The Golden Flame (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘Yes, he is a beautiful baby,’ she would reply.

  They came at last to the sea, and saw it rippleless and clear, much like that other sea that Jan and Josette had watched from the window of their big attic. They had been told so often of the unfriendliness of the channel which lies between France and England, that they were both amazed to see it lying there, so like an old friend, so turquoise, and so still.

  ‘It is a good omen,’ said Matina quietly.

  They walked on board the little ship, and sat themselves down calmly, with their luggage grouped beside them, and the child, now awake and laughing in her arms. They might have been man and wife for all the world could judge, and not merely two friends, a man in mental torment, and the woman who had gone to him out of sheer goodness of heart!

  They saw across the water the white line as though some child had chalked it in with a piece of chalk to amuse himself, and they knew that those were the white cliffs they had heard people talking about before. White cliffs of Dover they called them, and Dover was where the boat put in!

  The crossing was quite smooth.

  They came to England, and sat down in a more comfortable train for the third class compartments in the other trains had been bare boards.

  ‘Surely these cannot be for us?’ asked Jan.

  ‘Surely they are,’ said Matina.

  They stared out at the new land from the windows. Jan did not know it but she was agonized lest he should hate it. Instead he liked it. Little fields, as the squares on a draughts-board, and lanes winding this way and that. Trees grown tawny and red with autumn, and children picking blackberries, just as the children of Tuscany gathered grapes.

  The oasts of Kent nuzzled together beside comfortable stack yards; they looked at them approvingly, not knowing what they might be, but sighting them as of interest. Little villages, churches with squat belfries, or tall steeples. As they neared London they saw the great city sprawled out in the evening sun. It was far bigger than they had expected. A feeling of lostness came over Matina; for a moment she wondered if she had attempted more than she should, and if she had done wrongly to bring Jan here. He, for his part, felt a sense of protection. He sensed that lostness and wanted to help her.

  ‘We shall be all right,’ he said.

  Nevertheless they came out of Victoria station, this strange trio, into the sunlight of the yard, and they stared helplessly, this way and that.

  A policeman saw them and came to them. They felt sure that he must be a great gentleman, and spoke to him respectfully, and haltingly, for all the English they knew had been picked up from the visitors to Amalia, save that Jan had learnt a little at Villefranche at Madame’s hotel.

  The policeman was extremely friendly. He nudged Luis’s cheeks and made him laugh, and he told them of a cheap lodging where they would find rooms, in the Soho neighbourhood, where there were dozens of foreigners like themselves.

  They trekked away, taking the bus he had directed, and getting out where he had said, Matina staggering along with the baby, and Jan with the curiously packed luggage.

  They turned out of Shaftesbury Avenue, which they knew to be much too smart for them, away from the rich people who were shopping there, and the theatres from which the crowds were emptying, because it was a matinee day, and they got their first glimpse of Soho itself, with its maze of little thin streets, and its curious grocery shops, and restaurants, and the windows with their fat chianti bottles, and the scent of garlic, and of spiced foods.

  ‘It is nice,’ said Jan suddenly.

  III

  The lodging house was clean and respectable, and they managed to get two tiny bedrooms skied off a landing, and ate in a communal room downstairs. It could not be for long, but then Matina had made up her mind that the sooner Jan got to work the better. He had experience. He only needed the urge to earn, and everything would be all right for him. The more he worked the less chance there would be of thinking of Josette, and the unhappiness of the past.

  It was she who found the little shop.

  The previous owner had been an Italian, who had failed miserably. The tiny house was shaped like a lighthouse, with a curious circular stairway which led up three floors. In the hurry of his get-away the previous owner had left some tables and a few chairs. They could be repainted and made gay. She saw possibilities.

  There was a tea importer on one side, and a grocer the other, and at the corner Campretti’s, the big restaurant, which did a big business and where almost everybody came and went. She watched them jealously.

  It was curious that she could forget her beloved piano so quickly, and dedicate herself to the picking-up of the pieces of this young man’s life, and helping him to re-establish himself. She did not yearn for her music.

  She supposed that she had always loved him so much, that to be with him was enough. It did not matter that he did not love her; she loved him, and that was sufficient.

  ‘That would be a good restaurant,’ she told him.

  He was in that lethargic mood which will be guided by anyone, and he took over the lease with no more ado. They had the money saved! For a moment he thought of the dreams that he and Josette had fostered of that restaurant where he would be maître and where she would dance. Now it was he and Matina who were to work together, and there was Tessa, a slatternly old body, who had been with the other owner, but who could cook and knew a risotto when she saw one.

  ‘We will make a success of it,’ said Matina, and her enthusiasm made him enthusiastic too.

  They did the repairs themselves. Cleaning the place out, and Matina, with never a thought for her hands which once had meant so much to her. There was the top floor with the bedroom for each of them, and the rest could be made into different restaurant rooms. In time they would develop it, she explained. They would start with only the two rooms downstairs, and she hung up gay striped curtains made from an old petticoat of hers, and she painted the tables and chairs in scarlet and jade to match.

  ‘It will be very gay,’ she said.

