The Diary of a Chambermaid (41 page)

Each morning, at eight o’clock, Edgar arrives at the Baron’s and descends from his motor car, wearing a small bowler hat and knee-length mackintosh, with a huge yellow rose in his buttonhole. The grooming has just been completed. Prancing round the yard with a bad-tempered expression on his face, he goes into the stables to begin his inspection, followed by a string of anxious and respectful grooms. Nothing escapes his suspicious eye, a bucket out of place, a dirty mark on a steel chain or a scratch on the silver and brass … He grumbles, loses his temper, threatens to sack them, in a hoarse voice, still thick from drinking too much poor quality champagne the previous night. He visits every loose-box, and runs his white-gloved hand over the horse’s mane and withers, belly and legs. If there is the least trace of dirt on his gloves, he starts abusing the grooms with a flood of foul language and horrific oaths, furiously waving his arms in the air. Then he minutely examines the horses’ hoofs, sniffs the hay in the marble mangers, makes sure that the Utter is clean and carefully studies the form, colour and consistency of the dung, with which he always has some fault to find.

‘D’you call that dung, my God?’ he shouts. ‘Why, a bloody cab horse would be ashamed of it … If it’s like that again tomorrow, I’ll damn well make you eat it, you dirty lot of bastards!’

Occasionally, delighted at the prospect of a chat with his stud groom, the Baron arrives on the scene, but Edgar scarcely deigns to notice his master’s presence. To the Baron’s timid enquiries he replies briefly, in an ill-tempered voice. He never addresses him as my lord, but, on the contrary, the Baron feels tempted to refer to him as ‘your honour’. And so afraid is he of upsetting Edgar that, before long, he discreetly withdraws.

Having completed his tour of the stables, coach-houses and harness-rooms, and issued his orders for the day like a military commander, Edgar climbs back into his motor car and drives rapidly towards the Champs-Élysées, where he pays a quick visit to a small bar, filled with racing men and weasel-faced tipsters, who show him confidential reports and whisper mysterious messages in his ear. The rest of the morning is devoted to the shops, where he places orders and picks up his own commission, and to the horse-dealers, with whom he engages in the following conversation:

‘Well, Mr Edgar?’

‘Well, Mr Poolny?’

‘I’ve got a buyer for that pair of bays of the Baron’s.’

‘They’re not for sale …’

‘There’ll be fifty quid in it for you.’

‘No.’

‘A hundred then, Mr Edgar.’

‘I’ll have to think about it, Mr Poolny …’

‘There’s another little matter, Mr Edgar … I’ve got a magnificent pair of chestnuts for the Baron …’

‘We aren’t looking for any, just at the moment.’

‘There’ll be fifty quid in it for you.’

‘No.’

‘A hundred then, Mr Edgar.’

‘I’ll have to think about it, Mr Poolny.’

A week later, having effectively ruined the paces of the Baron’s pair of bays, and having convinced the latter that it would be a good thing to get rid of them as soon as possible, Edgar sells them to Poolny and, at the same time, buys the magnificent chestnuts from him. Poolny does very well out of the transaction: having turned the bays out to grass for two or three months, he will almost certainly be able to sell them back again to the Baron some two years later.

But, by midday, Edgar had finished with work, and would go home to lunch at his flat in Euler Street, for he did not live at the Baron’s and was never expected to drive him anywhere. His ground-floor flat was filled with plush furniture in the most ghastly taste, with English lithographs on every wall, of hunting scenes, steeplechases and Derby winners, as well as a selection of portraits of the Prince of Wales, one of which was signed by the Prince. A collection of riding canes, whips, hunting crops, stirrups, bits and coaching horns was arranged as a kind of trophy around an enormous polycrome bust of Queen Victoria standing on a gilt pediment. For the rest of the day, Edgar was free to devote himself to business and pleasure, tightly buttoned up in his blue overcoat and wearing one of his glistening hats. His business affairs were extensive, for in addition to being in partnership with a bookmaker and a well-known photographer of horses, he also had three horses in training near Chantilly. Nor was there any shortage of pleasure, for some of the best known tarts used to find their way to Euler Street, whenever they were on the rocks, as they could always be sure of finding there a cup of tea and a loan of five louis.

In the evening, after putting in an appearance at the Ambassadors, the Circus, or Olympia, very correct in a black-tail coat, Edgar would repair to a bar called ‘The Old Man’, here he would sit boozing for hours, in company with coachmen who behaved like gentlemen and gentlemen who behaved like coachmen …

And every time William told me one of these stories about Edgar he would conclude by saying, in an admiring tone of voice:

‘No, you can say what you like, but Edgar’s a fine chap!’

