The House in Paris (6 page)

She
wrote:

My dear Kingfisher:
Why
do you never write to me? I had your card at Christmas and hoped for a letter later, but not another word came. I shall begin to think you very much less constant than you declared you were on our drive round the lake. Your pressed wild pansy fell out of de Sévigné only the other day, and I smiled again at that passage we marked together. Am I always to see you standing on top of the rock in your long blue coat, looking down so intently as though you wanted to dive? Never to see you again, I mean? Here (you will see by the top I am at Mentone) I crawl about in the sun, like the many other old women, remembering friends who forgot. Old people, I know, must not make too many demands. And I expect your life is absorbingly full these days.

It comes suddenly into my mind — Do you like prim little girls? I hardly think that you do, but I throw this out. Henrietta, the younger of those two problem grand-daughters (Caroline married last year, she was the one you met) is being sent out to me, to finish the winter here. Her invaluable governess is away, ill, and her father does not know what else to do with her. One is not, as I said before, a grandmother for nothing.

Arrangements for the child's journey seem to devolve on me. Caroline has been unusually effective and found her as escorts two travelling women, one to Paris, one as far as Nice. (Nobody for the through train, unfortunately.) But the first woman insists on travelling overnight from London, the second on leaving Paris
late
the following day. Which leaves the child in mid-air for the day in Paris between (it is next Thursday she will be arriving in Paris, by that, I fear, very early train at the Gare du Nord). She could, of course, spend the day at a G.F.S., or some such, but as a first view of Paris that sounds a
little
sad! Though prim, we have our own ideas of things. Whereas a day
chez toi
would be a red letter for her. Dear Kingfisher, could you, I wonder, allow this to be possible? You must not feel bound in any way to amuse her; she reads anything anywhere. Though of course, if you
should
be free, a flying glimpse of Paris would be a delight; she has been nowhere yet and one is only eleven once. She is a responsive, susceptible little person and would, I don't doubt, adore you: in fact, I shall expect to hear for many days of the Kingfisher who forgot me and did not write.

But how I jump to conclusions! There is
no
reason at all why you should meet Henrietta: no time for this, I expect, in a life that I imagine now absorbing and full. Someone (should I like her?) I don't doubt now claims Kingfisher's heart and time. If, however, you should think of meeting Henrietta, will you wire Caroline (now Mrs Wade-Trefusis, 195 Pelham Crescent, S.W.) for times of trains (arrivals, departures, etc.) full instructions and names of the two travelling women, which I fear I forget? I have worked out a dear little system of cherry-pink cockades: one for Henrietta, in order that you may know her at the Gare du Nord, one for yourself for
her
to know you by (in case you should meet her, always in case!) and one for the second woman to wear at the Gare de Lyon, for Henrietta and you to know
her
by. Please also see Henrietta pins on her cockade again before going to G. de L. The second woman (who is, now I remember, called either Watts or Wilson) may not know who she is. I have posted all these cockades to Caroline: see that she
writes
to you, confirming all this and sending you the cockades. She is lazy and given to telegrams. If it is not possible for you to meet Henrietta (as I hardly expect it will be) Caroline must post your cockade to the G.F.S. So perhaps you'd be sweet enough to wire her, either way? I am sorry I cannot give you the times of the trains or the names of the two women, but I find they are in my other handbag at home, and I am writing this on a seat under a palm. However, Caroline knows all that.

No, I must not make claims on you, my dear Kingfisher: my remembering you more often than you remember me is not any reason to do that. If you really did take in Henrietta for Thursday I confess it would be a weight off my mind. Keep accounts of telegrams, taxis and any other expenses and remind Henrietta, who will have money with her, to pay you these back before saying Goodbye. She cannot learn too young to be punctilious.

I often wish very much you could join me here. (Perhaps, however, you do not want to leave Paris?) My little flat has big balconies but such wretchedly small and so few rooms that I hardly know yet how to fit Henrietta in. She is to go to a little school here, so will be out all day: otherwise she and I would not have room to turn round. But there are several moderate and I hear delightful pensions, quite near my little flat. So perhaps I may see my Kingfisher darting and glinting about here in her coloured coat again? This month and March would not, alas, be good for me, as parties of friends here in two of the villas make far too many claims: I had hoped for peace. So I should see not enough of you. If you thought you might come in April, I might attempt to keep on my little flat. If I cannot do this, I must move on to Florence, I fear. But do all you can to come, and we must both hope for the best.

