by Rumer Godden
“Good!” Mademoiselle Zizi was defensive. “To be drunk at their age! On my wine!”
“And look at the table!” cried Madame Corbet.
“Ma petite table! My little table! Ah!” Mademoiselle Zizi’s voice was agonised.
Madame Corbet darted forward and picked up the bottles. “Zizi! The Villers Marmery and Bouzy Rouge!”
Paul had been picking up the broken glass. Now he rolled it in his apron and slipped adroitly through the kitchen door. Joss was insensible; there was only I, Cecil, to face them. I was standing unsteadily where I had risen by the table and Madame Corbet turned on me and slapped my cheeks. “Petite canaille . . . Je m’en vais te flanquer une correction. Drôlesse! Oh! Cette petite crapule!”
“Stop that, Irène,” said Eliot. “Stop. Hush!” he said more loudly as the stream of names went on.
“Hush! And who is to pay for it?”
“You can put it on my bill,” said Monsieur Joubert and there was silence. He bent and picked Joss up. “Mademoiselle Cecil, can you walk upstairs to your room?”
My ears were singing with Madame Corbert’s slaps, but I managed to leave the table and zigzag to the stairs; there the banister-rail came unexpectedly into my hand. Monsieur Joubert followed, carrying Joss.
“Let me take her,” said Eliot.
“I think you have done enough,” said Monsieur Joubert. He carried Joss up. I followed, missing some steps but holding by the banister-rail. Eliot was left standing at the foot of the stairs.
CHAPTER 11
“IF THIS is how grown people feel,” said Joss, “they are even worse pigs than I thought.”
I said, perhaps tactlessly, “They know when to stop.”
“Do they!” said Joss. “Look at Mademoiselle Zizi.” But I had to be fair.
“Of all the grown-ups she is the only one who doesn’t seem to know,” and I sighed. “I suppose one has to learn even to drink.”
I did not remember getting into bed, but I had woken to find myself under the clothes though dressed. “Dressed in bed!” said Willmouse. “Cecil, what have you been doing?” It was not often Willmouse asked questions, and when he had seen how unwell I was he had slipped on his vest and shorts, brushed his hair and gone out. I think he kept Hester and Vicky away.
When I had gone in to Joss she too was in bed, the covers tucked carefully round her, her sandals placed neatly side by side on the rug, but she also was dressed. I felt so miserable that I woke her and she was cross. Then, sitting up, she had taken in where she was, her crumpled dress, the smell on her hair and she gave a sound like a moan and shut her eyes.
We felt our bones were stained now indeed and, too shamed to go down to breakfast, we stayed in Joss’s room. “But it wasn’t our fault,” I argued and used a phrase I had read in Monsieur Armand’s newspapers, “They drove us to it,” but Joss was more truthful than I.
“It was our fault,” she said wearily, “and we shall have to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“To manage.”
“Manage what?”
“Manage what happens to us better than this. I smell,” said Joss.
“I smell too,” I said.
“Not as badly as I do,” and once more she covered her eyes with her hand. It was only to shut out the light, but it looked tragic and I felt torn.
When something is badly needed it is amazing how an answer will come. I was moved to tell Joss about Monsieur Joubert. She was quiet as she listened, then she took her hand down. “You mean he said, ‘Put it on my bill’, just like that?” she asked.
“Just like that.”
“He wasn’t angry?”
“Not with us.”
“And I was drunk.”
“Very.”
“Like those men by the canal.”
“Yes. He carried you up to bed.”
“Not . . . Eliot?”
“Eliot wanted to but Monsieur Joubert would not let him.”
Joss thought for a moment, then got out of bed, went to the washstand, poured water into the basin and began to splash her face. She did not speak while she dried her face and hands, then stripped off her crumpled dress; I knew she was thinking very deeply or she would have told me to go away. At last, as she was putting on a clean dress I asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Give Monsieur Joubert one of my paintings,” she said.
“But, Joss! He is famous. He gets hundreds of pounds for a portrait. He has paintings in big galleries like the Salon and the Academy.”
