by Anne Piper
Tom always worked on his book in the mornings. The sun shone with agreeable monotony day after day. Caro took the tram to Hermance all by herself, but arrived back holding the conductor’s hand almost before I had time to worry. It seemed that she had paid her fare and had only aroused suspicion when she remained primly in her seat at the terminus. I asked the man how he knew where she lived, and he told me that everyone on the route knew there were English at l’Oasis for the summer.
“En tout cas elle me l’a dit,” he finished.
“En français?”
“Mais, évidemment. Elle a un bon accent, la petite.” Caro looked coyly at her sandals, still with her hand in his. He disengaged himself gently saying that the other passengers would soon become impatient. Caro and I stood at the gate to wave them off to Geneva.
“I didn’t know you could speak French, Caro?”
“Sometimes.”
“What can you say?”
“I don’t know.” She ran away laughing towards the lake. At the corner of the house she turned and shouted:
“Such a funny tram. It drives through cornfields.”
I looked forward to Prue’s arrival to help me keep an eye on the children. Caro had grown too quick for me. Next time she might take the tram into Geneva and get into goodness knows what sort of trouble.
CHAPTER II
Tom and Caro went to the station to meet Prue. I took a last look round her room to make sure I had moved away all Nicholas’s belongings. I twitched the big bowl of pink roses on the dressing-table, retrieved a rattle from under the bed, smoothed the white cotton counterpane where Susan must have jumped on it and, leaving Susan and Nicholas asleep upstairs, wandered out into the drowsy afternoon garden.
“Boo,” growled Jean-Pierre, leaping from behind a laurel-bush wearing only brief black bathing trunks. “You are alone?”
“Really, Jean-Pierre, must you? So soon after lunch, you quite frightened me.”
“That was my intention. Do you like my new maillot?” he pirouetted for my benefit, with a rose in his teeth. I lowered myself heavily into a deck-chair.
“That lacing at the sides —”
“You don’t approve? I think it is especially chic.”
“I suppose it’s all right, but you’ll get very wattley sunburn.”
“Wattley?”
“Criss-cross.”
“Oh no. I have become burnt all over before acquiring this maillot. I have lain on the roof of our house. Where is Tom?”
“Gone to Geneva to fetch our young friend who is coming to stay here. I expect you and she will get on very well.” He flung himself gracefully on the gravel at my feet. The stones are fortunately rounded.
“Why?” This stumped me for a minute.
“Why not? She’s nice, and she’s a girl.”
“How old is she?”
“I’m not sure — either eighteen or nineteen.”
“Too young. I don’t like inexperienced women. Shall we bathe now?”
“Surely you don’t mean to immerse those elegant pants?”
“But of course, I have another pair quite dry and similar for afterwards.”
“The lake is so cold.”
“Mary — you must not refuse pleasure because it is difficult.”
“But it isn’t pleasure if it is difficult.”
“Many of the greatest pleasures are acquired with the greatest difficulty,” Jean-Pierre announced sententiously, rising to his feet. “Go quickly, and change before any of your charming children awake.”
So he and I lay in the long grass drying off in the sun when Prue arrived. I hovered on the edge of sleep under my hot, tickly straw hat while Jean-Pierre propped on his elbows explained again his ambitions and frustrations.
“Poor Jean-Pierre,” I murmured at intervals.
“Mary,” screamed Prue from the terrace, “I’ve come.” I jumped up, went to kiss her.
“My dear,” I said, “I’m so glad to see you. Are you exhausted?”
“I was this morning, but the journey from Basle quite braced me again — what a lovely, tidy country. Did you see the geraniums right inside the station at Basle?”
She paused as Jean-Pierre also came up to the terrace. I introduced them, but he retired at once through the hedge into his own garden.
“Come and sit down, Prue,” I said, leading her to the deck-chair. The poor child looked very white and spotty. But she beamed through her glasses with such radiant joy that the spots were dimmed.
