The Dangerous Years (20 page)

The drive back to the flat, the delivery of Jeannette to the care of the governess, left the elderly lovers free to explore this youthful world which they had re-discovered.

They walked back to the Rue d'Assas, under a burst of sunshine which had triumphed over the frost. Shafts of dusty light fell upon the rime, melting a medallion here and there, releasing drops of moisture on twigs, that instantly froze again as soon as they gathered on the underside. Vagaries of brightness cut across the monotone of misty air, giving it life, a laughter of light.

“This is good, Mary,” said Batten, tucking her gloved hand under his. “This is something we had not reckoned upon, eh?” He drew her into a doorway and kissed her cold cheek, then her colder lips. The contact roused them both. She murmured indistinctly, then controlled herself.

“We are like children,” she said, smiling up at him with a slyness that was wholly candid. He saw her eyes, the brown warmer than ever, an autumnal confidence in them; of ripeness, of harvest.

“Look, Mary!” he said, his voice troubled, “it had to come. It had to!”

“I know,” she whispered, tightening her grasp of his arm, “but what are we to do? What
is
to be done? We know nothing of each other, really. It is all folly, Tom. You are not free. That is all important. We can only take illicitly. I am not used to that. I cannot realise it, even.”

He was distressed by this intrusion of reality.

“Don't,” he pleaded, “let's forget that to-day. The whole truth is that we have found each other like this. It's something of a miracle, late in life, when all was finished. Yes, finished, Mary. You ought to know. I was done for. I've been a fool; wasted my life since I came out of the Service. Tried to go into the City, was duped by a gang of people whose ways and standards I knew nothing of. They put my name on their notepaper, a respectable soldier with a good record. That is all it amounted to, Mary. I was used as a bit of shop-window bluffing. Nor was I paid overmuch for it. But the truth is, I have sold my respectability. Yes, sold it for a living; a fool's trick!”

Mary did not know what to say. She too had no experience in this financial world of which he hinted so vaguely, acknowledging his incompetence half-shamefully, half with a sense of virtue, as though it were to his credit to be ignorant of the responsibilities to which he had lent his name and reputation.

“Let me come with you,” was all she could say, augmenting her plea by clinging to him, turning her face up to his and letting him see the certainty of her trust and admiration. “Let me help you, darling. That is what you need me for, isn't it? Not only … not only the other thing…?”

She did not know why she added that rider. It was not quite honest. She knew she was prepared, now, to abandon all the past restraints, all that negative way of life. She had lived and loved before. This fullness of living was no novelty. Why should she pretend to a modesty she did not feel? But habit was too strong. The pretence had to be made.

“Tell me,” she added, “you know that if I did not love you, I could not have given …”

He put his fingers over her lips, and drew them together.

“Don't say that,” he urged. “You're talking nonsense. Be quiet, Mary. Leave well alone. Look at it this way. I've found you; all too late. But I've found you. And by God, I am grateful for it. I intend to keep you. Nothing shall part us now, my dear. Nothing! Nothing! That's a certainty.”

He quickened his pace, almost lifting her off the ground as he defied the fates.

“Here we are, now,” he said, stopping at the entrance to the lawyers' offices opposite the gate of the Luxembourg Gardens in the Rue d'Assas.

Mary did not hesitate. With her hand still on his arm, she held him back on the threshold of the offices.

“May I come in with you?” she asked, quite simply.

He was startled. He took both her hands in his, turning to her with a tenderness that almost frightened her, because of its fragility in contrast with what life had offered for so many years.

“You can't do that, I think, my dear. You don't understand. Here in France that would be given only one construction. You see what I mean.”

“I don't care! I don't care!” she whispered, moving closer to him and making him wince by the pressure of her fingers round his. “I want to share it all. I've given you so much now. I must go the whole way. It is all I can do, to show I'm not irresponsible, frivolous.”

He laughed, teasing her.

“You frivolous? What an idea! Why, Mary, you've made my life solid again. I begin to feel that I've got a purpose after all, and some confidence in myself. And it has taken only that one … one …”

But he did not care to put into words what had been exchanged between them; what to them was sacred, unexampled; the experience suspected by Joan and withdrawn from as something unclean, repellent.

