The Ballad and the Source

by Rosamond Lehmann

  Silence.

  “Did she recognise it?” I said.

  “She recognised it.”

  “What happened then?”

  “It was the finish. At the top of her lungs she shrieked out: ‘There she is! There! I knew it! Kill her! Kill her!’ And in a flash she’d seized up one of his modelling knives, and rushed at it and jabbed and jabbed. …” It must have been a good likeness anyway,’ said Gil.”

  Maisie burst into laughter, and I laughed too. We both went on shaking for about half a minute.

  “Did she jab it to bits?” I said. “Spoil it absolutely?”

  “Pretty well. It wasn’t there any more. He said he’d broken it up afterwards: he thought it was best to destroy all trace of it. … He let her go on knifing it for a bit, and then he told her that that was about enough, she’d quite killed her off, would she give him the knife now, so that he could clean it? He had a nasty moment, he said, thinking she might start on his face; but she was more or less exhausted by her effort with Sibyl, and she gave it back like a lamb. He spoke to her by her name—Ianthe—in a cheerful, friendly way, and persuaded her into the other room and locked the door between. She got quite quiet. The only thing she said was: ‘Is she dead?’ He wasn’t sure if she meant Cherry or Sibyl. He said yes, she was. She said: ‘You swear it? You swear she won’t ever come back?’ So then he knew she meant Sibyl; but of course he had to swear it. They had a chat about this and that—very tricky for him, she was quite batty: he agreed with her how much more satisfactory things would be now. After a bit it began to dawn on her she hadn’t got Cherry yet, and she started to boil up again—and went for the door, and then for the window, and him. … And then we turned up. The rest you know.”

  “Yes,” I said, sighing. “Though I keep on wondering if I’m dreaming you’re telling me such things.”

  “I said to Gil: ‘Well, whatever Sibyl may have to be told, it’s obvious she mustn’t see her.’ You see, what with Mother thinking she’d done her in, and having it sworn to by Gil, it would be unfortunate all round, I saw, if Sibyl rose from the dead and appeared before Mother, as fit as ever. I thrashed about with schemes for taking her away myself as soon as she was able to travel. But Gil said he counted on me to be sensible and not turn out one more of this family who thought she could bring off what was impossible. I saw the force of that. I said I really must apologise for the frightful nuisance and embarrassment we’d brought on him, and I did want to thank him. He told me to shut up. ‘Not that I don’t simply detest having your mother in my bedroom,’ he said. ‘But I guarantee my corpse in the last ditch.’ We drank some lovely cold white wine; and then we agreed he’d better go up to the house, to Sibyl, and leave me. He said I needn’t be afraid anything would happen while he was away. I wasn’t afraid. We decided we must simply concentrate on keeping quiet for to-night, and make up our minds to-morrow what was to be done. He told me to help myself to eggs to make an omelette, and then he went away. I couldn’t be bothered to cook, I ate some rolls and butter; and then I went softly into the bedroom, and sat in the armchair. … When he got back I don’t know, because, though I tried to keep awake, I went bang off to sleep and didn’t wake up till seven o’clock next morning. It was queer coming to with a start and seeing her half sitting up in bed, watching me. I said: ‘Hallo, Mother,’ —I did say it then, I was sleepy; and she said—what do you think she said?”

  “What?”

  “She said: ‘Maisie, you shouldn’t sleep with your mouth open, you’ve been snoring.’”

  “She didn’t!” I said joyfully. “Just like that?”

  “Absolutely. Just having a long cool stare at me, and teasing me, like Malcolm or anybody might. I made some sort of a joke, and she giggled. I don’t know when I’d last heard her laugh in that cheerful sort of way. It reminded me of that time in the London hotel, when that Tilly came. I heard her giggling in the next room with Tilly, while she was dressing to go out. She said she was hungry, so I got her some breakfast and she enjoyed it and polished off every scrap; and I washed her face and tidied her up a bit, and she smiled and chatted all the time. She complained that her head tickled, so I said would she like me to wash her hair, and she said yes, very much. So I helped her out of bed—she was remarkably spry—and I took her to the bathroom and washed it in the basin with some of Gil’s hair-wash, and gave her head a jolly good massage. I said: ‘That’ll clear away the cobwebs,’ and she laughed and said it was what Tilly used to say. Then I took her out and sat her in the sun to dry it. I managed to take a peep through the studio window and saw Gil lying fast asleep on the couch. I put her chair round the corner, well out of sight of him. She looked like a little girl with her hair all loose over her shoulders. And that’s how she behaved,” added Maisie, looking slightly grim. “She was a little girl of six, and I was her nurse.”