“Oh Mary. I’m so happy to be here. It’s such a lovely house too, isn’t it? — and the view.”
“We must feed you up on steaks and sunshine. You look as if you’d had a tiring term.”
“Yes. It was in a way. And Claire’s not been very well, the heat doesn’t agree with her. It makes her irritable.” Poor child. Irritable must be an understatement.
“Well, now you can forget all about England for six weeks and just enjoy yourself and concentrate on getting fat.”
“And look after the children, Mary, that’s what I came for.”
“Oh yes, the children, but I hope they won’t be too much trouble and you must have plenty of free time.”
She lay back in her chair, her hands hanging loosely at the sides. “It all still sounds too good to be true, Mary.”
“What about tea?” bellowed Tom from the terrace.
“Do you still have tea, even in Switzerland?”
“But of course, Tom would be lost without his tea. Come along and I’ll show you the kitchen.”
Prue wasn’t very interested in the kitchen. She hung out of the window gazing greedily at the lake.
“This is where I keep the sugar.”
“Oh yes,” said Prue, barely turning round. “Which mountain is that?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. Tom has all the maps. Could you find the knives in the drawer by the sink, please?”
She rootled ineffectually, and produced two tea-spoons. “Knives, Prue dear, on the left.”
“Here you are. Mary, could I wash, please? Even electric trains are a little dirty.”
I told her where to go, and she sailed out of the kitchen humming. I could hardly expect her to do any work the first day, she would come to earth soon enough.
When everything was ready, and I had rounded up the little girls and settled them on iron chairs in the shade in front of tomato sandwiches, I looked round again for Prue and saw her standing on the balcony of my bedroom studying a map; Tom pointed over her shoulder. He had put on his lecture voice.
Prue looked down, “Oh help,” she said suddenly contrite.
“You’ve done everything, Mary.” She brushed past Tom, left in mid-sentence with his mouth open, and reappeared breathlessly below.
“I’d no idea I’d been upstairs so long. What shall I do?”
“Sit down and have your tea, dear.”
“But oughtn’t I to do something?”
“Later, there’ll be plenty. Have a rest now.”
“Good. I’m hungry. Who was the Faun whose Apres-midi I interrupted by arriving?”
I explained about Jean-Pierre.
“How right that somebody should paint you, Mary. I can’t think why they didn’t long ago.”
“It isn’t me so much, as the double act of me and Nicholas.”
“Was the lake cold to bathe in this afternoon?”
“Very,” I shuddered at the memory.
“Nonsense,” said Tom, drawing up a chair. “If one swims briskly it’s no colder than any other fresh water.”
“Oh Tom, it is, when you put your legs down you can feel all the ice of the Alps — and the green Rhone flowing through them.”
“Well, keep your legs on the surface then.”
“I can’t swim,” said Prue in a small voice.
“Goodness me — and you at that expensive school for years?”
“They tried hard to teach me, but I never got the hang of it somehow. The swimming bath was in a pine
wood and always slimy with pine-needles and scum and dead frogs.”
“I bet you ten shillings I teach you here before the end of August,” said Tom.
“I’m afraid I’d just be cheating you out of your money. I’m sure I’m unteachable.”
“We’ll see about that — I’ll give you the first lesson now.”
“Not now, Tom, the poor child must be tired after her journey.”
“I’m not Mary, really, I’d like to try, I won’t be a minute changing.”
I turned to Tom when she had rushed into the house.
“Do be careful with her, darling, she doesn’t look at all well, and we don’t want her to overdo it at the start.”
“If you ask me, Mary, that girl has been indoors far too long, and what she needs is plenty of fresh air and outdoor exercise.”
“Darling, that’s all very well, but even fresh air can be dangerous taken in large doses if you aren’t used to it. Particularly with strong sun thrown in.”
“Oh Mary, don’t be such an old fusspot. Anyone would think you were Prue’s mother.”
“But I am in loco parentis while she’s here, and so are you.”
