“When the run of this is over,” he would say, “we will do this—and that; you shall play the part of the girl, you’re just right for it.” “Am I?” she answered. “But wouldn’t I be too young? I mean, in the last act, that business when she comes back, much older…” “No,” he said, “you can do it. You can do anything, if I show you how to do it.” He tells me I can do anything, thought Maria, he tells me I can do anything, and I’m only twenty-one.
The car gathered speed and ripped along the hard, straight road into the country, passing other cars, and the winds of April were soft and warm and did not matter, the dust did not matter either, it brought the scent of gorse and broom.
Egg sandwiches tasted good under the sun, so did a cold leg of chicken; and grapes from Fortnums had a lovely bloom upon them. Even gin and vermouth drunk straight from the lip of a silver flask tasted better, and more potent, than it did from some old glass; besides, it gurgled down your throat, and you choked, and you had to borrow a handkerchief. Which was fun. Everything was more fun out of doors. No matter if it rained, there were rugs, umbrellas.
“No, said Robert, when it pours,
It is better out of doors.”
The line from the child’s Strewelpeter came back to her as she lay in the grass hollow when the shower came. And she began to shake with silent laughter, because it was so funny.
“What are you laughing at? What is the matter?” he said. But you could not really say. A man was so touchy and easily offended. He did not understand that laughter rose in you very often, much too often, in a great gulf; and you suddenly thought of the most ridiculous things for no reason at all. His ears, for instance, were keen and pointed, like the china rabbit on the mantelpiece at home, and how was it possible to be serious and intent if you remembered this? Or your thoughts would go shooting off at a tangent—“Damn, I mustn’t forget the dentist Friday morning”—or even idly observant, while he would be intent, so that you noticed the branch of a tree hanging overhead and saw that the buds were sprouting and it would be nice to take it back home and put it in water and watch the buds come into leaf. Not always, though. Sometimes you thought of nothing in this world or in heaven either, and the only moment was the moment now, and an earthquake could have opened up the ground and swallowed you and you would not have known, you would not have cared.
There could be no languor like the aftermath of a spring day under the sun. The drive back to London. The passing cars. You had no thoughts and very little feeling, and you did not talk at all. You sat wrapped in a rug like a cocoon. Then the yawn, the jerk into reality, and the growing sound of traffic brought the world too near.
Lighting-up time, and the shops were bright in the suburbs, the people jostled one another on the pavements. Women with shopping-baskets, women with prams, lumbering great buses and grinding trams, and a man with one leg advancing with violets on a tray: “Fresh vilets—sweet bunch of fresh vilets.” But they were dusty, they had been on the tray all day. On the top of Hampstead Heath the people still lingered by the pond. Boys with sticks, and girls without coats, calling to barking dogs. One little sailing boat, abandoned by its owner, rocked in the middle of the pond, with sails limp.
Down the hill straggled the people to the Underground, weary and fractious, while London lay below, like a vast backcloth on an empty stage.
The car stopped at the routine stopping-place in Finchley Road. “See you presently,” he said, touching her face, and then the car gathered speed and went away, and she heard the clock at the corner chime the half hour. She would just make it in time for dinner.
What a good thing it was, Maria thought, that when you had been making love it did not show. Your face did not turn green, or your hair drop off. God might so easily have made this happen. And then, you would be sunk. There would be no hope. Pappy would know. In a way, up to a point, God was on your side…
Pappy was back. The garage doors were shut. If he had been out still, the garage doors would be open. As she let herself in at the front door she saw Edith carrying the tray with glasses and silver into the dining room. Five minutes to spare. The rush to the bathroom, the rush to do the face. And then the inevitable boom-boom of the gong.
“Well, my darling? What sort of a day?”
Celia was an ally. She came to the rescue, always, with what they had been doing themselves, she and Pappy.
“Oh, Maria, you would have laughed, we saw the funniest little old man… Pappy, tell Maria about the little old man.” And Pappy, happy to talk, happy to plunge into his own day, would forget about Maria’s, and the dinner, hastily swallowed, that might have been a strain, passed swiftly, safely, with no direct questions, no direct replies.