  I said timidly:

  “Did it seem—sort of—all right?”

  “Yes—and no. No. She seemed a bit on the silly side. Silly and placid. Considering everything, it wasn’t exactly natural to be so carefree. But I was so relieved, I didn’t worry about that. I decided it was the first step towards recovery.”

  “Didn’t she mention anything? About what had happened?”

  “Not a syllable. She looked at her bandaged hands in an interested way, but she didn’t refer to them. She didn’t ask whose house she was in or where Gil was or anything. It was as if the whole thing had been sponged clean off her mind and she was starting again from scratch.”

  “Did she treat you as if—as if she knew she was your mother?”

  “I can’t say she did,” said Maisie, sardonic. “Merely as if I was familiar to her, and could be trusted to—to keep things bright and jolly.”

  “She didn’t talk about Cherry?”

  “Oh, dear me, no. Never mentioned her. Nor Malcolm. And of course I knew better by this time than to refer to them. No, I just let her rip. She wanted to teach me German words—most peculiar. And she sang a little German song. In between times she sat staring, rather vacant, but not in the least dejected. She carried on as if she was having a nice holiday with somebody she took for granted would look after her. The only thing I didn’t like was that now and then I felt her watching me when I wasn’t looking at her; and directly I did, she’d look away. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.”

  “Oh yes—” I began eagerly, recalling the eyes of Ianthe, fixed, sliding aside, in Florence, in Bohemia. I checked myself.

  “Yes,” agreed Maisie, unsuspicious. “It’s a symptom. I realised it was queer, but all the same I didn’t bother about it. The great thing was to feel so certain there was no violence left in her; and that I could keep up my part in this new sort of act, as easy as kiss my hand. After about an hour of it she said she wanted her own brush and comb, and wanted to put on a clean frock. So I decided to risk taking her back to the inn. I thought the Meuniers would probably be busy in the back regions; and as it was the middle of the week there weren’t likely to be many people coming in. I looked in again through the studio window, and saw Gil still fast asleep. I told her to wait a moment and tiptoed in and scribbled on a big piece of paper to say where we were, and everything was perfectly all right, no need to worry, and left it propped up against a jar on his table. She never asked me what I’d been doing, or gave so much as a twitch of the head as we went by the door. She still had her hair down her back, and she would stop to pick wild flowers in the bank; and on the bridge she stopped for ages to look at the shoals of little fishes. She simply delighted in them. I told her to hurry up and change, and I’d take her on the river. If she couldn’t manage to do up her dress by herself, I’d see to it when she came down. I thought I’d better not go up with her in case somebody saw us and thought it peculiar. I went and untied our boat and brought it up to the landing stage. While I was waiting, Pierre Meunier came down and said ‘Bonjour,’ and told me his wife had gone to the market. I
told him I was going to take the English lady for a row. He nodded in what I thought rather a meaning way—but all he said was, ah, her health was re-established then; and I said yes, and that I’d made friends with her. And he said it must be agreeable for her to meet some compatriots; and then he said: ‘Alors, bon voyage, Mademoiselle,’ and went away. And what if anything the Meuniers saw, or guessed, of what happened before, or what came after, I know no more than the dead. … She came down in a blue embroidered muslin frock, and was as pleased as Punch when I admired it. I did her up at the back and she called me clumsy. She brought a blue ribbon for me to tie her hair back. She asked how she looked and I said lovely. She said rather petulantly she was sure I’d made a horrid bow. So I had. But she didn’t look too bad. And off we went for a jolly row.”

  “Was it?” I inquired, not optimistic.

