The Dangerous Years (8 page)

The meal was accordingly discussed and ordered with special care, and monsieur took the matter of the wine completely out of Joan's hands. He rolled his eyes, pursed his lips, and raised a fat finger; an amusing piece of professional salesmanship, that deceived nobody, but did the trick.

“We ought to make a note of this,” said Joan, half-way through the
entrecôte
, which had been preceded by Portuguese oysters.

“Nobody is interested in what other people have eaten,” said her mother, in a very English mood.

“No, but we might forget ourselves, and not be able to order it again. Pleasures have a habit of vanishing.”

“Really, you are becoming too earthy, Joan.”

The genial Beaujolais, so deceptively innocent in its country freshness, was directing both mood and conversation. It made Joan expansive, and perhaps a
little more inclined to release her truculent personality.

“What do you think of that Colonel Batten, the doctor's mysterious brother?”

“Mysterious?” Mary was guarded. She saw herself taking up a defensive attitude, and warmed by the wine, did not query so unexpected a partisanship.

“Well, isn't he? What does he do here in Paris; a retired soldier out of the Regular Army? He seems to have been here for ages, living at that antiseptic hotel of ours. And did you notice last night, when that telephone call came through from London, how furtive he became? I thought he would pick up his hat and run.”

“You are imagining things, Joan. I met him when I came out this morning, and he was quite polite and normal.”

She did not say that she had spent the major part of the morning with him. And she was not ashamed of the deception.

“No doubt,” said Joan dryly. “I'm sure he appreciates the best of everything. Most men of his kind do.”

“What do you mean by men of his kind?”

Mary felt quite heated; but she was in sufficient control to disguise her resentment of this unfair attack. She put it down to Joan's warped philosophy.

“Well, I felt from the first that there was something evasive about him. I can't help suspecting that he is under a cloud, and that he is here under his brother's eye. And that is a sure enough eye; which is more than one can say for
his
. I never saw anything more fishy.”

“Joan, you have had too much to drink. You have no right to talk of people in that way. It is downright … I don't know
what
it is. But it is most unkind.”

“I suppose so. But I'm not in a kind mood these days, Mother. And another thing. That child, the boy; he told me that this precious uncle of his wants to go against the father's very sensible decision.”

“How do you mean. I'm inclined not to listen to any more.…”

“Well, it is a fact. I went to call for you and thought that I was overhearing Mrs. Batten playing the piano when I arrived. But the playing was astonishing. I could tell that, even with my academic ear, stuffed with the cotton-wool of school and Newnham, and economic history, and … and … mountaineering!”

She added this last word as a grim afterthought, her face convulsed with disgust.

“Please, Joan! You are giving way. I am ashamed of you….”

“Sorry, darling. But as you say, it must be the wine.”

She was silent for a while, while they consumed a
salade
which monsieur had brought up himself and ceremoniously
fatigued
before them, with wooden spoon and fork.

“What puzzles me, Mother,” she said, more calmly, “is that nobody in the family has said a word about that child. He was not even mentioned as being alive last night, except by the baby girl. Did you notice that?”

“Why should he be discussed, at a first meeting like that?”

“No reason. But since he is so obviously a creature whose gifts must present a problem, and surely some degree of pride, I am surprised that nothing was said about him.”

“But what is unusual about the child? I thought him a quite ordinary little boy, rather neglected in fact; at least his clothes were.”

“Oh, Mother, you must have noticed that intense little face; the eyes darting like fireflies. But I'm being absurd. Well, it was
he
who was playing when I arrived; he, not his mother. And the music was delicious, ravishing. He told me it was Scarlatti. Think of those small hands commanding all that rapid stuff. It is obvious that he is being carefully trained, and given special treatment. That will
mean arrangements at home and at school. I wonder where he goes to school?”