“All right, all right. She shall be treated as porcelain.” Prue came towards us wrapped in a bath towel, with only her long white legs showing.
“What about your hair?” I asked. “Would you like to borrow my cap?”
“I shan’t bother, thank you. May I leave my glasses with you?” She handed them to me and started to pick her way down to the water peering anxiously at the gravel.
“Here, take my arm,” said Tom. “I won’t let you fall into a rose-bush.” Susan and Caro ran after them. As I began to feed Nicholas, Jean-Pierre turned up with remarkable promptitude.
“You’ve been spying through the hedge,” I told him severely.
“Of course,” he said with no apology flinging himself at my feet again. “I don’t like crowds.”
“Why did you go away so quickly when Prue came?”
“I don’t like slugs either. That girl needs toasting.”
“She has started now.”
I gestured towards the merry splashing at the bottom of the garden.
“So I see,” said Jean-Pierre. “When she is well oiled and roasted she will be a choicer morsel.”
“Jean-Pierre, what a cannibalistic turn of phrase.”
“It is true. And she must have dark glasses.”
“Yes. I don’t suppose she can afford them.”
“Would you like her to have them?”
“Of course.”
“Then I shall buy them for her — to please you, not her, let it be understood, because it is not right that you should be waited on by an ugly white stick of celery.”
“I don’t expect she will wait on me much. Poor Prue, she’s not quite as ugly as that surely?”
“No. She has good legs, good ‘attaches’ and a fine firm body, a bit too like a boy — but it is as if she had just been dug up from the cellar. Why is she not working for you now?”
“It’s her first day and she’s tired.”
“She does not look tired. She strikes out well with her legs down there. You should begin as you mean to go on, so my mother says, with servants.”
“But Prue isn’t exactly a servant.”
“Are you not paying her to work for you?”
“Not very much money.”
“Any money at all makes her a servant.”
“No. We can’t treat her as a servant. She is a great friend of my sister’s, and I am sorry for her. She’s an orphan and lives with an aunt who does not like her, so you see you must be very kind to her; I want her to have a really happy holiday here.”
“I will do what you say, Mary.”
“After all, Jean-Pierre, everyone can’t be as brown as you. You’ve been working at your sunburn for nearly two months now. Prue has come straight from London.”
Jean-Pierre rolled on to his back and flung his arms out sideways in a wide gesture. “You admit then, Mary, that I am a fine virile colour?”
I looked at his strong chest, somewhat the shade of a Guernsey cow, and agreed.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we will begin to educate Mlle. Prue.”
“Educate?” I enquired nervously, uncertain of the principles of Swiss upbringing.
“Begin to cook her, if you prefer.”
When Jean-Pierre arrived with his canvas next morning, he found Prue, Susan and Caro peacefully collecting smooth pieces of gravel at my feet.
He spoke severely to Prue. “Do not let me detain you, Mademoiselle. I can watch the little girls. I expect you have work in the house.”
Prue looked enquiringly at me. “Is there something, Mary?”
“Well — there are always the lunch vegetables. But bring the basin out here.”
As she ran into the house I turned to Jean-Pierre. “Really,” I said. “You must not speak to her like that. I thought I explained to you yesterday? And in any case how is she to get brown if she stays indoors?”
“Ah, I had forgotten the frying. But she is buttoned up to the neck. All that will happen is a peeling nose and white skull holes for the eyes under the glasses. Is she to be with us every morning now?”
“I don’t know, Jean-Pierre, but don’t be so ridiculous. What does it matter if she is?”
At this moment Prue returned, walking carefully with a bowl of water.
“A gauche, à gauche, Mademoiselle,” barked Jean-Pierre irritably as he saw her about to settle within the framework of the picture. Grunting, he applied himself to his palette.
Prue brushed the new potatoes with a soft, wet swish, Caro breathed heavily in her attempt to build a house with round intractable pebbles.