The master and mistress belonged to what is usually called high society, that is to say the master, though penniless, was of noble birth, though nobody could say exactly where his wife had sprung from. There were all kinds of stories, some worse than others, as to her family background. William, who was very well up in society gossip, maintained that she was the daughter of a retired coachman and an ex-chambermaid who, as a result of scraping and swindling, had managed to get together a small sum of money, enough to set up as moneylenders in one of the poorest parts of Paris, where they had rapidly succeeded in acquiring a huge fortune by lending money to tarts and domestic servants … They must have been in luck!

To tell the truth, though she was pretty and elegant, Madame had the most curious manners, and some of her personal habits I found most unpleasant. She liked eating boiled beef and fried cabbage, the pig … and, for a special treat, used to pour her wine into the soup, like cabbies do. I often felt ashamed for her … Sometimes, when she was quarrelling with the master, she would so far forget herself as to call him a shit, at the top of her voice. When she lost her temper, it seemed to stir up all her native filth, unpurged by the too recent acquisition of wealth, and, like some filthy scum, words would rise to her lips … well, words that I, with no pretence of being a lady, am really ashamed of using … But there it is … People simply have no idea of the number of women there are, who, in their own homes, though they look like starry-eyed angels and wear dresses costing three thousand francs, use the filthy language and gestures of the lowest streetwalkers.

‘Fine ladies,’ William used to say, ‘are like the most delicious sauces: never enquire what they’re made of … If you do, you’d never want to sleep with them.’

William was full of such cynical aphorisms, but, as he had taken a real fancy to me, he would put his arm round my waist and add:

‘Maybe a pretty little piece like you doesn’t flatter a man’s vanity so much maybe … But it means a lot, all the same.’

It is only fair to say, however, that the mistress used to work off all her bad temper and filthy language on the master … With us, as I have mentioned already, she was much too shy …

Despite the utter chaos of her household, and the frantic waste that she was prepared to put up with, Madame was in some ways extraordinarily, and quite unexpectedly, stingy. She would argue the toss with the cook over two-pennyworth of salad, try to cut down on the staff’s laundry, kick up a row over a bill for three francs, and carry on an endless correspondence with the railway company about the repayment of fifteen centimes, which she claimed they had overcharged for delivering a parcel. She never took a cab without having a row with the driver over the fare, and usually managed to cheat him as well as not giving him a tip …This didn’t prevent her from leaving her money lying about all over the place, as well as her jewellery and keys. She would ruin the most expensive dresses and exquisite lingerie in no time, but, nevertheless, allowed herself to be preposterously swindled by the most exclusive shops and settled the accounts presented by the old butler without batting an eyelid … as indeed, the master did, with those prepared by William. And yet, God only knows how much those two used to twist them! I sometimes used to say to William:

‘Really, you fiddle much too much … One of these days you’re going to get into trouble.’

To which he would reply, without turning a hair:

‘Just you mind your own business … I know what I’m up to, and exactly how far I can go. If you work for people as stupid as these two, it would be a crime not to take advantage of them.’

But his endless swindles did not benefit the poor fellow much, for all the money he succeeded in making simply went to swell the profits of the bookmakers, in spite of all the marvellous tips he used to get.

The master and mistress had been married for over five years. At first, they used to go out a great deal, and were always giving dinner parties. Gradually, however, they cut down both their visits and their invitations, and lived pretty much on their own, supposedly because they were jealous of each other. She accused him of flirting with women, and he maintained that she was always running after men. They were very much in love … that is to say, they spent most of the time quarrelling, like any petty-bourgeois couple. The fact of the matter is, Madame was by no means a social success, and was frequently snubbed because of her bad manners. On such occasions, she accused her husband of not backing her up, while he blamed her for making him look ridiculous in front of his friends. They refused to admit the bitterness of their feelings for each other, and found it simpler to attribute their constant bickering to their being in love.

Each year about the middle of June, they used to go to the country, to Touraine, where Madame had a magnificent country house. In addition to the usual staff, they employed a coachman, two gardeners, a second chambermaid and women to look after the livestock … There were cows, peacocks, chickens and rabbits … It must have been wonderful, but when William used to describe the kind of life they led there, he always spoke in the sourest and grumpiest way. He couldn’t stand the country, and was bored to tears by the endless trees and fields and flowers. He was a real Parisian, and the only kind of nature he really approved of was bars, racecourses, bookmakers and jockeys.

