Her Lover (65 page)

How beautiful this August night, a night still young, unlike me, says one I know who once was young. Where are they now, those nights he knew, this man who once was young, those nights that he and she once shared, and into what heaven, what hereafter, did they vanish, and on what wing of time?

On such nights, says he who once was young, we went into the garden, vainglorious with love, and she looked at me, and we went our way, brilliant with youth, slowly stepping to the illustrious music of our love. Why, O God, why is the sweet-scented garden no more, why do nightingales not sing now, why is there no arm in mine, no eyes turning to me and then raised to heaven?

Love oh love, the flowers and fruit which she sent him every day, love oh love, the foolish youthful fancy to eat of the same grape together, grape after grape together, love oh love, adieu beloved until
tomorrow, love oh love, kisses and leave-taking and she walked him home and he walked her home and she rewalked him home and their destination lay in the great love-scented bed, love oh love, nights and nightingales, dawns and sempiternal larks, kisses tattooed on lips, God between their conjoined lips, tears of happiness, I love you and I love you, tell me you love me, oh the telephone tones of his beloved, her golden inflections, so tender, so plaintive, love oh love, flowers, letters, waiting, love oh love, so many taxis bearing him to where she was, love oh love, telegrams, off to the sea off their heads, love oh love, her inspired fancies, tenderness beyond belief, your heart, my heart, our hearts, such momentous silliness. O love, O sometime queen of my heart, is it for you or for my youth that I weep asks he who once was young. Where is the witch who will restore my black anthems so that I dare look again upon the sometime queen of my heart and not love her? But there is no such witch and youth nevermore returns. You could die laughing. It's a scream.

Others stay themselves with honours, with books or talk of politics. Others again, fools that they are, take comfort in the pleasures of fame or of being in control or of dandling their grandchildren on their worthy knees. But, says he who once was young, I cannot resign myself, I want my youth back again, I want a miracle, I want the fruit and the flowers of the queen of my heart, I want never to be tired, I demand the black anthems which once crowned my head. The old man's got a nerve! Right then. Make him a shiny new coffin and shove him in it!

Your jasmined breath, O lost youth of mine, is headier now than in the time of my youth, says he who once was young. You are gone for ever, youth of my youth, my youth which was but yesterday, and my back aches, and my aching back may signal the beginning of my end. My back aches and my brow is fevered and my knees fail me and I should see a doctor. But I prefer to see my task through, says he who once was young. Press on, says he, make haste, crazy, gentle journeyman who grimly garners hapless harvests, make haste, for the birds of understanding will soon still their song, press on, cast off your lassitude for night creeps on apace, come garner what crop you may. Take heart, says a voice, faint like the voice of his mother. And to you, O men, farewell, he says. Farewell, bright-hued nature, soon I shall go to earth for all eternity, farewell. All things considered, it wasn't much fun.

I stand alone upon my ice floe, says he who once was young, broken-bodied and already dying on the ice floe which carries me oh I know whither through the night, I hold up my feeble hand and bless the young who on this night grow drunk on words of love beneath the infinite, hushed music of the spheres. Alone I stand upon my ice floe, and yet the rustle of spring is still in my ears. I am alone and old upon an ice floe, and night has fallen. So says one who once was young.

Farewell, O shore of youth upon which an ageing man now gazes, O forbidden shore where dragonflies are Uttle beams from the eye of God. O queen of my heart, says he, you who were beautiful and noble and no less wayward than Ariane, my queen whose name I shall not speak, we dwelt upon that shore and there were we brother and sister, my best loved queen, the sweetest and the unquietest, the noblest and the slenderest, my bubbling, spinning, sunlit queen, haughty, arrogant, inspired, enslaved, and I would that I could have commanded all the voices of the wind to tell all the trees of the forest that I was in love, that I loved the one I loved. So says one who once was young.

There is a silence in the cemetery where sleep the sometime lovers. Oh they are quiet now, poor dead dears. No more waiting now, no more nights of ecstasy, no more damp bucking of young bodies. That is now consigned to the place where all must sleep. All pronely laid, these regiments of silent, unfleshed, grinning dead who once were quick and lively lovers. Sad and solitary, the lovers and their mistresses lie in God's good acre. The spellbound moans of the mistress stupefied with pleasure, her sudden undulations, her eyes turned holily heavenward, eyes closed to savour the pleasure, the noble breasts she gave you, all consigned to earth. Lovers, get ye to your earthy burrows!

