The Dangerous Years (5 page)

Mary found herself eagerly beseeching unknown powers on the colonel's behalf. Whatever could be wrong? She was convinced that he ought never to be in trouble of that sort. But what sort? This question completely fogged her. She remained anxious, but with her interest, even her faith, in him unshaken. It did not occur to her to ask herself if she had been required to have faith in him. At any rate, if he asked as much, she was prepared to give it.

The doctor came back to the table, a slight gleam of colour in his cheeks. “Tom won't be long,” he explained to his wife. “He's just ringing up Wilson here, at his home.”

The meal proceeded, a pretence of small-talk being maintained, but without much strain, the doctor and his wife being obviously quite imperturbable people, full of confidence, either in themselves, or in some larger agent outside everyday life and its unpleasant accidents and surprises.

Then the colonel returned, his short hair almost ruffled, where he had been rubbing his hands over it as though after swimming.

“Wilson was out; so I rang his partner Lepage. Useless, Luke. I can't understand a word. These French professionals are much too fast for me. It was the same with their officers. All theory and high faluting. And it gets you no further than our rule of thumb, in the long run.”

“Yes,” replied his brother dryly, “but we are concerned with the short run at the moment.”

The meal over, the party retreated to the sitting-room, the screen and the Pleyel grand piano. After coffee, the doctor took up the violin and began tuning it between his knees.

“We were in the middle of a Fauré sonata, Mrs. Winterbourne.
Would you mind if we try to finish it? Come, Vivienne.”

His wife rose from the coffee-stool, pushing aside her work-basket, and coming forward, easing her bulk by placing a hand on Mrs. Winterbourne's shoulder. She pressed it, saying in a half-whisper, “It helps him to sleep, a little music at the end of the day.”

The music, however, proved to be something more than a sedative. Both husband and wife played well, and Mary was surprised to see Joan staring fixedly at the ceiling, her eyes moist with emotion; moist, and touched with an anguish wholly foreign to the girl's character. The mother could see, also, tiny wrinkles at the corner of those eyes, the microscopic signature of distress. Twenty-five years old! She is too young for that, thought Mary, her heart aching for the girl. But she had not yet thought out what could be done to repair the rift in this marriage with a perfectly estimable man. Poor John! He too must be suffering. Or did his Spartan code make no allowance for the finer shades of human relationship, and the promissory adversities of domestic intimacy?

Listening vaguely to the entrancing and so highly-civilised music of Fauré, Mary pondered on the principal stumbling-block to the unhappy impasse in her small family life. She knew the cause of it; the timidities of two over-educated people. She was inclined to blame herself for having been too ambitious for Joan, sending her to a school and university where primitive reactions and elementary emotions were frowned upon. Then she realised that this was not the cause, for had not Joan complained that her normal womanly needs had been denied by John Boys, too much a man of mind and muscle, with no ameliorative unctions?

Contemplating his character from afar, she found herself regarding also the colonel, who sat almost within a fold of the great screen, in a low chair, his coffee-cup on
his knee, one hand shading his face. Poor man, how forlorn he looked; rather like a small boy who has been given an unfair imposition at school.

Then she perceived that he was looking under his hand, staring eagerly at her, so intently that she had to drop her gaze, and half-turn her head, to study the doctor standing beside his wife at the piano, thoroughly enjoying himself, the music, the universe in which it was finding embodiment. Oh, what secret has he, she asked herself; that nothing frightens him?

Conversation broke out again, and Joan lowered the blind over her private miseries, forcing herself to become quite animated, thanking the musicians by a brittle display of appreciation. Mary, finding courage, and overcome by compassion, turned to the colonel and smiled at him. He got up, walked over to her, and took the empty chair at her side.

“Thank you,” he said, “thank you, Mrs. Winterbourne.”

“Why, whatever for?” she whispered.

“I'm not quite sure,” he replied, putting down his cup on the tray, and touching her hand as he did so. “But I am grateful, nonetheless.”

