by Rumer Godden
Who was Paul? Nobody knew. Even his name might have belonged to almost any nationality; it was one of the few that hardly change in pronunciation from one country to another. Paul could have been English, German, French, Austrian, Russian. His mother, Madame Corbet said contemptuously, had ‘gone with the soldiers’.
“Gone where?” asked Hester, but nobody answered that. “Our father’s a botanist,” Hester told Paul. “What’s yours?”
“Un troufion,” said Paul, and when we looked mystified he pretended to march and salute.
“Oh, a soldier!” I said.
“What was his name?” asked Hester, but the father did not seem to have had a name. One day Paul said, “J’avais une p’tite soeur.”
“A little sister?” By then Hester was beginning to understand.
“Une mulâtre,” said Paul carelessly, and, seeing we did not understand that either, he said, “Une négresse,” and showed half on his finger.
“Negro? But you are not mulat . . . what you called it,” we said, puzzled, and asked, “Where is she, your sister?”
Paul shrugged.
“Don’t you know?”
He shook his head. “Elle a disparu.”
Hester looked enquiringly at me. “She disappeared,” I said.
“Does he mean dead?” asked Hester.
I tried him with that. “Morte?” I asked sympathetically.
“Perdue,” said Paul. “Pssts,” and he made as if to throw something away.
“But you don’t lose sisters.” Paul’s silence said clearly that you did. We felt dizzy.
He had been found in the American camp when it was broken up; the soldiers themselves had found him and been kind. When they went home to America he was taken to the almshouse, the Hotel-Dieu. “God’s hotel?” asked Hester. “That should have been good.” But Madame Corbet said it was where they put old people waiting to die, and lunatics and badly treated children from the courts, “That doesn’t sound good,” said Hester doubtfully.
Madame Corbet did not seem disturbed. “Where are they to go in a little town like this?” she asked. She added that Paul was bad and ran away, the police brought him back, and—“Mademoiselle Zizi, out of her kindness, let him work here.”
It did not seem very kind. As we were to find out, Paul worked from six in the morning—or before, if there were a party for breakfast—until midnight—or after if there were dinners. He had plenty to eat—everyone near Monsieur Armand, the chef, had that—but Paul’s sleeping place was in a cupboard under the stairs, and had not even a window; the bed was planks with a straw mattress, there was a dirty pillow and the kind of blanket given to dogs.
“But all that was no reason to make a set at me,” I said afterwards, but it seemed it was. I think now our coming, so unaware, so pink and protected, gave Paul a smart he had not known before, and particularly when Joss was near him, every spot of grease, each broken black nail stood out, and the smell of him, in which he lived unnoticing, stank.
The first morning we knew none of this and I looked at him, my chin high, then coldly turned my eyes away. It was not done as Joss would have done it, but it was the best I could do. I spread Vicky’s croissant with jam and poured out her cup of milk; then, copying a big Frenchman in the corner, I dipped my own croissant in the dark bitter coffee and ate it like that. It tasted nasty, but at least it was French.
After breakfast I sent Hester, Willmouse and Vicky out to explore. I watched them as they scampered down the alleys of the orchard, and my legs itched to run too; still, in spite of my teens, that urge to run and scamper and roll like a colt would rise in me, but Paul was watching; besides, with Mother and Joss ill I felt as weighted with cares as Uncle William. I went out on to the terrace and stood at the top of the iron steps holding the rail that was already warm from the sun.
I could not feel an Uncle William for long. All around me rose the sounds of this, my first real French morning. Overhead the voices of two women talked. From Joss’s window that, unlike ours, faced the road, I had seen them earlier come in through the gate. They were the daily maids and now they flung mattresses over the sills upstairs, shook dusters and brooms. One called from her window to the other, ‘Toinette, la clé du quatorze,’ and the other shrilled back, ‘En bas, Nicole, sur le tableau.’ Why should that have ravished me? I do not know, but it did. Water was running in what I guessed was the kitchen because of the clatter of china and a man’s big voice shouting orders. Mauricette was singing in the dining-room a nasal little song:
“Je l’ai tellement dans le peau,
C’est mon homme.
