Good Morning, Midnight (11 page)

Thinking: 'I've got away from all that, anyhow. Not to go back, not to go back....'

I liked Tonny; she was gentle. But I hated Hans Steen. He had a blustering look. He didn't bluster, he was very polite. But his pale blue eyes had that look, and his hands.

Narrow streets, with the people walking up one way and down another. So tidily. In the park, the Haagsche Bosch, the trees upside-down in the ice green water.

We go every day to the Centraal for an aperitif. We eat at a little place where the violinist plays sentimental tunes very well. ('Will you play Le Binyou for madame?....')

I haven't any money. He hasn't any either. We both thought the other had money. But people are doing crazy things all over the place. The war is over. No more war - never, never, never. Apres la guerre, there'll be a good time everywhere....And not to go back to London. It isn't so fine, what I have to go back to in London.

But no money? Nix?....And the letter in my hand bag: 'I think you must be mad. If you insist on doing this....'

A tall vase of sprawling tulips on the table. How they give themselves! 'Perhaps it's because they know they have nothing to give,' Enno says.

Talking about Paris, where he has lived since he was eighteen. He was a chansonnier, it seems, before he became a journalist. He enlisted during the first week of the war. From 1917 onwards a gap. He seemed very prosperous when I met him in London, but now no money - nix. What happened? He doesn't tell me.

But when we get to Paris the good life will start again. Besides, we have money. Between us we have fifteen pounds.

All the same, I never thought we should really get married. One day I'll make a plan, I'll know what to do....

Then I wake up and it's my wedding day, cold and rainy. I put on the grey suit that a tailor in Delft has made for me on tick. I don't like it much. Enno comes in with a bunch of lilies of the valley, pins it in my coat and kisses me. We get a taxi and dive through the rain to the town hall and we are married with a lot of other couples, all standing round in a circle. We come out of the town hall and have one drink with Tonny and Hans. Then they go home to look after the shop. We go on to another place. Nobody else is there - it's too early. We have two glasses of pot and then another two.

'How idiotic all that business was!' Enno says.

We have more port. It's the first time that day that I have felt warm or happy.

I say: 'You won't ever leave me, will you?' 'Allons, allons, a little gaiety,' Enno says.

He has a fiend called Dickson, a Frenchman, who sings at the Scala. He calls himself Dickson because English singers are popular at the moment. We go to his flat that afternoon and drink champagne. Everybody gets very gay. Louis and Louise, tango dancers, also at the cabaret, do their show for us. Dickson sings In These Hard Times:

That funny kind of dress you wear Leaves all your back and your shoulders bare, But you re lucky to be dressed up to there In these hard times.

Enno sings:

Quand on na pas de chaussures On fait comme les rentiers, On prend une voiture, On ne vous voit pas les pieds!

Parlous done de chaussettes: Faut pas les nettoyer, On les retourne, e'est pas bete, Puis on les change de pied!

I sing: 'For tonight, for tonight, Let me dream out my dream of delight, Tra-la-la....And purchase from sorrow a moment's respite, Tra-la-la....'

Mrs Dickson reads aloud excitedly from a theatrical paper. Two girls they know are mixed up in a murder case. She reads about Riri and Cricri, rolling her 'r's'. Rrrirrri, Crrricrrri....

I am a bit drunk when we take the train to Amsterdam.

....The room in the hotel in Amsterdam that night.

It was very clean, with a rose-patterned wallpaper.

'Now, you mustn't worry about money,' Enno says. 'Money's a stupid thing to worry about. You let me do. I can always get some. When we get to Paris it'll be all right.'

(When - we - get -to - Paris....)

There's another bottle of champagne on the table by the bed.

'Love,' Enno says, 'you mustn't talk about love. Don't talk'.

You mustn't talk, you mustn't think, you must stop thinking. Of course, it is like that. You must let go of everything else, stop thinking....

Next morning we eat an enormous breakfast of sausages, cold meat, cheese and milk. We walk about Amsterdam. We look at pictures in the Rijksmuseum. 'Would you like to see your double ?' Enno says.