“Jean-Pierre has offered to buy you some dark glasses, Prue,” I remarked. “Won’t that be nice?”
Prue looked up startled at this further strange evidence of artistic temperament. “Really?” she asked. “Why?”
“He thinks it is dangerous for you to be without them with your weak eyesight. I imagine we can get some made quickly to your prescription out here.”
“We shall go this afternoon to Geneva,” announced Jean-Pierre. “All of us.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Not all. Just take Caro.”
“My want car, my want car,” screamed Susan.
“No,” I said. “You can’t all go. Prue wouldn’t be able to make herself heard in the shop. You shall have an extra sweet instead, Susan.”
When I had laid Nicholas to sleep in the shade of the cherry-tree, Jean-Pierre still showed no signs of leaving. “Why don’t you put on your bathing dress?” I asked Prue. “You’ll find some oil in my room.”
“Oh no. I couldn’t, Mary. Not that two-piece one, I’d feel awful.” She unbuttoned the top button of her cotton frock as a concession to the sun.
“You will grow an ugly red V-neck,” said Jean-Pierre.
She buttoned it up again quickly.
All the afternoon I slept like the children behind the half-closed shutters of my bedroom. I woke to the tooting of Jean-Pierre’s horn at our front door, slipped on my dress again, sponged my face, and ran down to welcome them home. I scarcely recognised Prue. She stepped out of the car wearing a charming white and black sun-dress, a big straw hat, dark glasses and carrying a new handbag.
Jean-Pierre at the wheel smiled at my astonished face. “It was worth it to see you so surprised, Mary,” he said. “I have equipped her fully. Even to a set of new underwear.” Prue blushed and lifted a corner of her skirt that I might admire her frilly nylon panties.
“And new lipstick and powder, Mary, he thought of everything.”
“But Jean-Pierre, why? How can we possibly thank you enough?”
“To please you, Mary. Besides it was fun.”
“And Mary,” said Prue, “these glasses are only to go on with, I’m to have some I can really see through. They’ll be ready in a few days.” She twirled round on the gravel in an ecstasy of
delight.
“Jean-Pierre, I just never had so many pretty clothes before in my life.” She lifted a yellow jacket and a cardboard box out of the back of the car.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A negligee for the warm evenings,” said Jean-Pierre. “And a nightdress.”
“Well I’m damned,” I remarked.
“But Prue,” said Jean-Pierre, “you are not to forget what you promised me.”
“I won’t,” called Prue as he drove off.
“My dear — what can you have promised him to repay such kindness?” I asked anxiously.
“Only to sun-bathe regularly every day, so that I get the right colour to go with this lovely dress. He said it was best to sun-bathe naked.”
“Did he? Where did he suggest you do that?”
“Oh, in the long grass. Our roof is not flat like his.”
“Well, well, well. Hease choose your times discreetly. We don’t want to be arrested.”
Jean-Pierre had rather overdone his generosity. When I saw the house-coat he had given her, I worried even more.
“Look, look, Mary,” she called from the top of the stairs and floated down in elegant twirls of white and grey.
Her disappearance after tea seemed to be accounted for by the fact that she had now washed her hair and left it loose and unplaited, tied back with a grey ribbon. I had to admit that Jean-Pierre had chosen his extravagances with taste and suitability. There was nothing that a young girl shouldn't wear, but they were none of them exactly what a young English girl usually wears. I sighed. Certainly we couldn’t return anything now, so poor Prue might as well have some fun out of them.
“You look very pretty, dear,” I said truthfully. She carried her glasses in her hand. “But if you are not going to wear your glasses you must not try to see anything. You spoil the whole effect if you peer about like a tortoise. Come along, supper’s ready.”
“So soon. Can I help at all?”
“Not in that garment,” I replied, but without bitterness. I could remember the first seductive dress I ever wore. It was hard on Prue that Tom never even looked up from his book when she made her entry. I had to draw his attention to her in the end, and tell him the whole story.