“Not the Academy. The Uffizi in Florence. They have just bought some of his,” said Joss calmly, putting on her shoes.
“He is to have an exhibition in London this year,” I argued; “Madame Corbet said so. He . . . he won’t be bothered with a girl, Joss. He is Marc Joubert. Madame Corbert says he is one of the best painters in the world.”
“Then he will know when a painting is good,” said Joss.
She was, of course, right. Monsieur Joubert did not send her away; he held the little painting at arm’s length, looked at it again, put it up on a chair and went away from it. Nor was he play-acting—I do not think Monsieur Joubert ever acted. We all stood round in a chorus while a familiar catechism began. “You did this yourself?”
“Yes,” said Joss, and we nodded.
“No one helped you?”
“No,” and we shook our heads.
“Then what are you doing mixing yourself up with other things?” asked Monsieur Joubert.
Joss said uncertainly, “There are other things.”
The answer came back, “Not for you.”
“I am going to an art school soon,” said Joss.
“When?”
“Perhaps when the holidays are over.”
“Painters don’t have holidays,” said Monsieur Joubert. “They don’t know how. Why an art school?”
“I need to learn to draw,” said Joss meekly.
I thought he would say ‘Nonsense’ but he nodded. “That won’t spoil you. When Madame your mother is better I will speak with her,” and he said to me, “Does she talk?”
“Mother?” I asked, startled.
“Mademoiselle.” He pointed at Joss.
“Oh! She! Sometimes.”
He pounced. “Not all times?”
“Oh no! That’s Hester.”
“Then,” said Monsieur Joubert, “Mademoiselle Joss can come and paint with me. Not near but near enough, but no other child must come,” and he said fiercely to the rest of us, “Keep away!”
We nodded again, our eyes wide with respect. This, we knew, was something different from Eliot.
Eliot made one approach to Joss. Before dinner she stayed out on the terrace so that she need not meet him in the bar. Mademoiselle Zizi was talking to some American arrivals and he went out.
“Joss.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. Joss, I had to do that.”
Joss said nothing.
“You won’t talk to me?” asked Eliot.
“No,” said Joss.
“Tomorrow I’m not going to Paris and . . .”
“I will be busy tomorrow,” and it was true, not an excuse.
From that day we were split as we had been . . . before Eliot, I thought. Vicky went back to Monsieur Armand, Willmouse stayed in his cherry bank atelier, Hester and I rambled alone. Joss got up in the mornings now as early as Monsieur Joubert; almost before it was light she was out on the bank—she too was painting two pictures—and she went early to bed. “There is no light then. I might as well go to bed,” she said. The other people in the house hardly saw her at all.
As Hester and I dawdled at the cove we would watch her. She had none of the trappings Monsieur Joubert had, not even a camp stool; she sat on an upturned wooden box and held her board on her knee. She had not any proper canvas, only a piece of linen stretched on the board, but Monsieur Joubert showed her a way of washing it over with two or three coats of white—“not paint, tempera,” s
aid Joss—to make it smooth. He had given her a flat tin box filled with jars of tempera and, “One day, he will help me with oils,” she said. Worst of all she had no umbrella and she had to sit out in the heat with only her old straw hat to shade her and that had been bent when it was packed so that the straw had split; I could not imagine Joss consenting under any other circumstances to wear it. Every now and then she climbed down the bank and wetted her handkerchief to spread on the crown; even so, she was sickly pale at the end of the day.
“Monsieur Joubert ought to send you in.”
“He doesn’t notice me,” said Joss with pride. She knew how to please him and she only interrupted her work to join us when we went to pay our evening visit to Mother. We were allowed to go and see Mother every day now and, “I’m painting,” Joss told her and Mother looked relieved.
“And what are you doing, Cecil?”
“Nothing.”
“But you are looking after the Littles?”
“Yes,” I said grudgingly. I had to. Joss was as good an elder sister as any, but, when she was painting, Vicky or Willmouse could have fallen into the Marne and she would not have known.
