August Is a Wicked Month (17 page)

‘Back to the hotel,’ she said to the driver. It took about half an hour. They had an argument over the fare when they got back. He had quoted one price and asked for another.

‘Crook,’ she said. Luckily he didn’t understand.

T
WO DAYS LATER SHE
found out. Too late to locate him, and anyhow, how could she be sure? It was a new situation and she was unfamiliar with the ethics. She reckoned that there was some sort of risk about accusing someone of having it, like there is in accusing someone of theft. She ground her teeth when she thought of him looking at the rim of dirt on his shirt-sleeve and saying ‘Disgusting’, and she thought if she had a good brother or a good male friend she would ask that good friend to go and kill him. But then again she remembered his reluctance and the shadow that came between them when she begged him to love her. Many of his jokes made sense now, and her anger was not that he had blemished her but that he had fled. He had not trusted her enough to stay. She thought, fondly for a minute, how they could get cured together. Do another joint thing. How long had he had it? Perhaps he didn’t know himself. Perhaps it was contracted from Denise. At any rate it must have come to him from a woman and he gave it back to another woman: the perfect circuit of revenge. And at the same time she tried to dismiss it until that was no longer possible.

On the second day when she was lying on the mattress she felt a hot, burning pain. Hotter than the sun had ever made her. Putting her head between her knees, pretending to do a drawing on the sand, she sought out and confirmed the smell. It had been like that all night between her legs. Not the stealthy damp of nice desire but a scalding, unpleasant one. She took out a Cologne stick and touched her pulse and the back of her knees and her legs, and she thought, ‘This will take it away, this cool anointment,’ and she lay back and told herself it was all delusion, or the result of guilt. But by evening it felt worse and she hurried from the beach and put a chair to her bedroom door and took off her bathing suit to examine herself. There was no doubt. Something had infected her. The dark mesh of hair had a blight. She looked at it, smelt it, a nest of sobs now with ugly yellowing tears, and she damped the cake of soap and washed herself roughly as if by hurting herself she would take away her sin and her shame. Then she dried herself with her pants and wrapped them up in the English paper and put them on the bed until such time as she went out and could throw them in the sea. She foresaw herself contaminating the entire hotel, being found out, being asked to leave, a public scandal, the violinist running along behind her asking for compensation, with his notebook out also, getting the word and the symptoms. And then again she thought it could not be true. Perhaps it was the sun, or the salt water, or the pine cone she’d brought to bed the two nights since he left. The calm she thought she’d stored up from the five days with him had vanished. Even before she knew about the disease she had a desperate longing to be with him again. Down on the beach the sun no longer sustained her and she thought of everything he’d said and done, his jokes, his carelessness with money, the things he taught her and finally of his loving her, and she thought, ‘I must hold something, someone, or I will die,’ and she cradled her own body in her own arms. Then she saw the huge cone on the beach beside a coloured ball and she went over and picked it up. Its wings were opened and its colour grey from being continually washed by the sea. She held it and then brought it up to her room and put it on the chair beside her bed, and then she got so that she could not be still unless she held it, between her hands, between her legs, between the hollow of her breasts, in the folds of her arm, anywhere. Could this pine cone have done it, she thought, and looked again at the disgraced part where she’d just washed and knew with certainty that it would not stay dry and sweet-smelling for long. Already, despite the talcum, the smell was back in her nostrils, and taking the chair away from the door she put her hand on the service bell and waited with a wrap around her.

‘I fear I have mislaid my T.C.P.,’ she said when Maurice came.

‘Madame,’ he said beaming.

‘For cuts,’ she said, pointing to her wrist, where there were no cuts. She thought he sniffed. She drew back from him, petrified. She stood between him and the chair in the wrap, shivering. He thought she was merely cold.

‘Soon is the time for lighting fires,’ he said.

‘Medicine,’ she said frantically, and he grinned knowingly and said
‘Oui,’
and disappeared. He was back in a matter of minutes with a bottle of sweetened cascara and she almost threw it at him. Finally she escorted him to the room where the medical things were kept and she found some disinfectant and came back and put some on a pad and went out smelling of many different things, convinced that she would find a nice English doctor in whom she could confide.