  “Well, taking it all round, it was. Yes, I must say we had a pleasant morning. She was all smiles and smoothness, and she examined every detail of the little houses as we passed, and made remarks about them. She said: ‘I do like this place, I’d like to live here. I’ve always wanted to live by a little river full of cresses and reeds and rushes and little fishes.’ She talked about a wonderful farm in Bohemia where she’d stayed once when she was a girl; and a stream where she used to go fishing. I suppose that’s where she learnt German—though it’s funny she never sang those German songs to us when we were little. … The only what you might call realistic moment was when she glanced sideways at me and off again, and said suddenly: ‘That man won’t come again, will he?’ ‘Which man?’ I said; and she said: ‘The bad one with the beard.’”

  “The doctor.”

  “‘Mm.’ I said perhaps he would just come to see that her hands were getting better; and she said: ‘I don’t want him. Keep him away. You can do my hands.’ I said casually I thought he was really quite kind, it was only his beard that made him look nasty; but much to my relief she changed the subject. She said she was hungry again, so I rowed back, and when we got to the landing stage, there was Gil, looking very forbidding. He said good-morning to her politely, and gave her a hand out; and then on the pretext of helping me get the boat round into the boathouse, he jumped in beside me and muttered in a furious voice: ‘Maisie, you must be mad.’ I saw he’d been frightfully anxious. I said: ‘But she’s all right, I promise you. It’s all over. You can see for yourself.’ He said it was time to stop playing with the situation. ‘Well, what do you suggest?’ We snapped at each other rather. He said: ‘Today, Sibyl must be told.’ ‘Who’s to tell her?’ I said. ‘I shall,’ he said. But,” added Maisie slowly, “he didn’t.”

  I waited, silent. She went on:

  “We landed from the boathouse—it’s a wet boathouse with steps leading into the garden—and joined her. She stood, and looked up at him very, very searchingly. Just as much as she avoided looking at me she looked deep at him with her enormous dark eyes. I wonder what was in her mind. … He said in a friendly formal way he hoped she would have no objection to his joining us for lunch. As a regular customer at this inn, he would like to introduce her to the delicious cuisine. She said: ‘Do you live here?’ and he said he was living temporarily near by. She said wistfully: ‘I wish I lived here. It’s such a gentle place.’ It sounded affected, I thought she was showing off to him. He said he’d go in and see Madame Meunier about an extra special lunch, and she and I went and sat in the summer-­house. And gradually the change began to come over her.”

  “What sort of change?”

  “She got silent. She didn’t smile any more. She stared at the table and looked dejected. When the food came she wouldn’t touch it.”

  “Oh dear!”

  “What a meal, my God! Gil and I exchanged some remarks about the weather. My heart began to sink into my boots. Not that she was violent or suspicious or anything. Just miserable. Suddenly she raised her eyes to Gil again, and said like an anxious pleading child: ‘I wish I could stay here. I do want to.’”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “Oh … Poor Gil! He put his head in his hands and ruffled his hair up, thinking hard. Then he began to ask her questions in a very kind way—where she’d come from, what sort of life she’d been living, had she any friends—questions like that.”

  “Did she answer?”

  “She answered quite simply and straightforwardly. She said that she’d had a very unhappy life for a long time; and that in the end she’d tried to kill herself. She said it was three years ago, but she didn’t go into it. She’d been very ill, she said, and was nursed by nuns in a convent, somewhere in the south of France; and that when she got better she wanted to stay there, and never come out into the world again. So she stayed. She’d been very happy and peaceful at first, she said, and felt sure she had the vocation to become a nun and end her days there. But after a bit she began to have doubts and to lose her faith, and wanted to get back to the world; and finally they turned her out. When she came out she didn’t know what to do. She went to Switzerland—Geneva, I think—where she thought she still had some friends. I’ve heard about them. The husband was a Cambridge don, and she lived with them for a time before she married, and went out to India with them. She was very fond of them, I think. But she found that the husband had died ages ago, and the wife had left Switzerland and gone away, she didn’t know where. Then she decided to go to Paris to find a man who’d once loved her—who she thought would be glad to see her again. She called him Marcel.”

