by Ursula Bloom
Four
I
It was very still that night.
The moonlight slipped in through the window, and the vine quivered as though touched by a wind, yet there was no wind, for the sea was rippleless and silvered like a painting.
Josette sat on the divan beside Jan, and they were like two children, hand in hand, staring into one another’s eyes in wonderment because they were setting out together on the great adventure of life.
‘Once,’ he said, ‘my mother warned me against love! How wrong she was. She did not understand.’
‘Once,’ said Josette gently, ‘somebody told me that love was never worth while. It was an exquisite pain while it lasted, and a tormenting one after. But I love you, and you love me, and we know that isn’t true.’
‘Of course not.’
There was the quivering of the vine outside.
‘We shall look back upon this moment all our lives,’ said Jan tenderly, ‘we shall know that this was the beginning. We didn’t start where we were born, that counted as nothing. Those useless years of growing up, and learning about life never mattered. But it all happened. This is the moment when we start along the path together.’
‘We shall always be together,’ she said.
‘I know.’
For a moment there was silence; it was that poignant silence, which is too full for words, and so cannot make itself heard.
He said: ‘Once I sat at Villefranche with my mother, and that was when she told me that she had felt like I do now, but it didn’t last. Oh, my dear, this is precious, we have got to make it last.’
‘It will, for us,’ she said.
He hated the doubt that rose in him for a moment, the doubt his mother had inspired in him, which queried why it should be different for them.
He said: ‘Her life was so hard! Perhaps it was that she was so poor. I suppose that there was nothing that you could do to help such poverty, and she became scarred by it.’
‘We are rich,’ said Josette, for with their pooled earnings, they would be able to save against rainy days, and to save meant richness. The Padrone might not be generous, but he had done much for them, and after all, at the Galleon the tips were on a lavish scale, and Jan could put those by. It was wonderful to feel so rich.
‘I know.’
‘One day,’ she said joyously, ‘we will have a little restaurant of our own, and then all the money in the world will be ours. We’ll make goulash, and risotto, and everybody will come, because it will be the most beautiful risotto and goulash that they have ever tasted. Will it not be so?’ and she laughed.
‘All the world,’ he said.
He wished that the shadow of that night at Villefranche did not lie upon him. Then he had sat with his mother, and had seen within her the ghost of that which once had been a young and lovely girl; now that ghost came to haunt him! He was afraid. The love that he had believed was strong enough to defy the whole world, suddenly to draw back and made him apprehensive. He wished that he were not afraid.
‘Love died for her,’ he thought.
‘We are different, different,’ cried Josette joyfully, and she put her little arms round him and drew his head down to her own, so that she could kiss his forehead. ‘Love is always new, it is always brave. I am not afraid for the future. There can be no background that will spoil my feeling for you. Don’t worry, my precious, it is such nonsense.’
He agreed.
‘Look,’ she said, showing him the window with the panorama of the sea beyond. ‘There lies the world, the big brave world that has everything to give us if only we have the impudence to snatch it, and we have the impudence, my dear. We will travel, my sweet; we will cross the sea! We will dance on the Danube, and down the Rhine, where there are vineyards, and mountains, and little castles; we will go to England, where there are fields like little green pocket handkerchiefs, and no vineyards, but where they grow hops for beer.’
She infected him with her gaiety. About her there was the buoyancy of the waves at high tide, of the winds at spring, and the corn at harvest.
‘We will,’ he said, and could share her joy.
There was the sweet clove-scent of the carnations from the table, the carnations that Madame had sent, which were now so pale in the moonlight that they might almost be white. There were the wedding gifts, lying about the room; the crisp notes from the Padrone, who had given lavishly; the rose bowl that the Maestro had left, with the instruction to gather the roses; and the beautiful embroidered cloth that had been Matina’s present to them.
It was their new world.
Nothing in the past could trespass across its threshold, he told himself, it was absurd to allow the ghost of his mother to wag a warning finger at him, and threaten him that love might not endure.
‘I love you so much,’ he whispered.
II
They were supremely happy.
Naturally, they worked hard at the restaurant in the evening, but they could lie late in the morning, until the sun had risen high and the day lay warmly upon the oleanders, and the lindens, and the little olive trees which grew in a mass behind the white house, so that one could lean from the balcony to pick the olives.
Life was happy.
The people who came to the cafe appreciated the fact that they looked so happy, and so much in love. It was good to see two people who cared so deeply in a world whose illusions were usually worn threadbare, and they would throw lire to them, and applaud vigorously.
Like this, life flourished for them both.
The Padrone allowed Jan to take home food that was left over, and which he believed would not keep. Sometimes it was the flowers that he would have thrown away, but Jan would take them, for Josette had a passion for flowers. She would cut their heads short, and swim them on a wide plate of water, just the heads of carnations, and camellias, like quaint water flowers, spiked to a couple of leaves.
‘It is my pool,’ she would tell Jan, ‘my wish well, where the fairies give me my heart’s desire,’ and she would laugh.
Such happiness was unbelievable.