“The mother told me, and she was not very enthusiastic about it, being a Catholic. Apparently Dr. Batten, though he is so quiet and seemingly inoperative, is the major factor in that household. The child goes with his sister to the near-by school, the Ecole Alsacienne.”

“Oh, I know. It is in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs. It is a big school, founded by the patriotic French from Alsace in 1870 after the Germans walked in. They wanted their children to be educated as French men and women. But it tends to be Protestant. All this is a part of my job, Mother dear, so don't be alarmed at my erudition.”

They finished their
salade
, and waited for coffee.

“But what is this about sending the child somewhere else?”

“I didn't say that. He told me that his uncle wanted him to give a public recital. What is the motive there? Is it family pride? I should have thought a British soldier would not have taken much pride in finding a pianist in the family. He would call it long-haired stuff, and all that. But of course, he may think there is money in it. If his own life isn't full enough, or his pocket either, he may fancy himself as an impresario for his brilliant little nephew.”

The mother did not reply. Her attention was fastened upon herself, for she could not understand why she was so angry with Joan. Did it matter what the girl thought about this stranger? And she preferred not to answer that question.

They drank their coffee in silence, except for her refusal to drink a cognac, and her decisive command that Joan should forgo a cognac too. In this, at least, the mother could assert her small authority.

“My head is swimming,” she said at last. “We ought not to have been so indulgent.”

“It comes nicely after a lot of renunciation,” said Joan, who had consumed most of the wine. “Let's go now to
the Cluny and look at the ancient time-pieces, and the bits of pottery. It will cool us down.”

They edged their way out of the tiny restaurant, to find that rain was falling, and thunder rumbling beyond the roar of traffic. Little scurfs of spray blew across the open square. A woman appeared in a doorway on the opposite side, exclaimed loudly, huddled herself into her coat collar, ducked, and minced over the flood to another doorway a few yards along the façade of buildings. No other sign of life, except a few pigeons gleaming in the wet.

“What do we do now?” said Mrs. Winterbourne, dodging back into the entrance.

“You wait there, and I'll stop a taxi; if that's possible,” said Joan, quite cheered by this discomfort.

Mary retreated, but she was most embarrassed by the lack of space, and the sense of being a nuisance, for the restaurant was still full and the staff busy. The proprietor saw her, however, and summoned his wife. They came forward and smiled at her, urging her to sit down at the table near the door, and without asking further, monsieur put a glass of crème-de-menthe before her, which she could not refuse.

She sat there sipping it, while her anger subsided. After all, she told herself, I know what Joan is like. And in her present mood, too, what else should I expect her to say? Any man is suspect at the moment. It is a wonder she takes up the cudgels for that scrubby little boy.

A car stopped outside, and she heard the rain drumming on its roof. Joan, looking like an athletic Ophelia who had fought her way out of ‘the glassy stream' and the entanglement of ‘dead men's fingers', triumphant over all the ills that men can bring to women, but damaged in the process, now poked her head in and beckoned to her mother. She grinned when she saw the green liqueur. Mary swallowed the dregs, smiled vaguely on monsieur and madame, and tottered after her daughter.

The rich meal, followed by the hurried retreat to the Cluny Museum, which the ladies found as cold as a tomb, resulted in an attack of indigestion that brought on a violent headache. Mrs. Winterbourne decided that she must do no more that day, and another taxi took them back to their hotel, where she went to bed, while Joan sat writing up the notes taken during the morning at the Institut: not a long task, but enough to keep her occupied before dinner.

Mary lay in semi-darkness, querulous because Joan took her indisposition for granted; rebelling against the diagnosis that “it's only your time of life, Mother. Another aspect of the injustice of nature toward women.”

Was the girl condemning her to old age, and no further interest in the world? Her present nausea tempted her to submit, though her will refused to.

The telephone rang, and Joan started up from her work.

“It's the doctor's wife,” she said, with her hand over the mouthpiece. “They want us to go round again to dinner. Isn't it rather imposing on them?”

