“It’s no use,” he said. “I can’t.”
Then she did a surprising thing. She sat down on the stool beside him, she put her left arm round his shoulder, and her right hand on the keys next to his two hands.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ll play together.”
And she took up the pace and the rhythm of the song where he had left it, she turned the song into a dancing, happy song, as he had done. He was so surprised, so startled, that he could not think at all. Perhaps Mama was sleepwalking, or had taken a pill for her headache that had driven her mad, like Ophelia in Hamlet. It seemed to him that it could not be true, Mama sitting like this beside him at the piano, with her arm in the peignoir round his shoulders.
She stopped and looked at him.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “Don’t you want to play anymore?”
It must have been true that she had been resting, because there was no powder on her face as there usually was, or lip stuff. Her face was not “done,” as Maria would have said. It was just her face. The skin was soft and smooth, and there were little lines at the corner of her eyes that did not show as a rule, and at the corners of her mouth. He wondered why it was that she should seem so much prettier when she looked like this, so much kinder. Not a person to be afraid of anymore. She was suddenly not like a grown-up person. She was young, like himself, like Maria…
“Don’t you want to play?” she repeated.
“Yes…” he said, “Oh, yes…” and now he was not nervous. The feeling of nervousness went away; he was happy at last, happier than he had ever been, and his hands were no longer false, no longer clumsy.
“Ma chandelle est morte,
Je n’ai plus de feu.”
And Mama was playing with him and singing too—Mama who never sang with Pappy.
Outside, through the shuttered window leading to the veranda, the foghorn sounded for the first time that afternoon; it boomed deeply. Once, twice and then again.
Niall went on playing, with Mama beside him, quicker and louder than before.
“Ouvre-moi ta porte,
Pour l’amour de Dieu…”
Down over the rocks, by the deepest pool, Maria was lying on her tummy watching her own reflection. She found she could make tears come into her eyes without the slightest effort. She did not even have to pinch herself, or squeeze her eyes. She just pretended she was sad, and the tears came. You said words to yourself that sounded sad, and the thing happened.
“Nevermore… Nevermore…” she murmured, and the face that stared back at her from the pool was tear-stained with grief. There were pieces from the Bible that were good to say too, not for crying, but just to say.
“How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter.”
Was that the Bible? Well, anyway, it was from something. There were so many lovely things to say. She wanted to string them altogether in a hopeless jumble.
“Now seems it more than ever rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain…”
She turned over on her side, shutting her eyes, listening to her own voice talking.
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”
It was warm and lovely, lying there beside the pool. It should be summer always. Never anything but summer, and the sun and the splashing sound of waves restful and lazy.
“Hullo, water nymph,” said a voice.
She looked up, and blinked. It was Michel. She wondered how he had discovered her. She was so well hidden by the overhanging rock.
“Hullo,” she said.
He came down and sat beside her. He wore bathing-trunks, with a towel round his waist. Maria wondered idly why it was that men could go about with their top half bare, and women could not. Because of being fat, she supposed. She was not fat yet, thank goodness, but Truda made her cover her top half this summer for some silly reason. She was getting too big to run around like that, Truda said.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” said Michel, a note of reproach in his voice.
“Have you?” said Maria. “I’m sorry. I thought you were talking to Pappy, or Mama.” Michel laughed.
“Do you think I would be with them if there was the slightest chance of being with you?” he said.
Maria stared at him. Well, really… He was grown-up, he was their friend, wasn’t he? Grown-up people generally preferred being together. She did not say anything. There was nothing to say.
“You know, Maria,” he went on, “I’m going to miss you terribly when I go back to Paris.”
“Are you?” said Maria. She lay back against the rock, and shut her eyes. How hot it was, really too hot to bathe. Too hot to do anything but lie against the rock.
“Yes,” he said. “Won’t you miss me?”
Maria thought a moment. If she said “No” he would be offended. Perhaps she would miss him a little. He was tall and nice and rather good-looking, after all. And he had been very good-natured playing tennis, and looking with her for starfish.
“I expect I shall,” she said politely. “Yes, I’m sure I shall miss you very much.”
He leaned over, and began to stroke her legs as he had done at vingt-et-un. It was queer, she thought. Why was he so mad on this business of stroking legs? At vingt-et-un it had been nice, oddly exciting, chiefly because the others were all there and did not know, and she had an instinctive feeling that Pappy would have been angry, which was fun. Now that she and Michel were alone she did not like it so much. It was rather silly, as Celia said. But again, if she moved her legs away, he would be offended. Suddenly, she thought of an excuse.
“Heavens, it’s hot,” she said. “I simply must have a swim to get cool.”
She stood up and dived into the deep pool. He sat there on the rock watching her. He looked rather annoyed. Maria pretended not to notice.
“Come in too; it’s lovely,” she said, shaking the water out of her hair.
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ve had my swim.”
He leaned back against the rock and lit a cigarette.