There came a letter from his mother, begging for help. Roby was a troublesome lad, and he had not taken to the fishing as they had hoped, though Henri when he grew up would be good at it. But now Henri was too small to go out with the boats. Roby hung about the alleyways of Villefranche, and begged from tourists, and the gendarmes were after him. Roby had those light fingers which could not stay still, but were for ever into other people’s businesses, and pockets.
There seemed to be no doubt, from the tone of his mother’s illiterate letter, that she expected Roby to drag them all into prison, unless Jan (always her favourite, she emphasized) did something about it.
He was saving hard for the little restaurant.
Every Saturday night he and Josette would bring out the stocking in which all their savings were packed, and hold it closely, and hug it, for herein lay their hopes.
‘We ought to send her some, the poor maman,’ said Josette, she is very poor, she has not had much happiness.’
He said: ‘Why not? It was her life, and she chose it to be that way.’
‘We ought to send it to her.’
It went against the grain to send that little wad of notes, but within six weeks she had written again, for the wad of notes was spent, and the family was now in even more serious trouble. Jan did not know what to do for them.
‘We must send more,’ said Josette, who was a most generous little soul, and she waved her little hands which were like flowers, quite gaily. It was Matina whose advice he took.
‘What should I do, Matina?’ he asked one evening when she came early, and stood there by the piano, dusting the keys lovingly, and touching them with caressing fingers, like a mother touches a child’s curls.
‘You never think for yourself, Jan?’
‘Myself? Why should I think for myself?’
She said: ‘Your mother had not been good to you. I do not see that she can
expect you to bring up all the babies that she has had. The day will come when you have babies of your own, and they have a right to the money that you have saved; far more than she has.’
‘I cannot leave her to starve?’
Matina shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. For a woman with the face of a Madonna, she had a worldly outlook. ‘She will not starve,’ she said, ‘she is too clever for that. Don’t send her the money, Jan. Keep it.’
At the time it hurt to resist the impulse which was to send that money, but he did resist it, and put back the notes into the stocking against the time when he and Josette would have a restaurant of their own, and make goulash and risotto. He felt guilty about it, and angry with himself, for nothing would have been easier than to satisfy the prickings of conscience and to slip away and put those notes into the post for his mother.
Yet the very next night he was not sorry.
The next night, he watched Josette dancing; he stood back against the wall as he had stood the first time. She did not move so lightly; it struck him as she flittered to and fro that her body was tired, for it quivered as she moved, and there was a strained look in her eyes, as though they had receded. Afterwards, when it was over, and he had served the patrons with drinks once more, so that they were happy, and the Maestro was playing, Jan slipped round to Josette’s dressing-room. She was still in her dancing frock, pinkly pale, with two great roses on her breast, and her hair smoothed flat like yellow satin. Her head had sunk forward on to her arms, and she was asleep.
He lifted her gently, and the hare’s foot pad with which she powdered her face slipped to the floor.
He said: ‘Sweet, are you so tired?’
‘Yes, Jan, so very tired.’
For a moment he remembered the Maestro’s warning, and was terrified lest he should have thought of it before. ‘You are not ill?’ he gasped.
‘Ill? No, listen, my little one. Listen hard! Maybe it is for the great happiness that I am so tired.’ She lifted her hands, and rocked them in the air soothingly, as though she were lulling an imaginary bambino to rest. He watched her, and he knew as he interpreted her meaning that a flame lit his own eyes. He knew that he loved her more now, at this particular moment, than he had ever loved her before.
‘We are to have a child?’ he asked, and then quickly: ‘When?’
‘In the spring, my sweet, in the spring!’ she said so tenderly, yet so gaily.
He caught her in his arms, and pressed her closely to him. In the spring they would have a baby; not a baby like those whimpering little creatures that had cluttered up that one room in Villefranche, but a beautiful child in lovely clothes. He had been wise to save his money for the baby, as Matina had said. He had been right to keep it for her. They would want every penny now.
‘I love you,’ he whispered, ‘I did not know that it was possible to love anybody so much.’
III
Naturally, the next few months presented their difficulties, because, after a little while, it was impossible for Josette to dance in the restaurant, so that she had to stay at home and make clothes for the new life which the spring would bring. It meant that their wages were reduced, because her earning had been helpful, and she was worried about this. Not so worried as Jan was, although he would not admit it.
‘You see,’ he said once, ‘I am afraid of poverty. It hurts so much. I know how cruel it can be.’
‘We are not poor, Jan, we are so rich in that we have one another.’
‘Yes, but I would hate that it should become as once it became for my poor mother.’
‘It will not.’
She had a gay confidence in the future which he admired, because she really believed it. After all, she lived life on a far better plan than he had ever lived it; if the moment were good, then she was happy, and if the minute was sad, then she was miserable. But so many of the present minutes were radiantly happy that really there was no need to worry about them at all.
When the winter came, the rich crowd left Amalia. They said that it was far too cold. The men and women, used to the pleasant warmth, went further south, to pleasanter casinos, where the roses still blew. The artists came back, and the men and women who wrote books, a jolly crowd, and cheerful, but with very little money to spend, though free with tips when they could afford to be.
