance of amused interest, observing the silvered hair of the woman, the grey moustache of the man.
“We’d better have some lunch,” said Tom, leading her along again. “Don’t let us think about that now. There’s nothing to be done at present. We must wait on events.” He didn’t know what events, or even what he meant. He was speaking automatically, driven on by the longing that he could not control.
They went into a little bourgeois restaurant in the Rue St. Benoit behind Les Deux Magots café opposite the ancient church and cloister, and in the warmth, the crowded, narrow room, with the smell of good food, garlic, wine, and sanded floor, they forgot their problems, and gave themselves up to the present, and this delicious illusion of happiness.
Surrounded by Parisians hurrying through a meal to get back to work, the lovers sat squashed together, eating and drinking with a relish intensified by its self-consciousness. Everything they tasted, everything they touched, had the quality of stolen fruit, the forbidden apple.
“We’ll go back now,” said Batten, quietly, when they stood outside the restaurant, looking up and down the little street.
“We ought to go to a museum, or for a long walk,” said Mary, parrying. She shivered in the frosty air, after the steamy heat of the restaurant.
“Look, you’re cold,” he murmured, his lips close to her face. “We’d better get back. Nothing else is possible, Mary.” He too was shivering, but not with cold.
“Yes, it is,” she teased him. “We’re not children, Tom.” But she knew that they were children, clinging desperately to each other, afraid of the future that was no future, trying to stir the ashes before the fire at last flickered out.
They were wafted along, back through the Gardens to the hotel, parting outside to allow Mary to go up first to her room, past the eye of the unsuspecting clerk, who during the day was a woman of formidable austerity.
Mary looked round the two rooms, and for the first time was conscious of Joan’s departure. She went through to the other room, and noticed Joan’s tweed overcoat hanging behind the door. She stared at it, her mind wilfully blank. But she knew. She knew deep in her soul, and the knowledge made her revolt still more passionately. Why not? rang in her mind; a mind shaken by tempest. I must! I must! Almost angrily, she took off her outdoor clothes, then, with a sardonic grimace, took down Joan’s coat, put it round her, and stealthily crept up to the third floor.
Chapter Eighteen
Mid Snow and Ice
In spite of the severe weather, the small party arrived punctually at St. Moritz, and were carried by sledge to their hotel, Suvretta House. By this time Adrian was exhausted, under the stress of excitement, and the noise of the train. Joan had been warned by his mother that his hearing was uncommonly acute, and that he was quickly tired by loud and persistent sounds.
Though resenting the defeat implied by her being once more with her husband, Joan had enjoyed the journey, and the attention which she had to give to the boy during the night. He and she had shared a double-bunk compartment, while John had slept in the next. Adrian was restless. She could hear him lumping about, sighing, breathing, murmuring to himself, in the bunk above her.
“I can’t go to sleep,” he complained, in the small hours, rousing her from a fitful slumber. “Can I come into your bed, Joan? I’m too near the roof up here. All the carriage is squeaking.”
“There’s no room, Adrian,” she whispered. But she spoke reluctantly. Groping upward in the darkness, she felt for his hand, and found it, warm and eager.
“Try to go to sleep,” she said. “You’ll be so tired to-morrow that you may have to stay indoors when we get to the mountains.”
“No,” he answered, bringing both his hands to entertain hers, “but I wish I could sleep with you. You are nice, Joan. I like being with you. I would like you to be my mother too.”
“Silly; you can’t have two mothers.”
“I could, Joan. If it was you. I wouldn’t want anybody else as my second mother. Would you read to me a lot?”
“No, I certainly wouldn’t. You’re a lazy monkey. You can read quite well for yourself.”
“Oh yes; but then I would want to play to you, because you can’t play for yourself, can you, Joan? Why can’t people play easily? They make such a horrible noise when they touch a piano. It’s so easy; much easier than reading a book. I’ll tell you what. When we get back …” But he had suddenly fallen asleep, and Joan, after listening for a while to his steady breathing, lost herself too.…
John woke them next morning by battering on the door. He jockeyed them for being a pair of lazy devils, and losing the first sight of the mountains. Joan washed and dressed the boy, to the accompaniment of the extra exertions of the locomotive, puffing up into the foothills of the Alps.
