Читать книгу A Wreath for the Enemy - Pamela Frankau - Страница 7

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My bedroom was on the ground floor, with a window that opened on to the far end of the terrace. It was late, but I was still awake and I heard Francis and Jeanne talking outside. I did not mean to listen, but their voices were clear and when I heard the name ‘Bradley’ I could not help listening.

“I agree with you,” Jeanne said, “that it is all an outrageous fuss. But these Bradleys mean a great deal to Penelope.”

“Wish I knew why,” said Francis. “They represent the worst and dullest aspect of English ‘county’; a breed that may soon become extinct, and no loss, either.”

“They are the kind of friends that she has never had: English children of her own age.”

Their footsteps ceased directly outside my window. I heard Francis sigh. “Ought we to send her to school in England, do you think?”

“Perhaps next year.”

“That will be too late, beloved.”

I had heard him call Jeanne ‘beloved’ before, but tonight the word touched my heart, perhaps because I was already unhappy; it made me want to cry. “She will be fifteen,” Francis said. “First she’ll kill herself trying to fit into the pattern, and if she succeeds in the task, we shall never see her again. God knows what we’ll get but it won’t be Penelope.”

“She will change in any case, whether she stays or goes, darling; they always do.”

“Perhaps I’ve done a poor job with her from the beginning,” Francis said; he spoke my mother’s name. And then I was so sure I must listen no more that I covered my ears with my hands. When I took them away Jeanne was saying, “You are always sad when your back is hurting you. Come to bed. Tomorrow I’ll invite the Bradley children for lunch again; on Thursday when Violetta’s in Monte Carlo.”

“Why should we suck up to the Smugs?” Francis grumbled, and Jeanne replied, “Only because of Penelope, tu le sais,” and they walked away down the terrace.

I wept because they destroyed my defences; my conscience still troubled me for the speeches of humbug that I had made to Eva, for quarrelling with Francis, and for being uncivil to the Duchess. It was a weary load. If the Bradleys accepted the invitation to lunch, it would seem that God was not intending to punish me for it, but exactly the reverse, and that was a bewildering state of affairs.

By morning, however, God’s plan became clear. Jeanne brought me my breakfast on the terrace. She sat with me while I ate it. I thought, as I had thought before, that she looked very young; more an elder sister than a stepmother, with her short, flying dark hair, the blue eyes in the brown face, the long slim brown legs. She smoked a Caporal cigarette.

I could hardly wait for her to tell me whether she had healed the breach with the Bradleys. But I dared not ask. Their talk on the terrace had been too intimate for me to admit that I had heard it. She said, “Penelope, the situation with your friends at La Lézardière has become a little complex.”

My heart beat downward heavily and I did not want to eat any more.

“I thought that it would give you pleasure if I asked them to lunch and would perhaps clear up any misunderstanding. But I have been talking to Mrs. Bradley and apparently she would prefer them not to visit the hotel.”

I did not know whether I was blushing for the hotel, for my own disappointment, or for the Bradleys; I was only aware of the blush, flaming all over my skin, most uncomfortably.

“Mrs. Bradley was friendly and polite, you must not think otherwise. She wants you to swim with them as much as you like; she said that she hoped you would go out in the speedboat again. But her exact phrase was, ‘We feel that the hotel surroundings are just a little too grown-up for Don and Eva.’ ”

I was silent.

“So I thought that I would tell you. And ask you not to be unhappy about it. People are entitled to their views, you know, even when one does not oneself agree with them.”

“Thank you, Jeanne: I am not at all unhappy,” I said, wishing that my voice would not shake. “And if the Bradleys will not come to me, I am damned if I am going to them.” And I rose from the table. She came after me, but when she saw that I was near to tears she gave me a pat on the back and left me alone.