If you should see Henrietta, you will have news of me, for what that may be worth. This letter goes to post now, and I on down to the sea. Always the same old beetle-green parasol! I think I must send you my de Sévigné, with that passage we marked. But I shall keep the pansy! Your affectionate,

PATIENCE ARBUTHNOT

Always hoping to hear from you.

This struck Leopold as a competent letter. He saw at once that Mrs Arbuthnot was wicked, and would succeed. Miss Fisher was not what he had imagined a kingfisher, but he let that pass. Precisely folding up the two letters, he saw he must not return to Spezia. He saw the row of red plasticine figures he had kept out for days on his windowsill because they kidded him plasticine sunbaked hard, and the one vague shape he had modelled that had dismayed Uncle Dee and disappeared in the night. Miasmas crept over all he had done and touched there. He saw himself tricked into living.

Then I will not, he thought. If he could have been re-embodied, at that moment a black wind would have rushed through the Villa Fioretta, wrenching the shutters off and tearing the pictures down, or an earthquake cracked the floors, or the olivey hill above the villa erupted, showering hot choking ash. Let them develop themselves. I will not go back there ... Leopold looked once more at his mother's envelope, at the address dashed off in a Berlin hotel room.

Getting up and pushing back the chairs, he began to pace the salon, with his eyes shut, pressing her empty envelope to his forehead as he had once seen a thought-reader do. Then he began to read slowly aloud, as though the words one by one passed under his eyelids: 'Dear Miss Fisher,' he said.

'It is kind of you to have Leopold at your house for us to meet. I shall be coming at half-past two on Thursday, so please have lunch over and be out of the way. Leopold and I shall go out,
then
you can come back as much as you want. We shall be very busy arranging things, as I am taking Leopold home to England with me. He cannot go back to Spezia as I mean to keep him, the people there must get hold of some other child. I never did mean him to go back, but did not say so for fear they would make a fuss. So they can put that in their pipes and smoke it. When I come, I shall go straight into the room where he is, so please do not be in it. I have come to the conclusion I cannot do without Leopold, because he is the only person I want. We have a great deal to say, so —'

But at that moment the door opened and Henrietta, red in the face, came in.

'Leopold!' she exclaimed, 'Whatever
are
you doing? There are enough mad people in this house!'

4

Mme Fisher's bedroom, though it was over the salon, had two windows, not one. Jalousies were pulled to over the far window, so that no light fell across the head of the bed. A cone of sick-room incense on the bureau sent spirals up the daylight near the door; daylight fell cold white on the honeycomb quilt rolled back. Round the curtained bedhead, Pompeian red walls drank objects into their shadow: picture-frames, armies of bottles, boxes, an ornate clock showed without glinting, as though not quite painted out by some dark transparent wash. Henrietta had never been in a room so full and still. She stood by the door Miss Fisher had shut behind her, with her heart in her mouth. Her eyes turned despairingly to a bracket on which stood white spiked shells with cameos on their lips. The airlessness had a strange dry pure physical smell.

'Here is Henrietta,' Miss Fisher said.

'Good morning, Henrietta,' said Mme Fisher.

'Good morning, Madame Fisher,' Henrietta replied. The hand she saw in the shadows did not stir on the sheet, so she stayed where she was on the parquet beside the door.

'Look, Henrietta, come round this side of the bed.'

'No, let her stay where she is. I see her best in the light.' The voice was less weak than minimized, like a voice far off. 'Go nearer the window, please; I have so very few visitors.' Henrietta heard Mme Fisher breathe more heavily, moving up on her pillows. Miss Fisher stood by, anxious. 'You speak French?' Mme Fisher said with a smile in her voice.

'Not very much.'

'You need not,' said Mme Fisher. 'I have been many years in England. I was a governess.'

'A "Mademoiselle",' said Miss Fisher, also smiling, anxiously.

