Human Traces (5 page)

interested in literature. And where would that take me? I suppose I could become a schoolmaster, teaching grammar in Lincoln, but... Oh dear." "Why don't you join the army? The Dragoons or the Hussars. You'd look handsome in that uniform." "Yes, even I ' "Even you, Thomas." "Stop it, Queenie, or I shall go downstairs and tell young Mr. Prendergast that you still sleep with a doll and that I saw you kiss ' "Thomas!" "All right. But you are blushing." "I know. But shall I marry Mr. Prendergast? That's what I want you to tell me." "I am sixteen years old, Sonia." "You have always been grown up for your age. Alas." "Owl My arm, my arm. You sat on my broken arm." "Let us have a look at this arm, shall we? Hold it out for me. Now where is it supposed to be broken?" "Here. Just above the wrist." "Can you move it like this?" "Owl" "And like this? Dearest, if it was broken, you could not move it at all. Do you know nothing about anatomy?" "Not really' "You are a hypochondriac, Thomas. And do you know why? Because you have never had a day of illness in your life. Not one." "I had chicken pox." "A handful of spots for half a day. And that is all, isn't it? That is why you always fancy you are ill because you don't really know what being ill feels like!" Sonia leaned forward on the bed and gently set Thomas's unbroken arm back by his side. "You are fascinated by illness. You love those long medical words even if you don't know what they mean. I heard you talking to Miss Brigstocke the other day about her scapula. She must have thought it was a kind of spoon for stirring soup." "Like a spatula." "But don't you see, Thomas?" Sonia stood up and walked over to the window; Thomas's room was on the second floor and the lights of the window were half obscured by the stone parapet outside. "I am excited by this." "By what?" "Thomas, don't be silly. This is what you should do. You should study to become a doctor. You could go to the university. Father would be happy and you could do all your play-reading and suchlike in the evenings after you had done your medical classes. It is perfect for you. Then you could become a doctor or a surgeon anywhere you liked. In London, in Edinburgh, Paris or on board a ship." "I am not going to be a barber surgeon cutting off the midshipman's leg. I want to ' "But I am right, aren't I, Thomas? It is the perfect profession for you." "And my qualification for it is that I am a hypochondriac' "I think it is the ideal qualification. You have excellent health, which you will need, and at the same time a fascination with the morbid. What more could you ask?" Thomas smiled at her but said nothing. "Well?" said Sonia. "I have heard you say more foolish things." Sonia folded her hands. "And now that I have decided your life's course for you, it is your turn to help me with mine." "Mr. Prendergast?" Thomas sucked in his breath. He did not want Sonia to leave Torrington House because he would miss her; in the brief time he had known Richard Prendergast he had developed misgivings about him. He did not trust himself to advise his sister, however, because he knew little about such things; it all seemed so unpredictable to him, so lacking in pattern. All he could do was help her to elucidate her own thoughts. "You think a girl should marry only for love?" he said. "Not for love alone, but I think love must be there." "And you do not love Mr. Prendergast?" "Of course not. As you said, I barely know him. But Mother says that love will come." "Love will come?" "Yes. She said it came to her after she was married to Father." "I see. And did it stay?" "I did not ask." Thomas could think of nothing more to say on the subject of love. "Would you like to live in London?" he asked. "I... I think so. It might be noisy and dirty but we could always come back here when we were tired of it." "Or to Nottingham. Should you not go and see his family's house?" "I imagine Father will go and see it. Anyway, as long as there is still this house, I should not have to go there if I didn't want to." "I would miss you, Sonia." "But you would come and stay in Mayfair. And from there you could walk to the theatre every night of the week." Thomas smiled. "Yes. I suppose I could. But I think..." He was interrupted by the sound of his mother's voice calling up the stairs. He raised his eyebrows. "Smoke?" he said. Sonia licked her lips nervously. "Yes, perhaps smoke," she said. "Sonia, you do not have to make a decision straight away. Be gentle. Be calm." He felt her fingers lightly drum his sleeve. "I know, Thomas, I know." At midnight, long after the last carriage had left, when the supper things were washed and tidied back into their cupboards by the sleepy May, when Dido and Amelia had been brought in from their kennel on account of the cold and given an old blanket in front of the range, there were still three people awake in Torrington House. Sonia lay beneath her eiderdown, staring at the invisible ceiling. Her grandmother had told her when she was a child that it was the duty of a girl to do the bidding of her father. A woman's life, she said, was full of rewards so long as she knew how to please her husband; and as to who that man should be, Sonia must rely on the wisdom and experience of her parents. What she should avoid at all costs was becoming unattached; she must not allow her selfishness and she did have a little wilfulness, did she not to remove her beyond the pale. If she was prepared to do as she was asked, then her life might be agreeable. She did not like Richard Prendergast; she did not dislike him: what she wanted was for her life to begin. She was bored at Torrington House with only domestic duties to attend