It meant a general tightening of belts, for no one could expect as much from this crowd as they had had from that rich people who, not having to count every penny, were liberal in all that they spent.
The vine shed its leaves and tapped with skeleton fingers at the window.
‘But soon it will be spring again,’ said Josette cheerfully, ‘soon it will be spring, and then the bambino will be here, and after that I shall be dancing again.’
Matina was kind in making little things for the bambino. She spent much in this way, and sometimes Jan was almost ashamed of her kindness, for she earned very little money. Josette laughed about it.
‘She is in love with you, my dear,’ she would say gaily, and for some reason, Jan never knew why, it made him very angry that Josette should talk like that.
‘It is nonsense.’
‘It is not. Anybody with half an eye could see that she worshipped you. I remember her face at your wedding. La pauvre. I remember the way she looked, and I was sorry for her, she would have given so much to be your bride.’
He said again: ‘You know that it is nonsense,’ and for the first time he was quite angry with her.
‘I will tell you something else,’ and she came to him coquettishly. ‘She would have made you happier than I shall.’
‘Nobody could make me happier.’
‘She would be a better wife, I know that. She is serious where I am gay. She is brave; she would have done more for you.’
He said: ‘I love you so much; nobody in the world could have made me as happy as you have done.’
She turned like a caressing child, and cuddled against him; there was something almost kittenish about her, and he had the feeling that even if she were going to have a baby, she herself was the kind that will never grow up. She would always be young like this, never old, or grey-haired. She was gay, with that careless grace, and that indifference to the morrow, happy and content in the abundance of to-day.
‘In the spring the baby will come,’ she said, and her voice was so happy that it was almost a song.
‘In the spring,’ he promised.
IV
That was a hard winter in a country which does not understand hard winters.
It was far colder than it had been since the middle of the last century, which only grandfathers could remember, and a wind blew from the north, with a hint of ice in it which was hard for their thin blood to bear. At Christmas Josette caught a bad cold.
‘I do not have colds usually,’ she said gaily, ‘I do not know why this should have happened now.’
‘It is because you are run down. The baby …’ he began, and he was afraid for her.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it must be the baby,’ and then with a laugh: ‘Poor bambino! We blame him for everything and he does not mean any harm. It will be a him; it will be a boy, I know. Mothers always know, they say.’
Jan did not care which sex the baby would be, for he was far too worried about Josette to think of the child. The cold was heavy, and it laid her low for a whole week; when she got up again she had a hollow cough, which frightened him. He could not forget what the Maestro had said when he had spoken so warningly, and that worried him.
‘It is nothing,’ Josette said light-heartedly. ‘Only a legacy, they come after colds.’
But the cough did not get better. Because he was so very afraid for her, he consulted the doctor, who came and fussed and sounded her chest and then said that it was nothing of any importance. It was just that they were young and frightened, and all the time there was nothing to worry them. Only a little nonsense, said he. Jan should have felt happier after that, but every time that he heard Josette coughing
about the house, it racked him, and he knew that he was becoming anxious again.
He confided in the Maestro one day, when he was suddenly desperately anxious, because he thought that the Maestro would understand, having been the one who had warned him.
‘I should never have said that,’ said the old man, reproaching himself for it, ‘it was wrong of me, and I ought to have held my tongue. She caught cold, like many other people, and now that is over, it has left her with a cough. It leaves dozens of people with coughs; that is nothing to concern you so much. All nothing.’
There was something pleasantly reassuring about the Maestro’s tone, much more reassuring than the doctor had been with his chit-chat, so Jan felt, and now he tried to laugh about the cough, and call Josette his ‘petite chienne’, playfully, pretending that she barked.
Spring came late.
That icy grip had held fast upon the world for far too long, but one day when they looked out of the window, they saw that the sea had turned pale blue again, and the vine was putting out tiny green tendrils, and clinging to the wall, and was full with budding leaves. There was a warmth in the sunshine, a promise of something which was far fairer to come; wistaria in flower, bougainvillea, and wild arums. For the first time, Josette opened the window, and sat there, drawing in deep breaths of air and smiling at the sunshine.
‘Jan, it is good to see the year start again so good.’
He said: ‘I know.’
Almost immediately after that the baby was born. He was a February child. He came, most conveniently, when his father had finished for the night at the restaurant, and, coming to the attic, found Josette, trying to make light of the pain. She was sitting on the bed, and said: ‘The baby will be here tomorrow. To-morrow will be the baby’s birthday.’
‘My sweet, is it so bad?’
‘No, Jan, of course not, of course not.’ But her poor little mouth was twisted; and then, a little later: ‘I wonder if Matina would come to be with me? Matina is so wise, so sensible. I could lean on Matina.’
Matina had already fallen asleep in her narrow room, so that Jan had no small difficulty in waking her up. She came to the window, her face framed in a little dark shawl that she wore, which made her look more madonna-like than ever.