Complete Short Stories (VMC) (84 page)

‘How
good
not to have anything frozen,’ she said, as she said at nearly every meal-time.

‘The tart is lovely,’ Polly said. She loved sweet things, and longed for them through the other courses.

Madame Devancourt played with her rings and stared about her, while her tall, bald son was peeling an orange for her. They really were a very silent pair; but sometimes he made a little joke, and she gave a smothered snigger behind her handkerchief. It was surprising – sounded like a naughty little girl laughing in church.

Through the window, Polly watched one or two people sitting at the tables outside the inn, looking rather bored as they sipped their evening drink. A middle-aged woman, with a bitter, closed expression on her face, sat beside an older woman who was bowed-over, so hunch-backed that she kept losing balance and slipping sideways. Then the younger woman – she was obviously her daughter – would put her right, and turn her head away again, without a word. After a while, she suddenly stood up, got her mother to her feet and began a slow progress back across the
place
.

Jean brought coffee to Gwenda and Polly and slopped it into the saucers pouring it out. Gwenda asked for another saucer and when he brought it, he looked so sulky that Polly smiled up at him, and thanked him in her atrocious accent. She knew so well herself what it was like to be clumsy and inadequate.

‘Such a moron,’ Gwenda said. ‘Never mind, it’s only for one night.’

Although it turned out to be for six.

Gwenda always got up for breakfast. She found French beds uncomfortable, and ‘liked to be about’, as she put it.

The Devancourts were also up. Madame was wearing her floppy hat, and a pair of grubby tennis-shoes. Her son peeled another orange for her, and made a few more jokes. She seemed to be his life, and accepted his attentions placidly. But she was, in her own way, protective to him. When he half stood up, with his napkin in one hand and the orange in the other, and bowed to Gwenda and Polly as they came in, she stared hard at him, as if willing him back into his seat, and Polly could imagine her having guarded him from women since he was a young man, just as Gwenda had warded off young men from herself. When he had sat down again and resumed his careful orange-peeling, the old woman turned a cold and steady gaze on Gwenda, as if to say, ‘Don’t waste any time on
this
one. He is mine.’ At Polly she did not so much as glance. Few people did. It was surprising that Jean darted forward and drew out her chair before he attended to Gwenda, although he shot it out so fast and so far that she almost fell on the floor.

‘I really don’t think he’s all there,’ Gwenda said.

She had brought the maps down to breakfast, and said that she thought that they could get to the source of the river that day. It was so beautiful up there in the Auvergne, she said. The air so clear. The flowers so beautiful. At the thought of the flowers, Polly brightened; but there was also the thought of the day ahead, with all the difficulties of the map-reading and Gwenda’s making a martyrdom of the driving – though it was she who forced the pace, who was determined to retrace every footstep of that last holiday with her husband. Why she wanted to do this, Polly found a puzzle – especially as that holiday must have been permeated with tragedy. Gwenda had always talked of it a great deal, and she talked of her husband more than Polly could endure. Such trivial repetitions – such as, every morning, ‘
How
Humphrey loved French bread!’ and reminiscences all the way along the road. And there were implications that Polly knew none of the secret joys of matrimony, and would be unlikely ever to learn them. So Polly felt excluded, as well as bored.

Sometimes, alone in her bedroom, she lay for a little while face-down on the bed, upset by vague desires. If the desires were to be loved, she had no face to match her longing; simply nothing to define her day-dreams. ‘I want! I just
want
!’ she sometimes moaned softly into the pillows.

‘Oh,
lazy
-bones!’ Gwenda would say, opening the door as she knocked on it. ‘Even at
my
age, I wouldn’t dream of lying down in the day-time.’ As like as not, she would be on her way downstairs for some of her
violent
exercise. This morning, having mused once more on Humphrey’s love of French bread, Gwenda put in her monocle and unfolded a map.

They were breakfasting in the bar, with a view through the open door across the
place
. It was early in the morning, and children were gathered at the tables outside, waiting for the school bus. The boys smoked, and some of the older girls were playing a game of cards. They were very orderly, though gay, and made a sound like starlings. Gwenda kept glancing up in annoyance, and glaring through her monocle. Polly felt envious of the children.

