The Apple Tree (23 page)

In contrast, her fore-finger was a striking pink, and this too seemed to her false, not true to her present mood. It was the elegant rich pink of drawing-rooms, of ball-gowns, of herself standing at some reception, slowly moving to and fro her ostrich feather fan, and in the distance the sound of violins.

The middle finger was touched with a sheen of silk neither crimson nor vermilion, but somehow softer, subtler; the sheen of a peony in bud, not yet opened to the heat of the day but with the dew of the morning upon it still. A peony, cool and close, looking down upon lush grass from some terraced border, and later, at high noon, the petals unfolding to the sun.

Yes, that was the colour. She reached for cotton-wool and wiped away the offending varnish from her other finger nails, and then slowly, carefully, she dipped the little brush into the chosen varnish and, like an artist, worked with swift, deft strokes.

When she had finished she leant back in her chaise longue, exhausted, waving her hands before her in the air to let the varnish harden—a strange gesture, like that of a priestess. She looked down at her toes, appearing from her sandals, and decided that presently, in a few moments, she would paint them too; olive hands, olive feet, subdued and quiet, surprised into sudden life.

Not yet, though. She must rest, relax. It was too hot to move from the supporting back of the chaise longue and lean forward, crouching, eastern fashion, for the adorning of her feet. There was plenty of time. Time, in fact, stretched before her in an unwinding pattern through the whole long, languorous day.

She closed her eyes.

The distant sound of hotel life came to her as in a dream, and the sounds were hazy, pleasant, because she was part of that life yet free as well, bound no longer to the tyranny of home. Someone on a balcony above scraped back a chair. Below, on the terrace, the waiters set up the gay striped umbrellas over the little luncheon tables; she could hear the maître d'hôtel call directions from the dining-room. The femme de chambre was doing the rooms in the adjoining suite. Furniture was moved, a bed creaked, the valet de chambre came out on to the next balcony and swept the boards with a straw brush. Their voices murmured, grumbled. Then they went away. Silence again. Nothing but the lazy splash of the sea, as effortlessly it licked the burning sand; and somewhere, far away, too distant to make an irritation, the laughter of children playing, her own amongst them.

A guest ordered coffee on the terrace below. The smoke of his cigar came floating upwards to the balcony. The Marquise sighed, and her lovely hands drooped down like lilies on either side of the chaise longue. This was peace, this was contentment. If she could hold the moment thus for one more hour... But something warned her, when the hour was past, the old demon of dissatisfaction, of tedium, would return, even here where she was free at last, on holiday.

A bumble-bee flew on to the balcony, hovered over the bottle of nail varnish and entered the open flower, picked by one of the children, lying beside it. His humming ceased when he was inside the flower. The Marquise opened her eyes and saw the bee crawl forth, intoxicated. Then dizzily once more he took the air and hummed his way. The spell was broken. The Marquise picked up the letter from Edouard, her husband, that had fallen on to the floor of the balcony. "... And so, my dearest, I find it impossible to get to you and the children after all. There is so much business to attend to, here at home, and you know I can rely on no one but myself. I shall, of course, make every effort to come and fetch you at the end of the month. Meanwhile, enjoy yourself, bathing and resting. I know the sea air will do you good. I went to see Maman yesterday, and Madeleine, and it seems the old curé..."

The Marquise let the letter fall back again on to the balcony floor. The little droop at the corner of her mouth, the one tell-tale sign that spoilt the smooth lovely face, intensified. It had happened again. Always his work. The estate, the farms, the forests, the business men that he must see, the sudden journeys that he must take, so that in spite of his devotion for her he had no time to spare, Edouard, her husband.

They had told her, before her marriage, how it would be. "C'est un homme très sérieux, Monsieur le Marquis, vous comprenez." How little she had minded, how gladly she had agreed, for what could be better in life than a Marquis who was also "un homme sérieux"? What more lovely than that château and those vast estates? What more imposing than the house in Paris, the retinue of servants, humble, bowing, calling her Madame la Marquise? A fairy-tale world to someone like herself, brought up in Lyons, the daughter of a hard-working surgeon, an ailing mother. But for the sudden arrival of Monsieur le Marquis she might have found herself married to her father's young assistant, and that same day-by-day in Lyons continuing forever.