“I only want to help you, Tom. I can't do much because I am ignorant of these things, and you have not told me what it all is, and what is involved. Did you leave England solely because of this? Did your brother urge you?”

He was uneasy.

“Look, my dear. I must go in, I'm already late. But what are you to do? Will you go and have a coffee? But it's so cold for you to wait. No, damn it all, you shall come in with me. You are right, Mary. We'll sink or swim together.”

They entered the vestibule, and finding themselves alone there, and nobody about, they kissed, clinging together while waiting for the lift.

“I hope we can see Wilson,” said Batten, as they entered the lawyers' office. “I find it impossible to follow the legal jargon in French. You see, Mary, these people here are acting for the solicitors I have enlisted in London. They are all for my staying out of the picture. But I don't know … I don't know.”

Mary said nothing. She knew that if he decided to go back to London, some important decisions would have to be made by her; and she had no strength to do so, at present. Everything was so new, so overwhelming.

They were ushered into the inner office, where the French partner, Lepage, rose from his desk to greet them. He was a tall, thin man, made of old leather, including
his eyes, and the very whites of his eyes. They flickered when they observed that his client was accompanied by a lady. He bowed over her hand and invited her to a varnished chair. Mary could almost smell his thoughts; the suavity, the cynical acceptance of the relationship which he did not for a moment doubt.

There began an ineffectual conversation, with the lawyer doing most of the talking, about the situation in London, and the name of the Public Prosecutor recurred again and again. It appeared that the investigation of the company's accounts was proceeding slowly, but ruthlessly, like a rising tide over a child's sand-castle. Emphasis was laid on the necessity for Colonel Batten to keep in close consultation with his solicitor through this French office. He was told that he was well advised to remain under cover, in view of the delicacy of his position. It was, of course, unfortunate that he had not done so and so, or taken expert legal advice before accepting … The voice rose and fell with studied rhetorical effects, while the dull, leathery eye roamed over Mrs. Winterbourne's person, implicitly congratulating the colonel on his good luck.

Mary listened, without understanding. From time to time she wafted away the strong cigarette smoke which drifted over from the lawyer, who was a chain-smoker, as his amber-coloured claws indicated. Through the window she could see the naked trees of the Luxembourg, and the cold sky above them. The conversation was punctuated by distant sounds of traffic below, the honking of motorhorns, the small cries of children at play in the Gardens. From the floor above came the thudding of a typewriter.

Mary found herself nodding in the warmth. For one moment her eyelids closed, and she had an inward vision of herself as a cat, basking before a fire, purring to itself. Furtively, she stroked herself down one thigh, and a tiny smile played about her lips as she realised that indeed she was basking. Oh wait! wait!' she said to herself, and
then, realising her shamelessness, dared to look openly at the lawyer, making him pause in the spinning of his web round the colonel's future actions. She knew that she wanted him to persuade Tom to stay. That was enough for the moment. Hardly a trace of uneasiness lingered in her mind.

“Ask him about your wife!” she heard herself say suddenly.

Both men stared at her. Terror, the terror of finding oneself out of control, moved her to rise. She dared not look at either of the men. What on earth had made her say that? Then she realised the extent of her hunger, and of the danger into which she was plunging.

“Oh, Tom!” she tried to whisper, but Monsieur Lepage, foreseeing more fees, interrupted.

“I can assure you, Madame, that if I can be of any assistance to Monsieur … you may be sure …” He waved his Caporal in the air, leaving a little figure of eight in smoke above his head.

This interruption broke up the interview, and the lovers found themselves walking down towards St. Germain-des-Prés, both silenced by the intensity of their feelings after that unexplainable outburst from Mary. At last she found courage to speak.

“I am so sorry, Tom. I don't know what made me say that! What was it, tell me, tell me, I am so ashamed…?”

“I know what it was,” he said. “I know all about it. Everything comes out in this fierce light. I'm not sorry. It makes me realise. It makes me reassured, you see? Doesn't it mean that you want me; tell me that!”