“Only they wouldn’t,” said Hester.
“No, but Willmouse goes off every evening alone and he shouldn’t.”
Every evening when he had finished his work Willmouse put his things away: his box of scraps, his sewing-box, Miss Dawn and Dolores, and their new confections; then he tidied himself, which was only a form because he was always tidy—even his scarecrows managed to be neat; he would wash his face and hands, sleek down his hair with his private bottle of eau-de-Cologne and, like any old gentleman, go for a little walk. A new barge, the Marie France 47, had anchored above the cove; he liked to walk up and look at that.
“Why don’t you go when we go?”
“I like to go by myself.”
“You can’t always do what you like.”
“I can,” said Willmouse.
I let him. It was too hot, everything was too strained, to bother.
Before Eliot. We were back to that time, yet we were not back. It was the same, and it was not the same. A curious tenseness was in the house. Eliot when he came from Paris looked bone tired and haggard, and he was so curt with Mademoiselle Zizi that her eyes looked bigger than ever with perpetual tears. She was very silly. She kept searching his face, beseeching him with those big eyes instead of leaving him alone; we scurried out of his way as soon as we saw that tiredness in his face.
For three days he did not come at all. Mademoiselle Zizi went to the telephone four or five times. We heard her ask for the same Paris number, then wait, listening, while that far-off bell rang and rang. There was never any answer. If the office telephone went she would leap out of her chair; then she would sink back again as she heard Madame Corbet’s, “Hôtel des Oeillets. Oui, madame. Oui. Certainement.”
Then there was Paul. I could bear his having tried to make Joss come to him, that was to be expected of Paul; if he had hit me that night, as I think he meant to with the bottle, I could have expected that too; but he had sneaked out and left me. In our code that was mean.
“Mauricette says you were drunk,” said Hester.
“So that was what was the matter with you,” said Willmouse.
“She says you shouldn’t be with Paul.” Hester was troubled.
“He is a horrid boy,” said Vicky. “He gave me a bit of frog to eat and said it was chicken.”
“Did you eat it?”
“You can eat them,” said Vicky, as if that settled it.
Neither of the Littles liked Paul. Hester, of course, took a more lenient view. “But you were not there,” I said. “You don’t know how awful he was,” I said.
“More awful than you and Joss?”
“Yes,” and then, thinking of what Paul had been through, the camps and the Hôtel-Dieu, the half-negro sister, I had to say, “I don’t know.”
I did not want to see all these things in Paul, but since coming to Les Oeillets I seemed to see a long way into people, even when I did not wish it. “You think of no one but yourselves,” Mother had said on that long-ago day on the beach, and how much more comfortable that had been. I seemed to see into everyone and, “There isn’t anybody good,” I said in misery.
“Yes, there is,” said Hester; “Monsieur Joubert.”
Perhaps even he was not completely good but he was . . . kept good, I thought; we could see him now, with Joss faithfully behind him, both of them busy. “I wish I had painting or dressage or something,” I said, and asked, “How can you be good if you are just lying about?”
“Mother says not everyone can have things.”
“Then they can’t be good,” I said firmly.
Hester was looking at the river, at the water eddying down. There was a long silence, then, “Cecil, is Eliot good?” she asked.
The question seemed to fall with a plop into the peaceful water.
“We love him,” I said uncertainly. Can one love someone who is not good? That was as much a reversal of our ideas as that the Black Virgin was beautiful.
Is Eliot good? It was a question I would rather not have answered and I was glad when the water-whirls took it away.
CHAPTER 12
IT WAS the third week of August, and the same high summer weather; even in the cove it was hot; hardly a breeze disturbed the willows so that they hung dustily green, not showing their silver; the grass was dusty and untidy, filled with the litter left by Sunday walkers and picnickers; the bulrushes were untidy too; they were ripe and powdering, and if we accidentally brushed a spear-rod a stain of brown was left on our skin and clothes. In the orchard the greengages were almost over and at dinner small white grapes appeared on the table. “Are they champagne grapes?” we asked—we had become most conscious of champagne—but Mauricette shook her head. “These are from the Midi. Ours are not ripe till the end of September,” and she said, “But you will be here for the vintage, of course.”
