Unclouded Summer (12 page)

It was different, altogether different. And the silence that followed after it was different too. Where before he had been apart from her, grateful, fond, adoring, now he was in harmony, at one, utterly at one, with her.

“It's strange,” she said at length, “but every hour for the last three weeks I've been thinking of this hour; I've been terrified lest it would never come; at the end of every day I've thought, That's a day nearer to the eighth. I don't suppose that a single whole minute's passed in which I haven't thought of you, but now that it's actually come, I don't know that I should really mind if I were to be told that I wasn't ever to see you again after tonight.”

“What a thing to say!”

“Is it? I don't know. Th's is so perfect. We're so very close. We may not ever be so close again. If we could live in this memory of each other.”

“But we are going to see each other again.”

“Silly, of course we are. We're lunching at the Cap tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow. I don't want to think about tomorrow.”

“Let's not then, let's think of all the yesterdays that brought us here.”

It was quiet now below the window. The gramophone in the bar was silent. The last sailor had been escorted either to his ship or to a refuge in the upper town. The patch of moonlight lay diagonally across the bed, a clean-cut line from hip to shoulder leaving Judy's face in shadow. The room was twilit. but her voice came out of darkness.

“When did you first begin to think about me in this way?” she asked.

“Not till three hours ago. I adored you, but as one might a goddess!”

She chuckled softly. “And to think that I've been in love with you all this time. I feel rather cheated. Tell me truthfully what did you really feel that first time we met?”

They talked in whispers; the silence on the waterfront below
seemed to enjoinder whispers as day by day they lived over the last three weeks, comparing notes, evoking confidences. “But surely you must have known when I said that.” “What were you really thinking then?” “But surely you must remember …” Never in his life had he felt so utterly at one with anyone, so surrendered and yet so masterful. And all the time as he talked his hands were moving over her slowly, fondly, so that gradually, softly the tide of his adoration swelled so that once again vibrant and purposeful his need for her was risen. Once again he was stubbing out her cigarette.

And this time, too, it was completely different. It was not the peace, the relief, the release, the fulfilment of that first entering of the garden; it was not that wild plundering of every fruit and flower that the garden cherished; it was a carefree temporary sojourning in one chosen part, chosen casually in the full knowledge that there were a hundred other spots, already visited, and to be revisited. It was light and gay; almost frivolous. “Darling,” she laughed, “what dark lines I shall have under my eyes tomorrow.”

And this time afterwards they were in no mood for cigarettes or whispers; close locked in each other's arms sleep came to them unbidden, while the patch of moonlight moved slowly across the bed on to the floor. On the table beside his bed was a luminous-handed traveling clock. The hour hand was near the four when she awoke suddenly with a cry, her arm asleep. “Darling, look at the time. I must go really, right away.” But he could not let her go, not yet, while the day was still an hour distant. Eager, refreshed by sleep, he caught her in his arms. “Not till you can see the villas on Cap Ferrat.” She struggled to get away, but his hands were round her, firm, insistent.

Her teeth closed upon her lower lip. She sighed. She flung out her arms sideways on the bed, beating her fists like a drumbeat, shaking her head from side to side, then suddenly closing her arms about his neck, her nails pressed into it. It was a thing of seconds, followed by a long shuddering moan.

The sky was lightening above Cap Ferrat when at last she lifted herself upon her elbow. Tenderly she stroked his cheek.

“It may take you twenty years to realize quite what this night's meant,” she said.

Francis woke with the sunlight streaming across his face. He sat up, blinking. The hour hand of his clock was pointing between nine and ten. He had never slept so late before; his eyes ached and his throat was dry. He looked round him, puzzled, trying to collect his thoughts. In the ashtray on his bedside table was a pile of cigarette stubs, two-thirds of them pink-tipped. A tumbler half full of water was rimmed with lipstick. His foulard dressing gown was tumbled on the floor. He drew his hand across his eyes. On its palm was the scent of tuberoses. Yes, he remembered now. It all came back. On his chest of drawers was the picture on which he had been at work the previous morning, the picture that Judy had looked at when they had come upstairs. It was the last thing that she had done before she had asked him to turn out the light. That picture was the last thing that he had seen before he turned the switch. When he had last seen that picture none of it had happened. When he had last seen that picture he had had no conception that any of it would happen, that any of it could happen.

