Sensible Life (3 page)

F
LORA TREVELYAN RAN FAST,
twisting and turning through alleyways and short cuts, down the hill to the plage. No longer in his prime, over-indulged on succulent scraps from the horse butcher, Prince Igor had trouble keeping up. He trotted protestingly, his neck twisted sideways by the taut lead. When they reached the beach Flora let him free. He snapped at her hand before running across the sand to prance, yapping, as the sea rippled in and out. He advanced and retreated with the water, afraid of getting his paws wet. Flora kept watch in case the German Shepherd who had pounced on the Pom and rolled it into the water the week before should reappear and terrorise it afresh. When Igor tired of his futile pastime, she re-attached the lead and proceeded at a sedate pace across the town to the quay where the vedettes came in from St. Malo, laden with returning day-trippers and passengers from the Southampton ferry. She had friends among the crews of the vedettes and would chat with porters sent from the various hotels to meet arriving guests.

“When does your mama return? Will she be accompanied by your papa?” Gaston, the porter from the Hôtel Marjolaine, threw the butt of his cigarette into the water.

“I do not know. She has not written.”

“Does she know that your Mademoiselle lets you run free about the town and adventure into the countryside without protection?”

“I have a dog with me.”

“You call that a dog? That specimen? Is a Bolshevik toy sufficient chaperone for a child, one asks?”

“Madame Tarasova is not a Bolshevik; I often have a larger dog; Igor has teeth.”

“Igor has teeth.” Gaston snapped his fingers derisively at the Pomeranian, who leapt up snarling shrilly. Gaston stepped back. “Bolshevik,” he hissed at the little animal.

“Don’t tease him.” Flora loosened the lead so that the dog could close up on the man. “If you go on, I will let him loose.”

“Does this courageous animal bite your Mademoiselle? Does Mademoiselle know the animal?” Flora did not answer. “Your maman was expected back weeks ago. I was told so by Mademoiselle, who sits in the hotel reading love stories and eating chocolates while you run wild,” teased Gaston.

“She changed her mind and stayed with papa. He has business in London. He goes back to India soon; she wants to be with him as long as possible,” said Flora defensively.

“One understands. But you, do you not wish to be with your papa?” The porter from the Hotel Britannique, lounging beside Gaston, joined in the quiz.

“Sometimes,” said Flora cautiously, “not always.” She sensed that Gaston and the other porter might be surprised if she told them that she hardly knew her father and was not all that keen on knowing him better. These family men were unlikely to understand or approve the mores of an Indian civil servant and his casual acceptance of constant separation.

“I am all right,” she said.

“And your lessons? You do your lessons with Mademoiselle?” queried Gaston, whose eldest son was working for his baccalaureat.

“Of course I do,” lied Flora, conscious that with Mademoiselle’s connivance lessons had dwindled to a bare minimum. The porter from the Hôtel d’Angleterre, younger than his colleagues and unmarried, now remarked: “She amuses herself, this English child, she runs wild with old women’s dogs. It is laughable.” He laughed. “C’est fou.”

“Madame Tarasova is teaching me Russian. In exchange, I exercise Igor.”

“Of what use is Russian, a filthy Bolshevik language? Your situation is not comme il faut.”

“Not convenable,” agreed the porter from the Hôtel Britannique, who had so far not contributed his opinion.

“I wish you would all mind your own business,” said Flora unhappily. “What visitors are you expecting?”

“English families,” said the porter from the Hôtel Britannique.

“For me the same,” said the porter from the Hôtel d’Angleterre. “There are too many; I spit on them and their money.”

“And I,” said Gaston, “am here to meet General Leigh, husband of the beautiful Madame Leigh.” Unconsciously Gaston drew himself up.

“Lots of spit for him?” suggested Flora. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “look! Here comes the vedette! Quick, Igor, run, I must get you home.”

The group of porters watched her disappear, dragging Igor behind her. “Has she seen the devil?” asked one.

“Her parents,” said Gaston. “I recognise the mother; the man with her must be papa, that one in the black hat who feels the cold. The tall robust one beside them will be my client, the General, husband of the lady who spends so much of the money you despise patronising our modistes. Does not your sister work for the hat shop in the Rue de Tours?”

