Complete Short Stories (VMC) (85 page)

‘Humphrey and I climbed right to the summit,’ she said. ‘There was an enormous view, and gentians – great patches of gentians.’

‘I should love to see gentians,’ Polly said.

‘Well, I doubt if we shall now,’ Gwenda said briskly. ‘It’s so infuriating. You really ought not to read that small print. Your nose almost touches the
page. So ridiculous. We shall have to see about getting you some spectacles when we get back.’

‘I shan’t wear them,’ Polly said, in a mild but firm voice. Sometimes, quietly, she put her foot down, and then Gwenda let the matter go. It was such a rare occurrence that it did not constitute a threat. All the same, only that morning Polly had insisted on going to the market with Jean, and had left Gwenda at the garage and gone on with him alone. Gwenda was always at the garage, making the same complaints, asking the same questions.

‘You’ll find you’ll come to them in the end,’ she said, referring to the spectacles. ‘Now do take your head out of that book, there’s a dear girl. Let’s go down and have a drink. I promised the Devancourts we’d join them.’

Madame Devancourt now seemed warmly disposed to them. She had decided that they were lesbians, and so of no danger to her son. Passing their table at breakfast, the day after the breakdown, the old lady had commiserated with them. She was formal and condescending. By dinner-time, she had warmed a little more; and the following morning had come to them, with her son hovering behind her, to invite them to a drive out in the afternoon. ‘Having no car you will see nothing of our country,’ she said.

So they had driven out along rutted, dusty lanes to see a small
château
. It stood high on a slope over the river, bone-white, with black candle-snuffer turrets. Madame Devancourt had the name of a friend to mention, and the housekeeper admitted them. The family was away, and she went ahead from room to room, opening shutters, drawing dust-covers from furniture, lifting drugget from needle-work carpets. There were some portraits, some pieces of tapestry, deer’s heads and antlers growing from almost every wall, and a chilly smell from the stone floors. Madame Devancourt and Gwenda exclaimed over everything, drew one another to view this and that treasure or curiosity. Each was impressed by the other’s knowledge. Monsieur Devancourt looked out of the windows, and Polly trailed behind, immeasurably bored.

She regretted this new friendship. Gwenda’s fluency with French debarred Polly from any part in the conversation – not that she had anything to say. She was frightened of the old lady, and thought her son a pitiful creature. Now they must spend an hour with them sitting under the umbrellas outside the
auberge
. She took her wild-flower book with her, and looked for a picture of a gentian. ‘
Gentiane
,’ said Jean, pointing at the illustration, when he had set down her drink before her.

‘
Oui
,’ she said, smiling and blushing.

‘
Oui, gentiane
,’ he repeated, turning to take an order from another table.

‘He will drive me
mad
,’ said Gwenda.

Then there was the little commotion of having to get up as Madame Devancourt shuffled out to join them, her son following, carrying her handbag and her cardigan.

At another table came the other sorry pair, the habituées, the crippled mother and the bitter-faced daughter. Every evening, they sat for twenty minutes in the
place
. The daughter sipped a drink, and kept propping up her mother. Not a word was spoken. When it was time to go, the daughter stood up in silence and helped her mother to her feet, and then to go slowly across the square. Homewards. Polly tried not to imagine any more – the dreadful ritual of getting Mother to bed. All old, she thought, looking round her. Whenever Jean passed by, he nodded his head at her, as if he were saying, ‘Ah, yes, you’re still there.’

Gwenda, missing nothing, frowned.

He continued to madden her through dinner. When he brought the trout, he winked at Polly, collusively.

‘One can grow tired even of trout,’ Gwenda complained. ‘Every evening. I do wish, Polly, you would try to ignore that terrible young man. He is quite oafish. I would have said he winked at you just now, if I could believe it possible.’

She had ordered a bottle of wine to be put on the Devancourts’ table – a token of gratitude for their kindness – and now Monsieur Devancourt across the room raised his glass in a courtly gesture, and Madame her glass of water, with a shaking hand.

‘Very affy,’ said Polly in a low voice.

After dinner, the four of them sat in the stuffy little salon, and Gwenda told them stories about her husband.

‘Excuse me,’ Polly murmured, slipping away suddenly – the very thing Gwenda had been determined she should not do.

In the courtyard, Jean was watering the tubs of geraniums. The air had a delicious smell.

At once, before Gwenda could find an excuse to come after them, he put down the watering-can and they set off across the orchard. Every evening he went to the stream to clean the trout-trap of drifting weeds and sticks and to dig up worms. They said very little – although Polly persevered with a few short sentences, and sometimes Jean pointed at plants and trees and said their name clearly in French, which she obediently repeated.

Although he was clumsy and unpredictable and could not speak a word of her language, Polly felt safe and at home with him. There was never anyone young in her life – neither here nor at home. She liked to go shopping with him in the market. It was the simplest, poorest of markets. Old women sat patiently beside whatever they had for sale – a few broad beans tied in a bundle, a live duck in a basket, lime-flowers for tisane, a
bucketful of arum lilies or Canterbury bells. She and Jean went from one to the other, comparing cheeses, and pressing the bean-pods, and she felt a sense of intimacy, as if they were playing a game of being husband and wife. Nothing Gwenda could say would prevent her from going to the market.

This evening, she helped him to clean the trap, she fed worms to the fish, having lost her squeamishness. They were as busy and absorbed as children.

Throwing the last worm, she lost her balance on the boulder, and one foot went into the water; but he was there at once to steady her. She was annoyed with herself, wondering how to explain to Gwenda her soaking wet sandal, without revealing the secret of this place.

Jean lifted her up and sat her on the bank.

‘I shall stay here for a while,’ she said. Perhaps Gwenda would go up to bed early, although more likely not.