He kicked back the sheet, swung himself out of bed: slipped his feet into his canvas sandals, shuffled across the floor towards the balcony. Heat and glare struck up at him from the cobblestones below. The iron railing was hot under his hands. There was not a breath of wind. There was an oily shimmer on the water. It was going to be a scorching day. He had had a bare four hours' sleep, and at half-past twelve he was to join the Marriotts at a lunch party at the Cap. Judy had brought him the invitation the day before. She would not be able to call for him herself, she had explained. She had to meet guests who were arriving by train from London. He was to go out by bus. There was an evening party later. It had been arranged that she should drive him back to Mougins, to siesta there, till it was time to start for it.

Yes, but that was what they had arranged in the afternoon. Everything was different now. everything was changed. Last night she might have said “I'll be seeing you at lunch tomorrow.” But that was last night; what would she be feeling now. waking as he was waking after a few hours' sleep with eyelids heavy, her throat dry, her temples throbbing. It was
one thing to talk about “tomorrow” in the moonlight; tomorrow was quite another commodity under the hard morning light. He'd better call it off: or rather he'd better give her a chance to call it off: he could put it to her in such a way that it would be easier rather than harder for her to say. “Well, on the whole perhaps that would be better. I'll drive down tomorrow in the morning and see how things are.” Tomorrow they would both be calmer, rested and refreshed.

He pulled on the foulard dressing gown and hurried down the stairs. The patronne greeted him with a smile.

“You are very late this morning, Monsieur Oliver. I hope this means that you enjoyed your party.”

The telephone stood on the bureau desk. The bureau was situated in the hall that divided the drawing room from the dining room, in the most public part of the hotel. Private conversation was impossible. But there would be no need for prolonged conversation. He would know from the tone of her voice what he should do. “Mougins 53-53” he called.

There was a pause, the inevitable, the invariable long pause during which he seemed to be listening in to every call that was being put through along the coast. “ ‘Allo Cannes” “ ‘Allo Nice” “J'écoute” “Lui-même” “ ‘Allo Cannes.” When finally a voice did answer him, it was a masculine and foreign voice; wrong number, he thought, of course. “No, no,” he repeated testily. “Mougins 53-53.”

But it was not a wrong number. It was the butler speaking. “Her Ladyship has just gone out. She has driven down to the station to meet Sir Henry.”

Pensively he hung the receiver back. Pensively he climbed back up the stairs. If Judy had just left, it would be an hour, at least, before she returned. She might not bother to come back at all. She might go straight on from the station to the party. But then she had other guests to meet. She would have, wouldn't she, to take back Sir Henry first? There wouldn't be room in the car for their luggage and Sir Henry's. If she took back Sir Henry first, she would only have time to stay for a moment or two at the villa. If he were to ring up in an hour or so that was to say, most likely he would be answered by Sir Henry. There would be no point in that. He shook his head. He tried to work it out, but he got confused. There were so many alternative possibilities. I suppose I've got to go, he thought. It would look odd, explanations would be required if he didn't. That was the one thing that would be fatal.

In the doorway of his room, he paused, noting again in the clear morning light the ashtray with its pile of pink-tipped cigarette stubs, the tumbler with its rim of lipstick, the picture standing on the chest of drawers. He walked over to the bed, lifted the pillow, held it against his cheek; it was scented with tuberoses. He had the sensation of something under his heart going round and over. It had been such a dream; he had never guessed that anything could be such a dream. He felt pride and exultation; exultation that anything so lovely could have happened to him, pride that it was through Judy that that loveliness had come to him, that Judy could have felt about him in that way. Mingled though with his pride was a sense of shame, of guilt. Judy was Sir Henry's wife, the man who had honored and befriended him, who had trusted him: there was a sense of foreboding, too, mingled with his exultation. What was going to happen next?