The porters stopped lounging against the wall, straightened their caps and adopted obsequious expressions.

While Flora raced through the town to deliver Igor to Madame Tarasova’s and on, panting, to rouse Mademoiselle from the sofa where she lolled with her novel, in the annexe of the Hôtel Marjolaine, Denys Trevelyan only marginally looked forward to meeting his daughter. He had disliked the crossing from Southampton and felt cold crossing the bay. He took his wife’s hand and tucked it against his side. She had introduced herself to Angus Leigh and was questioning him about the likelihood of a General Strike as though he were a politician or a trade unionist, in spite of his modestly explaining that he was a retired Army man, no better informed than anyone who read
The Times
or listened to the news on the wireless. If there were a General Strike, he said, he proposed leaving his wife in Dinard and motoring back by himself.

“Just in case of trouble I’d like my wife to be out of things. One never knows these days whether things may not get rough.”

“Oh, Denys. Did you hear that?” Vita looked up at her husband. “What shall we do if there is a strike? Will there be a revolution?”

Denys Trevelyan repeated for the benefit of the General what his wife perfectly well knew. Come what may, his leave was up at the end of June and he must sail for India. Anyway, he said, more for the benefit of the General than his wife, he thought talk of revolution was alarmist. He did not add that he wished to God that Vita was coming with him, that he loved her jealously and passionately, that the prospect of leaving her made him feel ill, that he thought it unnecessary for her to stay with Flora until the autumn. In India she could go to the hills for the hot weather, as she usually did, where he would know what she was up to. He thought the child could have been deposited in the school they had picked at once, instead of at the start of the school year. Pressing his wife’s arm against his ribs and his lips into a tight line, he wished that when Vita nearly miscarried, five months pregnant, she had lost the child. Children and the Indian Civil Service did not mix. It was not, he thought bitterly, as though Vita liked children. Flora was the result of a passing and regrettable fancy. The child was an expense, an inconvenience, a wedge between himself, his wife and his career. He was an uxorious man; he flinched from sharing any part of her. Spending the summer with Flora, Vita was bowing to the convention that this was what parents did. She had been happy to leave her with the governess all the weeks they had spent in London, he thought grimly. He knew Vita, alone with Flora, would get bored. And what then? At least when she was in a hill station, and he not too far away, there was some control. Most wives could be counted on not to do more than flirt with bachelor subalterns. Vita was welcome to that, but alone in France—

Beside him, Vita was telling the General that they had a daughter and the idea was that she should learn to speak French before she went to school; that she already spoke good Italian after a year in Siena with an Italian governess. “Denys is keen on languages,” she said. “She is also learning Russian.”

“Ah, hum, yes, a good thing, I suppose. Are you yourself a linguist?” Angus included Denys in the conversation.

“Native languages.” Denys did not specify how many. “In my job, you have to.” He despised Vita for her falsity, and perversely loved her for it. Flora’s year in Italy and her present sojourn in France were nothing to do with the acquisition of languages, everything to do with the rate of the lira and franc to the pound. He had no independent means (the sight of General Leigh’s rather splendid luggage annoyed him). Standing up in the vedette, looking towards the quay, he decided Vita could manage without Mademoiselle until Flora went to school. While despising his wife’s manipulation of the truth, Denys felt a sharp lust for her. She may be silly, he thought, but I desire her.

“Is your daughter meeting us?” he asked, disassociating himself from parenthood. Then, noticing Angus Leigh’s quick glance, he laughed. “Our daughter is so unlike either of us, I make a joke of it, but since discovering a portrait of my great-grandmother I have put aside doubts of her provenance.”

Angus Leigh said, “Oh,” on a polite note.

Vita said, “Oh, Denys, you are the limit,” and to Angus, “We are both fair, you see, and Flora is dark.” Then to Denys she said, “No, darling, I don’t think she will meet us. It seemed better not to tell her we were coming today; the sailings might have been delayed by the strike.”

“The strike has not happened yet,” said Denys, aware that they would have stayed on in London if they had been able to get tickets for a particular show. “I want to get you into bed,” he muttered in his wife’s ear.