Que j’en suis marteau,
C’est . . . mon . . . homme.”
A typewriter clacked in the office. I looked over the garden to the green dew of the wilderness and orchard, the sun haze beyond, and I could stay in no longer; slowly I went down the steps, across the gravel, past the flower-beds and through a gap in the box hedge. Stepping in dew, my head in the sun, I walked into the orchard and, before I knew what I had done, reached up to touch a greengage. It came off, warm and smooth, into my hand. I looked quickly round, but no one came, no voice scolded and, after a moment, I bit into the the ripe golden flesh. Then I ate another, and another until replete with fruit and ecstasy, I went back to my post.
There was no sign of Mademoiselle Zizi, but presently Eliot came out. He was aloof and unapproachable. How did I know then that he had these times? I do not know, but, as if the first greengage had been an Eden apple, I was suddenly older and wiser and did not try to speak to him. He passed me as if I did not exist and went out into the sun. He was wearing linen trousers, a dark-blue open-necked shirt. Mauricette ran out with a deckchair for him, but he was curt with her. How wonderful to be as curt in French as in English! The ecstasy faded. I was suddenly depressed again. How inferior we were; our family had never been anywhere at all and did not know anything.
Then Paul came out and jerked his thumb over his shoulder for me to go to the office. Madame Corbet sent me to fetch our passports, and Hester bobbed up and told about Uncle William.
Monsieur William John Bullock, wrote Mademoiselle Zizi on a slip of paper; then she opened the grille and the flap of the counter and came out. She ran upstairs, and her heels sounded very determined as she crossed the landing to Mother’s room. My heart sank, and I pushed Hester away in disgust and went up too.
Mother was a prisoner in the bed; a cage had been put over the bad leg and she lay on her back, her eyes looking this way and that, past Mademoiselle Zizi, past the nun; then she saw me in the doorway and beckoned me. I slipped past the foot of the bed and knelt down. Mother clutched me and whispered, but the whisper was so thick and blurred that I could hardly understand it. “Get the Englishman,” whispered Mother, “that man who was English.”
Mademoiselle Zizi’s ears were sharp. “No! You are not to!” she cried, but I had slipped out.
When Eliot came I knew how good he was. “Not good,” said Hester, who was exact. “A good person would not have done it. Not good—kind,” which was nearer our hearts.
He came in looking tall in that room of women.
“Mais Eliot, je t’en prie . . .”
“Wait, Zizi.” He bent down and Mother caught his hand. I knew how hot hers were from when she had held me, and her eyes were full of pain. “Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Eliot.
“Don’t let them.” It was the same thick whisper. “Don’t let them.”
“Eliot, this is nothing to do with you.”
“Please, Zizi.” He bent down lower. “Don’t let them what?”
Mother could look very like Hester. “Don’t let them send for William.”
I saw his lips twitch. “But . . .”
“He will say I told you so’,” whispered Mother.
“I see,” said Eliot. “Yes. I understand.”
“But she has to go to hospital,” cried Mademoiselle Zizi. “Bon Dieu! Et si elle allait mourir?” She went on so fast that I c
ould not keep up, but Eliot, while the stream of French went on, kept Mother’s hand.
“Why did he consent? A fellow like that?” Uncle William said afterwards. “It wasn’t in keeping.”
“Perhaps,” said Joss privately to me, “Eliot once had an Uncle William.”
“But what can I tell Irène?” said Mademoiselle Zizi.
I think she and Eliot spoke in English sometimes because they did not want the servants to understand, but they mixed it; sometimes one would ask a question in English, the other answer it in French, or the other way round. “What can I tell Irène?”
“That you can put two into a single room and charge for both.”
“Eliot, you are laughing at me.”
“Not laughing, predicting.”
“But can they pay?” asked Mademoiselle Zizi. “They do not look as if they had much.”
