by Alec Waugh
I had four hours to put in there between planes : four hours in which to reconstruct four years. In brooding reverie I followed the noisy street along the narrow stream that once, as Abana, had been compared contemptuously with Jordan. It was very hot, and I walked slowly towards the cool of the bazaars.
For the tourist Damascus, like Aleppo, is its bazaars. When you look down on them from the citadel you can see how the souks follow an ordered pattern, but under their arched roofs you are in a labyrinth. They are arranged, so you are told, in order; certain sections are set apart for certain trades. One street is reserved for silversmiths and one for goldsmiths. The gold is sold by weight. Its yellow under the electric light is so vivid that it seems unreal. The designs of the bangles are so commonplace and tasteless that you feel that you are being offered brass-work at a county fair. Certain streets are reserved for goods of quality. There is the equivalent of Regent Street and the equivalent of the Bon Marché, Brixton. But to the inexperienced visitor it is all one jumble.
The noise is constant and insistent, the rattle of harness, the tinkle of camel-bells, the honking of horns, the raising of impatient voices, the murmur of gossip. Cabs and carts and camels jostle the pedestrian into the gutter. But the salesmen in the small theatres of their shops contribute nothing to the general din. They sit impassive among their goods. They do not solicit custom. They will bargain with you endlessly; that is their game, and they enjoy it. But their pride will not allow them to invite refusal. If you are interested in their goods, they will display them to you, for as long as you choose to look, in a spirit of Arab hospitality. Their time is yours, you are their guests. They will not press you to buy. Sometimes they will offer you a cup of coffee, but the offer of it entails no obligation. There is a dignity of salesmanship in the souks.
When you look down from the citadel you can see how much space is included within the framework of the bazaars, in the same way that looking down on England from an aeroplane you can see how much land lies behind the ribbon development of the roads that radiate from London. It is here, between and behind the souks, that many of the rich Damascene merchants have their houses. One such house, the Azid Palace, is on show to tourists. It is a large, low building, or rather a succession of low buildings, with courtyards and fountains and rooms set round them—rooms with painted ceilings and rich, harmonising colours; a spacious air of leisure and deliberation. It is hard to realise that only a few yards away are the din and traffic of the souks.
I have spent many days, many hours in Damascus, but I have seen it as the tourist sees it, from outside. I have never been a part of it. I had no Arab friends there. I never gossiped in the ample palaces that lie behind the brass-bound doors. I have only had occasional glimpses of the richness of its hidden life. I had one such glimpse on this last brief visit. I had a few pounds of Iraqi currency that I wanted to change into French francs. Syria, like Lebanon, is an open market. I went to a small money-changer. Two or three other customers were being served. One of them was noticeably ragged; he had shuffled across the counter a pile of medium-sized yellow coins, which the trader was dividing into piles of ten and wrapping up in newspaper. I was reminded of Lily busy over Leslie’s two-cent pieces. The customer produced from his capacious pockets—designed to accommodate the birth of the next Mahommed—a further store of coins. It looked like being a prolonged transaction. I wondered whether I could not with my few but higher valued notes claim precedence. Before I intervened, however, I took the precaution of glancing to see what kind of coin was being wrapped up so carefully. It was as well I did. They were English sovereigns. It is thirty-five years since such coins have been in circulation in the land where they are minted. That high pile of sovereigns produced from the grubby pocket in a dusty store is typical of the vast and hidden wealth of the long-storied city of Damascus.
VII
Villefranche-Sur-Mer
IN THE summer of 1932 the continental Daily Mail referred to me in a gossip paragraph as Mr. Alec Waugh of Villefranche. During the three previous years I had made it my headquarters. It was the perfect place in which to work. Though only a few miles from Nice, it was cut off from the fashionable Riviera life that stretches a continuous succession of villas, restaurants, and beaches from Menton to La Napoule. A fishing village, cut back into the solid rock on the edge of the finest natural harbour along the coast, it had a distinct and separate existence of its own.
The Welcome Hotel is on the water-front. After my morning swim and coffee, I would sit on the terrace, under the plane trees, at a round blue table, working on my stories. On the railing in front and along the quay, fishing nets lay out to dry. The womenfolk of the fishermen were at work repairing them. Behind me was the Place du Marche. Fruit and vegetables were on sale, and cheapish hosiery. Innumerable small urchins scrambled and tumbled about the steps leading from the terrace to the bar.
The sun-soaked hours passed by tranquilly. I would write, swim, lunch, then write and swim again. By the early afternoon the sun would have sunk behind Mont Boron, the harbour would be in shadow, and the water would take on a glassy, mauve-flecked, wine-coloured sheen. In the evening after dinner I would sit out in front of the Welcome Bar, over my fine and coffee, looking out across the harbour towards the dark, humped outline of Cap Ferrat. Girls, slim, pale-skinned, dark-haired, would saunter slowly in couples along the water-front; while young men, in sleeveless maillots, clustered by the steps, in groups, watching them with predatory eyes. Later I would go into the upper town, to the Garden Bar in the Rue du Poilu.