He began to shave. His hand was shaking and he cut himself, an awkward nick under his chin, the kind of cut that would take a long time to heal. As he lathered himself a second time, he watched the blood ooze through the soap, the red stain spreading. It was still oozing as he dried his face. He examined himself with a cool detachment. What on earth had Judy seen in him? He had no illusions about his looks; his features were ordinary and conventional; he had never felt the least impulse to self-portraiture. If only, he had sometimes thought, he had an interesting ugliness. What had Judy seen in him? She had said that one never knew oneself what one really looked like. She had said that she had had this feeling about him from the very start. It was something he could not understand. He was not bad-looking, he knew that. Julia had told him that. He could imagine that a girl who had known him for some time, whose trust and confidence he had earned, might come to care for him, to love him. But how anyone could fall in love with him at sight, as Judy had said she had … no, he could not understand it. Was it just one of those caprices to which judging from recent English novels like
Antic Hay
and
The Green Hat,
fashionable Englishwomen were extremely subject? It could not be that. He could not believe that it was that. He could not bear to believe that it was that. But if it wasn't that, what was it? Doubt and foreboding were mingled with his exultation. What was to happen now?

It was quarter-past ten before Francis was seated on the
terrace over his figs and coffee. He had bought a copy of the Paris Edition of the
Herald Tribune
but the print was blurred for him. A waitress was busy washing down the pavement outside the bar; fourteen hours earlier his party had been seated there. From his place at the head of the table with Nina Ambrose on his right, looking towards Judy at the other end, he had seen this party as the proud climax to his month at Villefranche. Never had he felt happier, never had he felt prouder than he had then; happy in the present, confident of the future, proud of Judy and of their friendship, planning to visit England, to exhibit his pictures there, to stay at Charlton …

To stay at Charlton. He smiled wryly. All that was over now. He could never now stay in Judy's house, never be her guest. He could never mix freely with her friends again. The position among them of which he had been so proud was his no longer. Everything was over, everything was spoiled. He raised his hand to his forehead, drawing it across his eyes as he had an hour earlier when he had woken up. The scent of tuberoses was no longer there. The loss of it was a symbol. Was that scent never to be upon his hands again?

He rose to his feet. He walked to the edge of the terrace, leaning his elbows on the railings. What was to happen next? What was Judy planning to have happen next? He was in her hands wasn't he? It was for her, not for him to decide surely? Was Judy planning a life together for them both? Was she planning an elopement, a divorce, remarriage? For him, on his side, it was all so unpremeditated. He had never expected anything like this to happen. He had never thought of Judy in this way, in this light. He had loved her, yes: he had adored her. She had seemed to him the perfect person. But he had never even considered the possibility of being in love with her, of making love to her. Yet she had envisaged the possibility from the very start. Had Judy been an American, he would have known that there were only two corollaries to such a night as theirs – a leave-taking of one another for all time or the start of a new life together. Were Englishwomen different though in this respect? He had always heard they were. What was she expecting of him now? Was she expecting him to tell her husband? Would she have already spoken to her husband as they had driven back together from the station? Surely he could do nothing till he had spoken to her first, till she had told him what she wanted of him. Her future, her position, her reputation were at stake. He
could do nothing without her permission. He was in her hands. There was only one thing that he could say to her. “I love you. There is nothing I would not do for you. To work for you, to live for you would be the highest privilege that life could offer me. You would be giving up a great, great deal if you were to throw in your lot with mine, but if you were to …”

At the thought of what life would be for him, if he had Judy to share it with, he closed his eyes. To have Judy as his companion, Judy as his lover … His hands tightened on the railings. He did not know what he exactly thought, what he exactly felt, what he exactly hoped for. He was exultant and dejected, hopeful and apprehensive, ashamed and proud. The outcome of how much depended on the next few hours. He looked slowly round him, at the fishermen's wives working on the nets; at the waitress setting out the tables; at the rowing boats washing against their moorings; at the children throwing tops. It all looked just as it had looked on every other morning. For all of them, the children, the waitress, the fishermen and their women folk, it was an everyday morning, one of a thousand others. But for him it was the morning of the day of which if he lived to be a hundred he would recall each detail: the day to which he would look back in retrospect as the most important, the most decisive in his life, the day that might redirect his entire life, whose outcome would, in any case, leave its indent, its signature on his entire life. Before he stood again upon this terrace the outcome one way or another would have been decided. He drew a long slow breath into his lungs. If only it were this time tomorrow.