“Golly—it’s half-past seven; I must fly.” The kiss on Pappy’s forehead, the smile and the nod to Celia, the shout to Edith to know if the taxi was at the door. Only Truda to make a damper to the day with her glance at Maria’s shoes. “Been in the country, haven’t you? You’ve got mud on the heels of your shoes. What a shame to crease your coat like that.” “The mud’s nothing, and the coat will iron. And for goodness sake tell that fool of a girl to put my thermos of Ovaltine beside my bed, but hot, not tepid. Good night, Truda.”
Down to the theater, in at the stage-door, “Good-evening” to the door-keeper, “Good-evening, miss,” and up along the passage to her dressing room, with a glance at his closed door. Yes, he was there already, she could hear his voice inside. The languor of the day was shaken off. She was excited now, and fresh, ready for the evening. And it would be exciting too to say to him presently, “Hullo, what a lovely day,” in front of the others, as though they were meeting for the first time, and had not parted only two hours before. Let’s pretend. Always the game of let’s pretend. And fun too, just to hint now and again that she knew him rather better than they did, just to say, “Oh, well, he said we were going to have an extra matinée, anyway.” “When? When did he tell you that?” “Oh, I don’t know. A day or two ago, at lunch.” Then silence. An expressive silence. An unmistakable hostility. Maria did not care. What did their hostility matter to her?
A tap at the door. Someone said, “It’s a wonderful house tonight. They’re standing at the back of the circle. My young friend is in front.” “Really?” said Maria, “I hope he enjoys it.” Who cared about the silly woman’s friend?
In half an hour she, Maria, would be standing in the wings, waiting for her cue, and she would hear his voice, as he stood by the open window on the set—his back was to the audience and he used to make a face at her—and the lines he said, just before, were laugh lines so that the warm, friendly sound of the laughter came flooding up to her, as she waited to make her entrance. The warmth and the friendliness used to fill the whole house, it filled the stage, and as she stepped forward she would make a face back at him, at the open window; once more they would be hoodwinking someone. No matter whether it was Pappy, or Truda; or his dreary wife, or his boring secretary; or the rest of the company, or the whole of the audience; they would have thumbed their noses at the world, at life in general, because it had been a spring day in April and Maria was twenty-one and did not care.
For Niall, it would be Paris in midsummer…
The apartment was in rather a drab quarter, off the avenue de Neuilly, but the rooms were large, and had balconies to the long windows, and if it got too hot you shut the shutters. There was a little court inside the entrance, where the concierge lived; there were always things airing inside the court, which was dim and dark and got no light, and cats prowled there, and sometimes made a smell, but the smell of garlic was stronger than the smell of cat, and the husband of the concierge, who was bedridden and lay all day propped up with pillows, smoked Caporal tobacco, which nearly killed the garlic.
The apartment was on the fifth floor, and looked out over the street, and over the roofs of Paris, while away to the right you could see the tops of the trees in the Bois, and you could see the avenue de Neuilly rising to the Etoile. The livi
ng room was bare but friendly. Freada had turfed out the stiff furniture and had bought bits and pieces of her own, things she had collected about her from time to time; like the old Normandy dresser in the corner, and the gatelegged table, and of course the pictures, and the rugs, and the piano. The piano was a Steinway baby grand, and the only thing that mattered, as far as Niall was concerned. The room could have been furnished with bamboo for all he cared.
In the bedroom, which also looked out over the street, there was Freada’s bed, large and comfortable, and a hard little divan that she had bought for Niall, because she could not always have Niall in her bed; she said it prevented her from sleeping.
“But I don’t kick,” argued Niall. “I lie still, I never budge.”
“I know, lamb, but I’m aware of you, just the same. I’ve always had a bed of my own, and I’m not going to change my habits now.”
Niall christened his hard divan Sancho Panza. It was just like the Gustave Doré illustrations to Don Quixote, the small bed beside the large bed was like the little white pony next to the long yellow steed. He would wake in the morning in Sancho Panza and look across to Freada’s bed to see if she was there, but there was never a sleeping rounded form under the sheets, the sheets would lie limp and crumpled. Freada would be up. Freada was an early riser. He would lie for a little while, blinking, looking at the blue sky through the open window, and listening to the familiar Paris noises, known from childhood, inbred in him, never forgotten.
