Presently the bell rang and the siren hooted and the long line of porters ran back the gangplanks. The boat drew away from Dover quayside and the blank wall that hides the trains, and the grey, terraced town with its white cliffs, and all the ramparts of the English coast, getting lower and smaller. Teresa waved good-bye to it and to Uncle Charles’s niece, a shadowy person, the creation of his persuasive fancy, and once, for a short time, almost convincing. It was not a difficult farewell, for the capacities of this dimly apprehended young woman had been so unripe, her destiny had lain so very much in the future, that she might never have come to life. Teresa had lost faith in her.
They had not gone far into the windy morning before she was compelled to go down into that Limbo where Belgian stewardesses in dubious aprons ply their grim trade. She felt desperately ill, but not so bad that she could not enjoy the antics of her fellow passengers. In an undertone she rehearsed their complaints, announcing her condition in every sort of accent, Glasgow, Kensington, Cambridge, Dublin, Leeds, Wapping and New York. But before the end of the crossing, which was a bad one, she lost interest in life. Time had ceased to exist for her, when a voice penetrated the chilly fog of exhaustion which shut out the world.
‘Mademoiselle is alone? She has no friends?’
Two stewardesses were looking at her in evident anxiety Their faces floated in the fog above her head. One of them said that she was blue and they asked again if she was alone, this time in French, and very loud, blaring at her like a couple of trombones.
‘Toute seule …’ she replied weakly. ‘… non … un monsieur . . la-hàut … on arrive déja?’
‘Nous sommes en retard … Mademoiselle est vraiment malade? Elle se trouve mieux à present?’
‘Woirse and woirse!’ said Teresa, with a recollection of the lady from New York in the next bunk. If she could survive this crossing she would make Lewis laugh, telling him about all these ladies. She said in a stronger voice that she could do with some brandy if they had any.
They gave her brandy and she found the strength to struggle to her feet. All round her the battered wrecks of women were gathering themselves and their possessions together. She looked in her purse and found half a crown and three halfpence. She gave the half crown to the stewardess and climbed rather uncertainly up the steep ladder. She noticed that the woman stood at the bottom watching her anxiously as if afraid she might fall back suddenly.
‘I must look frightful,’ she thought.
Outside, the cold air did her good. She found that they were nearly in, slipping past the endless Ostend Plage with its fringe of hotels and casinos. It was a boisterous, changeable afternoon and the enormous sky seemed to be full of clouds, all sailing at different speeds, speared through with brilliant, watery shafts of sunlight. Behind them was a grey forbidding waste, already blurred with rain.
A dense crowd was lined up for the gangplanks and she could not see Lewis anywhere. But, as they began to stream off the boat, she thought she caught sight of him, well ahead of her, going into the Douane. Thither she followed him and got an official to deal with her parcel, after a long interval of pushing and shouting. She had to untie the string, and as she was doing it up again she was appalled to hear somebody call out that the Brussels train was just starting. Gathering her possessions in her arms, she ran, strewing articles of toilet over the railway lines. Lewis, hanging out of a carriage window, hailed her:
‘Here you are! Jump in! I nearly went without you!’
She jumped in, and the train started.
‘Your tooth brush is on the line,’ he said, taking a last look out of the window. ‘What made you cut it so fine? Were you changing your money?’
‘No,’ she replied, at last getting her breath back. ‘I didn’t like to change such a large amount in a hurry.’
She showed him her three halfpence and he laughed.
‘You’ll have to buy me another toothbrush,’ she said.
‘On the contrary, you must do without one. Many most admirable people do.’
She raised her eyebrows and asked sweetly:
‘Were you sick on the boat, my turtle dove?’