  “That one!” I exclaimed. “That you took a dislike to in Paris that time.”

  “What a memory you’ve got. That one. And if I could hunt him down I’d murder him.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Fled from her like the plague, I suppose. She said: ‘He didn’t want me. …’ Well, she had changed. She’d lost her looks. I don’t know who he is, or anything about him. I’ve just got it stuck in my mind, I don’t know why, that he was a very prosperous well-known worldly man—a famous actor or something. Of course he’d be annoyed to have a wreck like her hanging round, doing him no credit.”

  “What did she do then?”

  “She lived with men, I think. Ones she picked up, who gave her money.” Maisie paused. “She didn’t say so in so many words, she was very vague about it—or confused. And we didn’t ask her, of course. But out of the blue, staring at Gil, she said suddenly that once, in Paris, she met what she called a terrible sad man: an Indian; and he had a skin disease; and in the whole wide world he had nobody at all. She stayed with him, she said, because he was so much—lower down than she was; and while she was with him she didn’t need to pity herself. She was better off than someone. But he disappeared one day and never came back again.”

  “He left her?”

  “Perhaps,” said Maisie slowly, “he preferred not to be pitied. Or perhaps he killed himself.”

  “Was she left absolutely alone after that?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “She must be very brave.”

  “She was always brave,” said Maisie, pleased with me. “Gil said the same. He wanted to give her a bit of conceit of herself.” She paused; then added, judicial: “Not that it was really necessary. She sounded rather proud of it all. I think it’s only in books that women are ashamed of being prostitutes. Her idea was to make herself interesting to Gil—dramatic, important.”

  “What did she do next?” I said, matter of fact, hoping to conceal shock.

  “What she told him was that she realised then that it was time to change her life—that she knew that work was the only real salvation. She decided to take up teaching again, she said. She told him all about her super qualifications, and how any seat of learning would be more than pleased to have her on their staff. But first she wanted to write a novel about her experiences—that’s why she’d come down here: to dash off a stunning novel. Funny how writer’s blood will out.”

 
“What? I thought she’d come to—” I saved myself. “But she didn’t want to say that, I suppose.”

  “Oh no. She’d washed all that out. It was only later, as I told you, that I found out she’d written to Auntie Mack for news of us. And begged her for a small loan. Which Auntie Mack sent by return. No—I’m perfectly convinced the real reason why she came down, poor thing, was to visit Cherry’s grave in secret. And then I expect, she meant to come on to England and see Malcolm and me.”

  “I’m certain that’s what she meant to do,” I said earnestly.

  “But it turned out she had too much to face when she got there: too many memories, I suppose, too many shocks. It brought on her madness again. And now she’d got a new brainwave: not to go away. To settle down where she was.”

  “To be near you?” I hazarded.

  “Near me? Good God, no!” said Maisie, with a coarse bark of laughter. “Presently she leaned over to Gil and whispered confidentially: ‘I do wish this girl would go away.’”

  “Meaning you?”

  “Meaning me.”

  I writhed in my chair.

  “And then we saw Tanya. She was starting to cross the bridge, and Gil called out to her. She did look staggered when she saw us. She stayed at the bridge and beckoned to me. I went down to her, and told her the position as quickly as I could. And she said there was trouble brewing up at the house: I must go back immediately. Sibyl had appeared at lunch, on the war-path. The fact that I was down again at the river had been ill received. She’d said: ‘If that obsessed creature cannot be weaned from her addiction, I must personally inspect the water-weeds this very afternoon. I do not wish a fatality to mar her design of acquiring gills.’”

  Once more, I could not refrain from laughter.

  “At least, I bet that’s what she said. I wasn’t present. Tanya also said she’d remarked in a sharp though casual way that she presumed I had returned some time last night to lay my limbs on terra firma. Tanya said, oh yes, of course. She’d ruffled up my bed, she told me, to make it look slept in. I asked if Sibyl had rung her bell in the night. She said yes, twice. And that the second time she’d asked her to open the shutters wide so that she could see the moon; and said in a gentle reflective sort of way: ‘This summer moonlight has an intoxicating quality. I expect you find it so.’”