The House in Paris (18 page)

'Receive,
chère madame,
my most... etc. etc.'

Somewhere in all that is what made her write, thought Karen. 'Such considerations' — how the French despise us! Did Max really say that? How I used to wonder what they said in the salon. How
she
used to smile when she found me in the hall! Did
she
send Max to England? What did she hope would happen? How like her, writing to Mother. What is she planning now? . . . July 5th: I shall not be married by then.

Braithwaite slipped in to put down the evening paper, folded like a lily for a coffin. She would have heard by now; news travels downstairs through the bones of a house. Mr Michaelis opened the study door; he and Karen both heard Mrs Michaelis pacing over their heads. In the course of the next hour it was decided that he was to catch tonight's Irish mail, to support Uncle Bill on his journey with the coffin tomorrow. If Uncle Bill had known how to ask for support he should have telegraphed, but they forgave this. Aunt Violet was to be buried at Montebello. Proper clothes were packed and Mr Michaelis seen off, homesick, dumb; he was to dine on the train.

Two days later Mrs Michaelis, seated at her desk in a black dress with pretty touches of white, turned up Mme Fisher's letter, which had got into the file of letters of sympathy. She read it through with a frown. 'Edith Belfrey has made another muddle,' she said. She went on: 'Mme Fisher seems to suggest that that young man is marrying Naomi for her money. How odd the French are!'

'She is terribly unfair.'

'Oh, I've no doubt he is — or that must come in to it. But it's odd of her to tell
me
so.' Mrs Michaelis, putting the letter aside, dipped her pen in ink. 'I don't think one need answer,' she said. 'I'll speak to Edith Belfrey.' She began to reply to another letter of sympathy. Her eyes had blue circles round them, her note paper had come out in a thin black line. She wrote a little, then looked up and said to Karen: 'How unreal it seems!'

8

Before the end of May it was summer; cool in the house but glaring hot in the streets. Mrs Michaelis went on being puzzled rather than sad; she was as right as ever in all that she said and did, but her eyes did not meet yours with the old confidence. Everyone blamed Uncle Bill for letting Aunt Violet's death come as such a shock; Karen did not even ask herself why
she
had said nothing. Karen went to the studio almost every day, but saw nothing but rings of air round the model; she worked away flaggingly, with a dead brush. What she had thought she saw in the flower-pot on the balcony, that had sent her back to painting, was gone now. Her dull work was done for pity (her own pity) like a pavement artist's on a cold day.

One hot night, when her parents were out together, she went into the study to look for soda-water on the tray Braithwaite left ready for Mr Michaelis. With her thumb on the siphon she stopped and looked at the telephone: the window was open behind the curtains and hot night air came in. The telephone held her eye; she saw it going to speak. The bell rang: Karen put down her glass. Was she Paddington 0500? Then hold on for Paris. Karen went to shut the window to keep out London, the door to keep out home. This sealed her up in silence with the telephone and one lamp cut out from darkness under its green shade. When she picked the receiver up they were on the line.

'... Miss Michaelis, please?'

'Speaking ... Hullo, Max.'

'Hullo, Karen. Where are you?'

'Here.'

'In which room?'

'The study. They are out. Where are you?'

'Rue Sylvestre Bonnard. Naomi is at the theatre with the Americans. Her mother has gone to bed.'

'Ill?'

He said: 'She has gone to bed,' in the same tone.

They waited; the line seemed to go dead. 'Max?'

'I was overwrought, I wanted to hear your voice.'

'It's four weeks since — '

'Yes. Will you come to Boulogne?'

'When?'

'Next Sunday. Or shall I come to Folkestone?'

'No, not Folkestone; I've been there. I mean ... Boulogne.'

'The boats will give you some hours. Sunday, then.'

'Yes. Will you meet the morning boat?'

'Yes.'

The line died again. 'Max?'

'Yes?'

'Is that all?'

'Yes.'

'Good night.'

'Good night.'

Karen had hung up; they had had less than three minutes. She looked for a cigarette in her father's box and lit it unsteadily. The clock said half-past eleven; her father and mother, who had been at a concert, must be walking home. He liked to do this on fine nights, so she would pick up her skirts and walk beside him with gallant even steps. Karen opened the window and looked across at the lights in the mews; this was above the morning-room where she had talked to Naomi. Electric silence filled the gardens and courts. Four weeks, she thought. How did I bear four weeks?