Maria swam around, watching him from the pool. When he sat slumped, lighting his cigarette, he looked nice. The top of his head, bent, was fair, and his neck a deep brown. But when he smiled, his teeth were rather too big, and that spoiled everything. She wondered if men were ever nice altogether, hair, eyes, nose, mouth, legs, arms, or if there was always something that would be irritating, putting off. She kicked her legs, and splashed, and then dived again, showing off, because she knew she dived well. Michel went on smoking his cigarette. Presently, Maria climbed out of the pool, and picking up her towel she dried herself in the sun. She felt fresh and cool after her swim.
“I wonder where the others are,” she said.
“Never mind the others; come and sit down,” he said.
The way he said it, almost like an order, and patting the rock beside him, surprised Maria. Generally, if anyone ordered her to do anything she refused, instinctively. Her nature was to disobey rules on principle. But when Michel spoke like this she realized that she liked it. It was much better than his soft voice saying he would miss her. Then he looked a fool. Now he did not look a fool at all. She spread her wet towel on the rock to dry, and sat down beside him. She shut her eyes, and leaned back against the rock. This time he did not speak, nor did he touch her legs. He reached out for her hand, and held it.
It was nice to have her hand held, peaceful and strangely comforting. And the feel of his shoulder, just touching hers, was comforting too. Yet, thought Maria, if Pappy came and saw us sitting here, and looked down over the rock, I should feel embarrassed, ashamed. I should quickly take my hand away and pretend Michel had not touched it at all. I wonder whether that’s why it is so nice. I wonder if I like it just because it’s something Pappy would not let me do.
Away in the distance, the foghorn sounded from the rocky islands across the bay.
Celia heard it, and frowned, and turned her head towards the sea, but the mist was
coming down fast, and already the islands were hidden. She could not see them anymore.
Boom… there it was again, doleful and persistent. She simply could not forget it, once it had begun. She stood back, surveying the house she had made. It was a lovely shape, with shells for windows, and trailing paths of seaweed from the front door to the gate. The doors and gate had been difficult to find, she was so particular about the exact shape of the stones. There was a bridge too, and a tunnel. The tunnel went right underneath the garden to the house. It was sickening to think that the sea would come up and destroy the house she had taken such pains to make. Seep it away, little by little. It just showed how useless it was to make things that did not last. Drawing was different. If you drew a picture, you could put it away in a drawer, and look at it again, and it would always be there whenever you wanted it again.
It would be nice to have a model of the sand-house, and to keep it always so that when they were home again, wherever home should be next time, Paris or London or some other place, the sand-house would be a possession, something to treasure with all the other things she hoarded, she never quite knew why, but in case… In case of what, Truda asked? Just in case, Celia answered. There were shells, and smooth green stones, and pressed flowers, and stubs of pencils, even little old bits of stick, picked up in the Bois, or in Hyde Park, and carried back to the hotel or the apartment.
“No, no, you mustn’t throw that away,” she used to say.
Because once she had chosen an object it must remain, forever; it was a treasure, it was something to be loved.
Boom… the wretched foghorn sounded again.
“Look, Pappy,” she called out, “come and look at the dear little house I’ve made, just for you and me.”
He did not answer. She turned round and ran to the place where he had been sitting. He was not there anymore. His coat and his book and his field glasses were gone. He must have got up while she had been building the sand-house, and gone back to the house. She had been alone on the beach perhaps for ages, and she had never known. The foghorn sounded again, and the mist came nearer, closing in upon her.
She was swept in sudden panic. She picked up her spade, and ran.
“Pappy,” she called. “Pappy, where are you?”
Nobody answered. She could not see the cliffs. She could not see the house. They had all gone, they had all deserted her. She was alone, she had nothing left but her wooden spade.
She went on running, forgetting she was no longer a little girl, but would soon be eleven, and as she ran she panted under her breath, “Pappy… Pappy… Truda… Niall, don’t leave me. No one must ever leave me,” and all the while the pursuing foghorn was booming in her ears.
He came suddenly, out of the mist, just by the garden gate that led to the house, Pappy in his old blue coat and white sun-hat, and he bent down and lifted her from the ground.
“Hullo, my old silly,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
But nothing mattered. She had found him. She was safe.
7
The last days of August had come and gone, and September was upon us. Soon, in a week or ten days, the inevitable packing-up would begin again, and we would be saying good-bye to the villa. There would be the sadness of last walks, last swims, last sleeping in beds that had become familiar. We would make all sorts of promises to the cuisinière, and to the daily femme de chambre, saying, “We’ll be back again next year,” knowing in our hearts that it would not be so. We never took the same villa twice. Next year it would be the Riviera perhaps, or Italy, and the cliffs and the sea of Brittany would become no more than a memory.
Maria and Celia shared a room, with Niall in the little dressing room adjoining, the door open between the two so that we could all talk to each other. But somehow, this summer we did not play the old noisy romping games of a year ago. We no longer chased each other in pajamas about the room, and jumped across the beds.
Maria would be drowsy and yawning in the mornings. “Don’t talk, anyone. I’m making up a dream,” and she used to tie a handkerchief round her eyes so that the sun could not waken her.