It was going to be another scorching day. It smelled hot already, the white heat of August; the roses Freada had bought yesterday were limp and drooping in their vase. The woman in the apartment beneath was shaking a mat out of her window. Niall could hear the regular thud, thud, of the mat over the balcony. And then she called her little boy playing in the street below, her voice sharp and shrill.
“Viens vite, Marcel, quand je t’appelle.”
“Oui, Maman, je viens,” he answered back, a pretty little boy in the inevitable black pinafore, with a beret on the side of his head. Niall stretched his feet to the end of Sancho Panza. He had grown another inch, his feet dangled over the edge.
“Freada,” he called, “Freada, I’m awake.”
She came in a few moments, carrying a tray. Although she must have been up for some time, she was not dressed yet. She was still wearing her dressing gown. The breakfast had a goodly smell to it. There were croissants, and two fresh rolls, and twists of very yellow butter, and a jar of honey, and a steaming pot of coffee. There was also a new packet of Toblerone chocolate, and three sucettes on sticks, all of them different colors. He ate all the sucettes, and half the Toblerone, before he started on his breakfast. She sat on the side of her own bed, watching him, while he sat up in Sancho Panza, balancing the tray upon his knees. “I don’t know what to do with you,” she said. “You’ll be eating the furniture next.”
“I need building up,” he said. “You said so, ages ago. I’m too thin for my age and for my height.”
“I said that once. I don’t say it now,” she answered, and she bent down and kissed the top of his head. “Come on, lazybones, eat up your breakfast and then take your shower. You’ve got to do some work on the piano before you eat again.”
“I don’t want to work. It’s too hot to work. I’ll work in the cool of the evening.” The soft, melting croissant tasted good with the tang of honey. “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” she answered. “You’ll work this morning. And if you behave yourself, like a good boy, we’ll have dinner somewhere in Paris and walk back afterwards, after the heat of the day.”
The heat of the day… Surely no other city in the world threw such a haze of heat from the pavements to the sky. The rail on the balcony blistered to the touch. Niall wore nothing but a pair of workman’s dungarees, with bib and brace, but he was sweating even in them, even in walking from the bedroom to the balcony.
He could have stayed all morning looking down onto the street. The flat hard sun did not worry him, nor the white haze rising, making a mist around the Tour Eiffel in the distance; he stood on the balcony because the sounds and the smells of Paris came to his ears and his nostrils and lost themselves inside his head and came out again as tunes. The little boy, Marcel, had gone down again from the next apartment, and was whipping a top on the pavement, talking to himself; the top kept going in the gutter. A coal cart lumbered along the cobbled street—who wanted coal in August, for heaven’s sake?—and the driver called out in his rather angry voice, “Ho, la—Ho, la,” while the harness bells jingled on the horse’s back. Someone in the house next door kept calling, “Germaine? Germaine?” and then a woman came and piled a heap of bedding on the balcony to air. There was a canary singing. The coal cart lumbered away towards the avenue de Neuilly, where the traffic sounded; the bells of the trams, the high-pitched, hooting taxis. An old chiffonier wandered down the street poking his stick in the gutter, calling his trade in the thin, high voice that quavered at the end. In the kitchen Niall could hear Freada talking to the daily cuisinière, who had just returned from market, her morning purchases bulging in her string bag.
There would be fresh gruyère cheese, and radishes, and a great bowl of salad, presently, for lunch, and possibly foie de veau, fried in butter, with a sprig of garlic. The door from the kitchen opened, and the smell of Freada’s Chesterfield cigarettes floated down the passage. She came into the room and stood beside him on the balcony.
“I have not heard that piano yet,” she said.
“You’re a slave driver,” said Niall. “That’s what you are. A ranting, ruddy slave driver.” He butted his head against her, sniffing the amber, and bit the lobe of her ear.