In the midnight cemetery, gaunt and silent gentlemen with no noses, with mouths that leer and jawbones as impassive as their deep, hollow eye-sockets, rise from their burrows and bonily dance, staidly dance. Noselessly, they cut a jig in slow but indefatigable motion, tarsus and metatarsus rattling and clattering like false teeth, keeping time to the tune played on a shepherd's pipe which a diminutive cadaver, wearing a yellow fez with a feather in it and perched on diamond-studded dancing-pumps, holds to the gaping cavern that once was a mouth.

To the sound of
The Skaters' Waltz,
the gentlemen and their ladies dance and sometimes skip, jawbone to jawbone, cavern to cavern, teeth to teeth, lovingly entwined, and the desiccated dancers, the claws of the gentlemen's hands upon the shoulder-blades of their partners, all grin silently on hearing the unexpected strain of
Aula
1
Lang Syne,
and one who wears the peaked cap of an officer clamps his humerus more firmly round the twenty-four ribs of his paramour and presses her to his sternum while an owl laughs stagily and a ladybones who was Diana, the bubbling, spinning, sunlit queen, the sweetest and the unquietest, haughty yet a slave in moments of moaning surrender, Diana, this lady now a bag of bones, with a wreath, poor wraith, of roses on her head, essays a tentative, clicking, clacking pirouette behind a bush.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER 53