He said not, but she scarcely believed him for he looked very yellow. They were going along through the flatness of Belgium and he would not tell her what any of the towns were. Whereupon she made all her enquiries of an impudent looking young Belgian beside her, explaining that her husband, with a gesture at Lewis, had never been abroad before and was recovering from the effects of sea sickness. The youth, with a broad stare at her swinging plaits and school clothes, asked pointedly if Madame had never been abroad before either. Madame replied with some aplomb that she had; she was still sustained by the brandy she had taken on the boat, and talked a great deal to all the people in their carriage, giving much uneasiness to Lewis, who knew that their appearance was odd and might cause comment. He was relieved when they reached Brussels and got out of the train unmolested.
They walked a little way and then took a tram. Teresa was silent now and docile. She sat beside Lewis, as they rumbled along towards a distant suburb, leaning against his shoulder and watching the stormy sunset behind the houses. It was a menacing sky: rags and banners of red cloud hung above the noisy streets and lit the faces of the people with an angry flame. The cries and shouts of the city sounded in her ears like cries of danger, warnings called forth by the wild light. Her dim remembrances of Brussels were not like this. When she had been there as a little girl it had seemed rather dull; this was a town imagined in a dream, a flaming adventurous place where anything might happen. She looked up at Lewis to see if he too found it exciting. He was gazing at the bright sky with the extreme concentration of purpose which he used for all important things; it was the first time that he had looked really awake since they started on their journey. He seemed to be gathering in that noisy radiance and stowing it away in his mind. An idea came to her and she asked:
‘Where are we going.’
He removed his light, steady eyes from the fiery clouds and blinked at her, as if trying to remember. Then he said:
‘To Mdme Marxse. She’ll put us up. You remember her? You all stayed in her house once before, didn’t you?’
‘I think I remember,’ she said slowly.
When she was a very little girl Sanger’s circus had spent some months with Mdme Marxse. Only she seemed to remember an old woman who was unbelievably fat. Oh, but monstrous! At that age one sees things out of scale.
‘Is she fat?’ she asked.
‘Fat! We call her Reine des Fées. You see!’
Teresa remembered now that that was what they did call her. Yes, and she had a bust like a broad shelf, buoyed up by a much boned corsage; it was with some awe that the young Sangers had watched her eat, so impossible was it that she could see her plate. The same idea had occurred to all of them – that it would be much better if she would put the plate on the shelf just under her chin. And like a lurid picture stood out the day when Sanger had said it. Suddenly he had leant forward in the middle of a silent meal and said persuasively:
‘Reine, why don’t you allow your plate to repose on your bosom? It would go better. You are dropping your food on your best gown.’
Another memory dawned; Evelyn, the beautiful mother who was so difficult to remember, had reproved the children for giggling, in case Mdme. Marxse might be mortified.
‘Must we go there?’ asked Teresa, rather reluctantly.
‘She knows us all,’ explained Lewis. ‘She’ll … she’ll hold her tongue … if anybody comes asking for us …’
‘I see. I’ve quite forgotten Brussels.’
But when they stood on the door step of Maison Marxse, she recognised the house opposite which used to have a birdcage with a canary in it. The smell of the entresol, a mixed smell of onions, stale scent, dirty black clothes and dust, carried her back more entirely into childhood. The door shut behind them like a trap and the meagre boy who had let them in went shuffling down the passage in front o
f them. An overpowering odour of the past rose up and clutched at her in the little room where Mdme Marxse, larger even than memory had painted her, wheezed upon a sofa amid sacred reliquaries, pampas grass and cats. It was such a small room, far too small for its occupant; it must have been built round her for she could never have got in at the door.
Lewis was greeted with a cascade of asthmatic chuckles and many shrill questions. Teresa had time to look about her. She remembered the picture over the stove, a puzzling group of a much curved, nude lady and a swan, which recent study of a classical dictionary enabled her to identify. But in spite of this piece of information she felt very much like a little girl, as she stood shyly clinging to her lover’s hand, while he bargained with Reine des Fées for a room. Presently she was pulled forward and introduced. The old woman remembered her, and she was folded in an odious, flabby embrace spiced with a whiff of strong waters. Enquiries were made after the other brothers and sisters. Caryl and Kate? How were they?