I am tuned up to top pitch. Everything is smooth, soft and tender. Making love. The colours of the pictures. The sunsets. Tender, north colours when the sun sets - pink, mauve, green and blue. And the wind very fresh and cold and the lights in the canals like gold caterpillars and the seagulls swooping over the water. Tuned up to top pitch. Everything tender and melancholy - as life is sometimes, just for one moment....And when we get to Paris; when - we -get - to - Paris....

'I want very much to go back to Paris,' Enno would say. 'It has no reason, no sense. But all the same I want to go back there. Certain houses, certain streets....

No sense, no reason. Just this nostalgia....And, mind you, some of my songs have made money....' Suddenly I am in a fever of anxiety to get there. Let's be on our way, let's be on our way....Why shouldn't we get as far as Brussels? All right, we'll get as far as Brussels; might be something doing in Brussels.

But the fifteen pounds have gone. We raise every penny we can. We sell most of our clothes.

My beautiful life in front of me, opening out like a fan in my hand....

What happened then?....Well, what happens?

The room in the Brussels hotel - very hot. The bell of the cinema next door ringing. A long, narrow room with a long, narrow window and the bell of the cinema next door, sharp and meaningless.

Things haven't gone. Enno saying: 'We've only got thirty francs left.' (My Lord, is that all?) 'Yes, only thirty francs. We'll have to do something about it tomorrow.'

The bell of the cinema kept on ringing and every time it rang I could feel him start.

When he went out next morning he said: T think I'll be able to raise some money. Wait in here for me.'

'Will you be a long time?'

'No....Anyhow, don't go out.'

Sitting on the bed, waiting. Walking up and down the room, waiting. I can't stand it, this waiting.

Then, as if somebody had spoken it aloud in my head - Mr Lawson. Of course, Mr Lawson....

I hadn't remembered how glassy his eyes were, Mr Lawson's.

'Yes?' he says. 'You asked to see me?' Raising his eyebrows a little, he says: 'Ye-es?'

He doesn't recognize me. I must look rather awful. I say: 'I'm afraid you don't remember me. I was staying in those rooms in the Temple that you came to look over, and you took me to dinner. We had oysters and we talked about Ireland. Don't you remember? Then we were on the boat going over to Holland and you gave me your address in Brussels. You said if I got here, would I look you up? Don't you remember?'

'Of course. Little Miss - '

'Not little,' I say, 'not little.' Because I can't have a man like that calling me little.

I talk away, saying, as if it were a joke: 'We're not exactly stranded. We shall be quite all right as soon as we get to Paris. In fact, we shall be quite all right in a day or two. Only, stupidly, just for the moment, we're a bit stranded.'

Mr Lawson talks back and in the end he gives me a hundred francs. 'If this is any good to you. And now, I'm very sorry, but I've got to rush.'

I am standing there with the note in my hand, when he comes up to me and kisses me. I am hating him more than I have ever hated anyone in my life, yet I feel my mouth go soft under his, and my arms go limp. 'Good bye,' he says in imitation American, and grins.

'Did you have any luck?'

'Not much,' Enno says.

I say: 'I've managed to borrow a hundred francs.'

'Who did you borrow it from?'

'Well, it's a woman I used to know very well in London. I knew she lived here and I found her address in the directory. She knew Miss Cavell. Yes, a friend of Miss Cavell's. She lives in the Avenue Louise, and I went and saw her.

'She's not exactly a fiend,' I say. 'As a matter of fact, she was horribly rude, the old bitch. She as good as told me she wouldn't see me if ever I went there again. Mademoiselle regrette, mais mademoiselle ne recoit pas aujourd'hui....'

'Avenue Louise? What number Avenue Louise?'

'Oh, shut up about it.' I lie down on the bed and begin to cry.

'Don't cry. If you cry I shall go mad.'

'Shut up, then, and don't talk about the damned hundred francs.' (With a hundred francs they buy the unlimited right to scorn you. It's cheap.)

'What are you crying about?' he says.

'It's my dress. I feel so awful. I feel so dirty. I want to have a bath. I want another dress. I want clean under clothes. I feel so awful. I feel so dirty.'