Mother and daughter were awakened early next morning by the roar of mechanical roadsweepers racing up and down the Boulevard Raspail. But the maid with their coffee and
croissants
was also early. Joan came into her mother's room, looking like a tousled goddess, yawning and stretching her arms, her figure silhouetted against the sunshine through a flimsy nightdress.

“Don't break something, dear,” said her mother, looking protectively at the cups as Joan sank on to the bed beside her.

“No,” said the girl, “though I've never heard of a
cow
in a china-shop.”

“I sometimes suspect that you feel you ought to have been a male.”

Mary said this as she handed coffee to Joan: but the effect of her words was disconcerting, for the girl jumped up, paced about the little room, and finally turned sharply, to say, “Why do you harp on that? Can't we forget this wretched business for a while? I'm sick and sick to death of all these personal affairs. Maybe John is right after all. I've been too much for him, with smothering affection. A boy! I doubt if anything could be less so. I think of boys as detached, light, blessed with a kind of seraphic indifference. But here am I, smouldering with rage; a possessive rage. I hate myself, I hate the world,
and I hate most where I love most. Let us try to forget it, Mother.”

“Here, child, take your coffee. I almost spilled it. And I wish you might try not to read too much into my irresponsible remarks. And let us go out this morning, to look at the outside world. We have had enough of ourselves for a while. What about the Cluny Museum, with its eighteenth-century France?”

The girl stirred her coffee, calmed by her mother's words. Then she looked up, puzzled.

“What makes you think of the Cluny, Mother? It is ages since you were in Paris.”

“Yes, but your father and I spent our honeymoon here, Joan. And I remember a happy morning at the museum, one April day. Coming back here brings it to mind—and much more besides. Oh dear, I thought my heart was asleep, after too much happiness.”

Joan contemplated her afresh.

“Do you know, Mother, I find it hard to recall Father. I was only nine when he went to the war. Is it an illusion that he was something like John; detached, not quite adult?”

Mary chuckled, but sadly.

“Nothing like that, child. If there was any detachment of attitude between us, it may have been on my side. I was very inexperienced. That was the pre-war English world; much different from to-day, especially for young women.”

There was silence between them, while Joan pondered on this. The noise of traffic increased, and the girl went again to the window, to look over the cemetery, where the winter sunshine flooded horizontally, making each monument a bastion against its own shadow. She saw people already hurrying into the Métro station, soberly-clad women, men in odd clothes; far more idiosyncratic than an English crowd: more nervous too, more alert and
apprehensive. And here and there a peasant trudged among these over-strung Parisians; earthy, rubicund, independent.

“I've just remembered, Mother. The professor asked me to get a piece of information for him about the medical service in the French Army during the war. I am to go to the Institut de France to see Dr. Georges Duhamel, who lives there. It's at the bottom of the Rue de Seine, facing the Quai and the end of the Island. Will you come with me? We can then go on to the Cluny, which is quite near.”

Mary hesitated. She found herself, to her shame, not unwilling to shake off this vigorous personality for an hour or two. It would be pleasant to be alone in Paris, to conjure back some of the scenes and moments of her honeymoon, over a quarter of a century ago. It was like looking back into the Golden Age, the world of innocence, with passion unspent, and even uncounted. She was shy, too, of new contacts.

“I think I will let you go alone. I'm rather tired after yesterday, and would like to tidy myself up. And also, I think I ought to call and see the children. We did not meet the little boy last night. Mrs. Batten was so sweet, I thought. A haven of rest. I could wait for you there, and we might lunch out, going to the museum after.”

Joan readily agreed, and an hour later was gone, leaving her mother to get up at leisure, go over her clothes (an activity Joan did not appreciate) and restore her self-confidence after the slightly effacing experience of a day's travel.

Memories of the past happiness were not intrusive. They lay like a bank of warm clouds on the horizon of her consciousness, touched with sunlight. Everything was sunlight on this amazing winter morning. The room glowed, even glittered. The setts in the street below looked like glass. Mary felt her skin, and peered at herself in the
mirror. There was no cause for depression. Her silver hair enhanced her appearance, she thought. Then she chided herself for being vain. Fifty years old, and sighing into a mirror like a young girl! Nevertheless, she dressed carefully, and pinned a hand-made brooch in exactly the right position on the lapel of her tailored coat.