‘I don’t know,’ said Teresa vaguely. ‘When Sanger died we were all separated.’
‘Ah, that man! That man!’ wheezed Madame. ‘So many children he had! It is unknown how many! And now all scattered? Here we have one. Thou knowest Mignonne? A brother of thine. My grandson.’
‘Yes,’ said Lewis. ‘I’d forgotten Paul. How is he, Reine?’
‘But ill! We shan’t keep him long. He is at school now, with the Jesuits. Many days his cough is bad and he cannot go. But still he wins all the prizes.’
‘Takes after his father,’ commented Lewis. ‘They all do. They’re all too clever to live.’
Teresa remembered the narrow-chested boy in the hall; she felt no enthusiasm on hearing that he was her brother. But it was probably true that he was intelligent; Sanger seemed to have scattered the curse of intellect most lavishly about the world. She got an uneasy glimpse of life’s continuity; it appeared that these things could have no end. She wondered how many of the children called to life by Sanger’s lust would thank him for it. Her next thought caused her to tell Madame that Tony had a baby. Madame remembered Tony perfectly. A pretty little bitch! And a mother already? Well, well! Teresa it seemed had also got a man. The little black eyes leered round at Lewis. Sanger’s daughters were not likely to die old maids. Well, well! Lewis would teach her.
‘For he’s the first, isn’t he, petite ange?’
Teresa nodded, still clinging to his hand.
‘Thou couldst scarcely have begun younger,’ commented the old woman. ‘How old . . say … fifteen? Mother of God! What a hurry the girls are in nowadays! Still, I was no older …’
She plunged into grimy reminiscence. Lewis, who had scarcely listened to the conversation, became at last attentive and said impatiently in English:
‘A bawdy old thing, isn’t she?’
Teresa laughed. She thought Mdme Marxse as good as a Shakespeare play at the Nine Muses, a rich entertainment, better even than the sea-sick ladies. That was because she and Lewis were together; their completeness shut them off from the world. They were like people watching a comedy from a box, seeing more significance in life, savouring its humour more soundly, because in their hearts they were remote.
Mdme Marxse had, it appeared, a room for them on the third floor. A fine room with a good bed.
‘That will do, I think? If you wish you may sleep well. Myself I often think that a good bed is wasted on a pair of lovers. They never notice. But she looks tired, the gosse, tired and pale. Thou hast been ill lately, my child?’
‘Only on the boat, Madame.’
‘The boat! Ah! Ah! One understands. Will you go up and see the room? Myself I cannot take you; I never climb these stairs. For five years now I have lived au rez de chaussée. But my daughter shall take you up. You remember Gabrielle, petite? No? Ah, your father would, I think, remember.’
She screeched for her daughter, who answered in a deep bellow from the next room and presently joined them, wearing a petticoat and underbodice, protesting angrily that she was just dressing to go out. She was a handsome slattern with small black eyes, a sallow skin and a sumptuous figure. Teresa seemed to remember her little, lascivious mouth, which was almost lost in the ample curves of cheek and chin, but the face which memory recalled was younger, more animated, and framed in cloudy black hair, very different from the short, woolly tufts which hung over Gabrielle’s brown neck. This, it seemed, was the mother of the intelligent Paul.
Gabrielle greeted Lewis with a spurt of sudden laughter and a brief warmth in her hard eyes, but she refused to recollect anything about Teresa.
‘One of Sanger’s children,’ cackled Madame. ‘A little sister for thy Paul.’
‘I’m sorry to hear such a poor account of Paul,’ put in Lewis.
‘Est poitrinaire,’ Gabrielle told them indifferently. ‘What good are his brains to me? He will never earn a sou. Always he will be an expense to us, if he lives …’
And she asked Teresa abruptly if her mother was dead.
‘Yes,’ said Teresa, in an annoyed voice, ‘and I was born in wedlock.’
