Читать книгу A Wreath for the Enemy - Pamela Frankau - Страница 8

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Only the smallest shadow stayed in my heart and I forgot it for long minutes. We talked our heads off. It was like meeting them again after years. I found myself quoting in my head, ‘And among the grass shall find the golden dice wherewith we played of yore.’ They still loved me; they still laughed at everything I said. When I ended the description of the ambassador fighting the press baron and the failure of the electric lights, they were sobbing in separate corners of the sofa.

“Go on; go on. What did the Duchess do?”

“I think she enjoyed it mightily. She had an electric torch in her bag and she flashed it over them both like a searchlight.”

“You do have the loveliest time,” said Eva.

“Where is the Duchess tonight?” asked Don.

“In fact I think I heard her car come back about ten minutes ago.” I began to describe the car and the chauffeur.

“Older than the Duchess? He can’t be. I’d love to see them bouncing away under the fringe. Let’s go out and look.”

“Too late,” I said. “At night he takes the car to the garage in Théoule.”

“Hark, though,” Don said. “There’s a car now.” He ran to the window; but I knew that it wasn’t the Isotta-Fraschini. It was the putt-putt noise of Laurent’s little Peugeot.

“How exactly like Laurent,” I said. “As soon as the Duchess gets home, he goes out for the evening. And Francis has left him in charge.”

It occurred to me now that I should go back. I reminded myself that Charlemagne was an effective watchdog. But I was not comfortable about it.

“D’you mean you ought to go and put the Duchess to bed? Undo her stays; help her off with her wig?”

“It isn’t a wig; it’s her own hair, and she requires no help. But I do think I should go back. The telephone may ring.”

“Well then, the Duchess will answer it.”

“She will not. She claims that she has never answered a telephone in her life. She regards them as an intrusion upon privacy.”

“Isn’t there anybody else in the hotel?”

“No.”

“Oh you can’t go yet,” said Eva.

I sat on a little longer. Then I knew that it was no good. “I shall have remorse if I don’t,” I said, “and that is the worst thing.”

“All right, then. We’ll go with you.”

“Oh, Don——” said Eva.

“Mum and Dad won’t be back yet awhile,” said Don, “and we’ll only stay ten minutes.”

“They’ll be furious.”

“We won’t tell them.”

Eva looked at me. I said, “I cannot decide for you. I only know I must go.”

“Of course, if you want to stay behind,” Don said to Eva.

“Of course I don’t. What shall we say to Nanny?”

“We can say we went down to the beach.”

We crept out, silent in the spirit of adventure. The moon had risen, the full moon, promised by the Duchess, enormous and silver and sad; its light made a splendid path over the sea; the palms and the orange trees, the rock shapes on the water, were all sharp and black.

“Here we go on Tom Tiddler’s ground,” Eva sang. We took the short cut, scrambling through the oleander hedge instead of going round by the gate, I could hear Don panting with excitement beside me. Almost, their mood could persuade me that the hotel was an enchanted place. We came on to the terrace and darted into the empty bar; Laurent had turned off the lights; I turned them up for the Bradleys to look at the photographs.

“What’ll we drink?” said Don facetiously, hopping on to a stool.

“Champagne,” said Eva.

“If the Duchess was still awake, she’d give us some champagne.”

“You wouldn’t drink it,” said Eva.

“I would.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I jolly well would.”

“She’s probably in the salon,” I said. “She never goes to bed early.”

I put out the lights again and led them to the salon by way of the terrace. The salon lights were lit. We looked through the windows.

“There she is,” said Don. “She’s lying on the sofa.”

They bounded in ahead of me. I heard Don say, “Good evening, Duchessa,” and Eva echoed it. There was no reply from the Duchess. With the Bradleys, I stood still, staring at her. She was propped on the Empire sofa; her red head had fallen sideways on the stiff satin cushion. Her little pointed shoes and thin ankles stuck out from the hem of her shantung skirt and the skirt, which was of great width, drooped down over the edge of the sofa to the floor. On the table beside her she had placed the green tricorne hat, the green scarf, and her green velvet bag. A bottle of champagne stood in an ice pail: the glass had fallen to the floor; since one of her arms dangled limply, I thought that she must have dropped the glass as she went off to sleep.

“Please wake up, Duchessa; we want some champagne,” said Don.

He took a step forward and peered into her face, which was turned away from us.

“She looks sort of horrid,” he said; “I think she’s ill.”

For no reason that I could understand I felt that it was impertinent of him to be leaning there so close to her. When he turned back to us, I saw that his face was pale; the freckles were standing out distinctly on the bridge of his nose.