  So, before they had time to look much round London, the restaurant opened for them, and hopefully they prepared for clients. At first only one or two passing by, noticed that the place was fresh and clean, so popped inside.

  Jan greeted them with a smile.

  He knew that now everything depended on him. It depended on how much he could put into this restaurant to encourage the clients to come back again. They did come back. He was amiable and interesting. He had cast aside his cloak of unhappiness as though it had been a pall, and now he was determined to make a success of this new venture.

  He could not let Matina down.

  They had started at a bad time, for almost immediately the English winter was upon them, and being used to the pleasant warmth of Amalia, it struck them very hardly. The child caught cold, and could not shake it off. In the end he went into hospital, and Matina cried herself sick with anxiety for him, believing that she had failed in her care.

  It was very difficult, that first winter, with their store of money decreasing, and trade fluctuating. There was the climate too! Not those mornings when the world was stiff with frost, for then that sent a colour to their cheeks, and they moved quickly, but those dreary damp days, with a moisture that seemed to penetrate into their very bones and was so very difficult to deal with.

  Both of them developed severe chest colds, and Jan would have closed the restaurant, had it not been that Matina was for ever at his side!

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Go on, and we will make good. You’ll see, we will make good.’

  She refused to look back.

  ‘We have got to make good, Jan, we have got to prosper for the sake of the bambino,’ she would insist.

  To her the bambino was a sacred trust, left to her by a dead woman. She would not betray it.

  Then, out of the mists and chilliness of winter, spring drew herself again, in a shimmering veil of light. New buds swelled in the plane trees in Soho Square, there was a gay s
wagger about the milkboy on his rounds, and he whistled more bravely, and flirted with girls at area railings.

  ‘Now,’ said Matina with fresh heart, ‘it is spring again, and we will start in earnest. You will see.’

  IV

  London suddenly waxed more sociable.

  People came out to dine and to lunch. They liked good food, and lingered over the gay little tables, around which Jan fluttered, his own heart beating as he saw trade improving. Where once there had only been two people or so in the restaurant, now there were several.

  ‘We are getting known,’ he said.

  Now he took an immense pride in the restaurant, making it gay with flowers, going to the market and shopping fastidiously, choosing carefully so that he should not spend too much, and always buying good food.

  ‘If the food keeps good, then people will continue to come,’ said Matina prophetically.

  The food was always good.

  One morning when it was late April, and the women were selling multi-coloured tulips in their big baskets, and little boys had bunches of primroses in the gutters, Jan was airing himself in the doorway of the house which was shaped like a lighthouse.

  He saw Mr. Campretti come out of his fine big restaurant two doors away. Mr. Campretti was iron grey. He was a little man with a big stomach, and twinkly dark eyes, and he ran an excellent business in his large restaurant.

  He saw Jan standing there sunning himself, and he came down the street towards him.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Mr. Campretti.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Jan, surprised, because always before Mr. Campretti had looked with disgust at the little new restaurant, and although he had never said anything in their hearing, they knew by the way that he looked at them that he disliked them intensely.

  ‘Business good?’ asked Mr. Campretti in quite a friendly voice. He stuck his thumbs inside his waistcoat sleeve-holes, and stood there obviously wanting to talk.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jan, ‘it is the spring!’

  Mr. Campretti lolled indolently against the area railing, and glanced inside the restaurant, with the gay striped curtains made from an old petticoat of Matina’s. He said: ‘I wonder you do not go back to the south. The child is paler than he was! Your wife …’

  ‘She is not my wife.’

  For a moment Mr. Campretti looked at him with a curious leer. It was a sickening look, and Jan knew that he completely misunderstood.

  ‘So,’ said Mr. Campretti, ‘well, the friend then! She must fret for the sunshine. Why not go back to the south?’

  ‘We wished to come to England.’

  Mr. Campretti nodded. He said: ‘Soho is very full of people and there is not much room for a newcomer. You could sell your business very profitably, and go back.’

  For a moment there came to Jan the fleeting thought of how beautiful it would be to see Amalia again. He could go back to the Padrone, and he had loved working for him. He could listen to the Maestro once more, and see Matina at her piano which she loved so much, and had given up for him.

  Then he knew that Amalia would be a pain, a knife thrust in the heart! It would hurt too much. He would be for ever thinking of Josette. He would be for ever remembering how she had danced like a flower in the wind, and he could not bear the bitter sweetness of such thoughts. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we will stay here.’

  Mr. Campretti argued. He said that he would be prepared to buy the little business and extend his own to it. He eyed it avidly. He suggested a sum which seemed to Jan to be far more than the place was worth. For a moment he was strongly tempted to close with the offer, then instinct warned him that there might be a catch in it! He would consult with Matina, he said, and then when they had talked it over together, then he would decide what to do.

  He could see that Mr. Campretti did not like this idea. He would have preferred a quick decision, but Jan, the more he thought about it, the less he liked the suggestion of anything in the nature of quickness.

  ‘Oh, as you will, I might not renew the offer,’ said Mr. Campretti and now his eyes were not so bright and he did not sound so cheerful.

  ‘I will tell you to-morrow. You understand I must ask Matina.’