'I'll get you another dress as soon as we get to Paris. I know somewhere where we can get credit....You'll see, when we get to Paris it'll be all right.' f He goes out to buy something to eat. I lie there and I am happy, forgetting everything, happy and cool, not caring if I live or die. I think of the way Mr Lawson looked at me when I first went in - his long, narrow, surprised face. I laugh and I can't stop laughing.

The lavatory at the station - that was the next time I cried. I had just been sick. I was so afraid I might be going to have a baby....

Although I have been so sick, I don't feel any better, head up against the wall, icy cold and sweating. Sometimes tries the door, and I pull myself together, stop crying and powder my face.

We are going to Calais. Enno has made pals with a waiter who lives there and who has promised to lend us some money.

He is very good at salad-dressing, this waiter. We eat with him and his wife next day. There he is, with his fat back and thick neck, mixing the dressing. He uses sugar in the German way. His wife watches him, looking spiteful and frightened. She is thin and ugly and not young.

The waiter mixes the dressing for the salad very slowly at the sideboard. I can see myself in the mirror. I look thin - too thin - and dirty and haggard, with that expression that you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.

I hadn't bargained for this. I didn't think it would be like this - shabby clothes, worn out shoes, circles under your eyes, your hair getting straight and lanky, the way people look at you....I didn't think it would be like this.

Walking about the streets of Calais with the waiter's wife. We went to see that statue by Rodin. All the time she was complaining in a thin voice that he never let her have any money for clothes, and that it was her money after all; he hadn't a sou when she married him.

She didn't seem at all curious about us, or to want to know where he picked us up. She just went on and on about his unkindness and the clothes she wanted.

It was a grey day. It was like walking in London, like walking in a dream. My God, how awful I looked in that mirror! If I'm going to look like that, there's not a hope. Fancy having to go to Paris looking like that....

When we got back we drank absinthe. The waiter prepared it for us elaborately. It took a long time. I didn't like the taste, but I was cold and it warmed me. We sat there sipping and Enno and the waiter talked in a corner. The wife didn't say anything and after a while I didn't either. But the absinthe made me feel quarrelsome and I began to wish I could shout 'Shut up' at them and to dislike the waiter because I knew he wasn't thinking much of my looks. ('She's not much. I thought she was better looking than that the first time I saw her.')

I stopped listening to them, but when the absinthe went really to my head I thought I was shouting to them to shut up. I even heard my voice saying: 'Shut up; I hate you.' But really I didn't say anything and when Enno looked at me I smiled.

Well, Gustave - the waiter - lent us the money he had promised and we left Calais.

Enno had taken a dislike to Gustave's wife. 'That to call itself a woman!' he said.

'But it was her money,' I said.

'Oh well,' Enno said, 'he makes very good use of it, doesn't he? He makes much better use of it than she would.'

It was a slow train and we were tightly packed in the compartment. Lying in the luggage rack, trying to sleep, propped up by Enno's stick, and the wheels of the train saying: 'Paris, Paris, Paris, Paris...."

A girl came into the cafe and sat down at the next table. She was wearing a grey suit, the skirt short and tight and the blouse very fresh and clean. And a cocky black hat like a Scots soldier's glengarry. Her handbag was lying on the table near her - patent leather to match her shoes. (Handbag....What a lot of things I've got to get! Would a suit like that be a good thing to get? No, I think I had better get....) And she walked so straight and quick on her high heeled shoes. Tap, tap, tap, her heels....

'I'll take you somewhere to wait,' Enno said. 'I must see one or two people.'

Drinking coffee very early in the morning, everything like a dream. I was so tired.

We got out of the Metro into the Boulevard Montparnasse.

'In here,' Enno said. He took me by the arm.

The Rotonde was full of men reading newspapers on long sticks. Shabby men, not sneering, not taking any notice. Pictures on the walls.

The hands of the clock moving quickly. One hour, two hours, three hours....

How long will they let me sit here? Not a drop of coffee left. The last drop was very cold and very bitter - very cold and bitter, the last drop. I have ive francs, but I daren't order another coffee. I mustn't spend it on that.

The colours of the pictures melting into each other, my head back against the bench. If I go to sleep they'll certainly turn me out. Perhaps they won't, but better not risk it.

Three hours and a half....

As soon as I see him I know from his face that he's got some money. A tall man is with him, a man with a gentle face and long, thin hands.