to, helping out here and there. She wanted to bring pleasure to her parents, to act out wholeheartedly the part they chose for her and to collect her reward in the approval of their eyes. She was fairly certain she would grow to love Richard, because he was blessed, raised in her view merely by being the choice of her family. And even if there was no flame, no anguish, no joy when be came home at night, still she could relish the business of being a wife, buoyed by the knowledge that she brought comfort to him, and pride to her father. She turned onto her side. How, really, could she know? With what other man could a girl of eighteen compare Mr. Richard Prendergast? If she were allowed a rehearsal, an experiment, then she might make a graver, more informed decision. Life, however, never felt like that to her; it felt like something that she improvised from day to day. Having the idea of duty deep inside her head, and having by some chance of birth a hopeful temperament, she was always, she admitted, more likely to say yes than no. Mr. Midwinter stood in front of the fire in his study, his feet planted on the thin rug that covered the flags. Occasionally, he had such moments alone, when he could step aside from the demands of his family and his clients. They were not glorious or exciting, these minutes of solitude, but they enabled him to correct the weight of anxiety and disappointment that were the burden of his days. His wife irritated him and his children were not what he had hoped; they would make no fortunes or conquests, would not become the cynosure of the county or the land. On the other hand, they were alive; the firm of Chas Midwinter laboured on beneath his direction; the house stood, his stomach was full and the dogs slept. In the corner of the room were packages he had wrapped for Christmas, another duty discharged. He shifted, and felt the floor again through the leather soles of his boots. This Richard Prendergast was not the kind of man he liked, and the parents were somehow a disappointment; he had felt no elation when he stood opposite the father after lunch: it had been a little like looking at himself in a dim glass. He told Prendergast the sum that he had put aside to settle on Sonia when she married, an amount his business manager told him he could not, under any circumstances, exceed. After half an hour of bargaining, he had agreed to raise it ten per cent and they shook hands, each with satisfaction Prendergast in the knowledge that he had secured a reluctant increase, Midwinter relieved that the sum was still lower than the figure he had actually resigned himself to losing. Thomas lay nursing his arm, cold and unhappy beneath his blankets. He had one year left of Sonia's company before she would be removed to London by young Mr. Prendergast after their wedding. Much of that year would in any event be spent by Thomas at his boarding school and he felt that the best part of his childhood had been brought to a sudden close by an opportunist family raid. It was not fair on him; nor could it really be fair on poor Sonia, he thought, to ask her to venture into a fragile future with this Prendergast, with her hopeful disposition their only real asset. Thomas knew little of the economics of marriage, but he could not help feeling that his sister had been sold too cheap. For himself, it was time to escape. Torrington without Sonia was unthinkable; he would stay there not a moment longer than was necessary to complete his education; and then... He would shock his parents with the brilliance of his plans; he would dazzle them and make them ponder, sadly, at what they themselves had overlooked. He would, like King Lear, do such things what they were yet he knew not but they should be the terrors of the earth. He clenched his good fist beneath the bedclothes. If they would not let him become a doctor of literature, then perhaps he should accept Sonia's parting present the bride's gift to her bachelor and become a doctor of medicine. Why not bring the labourer, science, to do the mule's work in his greater project? Keats, after all, had been apprenticed to an apothecary and qualified as a surgeon. Thomas's fretful ambitions, once they had blown and raged enough to keep him from sleeping, elicited from him a reluctant smile. Who would listen to an English boy, of no obvious abilities, invisible in the cold and silent countryside? How would they even know that he existed?

Three

In the fourth year of her marriage, Sonia accompanied her husband to the recently built French resort of Deauville. Richard Prendergast told her it would be good for his business to be seen mingling with fashionable Parisians, strolling along the sea front and sitting down at the gaming tables of the Trouville casino at night. He assured Sonia that he would gamble only small sums and that when it came to card games he had the luck of the devil. "Anyway," he said, taking her arm, 'a change of air might help your..." He gestured towards the area of her abdomen, then overcame his diffidence as a thought apparently came to him. "Fresh air," he said, 'for a fresh heir." They took rooms in a boarding house some way back from the front, therefore less expensive than the principal hotels. Sonia had disliked the seaside since being immersed as a child in the freezing waves of Yarmouth and felt her spirits subside as the summer months approached. How was she to make conversation with the spinster ladies and retired Parisian stockbrokers who would constitute the clientele of the establishment? One day in April, as she was returning to her small house behind Curzon Street, she had an idea; she ran upstairs to the sitting room and pulled out a piece of paper.

