"I went down to the shop to fetch my snap-shots," said Miss Clay, "and I found it shut. The door was locked and the shutters were up. I thought it rather odd, and I went into the pharmacie next door and asked if they knew whether the shop was likely to be open after tea. They said no, Mademoiselle Paul was too upset, she was being looked after by relatives. I asked what had happened, and they told me there had been an accident, that poor Monsieur Paul's body had been found by some fishermen three miles up the coast, drowned."
Miss Clay had quite lost colour as she told her tale. She was obviously deeply shocked. The Marquise, at sight of her, gained courage.
"How perfectly terrible," she said. "Does anybody know when it happened?"
"I couldn't go into details at the pharmacie because of the children," said Miss Clay, "but I think they found the body yesterday. Terribly injured, they said. He must have hit some rocks before falling into the sea. It's so dreadful I can't bear to think of it. And his poor sister, whatever will she do without him?"
The Marquise put up her hand for silence and made a warning face. The children were coming into the room.
They went down to the terrace for déjeuner and the Marquise ate better than she had done for three days. For some reason her appetite had returned. Why this should be so she could not tell. She wondered if it could possibly be that part of the burden of her secret was now lifted. He was dead. He had been found. These things were known. After déjeuner she told Miss Clay to ask the manager if he knew anything of the sad accident. Miss Clay was to say that the Marquise was most concerned and grieved. While Miss Clay went about this business the Marquise took the children upstairs.
Presently the telephone rang. The sound that she had dreaded. Her heart missed a beat. She took off the receiver and listened.
It was the manager. He said Miss Clay had just been to him. He said it was most gracious of Madame la Marquise to show concern at the unfortunate accident that had befallen Monsieur Paul. He would have spoken of it when the accident was discovered yesterday, but he did not wish to distress the clientèle.
A drowning disaster was never very pleasant at a sea-side resort, it made people feel uncomfortable. Yes, of course, the police had been called in directly the body was found. It was assumed that he had fallen from the cliffs somewhere along the coast. It seemed he was very fond of photographing the sea views. And of course, with his disability, he could easily slip. His sister had often warned him to be careful. It was very sad. He was such a good fellow. Everyone liked him. He had no enemies. And such an artist, too, in his way. Madame la Marquise had been pleased with the studies Monsieur Paul had done of herself and the children? The manager was so glad. He would make a point of letting Mademoiselle Paul know this, and also of the concern shown by Madame la Marquise. Yes, indeed, she would be deeply grateful for flowers, and for a note of sympathy. The poor woman was quite broken-hearted. No, the day of the funeral had not yet been decided...
When he had finished speaking, the Marquise called to Miss Clay, and told her she must order a taxi and drive to the town seven miles inland, where the shops were larger, and where she seemed to remember there was an excellent florist. Miss Clay was to order flowers, lilies for choice, and to spare no expense, and the Marquise would write a note to go with them; and then if Miss Clay gave them to the manager when she returned he would see that they reached Mademoiselle Paul.
The Marquise wrote the note for Miss Clay to take with her to pin on the flowers. "In deepest sympathy at your great loss." She gave Miss Clay some money, and the governess went off to find a taxi.
Later the Marquise took the children to the beach.
"Is your chill better, maman?" asked Célèste.
"Yes, chérie, now maman can bathe again."
And she entered the warm yielding water with the children, and splashed with them.
Tomorrow Edouard would arrive, tomorrow Edouard would come in his car and drive them away, and the white dusty roads would lengthen the distance between her and the hotel. She would not see it any more, nor the headland, nor the town, and the holiday would be blotted out like something that had never been.
"When I die," thought the Marquise, as she stared out across the sea, "I shall be punished. I don't fool myself I am guilty of taking life. When I die, God will accuse me. Until then, I will be a good wife to Edouard, and a good mother to Célèste and Hélene. I will try to be a good woman from now. I will try and atone for what I have done by being kinder to everyone, to relations, friends, servants."