“She is ill, I’m sure,” he said. “She’s unconscious.” He looked at the bottle of champagne. “She must be——” He stopped. I saw that he thought that the Duchess was intoxicated and that he could not bring himself to say so.

“Let’s go,” Eva said in a thin, scared voice. She grabbed Don’s hand. “Come on, Penelope. Quick.”

“But of course I’m not coming.”

They halted. “You can’t stay here,” Don said. Eva was shivering. There was no sound nor movement from the figure on the sofa. I said, “Certainly I can stay here. What else can I do? If she is ill, I must look after her.”

I saw them straining against their own panic. Suddenly they seemed like puppies, very young indeed.

“But we can’t stay here,” Eva said. “Oh, please, Penelope, come with us.”

“No indeed. But you go,” I said. “It’s what you want to do, isn’t it?”

“It’s what we ought to do,” Eva stammered through chattering teeth. Don looked a little more doubtful. “Look here, Penelope, you needn’t stay with her. When they—they get like that, they sleep it off.”

Now I was angry with him. “Please go at once,” I said. “This is my affair. And I know what you mean and it isn’t true.” I found that I had clapped my hands to shoo them off; they went; I heard the panic rush of their feet on the terrace. I was alone with the Duchess.

Now that they were gone, I had no hesitation in approaching her. I said softly, “Hullo, Duchessa. It’s only me,” and I bent above her as Don had done. I saw what he had seen; the shrunken look of the white face with the false eyelashes. Indeed she looked shrunken all over, like a very old doll.

I lowered my head until my ear touched the green frilled chiffon at her breast. I listened for the beat of her heart. When I could not hear it, I lifted the little pointed hand and felt the wrist. There was no pulse here that I could find.

I despised myself because I began to shiver as Eva Bradley had shivered. My fingers would not stay still; it was difficult to unfasten the clasp of the green velvet bag. I thought that there would be a pocket mirror inside and that I must hold this to her lips. Searching for the mirror I found other treasures; the ivory hand that she had aimed at Francis, a cut glass smelling-bottle, some coloured plaques from the Casino, a chain holding a watch, and a cluster of seals.

The mirror, when I found it, was in a folding morocco case with visiting-cards in the pocket on the other side. I said, “Excuse me, please, Duchessa,” as I held it in front of her face. I held it there a long time; when I took it away the bright surface was unclouded. I knew that the Duchess was dead.

A profound curiosity took away my fear. I had never seen a person lying dead before. It was so strange to think of someone I knew well, as having stopped. But the more I stared at her, the less she looked as though she had stopped; rather, she had gone. This was not the Duchess lying here; it was a little old doll, a toy thing of which the Duchess had now no need. Where, I wondered, had she gone? What had happened to all the things that she remembered, the fencing lessons, and the child’s dreams, and the Emperor? What happened, I wondered, to the memories that you carried around in your head? Did they go on with your soul or would a soul not want them? What did a soul want? Did the Duchess’s soul like roulette? Theology had never been my strongest subject and I found myself baffled by the rush of abstract questions flowing through my mind.

Then I became aware of her in relation to me. It was impossible to believe that I would not talk to her again. I was suddenly deeply sorry that I had not dined with her on the first evening, that I had not gone down in the fancy-dress to show myself to Jeanne. She had asked me to do this; she had asked me to come to Monte Carlo with her. ‘Viens, chérie, ça te changera les idées.’ Always she had been kind. I had not. I had never been nice to her, because she embarrassed me, and now I should never have another chance to be nice to her.

Automatically I began to perform small meaningless services. I covered her face with the green scarf, drawing it round her head so that it made a dignified veil. I fetched a rug and laid it across her feet; I did not want to see the little shoes. I carried the untouched champagne back to the bar. I lifted her hat, her bag and gloves off the table; I took them up to her room. It was more difficult to be in her room, with the bed turned down and the night-clothes laid there, than it was to be in the salon with her body. I put the hat, bag, and gloves down on the nearest chair and I was running out when I saw the crucifix on the table. I thought that she might be pleased to have this near her (‘Although,’ I said to myself, ‘she isn’t there any more, one still goes on behaving as if she is’), and I carried it down; I set it on the table beside her. There seemed to be too many lights here now. I turned off all but one lamp; this room became a suitable place for her to lie in state, the elegant little shell of a room with the Empire furnishings. I pulled a high-backed chair from the wall, set it at the foot of the sofa, and sat down to watch with her.

Outside the windows the moonlight lay in the garden. I heard her saying, “The moon is at the full tonight. I look forward to it.” I heard her saying, “Naturally, you cry for the moon.” I heard her saying, “Death is a part of life,” as she pulled on her white gloves.