Then she went out, immediately to encounter Colonel Batten in the vestibule. He smiled at her shyly and raised his hat. The sunshine had touched him too with its miracle-working fingers. He shone. He was the embodiment of good health, good taste, Englishness.

The elderly man and the elderly woman stood for several moments, silent, both conscious of the absurd responsibility which the years of their age had put upon them. They knew that they ought not to be looking at each other in quite that way. Sobriety, staidness; the traditional prescription hung between them.

“This is the kind of day that Paris often gives us in midwinter,” said he. “But only English people would remark on it,” she replied.

They laughed, and the colonel turned and walked at her side, under the bare trees on the boulevard, taking her arm as she nearly tripped on one of the iron grilles round the boles of the trees. He kept his hand lightly under her elbow, and she found herself being steered down the road, away from the Métro station and the Rue Boissonade.

“You were going for a walk? I am at a loose end; if I may accompany you?”

The formality of it all was ridiculous. They might have been in the middle of the nineteenth century. Mrs. Winterbourne looked sidelong at her companion, and saw a healthy and attractive man, walking erect, escorting her as though he were carrying the regimental colours. His eyes were darker than his brother's, and more elusive, guarded by a certain blankness of expression. She conceived
the idea that he was dodging something; something that he might even be afraid of. That must be most humiliating for a soldier. She began to sympathise.

“I am stealing your time,” she said, looking up at him. He walked on resolutely, turning his head down to her and examining her with an air of uncertainty. She might have been teasing him. That was the effect of his glance.

“It's a pleasure,” he said gruffly. And the touch under her elbow tightened, almost imperceptibly. But she noticed it. She was alert again, young again.

“Your husband; was he in the Regular Army?”

“No. He was a stockbroker, fortunately for me. I might have had to drag out the years on an officer's widow's pension.”

“I see. Territorial? They did jolly well. Saved the situation, in fact. Then they were swamped by conscription, if you see what I mean?”

Mary believed that the colonel was somewhat shocked by her reference to her income. Perhaps he thought it was very un-English of her. She studied him again, and found him even more acceptable. He had taken his hand away from her elbow, and now marched along at her side; yes,
marched
, with a strained expression on his face, as though he had caught her walking out of step. They did not speak for some moments, and the silence lasted until they reached Vavin Métro station.

Colonel Batten stopped, looked down the Boulevard Raspail, and then along the Boulevard Montparnasse.

“I am bound northwards,” he said, uncomfortably.

“What does that mean?” said Mary. “I have not seen Paris for many years; only once, I think, since my honeymoon here.”

“Ah, you spent your honeymoon here?” She felt that he had forgotten his embarrassment, and was examining her once more with an odd intensity.

“That was twenty-six years ago.”

The melancholy with which she spoke again disconcerted him. He shied away from the subject of time and lost love.

“North means towards the river,” he said. “In fact, I've got to call on the lawyer who rang up last night while we were at supper.”

“That's usually an ordeal,” she said, her voice hushed with sympathy. “I was intending to find the Luxembourg Gardens.”

“Ah well, that is the same way. The lawyer's office is in the Rue d'Assas, almost opposite the gate of the Gardens. May we go down together, and I will leave you there. Though I do not intend to be more than a few minutes. Perhaps I could join you again in the Gardens, and we could have coffee?”

“I imagined visits to lawyers always took hours,” she said, lightly.

He glanced quickly at her, then losing his suspicion that she might be laughing at him, or prying, he took her arm and guided her across the road. They turned down the Rue Vavin, crossed the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, and quickly found themselves at the gate of the Gardens. Mary had neither rejected nor accepted his suggestion that she should wait for him. She thought it rather characteristic; a childlike claim on her time and attention. She wondered if he was the sort of man that has to be looked after; to be mothered, perhaps.