This was the point at which I discovered that hate did not cast out love, but that it was, on the contrary, possible to hate and love at the same time. I could not turn off my infatuation for the Bradleys, much as I longed to do so. They were still the desirable Vikings. The stately pink villa above the orange trees, the grey rocks where the diving-board jutted and the speedboat lay at anchor, remained the site of romance, the target of forlorn hopes. It hurt me to shake my head and retire from the flat rock when Don and Eva beckoned me. They seemed to understand quickly enough, more quickly than their parents did. Mr. Bradley still called, “Coming aboard?” and Mrs. Bradley waved to me elaborately on every possible occasion. The children turned their heads away. For two days I saw them all like figures set behind a glass screen; only the echo of their voices reached me; I gave up haunting the beach and worked in a corner of the garden; the regularity of their time-table made it easy to avoid the sight of them. I told myself that they were loathsome, that they were the Smugs, that Don and Eva were both candidates for R.C.I. I even considered including them in the Anthology of Hates, but I found it too difficult. Now they had indeed become the moon that the Duchess told me I cried for. I cherished dreams of saving Don’s life or Eva’s at great risk to myself, and being humbly thanked and praised by their parents. Then I hoped that they would all die in a fire, or better still that I would die and they would come to my funeral.

In these two days I found myself looking at my home differently; seeing it in Bradley perspective. I had been plagued by the crises and irregularities but never ashamed of them. Was I ashamed now? I could not be sure; the feeling was one of extra detachment and perception; I was more than ever aware of the garden’s bright colours, of the garlic smells from the kitchen, of the dusky coolness in the bar; every time that I walked through the salon I looked at it with startled visitors’ eyes; Bradleys’ eyes.

“It’s pretty, of course; it’s like a little room in a museum, but it isn’t the sort of place where one wants to sit.” The terrace with the blue and white umbrellas above the tables, the stone jars on the balustrade, the lizards flickering along the wall, seemed as temporary as the deck of a ship on a short voyage. I felt as though I were staying here, not living here. And there was no consolation in my own room with my own books because here the saddest thoughts came and they seemed to hang in the room waiting for me, as palpable as the tented mosquito-net above the bed.

I found that I was seeing Francis, Jeanne, and the Duchess through a grotesque lens; they were at once complete strangers and people whom I knew intimately. I could place them in a Bradley context, thinking, ‘That is Francis Wells, the poet, the poet who keeps the mad hotel. He always seems to wear the same red shirt. He looks like Mephistopheles when he laughs. And that is his wife, his second wife; younger than he is; very gay always, isn’t she? What very short shorts. And there goes the Duchessa di Terracini, rather a terrible old lady who gambles at the Casino and drinks champagne; doesn’t she look ridiculous in all that make-up and chiffon?’ And then I would be talking to them in my own voice and with my own thoughts and feeling like a traitor.

I knew that they were sorry for me; that Francis above all approved my defiant refusal. I was aware of their hands held back from consoling gestures, to spare me too much overt sympathy. Even the Duchess did not speak to me of the Bradleys.

For once I welcomed the crises as diversion. And these two days naturally were not free from crisis; a British ambassador and his wife found themselves en panne at our gates. All the entrails of their car fell out upon the road and we were obliged to give them rooms for the night.

This would not of itself have been other than a mechanical crisis, because the ambassador and Francis were old friends. Unfortunately the ambassador and the press baron from Menton, who was dining with the Duchess, were old enemies. So a fierce political fight was waged in the bar, with both elderly gentlemen calling each other poltroon, and they would have fought a duel had not the electric current failed and the hotel been plunged in darkness till morning. (My only grief was that Don and Eva had missed it. All roads led to the Bradleys.)

On the third morning, which was Thursday, doom accelerated. I woke to find Francis standing beside my bed.

“Sorry, darling; trouble,” he said. “A telephone call just came through from Aix; Jeanne’s mother is very ill and I’m going to drive her over there now. Can you take care of you for today?”

He never asked me such questions: this was like a secret signal saying, “I know you are miserable and I am sorry.”

