Peking Picnic

by Bridge, Ann;

  Pourquoi mon âme est rêveuse

  Me demandez-vous encore?

  Elle a glané, la glaneuse,

  Mon coeur dans sa gerbe d’or.

  She went on with some Gounod and Fauré, old-fashioned stuff, but very singable; the enchanting pure quality of her voice twirled round the flowery phrases, somehow redeeming their sentimentality. Henri was ravished. ‘Dame, quelle virtuosité!’ he muttered. At Touchy’s request she went back after that to English. ‘Do you know this one, from the Appalachians?’ she asked, and began ‘The Dear Companion’.

  The little plaintive melody, with its curious hesitation in the middle of the line, its unexpected lift and fall, floated out into the air, hauntingly sweet, carrying the artless sadness of the words straight into the heart – it flowed on to the last verse:

  Oh when I see – your babe a-laughing

  It makes me think – of your sweet face

  But when I see – your babe a-crying

  It makes me think – of my disgrace.

  Laura watched Derek’s face. It told its own tale, for a brief moment. Something was taking hold of him, some fresh influence joining its force to those she had already felt at work in the darkness under the almond trees. A sudden impulse moved her to deal him another stroke through the music, or rather to let Judith, the happy warrior, strike a resounding blow for herself and her way of life.

  ‘Now sing “Fain would I change that note”, Judith,’ she said imperatively; she meant to jump the girl into it without giving her time to think, and the abrupt and imperious tone succeeded. With a half-startled glance at her aunt, Judith obeyed. Up rose the glorious voice, steady, strong and full, gathering power as the song proceeded, carrying the noble words out into the night with superb assurance.

  Judith lost herself now in the music – triumphant, grave, her voice rose in the second verse.

  O Love, they wrong thee much

  That say thy sweet is bitter,

  When thy rich fruit is such

  As nothing can be sweeter.

  Fair house of joy and bliss

  Where truest pleasure is

  I do adore thee.

  I know thee, what thou art,

  I serve thee with my heart

  And fall before thee.

  As the solemn sostenuto of the last words died away there was silence among Judith’s listeners. Derek had turned his head aside into the shadow, and was tracing the cracks between the flagstones with his fingers. ‘That’s all,’ said Judith abruptly, and with her swift strong step she walked away from the thanks and applause which broke out. A little group of Europeans from the other party had collected some distance off to listen – with subdued ‘Bravas’ they melted away. As though some band which held them still had suddenly broken, the Neviles’ party began to shift and disperse.

  ‘By Jove, some singing Kuniang!’ said Touchy, getting up from his cushion and stretching his cramped limbs. ‘She’s a wonder, Laura.’

  ‘Mais écoutez, Laura, c’est magnifique, cette voix,’ Henri exclaimed; ‘she should give a – ’ow do you say? – repetition.’

  ‘Concert,’ said Touchy.

  ‘Ao yes, concert. We ’ave so little music in Peking. She sings very very well – she ’as sung this Gounod marvellously.’

  ‘Who trained her, do you know?’ Vinstead asked of Laura. She felt almost like the proprietor of some performing animal. ‘I should say Hengel, at a rough guess.’

  ‘Yes, she has worked with him,’ she answered.

  ‘She has a great future before her,’ he said, almost solemnly.

  Praising and discussing, everyone drifted off towards bed. Back in their own courtyard – ‘Who’s for a drink?’ said Touchy. ‘All that singing has given me a Sahara thirst.’

  A few were for drinks, and whisky and soda and barley water were produced. They sat on the marble steps leading up to the main pavilion. The proximity of their sleeping quarters reminded Delache of the rats, and he insisted on having his camp bed carried out into the courtyard.

  ‘This is convenable, n’est-ce pas?’ he inquired; ‘since the ladies sleep indoors?’

  He was told not to be a goose – of course he could have his bed out. Touchy decided to follow his example. ‘It’s a divine night – much too good to spend behind paper. Why don’t you sleep out too?’ he asked, turning to Vinstead. Vinstead thought he would.

  ‘The War made me comparatively indifferent to rats,’ he observed, ‘but I have rather a fancy for seeing the dawn.’