At intervals I was afraid again; the fear came and went like intermittent seasickness. I did not know what brought it. She was so small and still and gone that I could not fear her. But I felt as though I were waiting for a dreadful thing to walk upon the terrace, and the only poem that would stay in my head was one that had always frightened me a little, ‘The Lykewake Dirge’:

‘This ae nighte, this ae nighte,

Everye nighte and alle,

Fire and sleet and candlelyte,

And Christe receive thy saule.’

It made shivers down my back. I would have liked to fetch Charlemagne from his kennel, but I had heard that dogs howled in the presence of the dead and this I did not want.

Sitting there so stiffly I became terribly tired: ‘But it is a vigil,’ I said to myself, ‘and it is all that I can do for her.’ It was not much. It was no true atonement for having failed her in kindness; it could not remit my having betrayed her to the Bradleys. It seemed hours since I had thought of the Bradleys. Now I wondered whether the parents had returned, and with the question there came incredulity that Don and Eva should not have come back. They had simply run off and left me, because they were afraid. The memory of their scared faces made them small and silly in my mind. Beside it, I uncovered the memory of my talk with Mrs. Bradley: the talk that had left a shadow. I admitted the shadow now: it was the note of patronage at the end of all the spellbinding. She had called me ‘poor little girl’.

‘You never called me poor little girl,’ I said in my thoughts to the Duchess. She had called me fortunate and a genius. She had spoken to me of the world, of freedom and maturity. That was truly grown-up conversation. In comparison the echo of Mrs. Bradley saying, “As one grown-up person to another,” sounded fraudulent. Some of the magic had left the Bradleys tonight.

I was so tired. I did not mean to sleep, because this was vigil. But I found my head falling forward and the moonlight kept vanishing and the Duchess’s voice was quite loud in my ears. “Of death,” she said, “I remember three things; being tired, being quiet, and being gone. That’s how it is, Penelope.” She seemed to think that I could not hear her. She went on calling, “Penelope! Penelope!”

I sat up with a start. Somebody was in fact calling “Penelope”: a man’s voice from the terrace. I climbed down stiffly from the chair. “Who’s that?” I asked, my voice sounding cracked and dry. Mr. Bradley stood against the moonlight.

“Are you there, child? Yes, you are. Come along out of this at once.” He looked large and golden and worried; he seized my hand; then he saw the Duchess on the sofa.

“Lord,” he said. “She’s still out, is she?” He started again. “Did you cover her up like that?”

“Yes. Please talk quietly,” I said. “She is dead.”

He dropped my hand, lifted the scarf a little way from her face, and put it back. I saw him looking at the crucifix.

“I put it there. I thought that she would like it. I am watching by her,” I said.

He looked pale, ruffled, not the way, I thought, that grown-up people should look. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said in a subdued voice. “Terribly sorry. Young Don came along to our room, said he couldn’t sleep for knowing you were over here with her. Of course he didn’t think——”

“I know what he thought, Mr. Bradley,” I said coldly. “Don and Eva are only babies really. Thank you for coming, just the same.”

He said, in his officer-to-men voice, “Out of here now. There’s a good girl.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re coming to our house. I’ll telephone the doctor from there.” He took my hand again; I pulled it free.

“I’ll stay with her, please. You telephone the doctor.”

He looked down at me, amazed, almost smiling. He dropped his voice again. “No, no, no, Penelope. You mustn’t stay.”

I said, “I must.”

“No, you mustn’t. You can’t do her any good.”

“It is a vigil.”

“That’s just morbid and foolish. You’re coming over to our house now.”

“I am not.”

“Yes, you are,” he said, and he picked me up in his arms. To struggle in the presence of the Duchess would have been unseemly. I remained tractable, staying in his arms until he had carried me on to the terrace. He began to put me down and at once I twisted free.

“I’m not coming with you. I’m staying with her. She is my friend and she is not your friend. You were rude about her, and stupid,” I said to him.

He grabbed me again and I fought: he imprisoned me with my arms to my sides. For the moment he did not try to lift me. He simply held me there.

“Listen, Penelope, don’t be hysterical. I’m doing what’s best for you. That’s all. You can’t possibly sit up all night alone with the poor old lady; it’s nearly three o’clock now.”

“I shall stay with her till dawn; and she is not a poor old lady, just because she is dead. That is a ridiculous cliché.”

I was aware of his face close to mine, the stony, regular features, the blue eyes and clipped moustache in the moonlight. The face seemed to struggle for speech. Then it said, “I don’t want insolence any more than I want hysteria. You just pipe down and come along. This is no place for you.”

“It is my home,” I said.

He shook me gently. “Have some sense, will you? I wouldn’t let my kids do what you’re doing and I won’t let you do it.”