She felt somehow that Gabrielle had once been a trial to Evelyn and that a little rudeness from Evelyn’s children would pass as an expression of loyalty. Madame screeched with laughter and called Teresa a ‘type original’.
‘Which means,’ said Lewis severely, as they climbed the stairs behind Gabrielle, ‘that you are a very rude little girl.’
Teresa pinched his arm and murmured an aphorism which she had learned from Aunt May, the wife of Robert Churchill:
‘It all goes to show that you can’t be too careful.’
And they arrived at their lofty bower quite breathless with giggling. Gabrielle threw open the shutters and flounced out of the room, shouting over her shoulder, before she banged the door, that they must come down soon if they wanted food. It was a small, dingy room with a large, dingy bed in it. Other furniture was hard to find. The strength which had thus far supported Teresa went from her; she sank with a little gasp on the bed, too much exhausted even to take her hat off. Lewis took it off for her, moved to some compunction, and vowing that they should go down directly and get something to eat. Then he began to unpack his bag, strewing things about the room. Soon there were sheets of music everywhere, and these, with the yellow scarf that hung over the end of the bed, made the place look exactly like every other room which had ever belonged to him. To Teresa it was home; she saw in her mind’s eye all the funny rooms which they would share and they were all like this one, half smothered in music, with a pair of boots on the mantelpiece and a big, hard, untidy bed. She wanted to tell him about it but instead she discovered that she had said:
‘Lewis … I do feel so very ill …’
He looked frightened and then said that it was no wonder. She had fasted for nearly twenty-four hours. She would be quite restored by food and a good night’s rest. Urgently he demanded that she should agree with him, which she readily did, surprised at herself for having been so plaintive.
‘Though I doubt the night’s rest,’ she said. ‘I wonder if this is really Old Greymalkin’s idea of a good bed.’
‘Old what?’
‘Old Greymalkin; the hag downstairs. She made a point of it that this was such a good bed and everything …’
‘Did she? It’ll be our bridal bed I suppose, so it’s a pity it shouldn’t be comfortable. Let me feel it! Oh, Tessa, it’s not so bad. I’ve slept on worse.’
‘Feels to me more like a stone quarry. But this is a very odd place altogether. I’m surprised at you for bringing me here. Will you look at the stove-piece with that indecent little china ornament next door to a statue of the Sacred Heart! How Uncle Charles would laugh!’
‘Would he?’
‘I’m sure he would. That’s why I do. A year ago I wouldn’t have seen the joke of that. I’d have thought it a perfectly natural thing for those two to be side by side. Oh, dear! There’s no getting away from it! You can never get quite back.’
Lewi
s was looking round the room, taking it in, with an immense effort of imagination, through the eyes of Uncle Charles. He examined the torn curtains and the flyblown paper and the gas-jet and the incongruous ornaments; finally he looked at Teresa, exhausted but intrepid, stretched upon the bed. He clapped his hand to his head in a sort of seizure and announced:
‘Call me a fool! We’ll go away tomorrow.’
‘Dear heart! Why? Are we the wandering Jew?’
‘Filthy place!’
‘It can’t hurt us.’
‘Can’t it, my blessing? I’m not so sure. There must be other places …’
‘I think you’ll find they all look pretty much the same.’
‘I ought to have thought … it took me so much by surprise when you changed your mind like that, at the last minute … I never thought … Tessa!’
‘Um?’
‘You haven’t told me yet, why you did change so suddenly.’
‘No. And I shan’t ever tell you.’
‘Why not?’
‘It isn’t … a suitable subject for people to talk about.’
‘Dear me!’
He was surprised. He could not imagine the subject which would appal Tessa into silence. He came and sat on the bed beside her and said in a low voice:
‘Tell me!’
‘Blest if I do.’
‘Tessa, you must! You must let me have everything … now …’
‘Not a bit of it. You’ll never know; you can keep on guessing till the cows come home, but I won’t tell you.’
The Constant Nymph Page 30