‘It’s not a crime, it’s not a crime, it’s not a crime,’ she kept saying, arranging her footsteps to tune in with that one sentence. ‘It’s not a crime,’ she said again as she went through the hall and thought the manager looked very suspiciously at her. But even as she was saying it was not a crime she thought back to herself as a student nurse drawing away from the rich men who put their hands out to touch her black-stockinged knee that was on a level with the bed. How unsoiled she was then. The only one she indulged was the forester with the broken leg, who gave her gifts of pennies wrapped in paper. These he threw down when she went by the window to the nurses’ quarters, to wash her hair and write a letter home, the ivory girl in her tower of gold. Would they recognize her now? It was as though she had fallen into a sewer. And yet she was able to look outside of herself, like a person going by, and say, ‘This is not happening to me, it is all nightmare.’

She walked down the terrace of steps and crossed the road to walk under the trees, along the path that led to the town. Passing the church, she blessed herself and said, ‘Oh God, grant I have not got syphilis,’ before she said, ‘Lord have mercy on his soul.’ The two things uttered in the same breath shocked her. Even if the church were open she could not have gone in to pray. Farther down she stopped at the chemist’s and bought four different bottles of disinfectant and some more talcum powder.

‘Could you wrap them up?’ she said. They produced a toilet bag, then a suitcase. They sold travel goods as well as medicines.

‘Paper,’ she said. It took several minutes to get a strong paper bag.

Outside it was warm. She’d put on a heavy skirt just in case and compared with everyone else she was dressed for Arctic weather. It was a tense night, the palm quills deathly still, motors going by, slowing down, whistles. A man whistled at her, but only to cover up for himself. Walking directly in front of her was a girl in gold lamé trousers and gold toplet who moved like a half-set jelly. Two cars had stopped for her at exactly the same moment. She got in the bigger car, and the other driver, not wanting to seem ignored, had propositioned Ellen.

‘You wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me, mate,’ she said, bitterly.

‘Enchanté…’
he said.

She shook her head and crossed the road as if she were going to meet someone at the corner restaurant. The place where people met.

A clown performed and rode around on an old-fashioned bicycle, tempting death by swooping in and out in front of motor-cars, shaving their headlamps, getting squeezed between car doors, raising his hat to danger, making a squeak by pressing a toy that he had concealed under his arm; sometimes his legs were on the handlebars, sometimes his chest was. Just when he seemed to have escaped death he darted forward again in front of a speeding car and she heard the brakes screech, and she called out, ‘Don’t, don’t,’ and closed her eyes in case of something terrible. Nothing fatal. The car just overturned some tables, and the people, once they were over the shock, laughed again and the clown was safe. He saw her stand in terror and he rode in her direction madly, as if he was going to ride through her, then barely missing the tail of her heavy skirt he rode right into a bookshop and around the racks of books and magazines, jerking the handlebars. She drew into a side street while his back was turned.

In that street there were fewer people walking, but many sat at tables eating. It was the street where the eating was done, and later the people would move around to the main corner and watch the man on the bicycle and read the scraps of news on the neon lit ticker tape, and drink. She walked slowly past the tables, looking for an English doctor. She had no way of recognizing one but she thought that if someone fainted a doctor would come forward.

‘Faint, faint,’ she said, going by, being watched and watching; girls with measuring tapes checking on how much the meal had swollen their bellies, wine in lovely old-fashioned pitchers, and rosé in the ends of glasses specked with sediment. Every few yards a man – usually a young man – coming towards her, tried to engage her, first by walking directly in her path so that they would have to bump into each other, then when she side-stepped, by speaking to her, and finally by turning and following, until such time as she turned round and stamped her foot the way she might stamp her foot at a dog. That usually sent them away.