“You’re here to work,” she said. “If you don’t work, I’ll send you home. I’ll go and buy your ticket this afternoon.”
This was a joke between them. Whenever he was more than usually idle she would tell him that she had been on the telephone to Cook’s, that Cook’s had taken reservations for him on the express to Calais.
“You wouldn’t dare,” said Niall. “You wouldn’t dare.” He pulled her round so that she faced him, and he put his hands on her shoulders, and he rubbed his cheek against her hair.
“You can’t bully me any longer,” he said. “I’ll soon be as tall as you. Look, put your feet next to mine.”
“Don’t stamp on my toes,” she said. “There’s a corn on the little one. That comes from wearing tight shoes in a heat wave.” She pushed him away, and, reaching forward, she pulled the shutters close. “We’ll have to keep the room cool somehow,” she said.
“It’s a fallacy, that business of closing the shutters,” said Niall. “They used to do it when we were children. It makes everything much worse.”
“It’s either that, or sitting in the bath all day with the cold tap on my tummy,” said Freada. “Don’t pull at me, Niall, it’s too damn hot.”
“It’s never too hot,” said Niall. She pushed him onto the seat in front of the piano. “Go on, my baby, do what you’re told,” she said.
He stretched out for a piece of Toblerone chocolate on top of the piano, and broke it in two, so that he could have two pieces, one in either cheek, and he laughed, and began to play.
“Slave driver,” he called over his shoulder, “stinking slave driver.”
Once she was out of the room he did not think about her anymore, he thought only of what he wanted from the piano. Freada always cursed him for laziness. He was lazy. He wanted the piano to do the work for him, not the other way about. Freada said nothing was worth doing without effort. Pappy used to say that too. Everyone said it. But when things happened easily, what was the sense in driving yourself, in sweating blood?
“Yes, I know that first song was a winner,” said Freada, “but you can’t just rest on that. And you must remember that the life of a song-hit is short. A couple of months, at best. You’ve got to work. You’ve got to do better still.”
“I’ve no ambition,” he told her. “Oh, yes, if it was
real music, then I’d be ambitious all right. But not this nonsense.”
And in one hour, two hours, it would come; out of the blue, from nowhere, a song that you could not help singing, a song that did something to your feet and to your hands. It was easy, so damn easy. But it was not work. It was the call of the chiffonier poking with his stick in the gutter, and the angry coalman saying, “Ho, la,” pulling the jingling reins as his horse stumbled on the cobbled stones.
The song hit the ceiling, and echoed from the walls; it was fun to do, it was play. But he did not want to write it down. He did not want to have the sweat and toil of writing it down. Why not pay someone else to do that part? And, anyway, once he had thought of a song, and played it, and sung it to himself and Freada about fifty times, it was out of his system, he was bored with it, sickened of it, he did not even want to hear it anymore. As far as he was concerned, the song was finished. It was like taking a pill, and the pill having worked, he wanted to pull the plug on it. Finish. Now what next? Anything? No. Just lean over the balcony under the sun. And think about the foie de veau there was going to be for lunch…
“I can’t work anymore today,” he said, at half-past one, when he had eaten the last radish. “It’s cruelty to animals, and anyway it’s the siesta hour. No one in Paris works in the siesta hour.”
“You’ve done very well,” said Freada. “I’ll let you off this afternoon. But play the song to me once, just once; because now I’m not an old pro anymore, trying to train a pupil. I want to hear your song for sentiment’s sake, because I love it, and I love you too.”
He went to the piano again and played it for her, and she sat at the table dropping ash from her Chesterfield cigarette onto the plate where the radishes had been, and the slab of gruyère cheese, and she shut her eyes and hummed the song in her husky voice that was always a little off key, but it did not matter. As he played, and looked at her, he thought suddenly of Maria, and how Maria would sing the song; she would not sit slumped there, in a chair, smoking a cigarette, over the remains of lunch; she would stand straight in the middle of the room and smile. Then something would happen to Maria’s shoulders, and her hands would move, and she would say, “I want to dance it. It’s no use standing here and listening. I want to dance.”