She slept well for the first time for four days.
Her husband arrived the next morning while she was still having her breakfast. She was so glad to see him that she sprang from her bed and flung her arms round his neck. The Marquis was touched at this reception.
"I believe my girl has missed me after all," he said.
"Missed you? But of course I've missed you. That's why I rang up. I wanted you to come so much."
"And you are quite determined to leave today after lunch?"
"Oh, yes, yes... I couldn't bear to stay. Our packing is done, there are only the last things to put in the suit-cases."
He sat on the balcony drinking coffee, laughing with the children, while she dressed and stripped the room of her personal possessions. The room that had been hers for a whole month became bare once more, and quite impersonal. In a fever of hurry she cleared the dressing-table, mantelpiece, the table by her bed. It was finished with. The femme de chambre would come in presently with clean sheets and make all fresh for the next visitor. And she, the Marquise, would have gone.
"Listen, Edouard," she said, "why must we stay for déjeuner? Wouldn't it be more fun to lunch somewhere on the way? There is always something a little dreary in lunching at a hotel when one has already paid the bill. Tipping, everything, has been done. I cannot bear a sense of anti-climax."
"Just as you like," he said. She had given him such a welcome that he was prepared to gratify every whim. Poor little girl. She had been really lonely without him. He must make up to her for it.
The Marquise was making up her mouth in front of the mirror in the bathroom when the telephone rang.
"Answer it, will you?" she called to her husband. "It is probably the concierge about the luggage."
The Marquis did so, and in a few moment he shouted through to his wife.
"It's for you, dear. It's a Mademoiselle Paul who has called to see you, and asks if she may thank you for her flowers before you go."
The Marquise did not answer at once, and when his wife came into the bedroom it seemed to him that the lipstick had not enhanced her appearance. It made her look almost haggard, older. How very strange. She must have changed the colour. It was not becoming.
"Well," he asked, "what shall I say? You probably don't want to be bothered with her now, whoever she is. Would you like me to go down and get rid of her?"
The Marquise seemed uncertain, troubled. "No," she said, "no, I think I had better see her. The fact is, it's a very tragic thing. She and her brother kept a little shop in the town—I had some photographs done of myself and the children—and then a dreadful thing happened, the brother was drowned. I thought it only right to send flowers."
"How thoughtful of you," said her husband, "a very kind gesture. But do you need to bother now? Why, we are ready to go."
"Tell her that," said his wife, "tell her that we are leaving almost immediately."
The Marquis turned to the telephone again, and after a word or two put his hand over the receiver and whispered to his wife.
"She is very insistent," he said. "She says she has some prints belonging to you that she wants to give to you personally."
A feeling of panic came over the Marquise. Prints? What prints?
"But everything is paid for," she whispered back. "I don't know what she can mean."
The Marquis shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, what am I to say? She sounds as if she is crying."
The Marquise
went back into the bathroom, dabbcd more powder on her nose.
"Tell her to come up," she said, "but repeat that we are leaving in five minutes. Meanwhile, you go down, take the children to the car. Take Miss Clay with you. I will see the woman alone."
When he had gone she looked about the room. Nothing remained but her gloves, her handbag. One last effort, and then the closing door, the ascenseur, the farewell bow to the manager, and freedom.
There was a knock at the door. The Marquise waited by the entrance to the balcony, her hands clasped in front of her.
"Entrez," she said.
Mademoiselle Paul opened the door. Her face was blotched and ravaged from weeping, her old-fashioned mourning dress was long, nearly touching the ground. She hesitated, then lurched forward, her limp grotesque, as though each movement must be agony.
"Madame la Marquise..." she began, then her mouth worked, she began to cry.
"Please don't," said the Marquise gently. "I am so dreadfully sorry for what has happened."
Mademoiselle Paul took her handkerchief and blew her nose.