‘Can you imagine anything more utterly stupid than a chestnut tree?’ he often used to say to me. ‘Look … Edgar’s a smart, intelligent fellow, but does
he
like the country?’

‘Oh, but think of all those huge beds of flowers,’ I would say enthusiastically, ‘and all the birds.’

‘Nonsense,’ he would sneer. ‘The only proper place for flowers is on a pretty woman’s hat … And as for birds, just think how they wake you up in the morning … worse than a lot of screaming kids. No, no … I can’t stand the country at any price. The only people it’s any good for are the peasants.’

Then, drawing himself up and striking a noble attitude, he would proudly conclude:

‘What I need is sport. I’m a sportsman, not a peasant.’

Nevertheless, I was happy, and longed for June to come. Oh, the daisies growing in the meadows, and the little footpaths through the woods, and the fluttering leaves … And then the birds’ nests that you find in the clumps of ivy, hanging from old walls … And the nightingales singing in the moonlight, as you sit on the wall of a well, covered with maidenhair fern and moss and honeysuckle climbing all over it, holding hands and talking quietly to one another … And the great bowls of warm milk, and the big straw hats, and the baby chicks, and going to mass in the village church, and the sound of the bells, and all the rest of it … Why, it makes you feel as though your heart would burst with happiness, like those lovely songs they sing in the cafés in Paris! …

Although I enjoy a bit of fun, at least I am a poetical creature. Old shepherds, harvest time, birds chasing each other amongst the branches, the sound of the cuckoo, streams chattering over the white pebbles, and all those handsome fellows, with their faces burnt the colour of ripe grapes by the sun, and great, healthy limbs and powerful chests … things like this fill my mind with charming dreams … I have only to start thinking of them, and I almost become a little girl again, and their candid innocence floods my soul, refreshes my heart, like the gentle rain that revives a flower too long exposed to the burning sun and withering wind … One evening, as I was lying in bed, waiting for William to come to my room, I felt so moved by all the happiness that was awaiting me that I began writing a poem: but as soon as he got back from the frowsty bar where he had been spending the evening the smell of gin when he began kissing me drove away all thought of poetry and put an end to my dreams. I had no desire to show him what I had written. What would have been the use? He would only have laughed at me, and probably he would have said:

‘Edgar’s a marvellous fellow … but does
he
write poetry?’

My poetical nature was not the only reason why I felt so impatient about getting to the country. The long period of poverty I had been through had thoroughly upset my digestion, and the present over-abundance of rich food that I was getting, on top of all the champagne and Spanish wine that William insisted upon my drinking, was not improving matters. I was really ill. When I got out of bed, first thing in the morning, I often felt giddy, and during the day my legs were like lead and there was a continual hammering in my head … If I was to get better, I badly needed to lead a more tranquil existence.

Unfortunately, however, fate decreed that this dream of health and happiness was to come to nothing … ‘Oh shit!’, as Madame would have said.

The scenes between the master and mistress always used to start in Madame’s boudoir, and they always started over nothing … the more futile the pretext, the more violent the row. Then, having emptied their hearts of all the accumulated bitterness and anger, they would sulk for a week on end. The master would retire to his study, where he would devote himself to playing patience and rearranging his collection of pipes. Madame would stay in her bedroom, and spend hours stretched on a couch reading novelettes, occasionally interrupting her reading by a furious attack of the drawers and wardrobes, sorting out her clothes as though she were sacking the place … They only met for meals. At the start, before I had got used to the way they carried on, I used to expect them to begin throwing the plates at each other … Unfortunately, however, nothing like that ever happened. On the contrary, at such times their manners were always at their best, and Madame even did her best to behave like a lady. They would talk to each other as though nothing at all had happened, rather more formally than usual, and with a cold, stiff politeness … they might have been dining at a restaurant. Then, as soon as the meal was over, they would go off to their respective rooms, both preserving an air of mournful dignity. Madame returned to her novels and tidying up, the master to his patience and his pipes. Sometimes, though not often, he would go off to his club for an hour or two … They used to keep up a furious correspondence, continually writing notes to each other, which I had to take. I spent the whole day like a postman, running between the mistress’s bedroom and the master’s study, delivering terrible ultimatums, threats, pleas for forgiveness, and tearful reconciliations … It was enough to make you die with laughing.