The Bohemian Girl (22 page)

Bridget came in and threw the door shut.

‘Bridget!’ said Diana, jumping in her chair.

‘Diana,’ the other said, using her name as she often did when things were very serious, ‘mam, there’s the new Duke come, don’t you remember telling him you’d be in this morning? And Mr Cornwallis has come from London, and there they are, together in the salon!’

‘Oh, my God,’ said Diana. ‘I quite forgot about him, why didn’t you remind me earlier? And – and you say
Arthur
’s here, Arthur Cornwallis?’

‘And how should I be remembering every sinful appointment of yours?’

‘Oh, be quiet!’

‘Well, mam, what are we to do, then?’

Diana got up. She was wearing a flannel nightdress and a dressing-gown from Whiteleys’, and her hair was roughly pinned up at the back of her head.

‘I must dress. Tell Jean to tell the duke I’ll join him, and – and you must tell Arthur to go – in front of the duke – but tell him
privately
to come up, no, come back tomorrow.’

‘You’re frightened,’ said Bridget quickly.

‘I’m not. Come and help me get dressed.’

The two of them left the room. As they clattered downstairs to the second-floor bedroom, Bridget said loudly: ‘There’s too many men in this house, that’s what it is!’

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ As she said this, Diana ran straight into
Arthur Cornwallis on the half-landing. She gasped, and Bridget came tumbling behind her.

‘Diana!’ Cornwallis said.

‘What are you doing here, in my house?’ she said, stepping backwards, remembering irrelevantly that he was now a widower, because Julian’s sister was dead. ‘Why did you come upstairs? Who gave you permission?’

‘I escaped from your solicitious servants!’ he said. Cornwallis was bald and rather wrinkled now, and he looked far less the wise and prissy owl than he had in 1890. ‘Mayn’t one pay a friendly call? Do you know, you don’t look – at all – as I had imagined. How are you?’

‘I am going to change,’ said Diana.

They looked at each other, and their chests moved quickly up and down. Bridget kept a close watch.

‘And so how is Julian?’ she said.

‘Quite recovered from his wound, one might say, although he did lose an arm, do you remember? I wrote to you. Well,’ Cornwallis said, ‘the Frenchman downstairs – whom I imagine to be a most valuable acquaintance, Diana, can poor old Trefusis quite approve? – obviously wishes me otherwhere, and so do you. I have to go on to Biarritz tomorrow, and then home, and so, alas – I don’t think I shall see you until you come back to London.’

‘No,’ said Diana. ‘Goodness me, you’re very like Trefusis.’

‘This is quite a magnificent
hôtel
particulier
,’ he replied, taking one step down and gazing at the staircase ceiling. He was speaking very fast, as though he were shy. ‘How magnificently unreal it all is! But I can’t be mistaken – that’s a genuine, a very real Watteau, isn’t it?’

‘Get out,’ she said. ‘How
could
you not warn me you meant to come?’

He turned round, and quickly patted her hand on the banister, then kissed it and said: ‘Don’t cry, my dear Diana. Don’t, I’m sure there’s nothing to cry about.’ He paused. ‘In your – glorious situation, the only real immorality would be not to enjoy it – and not to be beautiful.’

Diana took a deep breath. ‘Goodbye for the present,
Arthur,’ she replied, and entered her rooms. She did not see Cornwallis go.

Half an hour later, when she was perfectly dressed, Diana entered her salon and told the plump young duke in the crudest way that she would do nothing for less than two million francs.

The duke was quite taken aback. Diana had a reputation for easiness, sexual naiveté and civilised behaviour, and her shouting at Cornwallis had made him very hopeful.

She looked ugly as she refused to bargain; her mind was all the time on Cornwallis’s intrusion, and on how men should never be allowed to be part of a household. All these men were beginning to advance much too far, they were forever disturbing the peace made by herself, Bridget and Alice. Diana felt that she and her friend and her daughter were no longer able to combine against the clients and, powerless as they seemed to be, exclude them from their real lives. Once, she had thought they were able to do that.

‘Touts
les
plaisirs
de
l’amour
je déteste,’ she told the duke, who spluttered. ‘Alors donc, Monsieur le Duc, je dis: pour moi deux millions. Deux, trois millions me donnera tant de plaisir, et vous si peu de peine!’

As she had expected, he turned her down and tried to laugh.

When he was gone Diana remembered that, as Bridget had told her, she had been frightened an hour ago. She had irrationally imagined that this man would see her for what she was, and would hold her in contempt because of it. But she had changed, she had learned something from her interview with him, and she was not in the least bit afraid now.

She must become fiercer, more demanding and ill-tempered, and thus attract masochists. That might make her corruptly happy. But I can’t manage it, surely, she thought. Diana went slowly back upstairs to her sea-green boudoir, let down her hair again and watched herself in the glass.

She could see Paris, framed by the windows, reflected in the mirrors behind her head. It was the 20th January, and on the high black roofs snow lay, like a shaking of flour on dark
marble in a pantry. The snow was old and it was not melting, it was merely being eroded away in the streets by endless feet and wheels. The sky was whiter than frost and its light turned Diana’s skin almost to blue.

It was true that she now hated sex, hated everything she had had to do with a man in the last year and had learned quickly and carefully how to do: but she noticed as she looked in the mirror that she seemed to thrive on it all the same. Her health and her looks were better than ever, she would grow more and more physically admirable until she burst with it.