"He was all I had in the wor1d," she said. "He was so good to me. What am I to do now? How am I to live?"
"You have relatives?"
"They are poor folk, Madame la Marquise. I cannot expect them to support me. Nor can I keep the shop alone, without my brother. I haven't the strength. My health has always been my trouble."
The Marquise was fumbling in her bag. She took out a twenty thousand franc note. "I know this is not much," she said, "but perhaps it will help just a little. I am afraid my husband has not many contacts in this part of the country, but I will ask him, perhaps he will be able to make some suggestions."
Mademoiselle Paul took the notes. It was strange. She did not thank the Marquise. "This will keep me until the end of the month," she said. "It will help to pay the funeral expenses."
She opened her bag. She took out three prints.
"I have more, similar to these, back in the shop," she said. " It seemed to me that perhaps, going away suddenly as you are doing, you had forgotten all about them. I found them amongst my poor brother's other prints and negatives in the cellar, where he used to develop them."
She handed the prints to the Marquise. The Marquise went cold when she saw them. Yes, she had forgotten. Or rather, she had not been aware of their existence. They were three views of her taken in the bracken. Careless, abandoned, half-sleeping, with her head against his coat for a pillow, she had heard the click-click of the camera, and it had added a sort of zest to the afternoon. Some he had shown her. But not these.
She took the photographs and put them in her bag.
"You say you have others?" she asked, her voice without expression.
"Yes, Madame la Marquise."
She forced herself to meet the woman's eyes. They were swollen still with weeping, but the glint was unmistakable.
"What do you want me to do?" asked the Marquise.
Mademoiselle Paul looked about her in the hotel bedroom. Tissue paper strewn on the floor, odds and ends thrown into the waste-paper basket, the tumbled, unmade bed.
"I have lost my brother," she said, "my supporter, my reason for being alive. Madame la Marquise has had an enjoyable holiday and now returns home. I take it that Madame la Marquise would not desire her husband or her family to see these prints?"
"You are right," said the Marquise, "I do not even wish to see them myself."
"In which case," said Mademoiselle Paul, "twenty thousand francs is really very little return for a holiday that Madame la Marquise so much enjoyed."
The Marquise looked in her bag again. She had two mille notes and a few hundred francs. "This is all I have," she said, "you are welcome to these as well."
Mademoiselle Paul blew her nose once more. "I think it would be more satisfactory for both of us if we came to a more permanent arrangement," she said. "Now my poor brother has gone the future is very uncertain. I might not even wish to live in a neighbourhood that holds such sad memories. I cannot but ask myself how my brother met his death. The afternoon before he disappeared he went out to the headland and came back very distressed. I knew something had upset him, but I did not ask him what. Perhaps he had hoped to meet a friend, and the friend had not appeared. The next day he went again, and that night he did not return. The police were informed, and then three days later his body was found. I have said nothing of possible suicide to the police, but have accepted it, as they have done, as accidental. But my brother was a very sensitive soul, Madame la Marquise. Unhappy, he would have been capable of anything. If I make myself wretched thinking over these things, I might go to the police, I might suggest he did away with himself after an unhappy love affair. I might even give them leave to search through his effects for photographs."
In agony the Marquise heard her husband's footsteps outside the door.
"Are you coming, dearest?" he called, bursting it open and entering the room. "The luggage is all in, the children are clamouring to be off."
He said good morning to Mademoiselle Paul. She curtseyed.
"I will give you my address," said the Marquise, "both in Paris, and in the country." She sought in her bag feverishly for cards. "I shall expect to hear from you in a few weeks' time."
"Possibly before that, Madame la Marquise," said Mademoiselle Paul. "If I leave here, and find myself in your neighbourhood, I would come and pay my humble respects to you and Miss, and the little children. I have friends not so very far away. I have friends in Paris too. I have always wanted to see Paris."
The Marquise turned with a terrible bright smile to her husband.
"I have told Mademoiselle Paul," she said, "that if there is anything I can do for her at any time she has only to let me know."
