Читать книгу The Villa in Italy - Elizabeth Edmondson - Страница 17

Marjorie’s heart lifted as the ancient taxi, reeking of terrible old French cigarettes, rumbled its way across the cobbled streets. Paris was alive; Paris had been reborn; all the harrowing times of Occupation were now only a memory, if a vivid one for someone of Marjorie’s age, who remembered the war and the distress of the fall of France all too well. The houses were still shabby, with peeling paint and crumbling stucco, the roads uneven and pot-holed, the pavements cracked and disorganised; but yet, underneath it all, the vitality of the city was there, unquenched and unmistakable.

And the sun was shining. And she was hungry, very hungry, her hunger sharpened by the shops and stalls they passed, fruit piled high, a little boy walking along with a baguette almost as long as he was tall tucked under his arm, a corner stall with oysters laid out in icy baskets.

The taxi ground to a halt with a screech of uncertain brakes, and the driver heaved himself out and slouched round to let her out and hand her her suitcase.

She recklessly handed over some of her precious francs, including a tip more generous than his surliness warranted, but she was in Paris, and it was spring, and she was, for this moment at least, happy, and the tip earned her an answering smile and even a civil ‘Au revoir, Madame’.

Madame! Yes, she’d been Madame for a long time now. How many years it was since she’d arrived in Paris, an eager seventeen-year-old, definitely a mademoiselle, plunging into a delightful world of cafés and jazz and endless, relentless pursuit of love and pleasure and fun. Paris had been her liberation, but it wasn’t a liberation that had survived her inevitable return to England, to a necessary job, mindnumbingly boring, so boring that she’d found herself using every scrap of time when the supervisor’s eyes weren’t on her to scribble stories that took her out of the dull office and into a headier, richer world of the imagination. Then her second liberation, of finding she could make enough money by her pen, just enough to get by, so that she could give up her job, which she’d left with joy in her heart, swearing to herself that never, no, never again would she work in an office.

A thin woman swathed in grey garments, and with dark, suspicious little eyes, pushed a ledger towards her.

‘Papers,’ she said. ‘Passport. How long are you staying?’

It was all so familiar, the Hotel Belfort, with its tiny entrance hall, the vase of dried flowers, dustier and more shrivelled than ever, sitting on the scruffy counter, the brass bell that gave off only a dull thud when struck, instead of the expected clang. Even Madame Roche didn’t seem to have changed a bit.

‘You don’t remember me, Madame Roche? I used to stay here, before the war.’

Madame’s eyes flew heavenwards. ‘Ah, before the war, that is a long time ago. Who can remember before the war? Everything was different before the war.’

Yes, and I bet you had German lodgers, and fleeced them, just as you’ve always fleeced your clients, Marjorie thought, as she took the large key that Madame held out for her. Why, she wondered, knowing what Madame Roche was like, had she always stayed here when she was in Paris? Familiarity, and she liked the area: the boulangerie on the corner, the little shop that sold tin goods, the kiosk where she bought her daily paper, the old woman selling flowers from a tiny stall. Buckets and buckets of flowers; no doubt the woman and her flowers were long gone.

It was a mistake. This was a mistake. She should have gone straight through; it was madness to break her journey in Paris. If she’d left early in the morning, caught the first boat, gone straight to the lawyer’s office, collected the money, then she could have been on the train to Italy even now, not stirring up old memories that were better forgotten.

Her happy mood was draining away. No, she wasn’t going to look back, she wasn’t going to let any regrets take her back into the glums. Come on, Marjorie, she told herself. Let’s see how much money you’ve got, and then go out and find a restaurant.

She stared at the notes in the envelope, each bundle held in a paperclip, with a white sheet of paper beneath it. French francs, one said, and a much bigger bundle of Italian lire.

Had they made a mistake? Why on earth would they give her that much money?

‘Under the terms of the late Mrs Malaspina’s will, we are directed to defray all necessary expenses for your journey to Italy,’ the grave lawyer in London had told her. ‘We shall give you here in England the maximum you are allowed by government regulations to take out of the country. Obviously, once you are on the other side of the channel, out of the sterling area, such restrictions do not apply, and our colleagues in Paris will ensure that you have enough money to continue on your way to Italy.’