Dear Thomas,

Thank you for your last letter. I am sorry you have been in trouble with the university authorities again. For heaven's sake, do be careful or you will be sent down and then where will all your plans be? Now that is why I am writing to you, young man, as your chaperone and Guiding Light. You shall have your bachelorhood of science, your MB or whatever you may call it provided you can keep away from the low company you have described at Emmanuel College and the taverns of Newmarket but then what? Are you to practise in Lincoln like poor old Dr. Meadowes with his pony and trap and his gouty foot? Or is to be the fashionable women of Mayfair with their imaginary maladies? Think hard, Thomas. You must be able to go where new discoveries are being made, where the great men of science are gathered together. You must learn to speak their language. I know you were taught German at school, but you need to speak French. You must be able to discourse as easily in Paris as in Vienna. You must never certainly not at this tender age allow your horizon to be limited. To this effect, my dear brother, I have engaged a room for you in a lodging house in the French resort of Deauville this summer. There you will undergo an intensive course in the French language, of which I know you already have the rudiments. By the time you return to your Fenland rooms, you shall be trilingual! Father can be persuaded to pay, I suppose, in the name of Education; if not... Well, I am not the kind of wife to play the coquette, and anyway I do not think it would be profitable. But you must come. It is a fine town, I am told, and a very fit place for a young man to pass his twenty-first summer. Respond at once, saying yes, to your ever-loving and -guiding Sonia.

PS Please do say yes.

The atmosphere in the dining room in the Pension des Dunes was even stuffier than Sonia had feared, since most of the residents appeared to dread fresh air, frowning and clacking if the waiters left a sliver of door open. There were about forty guests in all, a few families whose small children were made to sit up straight with their hands visible on the table, but mostly grey-haired couples of long familiarity, who faced one another in committed silence. Richard Prendergast ran his finger round the inside of his collar. "I wish they would open a window." "We can have coffee outside," said Sonia. "There's a charming little garden. Did you see it?" "Yes," said Thomas. "With lanterns and red creeper on the walls." The waiter placed a tureen of soup on the table and invited them to serve themselves. Sonia lifted the lid and a smell of cress and summer savoury floated upward. "I see you have grown a beard' Thomas said Richard. "Do all your fellow-students have beards beneath their scholar's caps?" "Almost all. Do you like it?" "It makes you look older," said Sonia. "It's a bother keeping it trim." "You should visit my barber in Leadenhall Street," said Richard. "Now let's hear some French from you, young man." "After two days? You are a hard master. But I can speak to the waiter if you like. Shall I ask him for some wine?" As Thomas looked about the room, he saw an unusual couple seated at a table by an enviably open window. One was a Curé, sweating a little beneath his soutane, the other a young man of about Thomas's age with black brows, a moustache and staring brown eyes. Something about his expression made Thomas want to smile. "I wonder what brings them together," he said quietly to Sonia, gesturing with his head. "I suppose the young man is being prepared for the priesthood." "In Deauville?" said Thomas. "More likely to be prepared for the Turf here, isn't he? And somehow he doesn't have a devout look about him. He reminds me of a fellow I know in Trinity." Their waiter was a tall, mournful man with a bald head and a thick moustache that gave him a look of the late Prince Albert. His manner was also regal, as he endowed the table with the burgundy; to each diner he offered a half glass of wine, then bowed slightly, and moved off on flat feet. He returned a few minutes later with some plates of sole in a cream sauce and a china dish of petits pois. "Nothing wrong in drinking red wine with fish," said Richard, looking round for the bottle which Prince Albert had secreted. "Drink what you dash well like, that's what I always say." "The sole is good, isn't it?" said Sonia. "Yes," said Thomas. "Has my sister proved a satisfactory housekeeper, Richard?" "Adequate, thank you. We had to let the cook go at Christmas. Domestic economies, you see." "I enjoy it," said Sonia. "It's a pleasure for me to make a dinner for Richard's friends, then to manage the budget with some modest suppers." She did not look up from her plate as she spoke. In the garden after dinner, they found themselves seated at the table next to the Curé and his charge. "Here's a chance," said Richard. "Ask the young fellow what he's doing. Let's see what your French is made of." "Not much," said Thomas. "That's why I have come. Let me have a cognac, I need some courage. Sonia speaks better than I do. Papa once sent her for a summer to a family in Brittany, I believe." "That's enough excuses. Go on with you." Thomas shifted his chair against the paved courtyard and cleared his throat