Adrian at first was irrepressible with excitement, but by the time they arri
ved in the late afternoon he had worn himself out, and it was a pale little waif who entered the hotel, clinging to Joan’s arm, and staring about him with tired eyes. Darkness came down soon after they arrived, and the hotel woke to its evening festivities, which Boys sniffed at with good-humoured contempt.
Joan put Adrian to bed early, reassuring him by promising to look in during the evening, and again when she went to bed in the next room. She told him that Mr. Boys would be in the room on the other side of her.
“Won’t you be lonely?” he asked, when he learned of this disposition of forces.
Joan parried the question, but he returned to a problem that puzzled him. She recollected his father’s words about his having a one-track mind.
“Mr. Boys is your husband. Why don’t you sleep together? My mother and father do. Don’t all mothers and fathers?”
“Well,” she said, putting out the bedside lamp, “you see, we are not a mother and father, are we? So that makes a difference.”
“Yes, I suppose it does,” he said, dubiously. “But I don’t see …” Joan did not wait. She left the night lamp glowing, and shut the door. Her heart was thumping as she returned to her own room. The old unhappiness came sweeping down, and she thought of her mother again; a subject put into the back of her mind during the journey. The sound of dance music floated up from below. Oh, the world is mad, mad; she thought. Leave me alone! She could not be sure whom she was addressing. John would serve. But was she sure that she did want him to leave her alone? Hesitating in the corridor, she looked back at the door of his room, behind which, no doubt, he was examining his skis, or polishing his skates.
John had them up early next morning, to see the sunrise and the first darting of the fierce beams along the valley. The western heights turned to flamingo-wings, deepened, faded, set to a day-long splendour of distant purity. Each excrescence along the valley, snow-mounds, humps of human index, runnels left by skis, patches of fir, threw an extension of itself along the surface which had been swept clean overnight by a wind so delicate that it might have come down out of the full moon, which was still smouldering in the south-west after sun-up.
Man, wife and the little changeling (who seemed to be diminished in size in this strange setting) stood in the winter garden, looking out over the alpine drama, hushed into awe. From time to time Boys sniffed, his healthy nostrils snuffing the prospect of battle.
“We must get out,” he said, putting a hand on the child’s shoulder. “What d’you say, Joan? No need to waste time. Though I’m free for a good spell, you know. No need to hurry back to Cambridge. So we can start gradually. Do a little more each day. You going to be a climber, son?” He addressed Adrian affectionately. The child had captured him merely by being so eager to see the mountains.
Joan studied them both, standing between her and the world of light beyond. They made a double silhouette, mere outlines, dense against the blinding glory. She quoted a couple of lines of verse:
“‘Were those clouds mountains, I would take
A thousand risks to scale their heights.’”
John looked round, amused.
“Nothing cloudy about those heights, old girl. That’s the real thing, the old adversary. Gy Bod, it makes my blood tingle!”
He led them away to breakfast, in the super-heated dining-room, and the chatter of guests, all equally urgent to get through the meal and out of doors.
After the scented beauty of Paris in winter, the odourlessness of the alpine air acted on the senses like an antiseptic on a wound. It stung, it cleaned, it drew the tender ligaments together and braced the minds of the newcomers. It drove the child crazy. The very silence of the snows, that absorbed even the cries and bangings and scrunchings of the crowd of humans in the vicinity of the hotel, acted upon Adrian’s imagination. He stood about, his small body disfigured by the clothes which Joan, over-anxiously, had piled upon him; not a word did he say, at first. His eyes flickered, reflecting the upward glitter of the snow, so that his face took on a slightly imbecilic look. Then he turned, and peered in the direction of the sun, staring into the sky and blinking at the intense blue and the invisible fire centred there. He was murmuring something to himself, and his gloved hands rose and fell from his hips.
“What’s on, old man?” asked Boys, busy supervising the equipment, and pointing out to Joan various technical matters connected with their sport.
“It’s an open scale,” said Adrian, a remark that caused the athlete to pause, stare at the child, then look enquiringly at Joan.
“We’d better get cracking,” he said. “He’ll get cold if we stand about. I wish your mother was here. She’d appreciate all this, eh, Joan?”
The first morning was a strenuous one, getting muscles into gear, putting Adrian for the first time on skis, and giving him a lesson. They withdrew themselves a little from the learners, who were crowded round the two Swiss instructors. John proposed to teach Adrian alone, he being so young. Joan went off by herself for a few runs, hardly out of sight of the man and boy. She too wanted to withdraw herself; she could not be sure from what.