On Saturday night, she told them she would be spending tomorrow in the country, starting early, getting back rather late. Her mother said 'Yes?' with the uninquisitive smile that had kept Karen from ever lying before. Never to lie is to have no lock to your door, you are never wholly alone. Her mother's agreeing smile made the world small; there was nowhere left to go to. Her family's powerful confidence was a searchlight that dipped into every valley, not letting you out of view. Since the night Max rang up, all faculty for tenderness in Karen had stopped — perhaps it had stopped before that; it might even lie in Aunt Violet's grave. All she felt, that Saturday, was: She
ought
to ask; I have an unnatural home ... On Sunday she crept downstairs in a thin dress, with a coat over her arm, to catch the early boat train. Summer mist lay over the lake in the park; what she did had no more colour than going to school.

She sat in the train in her thin dress; everyone else had luggage. The train swayed on the rails, the summer country swayed past: knolls, trees in their early morning blue bloom. Sooty siding walls, a dead bird on a wire, moon-daisies in a cutting: the known county of Kent. Expectation made her hollow. The sea appeared. On board, the vibration of the ship starting half woke her nerves. Looking back at England, she asked herself: Or, is this courage? and walked the deck still not knowing. On this unclear fine morning France could not be seen.

The hills and dunes of Boulogne were chalked green and white against the paper-blue sky: France looked one long low hill. Sea-clearness struck the houses, from the glittering sea. Dykes, earthworks and idle cranes appeared; two long black-and-white wooden piers ran out to meet the ship. Eager trippers and blasé Sunday travellers crowded up to wait where the gangway would be let down. Karen looked up and saw the cathedral dome, ethereal with distance, at the top of the town: thin chimneys stood along the inland skyline. They steamed in past the Casino, which flew two flags; sunny light rippled over its garden trees, so close and bowery that they looked like a wood. The long line of quayside hotels and cafés smiled, expectant of the incoming ship. France met her approach coquettish, conscious, gay.

Across the water from the hotels, on the railway quay, a group of people were waiting, shading their eyes as the sun struck the bright white ship: women in cotton frocks with their bare arms up. The ship steadied and drew alongside. Karen, looking down calmly, saw Max. Hat off, sun dazzling his unburnt forehead as his eyes searched the ship as calmly, he looked young. Stuck in his coat, a rose that he must have stopped to buy at some flower-gay street corner. Opposite the rose, the holiday town hung like a painted scene: after all, after all, were they not meeting for pleasure? He hasn't seen me, she thought, and looked away gently at the cranes over his head, the crowded shipping behind. It was twelve noon: sharp and deep Sunday chimes broke from two belfries into echoing streets. Max suddenly saw Karen. She smiled, and heard them run the gangway across. They stood looking at each other. When the gangway was clear, she landed, last of all.

They walked down the cobbled quay towards the bridge; lines cross the quay and they waited once to let part of the boat train shunt. Max said: 'We have a fine day.' Karen, stepping on air, did not feel the cobbles. Max had put on his hat with the brim well down because of the sun. Their hands, swinging, touched lightly now and then; their nearness was as natural as the June day. Saying nothing, they crossed the bridge and walked down the quay at the other side, along the line of cafés, then turned into one where he ordered Pernod Fils and she said she would have a vermouth and soda, please. The man brought some dusty ice in a zinc pail, and Max scraped the sawdust off Karen's piece of ice with a spoon out of her saucer. The inside of the café was transparently dark, the marble table cold to Karen's bare elbows. Outside in the glare, she saw from the women walking how rough the cobbles had been. A hot breath from the sea made the orange awning flop.

Max spooned the wedge of clean ice into Karen's drink. 'I suppose we shall say something,' he said seriously.

'Do we want to?'

'No-o,' he said, with his funny rising inflection. They looked at each other's drinks; the Pernod with water added turned solid yellow and sent up an aniseedy smell. Karen looked up first, at Max's turned down eyelids, the cheekbones showing under his unburnt skin. 'Do you live indoors?' she said.

'Yes. I am too busy. And games I never play, which is terrible in France. Do you mean, I shall get fat?'

