The Heroes' Welcome (11 page)

‘On second thoughts,’ she said to the waiter, ‘I’d like a cocktail.’

‘
Bien sûr, Madame. Qu’est-ce que vous prenez?
’

Well, of course she didn’t know. She’d never had a cocktail.

‘You choose,’ she said, giving, instead of the radiant smile which used to be a mainstay of her armoury, the mysterious, vulnerable yet glamorous glance which was taking its place. Had she developed it on purpose? Ah – she didn’t have to. All her life Julia had been a beautiful girl, creamy and fresh and delectable. For a while, she could see now, she had been a fading girl, a self-conscious, obsessive creature pining for what she could not have – her youth, her husband.
So now? Now I am an elegant, purged, adult woman. I have suffered and I’m not ashamed of it. I am thin, and a little hard. I am not deluded. I will lie if I need to. I know what’s dead, and I’m no longer in mourning. My husband is a pathetic provincial drunk – well, isn’t he? And I am a free modern woman. The cliché, now, of course, would be to cut all my hair off and take up smoking. That’s what a girl does, nowadays, to show what she is. But I shan’t. I shall keep my beautiful hair. I shall not smoke, I am a woman of mystery, and I have brought three chequebooks. And Peter, wherever he is, probably won’t even notice that I’ve gone.

Julia’s waiter, perceiving that she was probably unused to drink, and considering her strange, unhealthy complexion, kindly chose – as some fresh oranges had come in from Morocco – to offer Madame a mimosa of champagne and orange juice; however, the head waiter, hearing the order and enquiring further, preferred that the oranges be preserved for those who a) specially asked for them and b) were known and valued customers of the hotel, rather than unknown women travelling alone. Madame should have, he suggested, a
blanc-cassis imperiale.

Julia liked it very much. It didn’t go to her head.
I thought cocktails were meant to be dangerous
– but it seemed not to be. She ordered another, and decided to have a lobster omelette, and watch the sun go down. Of her new books (which also included the latest Edna St Vincent Millay collection and a detective novel about a little Belgian), she had decided on the new Edith Wharton: society, marriage, love and scandal in 1870s New York. Well. The setting might be old, but she knew the approach would not be. She would sit in public alone, eating her dinner and reading. She was not lonely. She was not embarrassed. She was happy. And, though she honestly did not realise it, she was, still, waiting.

*

For a while Julia lay low. She slept a lot, and took walks, sheltering her white face from the sun beneath a wide-brimmed hat, and crossing the road when she saw small children.

She knew she was right to leave, and to leave Tom,
but
…

When the little
but
started up, she pictured it as a tiny goblin on her shoulder, whispering to her. She had had goblins all her life. They sat there, fat and squat, telling her perfectly boldly that she was not good enough, she was pathetic, and what
was
she thinking, to imagine she could do this, or that, or the other. Or anything, really.
A giant version of my mother!
she had realised in the end, and taken up a sort of loud singing inside her head to block it out.

Today’s goblin was small, pale and mild. ‘You should be with your child,’ it murmured.
Even though he can’t stand me and everyone knows I’m a terrible mother and I only make things worse for him?

‘You should be with your husband,’ it said.
Even though Peter isn’t even there, and when he is he’s a drunk?

‘What are you if you’re not a wife and mother, and not even a beauty any more?’ the tiny goblin whispered.

I’m a runaway
,
she replied.
I’m a modern woman. I’m a self-sacrifice for their sake. I’m facing my responsibilities by getting out of the way of all those people who know better than me what to do, to help Peter, and Tom … I’m no good. I wish I were. Rose, and Mama … they are, well, they’re better than me, aren’t they? When it comes to it? They can do things, and they know that I can’t.