'Work? I've got through stacks of work since I got back day before yesterday just like I promised that bitch Antoinette old Face-Ache I would, I told her I'd be back the minute my sister's swollen legs went down but of course it took longer than I thought seeing as how I'd said the start of July going on what the doctors had said and it's not my fault if they got it wrong, they always get it wrong though they never make mistakes when it comes to sending you bills and that's a fact, you can take it from me, it's not my fault 'cos I'm always as good as my word unless something special crops up, anyhow on the sixth of August, the minute the swelling went down, one-two one-two I'm on that train and the minute I land back spit-spot on with the job and I've done stacks since the day before yesterday and the place needed it around here I can tell you, sit yourself down, take the weight off your feet, I like talking even when I'm by meself, it keeps you company when you're working, specially like now when I'm polishing up the silver sitting down comfy sipping a nice cup of coffee, Madame Ariane says when I'm doing the silver I pull that many faces I look like I'm hopping mad at somebody, p'raps it's true and all, 'cos obviously I'm not looking in no mirrors when I'm doing my silver, the opposite's true, I love these silver things because it all belongs to Madame Ariane she got it from Mademoiselle Valérie who left it to her, so as I was saying, work, I've done stacks and stacks, there's not many of your young chits of girls would have got through half as much as old Mariette not that I've always been old mind, I may be little and roly-poly these days and that many wrinkles anybody'd say
I was an old apple left in a cellar, well past sixty, but there wasn't many like me around when I was twenty and good-looking and the rest of it, but now, poor Mariette Garcin, the dustbin is all you're fit for, never mind all the work I've got through, you should have seen the state the kitchen was in when I got back day before yesterday, sink like the back of the grate and two tins of elbow-grease before it was got clean again, dirt in all the corners, dishcloths all sticky and slimy like they'd never been rinsed through and the smell you never smelled anything like it and everything moved out of its proper place, shifted about all tipsy-tivy, of course it was all the fault of the girl they had to stand in, Putallaz they call her, I'll tell you about her in just a minute, the kitchen was a right mess, and so when I got back here home again from Paris day before yesterday, my sister's legs being a lot better, I was so upset seeing the kitchen in such a state, 'cos I always liked to see it looking nice and tidy and sparkling like the inside of a jeweller's shop, it took me all me strength and grit, cleaning all the windows and glass all over the house with a shammy, the whole lot, getting it all clean again, not stopping for a minute to catch my breath there being so much mess everywhere, not that it was any surprise seeing that when young Martha left it was that piece Putallaz who got her place instead, now there's one don't give a toss, just comes in mornings, I got her number, always with a fag in her mouth, painted up to the eyeballs and puts no vim into it when she sweeps the floor, just a quick once-over with the mop which don't get anything up at all, talk about half-hearted, sweeping it all into the corners if only you could have seen the corners, goes shopping in her slippers, stays ages jawing in the grocer's, always gossiping she is, she must have been vaccinated with a grammyphone needle, all she ever thinks about is feeding her face and drinking, she's a chicken-cemetery on legs, and unpleasant with it, getting up on her high hobby-horse soon as look at you, oh I got her number all right, and every evening it's off to the pictures or dancing and at her age too she's well past forty, and before lady muck Putallaz there was that poor Martha who come after me when I left, nice enough but a real good-for-nothing, eyes in her behind she had, I done my best to train her up before I went off on account of my sister's phlebitics, family comes first of course, poor thing they put her in a what they call a cradle-splint, her legs being all swelled up and her various veins bursting and couldn't move a muscle all bandaged up she was, caretaker she is in the Aga Khan's villa, twenty rooms it's got, now that's a job, they weigh him in Africa and give him his weight in gold and diamonds, comes to a tidy sum though it's not fair with him being swelled up extra heavy, a right hippopotomouse, they say he's like the Pope to the blackies over there, but he makes sure he takes things easy, believe me, forever going off travelling and having a fine old time in the best hotels, wears a white topper to the races, gets pushed about in a wheelchair, I seen his picture in the paper, always got chorus-girls and suchlike hanging round him and he don't turn his nose up at any of them according to what my sister told me, it's a fact, always young they are, one in partickler, she's on the films, got a mouth the size of an oven, it's just as well she's got ears to stop it otherwise it would go on for ever, anyhow it's the high life all right and luxury when there's poor devils who got nothing, not even a room to lay their head or a clean shirt and bellies that's all puckered they're that hungry, well-meaning was Martha, that's my replacement, quite nice, but not much between the ears, not a clue about being organized, always scared stiff of Antoinette who goes about like she was God in heaven giving out orders with a smile, the upshot being that in between the time Martha left and ladymuck Putallaz came the house got all run-down, the silver got all discoloured, Madame Ariane isn't up to much when it comes to keeping an eye on things, it's a gift, you've either got it or you haven't, yes I will have some more, the milkpan'll have kept it nice and hot, come on Mariette, my treat, this one's on me, I like slurping my coffee you can taste it better that way, Madame Ariane reckons with my glasses on I get this sly look in my eyes when I'm drinking my coffee, and she says I got nice hands, like a little kiddy's, oh Madame Ariane if you'd have seen me when I was twenty, anyroad this coffee's reely good, you can't beat a good cup of coffee for giving you a bit more go for the job in hand, that Paris doctor told me I ought to give it up, seems I got blood-pressure in my arm according to that thing they put on you, but I just don't care, and anyway them doctors always look very knowing but they don't know that much, oh dear me no, except they know how to send a bill, they're pretty