“Certainly it is. And we must make that clear. Anyhow, I do not intend to move again to-night. I dare not trust myself upright. Anything might happen; and my head is terrible. But don't say anything to them about…”

Joan had already done so, expostulating with Mrs.
Batten, saying rapidly and with characteristic emphasis that she and her mother must make their own plans and not add to the burden of a professional household; and that for to-night the matter was settled because her mother was laid low with one of her migraines.

“Joan, why must you be so downright?” she moaned, as the girl slammed down the receiver, and returned to her work at the table under the light, which she had shaded from her mother's eyes with a silk scarf.

“I shall go down and have an omelette in that little place along the road,” said Joan, ignoring the criticism. “I'll try to find some lemons, and bring you in a seltzer.”

The suffering woman did not hear her depart. Joan had small sympathy with sickness, and Mary knew it. She was, for the moment, glad to get rid of the girl, and to lie alone with her thoughts, if the miseries of a migraine can be called thoughts. She fancied that she had dozed off, and was startled to find somebody standing beside the bed looking down at her. It was Dr. Batten.

“Vivienne sent me along, Mrs. Winterbourne. Is the roar of Paris traffic too much for you?” He smiled and felt her pulse, then her head, with a cool hand. She struggled up, and wrapped her bed-jacket round her, and tried to tidy her hair.

“Does this happen frequently?” he asked. “You look in excellent condition, you know. I am inclined not to be too sympathetic. But these tablets will be useful for such occasions. Take one now.”

He fetched her a glass of water, and she swallowed the medicine. It must have been his presence, however, that immediately worked upon her lax mood, for she began to chat with him, and he sat on the end of the bed, enjoying the conversation.

“My brother Tom tells me that he had a pleasant hour with you this morning. It is an odd thing that he should
have stepped forward like that. He is the shyest fellow I know. Poor chap!”

“Is he in trouble, then, Doctor?”

“Well, in a way, he has never been out of it. He did well enough during the war, won the D.S.O. and reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. That might have been a steady career, but he was wounded, and in the following despondency he decided to give up his commission and try to make a living in the outside world. Not easy for a Service man. Nobody wants him. The business world always think a professional who steps out of his job must have something fishy to hide, or be so spoon-fed by the conditions of his former trade that he will have no initiative in the world of free competition.”

“But all that is twelve years ago.”

“I know. He has knocked about a bit since then. He tried farming, like so many of his kind. Of course that failed. Farming is an expert job. There's nothing that he is expert at, except perhaps … well, I suppose that would be totally disregarded. But you know, Mrs. Winterbourne, he is a lovable character, and I'll swear that no man alive is of a more impulsive heart. He has really never quite grown up. He believes in everybody, for instance. It's a saintlike quality, if you come to think of it; but it does not get him very far in this modern world.”

“Are you more cynical about human nature, then, Doctor?”

Dr. Batten stopped, looked at her sharply, then smiled.

“A good doctor does not have fixed opinions, Mrs. Winterbourne. He takes each case as it comes.” He paused again. She felt him watching her with greater interest. “Is the tablet working yet? Good. What I meant to say about my brother is that whatever scrape he may get himself into, I am prepared to stand by him. And I can't really account for that feeling, beyond the call of the blood.”

“It sounds as though he is frequently in difficulties. He does not give one that impression. I could not imagine a figure more English, more … solid!”

Dr. Batten laughed, leaning forward on his hips and rocking himself gently to and fro. The light passed across his face at each movement, emphasising its sharpness, the deep-set eyes blazing in their caverns.

“Solids do not amount to much nowadays, Mrs. Winterbourne. You see the mischief we work by changing them. It looks as though we are approaching the goal of the medieval alchemists—and with disastrous consequences. All this passion for changing things! Do I sound oldfashioned? At any rate, I do not propose to try to change my brother—as a solid, that is. The only person who suffers, so far, is himself.”

“Is there nobody …?”