  So presently three camp beds stood out under the peach trees near the well head. But they were not at once inhabited. Vinstead wandered off to take a last look at the terrace by moonlight, and Touchy and Laura sat on with Henri, too idle to go to bed at first, and afterwards too much amused. For Henri, after a couple of whiskies, became animated. He talked with even greater freedom than usual, and Touchy and Laura were kept laughing, half at his efficient but curiously placed English, half at his point of view. He was consumed with the ambition to behave and speak correctly in an English way, especially where the proprieties were concerned; he had many English and American friends, and he wished, quite sincerely, to adapt himself to their attitude and to respect their conventions. But our island point of view was altogether too much for him. He could not understand it, could never be sure what was proper and what was not. With Mrs Leroy and La Touche he was quite at his ease, and put his troubles before them with comic freedom. His latest was in the matter of a story he had told to Miss Hande on the terrace after dinner; ‘I think this is quite correc’, but she look at me as if I was a serpent.’

  ‘What was the story, Henri?’ Touchy inquired, giggling.

  ‘Ow, it was nothing,’ but he told it, and it was sufficiently hair-raising; Laura laughed to think of the effect on poor Miss Hande.

  ‘You should be more careful, Henri!’ she said; ‘that was a very improper story.’

  ‘Improper? Comment? You mean not correc’? But I am very careful – I did not tell her this one because I think it is not correc’. You see, I was in the Train Bleu – I ’ave a sleeper, of course …’ There followed a completely innocuous tale of a confusion in sleeping cars, in which all the parties had behaved in the most correc’ manner possible.

  ‘But that was all right, Henri, old man – you could have told her that one and she wouldn’t have turned a hair,’ said Touchy, stifling his mirth as well as he could.

  ‘Non – vous blaguez!’ said Henri, with conviction. ‘My dear Touchi, I knoh one thing – for Americans wagons-lits are always shocking!’

  Presently the moonlight, flooding the further side of the court, made him reflective. ‘This is what you call romantic, n’est-ce pas?’ he observed, waving his hand at it.

  ‘Quite right, my lad,’ said Touchy; ‘you’ve got it in one.’

  ‘Now the romantic, for you, it promotes kissing, isn’t it?’ pursued Henri.

  ‘Rather crudely put, but broadly speaking, yes,’ Touchy replied.

  ‘Mais c’est vrai,’ Henri went on. ‘I ’ave noticed this. For English people, moonlight makes them wish to kiss – it is romantic. C’est curieux,’ he pursued, in his monotonous voice. ‘I – I am not romantic. I do not wish to kiss simplement à cause du clair de lune. When there is moonlight, I will admire the moonlight – I will not kiss.’

  Laura could not help laughing.

  ‘Non, mais écoutez, Laura, c’est vrai, ce que je dis là. Vous autres Anglais, vous confondez – mix up – two things. There are the beauties of Nature, and there are the pleasures of Love. Tous deux sont bons, but I will not mix them. Love goes better indoors.’

  Touchy exploded with laughter.

  ‘But why is it, then, that you will mix them up?’ Henri persisted, quite unperturbed; he was accustomed to being laughed at by Touchy. ‘C’est idiot!’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ said Touchy, pulling himself together. ‘You’re quite right; we have a romantic idea of love, and we like to bring all beautiful thi
ngs, like nature and music and so on, into it.’

  ‘Mais ça ne donne jamais rien de bon,’ said Henri emphatically. ‘You forgive me, my dear Touchi, but the English are not good lovers. You make yourselves a fine theory of love and moonlight, yes, but your – ’ow do you say? – practice, ça fait pitié! En somme, there are exceptions’ – he nodded amicably at Touchy, to indicate that he was one, and no doubt an admirable lover – ‘mais en fin de compte, toute femme française vous dira que c’est rasant, l’amour anglais!’

  ‘Sorry about that, old man,’ said Touchy amiably.

  Henri, with his quick courtesy, was instantly apologetic. ‘My dear Touchi, you do not mind what I say? You knoh ’ow I talk! Mais, admettons, c’est la théorie qui cloche! You see, I read your English books, and I knoh what it is, the theory. You will ’ave the impossible; you will love only one woman, and marry ’er, and be faithful to ’er always, and live ’appy ever after. N’est-ce pas?’