'No, I should think you were born thin.'

'I did play tennis.'

'Well?'

'Fairly well. But in town it is too expensive. When I was a boy, I played in the south of France.'

'Did you know people there?'

'My mother's relations lived there.'

'Are they Provençals?'

'No; my aunt's husband retired there from Le Mans. He had one of those new villas outside Mentone, and grew carnations for market up in the hills. He is dead now.'

'My mother's sister has just died.'

Your aunt? So many aunts have lately died. Look at Naomi's.'

'I had been staying with her the month before.'

'Then you must be sorry,' said Max. He looked un-understandingly at her, but his dark startled pupils softened with gentleness. She thought of the Chester Terrace drawing-room, blazing, that deathly evening, with sunshine, into which he had not come. 'I was more frightened,' she said. 'It seemed to crack my home.'

'Did it?' said Max. 'I did not care for my uncle, but I remember very well when he died.'

Karen's empty white gloves lay on the table between them; he turned one over, intently looking at it. Nerves in her finger-tips began burning; she looked away from the glove at the grey feathery veins in the marble table-top. Outside, the idle flopping of the awning filled up the pause.

'I've been painting again,' she said.

'I wondered whether you would.'

'When do you think about me?'

'I never know when I may — Did you paint well?'

'No. I can't see things now.'

'Then is it worth it?'

'No. But the day you left -'

'This is better than what we both do,' he said putting the glass down and looking across at Karen.

You might not think so the whole time.'

His forehead wrinkled. 'I never know,' he said. ' — Have you been in Boulogne before?'

'Only crossing it, landing here.'

'Shall we walk about?'

'I'm rather hungry,' she said. 'I forgot to ask them for early breakfast, so I only had tea before I started.'

He did not seem to hear; he said: 'Will you take your hat off?'

She took off her hat, and he looked at the way her hair grew round her forehead; his eyes fixed unbelievingly on her forehead as though he had not known she still looked like this.

Then he said: 'Then we'll have lunch. I know where we will go.' He paid for the drinks and Karen put her hat on. As they stepped out under the awning he said: 'We can't, I suppose, look at each other the whole time.'

Boulogne is less shallow than it looks from the sea. Inland, streets run criss-cross some way up the bluff behind, under the citadel. At the end of May there are still not many visitors; the townspeople took one in with such possessive alert eyes that Karen thought: They must think we are staying here. But however far into the town you penetrate, beside trams, under arches, you never feel inland or forget that the downhill streets have a line of water ruled across at the end. The silence in
culs-de-sac
is the silence of not hearing the sea. Today, the salt sunshine brought every shape nearer, as though distance had been parched out. Doorways, cobbles, arches and stone steps looked sentient and porous in the glare. Buildings basked like cats in the kind heat, having been gripped by cold mists, having ached in unkind nights, been buffeted in the winter. Hot wind tugged now and then at the flags down on the Casino, stretching the flags, then letting them drop again. Flashing, a window was thrown open uphill. What you saw, you felt. Max's presence, and what he said or did not say, made the flags, the steep streets and the window opening familiar; she saw the same deep reason for everything.

The façade of a theatre blocked the end of the street where the restaurant was. Going into Mony's, they sat down side by side on a brown leather bench, unfolding the pressed napkins. Max said he had liked this place before. Karen knew he meant: So I hope we may like it now. But because inside here was so suddenly dark — and so suddenly chilly, making her cup her bare elbows in her hands — because she missed the table with grey veins and the hot orange of the awning, all she felt was: Before? Before? Who with? He had been a man for years, and Boulogne had been here always. With Naomi, who had sat on her own bed in the dark? She did not picture any exact other woman; it was his whole experience that stood over her, while Max read down his menu Napoleonically, and she looked at her menu blotty with mauve ink. This is the worst of love, this unmeant mystification — someone smiling and going out without saying where, or a letter arriving, being read in your presence, put away, not explained, or: 'No, alas, I can't tonight,' on the telephone — that, one person having set up without knowing, the other cannot undo without the where? who? why? that brings them both down a peg. Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies .. . Then Max saw Karen's fingers comforting her cold elbows. He put his menu down. 'Are you cold, my darling?' he said.