Unclouded Summer (15 page)

Not that he was going to let her see that he was wishing that. Taking his lead from her he half turned his back on her, isolating Silvi from the group, embarking on an animated discussion of the separate qualities of French and German films.

“I saw a number of Ufa films when I was in Germany,” he said. “They were very good technically; and they were all good entertainment value, but they all dealt with abnormalities of one kind or another. They none of them had that normal quality which, I don't know how you feel about it,
has always seemed to me to be the great quality of the best French films; however sensational the central plot may be, the background to a good French film, the behavior and manners of the minor characters, is recognizable as ordinary French life.”

He spoke with an animation that he rarely summoned, that was histrionic. He was going to talk well, he was resolved; he was going to talk a lot. And he was going to keep dead cold sober.

It was in a mood of belligerence that he decided that. And it was with the self-confidence of success that at the dinner's close he moved round the table towards Judy. He was no longer taut and nervous. He had been listened to, he had made people laugh; he had shown Judy that he could play her game. The moment of his reward had come. Now at last he and she could slip away to one of the many quiet corners that a house built out of five others held, so that at last he could tell her all that last night had meant, so that he could vow himself, not as an abject suppliant but as a man vindicated and assured. Whatever the outcome he was prepared to meet it. Never had he felt more certain of himself.

She turned as he came towards her.

“We're trying to arrange some bridge. Do you play?” she asked. “I've never seen you.”

“I'm afraid I don't play very well.”

“In that case I don't think it would be fair to inflict these robbers on you. So I suppose,” she said, turning back again to her hostess, “that that leaves our usual four.”

“That's certainly all right by me.”

It happened so quickly that he did not realize that it was happening. Stupefied, he stood watching the four of them move into the house. Bridge on a night like this. And from what he knew of bridge, certainly of Judy's bridge, that four would constitute a final pocket of resistance when the guests dispersed. Bridge, tonight! What chance now was there of his seeing her? He stared, stupefied at the doorway through which they had passed. How could she have? To behave as though tonight were any night.

A voice spoke at his elbow.

“There's not a thing you can do about it.”

He turned. It was Nina Ambrose. Her smile was mocking, but it was friendly too. He was touched at her saying that, just as he had been touched the night before when she had called him Francis. She could not know the full nature of
what was in his mind. But she could guess at it in part. It was a sympathetic smile. It was not however the kind of remark or smile that invited confidences. He changed the subject.

“It's the first time I've seen you in real evening dress,” he said.

It was a girlish dress, light-blue, with a tight fitting bodice and a flounced skirt, spreading out from the waist with a curtailed panier effect, into a fluttering fringe of silk about her knees.

“One day I'll show you what I looked like in court dress,” she said.

“Was your hair short like that?”

“Good heavens no. It was four years ago. It was bobbed. I don't know how one would manage those feathers with an Eton crop.”

From the far side of the terrace came the first notes of a gramophone. It was playing “Always.”

“I like this tune,” he said. “Let's dance.”

“All right.”

It was the first time they had danced together. The old tiling of the terrace was worn and smooth. From the first gliding step their steps fitted in an easy harmony.

“I like your scent,” he said.

“It's very old-fashioned I'm afraid. ‘It's ‘Quelques fleurs.'“

He was very conscious of her scent; he was conscious of her legs, straight and slim, moving against his. She smiled as the record ceased.

“What a relief a waltz is after all those Charlestons.”

“Can you dance the Charleston?”

“Of course I can.”

“Let's try one then.”

They put on “Yes, Sir, That's My Baby.” She danced it with the suppleness and vitality of which only extreme youth is capable: the knees kept close and the feet flying sideways, without effort, without any catch of breath. When the record stopped, the Heathcrofts clapped.

“An encore please,” they said.

Nina and Francis looked interrogatively at one another. At home he preferred the latest dances. But Charlestons seemed out of tune with these old walls and the moonlight on the hills.

“I'd prefer a foxtrot,” he confessed.

“So'd I. Let's look for one.”

They turned over the latest records. He read out the titles.
“Sitting on Top of the World,” “In a Little Spanish Town,” “Breezing Along.”

“No, let's have this, though it is a waltz,” she said. “Let's be sentimental.”

As they danced she hummed the words:

She was light, in his arms, but light though she was he was conscious of her being there. Her shoulders were soft but firm under his hand. “There's another old-fashioned one I saw,” she said.

Once again she hummed the words:

“I got engaged to this,” she said.

But this time when the record finished she did not seek out another. They had stopped near the parapet, and she turned to rest her hands on it. Below them and beyond them was spread the long panorama of the northern Littoral; the lights of the Middle Corniche curving between the pines and olive groves; the promontories of Nice and of Cap Ferrat dark against the sea; the lights of a yacht reflected in the harbor of Cap St. Jean; the scattered lights of villas in the hills, the two small bays, with Montboron obscuring the Promenade des Anglais, with the Croisette and La Napoule showing beyond its shoulder and beyond them, crowning them the tremendous backcloth of the Esterels, with a moon waxing to its full, flooding and veiling it with shadows.

