The Apple Tree (24 page)

"Hush, Céleste and Hélène: you make my head ache."

"Madame is tired? You must rest after lunch. It will do you good, in such heat." Miss Clay, tactful, bent down to scold the children. "Everyone is tired. It will do us all good to rest," she said.

Rest... But, thought the Marquise, I never do anything else. My life is one long rest. Il faut reposer. Repose-toi, ma chérie, tu as mauvaise mine. Winter and summer, those were the words she heard. From her husband, from the governess, from sisters-in-law, from all those aged, tedious friends. Life was one long sequence of resting, of getting up, and of resting again. Because with her pallor, with her reserve, they thought her delicate. Heavens above, the hours of her married life she had spent resting, the bed turned down, the shutters closed. In the house in Paris, in the chateau in the country. Two to four, resting, always resting.

"I'm not in the least tired," she said to Miss Clay, and for once her voice, usually melodious and soft, was sharp, high-pitched. "I shall go walking after lunch. I shall go into the town."

The children stared at her, round·eyed, and Miss Clay, her goat-face startled to surprise, opened her mouth in protest.

"You'll kill yourself, in the heat. Besides, the few shops always close between one and three. Why not wait until after tea? Surely it would be wiser to wait until after tea? The children could go with you and I could do some ironing."

The Marquise did not answer. She rose from the table, and now, because the children had lingered over déjeuner—Céleste was always slow with her food—the terrace was almost deserted. No one of any importance would watch the progress back to the hotel.

The Marquise went upstairs and once again touched her face with powder, circled her mouth, dipped her fore-finger in scent. Next door she could hear the droning of the children as Miss Clay settled them to rest and closed the shutters. The Marquise took her handbag, made of plaited straw, put in it her purse, a roll of film, a few odds and ends, and tip-toeing past the children's room went downstairs again, and out of the hotel grounds into the dusty road.

The gravel forced its way at once into her open sandals and the glare of the sun beat down upon her head, and at once what had seemed to her, on the spur of the moment, an unusual thing to do struck her now, in the doing of it, as foolish, pointless. The road was deserted, the sands were deserted, the visitors who had played and walked all morning, while she had lain idle on her balcony, were now taking their ease in their rooms, like Miss Clay and the children. Only the Marquise trod the sun-baked road into the little town.

And here it was even as Miss Clay had warned her. The shops were closed, the sun-blinds were all down, the hour of siesta, inviolate, unbroken, held sway over the shops and their inhabitants.

The Marquise strolled along the street, her straw handbag swinging from her hand, the one walker in a sleeping, yawning world. Even the café at the corner was deserted, and a sand-coloured dog, his face between his paws, snapped with closed eyes at the flies that bothered him. Flies were everywhere. They buzzed at the window of the pharmacie, where dark bottles, filled with mysterious medicine, rubbed glass shoulders with skin tonic, sponges and cosmetics. Flies danced behind the panes of the shop filled with sun-shades, spades, pink dolls and rope-soled shoes. They crawled upon the empty blood-stained slab of the butcher's shop, behind the iron shutter. From above the shop came the jarring sound of the radio, suddenly switched off, and the heavy sigh of someone who would sleep and would not be disturbed. Even the bureau de poste was shut. The Marquise, who had thought to buy stamps, rattled the door to no purpose.

Now she could feel the sweat trickling under her dress, and her feet, in the thin sandals, ached from the short distance she had walked. The sun was too strong, too fierce, and as she looked up and down the empty street, and at the houses, with the shops between, every one of them closed from her, withdrawn into the blessed peace of their siesta, she felt a sudden longing for any place that might be cool, that might be dark—a cellar, perhaps, where there was dripping water from a tap. The sound of water, falling to a stone floor, would soothe her nerves, now jagged from the sun.

Frustrated, almost crying, she turned into an alley-way between two shops. She came to steps, leading down to a little court where there was no sun, and paused there a moment, her hand against the wall, so cold and firm. Beside her there was a window, shuttered, against which she leant her head, and suddenly, to her confusion, the shutter was withdrawn and a face looked out upon her from some dark room within.