“But of course. Please don’t worry.”

“There are no guests, thank God. Violetta’s going over to Monte Carlo; Laurent will be in charge tonight. You might see that he locks up, if I’m not back.”

“I will do that.”

“But don’t let him lock Violetta out, for Heaven’s sake.”

“I will see that he does not. Can I help Jeanne or do anything for you?”

“No, my love. We are off now. I’ll telephone you later.” He ducked under the mosquito-net to kiss me.

“You must pray rather than worry,” the Duchess said to me, standing on the doorstep. For her expedition to Monte Carlo, she wore a coat and skirt of white shantung, a bottle-green frilly blouse, and the usual chiffon scarf. She was topped by a bottle-green tricorne hat with a green veil descending from it. “Death is a part of life,” she added, pulling on her white gloves.

I could feel little emotion for my step-grandmother who lived in seclusion near Aix-en-Provence, but I was sorry for Jeanne.

“The best thing that you could do, Penelope,” said the Duchess, grasping her parasol like a spear, “would be to come over with me to Monte Carlo. We will lunch delightfully on the balcony of the Hotel de Paris; then you shall eat ices while I am at the tables; then a little stroll and a little glass and we could dine on the port at Villefranche and drive home under the moon. The moon is at the full tonight and I look forward to it. Viens, chérie, ça te changera les idées,” she added, holding out her hand.

I thanked her very much and said that I would rather stay here.

When she was placed inside the high purple Isotta-Fraschini, I thought that she and her old hooky chauffeur looked like a Punch-and-Judy show. The car was box-shaped with a fringed canopy under the roof and they swayed as it moved off. I waved good-bye.

The first part of the day seemed endless. I sat in the garden on a stone bench under the largest of the umbrella pines. That way I had my back to La Lézardière. I could hear their voices and that was all. When the bell rang for their lunch, I went down to the pool and swam. I swam for longer than usual; then I climbed to the flat rock and lay in the sun. I was almost asleep when I heard Eva’s voice. “Penelope!”

She was half-way up the rock; she said, “Look; we are so miserable we’ve written you this note. I have to go back and rest now.” She was like a vision out of the long past; the freckles, the sunburn, and the wet hair. I watched her scuttle down and she turned to wave to me from the lowest tier of the terrace. I gave her a half-wave and opened the note.

It said:

‘Dear Penelope,

‘Please don’t be cross with us. Mum and Dad are going out to supper tonight. Don’t you think that you could come? They have asked us to ask you.

‘Always your friends,

‘Don and Eva.’

I wrote my reply at the écritoire in the salon. I wrote:

‘Much as I appreciate the invitation, I am unable to accept it. Owing to severe illness in the family my father and stepmother have left for Aix. I feel it necessary to stay here and keep an eye on things.

‘Penelope.’

To run no risk of meeting them, I went into the bar and asked Laurent if he would be so kind as to leave this note at La Lézardière.

Laurent was in one of his moods; he replied sarcastically that it gave him great pleasure to run errands and do favours for young ladies who had not the energy to perform these for themselves. I echoed the former cook’s husband, the assassin, and said, “Salaud,” but not until he was gone.

After I had answered the note, I alternated between wishing that I had accepted and wishing that I had given them more truthful reasons for my refusal.

Later, I sought comfort by writing to my Aunt Anne in England; I sat there conjuring the fortnight as it would be and putting in the letter long descriptions of the things that I wanted to see and do again. It helped. I had covered twelve pages when the telephone rang.

Francis’ voice spoke over a bad line: “Hullo, Child of Confusion. Everything all right?”

“Yes, indeed. Nothing is happening at all. What is the news?”

“Better,” he said, “but Jeanne will have to stay. I may be very late getting back. See that Laurent gives you the cold lobster. Jeanne sends her love.”