“And I you,” she said. “Here we are, we have arrived.” The boat bumped against the quay. “See you at the hotel later on,” she said to Angus.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Angus, not sure that he wanted to. He handed his bags to Gaston and set off at a brisk clip towards the Marjolaine, leaving the Trevelyans to find their own way. As he walked he thought Vita Trevelyan pretty but tiresome, foreseeing that she might make friends with his wife. Nor was he drawn to her husband.

S
INCE THE HOTEL WAS
filling up, the management had asked Cosmo and Blanco if they minded moving into the annexe. They would share a room with a balcony larger than the one they occupied in the main building. Perhaps they would not mind the inconvenience of crossing the garden to the hotel dining-room for their meals? The servants would, of course, move their things. Cosmo and Blanco did not mind.

“We can sneak out at night and go to a brothel,” Cosmo suggested. “If there is a brothel. I wonder what goes on?” he said wistfully. They surveyed their new room.

“We would be turned away as under age. You know what goes on, idiot,” muttered Blanco.

“In theory. What’s the use of theory?”

“We could try the casino, wear false moustaches.”

“Same applies to the casino; they guess your age to a week, I’ve heard,” said Cosmo. “Ah me, you know why they moved us, don’t you? It’s all those Dutch girls. I bet they will be strictly chaperoned, kept well clear of sex-starved us.”

“And your sister and her friend? What’s the friend like?” asked Blanco.

“No idea. She’s called Tashie Quayle. Are you going to have a bath?”

“I might do. Oh God! They’ve mixed up our clothes. Look at this.” Blanco jerked open a drawer with one hand as he unbuttoned his flies with the other. “Let’s get them sorted; it’s not good for my best shirt to consort with your pants. I like this room. I wonder whether there is anyone interesting in this annexe. I say, that’s my pullover you are putting in your drawer.” He stepped out of his trousers and snatched at the pullover. “But you can have it if you like, it’s the sort of thing the Prince of Wales wears—puts me off.”

“No thanks, I don’t want it, Blanco.”

“I wish you’d call me Hubert, that’s my proper name,” protested Blanco.

“With a name like Wyndeatt-Whyte you must resign yourself to Blanco, Blanco.” Cosmo ducked as his friend aimed a blow.

“I thought your cousin Thing was called Hubert, and since you don’t care for him—”

“My father was Hubert, too. My family are repetitive with names. I say, these walls are paper thin. Listen.”

Footsteps tapped along the corridor and someone knocked at the door of the room next to theirs. The door opened. A woman’s voice said, “Mademoiselle? Are you in here?” The door closed.

“Oui, Madame, I am here. The child ran in and said—I was not expecting you just yet—if I had known that you were arriving today, I would have—”

“Sent Flora to meet us? Where is she?” The voice was sharp.

“I let her run out to buy flowers for your room. She planned to please and surprise you and her father. I gave her some money, her next week’s pocket money to be exact.”

“A nice thought, I suppose.”

“It was the child’s idea.”

“Well, yes—I see—Well, actually, while she is out, perhaps I’d better speak to you.”

“Of course, Madame. Won’t you sit down?”

“I’d rather stand.”

Cosmo and Blanco listened. Cosmo unbuttoned his shirt and slowly pulled it off and, as Blanco watched, slipped off his shoes and tiptoed to the French window which opened onto the balcony. Blanco, already in socks, joined him.

In the next room Vita Trevelyan dismissed the governess, giving her her salary and a month’s money in lieu of notice. For the rest of the holiday, she explained, and the summer months until Flora went to school, she would look after her daughter herself.

“It would be nice for the child to see something of her papa.” Mademoiselle’s interjection was hoarse. Vita Trevelyan did not seem to hear. It would be convenient, she said, if Mademoiselle packed up and left the following day; she had arranged with the manager for Flora to move into a single room. “The single rooms are all at the back looking out on the street, not the garden,” said Mademoiselle.

“The arrangement is suitable,” said Vita Trevelyan.

“And more economical,” said Mademoiselle. Cosmo and Blanco drew in their breath.

“That is a consideration,” said Vita coldly.

“Madame will give me a reference?” asked the governess.

“Of course,” said Vita flatly.

“Thank you,” said Mademoiselle.

There was a pause. Cosmo and Blanco waited; Cosmo’s mouth was open, Blanco’s hands held his vest pushed half-way up his chest.