as he leaned across the neighbouring table. In an accent in which he himself could almost hear the roar of the Wash, he said, "Good evening. My sister and her husband and I, we were asking ourselves what was bringing you to Deauville this summer and if the boarding house pleases you." "Good evening, Monsieur," said the Curé. "My friend and I have come for a week's holiday. I promised him that if he was successful in his examinations I should reward him with a week at the seaside. Although his family lives near the sea, he has never had a holiday in all his twenty years. As to the boarding house ' "Me also," said Thomas, "I mean, I too, have am twenty years old. My name is Thomas Midwinter. I have come from England." "I thought perhaps you did. We are from Brittany. May I introduce my friend Jacques Rebière, a great doctor of the future." Jacques held out his hand to Thomas. "What did he say, Father?" "He is the same age as you and he comes from England." Thomas introduced Richard and Sonia. "Do you speak English?" Thomas asked Jacques. Jacques shook his head, looking startled. "Jacques's education was late in starting," Abbe Henri said, 'but every week he is making up the ground that he lost. And you yourself, sir, I presume you are studying at one of those fine old English universities." "Yes. It is very ancient and very fine. My sister thinks I do not work enough, but this is not true. Each morning I must do a lecture and a practical demonstration of the anatomy." "You speak very good French." "No, this too is not true. This is why I am come here in France. When I speak then about lecture and anatomy it is easy because the words are the same thing in English. Like this I have the air of a good French. But it is not true." Thomas noticed Jacques's tense expression resolve at last into a brief grin; it was an extraordinary expression, like a piece of fruit gashed by a cutlass. His mouth had a hundred shining teeth; then it was closed, the moustache realigned itself and the brows re-knitted in perplexity. Thomas felt his own lips twitch in amusement. It transpired that Abbe Henri spoke some English and was able to make himself pleasant to Richard, who looked displeased at having been excluded from the conversation. One of Sonia's accomplishments, one of the make weights in her father's downward adjustment of her dowry, was a fluent if idiosyncratic French; her accent was free of any Gallic influence, but she was able to understand almost everything and to reply at speed. At the end of the evening, they parted company in the hotel vestibule, but Thomas did not feel ready for bed. He turned to Jacques. "Would you want to walk for a few minutes?" Jacques shrugged one shoulder. "Yes." "To the beach?" "Yes." "Good night, Sonia. Good luck at the tables, Richard." It was a warm evening as they went down the streets towards the front, between the quiet villas and their tree-shaded gardens. Each took off his jacket and carried it over his shoulder. Thomas smiled encouragingly at Jacques in the darkness but could see no response. When they arrived at the front, Jacques said something that Thomas did not understand. After some repetitions, it was agreed that they should walk on the sand, and they made their way past a series of small wooden changing huts and some bathing machines that had been pulled back from the tide. Thomas took his shoes off and tied them round his neck, then put his socks in his pocket so he could feel the cold sand under his feet. "It is good," he said, but Jacques merely shrugged and walked on. Thomas wondered what he would have to do to elicit another of those smiles. "What do you study?" said Thomas. "I am studying medicine in Paris." "Does your family inhabit Paris?" "My family is from a small village near the coast. Sainte Agnes. No one has ever heard of it. It is very bare and bleak. Monsieur the Curé says even the rocks of the seashore cry out for God's mercy." Jacques spoke rapidly, with no concession to his English listener; Thomas, struggling to follow, was not sure whether to be irritated or flattered. Perhaps Jacques was inhibited in some way by his presence, but there seemed little he could do about it, now that they were committed, close to the dark water's edge with no one else in sight. They stared towards the sea in un companionable silence. It was a clear night, and beyond the bay of Trouville to their right Thomas could make out the distant lights of Le Havre; above them, the sky was smeared with stars. Thomas pointed. "How do you call this star?" "The polar star." "We call it the North Star. Do you think there is an... Intelligence there?" "In the sky?" "In the Universe." Jacques said nothing and Thomas wondered if he had insulted him. He knew that, although France was proud of the fact that it was a lay republic, most French people were still fierce in their Catholic beliefs; he feared that he had offended Jacques by questioning the existence of his god, though in fact he had meant to suggest something vaguer. "I ask pardon if I..." He could not find the words. "No, no." Jacques cut him off. Thomas sat down on the sand. He would not give up yet, he thought; he would simply continue to talk without asking questions, and see if that way he could tempt Jacques to