Niall was not drowsy in the morning, but he would sit on the end of his bed, which was underneath the window, and stare out across the garden to the sea and the rocky islands. Even on the calmest day the sea was never still around the lighthouse. There was always a white surf breaking on the rocks, and a long thin line of curling foam. Truda would come in with his breakfast, coffee and croissants, and golden honey.
“What’s my boy dreaming of now?” she used to say, to be met with the inevitable answer, “Nothing!”
“You are all growing up too fast, that’s what it is,” she would reply, as though growing was somehow a disease that had come upon us, though in some fashion shameful, awaking disapproval.
“Come on now, none of that shamming sleep. I know you’re foxing,” she said to Maria, dragging back the curtains with a jerk, flooding the room with sunshine.
“I don’t want any breakfast. Go away, Truda.”
“That’s the latest, is it? Don’t want your breakfast. You’ll be glad enough of breakfast once you get to school, my girl. No lying in bed then. And no dancing in the evening, or other nonsense.”
And Niall, glad of his breakfast and the warm, melting croissant, wondered why it was that Truda, whom he loved, should have, in spite of this, such a talent for arousing irritation.
Let Maria lie and dream if she wanted to; let Niall crouch by the open window. We did no harm by this; we did not attack the world of grown-up people.
Grown-up people… How suddenly would it happen, the final plunge into their world? Did it really come about overnight, as Pappy said, between sleeping and waking? A day would come, a day like any other day, and looking over your shoulder you would see the shadow of the child that was, receding; and there would be no going back, no possibility of recapturing the shadow. You had to go on; you had to step forward into the future, however much you dreaded the thought, however much you were afraid.
“Oh, God, put back Thy universe and give me yesterday!”
Pappy quoted it, joking, at lunchtime, and Niall, looking round, thought this moment already belonged to the past, it is over and done with. In a minute we shall be pushing back the chairs and going onto the veranda, and it can never, never happen again. Pappy at the end of the table, the sleeves of his shirt rolled above his elbows, his old yellow cardigan with the hole in it thrown open, unbuttoned, his blue eyes, so like Maria’s, laughing across at Mama.
Mama drinking her coffee and smiling back, cool and detached. She was always cool when other people were hot, wearing a mauve frock and a long chiffon scarf around her shoulders. Mama will never look quite like this again because soon she will have finished her coffee and put the cup back again on the saucer, and she will be saying to Pappy, “Have you finished? Shall we go?” the way she always did, feeling for her scarf, twisting it round her neck, and as she moves from the dining room to the veranda she will be moving from the past into the future, thought Niall, she will be entering another life.
Maria wore a blue sweater over her bathing-dress that matched the color of her eyes, and her fair hair was still wet from her morning swim. She had been snipping at it with nail-scissors to make it shorter.
Celia’s hair was in two tight plaits that made her face seem rounder and plumper than ever, and as she bit on a chocolate the expression of her face changed suddenly, became pensive; she had bitten on a stopping, the stopping had come out.
There will never be a photograph of this, thought Niall, never a photograph of the five of us together, round the table, holding the moment, smiling and being happy.
“Well, shall we go?” Mama rose from the table; the spell was broken. But I can hold it, said Niall to himself, I can hold it if I don’t speak to anyone, if nobody speaks to me, and he followed Mama onto the veranda in silence, watching her pat the cushions into place on the long chair, while Pappy opened her sunshade and tucked the cover
let round her legs to keep away mosquitoes. Maria had already sauntered off in the direction of the beach, and Celia was at the back of the house somewhere, calling to Truda about the stopping in her tooth.
“I don’t know which grows up fastest, this lad or Maria,” said Pappy, and he put his hand on Niall’s shoulder, smiling, and then wandered down the steps into the garden, to lie full-length on his back with his hands under his head, and an old panama hat over his face.
“You shall come for a walk with me presently,” said Mama to Niall, and the moment at the table that he had wished to hold throughout the afternoon was thrown away upon the instant. It had become a thing of no account, and he wondered why only a few minutes ago he had given it so much importance.
“I’ll leave you to rest,” he said, and then, instead of going into the drawing room to play the piano as had become his custom, he ran round the back of the house to the kitchen garden where the garden boy kept his bicycle, and he jumped upon the saddle and steered it out into the road. He grasped the hot, shiny handlebars of the machine, and his naked feet in sandshoes felt strong and free as they touched the pedals. He rode fast and furious along the twisting, sandy road, and the dust blew in his face, and he did not mind.
Back in the house Celia was showing her gaping tooth to Truda, and Truda was packing into it a little hard wedge of toothpaste.
“You’ll have to wait now until we get to London,” she said. “These French dentists are no good. Be sure to remember and bite on the left side. Where’s Maria?”
“I don’t know,” said Celia. “I think she went for a walk.”
“What she wants to go off walking for this hot weather I can’t think,” said Truda, “but I can make a pretty shrewd guess she won’t walk alone. Don’t pull at the tooth, Celia. Let it be.”
“It feels funny.”
“Of course it feels funny. It will feel funnier still if you let that piece of toothpaste slip, and you bite on the nerve. You and Niall had better run off and join Maria, and see she doesn’t get into mischief. It’s a good thing we’re going back to England next week.”