Madame Devancourt padded past them in her tennis-shoes, followed by her son. He bowed again, but she kept her eyes ahead. Presently, Jean appeared outside with a stiff broom and began to sweep between the tables; then he leant on the broom and talked to some of the children; almost seeming to be one of them, without, for once, his shy or sullen look. Perhaps he too was envious of them, Polly thought.

‘Jean, Jean!’ Madame Peloux came in in her black overall and called her son’s attention to his work, and he shrugged and glowered and began to sweep again.

The school bus came, was filled, and drove off, and there was silence except for the rasping of the broom on the pavement. When he had finished the sweeping, Jean watered the box-shrubs and a sharp, cold smell cut off the heat of the morning for a while.

‘Have you packed?’ Gwenda asked Polly, knowing that she had not.

As Polly got up, she bumped against the table, and Gwenda looked up sharply and clicked her tongue. Polly, catching Jean’s eyes, blushed, ashamed to be rebuked in front of him. He was standing in the doorway, flicking the last drops from the watering-can about the pavement.

As she went upstairs, Polly thought, ‘I’ll bet old Humphrey never bumped into things,’ and she hoped for his sake that he hadn’t.

Gwenda paid the bill, then she walked about the courtyard, smoking to soothe herself. The exasperation she felt at having to wait always for Polly was a trembling pain. She hated to wait, and now spent hours of her life doing so. She herself was quick and decisive, always thinking one step ahead. Routine things, like packing, for instance, were so boring that she would get them done with great speed, only to waste time she had saved pacing up and down while Polly dithered.

Jean brought down her case and put it in the boot of the car.

Monsieur Devancourt came out to the garage with his fishing-rods. He stopped to wish Gwenda a pleasant journey, then drove off in his old and dusty Citroën. As Gwenda looked back to the inn for any sign of Polly, she saw old Madame Devancourt, still wearing her hat, staring down at her from a window.

Already the sun was strong. Smells of baking came through the kitchen window, and Gwenda began to long for the cool air of the Auvergne.

At last Jean brought down Polly’s suitcase, and Polly followed soon after. Madame Peloux came out from the kitchen, wiping her floury hands on her apron.

As they drove out of the courtyard, Polly thought, ‘As soon as I get to like a place, we have to move on,’ and she turned back and waved to Jean, who was staring after them in his vacant way.

But Gwenda was insistent on moving on, on retracing every mile of her holiday with Humphrey. They had to get up to the source and back through Northern France, and there were only ten days left. Then Gwenda had to go home to open a garden fête.

‘I love this feeling of starting out fresh in the mornings,’ she said, as they drove out of the square. ‘Humphrey used to say …’ She slowed down, reaching the main road; the engine stalled, and stopped, and would not start again.

‘Oh, drat it,’ said Gwenda.

Now the heat poured into the car. While Gwenda tugged at the starter and made her mild, but furious-sounding imprecations, Polly placidly looked at her wild-flower book, as if the hitch did not involve her, and would soon be put right.

Jean, who had watched the car and seen it stop, came running towards them. He opened the bonnet and seemed to take a very grave view. After a while he fetched his friend from the garage. The car was towed away, and Gwenda and Polly decided to return temporarily to the
auberge
and drink a
citron pressé
.

‘Now, we shall have a job to get to the mountains by this evening,’ Gwenda said.

Polly was playing with a cat.

As the day went on, the idea of the mountains receded. Jean carried their suitcases back upstairs, and they unpacked.

‘A week at
least
,’ Gwenda moaned. ‘And if they say that, goodness only knows what it might really mean. Stuck in this place.’

‘It’s quite a
nice
place,’ said Polly.

‘Yes, but it’s not what we planned.’

The car was in the village garage, and a spare part had been telephoned for, and for once there seemed nothing that Gwenda could do. So she went to lie down, in the heat of the afternoon – the thing she said she never did. Polly, at a loose end, wandered in the orchard, looking for flowers. It was like the afternoons of her childhood, when her mother rested, and she was left to her own devices. In those days, she had felt under a spell. Through an open window she could hear the solid ticking of a grandfather-clock and
on the terrace, the peacocks squawked with a sound of rusty shears being forced open. Here there was only the busy noise of the cicadas in the grass.