  ‘That’s about the idea,’ said Touchy, lighting another cigarette.

  ‘Mais je vous assure que c’est impossible!’ said Henri vigorously. ‘And you pretend to possess ’er ’eart and mind; you will be like one person. Cela n’arrive jamais, mon ami. ’Ow will you possess a woman’s mind? ’Er body, yes, but ’er mind? Vous confondez toujours les choses. Women ’ave the intelligence very delicate, on peut bien s’en réjouir, et c’est par la conversation qu’il convient de commencer – mais ce n’est pourtant pas l’amour, avouez-le! And when you will love a woman, you think always about ’er mind, ’er ’eart – mais vous ignorez l’essentiel, la façon de s’y prendre, et la chose est râtée!’

  At this point Vinstead’s tall, rather precise figure entered the courtyard through the gate opposite and crossed the moonlit square, his black shadow following him over the pavement towards them. It broke up the little party. ‘Midnight, by Jove!’ said Touchy, looking at his watch.

  As Laura went off to bed she was turning Henri’s words over in her mind. She remembered her talk with the Professor on the way up, and how she had failed to find a precise expression for the world the French do not enter. Was it, perhaps, just the kingdom of romance? Delache had thrown some light on the subject. She saw the French attitude more clearly than ever as deliberate, the fruit of an intellectual decision, and even containing a certain rather arid wisdom. They refuse to mix themselves up with the tears of things, she thought; there are certain satisfactions which they value – good food, good wine, conversation, women, intellectual activity – but they keep them all distinct, and they don’t go chasing the impossible. It was clear to her also that Delache was right in this – the English do. ‘We want the impossible even when we know it to be the impossible; we go on being disappointed because we don’t get it; in the midst of our disillusionment we hug our dreams.’ She thought of Derek. His trouble at the moment was just that he too had begun to want the impossible. Irish as he was, but with an English mother, he took, on the whole, very much the French point of view about life and the satisfactions it affords, especially women; but this carefully cultivated attitude was breaking down before a stronger emotional impulse, which worked on him in the way traditional to his race, and he was in the first throes of a struggle between the two. ‘It will probably beat him in the end,’ she thought; ‘if not with Judith, with someone else. The English can only love in one way, really. It’s true that they can’t love with complete success even in that way, but they can’t be happy unless they are trying to. We would rather fail on our own lines than succeed on any others; we can never really get away from our traditions and our racial make-up.’ And because her mind was like that, she began to think about the difference between Venetian and Florentine painting as a parallel. Everything that the Venetians had in them to express, they expressed to perfection, a complete and consummate achievement. But the Florentine artists never finished with a subject – there is always about their pictures a sense of the ‘yet more’, of some idea too great for them, striving for expression behind their finished work. ‘Yet shall there hover in their restless heads, some thought, some grace, some wonder at the least, which into words no virtue can digest,’ she muttered to herself. It was one of her outside shots in the way of ideas which Aubrey took up so readily, but hardly anyone else – she had learnt to suppress them in conversation as a rule. But it led her on to Aubrey. Curious, how the Professor had brought him to life in her thoughts – he had made her, today, meet Aubrey, so to speak, at every step her mind took. There was already between them, after one walk together, the beginnings of the same easy interchange of ideas.

  On entering her pavilion she went to her bare chamber and lit the candle, passing as quietly as she could through the darkness of the central hall. A moment later Judith came tiptoeing in in her pyjamas, her hair in a cloud round her head.

  ‘Laura, I simply won’t sleep indoors tonight! What ages you’ve been! Can’t we take our beds out?’

  ‘The men are all over the courtyard,’ said Laura.

  ‘The terrace, then – let’s go on to the terrace!’

  Laura was aware of a certain urgency in Judith’s voice, and realised that this was one of the nights when youth must have its way – to thwart it in the interests of middle-aged comfort would be almost criminal.

  ‘We must take our beds ourselves, then,’ she said resignedly. ‘The servants will have gone to bed.’

  But they had only got a few yards with Judith’s bed when a figure in white came slippering softly across the courtyard – the ever-watchful Niu had observed their proceedings. He fetched a coolie, and their two beds were carried out and placed on the inner terrace under the white pine. Laura went back and undressed, then she went out to them.