"Of course," said her husband. "I am so sorry to hear of your tragedy. The manager here has been telling me all about it."
Mademoiselle Paul curtseyed again, looking from him back to the Marquise.
"He was all I had in the world, Monsieur le Marquis," she said. "Madame la Marquise knows what he meant to me. It is good to know that I may write to her, and that she will write to me, and when that happens I shall not feel alone and isolated. Life can be very hard for someone who is alone in the world. May I wish you a pleasant journey, Madame la Marquise, and happy memories of your holidays, and above all no regrets?"
Once more Mademoiselle Paul curtseyed, then turned and limped from the room.
"Poor woman," said the Marquis, " and what an appearance. I understand from the manager that the brother was crippled too?"
"Yes..." She fastened her handbag. Took her gloves. Reached for her dark glasses.
"Curious thing, but it often runs in families," said the Marquis, as they walked along the corridor. He paused and rang the bell for the ascenseur. "You have never met Richard du Boulay, have you, an old friend of mine? He was crippled, much as this unfortunate little photographer seems to have been, but for all that a charming, perfectly normal girl fell in love with him, and they got married. A son was born, and he turned out to be a hopeless club-foot like his father. You can't fight that sort of thing. It's a taint in the blood that passes on."
They stepped into the ascenseur and the doors closed upon them.
"Sure you won't change your mind and stay for lunch? You look pale. We've got a long drive before us, you know."
"I'd rather go."
They were waiting in the hall to see her off. The manager, the receptionist, the concierge, the maître d'hôtel.
"Come again, Madame la Marquise. There will always be a welcome for you here. It has been such a pleasure looking after you. The hotel will not be the same once you have gone."
"Good—bye... Good-bye..."
The Marquise climbed into the car beside her husband. They turned out of the hotel grounds into the road. Behind her lay the headland, the hot sands, and the sea. Before her lay the long straight road to home and safety. Safety...?
KISS ME AGAIN, STRANG
ER
I LOOK AROUND FOR a bit, after leaving the army and before settling down, and then I found myself a job up Hampstead way, in a garage it was, at the bottom of Haverstock Hill near Chalk Farm, and it suited me fine. I'd always been one for tinkering with engines, and in R.E.M.E. that was my work and I was trained to it—it had always come easy to me, anything mechanical.
My idea of having a good time was to lie on my back in my greasy overalls under a car's belly, or a lorry's, with a spanner in my hand, working on some old bolt or screw, with the smell of oil about me, and someone starting up an engine, and the other chaps around clattering their tools and whistling. I never minded the smell or the dirt. As my old Mum used to say when I'd be that way as a kid, mucking about with a grease can, "It won't hurt him, it's clean dirt," and so it is, with engines.
The boss at the garage was a good fellow, easy-going, cheerful, and he saw I was keen on my work. He wasn't much of a mechanic himself, so he gave me the repair jobs, which was what I liked.
I didn't live with my old Mum—she was too far off, over Shepperton way, and I saw no point in spending half the day getting to and from my work. I like to be handy, have it on the spot, as it were. So I had a bedroom with a couple called Thompson, only about ten minutes' walk away from the garage. Nice people, they were. He was in the shoe business, cobbler I suppose he'd be called, and Mrs. Thompson cooked the meals and kept the house for him over the shop. I used to eat with them, breakfast and supper—we always had a cooked supper—and being the only lodger I was treated as family.
I'm one for routine. I like to get on with my job, and then when the day's work's over settle down to a paper and a smoke and a bit of music on the wireless, variety or sornething of the sort, and then turn in early. I never had much use for girls, not even when I was doing my time in the army. I was out in the Middle East, too, Port Said and that.
No, I was happy enough living with the Thompsons, carrying on much the same day after day, until that one night, when it happened. Nothing's been the same since. Nor ever will be. I don't know...
The Apple Tree Page 22