At the bottom of the orchard, she saw Jean. He was beckoning to her eagerly, and she hurried forward, with a wading motion, through the long grass. He had few words to say – from habit, from
gaucherie
, from fear of her foreignness. To make up for his dumbness, his gestures were all exaggerated, like Harpo Marx’s. They came out of the orchard and crossed the narrow, gritty lane, which was lanced by sunlight striking through birch trees.

With a complete disregard for Polly’s bare legs, he took her hand and drew her through looped and tangled brambles, disturbing dozens of small blue butterflies. Polly could hear the stream, but not see it for all the undergrowth. She wondered where they were going, and what all the secrecy and haste and excitement were about. Jean parted some reeds and she could see the stream again. It looked less deep than it was, for it was very clear, and the fat brown stones on its bed seemed near the surface. Jean turned and lifted Polly with his hands round her waist. He swung her down over the bank on to a boulder. It had seemed a sudden, reckless thing to do and her breath was taken away; but she landed quite safely on the boulder, with his large rough hands steadying her.

He became more secretive than ever, carefully drawing aside branches to show to her a part of the stream, caged off by wire netting. The water flowed through the trap, which was full of trout, turning back and forth, and swimming as best they could. So this was his secret? Polly smiled, and he watched her face intently, and when she turned to him and nodded – she knew not why – he put a finger to his lips and narrowed his eyes. To an onlooker they would have seemed like people in a silent movie.

For a moment or two, they stood in contemplation, hypnotised by the slowly moving fish; then, suddenly, with more frantic gestures, Jean dashed off again. He took a spade from a hiding-place under a bush and began to try to thrust it into the earth. Polly turned to watch him with amazement. The earth was hard. He lifted a piece of rough turf and bent to examine the soil, clicking his tongue in disapproval. In spite of the dryness of the earth, he managed, as he dug deeper, to find a few worms. He brought them eagerly to Polly and put them into the palm of her hand, as if they were a handful of precious stones. She recoiled, but he did not notice and, to show her how, he took one of the worms from her and tore it into pieces and threw them to the fish. With a feeling of revulsion, Polly flung her handful suddenly into the trap. Some fell through, others lay on the wire-netting, writhing. She bent down and dipped her hand into the cool water, while Jean poked at the worms with a stick, clicking his tongue in vexation.

‘Jean! Jean!’ They could hear his mother calling him across the orchard.

He frowned. He watched the trout a little longer, then he seemed to gather himself from a trance, braced himself, and gave his hands to Polly, dragging her clumsily up the bank. ‘Jean! Jean!’ the voice went on calling, getting shriller. He looped briars carefully over the trap and he and Polly set off.

Madame Peloux was standing in the orchard. She waved a basket at them, for there was some errand for Jean to run – he had to go to the farm to fetch a chicken for dinner. An old boiler, she explained rapidly, aside from Polly.

Polly stood, hesitating, unsure whether to walk on or not. Then, feeling very bold and having composed the sentence in French before she spoke it, she asked if she might go with him to the farm. His face at once lost its sulkiness, and the errand seemed to take on a bright aspect. Madame Peloux stood looking suspiciously after them as they set off.

‘What
has
come over you?’ Gwenda asked Polly, fearing that she knew. She had found the girl sitting by her bedroom window, studying a phrase-book. It was opened at
Le Marché
.

‘You always said I should improve my French,’ Polly replied defensively.

‘But you never cared to try, did you? Before?’

It was a brilliant early evening, and Gwenda had looked in on her way downstairs. In the garden the acacias were full of sunlight against the pale blue sky. Martins and swallows darted about the terra-cotta, crenellated outhouse roof, catching, Gwenda hoped, the mosquitoes which otherwise might have plagued her later. There was a smell of lime-blossom and honeysuckle and, down below, in the vegetable-garden lilies grew like weeds.

‘I could stay here for ever, I think,’ Polly said, glancing across the orchard.

‘This was hardly the object of our holiday,’ Gwenda said. She was fretful to complete their journey. She talked continually of getting to the source, to the mountains, so infuriatingly near, where she and Humphrey had been so happy. As they were arrested on their travels, there were no fresh sights to discuss, so she talked about Humphrey, and Polly wished that she would not. Gwenda spoke of marriage as if it were something exclusive to herself and her late husband. She referred to past experiences, implying that Polly would never know similar ones.