A romantic match, surely. Frowned on at iirst by his relatives, most certainly. But Monsieur le Marquis, homme sérieux, was past forty. He knew his own mind. And she was beautiful. There was no further argument. They married. They had two little girls. They were happy. Yet sometimes... The Marquise rose from the chaise longue and, going into the bedroom, sat down before the dressing-table and removed the pins from her hair. Even this effort exhausted her. She threw off her wrapper and sat naked before her mirror. Sometimes she found herself regretting that day-by-day in Lyons. She remembered the laughter, the joking with other girls, the stifled giggles when a passing man looked at them in the street, the confidences, the exchange of letters, the whispering in bedrooms when her friends came to tea.

Now, as Madame la Marquise, she had no one with whom to share confidences, laughter. Everyone about her was middle-aged, dull, rooted to a life long-lived that never changed. Those interminable visits of Edouard's relatives to the château. His mother, his sisters, his brothers, his sisters-in-law. In the winter, in Paris, it was just the same. Never a new face, never the arrival of a stranger. The only excitement was the appearance, perhaps, to luncheon of one of Edouard's business friends, who, surprised at her beauty when she entered the salon, flickered a daring glance of admiration, then bowed, and kissed her hand.

Watching such a one, during luncheon, she would make a fantasy to herself of how they would meet in secret, how a taxi would take her to his apartment, and entering a small, dark ascenseur she would ring a bell and vanish into a strange unknown room. But, the long luncheon over, the business friend would bow and go his way. And afterwards, she would think to herself, he was not even passably good-looking; even his teeth were false. But the glance of admiration, swiftly suppressed—she wanted that.

Now she combed her hair before the mirror, and parting it on one side tried a new effect; a ribbon, the colour of her fingernails, threaded through the gold. Yes, yes... And the white frock, later, and that chiffon scarf, thrown carelessly over the shoulders, so that when she went out on to the terrace, followed by the children and the English governess, and the maître d'hôtel, bowing, led the way to the little table at the corner, under the striped umbrella, people would stare, would whisper, and the eyes would follow her, as deliberately she would stoop to one of the children, pat its curls in a fond maternal gesture, a thing of grace, of beauty.

But now, before the mirror, only the naked body and the sad, sulky mouth. Other women would have lovers. Whispers of scandal came to her ears, even during those long heavy dinners, with Edouard at the far end of the table. Not only in the smart rifliraff society to which she never penetrated, but even amongst the old noblesse to which she now belonged. "On dit, vous savez..." and the suggestion, the murmur, passed from one to the other, with a lifted eye-brow, a shrug of the shoulder.

Sometimes, after a tea-party, a guest would leave early, before six o'clock, giving as an excuse that she was expected elsewhere, and the Marquise, echoing regrets, bidding the guest au revoir, would wonder—is she going to a rendezvous? Could it be that in twenty minutes, less perhaps, that dark, rather ordinary little comtesse would be shivering, smiling secretly, as she let her clothes slip to the floor?

Even Elise, her friend of lycée days in Lyons, married now six years, had a lover. She never wrote of him by name. She always called him "mon ami". Yet they managed to meet twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. He had a car and drove her into the country, even in winter. And Elise would write to the Marquise and say, "But how plebeian my little affair must seem to you, in high society. How many admirers you must have, and what adventures! Tell me of Paris, and the parties, and who is the man of your choice this winter." The Marquise would reply, hinting, suggesting, laughing off the question, and launch into a description of her frock, worn at some reception. But she did not say that the reception ended at midnight, that it was formal, dull, and that all she, the Marquise, knew of Paris was the drives she took in the car with the children, and the drives to the couturier to be fitted for yet another frock, and the drives to the coiffeur to have her hair re-arranged and set to perhaps a different style. As to life at the château, she would describe the rooms, yes, the many guests, the solemn long avenue of trees, the acres of woodland; but not the rain in spring, day after day, nor the parching heat of early summer, when silence fell upon the place like a great white pall.