good at that, I'd have come back to work sooner only just when my sister was getting over her legs she gets pewmonia and they shoves this tube down her gullet so she could breathe, and then there was this fibrous tumour I had, so hospital for me, very nice them hospital doctors, specially the little dark one with curly hair, everyone was very complimentary about my fibrous tumour, thought it was wonderful, seems they never ever saw a bigger one, four kilos it weighed and you see when it's as big as that they say it can get all twisted up sometimes, anyroad thought the world of me did the doctors, looked after me like royalty specially after Madame Ariane when she found out and traipsed all the way to Paris on purpose, stayed a whole day, wanted them to put me in a room by myself, a private room they call it, but I told her not to bother but she insisted, she paid for everything, so you can tell she's fond of me, the family is very good with illness, take my niece, the one who got married, she gets monthlies that last fifteen mebbe twenty days then it stops for months on end and you start thinking that's it, she's going to have a kiddie, but not a bit of it, it's just a clot blocking her insides up and then it starts all over again talk about a running tap, they say clots is caused by little growths, the doctors said she ought to have her womb and tubes all taken away, and on top of that she's got this constricted yewteris, all the husband's fault according to my sister, they say God made us all in His image, well He can't be much of a sight to look at, all women's insides ought to be opened up, anything wonky should get took away and they should fit us with zips for when there's other bits of bubble and squeak that got to come out, still I suppose in a way my fibrous growth was a bit of luck 'cos without it I'd have been back sooner and then I'd have had to traipse all the way back to Paris again 'cos my sister got her swelling back when they thought it was all over and done with and it was hospital for her again, anyroad she's been put to rights now, I only hope it lasts, she is my only sister after all, Madame Ariane said she thought my frizz was very fetching, I say kiss-curl, it's nicer, all I use to get it like that is a wet ringer, it sets off my forehead, it's a bit saucy-like, but it suits me, now getting back to the Aga Khan I grant your communists and all that lot could be right when it comes down to it but I'd never go along with them taking my savings off of me, never, not after working my fingers to the bone for fifty years keep off the grass I just wouldn't have it I just wouldn't, I know what they oughter do, but the government's too busy feathering their own nests, what's wanted to my way of thinking is that there should be ordinary folk, fair enough, but they should have enough to see them right when they're old and past it, then some folk in the middle, fair enough again, you got to have shops and business, but not people at the top so rich they got more money than they know what to do with, your Aga Khan and American millionaires and princesses of this and that like what you see in magazines, got too much of everything, necklaces and priceless pearls that they don't care if they get stolen, they just laugh like they was saying oh it don't matter tuppence to me, there's plenty more where they came from so I'll go out and buy some more, always dancing, riding horses with that look that says the world owes me a living, now that's more criminal in the eyes of the Lord up above than a thief, often it's not the man's fault, brought up poor, father always in a temper coming home fighting drunk, and what did your princesses ever do in life that was any use except that the king gave the queen a good poking one night, and the upshot is that every blessed thing is owed to her ladyship the princess, always going off to posh balls but would she ever polish a floor or do a wash for you? don't even rub her own stockings through when she gets home, it don't take a minute, but oh no, it's always high jinks in country houses, never steps out of a train unless it's on to a red carpet rolled out just for her, mustn't forget to worship the soles of her shoes, everybody gotter pay their respects as if she didn't have a crack if you follow me just where the rest of us girls have got one, that's what I think so there, then the papers say the queen of this or that is expecting in September, they crawl and kowtow and never so much as a nudge or a wink, it would never come into their heads to say it all come about 'cos the king gave the queen a good poking back in January, but don't go thinking I came back to work here, leaving my poor sister lower than ever she is, five different sorts of medicine she got on the table by her bed, no I didn't come back on account of that cow Deume with her buck teeth that look like a kiddies' slide, Madame Poison is what I call her to myself, says she'll pray for you, always going on about religion but talk about underhand she stabs you with them smiles of hers, thinks she's posh and a nob, now Mademoiselle Valérie, I was in service with her for twenty years, now she was real upper-crust, she'd met the Queen of England and curtsied when she was presented once a year what an honour! but Madame Poison is a jumped up nothing, no breeding, can't tell a Bordeaux glass from the glasses you should use for fine wines, oh no I'd never have put meself out and come back for her nor for that darling son of hers that snooty Didi that walks right past me as if I wasn't there, puts on airs all holier-than-thou, wears fancy white spats over his shoes not that they make him any nicer, and that wispy beard! but if I did put myself out it was partly for Monsieur Hippolyte's sake, he's a lamb, you can't help feeling sorry for him, but mostly I came back on account of Madame Ariane being my best friend, mind you being French I don't take naturally to Switzerland, in France we're used to variety, there's always something different, but Switzerland is all peace and quiet it gets monotonous, so it was for Madame Ariane, we're ever so fond of each