Ploughing her way up the slope of the first run, she rose above the top of the buildings, the fir trees, and stared across to the other side of the valley, over which the sun now stood, dwarfing the ridge below him. She felt his fierce light on her cheeks, and had to readjust her dark glasses. She turned up her throat to the caress, and let the fingers of light seize her. She began to breathe deeply, her breast rising and falling. The sunlight became a presence, a person. It whispered to her, and grew bolder. She turned away, studied the ground behind her, up the slope, then the run down, took her calculations of distances, and let go.
The air rushed past her, a laughter of powers almost to be seen, snatched at as she fled. She saw the two tiny figures below, growing larger and taller where they struggled and floundered. She heard the shrill voice of the child, and his shriek of joy when he fell and John picked him up and set him going again. It was obvious that he was taking to it quickly, with a sense of the rhythm of the movements, and the right balance.
She came back to them, all the bells of her body ringing with a clamour of physical exhilaration. John chuckled, told her to take over, and went off for a trial run over the tracks of Joan’s skis. Adrian welcomed this change with enthusiasm, boasting of his skill, falling again and revelling like a puppy in the snow. Hand in hand with Joan he began to move, colliding and bringing them both down.
“Look at that youngster,” said a passer-by, chuckling at the child’s delight.
The midday break for luncheon came too quickly, but hunger drove the guests down to the hotel like a flock of sheep. Joan, after the morning’s exhilaration and the heavy meal, grew sleepy, and she sat in the baroque drawing-room, the vastness of it giving her the impression that she was sinking away, the walls receding, advancing, with the great chandeliers glittering above, a menace of rainbow flashes. At the far end, on a low platform, stood a concert grand pianoforte, and several music-stands made of mahogany, in the shape of lyres on legs. The instruments of a dance-band stood around the piano.
Guests began to trickle into the room, smoking and chatting. The elders had already had enough outdoor activity for the day, and intended to make themselves comfortable, with reading matter, bridge, perhaps a little dancing when the musicians came to the stage. Joan did not observe them closely. She was sleepy, and the familiar unrest had begun to creep back. She wondered what was happening in Paris. But that must not be followed up; it had an unsavoury taste. She sat, with set mouth, combating this vagary of mind, when her attention was caught by Adrian, who had come in with her, John having gone off again, his plan being to put in some real ski-ing until dusk.
“Oh!” said Adrian, suddenly catching sight of the paraphernalia on the platform. He stood up, his head erect, his attention fixed. “Look, Joan,” he said, without indicating what he wanted her to observe. But there was no mistaking his fascination, or its source. He was glaring at the pian
o hungrily. Then he looked up at the height of the room, its ceiling almost obscured in mist, or broken shadows from the chandeliers. He was calculating the acoustics, perhaps, or enjoying that unheard music which is sweeter than the heard.
More people came in, and dispersed themselves amongst the comfortable arm-chairs, sofas and around card tables. The room absorbed them. It could accommodate over a hundred, surely, if they were packed close; or maybe five hundred. Adrian appeared to be making all these calculations, his small body dead still, while his eyes roved up and down, and around, taking in everything.
Then he began to move forward, gradually edging towards the stage. Joan was nodding. Sleep, the just reward of skiers, was overcoming her. But before the boy could reach the piano, Joan, prodded by instinct, roused herself, and saw what he was at. Instantly she realised the responsibility undertaken in bringing the child away from Paris and the influence of Aloysius Sturm; yes, and also the colonel and her mother. The thought of this latter couple roused her fighting temper. She darted after Adrian, took him by the arm, and said almost roughly, so that he looked up at her in amazement, almost in fear:
“No, Adrian! You must not play while all these people are about. They want to be quiet after lunch. Besides, it is not what your father would like. He …”
Happily, no further explanation was possible, for the bandsmen came in, and Adrian’s attention became passive. He wanted only to watch them, and to listen. He sat at first on the arm of Joan’s chair, kicking the side of it with his shoe. But after the first two items, the usual march and Viennese valse, when the pianist gave a solo, the boy slipped down and made himself snug on Joan’s lap. He seemed to be bored by the performer, a capable pianist, who was playing a serenade by Rachmaninoff, a hackneyed piece, but new to the child. He pressed his head down into Joan’s shoulders and clasped her jersey so firmly that it dragged down over her breast.
The Dangerous Years Page 16