"Ah! Pardon, je croyais que madame était sortie..." He had come in without knocking, the valet de chambre, his straw brush in his hand, and now he backed out of the room again, discreetly, but not before he had seen her there, naked before the mirror. And surely he must have known she had not gone out, when only a few moments before she had been lying on the balcony? Was it compassion she saw in his eyes as well as admiration, before he left the room? As though to say, "So beautiful, and all alone? We are not used to that in this hotel, where people come for pleasure .... "

Heavens, it was hot. No breeze even from the sea. Trickles of perspiration ran down from her arms to her body.

She dressed languidly, putting on the cool white dress, and then, strolling out on to the balcony once more, pulled up the sun-blind, let the full heat of the day fall upon her. Dark glasses hid her eyes. The only touch of colour lay on her mouth, her feet, her hands, and in the scarf, thrown about her shoulders. The dark lenses gave a deep tone to the day. The sea, by natural eye a periwinkle blue, had turned to purple, and the white sands to olive brown. The gaudy flowers in their tubs upon the terrace had a tropical texture. As the Marquise leant upon the balcony the heat of the wooden rail burnt her hands. Once again the smell of a cigar floated upwards from some source unknown. There was a tinkle of glasses as a waiter brought apéritifs to a table on the terrace. Somewhere a woman spoke, and a man's voice joined with the woman's, laughing.

An Alsatian dog, his tongue dripping moisture, padded along the terrace towards the wall, searching for a cold stone slab on which to lie. A group of young people, bare and bronzed, the salt from the warm sea scarce dried upon their bodies, came running up from the sands, calling for martinis. Americans, of course. They flung their towels upon the chairs. One of them whistled to the Alsatian, who did not move. The Marquise looked down upon them with disdain, yet merged with her disdain was a kind of envy. They were free to come and go, to climb into a car, to move onward to some other place. They lived in a state of blank, ferocious gaiety. Always in groups. Six or eight of them. They paired off, of course, they pawed each other, forming into couples. But—and here she gave full play to her contempt—their gaiety held no mystery. In their open lives there could be no moment of suspense. No one waited, in secret, behind a half-closed door.

The savour of a love affair should be quite otherwise, thought the Marquise, and breaking off a rose that climbed the trellis of the balcony, she placed it in the opening of her dress, below her neck. A love affair should be a thing of silence, soft, unspoken. No raucous voice, no burst of sudden laughter, but the kind of stealthy curiosity that comes with fear, and when the fear has gone, a brazen confidence. Never the give-and-take between good friends, but passion between strangers...

One by one they came back from the sands, the visitors to the hotel. The tables began to fill up. The terrace, hot and deserted all the morning, became alive once more. And guests, arriving by car for luncheon only, mingled with the more familiar figures belonging to the hotel. A party of six in the right-hand corner. A party of three below. And now more bustle, more chatter, more tinkling of glasses and clatter of plates, so that the splash of the sea, which had been the foremost sound since early morning, now seemed secondary, remote. The tide was going out, the water rippling away across the sands.

Here came the children with their governess, Miss Clay. They prinked their way like little dolls across the terrace, followed by Miss Clay in her striped cotton dress, her crimped hair straggling from her bathe, and suddenly they looked up to the balcony, they waved their hands, " Maman... maman..." She leant down, smiling at them; and then, as usual, the little clamour brought distraction. Somebody glanced up with the children, smiling, some man, at a left-hand table, laughed and pointed to his companion, and it began, the first wave of admiration that would come again in full measure when she descended, the Marquise, the beautiful Marquise and her cherubic children, whispers wafting towards her in the air like the smoke from the cigarettes, like the conversation the guests at the other tables shared with one another. This, then, was all that déjeuner on the terrace would bring to her, day after day, the ripple of admiration, respect, and then oblivion. Each and all went his way, to swim, to golf, to tennis, to drive, and she was left, beautiful, unrullled, with the children and Miss Clay.

"Look, maman, I found a little star-fish on the beach, I am going to take him home with me when we go."

"No, no, that isn't fair, it's mine. I saw it first."

The little girls, with flushed faces, fell out with one another.