‘
You weren’t bright enough to be educated,
’
the goblin said, happily repeating the old truths.
‘
And you weren’t maternal enough to be allowed to keep your baby … and Rose just laughed when you wanted to help with the war effort. They don’t like you. You just get in the way. You’re tiresome …’

‘I’m tiresome even to myself!’ Julia cried out loud on the seafront. Then, ‘For goodness sake, Julia, throw that goblin in the sea!’ She’d unclip its nasty long nails from her shoulder and untangle it from her hair, silence its wheedling voice, and stop it from constantly turning her mind backwards. She pictured it with long tentacles reaching down through her ear into her blood, down to her heart and belly, enveloping them and growing, sinking into them like ivy round a rock; roots, feeding. A network.
How painful it would be to pull them out. And how beautiful.
She had an image of the goblin uprooted and surprised, blowing away from her in the restless wind off the sea, tumbling down the path, hurled and gusted against the rocks, where it would break and smash. Or from the deck of a boat: one twirl, and into the briny, to sink with the weight of its own nastiness. Or she’d throw it in the path of a long low car and watch it splatter under the wheels, all its poison draining out, etiolated, flaccid and dying.

Does everybody have them? Does everyone fight themselves all day and all night inside their own head?

She took off her hat, and spread her arms as she leant on the railing, looking out into the Atlantic, stretching her neck, rolling her shoulders a little. The scent of salt and juniper was clean, aromatic and invigorating; the snow-capped Pyrenees gleamed in the south. The sunshine played on her neck, warm and delicious – but she had to put her hat back on. She could not allow sun on her face. The doctors had agreed.
So it is
,
she thought,
that we learn to appreciate things when we lose them.

No!
she thought.
Get rid of all that
.
Clean, new. Better. Do something better, be something better. Future! Toughen up!

*

Across the road, a tall blond American officer was watching her. The town was still full of soldiers waiting to be shipped home, exhausted, hysterical, victorious, in a party mood in this busy town. Teddy Roosevelt had just been, General Pershing turned up; the King was expected. The mayor was a charming chap – Monsieur Petit – with a beard and black eyes, honest, energetic, full of plans for his town. It was terribly clean. The ghosts of pre-war glamour infused the mayor’s rebuilding programmes, and all the French were in love with both the English and the Yanks.

The American had been amusing himself with days at the Hippodrome de la Barre and outings to San Sebastien for the bullfight, cocktails back at the Rotonde, and nights at the Pavillon Royal or le Caveau, where Latin-Americans danced with Russian exiles, and undoubtedly there were Secret Service men in disguise. He was a New Yorker, accustomed to fun, and he found Europe droll. His service had been comparatively light, but he had seen enough. He was getting a little bored now.

He knew that she was Mrs Lucke, a war widow, respectable but mysterious, at Biarritz for her health. He had noticed her at the Grande Plage, sea bathing with her personal
baigneur
, her wide hat in place under a veil. The contrast of the revealed limbs and the hidden face had caught his eye. Then he had seen her in the foyer at the hot fountains and mud baths at Dax, and again at the Thermes Salins
,
where, according to the advertisements, the nervous, the insomniac, the weak, the irritable, the neuralgic or those in need of general healing after injury could take medicinal brine baths, with heliothantic physiotherapy, and massage. He wondered which of those she was – if any. Anyone can benefit from attention – even paid-for attention – when they have had none for too long. A widow. He had wondered why she never took that hat off. He had wondered what her face looked like. So when she took it off, for that moment on the front, he raised his chin and leaned forward, keen suddenly, excited – but the angle was wrong, and she was too far away. All he got was a glimpse of white-blonde hair, and a gleam of pallor.

When she turned and began to walk again, up towards Maxwell’s English Tearoom, he followed her. When she stopped to admire some embroidered slippers on a stall, he paused. The pair she bought were very small, he noticed, and blue: for a child. She passed by Fortunio’s English and American bookshop with a glance in the window. He had seen her in there once, having a polite exchange with another English lady about Agatha Christie: Marvellous? Or not? He had caught the other woman’s voice but not hers. He wanted to hear it.

And then at Dodin in the rue Gambetta she paused and went in. Her movements were elegant as she slid between tables towards the back of the room, where she took a seat, ordered a
soufflé au Grand Marnier
and a tisane, and took out a book
.
He took the table next to her, ordered coffee and soft macaroons, looked up, and smiled at her. He saw beauty like a pearl, glamour, and the biggest blue eyes, with sorrow, gayness and determination in them. She saw a man as healthy and handsome as a field of wheat, with good teeth and straight shoulders, frank with admiration.