"Je regrette..." she began, swept to absurdity that she should be discovered here, intruding, like one peering into the privacy and squalor of life below a shop. And then her voice dwindled and died away, foolishly, for the face that looked out upon her from the open window was so unusual, so gentle, that it might have come straight from a stained-glass saint in a cathedral. His face was framed in a cloud of dark curled hair, his nose was small and straight, his mouth a sculptured mouth, and his eyes, so solemn, brown and tender, were like the eyes of a gazelle.

"Vous désirez, Madame la Marquise?" he said, in answer to her unfinished words.

He knows me, she thought in wonder, he has seen me before, but even this was not so unexpected as the quality of his voice, not rough, not harsh, not the voice of someone in a cellar under a shop, but cultivated, liquid, a voice that matched the eyes of the gazelle.

"It was so hot up in the street," she said. "The shops were closed and I felt faint. I came down the steps. I am very sorry, it is private, of course."

The face disappeared from the window. He opened a door somewhere that she had not seen, and suddenly she found a chair beneath her and she was sitting down, inside the doorway, and it was dark and cool inside the room, even like the cellar she had imagined, and he was giving her water from an earthenware cup.

"Thank you," she said, "thank you very much." Looking up, she saw that he was watching her, with humility, with reverence, the pitcher of water in his hand; and he said to her in his soft, gentle voice, "Is there anything else I can get for you, Madame la Marquise?"

She shook her head, but within her stirred the feeling she knew so well, the sense of secret pleasure that came with admiration, and, conscious of herself for the first time since he had opened the window, she drew her scarf closer about her shoulders, the gesture deliberate, and she saw the gazelle eyes fall to the rose, tucked in the bodice of her dress.

She said, "How do you know who I am?"

He answered, "You came into my shop three days ago. You had your children with you. You bought a film for your camera."

She stared at him, puzzled. She remembered buying the film from the little shop that advertised Kodaks in the window, and she remembered too the ugly, shuffling, crippled woman who had served her behind the counter. The woman had walked with a limp, and afraid that the children would notice and laugh, and that she herself, from nervousness, would be betrayed to equally heartless laughter, she had ordered some things to be sent to the hotel, and then departed.

"My sister served you," he said, in explanation. "I saw you from the inner room. I do not often go behind the counter. I take photographs of people, of the countryside, and then they are sold to the visitors who come here in the summer."

"Yes," she said, "I see, I understand."

And she drank again from the earthenware cup, and drank too the adoration in his eyes.

"I have brought a film to be developed," she said. "I have it here in my bag. Would you do that for me?"

"Of course, Madame la Marquise," he said. "I will do anything for you, whatever you ask. Since that day you came into my shop I..." Then he stopped, a flush came over his face, and he looked away from her, deeply embarrassed.

The Marquise repressed a desire to laugh. It was quite absurd, his admiration. Yet, funny... it gave her a sense of power.

"Since I came into your shop, what?" she asked.

He looked at her again. " I have thought of nothing else, but nothing," he said to her, and with such intensity that it almost frightened her.

She smiled, she handed back the cup of water. "I am quite an ordinary woman," she said. "If you knew me better, I should disappoint you." How odd it is, she thought to herself, that I am so much mistress of this situation, I am not at all outraged or shocked. Here I am, in the cellar of a shop, talking to a photographer who has just expressed his admiration for me. It is really most amusing, and yet he, poor man, is in earnest, he really means what he says.

"Well," she said, "are you going to take my film?"

It was as though he could not drag his eyes away from her, and boldly she stared him out of face, so that his eyes fell and he flushed again.

"If you will go back the way you came," he said, "I will open up the shop for you." And now it was she who let her eyes linger upon him; the open vest, no shirt, the bare arms, the throat, the head of curling hair, and she said, "Why cannot I give you the film here?"

"It would not be correct, Madame la Marquise," he said to her.

She turned, laughing, and went back up the steps to the hot street. She stood on the pavement, she heard the rattle of the key in the door behind, she heard the door open. And then presently, in her own time, having deliberately stood outside to keep him waiting, she went into the shop which was stuffy now, and close, unlike the cool quiet cellar.