Diana turned aside and began to undress. When she was back in one of her better negligées, she rang the bell and asked the housemaid to tell Alice to come to her. The child arrived after what seemed a long time and said: ‘Well, Mamma?’

Diana looked at her. ‘You’re not going to be a beauty, Alice, are you, but at least you’re going to be interesting. Little
jolie-laide,
then! You look so nice in your sealskin hat, it’s so ridiculous.’

‘Are we goin’ out in the motor, then?’

‘No,’ said Diana, and picked her up and carried her over to the window. It was so convenient, she thought, that Trefusis was away with friends. ‘We’ve got to stay in for a while yet, Alice.’

‘Beautiful,’ said Alice, who was remarkably contented, and did not seem to mind having two half-mothers and a series of men in the house. Alice understood reasonably well what they were there for. Diana knew with absolute certainty that she was right to allow Alice to grow up as fast as possible, to conceal no knowledge from her, so that the girl would never make the mistakes her mother had made through rebellious ignorance of the world. She knew that few people who made mistakes ended up half so well as she, Diana Blentham, had done.

‘I want to go in the motor, Mamma, and wear me sealskin.’

*

Diana spent the night of the 21st struggling with morality in her large and empty bed.

One telegram had been sent to Arthur Cornwallis in Half
Moon Street, another to Clementina Wood in Gorden Square, and a third to a comfortable hotel in Bloomsbury Way. Nearly all the packing was finished, and the other arrangements made. But Diana could not decide whether she had a right to a fortune with which to start life in London, or next to nothing at all. She would certainly have to explain everything to Trefusis in a letter, which must be left on her dressing-table, and she felt this to be rather degrading in itself. In it, she supposed she would include the various press cuttings about herself from the
Paris
Herald,
Le
Journal
and
Gil
Blas.

I am so used to running away, thought Diana: from home to Michael, from poverty, from Julian, and now this. Each time she deserted, she felt joyful and strong. It was said, of course, to be weak and bad to run away. Diana wondered what the servants would do and say, when she and Bridget and Alice turned up in the hall in travelling clothes, and ordered two fiacres to be sent for to take them and their luggage to the Gare du Nord. Probably they would think she was in trouble with the police, or had run up unpayable debts. Yet she was only leaving because she did not want to be immoral, and because she wanted friends.

Diana got out of bed and turned on the electric light. She went into her secondary boudoir and took out both her jewel-cases from their satin-covered safe. Returning to her bedroom, she sat down and tipped them out on to the pillows for counting, like a miser. She scattered them over the bed.

There was a bracelet of black pearls, diamonds and black enamel, two identical bracelets of gold and sapphire, about fifteen different rings, a tiara, brooches, earrings, headbands, more bracelets, and necklaces. Diana counted seven necklaces, five of which had been paid for by Trefusis. One matched the black-pearl bracelet, another mixed rubies, jet and emerald to make a collar of jewel poppies, and one was a heavy chain of interlaced diamonds. Diana sighed. Among them was the only piece her mother would consider fit for a lady: a three-row choker of very fine pearls with a clasp containing one yellow diamond.

She made her decision. She would take her simpler dresses from Worth (Bridget had already packed them), all the loose cash in the safe and in her dressing-table, and the big pearl choker. There must be about a hundred thousand francs in the house, thought Diana.

The rest of the jewellery, and everything else of value, she would leave. She would allow Trefusis to give it all to his next mistress. It was as though she, Diana, were the widow of a landed gentleman, obliged to hand the family jewels over to her son’s wife. As for the other men who had given her charming presents, Diana pictured them fighting over what she had abandoned so easily.

*

By the evening of the 22nd, Diana, Bridget and Alice were at Boulogne, waiting for the ferry to take them to England. It was stormy, and it seemed they would have to wait some time.

As she watched Bridget and Alice playing Snap in the corner of the palm-filled hotel lounge, Diana thought how simple it had all been in the end though travelling was, of course, always exhausting. Paris seemed very far away, and as she tried to see the dark Channel through the window, she imagined that there, in the Bois, it was summer.

Within twenty-four hours they should be in London, settled in their hotel, and ready to look for a house in Bloomsbury for whose freehold Diana would pay cash. Diana felt sea-sick already; but wild and nervous and brilliant as a young girl set suddenly free from schoolroom constraints. No doubt, she thought, tears were close to the surface, as they usually were with her.

None of the family slept well that night in the over-heated yet draughty hotel. Diana was kept awake because she could not stop the words of one Kitty’s favourite songs from
Iolanthe
running through her head. Even Lady Blentham had enjoyed
Iolanthe.

However hard she tried, Diana could not remember the next few words, which came before ‘to a party of friends and relations’.

She felt unwell the next morning, but the weather was better, and they were told that the ferries would be able to set out for Folkestone. Diana, Bridget and Alice left to catch their boat in a comfortable hurry.

It was not until they had reached the quayside, where they saw a hungry boy selling newspapers, that they learned the tidings which had reached Boulogne the night before. Diana stared at the black-edged English papers before she bought one; and she read it in amazement, because she had not thought of such matters for months.

‘Who’d have thought it, poor old lady, God rest her soul, and her in Ireland only last year!’ said Bridget, crossing herself as she stared over the boat’s side at the French coast. Everyone in England would be dressed in black, because Queen Victoria had died.

Diana put the paper down at last on the deck of the ferry, and lit a cigarette, which spoiled the respectable picture she made of a pretty English widow travelling with her servant and child.