respond. Laboriously, he set off. "My sister inhabits London. I like the theatre. I go often to the theatre. Do you like... I like Shakespeare. He is an English writer. Perhaps you do not know him at France. I am a student of medicine. I have one brother also, he is older and will take the work of my father and his house. I find interest in philosophy same word in English and the way in which functions the mind of the human." "Stop! Stop! Wait there. I will be ten minutes. Don't move from there!" Jacques ran off, stumbling, back over the shallow waves of sand, then gained his footing more surely as he neared the road where, as Thomas watched in astonishment, he leapt the small brick wall beneath the streetlamp and ran back into the town. Thomas lay flat on the sand and shook with laughter. Ten minutes later, Jacques, panting, knelt down beside him. He carried a wicker basket, from which he took a bottle of wine, two glasses, a half empty bottle of cognac, a Camembert, a loaf of bread and a box of violet-scented chocolates. He drew the cork and poured some wine into a glass which he handed to Thomas. His white teeth flashed in the darkness. "Thank you," said Thomas. "Where have you found these things?" "In the boarding house. I know where they are kept. Do you want some cheese?" "Not now. And what ' "Wait. "Jacques put his hand on Thomas's arm. "I am always hungry, even after dinner. And the food at the pension, it's ' "It's marvellous." "Yes, it is. But wait. I want to talk to you, but it's difficult for me. My mother died when I was a baby and my elder brother is not well. I left school when I was young so I could go and work for my father, and Abbe Henri is the only real friend I have had. So when you began to talk ' "Excuse me," said Thomas. "May you talk more slowly, please. Thank you." "Ah, it's difficult." Jacques stood up. "I have so much to say and I sense that for the first time in my life I have found someone who can understand it. I only met you this evening, of course, but I know it... Here." He banged his sternum so hard with his closed fist that Thomas thought he must have hurt himself. "Slowly," said Thomas. "Slowly. At least you may help teach me French." "I will. At once. The best way to learn is to listen." "Is that true?" "Yes. Alas." They laughed at the same time. Jacques began to describe his studies in physiology and anatomy, the lectures, the classes, the unforgiving timetable. "I sleep on the floor of another student. He is often out at night, so sometimes I climb into his bed. Abbe Henri has paid for my courses and I can't ask him for more money, so sometimes I have to work in the laundry or at a bar. I don't mind. My mind is so much on fire for what I'm learning, but I am frustrated because I want to move beyond the movement of the bowel or the function of the liver and ' "Gently' "Forgive me. When you spoke just now what were the words you used? About the mind. It doesn't matter. I can come back to that. You see, I have this idea that we must somehow try to understand the meeting point between thought and flesh. That is what the next great aim and discovery of medical science will be. Are you with me?" "I think so. I ' "We have alienists in the asylums. We call them asylums but they are prisons, really. We have neurologists, great neurologists in this country, and in Germany, and of course we have physicians. Even in your country forgive me ' "It's all right, I ' "Physicians by the score! But a medicine that would understand and cure those whose sickness is in the mind and which could determine its causes... That is something I dream about." Thomas looked over his wineglass as Jacques's torrent slowed for a moment. He had understood most of it, he thought. "I think the proposition, "Thomas said, "it this. Forgive my French. To understand... To accomplish what you describe is a thing not only of medicine. I need, you need, also to see at what point the human being rests on his journey of evolution. You know the book of Mr. Darwin which comes out twenty years past?" "In the year of my birth?" "Exactly. Our birth, in effect. And for me there is also a question of psychology, such as the great writers speak of, which is important here also. I mean to say, it is more than a question of dissection of dead people to see the cause of a malady. And at last..." Thomas found himself struggling, but thought it was important to continue, because this aspect of what he had to say was to him the most important. "There is at last the question of what we might call... how does one say... the sensation of being alive and of thinking..." "Awareness?" said Jacques. "Yes. To know if that is a faculty which also evolves. For some scientists, this power of what are we calling it awareness is that which separates humans from animals. It was God who provided it. But if this is a faculty of the mind which evolves as the human reason has evolved, or our ability to make things, then we are only animals after all. Forgive me. I explain myself badly. Or perhaps awareness is a thing which is there but which we do not yet completely see or use, as for many millions of years human beings did not have fire, or electricity. Then, once it is discovered, everyone has it." Jacques grabbed his arm. "Exactly. Exactly. These