'Yes,' went on Mme Fisher, 'I rapped very many knuckles, before my marriage.'

Henrietta's own knuckles stung. 'I hope,' she said, 'you are feeling better today?'

'No,' said Mme Fisher, without expression.

'Oh, you do feel better, Mother!'

'You must please let me decide.'

Miss Fisher sat down on the wall side of the bed and took up her knitting passionately, as though to obliterate herself.

Transfixed half-way between the door and the window, Henrietta felt that pillow was all eyes. Mme Fisher's unmoved regard was a battery: with an unconscious quiver Henrietta drew in her chin. If she was really dying her head would be flat, she thought. She felt every hair she had, and every freckle, every red bone button down her stomach stand out with frightening meaning: if pictures suffer, she did. 'So,' said Mme Fisher, 'you are the prim little girl?'

'Mother
!' said Miss Fisher, ducking over her knitting.

'That was a joke of your grandmother's,' said Mme Fisher. Henrietta, for the first time, stared straight between the bed-curtains, meeting lambent dark eyes in a white stained face. Then Mme Fisher relaxed back on the pillow, drawing the bedclothes closer up to her chin. 'Please come by the bed now: we must resign ourselves to talk in the dark. I am too ill for light, you know.'

This had such a mocking ring that Henrietta, edging between the bed and the shuttered window, only brought out, 'I'm sorry,' in an uncertain tone.

'At my age,' said Mme Fisher, 'one must expect to die soon.'

'You have no intention of dying,' said Miss Fisher with energy.

'Naomi will not let me. These days I may do nothing, not even die, I am so much under control.' Lying flat and straight, Mme Fisher turned her head slowly to smile at her visitor. Her dark eyes with their sick brown rims were communicative and mocking. Henrietta found in her smile a perplexingness she had once been told was beauty and learnt to recognize by some pause in herself. The smile was pungent, extraordinary, as deep as darkness and as dazzling as light.

Mme Fisher was not in herself a pretty old lady. Waxy skin strained over her temples, jaws and cheek-bones; grey hair fell in wisps round an unwomanly forehead; her nostrils were wide and looked in the dusk skullish; her mouth was graven round with ironic lines. Neither patience nor, discontent but a passionate un-resignation was written across her features, tense with the expectation of more pain. She seemed to lie as she lay less in weakness than in unwilling credulity, as though the successive disasters that make an illness had convinced her slowly, by repetition. She lay, still only a little beyond surprise at this end to her, webbed down, frustrated, or, still more, like someone cast, still alive, as an effigy for their own tomb. Her illness seemed to be one prolonged mistake. Her self looked, wildly smiling, out of her body: what was happening in here was too terrible to acknowledge; she had to travesty it and laugh it off. Unserene, she desperately kept her head.

Miss Fisher pointed across the bed with her knitting-needle, and Henrietta saw a chair and sat down. Mme Fisher's stick to tap with leaned by the bed. The chair was low, the bed high; so that her face was now on a level with Mme Fisher's: she gazed gravely but with alarm into those wells of sockets, those martyred amused eyes. Mme Fisher's foreign accent was marked but in no way quaint: no touch of comedy enlivened their talk.

'So you enjoy travel?'

'So far,' said Henrietta. 'So much happens.'

'Much does not happen here. It is quiet here, I am afraid.'

'Well, there's Leopold.'

'Yes. You travel, I hear, with a monkey?'

'Yes, called Charles. I left him down in the salon.'

'Will he wreck the salon?'

'Oh no, he's not
alive.''

'That was only my joke.'

Henrietta blushed.

'French ideas of funny are different,' said Mme Fisher. 'That was a joke in English, which you did not expect, perhaps. You are pleased to be going to visit your grandmother?'

'Well, I see her quite often, but it is always nice.'

'You will go to school at Mentone?'

'Yes.'

'That is good, I am sure. Mrs Arbuthnot is busy,' said Mme Fisher in her most hollow tone. 'She has many friends, writes many excellent letters and walks every day by the sea with a green parasol, reading Mme de Sévigné's letters. She goes for carriage drives, and taught Naomi to believe that she, Naomi, resembles a kingfisher.'