‘But who is Beatrice Malaspina? There must be a mistake. I’ve never heard of her.’

There had been no mistake, the lawyer assured her. Her name, her full name, her address, even her parentage, daughter of Terence Swift, all of it was perfectly correct. The Marjorie Swift that Beatrice Malaspina, the late Beatrice Malaspina, had summoned to Italy was quite definitely her, not some other Marjorie Swift.

She had given up wondering why. Brief fantasies of the white slave trade flashed through her mind, and then she’d laughed at herself. She’d never been the sort to appeal to any kind of white slaver, and now, well past thirty—admit it, nearer forty—skinny and grey after the last few difficult years, she wouldn’t fetch sixpence on any slave market.

A scheme, a touch of spivvery? What would be the point? She had nothing that anyone could swindle her out of. Less than a hundred pounds in the world, and that would be gone by the end of the year, and then, horror of horrors, unless a miracle happened, she would be back once more in the office job she’d sworn never to take again.

Always supposing she could find any such employment. Who would want to employ a woman no longer in the first flush of youth, and a woman moreover who hadn’t had a proper job for more than ten years? The familiar fear flooded over her, but she pulled herself up. A week ago, she had never heard of Beatrice Malaspina; a week ago, she had no more idea of being in Paris than of finding herself on the moon. Where there was a will, perhaps there was an inheritance, although why a total stranger should leave her so much as a Bible was beyond her.

Unconsciously, as she thrust the key into the lock, and fought the warped door, ideas began to creep into her head. Mistaken identity? Clichéd, but then everything was a cliché until you wrote it afresh. Wills? Murders were done for wills. And mystery, the mysterious woman summoning the English spinster.

She put her suitcase on the rickety stand provided for it, took off her coat—once good, now threadbare—and removed her hat. She washed her face and hands in the basin, supplied with a mere trickle of water, but enough for her purpose. Then, in a moment of bravado, she took out a powder compact, and sponged the last few grains on to her cheeks.

That day in Paris brought Marjorie back into the human race, that was how she saw it. The next morning, the memory of a meal such as she hadn’t had for years still in her mouth and in her mind, she woke early, and set off to walk the Paris streets. She stopped for a café au lait and a croissant, the buttery pastry melting in her mouth, a taste so delicious that it almost hurt senses dulled by the last few years of darkness and fear and despair. How could she have thought of leaving it all? Of never again greeting glad day as the sun rose over the Seine, never feeling a taste explode in her mouth, never greedily gulping down coffee, hot and black and bitter.

She walked along the left bank, over the bridges, across the Ile de la Cité. In her mind was the France of Dumas, an untouched world of swords and kings and musketeers, not the rundown shops and streets in front of her eyes. Flaubert would provide a more realistic model, but no, on that day she saw Paris through the eyes of a Romantic, not a realist.

And so the evening brought her, weary, but with an underlying sense of happiness that was so unfamiliar she didn’t trust it, to the Gare de Lyon, to catch the overnight Paris-Lyon-Nice train.

On which the French lawyers had booked her a compartment, a bed in a Wagon Lits carriage; a luxury beyond her imagining. She pinched herself as she sniffed the clean white sheets, jumped guiltily as the conducteur put his head round the door to enquire if she wanted anything, and then made her pillow wet with tears.

Tears for what, she asked herself, as she turned the damp object over and gave it a defiant punch. For the girl she had once been? For the fact that she was, despite her best efforts, still alive? That someone, even someone she knew no more than the man in the moon, had cared enough to leave instructions and money for her to travel in this quite unaccustomed comfort? Tears of relief for being away from her wretched life in England, of gratitude for the exquisite omelette she had eaten at the station before getting on the train, of anger at herself that she should be grateful for such tiny things.

Les petits riens, she told herself as she snuggled luxuriously into her berth. The train seemed to echo the words, petits riens, petits riens. It was the little nothings that made life worth living, in the end.

Then she mocked herself for thinking such nonsense. The petits riens were all very well, but it was the greater things of life that caused all the trouble, and they pushed everything else out of the way, crashing in on one’s dreams and delights, and turning happiness into misery.