are the questions I have been asking myself for a long time. I feel that there is an answer, perhaps a single answer, which may help us. But it is the project of a lifetime." "I have a lifetime," said Thomas. "And you have a project." As Jacques began to talk again, Thomas began to see how aspects of his own interests and ambitions things he had previously thought to be irreconcilable might be brought together. Perhaps he and this extraordinary young man might really one day work together. And then, what might they not achieve? The discovery of new diseases that could be named after them Midwinter's Disease, Rebière Syndrome; a great teaching hospital that would carry on their methods after their death; but, more than such conventional stuff: a map of the mind and its million pathways... As Jacques's ideas raged on in front of the gently breaking Channel waves, almost
anything seemed possible. Thomas was thrilled not just by the exuberance of Jacques's talk, but by the certainty of the references. Although the Curé had said something about his education starting late, he clearly had a scientist's turn of mind; though there was also, in his gesticulating hands, a suggestion of the crusader. If Jacques had begun with chemistry and moved through the elements of medicine to an interest in neurology and behaviour, it might be, Thomas felt, almost a mirror of his own journey, which had begun in the abstract land of words and verses, taking half a handhold in psychology before he had acquainted himself with the rudiments of anatomy. If there was a common ground where they now met, it was unlikely that they would cross and diverge that Jacques would ever end up reading Shakespeare or that he himself would master the details of chemical change. To this extent, their interests, while similar, also seemed to complement one another. It was beginning to grow light, the colour of darkness slowly receding from the sky over Le Havre, leaving the pallid grey of cliffs and clouds to re-emerge from the mist. They still had a little cognac left, the last of which Thomas poured into the two glasses. They had been talking for more than six hours, yet he felt he had only begun to explore what needed to be said; he could not catch the next thought fast enough for his determination to do justice to the previous one. As the night began to fade, Jacques drained his glass. "Shall I tell you something peculiar that has happened in the course of this conversation?" he said. "What?" "You have become fluent in French." "Have I?" "Yes. At the start you had all the words in the wrong order and you spoke slowly. Now you talk like a native. A native of Brittany, I am afraid, like me, with a Vannes accent, but at least you sound like a Frenchman." Thomas felt gratified. "Now I shall have to teach you English." "Dear God. Let us do the simple things first." "Establish a new clinical method." "Yes. And a map of the mind." "Then English." Thomas bent down and put on his socks and shoes. "We can continue our conversation," he said, 'over breakfast. One of the cafes on the front should be open by now." "Not the front. Let's find a back street. And before we go," said Jacques, 'we should drink a toast to our future work." Thomas lifted his glass. "All right," he said. "I propose we drink to that phrase of yours, if I remember it right. "The meeting-point of thought and flesh"." They drank solemnly. "Don't finish," said Jacques. "I have another. It was something you said, in your ancient French your former language. It was a fine phrase and I think we should drink to that as well. It was the words that made me know you would be my friend, which is why I ran back to the pension to get food and drink. I propose a toast to: "The way in which functions the mind of the human"." They drained their glasses. "If," said Thomas, "I am to be your friend and we are to speak in French, we will need to find some better words for "mind"." "Very well. You can be the master of words." "I may force some Anglo-Saxon distinctions on you, or we may improvise with German." "Good. But now... To breakfast." They laboured back over the cold sand and walked into the town, heads down, glancing up only to see if they could find a cafe that was open. That afternoon, when Prince Albert had slowly cleared the plates of langoustine shells, the Muscadet bottle, peaches and grapes, Richard said he needed to go up to the room for a rest. He had returned at two in the morning from the gambling room of the Trouville casino and was enigmatic about how the night had gone for him. Sonia set off with Thomas to hire a boat. "Do you know how to sail?" she asked, as they walked along the front. "Yes. I learned that summer at Mablethorpe. But I imagine we would take a man with us." It was a hot afternoon, and most of the holiday makers stayed indoors behind the shutters of the new Norman villas. Sonia wore a wide-brimmed straw hat held in place and fastened beneath the chin by a pink scarf; even so, she felt uncomfortably warm in her long skirt and high-necked blouse. "Do you like Deauville?" she said. "It needs to be used a little more, doesn't it? I don't like the way that all the streets are at right angles to one another. I think I like the look of Trouville better. It has more