He understood her, and sat down beside her, feeling worried, because soon his mother would be calling ‘Jean! Jean!’ all round the garden – there would be some job to be done.

When they had been together before, there had always been something to be busy about – the marketing, the fish. Now each had only the other one in mind. He sat there staring in front of him, as if he were wondering what on earth to do next, for he had scarcely been allowed five minutes’ idleness in his life. Then he suddenly had an inspiration. He turned and kissed her suddenly on the side of her face, then, less awkwardly, on her forehead. Polly had been kissed only by her mother and elderly relations; but she felt that she knew more about it than Jean. She put her hands behind his head and kissed him very strongly on the mouth. She felt quite faint with delight. But hardly had they had any time to enjoy their kissing, when that far-off, coming and going, mosquito-plaint began – ‘Jean! Jean!’ – across the orchard.

Until they were in sight of the house, they went hand in hand, saying nothing. Although the kissing was over, something remained – an excitement, a gladness. Something Gwenda, surely, could never have experienced.

That Gwenda guessed something of what had happened was shown by her coldness and huffiness. She had felt awkward, sitting in the salon with the Devancourts. Polly had excused herself so abruptly, and Madame Devancourt kept looking towards the door. Gwenda was glad when, at their usual time, Monsieur Devancourt fetched the draught-board and set out the counters. She watched for a little while, and realised that the son was making stupid mistakes so that his mother could win. Then, hearing Madame Peloux outside, calling for Jean, Gwenda got up uneasily, and said
that she was going to have an early night. She went upstairs and threw open the window, regardless of mosquitoes.

Polly and Jean were coming back across the orchard. Gwenda began to shake violently, and moved back a few steps from the window. Jean answered his mother, but did not say a word to Polly, not even when she turned away from him to enter the house.

Gwenda was so unpleasantly disturbed that she felt unable to face Polly, and dreaded her coming to say good-night. But she did not come. The footsteps stopped at the next room, and Gwenda heard the door open, and then shut. This was something that had never happened before. There were too many things happening for the first time. Gwenda lay in bed worrying about them, and she slept badly.

At breakfast, nothing was right. She snapped at Jean for slopping the coffee, she complained that the butter was rancid, and she found every word that Polly said in French excruciating. ‘Your command of the language grows as fast as your accent deteriorates.’ She preferred the days when Polly did not try, and had no reason for doing so. ‘Whatever must the Devancourts think? They must wonder where on earth you picked up such an accent.’

‘It’s not
for
them to wonder,’ Polly said calmly. ‘They can’t speak a
word
of English.’

She
was
calm. She was
too
calm, Gwenda decided. And Jean did not look at her this morning, nor she at him. It seemed to Gwenda that they no longer felt they needed to.

‘Oh,
damn
the car,’ she suddenly said.

Polly looked a little surprised, but said nothing.

‘I think I’ll have a look round the market this morning,’ Gwenda said casually.

The three of them later set off, and there was only a brief chance to make an assignation, when Gwenda almost instinctively paused to look at a terrine on a stall.

The friendship with the Devancourts played into Polly’s hands. Just at the right moment of the afternoon, Madame Devancourt came downstairs with a photograph-album to show to Gwenda – her collection of photographs of great houses, all to be gone over and explained in detail, trapping Gwenda who thought that she would scream. Monsieur Devancourt was attending to his fishing-tackle, so the two women were left alone, sitting in the stuffy salon. It was too hot to go out-of-doors, Madame Devancourt said.

Polly, who had gone into the lavatory, to try to plan her escape, saw the delightful sight of Gwenda with the album on her knees and Madame Devancourt leaning over, pointing at a photograph with a shaking finger. She slipped away without being seen. Jean, whose slack time it was, was
waiting for her by the trout-trap. He pulled briars and bracken round them, like a nest, and, without much being said, made love to her.

The old lady smelled of camphor and lavender. She leant so close that Gwenda almost choked. Sometimes little flecks of spit fell on the pages of the album, and were quickly wiped away with the purple handkerchief. Gwenda tried to turn the pages quickly, but this would not do; for every coign and battlement and drawbridge had to be explained.

At last Monsieur Devancourt interrupted them. He had finished with his fishing-tackle and had come to take them for a little drive. Where was Mademoiselle Polly, he wondered. Gwenda flushed, and said that she must be writing letters in her room; and she excused herself from the outing, having a headache, she explained.

When they had gone, Gwenda walked up and down the garden-path. She strutted, with rather apart legs, like a starling. She listened and she looked about her. But there were no voices. It was a hot, humming afternoon. The Devancourts’ car went off, and then there was nothing but the sound of insects, and hardly a leaf moved.

‘Her mother!’ Gwenda kept saying to herself. ‘What would her mother think?’

It was a real headache she had, and the sun was making it much worse. It drove her inside – up to the vantage-point of her bedroom window.

It was a long time before she saw Polly coming back across the orchard. She walked slowly, and was alone. But that was only a ruse, a piece of trickery, Gwenda was sure.

She leant out of the window and called to her.

Polly seemed to come unwillingly, and stood hesitating at Gwenda’s door.

‘Where have you been?’

‘For a walk.’

‘With that dreadful loutish youth.’

Polly pressed her lips together.

‘He’s not even …’ Gwenda shrugged and turned aside; and after a few moments in which nothing else was said, Polly went quietly to her own room. Although she foresaw all the agonising awkwardness of the rest of the holiday – even, vaguely, of the rest of her life (Gwenda going on being huffy in Surrey) – she dismissed its importance. She stood before the looking-glass, combing her hair dreamily, staring at her freckled face with its band of sunburn across the forehead. It was she now, she decided, who had something exclusively her own, and it seemed to her that Gwenda had nothing – for even her memories were threadbare.