He said, light and friendly, with a smile, ‘You’re Mrs Lucke, aren’t you – what luck. Oh, Lord, I can’t believe I said that …’ whereupon she smiled, and her dignity and pre-war
pudeur
were on the back foot.

‘I’m sorry, Ma’am,’ he said, and she liked that he said ma’am. Then as a courtesy, a patent calling card, he mentioned an acquaintance they shared – but she can’t have looked very accepting (
Well, of course I don’t,
she thought,
my face hardly moves, how could he read my feelings?
), because then he said ‘Is this OK? Me speaking to you like this in public? You’re British, right? So maybe the Empire will explode? And your ancestors start rotating?’

And she was quite disarmed.

‘Oh, don’t you start that,’ she said. ‘That “America is so modern and Europe is so ancient” business. As if you are all made of plate glass and steel, and we are still wattle and daub. I know for a fact that far more Europeans than Americans are atheists, and what could be more modern than that?’

‘So can I take it that you are modern, Mrs Lucke?’ he asked, but in a droll way, not a vulgar one, and Julia found herself wishing, really wishing, that her face had expression, because she wanted to give him a look, the kind of look which her features would have formed automatically in the old days, when her emotions and the cells of her muscles and skin were in a direct contact which had nothing to do with her will or her brain … but now she had to think about it.
How do I make the expression I require appear on my face?
She feared any expression she made might be ugly. She didn’t know how to deal with that possibility.

She thought of the modern woman she planned to be.

He was watching her, and he said: ‘It seems as if everything you do, you think about …’ and at that she laughed out loud, so immediately and so bitterly that her self-consciousness had no time to play its part.

‘Far from it,’ she said. ‘Oh, far from it.’

‘Tell me more,’ he said, and she laughed again, a prettier laugh, and said ‘absolutely not!’ in a most intriguing manner. He pressed a little more, to imprint the matter of his interest, but noted that she did not want to tell her secrets, but to be amused. And so he took it on himself to amuse her. Later, he equipped himself better, with a car for outings, hampers and wine for quiet picnics, and the address of a stables for riding. Today, all he had was a copy of a newspaper his sister sent him regularly for news of home: the
Evening Sun
. He pulled it out, and said to her, ‘How about this? This guy, the writer, he’s called Don Marquis, and he writes about this cockroach, who was a free-verse poet in his previous life, and he comes out at night and writes poems on this guy’s typewriter. He jumps up on the keys, one by one. That’s why there’s no capital letters, you see? He can’t bounce on two keys at the same time …’ And he read the column to her, in his New York accent, about archy the cockroach and his friend the cat mehitabel, who had been Cleopatra in
her
former life, and whose constant chorus on all that life threw their way was: ‘
toujours gai, archy, toujours gai
…’

Julia thought it the funniest thing in the world, and indeed it was. ‘
Toujours gai
…’ she murmured, with delight.

His name was Harlan Barker. When he told her he was a lieutenant, she liked the way he said it, lootenant. He was civil and clever and attentive, with a straight nose and hair of a colour that on a woman would have inspired poetry involving sunlight, cornfields and quite possibly angels’ wings, but on him was cut short and manly. Before too long Harlan Barker was calling her archy, and in his company she usually found it possible to be
toujours gai
.

*

On one of the quiet beach and hamper days, in the shade by a rock, on a blanket, sitting a little apart, as they did, for they had not thrown over the habits of respectable society entirely, the shadow of sorrow came over her and he asked her, ‘What is it?’

She smiled at him, and said, after a moment’s thought, ‘You’re so very sensible, I don’t think you’d understand.’

‘Try me,’ he said, and turned to her, receptive.

She glanced about a bit, nervous, and then thought,
Go on! New habits! He’s not Peter – talk!

‘Goblins,’ she said.

‘What kind?’

‘A horrid one that sits on your shoulder pouring poison into your ear, telling you you’re no good,’ she said quickly. She had never mentioned them to anybody in her life.
He’ll think I’m mad
, she thought.

He jumped up.

‘You got one of them?’ he cried.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking up at him, puzzled.