character." "That's where the boat man is." "Perhaps we should stay and have dinner in a dirty old cafe after our sailing." "I would love to. But... Well, we can't, can we?" "No." There was a pause, then Sonia brightened. "And in any case the food at the pension ' "I know. Those langoustines. And the little cheese things afterwards. I could grow very fat in that dining room." They came to the boat man's house down a small path on the hillside above the bay; it seemed to belong to an earlier century than the houses of the resort and there was a long silence after they had knocked at the splintery front door. They could hear an old man's voice calling out from inside, then the sound of boots crossing a flagged floor. The door scraped back and they found themselves looking into the startled face of a tousle-haired young man, whose eyes moved up and down Sonia's figure, from the bonnet to the boots, finally coming to rest on Thomas, somewhere in the region of his chest. "Yes, yes, come in," he said, when Thomas explained why they were there. "Come and sit down for a moment." He pulled back two chairs from the table in the cool parlour and disappeared. Sonia and Thomas looked round the room, where lobster pots and fishing tackle were piled up between the chairs. He raised one eyebrow. "Can you swim, Queenie?" "Stop it. You know I can." The young man returned. "This is my grandfather. It is his boat." Thomas held out his hand to be shaken by the owner and found it grasped with painful firmness. "Guillaume," said the powerful old man. "You can call me that. My grandson is also Guillaume. Little Guillaume." "And your son?" said Thomas. "Is he ' "I have no son. The boy's mother is my daughter. I always wished for sons, but alas... So the lad and I run the business together. Staying in Deauville, are you? I remember when it was just a swamp. Even young Guillaume remembers, don't you? Where are you from?" "From England," said Sonia. The old man looked surprised. He rubbed his hand through the white bristles of his cheek. "We've never met a... Anyway, I will send the boy with you. Guillaume, don't forget to look at the pots on the way up this evening. Mind your step on the way down to the boat." Young Guillaume beamed with impatience. "Shall we go?" He went ahead and held out his hand for Sonia as she descended, lifting her skirts to avoid the sharpest of the small rocks. He took them to a jetty and helped them into a wooden skiff, which he then rowed out to an anchored sailing boat. When they were safely embarked, he took off his shirt and shoes and flung them down on the deck; then he rowed the skiff back and attached it to a wooden buoy closer to the shore; to Thomas and Sonia's surprise, he then dived over the side and swam back to them, hauling himself up into the sailing boat, disdaining Thomas's offer of help, and slithering aboard like a familiar dolphin, shaking off the drops of seawater as he set about rigging the sails. Sonia sat on a bench, her lips pressed together, trying not to catch Thomas's eye. Guillaume soon had the boat heading out into the bay, picking up what small breeze fluttered in the torpid afternoon. He had replaced his shirt, with mumbled apologies, but his rolled cotton trousers still dripped onto the deck. As he whisked the tiller from side to side, shouting instructions when the boom swung across, he kept his gaze fixed on Sonia, as though not quite able to believe that a woman as elegant as this was in his grandfather's battered craft. Thomas asked a few polite questions about the resort and the weather, which Guillaume answered without taking his eyes from Sonia. Eventually, after a sudden change of tack, he found himself opposite Thomas. "And you, Monsieur, you are also from England?" "No," said Thomas, "I am from Vannes. In Brittany. Do you know it?" "No, no, we have not travelled far in my family." "Really, Thomas," said Sonia in English, 'you are a child sometimes." "I know. But not for much longer. I shall soon be twenty-one and then I shall find the cares of the world pressing in on me. There's not much time left to be a child in." "No. Not for either of us, I suppose." Sonia looked over the sea for a moment. "But he seemed to believe you, didn't he? I must say your French is extraordinary. What happened?" "I did a rapid course last night. It lasted twelve hours, from when we said goodnight in the hall, to about ten this morning. I spent the whole time with Jacques, the young man from the boarding house. I have never met anyone like him. He is wonderful. He is just like me ' "Is that why he is wonderful?" "Let me finish! He is just like me, but completely different at the same time. He has had all the same thoughts yet they have come from a different life, a different world. It's like two men bumping into each other in the jungle when one started in Iceland and one in China and finding they are reading the same book. He has a marvellous mind, he's so lucid, yet at the same time he makes me laugh. I want to laugh all the time when I'm with him, though I think he is a sad man, really. I have never had a friend like this, ever. The boys in the village, I mean, I liked fighting them and the boys at school, or at Cambridge there were one or two, of course, but that was like