“If they can’t I will.”
“Have you so much money, Eliot?”
He did not tell her. “It comes and goes,” he said and there was the sound of a kiss; but Eliot said something else, something odd and . . . not pleasant, I thought, “Those children can be useful.”
“How useful?”
“Stop people talking.”
“Let them talk,” said Mademoiselle Zizi.
“Don’t be silly, Zizi. This is a little town and you have to live in it. The children will give me a reason for being here. After all, now I’m their guardian. They can be camouflage.”
I did not like us being camouflage, and he was right about the rooms. Hester and Vicky slept one each end of a single bed, and Joss was in our dressing-room, which was not really a bedroom at all. We were not allowed to use the bathrooms, and our only lavatory was the one we called the Hole, because it was in a cubbyhole opening off the stairs; there was no pedestal or seat, only a pan in the floor and two places to put one’s feet—‘à la turque,’ Paul called it, but it was awkward for someone as small as Vicky and ignominious for big girls. “And it smells the stairs,” said Hester. Madame Corbet charged us for towels and soap; when I went that first morning to the desk to ask for some lemon water for Joss, Madame Corbet already had two pages on the ledger marked 15, 16 and 16a, and there were several entries in her spider-fine writing. The lemon would be written in at once.
Paul kept the bar in the afternoons and Madame Corbet called to him to get it. “Alors vous restez?” he asked, looking me over.
“Yes, we are staying,” I said coldly. I added sarcastically in French—I was determined to speak French to Paul—that I hoped it would not derange him.
He shrugged and Paul’s shrug was indescribably rude. “Les enfants trouvés, y faut b’en s’en occuper, hein?” he said, and turned to take the slip for the lemon to the desk before he gave the glass to me.
I had caught ‘found children’, that means ‘strays’, I thought . . . strays! And as he went he pulled my hair.
There was no one in the hall but ourselves, no one to remind me I was big, almost grown up. Suddenly I had had enough of Paul. I ran after him and hit him as hard as I could on the jaw.
He was so surprised that he almost fell; the lemon water went spinning across the hall, his long legs slithered and his apron slipped as he clutched at the newel-post on the steps leading to the landing; then, holding to the post, he bent forward and looked at me; the lock of hair had fallen farther over his eyes and they gleamed through it like an animal’s. “So,” said Paul. “So.”
“Yes. So,” I said.
He came at me, but I was waiting. Paul was tall but he was gangling, while I was a Bullock and all Bullocks were solid and strong. I got one more hit in on his chest, then his arms were like a flail hitting me, and he knocked me over; in a moment we were both on the ground, rolling and scratching. I remember him pounding my head on the marble, then Madame Corbet screamed and people came running. I saw Mauricette’s legs, black skirt and frilled apron, before my own blood blinded me as I dug my thumbs into Paul’s throat until we were taken like kittens by the scruffs of our necks and shaken apart.
It was the chef. I could smell the grease on his white clothes and had a startling view of his fat cheeks, polished black moustache and high white cap seen through the tears that were stupidly pouring from my eyes.
Eliot’s voice came. “Let them go,” he said, and the chef dropped us—again like kittens—and we stood in the middle of them all, breathing hard and glaring at one another. Mauricette held a table napkin to my nose; it was not her table napkin and Madame Corbet snatched it away. Eliot looked at us amused and passed me his handkerchief; I was very much ashamed.
I thought he would say something about my being a girl, even a young lady, but he did not. I suppose that to him we were two young animals. “Next time,” he said, “fight in the garden. This is a lady’s house,” and he said it in French for Paul, “Vous êtes ici chez une dame comme il faut.” Paul made a rude noise. “Chez une dame comme il faut,” repeated Eliot—his voice was so peremptory that Paul stood up straight—“et vous vous tiendrez comme il faut.”