Day after day it went on like that. The big cars raced above me, along the Corniche Road. The blue train roared past, not stopping between Nice and Beaulieu. Now and again, every five days or so, I would feel restless, in no mood for work, in need of relaxation; then I would go into Nice. It was quite an expedition. First there was a ten minutes’ climb up to the Octroi; then the wait for anything up to a quarter of an hour for the rattling little one-track tram that ran out from Nice. Villefranche was so cut off from the general life of the coast that I felt I was living on an island; the tram was like a ferry service with the mainland. It took a full twenty minutes to reach Nice. When I took the return ferry in the evening, it was always with a sense of liberation that I strolled back down the steep winding road into the harbour.
Now and again a man-of-war—French, English, or American —would anchor for four or five days in the harbour. The whole town went mad. Girls would come out from Nice. Every café would have its jazz band. Dancing would stop at two, but all night long the water-front would be disturbed by late revellers who had missed the last launch to the ship. You slept in snatches. No one could say that he knew Villefranche until he had been there when a ship was in. But no sooner had the last launch gone, than the fishing nets were spread along the cobbles; Villefranche became itself again.
For three years Villefranche was as good a place to work as I have found, then suddenly, overnight, it changed. The ferry service was suspended and its place was taken by a large blue motor coach that ran straight into the market-place. It was a half-hour service and was a godsend for the inhabitants, but it introduced a restless atmosphere. There was a constant coming and going. The market had to move into the upper town. Villefranche was now linked with all those other playgrounds—Cannes and Beaulieu and Juan les Pins. I was no longer living upon an island. I never again used Villefranche as a place to work. I continued, however, to pay it regular visits. I did not want to lose touch with the friends that I had made there—particularly with Cécile who ran the Garden Bar, of whom I have written in another book, now out of print, Most Women. That chapter was written in the autumn of 1930; since then very much has happened.
When I met her first in the late summer of 1929 she was sixteen and a half years old. Meridionale and half Italian, of medium height and very slim, she wore her black hair high-piled above her forehead with long curls falling to her shoulders. She had the look of a tulip that its stalk only with difficul
ty supported. Her face, shaped like a heart, was of a magnolia whiteness. Her mouth was very small, her teeth were white and even. She had a long, straight nose.
I was then thirty-one and I had no entanglements. The scene was well set for a conventional magazine short story. And in a sense, I suppose, that was what it was.
It was a strange tendresse. During the three years that Villefranche was my office I was never once alone with her. I rarely saw her outside her bar. She would join me at my table, we would play cards with the fishermen and the masons from the upper town—a rather foolish game that they called ‘Petit Cochon’; we would dance together to the gramophone; I would translate the love letters that English sailors who could not speak one word of French had written her; she would recount the local gossip; she would ask me about the latest arrivals at the Welcome; we would hold hands sometimes, but very openly; we would write each other letters when I was away. At Christmas and Easter she would send me elaborate embossed postcards depicting doves in the process of ringing bells. From my weekly visits to Nice I would return with an Algerian bag or comb.
Once I found her in a sullen, discontented mood, She would not sit at my table. She was too busy. She had other clients. She barely nodded when I said good night. Next morning my writing was interrupted by her sister. Cécile was furious; she had been told that I had bathed alone by moonlight with one of the hotel guests. I had better go up straight away and make my peace.
Those few minutes of convincing her of the complete propriety of my behaviour was the only ‘incident’ in those three years. Or at least it was the only scene in which Cécile herself was to play a part. For there was another scene, in London a year later.
“Well, if you really think it’s a good idea,” I was to be told, “let’s stage it in a romantic place. Let’s go to Villefranche.”
I shook my head.
“Why not? In that last book of yours that’s how you made it sound.”
Again I shook my head. “I’d rather go somewhere else.”
I was fixed with one of those suspicious glances that read into one’s most secret thoughts. “It’s either going to be Villefranche or nowhere,” I was told.
It was nowhere. I was not going to have Cécile’s feelings hurt.
Those two incidents—and no more.
It was in my own mind that such drama as there was took place. Maupassant wrote in La Parure of certain women born to humble circumstances who carry within themselves gifts that properly developed would set them at their ease in any milieu. As I watched Cécile pass from table to table with the grace of a hostess moving among her guests, I pictured that charm and graciousness displayed against other backgrounds. What a waste that her whole life should be spent in this quiet port; that she should never have the chance of figuring in a larger world.
I allowed my imagination to picture her in Paris. Suppose I were to buy a bar, to install her as its patronne.
It would not be difficult to persuade her, nor impossible to convince her parents, that it would be a great opportunity, a chance for her to make something of her life. It might be a big success. “Why not?” I asked myself.
But as I said, this is one of those stories in which nothing happened, although almost anything might have happened. Two years later, in the autumn of 1934, I was one of the dozen guests at Cécile’s marriage to the son of a local gardener.
Our friendship did not end there. I went to the south of France at least once a year, and during every visit I saw Cécile. I became good friends with her husband Paul; he was small, well-built, and neat. He worked as an under-gardener and mechanic on the estate where his father was head gardener. It was a large estate, at Cimiez, owned by a branch of the de Vogues, a family that owns a proprietory interest in Moet Chandon.