“Your children,” I said, “wouldn’t want to do it anyway; they are, in vulgar parlance, a couple of sissies.”

At this he lifted me off my feet again and I struck at his face. I had the absurd idea that the Duchess had come to stand in the doorway and was cheering me on. And at this moment there came the miracle. The noise of the car sweeping in from the road was not the little noise of Laurent’s car, but the roaring powerful engine that meant that Francis had come home.

The headlights swung yellow upon the moonlit garden. Still aloft in Mr. Bradley’s clutch I said, “That is my father, who will be able to handle the situation with dignity.”

He set me down as Francis braked the car and jumped out.

“That you, Bradley?” said Francis. “What, precisely, are you doing?”

Mr. Bradley said, “I am trying to make your daughter behave in a sensible manner. I’m very glad to see you.”

Francis came up the steps on to the terrace. He sounded so weary that I knew his back hurt him: “Why should it be your concern to make my daughter behave in any manner whatsoever?”

“Really, Wells, you’ll have to know the story. There’s been a tragedy here tonight, I’m afraid. Just doing what I could to help.”

“I will tell him,” I said. I was grateful for Francis’ arm holding me; my legs had begun to feel as though they were made of spaghetti.

“You let me do the talking, young woman,” said Mr. Bradley.

“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to hear it from Penelope,” said Francis.

I told him. I told him slowly, leaving out none of it; there seemed less and less breath in my lungs as I continued. “And Mr. Bradley called it morbid and foolish and removed me by force,” I ended.

“Very silly of you, Bradley,” said Francis.

“Damn it, look at the state she’s in!”

“Part of which might be due to your methods of persuasion, don’t you think? All right, Penelope, easy now.” I could not stop shivering.

“Leaving her alone like that in a place like this. You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Mr. Bradley boomed.

“Quiet, please,” said Francis in his most icy voice.

“Damned if I’ll be quiet. It’s a disgrace and I don’t want any part of it.”

“Nobody,” I said, “asked you to take any part in it, Mr. Bradley.”

“Hush,” said Francis. “Mr. Bradley meant to be kind and you must be grateful.”

“I am not in the least.”

“Fine manners you teach her,” said Mr. Bradley.

“Quiet, please,” said Francis again. “Penelope has perfect manners, mitigated at the moment by perfect integrity and a certain amount of overstrain.” Looking up at him, I could see the neat Mephistophelean profile, the delicate shape of his head. I loved him more than I had ever loved him. Mr. Bradley, large and blowing like a bull, was outside this picture, nothing to do with either of us.

Suddenly he looked as though he realised this. He said, “I don’t want my wife or my kids mixed up in it either.”

“Mixed up in what, precisely?” Francis asked.

I said, “It is possible that he is referring to the inquest. Or do you mean mixed up with me? Because if you do, no problem should arise. After tonight I have not the slightest wish to be mixed up with them or you.”

It would have been more effective had I been able to stop shivering; I was also feeling rather sick, never a help when attempting to make dignified speeches.

Mr. Bradley faded away in the moonlight.

Francis said gently, “Did you mean it? It is easy to say those things in anger.”

“I think I meant it. Was the vigil, in your opinion, the right thing to do?”

“It was. I am very pleased with you.”

I said, “But I am not sure that I can continue with it for a moment. I feel funny.”

Francis took me into the bar; he poured out a glass of brandy and a glass of water, making me drink them in alternate swallows.

“Of course,” he said gloomily, “it may make you sick. In which event the last state will be worse than the first.”

But it did not; it made me warm.

“They can’t help being the Smugs, can they?” I said suddenly, and then for the first time I wanted to cry.

“They’re all right,” said Francis. “They are merely lacking in imagination.”

I managed to say, “Sorry,” and no more. I knew that he disliked me to cry. This time he said, watching me, “On some occasions it is better to weep.”

I put my head down on the table and sobbed, “If only she could come back; I would be nice.”

Francis said, “You gave her great pleasure always.”

“Oh, not enough.”

“Nobody can give anybody enough.”

“Not ever?”

“No, not ever. But one must go on trying.”

“And doesn’t one ever value people until they are gone?”

“Rarely,” said Francis.

I went on weeping; I saw how little I had valued him; how little I had valued anything that was mine. Presently he said, “Do you think that you can cry quite comfortably by yourself for a few minutes, because I must telephone the doctor?”

Though I said, “Yes, indeed,” I stopped crying immediately. As I sat waiting for him, I was saying good-bye, to my first dead, to a love that was ended, and to my dream of being like other people.

The next day I tore the Anthology of Hates into pieces and cast the pieces into the sea. I did not read through the pages first, so certain was I that I had done with hating.