befriending the man in the next cell. But Jacques Jacques, I feel as though I've been waiting all my life to meet him." Sonia laughed. "My dear Thomas, you sound as if you are in love." The boat tracked back and forth, heading west into the Deauville bay and then beyond. "Stay out as long as possible," Sonia told Guillaume, who nodded vigorously. She rearranged her hat, to shade her from the sun, and settled back against the side of the boat. "And you?" said Thomas, looking up from where his fingers split the white water by the hull. "Me what?" "Are you in love?" "Oh, Thomas, you cannot ask that question of a married woman." Sonia looked away. Thomas knew the answer, but thought Sonia might like to tell. "Did love come?" he said. "As mother said it would?" "It's not right to ask me such questions." "Did it?" "Yes," said Sonia. "Yes, if you really insist on knowing. I have great affection and respect for Richard. He has many fine qualities and I like trying to manage his house." "It sounds as though you like the job of being a wife more than ' "I do enjoy it. I like cooking, as you know. I try out some of the old receipts I learned from Mrs. Travers." "Sheep's head broth?" "Do you remember that?" "I used to dread Tuesday suppers. Every day from the previous Wednesday' Sonia laughed. "Kidney pudding he likes. And I got away with giblet pie." "Why is money so short?" "I think the sugar business has not proved as easy as we thought. There have been sugar brokers in London for a long time, and some of them are very large and powerful companies. And the partners in the business have been reckless. There's one called Jackman who has been especially ill-advised, I am told." "Is it a problem with buyers or suppliers?" "It's no use asking me. I don't understand how the business works and I have been told very little about it. My husband says it's not something for me to know about." "And do you mind that?" "Of course not. He does his work and I do mine. Though I wish sometimes he would not be quite so strict. My dress allowance has been cut to almost nothing. I made the curtains for the bedrooms myself. It's not that I mind or that I think it is beneath me, but he ordered four new coats for himself. He says he must have them to impress his clients. And I am hardly allowed out at all." "Poor girl. No parties." "I am not able to go to parties because he has sent the little coach away and I am forbidden to take a cab." "Poor Queenie. I am sorry." "It doesn't really matter. As long as I please him." "And when will you start a family?" Sonia stared at her hands, clasped in her lap. "I have been to see a doctor about it. He says he can see nothing wrong with me, but I fear there may be. Sir James Bannerman was his name. He has a brass plaque in Wimpole Street. I asked Mama if she would pay his account because I didn't want my husband to know." "Did he have no solution at all?" "He recommended patience." "Might it not be worth Richard going to see a doctor?" "No, no! I did mention it to him but he told me he was perfectly healthy. No, Thomas, I think the problem lies with me." They were far from land and could make out no more than the smudges and outlines of the town. "Sonia, would you mind if I went for a swim?" "But you have no bathing costume." "I know. But I love the feel of the water on my skin. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world, to swim in a deep sea." "How will you dry yourself?" "The sun will dry me quickly. I'll explain to Guillaume. You look the other way while I undress and dive in." Guillaume grinned incredulously when the plan was explained; he slackened off the sail and a few moments later Thomas dived into the cold green water. He surfaced, spluttering and exclaiming. "It's wonderful! I feel like a primitive animal in his element at last. Sonia, you must come in." Sonia laughed. "You silly boy." "I mean it! "Thomas disappeared under the water and re-emerged on the other side of the boat. He gripped on to the side, gasping and laughing. "It's so wonderful. You feel it wash you clean. It's like being an animal, a porpoise. I'm sure we must once have lived in the sea." "Is it cold?" "Not at all. Do come in, Sonia. I'll make Guillaume look the other way, then I'll hold up my shirt for you when you want to come back." "Thomas, don't be ridiculous. I am a respectable married lady with ' "No, you're not! You're little Sonia from Torrington. The little girl from the big house. Or the not so big house in fact, but don't tell your husband." "I'm not telling him anything of this nonsense." "Will you please do what I say, Sonia. Get in at once." "You are a bully, Thomas." "I am a strong character, Sonia. There is a difference." In Sonia's green eyes he saw the look he had most loved in any human being in his short life, the look of modesty at war with daring. He admired both qualities in his sister, the fact that they could exist together and the way that daring always won. He explained to Guillaume that he must fix his gaze on the land behind Trouville until such time as he was told otherwise. "Sonia, tell me when you're about to be indecent and I shall dive under the waves. Then jump in." He could see Sonia's skirt and stockings being laid on the bench on the other side of the sail; they