She passed a house with a brass plate nailed up outside, telling a doctor’s name and the hours he was in attendance. It was encouraging to find it because if help did not come in the night she would rush round in the morning at the appointed hour. But help would come. She went into a lavatory and applied one of the new disinfectants. It looked strong, it burnt, that was a good sign. Maybe by the time she got back to her hotel the whole thing would have cleared itself. Her disease occupied her thoughts so much that she forgot Mark, and then when she remembered him she broke into sobs, but tearless sobs, and asked his forgiveness and said, ‘This is only vinegar and gall.’ She had no idea who she was speaking to, but all that night she talked to herself, blamed herself, hoped, pitied her ignorance and said, ‘Doctor, Doctor, Doctor…’ to match her footsteps. The thought of a hospital was too terrifying.

Quite by accident she came on the place that was canopied by the big tree where they went the night she had met the group, and she re-lived a little of it, Sidney as he dealt out the various packets of cigarettes like packs of cards and the mean people who pocketed the cigarettes straight away and the man with the fox tail between his legs and Gwyn with the big spotted handkerchief before her eyes.

‘Gwyn,’ she said out loud as if she just thought of a miracle, and she went into a quiet restaurant and drank a Pernod first and tipped enormously and then asked for the telephone. There was no telephone, so that she had to go to another restaurant and do exactly the same thing except that this time she made sure of the telephone before tipping. The waiter got the number for her and at the other end, Antonio – she was sure it must be he – asked her to hold on.

‘Who is it?’ Gwyn said, worried.

‘Have I taken you from dinner?’ Ellen asked, nervous.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Ellen…’

‘Oh, little Irish. Hello little old Irish, how are you?’

‘I’m all right,’ Ellen said, ‘I didn’t go home.’

There was a pause for a minute and she knew that Gwyn was thinking, ‘What the hell.’

‘We must have a get-together one evening, do I have your number?’ Gwyn was saying now, rounding off the conversation.

‘Gwyn,’ Ellen said, ‘do you remember what you said about having a friend?’

‘Yes ma’am…’

‘I’m in trouble…’ Ellen said.

‘Now that’s not clever.’

‘I know it’s not.’

‘Well you got to do something. How long is it gone? If you have your dates right it ought to be simple…’

‘Gwyn,’ Ellen said urgently, ‘it’s something else, worse than that. I got it while I was here…’ There was a pause that seemed to be unending but must only have been minutes or the operator would have interrupted.

‘You’re not telling me you have the clap?’ the woman said in a sharp, shocked voice.

‘I have something,’ Ellen said, looking down. There were ants all over the white plate that was left for the telephone money. She felt they would come inside her clothes and crawl around and nest and breed in her infected hair. She beckoned to the barman to bring her another drink.

‘Hear that, Jason?’ Gwyn said across the room, and her husband must have come across to the phone because Ellen could hear them murmuring and him saying, ‘That’s crazy,’ and Gwyn saying, ‘We must do something,’ and him saying, ‘No you don’t,’ and then at intervals Gwyn speaking into the mouthpiece and saying tonelessly, ‘Just a minute,’ she and him saying, ‘A hot little broad like that, who the hell asked her to butt in?’ and Gwyn saying, ‘You’re damn right,’ but still telling Ellen to hold on. Finally she got the name of Sidney’s doctor from Antonio and called it out and kept saying, ‘Got that?’ She spelt each word carefully.

‘Can I say Sidney sent me?’ Ellen said.

‘Well it’s not too swell a complaint, is it?’ Gwyn said, and asked Jason what he thought.

‘Huh,’ Ellen could hear him say, ‘don’t ask me,’ and then Gwyn went on with the doctor’s address, but by that time Ellen had stopped writing it down.

Back in the hotel the manager waited for her. She went quite pale as he stood in th lobby and said,

‘Madame Sage.’

Gwyn had telephoned, to warn him.

‘Yes,’ she said. She looked towards the tiny cubicles where the keys were. Her key was there.

‘Please to come in,’ he said and led the way to a small office at the back of the reception desk. She put the parcel behind her back. Was he going to examine her?

‘Sit down, Madam,’ he said. ‘You are enjoying your stay?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My son died and I came here to get over it.’ Nothing like pity. Was he a family man? No, he never married. He liked peace.

‘Too bad about your son,’ he said. He had a sallow, gentle face, given to smiling. No matter what he said or she said, he smiled.

‘What did you want?’ she said. She might as well face it.