The storm of this stopped them in the street, turned them to each other, careless of passers-by, one or two of whom gave them a passing glance of amused interest, observing the silvered hair of the woman, the grey moustache of the man.

“We'd better have some lunch,” said Tom, leading her
along again. “Don't let us think about that now. There's nothing to be done at present. We must wait on events.” He didn't know what events, or even what he meant. He was speaking automatically, driven on by the longing that he could not control.

They went into a little bourgeois restaurant in the Rue St. Benoit behind Les Deux Magots café opposite the ancient church and cloister, and in the warmth, the crowded, narrow room, with the smell of good food, garlic, wine, and sanded floor, they forgot their problems, and gave themselves up to the present, and this delicious illusion of happiness.

Surrounded by Parisians hurrying through a meal to get back to work, the lovers sat squashed together, eating and drinking with a relish intensified by its self-consciousness. Everything they tasted, everything they touched, had the quality of stolen fruit, the forbidden apple.

“We'll go back now,” said Batten, quietly, when they stood outside the restaurant, looking up and down the little street.

“We ought to go to a museum, or for a long walk,” said Mary, parrying. She shivered in the frosty air, after the steamy heat of the restaurant.

“Look, you're cold,” he murmured, his lips close to her face. “We'd better get back. Nothing else is possible, Mary.” He too was shivering, but not with cold.

“Yes, it is,” she teased him. “We're not children, Tom.” But she knew that they were children, clinging desperately to each other, afraid of the future that was no future, trying to stir the ashes before the fire at last flickered out.

They were wafted along, back through the Gardens to the hotel, parting outside to allow Mary to go up first to her room, past the eye of the unsuspecting clerk, who during the day was a woman of formidable austerity.

Mary looked round the two rooms, and for the first time was conscious of Joan's departure. She went through to
the other room, and noticed Joan's tweed overcoat hanging behind the door. She stared at it, her mind wilfully blank. But she knew. She knew deep in her soul, and the knowledge made her revolt still more passionately. Why not? rang in her mind; a mind shaken by tempest. I must! I must! Almost angrily, she took off her outdoor clothes, then, with a sardonic grimace, took down Joan's coat, put it round her, and stealthily crept up to the third floor.

In spite of the severe weather, the small party arrived punctually at St. Moritz, and were carried by sledge to their hotel, Suvretta House. By this time Adrian was exhausted, under the stress of excitement, and the noise of the train. Joan had been warned by his mother that his hearing was uncommonly acute, and that he was quickly tired by loud and persistent sounds.

Though resenting the defeat implied by her being once more with her husband, Joan had enjoyed the journey, and the attention which she had to give to the boy during the night. He and she had shared a double-bunk compartment, while John had slept in the next. Adrian was restless. She could hear him lumping about, sighing, breathing, murmuring to himself, in the bunk above her.

“I can't go to sleep,” he complained, in the small hours, rousing her from a fitful slumber. “Can I come into your bed, Joan? I'm too near the roof up here. All the carriage is squeaking.”

“There's no room, Adrian,” she whispered. But she spoke reluctantly. Groping upward in the darkness, she felt for his hand, and found it, warm and eager.

“Try to go to sleep,” she said. “You'll be so tired to-morrow that you may have to stay indoors when we get to the mountains.”

“No,” he answered, bringing both his hands to entertain
hers, “but I wish I could sleep with you. You are nice, Joan. I like being with you. I would like you to be my mother too.”

“Silly; you can't have two mothers.”

“I could, Joan. If it was you. I wouldn't want anybody else as my second mother. Would you read to me a lot?”

“No, I certainly wouldn't. You're a lazy monkey. You can read quite well for yourself.”

“Oh yes; but then I would want to play to you, because you can't play for yourself, can you, Joan? Why can't people play easily? They make such a horrible noise when they touch a piano. It's so easy; much easier than reading a book. I'll tell you what. When we get back …” But he had suddenly fallen asleep, and Joan, after listening for a while to his steady breathing, lost herself too.…