  ‘But if she is not your wife?’

  ‘She has money in this. It is half her business.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Mr. Campretti, and grunted, and went on his way.

  Jan went into the shop. Tessa was cooking in the kitchen, from which came the exquisite scent of garlic, and thyme, and mint. She chattered to herself for Tessa was a born chatterer, and out in the funny little square yard the child toddled and played with a wooden train that his father had bought for him.

  ‘Matina,’ he called.

  She came down the circular stairs, her head tied in a turban of duster material, her dark madonna eyes very somnolent. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He told her then briefly what had happened. Mr. Campretti wanted to buy the business, he wanted to have it for himself, and then they could go away back to the south, where the sun always shone, and where there were no fogs.

  Matina stared at him.

  ‘It would be madness,’ she said slowly.

  ‘I thought it a fine offer.’

  ‘Madness,’ she repeated, ‘quite crazy! He would not want to buy the business if it did not threaten his own. He is afraid that you will do too well.’

  ‘But we are only starting.’

  ‘Yes, and we go on.’ He had never seen her so impassioned, so alive, so vivid. She seemed to have become surprisingly strong.

  ‘But why not go back?’

  ‘Because in life you cannot go back, only on! Oh, Jan, we have worked so hard for all this, we must not sacrifice it.’

  She had put out an arm and had caught at his. Now there was something compelling about her. He recognized it. He knew at this particular moment that she loved him, that she would do anything in the world for him, and that she would face that world for him. All along he had known that she cared of course, but not that she loved, deeply, passionately, strongly.

  ‘But the south …’ he argued.

  ‘We are going on,’ she said.

  ‘Very well.’

  He would have turned away, irritated that any woman should dictate to him so compellingly, but she put out her hand again. ‘Jan, dear Jan, listen to me. I want the best for you and the bambino. We will find the best. We will do well! Jan, don’t turn against me.’

  Dully he replied: ‘How could I turn against one who had done so much for me?’

  ‘I care for you,’ she whispered. ‘I always cared.’

  ‘I know.’

  She said: ‘Oh, Jan, don’t think me cruel, because there is no going back; when I left Amalia I knew that it was for ever, I knew that all I could do in the future was to be for you. It wasn’t easy to say good-bye. The sea, that shore, the scent of the magnolias, and my piano. My piano hurt most of all.’

  He glanced for a moment at her hands, roughened by work, and he said: ‘You’ve been too good for me, Matina.’

  ‘I could never be good enough, you had suffered so much, and so hard. I wanted to help you.’ She wiped away her tears which she choked down. ‘I knew that when I came, and it was at my own free will.’

  Again he said: ‘You’ve been too good to me.’ He stood there staring at her. About her was a certain loveliness, a certain new beauty awakened by love. It was all wrong that he could not take her into his arms, and kiss her, but something held him back. Memory of Josette, a little ghost dancer, pirouetting through his mind. He had never loved Matina, only cared for her deeply, sincerely, and it was not sufficient. He had known the emotional passions of real love, and there was no such thing as a second best.

  For one moment he saw the fire burning in her heart, a golden flame, which lit her eyes, so that they shone tenderly.

  ‘You’ve been an angel to me,’ he murmured, and pressed her hand and then turned and stumbled down the stairway.

  V

  He
told Mr. Campretti that night.

  It was a still spring evening, with the sounds of Shaftesbury Avenue hushed and dimmed, and the people sitting in their doorways for a breath of air.

  He said: ‘I have talked to Matina, and she does not think that it would be wise for me to give up my restaurant. It is just beginning to make good. We came here because we wished to be in England. There would be no sense in giving it up now.’

  Mr. Campretti looked at him with those queer slotted little eyes of his. He said: ‘But that is nonsense. I am offering you big money for the restaurant. You will not make it pay for long. Nobody has made it pay. The last man was glad to crawl away from the failure. It has been like that with many.’

  ‘I know. But Matina wishes to stay.’

  He himself did not know which way he wished to go, but he was influenced by the girl who had been so good to him. Matina loved him. He supposed that was the reason why he leant on her.

  ‘Think again,’ urged Mr. Campretti, going red, and with signs of obvious anger. ‘Think again. Do not trust any woman. Women were made to scrub, and to cook, they have not the right heads for business. Think again.’

  ‘I have thought,’ said Jan, ‘and I have made up my mind.’

  ‘But I tell you nobody will pay you what I will pay you for the little business.’

  ‘I do not care,’ said Jan, very quietly. ‘I have made up my mind.’

  As he turned away from the big restaurant, he had the feeling that he had made a bad enemy, an enemy who would be there for life. He wondered if he had not made a mistake, just as he had wondered for one dreadful moment when he had turned from the Maestro that time that he had warned Jan that Josette might inherit her father’s deadly disease.

  Jan did not know who was right at this particular moment, Matina, or Mr. Campretti.

  Matina was waiting in the doorway to welcome him. The bambino clung to her skirts. She said: ‘Well,’ and then, ‘he was very angry?’

  ‘Dreadfully angry! I fear we have made a bad enemy. It is not wise to come to a new country, and then make so bad an enemy.’