We did not dispute that. It seemed to us we were here for ever. Mother was better but still not out of bed, not even sitting up. Next month the holidays would be over, but there were still three and a half weeks to go and at Les Oeillets each day was like a year. Twenty-three days; twenty-three years. Who bothers what will happen in twenty-three years?
I remember thinking that as I was lying on my stomach in the sun at the edge of the cove, looking down into the water where hundreds of tiny fish were nibbling at nothing that I could see. If I threw in a crumb they would all dart round it, taking bites, as something sensational would divert us. I supposed a fish’s only sensation was food . . . food and death, I thought, watching a big fish hovering over them. Sometimes someone from the town or the hotel would bring a fine net and scoop these little fish up, a hundred or so of them, to fry crisp and season with salt and lemon, and eat with slices of brown bread and butter. I had eaten dozens; now I, part of their fate, hung over them and they did not even see me. Ugh! I thought.
My back seemed to be melting with heat, but suddenly I felt cold as if my blood had chilled. There was nothing one could do; at any moment the big fish, the net, might come to any of us, to me. I looked at the nibbling shoal again. If there were a crumb they darted, but even if the shadow of a very big fish went over them they did not move from the crumb. They were too busy living.
Well then, I thought; and slowly the cold ebbed away and again I could feel the heat beating through my dress on to my skin, but I could not forget that cold. “Funny, I was never afraid of death before,” I told Hester.
“You never thought about it,” said Hester and she comforted me. “It was only the fish.” I had put death firmly out of my mind when she said thoughtfully, “I don’t know why but I don’t like these days.”
I did not like them either, but there seemed nothing wrong; in fact there was a new friendliness in the house. We had put Paul out of bounds so that we heard no scandal; Mademoiselle Zizi and Joss kept truce under Monsieur Joubert; Madam
e Corbet, perhaps because she wished she had not slapped me, was less sharp; and for us it was as if we had taken a step or two backwards; we were children again, and that was a relief.
Joss finished her first painting and took it to Mother. Vicky had her fifth birthday; Monsieur Armand made her a cake and we had a French birthday party. We were to remember it always. “Because it was from then,” said Hester afterwards. “That was the day,” she said, “when Eliot began to be where he wasn’t.”
“And wasn’t where he was.”
It was a queer birthday party. A table was carried out in the garden, Mauricette covered it with a white cloth and decorated it with vine leaves from the arbour. In the middle was the cake, covered with cream icing and nuts, and round it Mauricette put a ring of wine-glasses filled with grenadine. “No tea?” asked Vicky puzzled, but there was no tea. Mademoiselle Zizi came and Madame Corbet, Mauricette, Monsieur Armand, Toinette and Nicole, Robert the gardener and his wife and baby; Monsieur Joubert and Joss left their painting, Willmouse his sewing. Paul curtly refused to come out of the kitchen, and Eliot, though he had known about the party, had gone to Paris. That made it more amiable but less exciting.
It did not last long; there were no presents, Mother could not be reminded and we could not buy them without any money, but Vicky, with so few birthdays behind her, was not in the habit of presents and did not know what she was missing. We drank her health, cut the cake, and after eating and drinking, broke up. Joss, Hester and I went to the hospital, Willmouse took his walk, and Vicky had more cake in the kitchen.
When Willmouse came in he said, “Who told you Eliot was in Paris?”
“He is.”
“He isn’t. He’s here.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw him,” but Willmouse seemed perplexed.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him.
“It was Eliot, not in Eliot’s clothes.”
“You must have made a mistake.”
“I don’t make mistakes about clothes,” said Willmouse.
He had been walking home along the bank—“You know the bit along the path where the cove is hidden in the bulrushes?”—when Eliot had appeared, walking in front of him. “And he was wearing blue, like the overalls here but trousers and one of those striped jersey shirts.”