Late that evening I met Paul again. At dusk the garden greenness took on a richer light as if the rays of the sunset stayed there prisoned by the walls; the leaves glimmered and the grass; the broken statues that were chill and white in the morning turned almost to gold. Robert had ceased his raking and gone home. The dogs lay out on the warm gravel, voices came more gently from the house, everything was filled with peace. I was still in the habits of Belmont Road and, sore as I was, with my swelled nose, I had come to find Vicky—I guessed she was with Monsieur Armand, whom she had instantly adopted—to put her to bed.
Paul was sitting on a stone step outside the kitchen. I did not know whether to pass him or go back through the house; that would have looked a retreat and I decided to pass him, though I was trembling. As I came nearer he stood up.
All right. If you want to fight, I thought, but . . . “Please, Mees,” he said and pulled out a crumpled paper packet of the horrible-smelling cigarettes he smoked and held them out to me.
I expect I blushed—no one had ever offered me a cigarette before—then I saw it was not condescension; he was offering them as to an equal. I took one. I did not know at all how I should smoke it, but was immensely flattered. Paul struck a match for me; I took my first puff and choked; he patted me on the back, and then we were sitting down together on the steps.
Vicky was hours late going to bed. “Well, she is in France; she must do as French children do,” I said. Belmont Road was disappearing fast.
When I went up to Joss she drew away across the bed and said, “Whew!”
“It’s a Gauloise, a French cigarette.” I tried to sound careless, but Joss’s look remained cold and she said icily, “You seem to have settled in here very quickly.”
CHAPTER 5
WE HAD settled. After that first disrupted day we might have been in Vieux-Moutiers all our lives. Why did we like it so much? “Because it was not Southstone,” said Uncle William testily. There was truth in that; after Southstone this old French town, drenched that year in sun, seemed especially beautiful. Southstone had not grown; it had been built in a few years as a watering place. Its red-brick houses with slated roofs stood in well-ordered asphalt roads, planted neatly with laburnum and bright-pink may trees, each cased in a stand of wire-netting; it had a Winter Garden for concerts, a skating rink, covered tennis courts, swimming baths, tea rooms and large shops. Its cliffs were cut up into municipal gardens, its foreshore into a parade with a bandstand and pier, a Round Tower, clock-golf course and an aquarium. Vieux-Moutiers, beside its wide peaceful river, was centuries old; its upper and lower town had grown slowly, haphazardly, or crumbled away with disuse. It was so small that one could not get lost, though it had a maze of tiny cobbled lanes around the Place, where the market was held twice a week in front of the Hôtel de Ville, as we learned to call the town hall.
The Hôtel de Ville was sixteenth-century, and the upper town was crowned by the monastery whose ramp
arts I had seen from my window; besides a monastery, it was a prison and held the old Donjon St Pierre. There was a gate through which Saint Joan had ridden with Charles VII, and I heard an American visitor read out from his guide-book . . . “She had probably heard Mass in the chapel, and the horse-block from which she mounted her horse still stands in the courtyard.”
“Saint Joan? Then was she a person?” I asked. “I thought she was a saint.”
“A saint is a person, you little silly,” said Eliot; “that is the whole point.”
Nobody told us about Vieux-Moutiers. Its history dawned on us as we overheard the visitors talking, or wandered by ourselves in the streets. The hospital, for instance. There was a notice over the stairs that we saw when we went to leave the bunches of wild flowers we picked for Mother. Essuyez vos pieds, SVP. said the notice, and we carefully wiped our feet while we spelled out the rest: ‘Erigée en 1304 par la grâce de Jeanne de Navarre, épouse de Philippe le Bel.’ Our mother, our mother, was in a hospital built by a queen. I wished I were married to Philip the Beautiful.
In the upper town there was a cream-washed house with marigold-coloured, patched stains on its walls; by its front door was a plaque. A poet had lived there, a famous one, and when we read his name the classrooms at St Helena’s came back, my punishments, Hester reciting at the school concert. ‘That poet lived here.’ I did not think a poet had ever lived in Southstone; it would be almost better to be married to a poet than to Philippe le Bel, and I took a flake from the cream-crusted walls to keep for ever.