He was behind the counter and she saw, with disappointment, that he had put on his coat, a grey cheap coat worn by any man serving in a shop, and his shirt was much too stiff, and much too blue. He was ordinary, a shopkeeper, reaching across the counter for the film.

"When will you have them ready?" she said.

"Tomorrow," he answered, and once again he looked at her with his dumb brown eyes. And she forgot the common coat and the blue stiff shirt, and saw the vest under the coat, and the bare arms.

"If you are a photographer," she said, "why don't you come to the hotel and take some photographs of me and my children?"

"You would like me to do that?" he asked.

"Why not? " she answered.

A secret look came into his eyes and went again, and he bent below the counter, pretending to search for string. But she thought, smiling to herself, this is exciting to him, his hands are trembling; and for the same reason her heart beat faster than before.

"Very well, Madame la Marquise," he said, "I will come to the hotel at whatever time is convenient to you."

"The morning, perhaps, is best," she said, "at eleven o'clock."

Casually she strolled away. She did not even say goodbye.

She walked across the street, and looking for nothing in the window of a shop opposite she saw, through the glass, that he had come to the door of his own shop and was watching her. He had taken off his jacket and his shirt. The shop would be closed again, the siesta was not yet over. Then she noticed, for the first time, that he too was crippled, like his sister. His right foot was encased in a high fitted boot. Yet, curiously, the sight of this did not repel her, nor bring her to nervous laughter, as it had done before when she had seen the sister. His high boot had a fascination, strange, unknown.

The Marquise walked back to the hotel along the dusty road.

At eleven o'clock the next morning the concierge of the hotel sent up word that Monsieur Paul, the photographer, was below in the hall, and awaited the instructions of Madame la Marquise. The instructions were sent back that Madame la Marquise would be pleased if Monsieur Paul would go upstairs to the suite. Presently she heard the knock on the door, hesitant, timid.

"Entrez," she called, and standing, as she did, on the balcony, her arms around the two children, she made a tableau, ready set, for him to gaze upon.

Today she was dressed in silk shantung the colour of chartreuse, and her hair was not the little girl hair of yesterday, with the ribbon, but parted in the centre and drawn back to show her ears, with the gold clips upon them.

He stood in the entrance of the doorway, he did not move. The children, shy, gazed with wonder at the high boot, but they said nothing. Their mother had warned them not to mention it.

"These are my babies," said the Marquise. "And now you must tell us how to pose, and where you want us placed."

The children did not make their usual curtsey, as they did to guests. Their mother had told them it would not be necessary. Monsieur Paul was a photographer, from the shop in the little town.

"If it would be possible, Madame la Marquise," he said, "to have one pose just as you are standing now. It is quite beautiful. So very natural, so full of grace."

"Why, yes, if you like. Stand still, Hélène."

"Pardon. It will take a few moments to fix the camera."

His nervousness had gone. He was busy with the mechanical tricks of his trade. And as she watched him set up the tripod, fix the velvet cloth, make the adjustments to his camera, she noticed his hands, deft and efficient, and they were not the hands of an artisan, of a shop-keeper, but the hands of an artist.

Her eyes fell to the boot. His limp was not so pronounced as the sister's, he did not walk with that lurching, jerky step that produced stifled hysteria in the watcher. His step was slow, more dragging, and the Marquise felt a kind of compassion for his deformity, for surely the misshapen foot beneath the boot must pain him constantly, and the high boot, especially in hot weather, crush and sear his flesh.

"Now, Madame la Marquise," he said, and guiltily she raised her eyes from the boot and struck her pose, smiling gracefully, her arms embracing the children.

"Yes," he said, "just so. It is very lovely."

The dumb brown eyes held hers. His voice was low, gentle. The sense of pleasure came upon her just as it had done in the shop the day before. He pressed the bulb. There was a little clicking sound.

"Once more," he said.

She went on posing, the smile on her lips; and she knew that the reason he paused this time before pressing the bulb was not from professional necessity, because she or the children had moved, but because it delighted him to gaze upon her.