Nothing would have induced me to ask Laurent for my dinner, but I was perfectly capable of getting it myself and the reference to cold lobster had made me hungry. No reason why I should not eat my dinner at six o’clock. I was on my way to the kitchen by way of the terrace when I heard a voice calling me:

“Penelope!”

I turned, feeling that horrible all-over blush begin. Mrs. Bradley stood at the doorway from the salon on to the terrace. She looked golden and statuesque in a white dress with a scarlet belt. The sight of her was painful. It seemed as though I had forgotten how lovely she was.

“May I talk to you a moment, my dear?”

“Please do,” I said, growing hotter and hotter.

“Shall we sit here?” She took a chair beneath one of the blue and white umbrellas. She motioned to me to take the other chair. I said, “Thank you, but I prefer to stand.”

She smiled at me. I could feel in my heart the alarming collision of love and hate and now I could see her in two contexts: as a separate symbol, the enemy; as a beloved haunting of my own mind, the Mrs. Bradley of the first days, whom I had made my private possession. Her arms and hands were beautifully shaped, pale brown against the white of her dress.

“Can’t we be friends, Penelope? I think we can, you know, if we try. Don and Eva are so sad and it all seems such a pity.”

I said, “But, Mrs. Bradley, you made it happen.”

“No, dear. That is what I want to put right. When I talked to your stepmother, I made it quite clear that we all hoped to see much more of you.”

“But,” I said, “that Don and Eva couldn’t come here. As though it were an awful place.”

She put her hand on mine; she gave a soft low laugh. “Penelope, how foolish of you. Of course it isn’t an awful place. You have just imagined our thinking that, you silly child.”

“Did I imagine what you said about the Duchess?”

Still she smiled and kept her hand on mine. “I expect that what I said about the Duchess was quite a little exaggerated to you by Eva and Don. That was an uncomfortable day for all of us. We don’t often quarrel in our family; I don’t suppose that you do, either. Quarrels are upsetting to everybody and nobody likes them.”

“Certainly,” I said, “I don’t like them.”

“Let’s try to end this one, Penelope.”

Did she guess how badly I wanted to end it? I could not tell.

“Supposing,” she said, “that you let me put my point of view to you, as one grown-up person to another. You are very grown-up for your age, you know.”

“I do know, and I deplore it.”

She gave another little low laugh. “Well, I shouldn’t go on deploring it if I were you. Think what a dull world it would be if we were all made alike.”

I winced at the cliché because Francis had taught me to wince at clichés. But I pretended that she had not said it. She went on, “Listen, dear. Just because you are so grown-up and this place is your home, you have a very different life from the life that Don and Eva have. I’m not saying that one sort of life is right and the other wrong. They just happen to be different. Now, my husband and I have to judge what is good for Don and Eva, don’t we? You’ll agree? Just as your father and stepmother have to judge what is good for you.”

“Yes. I agree to that.” It sounded reasonable; the persuasion of her manner was beginning to work.

“Well, we think that they aren’t quite grown-up enough yet to understand and appreciate all the things that you understand and appreciate. That’s all. It’s as though you had a stronger digestion and could eat foods that might upset them. Do you see?”

When I was still silent, she added, “I think you should. Your stepmother saw perfectly.”

“I suppose I see.”

“Do try.”

In fact I was trying hard; but the struggle was different from the struggle that she imagined. I felt as though I were being pulled over the line in a tug-of-war. Inside me there was a voice saying, “No, no. This is wrong. Nothing that she says can make it right. It is not a matter of seeing her point of view; you can see it; she has sold it to you. But you mustn’t surrender.” Oddly, the voice seemed to be the voice of the Duchess. I felt as though the Duchess were inside me, arguing.

I looked into the lovely, smiling face. “Do try,” Mrs. Bradley repeated. “And do please come and have supper with the children tonight. Let’s start all over again; shall we?”

When she held out both hands to me, she had won. I found myself in her arms and she was kissing my hair. I heard her say, “Poor little girl.”