other, you could say I'm a bit like a second mother to her since she's an orphing poor thing, there's no one she loves more than me, it's a fact, I've known her since she was a baby in nappies, in the summer I'd give her a bath in a wooden tub in the garden with warm water, the sunshine was good for her, when I got back the other day you should have seen her, she threw her arms around me before I'd even got out of the taxi, she was all smiles when she saw me, but what really pleased me was how changed she looked, last year before I went to Paris when my sister swelled up there was times when she looked sad, she didn't say much, was always doing her scribbling, I put it down to her marriage, p'rhaps Didi wasn't making her happy, he's not much of a ladies' man, dear me no, now if you'd met my late hubby, ever so good-looking a hundred kilos of real man and arms as white as a woman's, what a change has come over her! happy and singing she is, take this morning now, she was up early, popped in and gave us a kiss in the kitchen, wanted to know if the weather'll be as nice tonight as it is this morning, transformed that's what she is, dead chirpy, singing
La Vie en rose
in the bath, you know the one about when he takes me in his arms, I reely like that song it's about true love and being young and the man you love, what's up with you Mariette talking to yourself for company silly old fool, but one thing's for sure I won't stay here to sleep, no fear, I like my freedom too much, and the face Madame Poison had on her when I told her I'd be looking for a place of my own in the village, Cologny village that is, and when I was in Paris on account of my sister's swelled-up legs I paid my rent regular, on the nail, so as I'd have my own place waiting for me when I got back, so that of an evening when I finish doing for Madame Ariane and the washing-up's done I get away early seeing as how Madame Ariane also likes a bit of peace to read those books of hers and play the piano, anyhow by half past seven I'm behind my own front door, one room and a kitchen, very nice, getting on with my knitting and reading the paper, couldn't want for more, come round and see me some Sunday afternoon for coffee you'll see how nice I got it, my hubby did fretwork, very artistic, Madame Ariane's father was a toff too, the Rev d'Auble they called him, out of the top drawer he was and not short of a bob or two, always very proper, a fine-looking man, and with him being so clever with books and studying, the government in Geneva asked him to be a professor and learn his ideas to the young ones training to be ministers, what an honour, Madame Ariane's mother was upper-crust too, you should have seen who came to her funeral, and his funeral too a bit later, they said it was heart but he died of grief he did if you ask me it was losing Madame that dicl for him, with her it was Mademoiselle Éliane's purple fever after she had the baby, she's the young one passed away when she was eighteen, a real beauty, but I always preferred Mademoiselle Ariane, you can't help your feelings, unless Monsieur's death had something to do with him losing all his money after that bankruptcy business in America though mebbe not, ministers of religion aren't supposed to care about money, but anyroad they let on that all he had left was the wages he got for being a minister, but Mademoiselle Valérie stayed very comfortable though she handed a lot over to them church ladies who used to come round and suck up to her, strict but fair was Mademoiselle Valérie, she used to have big dinner parties sometimes, with me looking after the cloaks and feeling pleased as punch in my cap and an apron with embroidery on, and only nobs with titles got invited, they didn't talk loud but even if they did it was still all very grand, Mademoiselle Valérie like a queen in the middle of them, a smile turn her head another smile, but never gushing oh no, always dignified, you should have seen her, and that's how I got a start with her after Monsieur's death when she took the children in, Monsieur Jacques who was the oldest he was eight, Mademoiselle Ariane was six, Mademoiselle Éliane five, no I tell a lie, Monsieur Jacques was seven, he wasn't born till two years after they got married, they weren't in no hurry, p'raps they didn't know what to do, ministers of religion may be clever you know but when it comes to all that love stuff they're more backward than forward, p'raps on their wedding night they got down on their knees by the bed to ask the Good Lord up above to give them a few tips on how to go about it and p'raps he didn't tell them right, that's enough it's not funny, but coming back to Madame Ariane it's almost like she was my own daughter with me looking after her ever since she was little, bathing her, putting talcum on and that, I even used to kiss her little behind when she was a baby, so you can appreciate I wouldn't know where to start telling you how good she's been to me, only yesterday she gave me a brand new cocodrile handbag as a present, must have cost the earth, and I'd hardly got out of the taxi day before yesterday after coming back on the train when she was wanting to carry that heavy case of mine just imagine, and her with hands like a princess, reely loves me, telling me I wasn't to wear myself out, saying she'd have her tea dinner they call it for half past six so I could get off at half past seven, ever so kind and thoughtful, there's just one thing I got against her, which is that she married that Didi, how that happened I'll never know, Mademoiselle Valérie's niece, can you imagine, but that apart it's all smiles and consideration, now there's just the two of us I give her whatever I fancy to eat, if it's sole and I fancy sole sole it is, and if I got an upset tummy it's a bit of veal in white sauce, I got a free hand, and never a sharp word with me, things are very easy between us, though she's very ejucated, got no end of diplomas, and you should see the way she eats, she don't make a noise like you and me, don't slurp, it's breeding does that for you and being in high society, when her aunt was alive you should have seen her, talk about graceful, riding the horse that Mademoiselle said she could have, won a prize for horse-riding when she was seventeen, the best lady horse-rider in Switzerland she was, but since she got married that's all finished, no more horses, no more hobnobbing with