  Having once got their camp beds out of doors, it was impossible not to feel that it was worthwhile. The inner terrace lay utterly quiet under the moon, marked by sharp black pictures of the turret, the tablet, and the twisted yellow fir – even the bells of the little pagoda, silhouetted against the luminous sky, dangled a second time on the moonlit pavement. In under the white pine, where their beds were, the shadows were deep – only a fleck or two of white light lay like rags on the flagstones; overhead, through the cold grey-white interlacing of the shadowed lower boughs, they could see the top-most branches shining golden in the strong moonlight.

  ‘Golly, what a place!’ breathed Judith unpoetically. ‘It was divine of you to bring us here.’

  ‘There’s nowhere like Chieh T’ai Ssu,’ said Mrs Leroy contentedly.

  There was silence for a little while – then, ‘Laura, are you very sleepy?’ inquired Judith’s voice.

  ‘No, not particularly,’ Laura replied, still under the compulsion of her feeling that this was Youth’s Night Out.

  ‘Then may I talk to you for a bit?’

  ‘Yes, rather, do.’ And to emphasise her conversational mood she lit a cigarette. ‘Carry on!’ she said. But the beginning was unexpected.

  ‘What exactly did you mean when you said the other day that sincerity was rather overrated?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Did I say so?’

  ‘Oh yes – don’t you remember? The day the picnic was arranged, when we’d been to the Summer Palace. We were talking about entertaining and people and all that, and then the Minister rang up, and you went away, and never finished.’

  Laura delved back into her memory with an effort, and did remember their talk to some extent. There had been – oh yes – some question of the sincerity or otherwise of entertaining people who bored one.

  ‘I think I probably meant that in those anyhow very superficial social relationships, it was a mistake to make such a fetish of sincerity as to let it cramp one’s style,’ she said, choosing her words rather carefully.

  ‘But you don’t think it a mistake in more – personal relationships?’ the girl pursued.

  ‘No – I think it enormously important. But you know sincerity isn’t a matter of words only.’

  ‘Oh no, I know!’ said Judith, with
conviction. ‘That’s what’s so difficult, partly. It’s about Derek, of course. You’ve guessed that.’

  ‘More or less. Well, tell me about him.’

  ‘Well, you see, things are getting to a stage where almost everything one says or does seems to count; they’re not just bricks in a heap any more – each thing is either building up or pulling down. Do you know?’

  Laura did know. She recognised the mood of suspense fraught with a sort of exaltation – the sense of trivial words and actions being weighted with an almost terrifying significance.

  ‘Are you finding sincerity difficult?’ she asked.

  ‘Not exactly – well yes, in a way. You see, I’m accustomed to it!’ said Judith quaintly. ‘It’s more … Oh, Laura, I want to be wise!’

  ‘Yes?’ Laura waited for more.

  ‘You see,’ the girl went on, ‘I think I understand now pretty well what he is – I mean I know he’s accustomed to hareing round after various women all the time. But now there’s me – and I have a sort of feeling that that is rather different, even for him – and even already. And that it might become quite different.’

  Laura thought this too, but she did not say so. She must keep the ring only – the girl must settle it alone.

  ‘Yes, go on.’

  ‘Well, I think in a way I might rather like it to,’ Judith brought out in a burst. ‘But there are some snags. I don’t really want to – oh, reform him, as they call it; he’s so fearfully nice as he is, in lots of ways. Only –’ she paused. ‘Oh, surely, Laura, there are more important things than sleeping with people? And surely there’s something in – well, in love itself that you miss by just doing that, on and on? You see, when he talks of love, he means making love, and to comparative strangers at that – and that isn’t what I mean by it a bit.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Laura. Judith needed very little help, she felt. She had apparently only to show that she was awake at intervals for it all to come pouring out.

  ‘But then, I must be wise, somehow, to – oh, you do see what I mean? If we …’ she hesitated. ‘Well, if we do go on, I should need to be hideously wise later, because it will be a fearful job, obviously, for one woman to satisfy him after so many. But you see, if I love him, I shall mind if he goes after other women. And if I don’t love him, the whole thing’s a washout. And if I love him, I don’t want him to be satisfied with a greedy sort of love – and besides, he isn’t, really.’