I remember in particular an unexpected visit that I paid in the spring of 1937. I had sailed direct from New York by the Italian Line. Two of the de Vogues were on the boat. We docked on a Saturday, and on the Sunday morning I went out to Cimiez. I arrived at about eleven, with the intention of inviting Cécile and Paul either to lunch or to dine with me. They insisted, however, that I should lunch with them. They were going over to Paul’s parents. There would be, they assured me, plenty for us all.
That lunch was a revelation to me of the style in which the French petits bourgeois live. It was, as I said, a Sunday, but they could not have made any special preparations for me; the meal must have been in preparation some while before. It consisted of a thick vegetable soup, stuffed aubergines, roast chicken, cheese. Through the meal we drank a very reasonable vin de table, but with the coffee, as this was an occasion, a bottle of champagne was opened. The meal was served in the kitchen. Though the de Vogues in the big house were lunching with greater elegance, I do not think they can have fared any better. As I sipped the champagne I wondered how my opposite number would have fared in England: a French novelist who had begun a romantic friendship with a teashop girl at Eastbourne. I am sure that he would have been hospitably received by her in-law’s; but what form would the hospitality have taken? Darts and beer at the local; then back to the cottage for the Sunday joint; or would there have been a high-tea, or perhaps a picnic; a ‘run out’ in the car to a neighbouring beauty spot. Cécile and Paul had practically no money, but their daughter Liliane was always neatly dressed; they themselves were smart. Their rooms were nicely furnished; I was always surprised how well they fed.
So it went on, through ’37, ’38, and ’39.
In the early spring of 1940 I received a wistful letter. Life, Cécile wrote, was precarious now. Paul was in the army, I was with the B.E.F. We might never meet again. She wanted me to know how much those days at Villefranche in the bar had meant to her.
The letter reached me in the lull that preceded the opening of the big attack. I had leisure to brood upon that letter. Through a long afternoon I brooded. No, I did not find myself regretting a withstood temptation. I would not have had things otherwise. But I felt curious, inquisitive. I wished that when one reached a cross-roads in life one could take both turnings, or that at least one could send a scout ahead to tell one what lay along the road one did not take. How would it have all turned out, I wondered, if I had taken that bar for her in Paris?
It was not until the spring of 1947 that I again saw Villefranche.
I was taut, expectant, excited, as the rapide on its way through to Beaulieu, came out of the tunnel, and I saw the familiar waterfront.
For seven years I had had no news of Villefranche. For five of those seven years it had lain behind an iron curtain. The newspapers had told me nothing. The issue in France had been presented in terms of an oppressed people: of penury, restriction, and discomfort; of base collaborators and a gallant underground; of hostages and spies and torture. It was, I knew, only half the story. The whole truth cannot be told in war-time. Wars can only be won by the maintenance of morale. Nothing must be whispered that might diminish a people’s faith in the validity of its cause, the virtue of its allies, the certainty and the advantages of victory. The party-line changes from hour to hour. Stalin the traitor of the Hitler pact becomes overnight the champion of freedom. In the autumn of 1939 an attempt was made by censorship to suppress a novel by A. G. Macdonnell, Flight from a Woman, on the grounds that by criticising Mussolini it might offend Italian susceptibilities.
In the early June of 1940, when the French armies were in full retreat and scarcely a British gun remained in France, the British Minister of Information declared over the radio that anyone suggesting that France might make a separate peace was either the paid tool of Germany, or he was a fool because he was the unpaid tool of Germany. It was no doubt a prudent and politic announcement at a time when there was still an outside possibility of France continuing the struggle from North Africa, just as it was prudent and politic of Sir Stafford Cripps to deny in July 1949 that he had any intention of devaluing the pound; for there was still a possibility of his saving it. That is one of the inevitable consequences o
f the twentieth century’s version of democracy. Politicians cannot afford to tell the truth. Their promises are not binding. The situation changes, and they do not bother to eat their words. They fix a different menu.
Common sense told me that the official picture of life in Occupied France must have been a partial one. It was essential for the German plan that France should be acquiescent, that there should be a relative degree of comfort and well-being; that the machine should work. Apparently it did. Money did not completely lose its value. The traffic of life went on, and De Gaulle was both surprised and disconcerted by the air of prosperity that he found in Paris. Common sense and my experiences in Lebanon with Spears’ Mission had taught me that you could not explain France in the brightly contracted opposites of gallant Maquis and base collaborators. It was a case of divided loyalties. When an armistice was signed in Syria in July 1941, an opportunity was given to the Vichy forces to rally to De Gaulle. Many of them did, but many returned to France. It was by no means a question of the brave remaining and the less brave going home. Many of those who stayed, soldiers and civilians, did so for reasons of convenience; they had recently married; they had a comfortable house; they liked the climate; in France they would be cold and hungry. While many good Frenchmen felt that their loyalty lay at home, France had lost the war. Their Government had made peace with Germany. They must accept the decision of their Government. Petain was an honoured name. It was their duty now to help rebuild their country’s fortunes.