“You see those last two peaks of the Esterels,” she said. “They're just like the island of Moorea, the island that you look at from Tahiti.” She paused, she sighed. “One tends to take all this for granted. Then something rather special happens and you see it with new eyes.” She turned, looking at him thoughtfully, then looked away. “It's all so exquisite, it all looks so peaceful. There's not one thing in it that one would alter. Yet how many people along this coast at this moment must be looking at it with breaking hearts. Have you ever thought of that? One associates unhappiness with
rain and cold and ugliness. Just as one associates unhappiness with poverty. Yet there are people along this coast tonight, people who've got health and youth and prospects, who're wishing they were dead. It's something that no one shivering in a garret could believe. They couldn't believe that unhappiness of that kind could be real. Yet it can, of course it can.” She was speaking in a kind of shorthand. “You're worried, you're unhappy,” she was saying. “And your unhappiness is no less real because you're feeling it on a summer night in Eze. You're unhappy. I'm sorry about it. But there's nothing I can do.” That was what she was saying and he was grateful to her for saying it in just that way, leaving so much unsaid.

From behind them came the voice of their hostess calling.

“What about some backgammon, Nina?”

It was after one before he was to stand upon the terrace of the Hotel Welcome watching the tail lights of a gray-green Chevrolet swing out of the square, northwards to the Corniche Road. After one, and it was fourteen hours since he had stood here, telling himself that before he stood here next, his fate one way or another would have been settled. Fourteen hours and in those fourteen hours he had not spent one minute alone with Judy. By not one word or look or gesture had she suggested that they were anything more, that they could ever be anything more to one another, than the casually affectionate friends they had been two days earlier.

He turned back to the hotel. It was very quiet. No ship was in. There was no shouting, no foxtrots coming from the bar. A cat crept out stealthily from the dark tunnel of the Rue Obscure, looked round her and then went back again. He rang for the night porter. The night porter was drowsy and uncommunicative. His room once again was filled with moonlight. In the far corner of the ceiling the beam of the lighthouse flashed and passed. He switched on the light. His^ picture was standing upon the chest of drawers. Twenty-four hours ago, he thought.

He walked over to the balcony. It all looked as it had looked last night, as it had looked that first night when he had stood here after that long first day with Judy, as it had looked on all those other nights, anonymous, and undetailed, when he had returned here from this or the other party, his heart light with happiness. Happiness. What had happened to all that happiness? Twenty-four hours ago he had been closer to Judy than he had believed possible for two human being to be to one
another, fulfilled and drowned in an intimacy that displaced all other intimacies, that removed the need for any other intimacy. Twenty-four hours ago. He turned away from the window, walked back to the bed, picked up the pillow, held it against his cheek. It was scented still. He had never felt lonelier in his life.

As it began so was it to continue. The second day was a replica of the first. From half-past ten when she called for him with the Heathcrofts until half-past twelve when she dropped him in the cobbled courtyard he was continuously in Judy's company, yet in all those fourteen hours he was not once alone with her.

She did not avoid him. On the contrary she was friendly, affectionate, “the perfect hostess.” She introduced him to anyone he did not know. She brought him whenever she could into the conversation. She quite often built up the conversation for him. She gave the impression that she was arranging her program so that he would be doing the things that would amuse him most. “We must see that your last days are good ones,” she insisted. She behaved exactly as she had done over the last three weeks, as though nothing had happened to change their relationship to one another; as though she had never said, “Oh my dear, what are we going to do about it?”

A second day exactly like the first.

It was in a different mood however that he was to stand this time upon the balcony. Where the night before he had been puzzled, saddened, hurt, this time he was angry and resentful. He no longer asked himself why Judy had behaved this way; he was concerned solely now with the fact she had. He had asked himself questions the night before. Now he remembered remarks that she had made, remembered things that had been said about her; Nina had talked about “Judy's crazes.” He remembered how Judy had taken up Rex Allan. Had not Judy herself said “If I wasn't ever to see you again, I wouldn't really mind.” Wasn't a remark like that in keeping with such behavior? The night before, he had asked himself question after question. But now he was past asking questions. He was not concerned with causes but with effects. She had behaved outrageously, that was all that mattered. She had behaved outrageously and he had had enough. He was not going to subject himself to a repetition of those last two days. Definitely and finally he was through. No one was going to treat
him
like that.

The next day, his last at Villefranche, broke gray and wet. This made it easier, he thought.

Directly after breakfast he rang up the Marriotts'. To his relief the butler answered him.

“Don't bother to disturb Her Ladyship, but will you please tell her that I am very sorry but I can't make the picnic? I have to go down the coast,” he said.

That's that, he thought. And tomorrow he would be off. He would write to her from the ship; something friendly and affectionate; so that if ever they did meet later they could meet as friends. Yes, that was what he would do.

The rain was falling with a quiet and drear persistence as he set out to swim. He wore a mackintosh. It was no day for loitering. He swam for a few minutes then hurried back. The clock was striking ten as he reached his room. Ten o'clock, and a whole day before him. He set out his easel. The sun had been shining when he began this picture. He had been painting happily, his eye upon the clock; Judy was meeting him at noon. Three mornings ago. It was this picture which had stood propped upon the dressing table when he had followed Judy into the room. He closed his eyes. The memory of that next moment, the memory of the moments that had followed ran along his veins in fire. If I live to be a hundred, he thought, I'll go on missing her.

He rose to his feet; he walked over to the balcony. Yesterday and the day before, she had seemed to have no part in his existence, but here, on this balcony, where they had stood together, he could not believe that he had lost her.

He sat down again before the easel, but he could not concentrate. It had been a different picture three mornings ago, just as it had been a different world, and he a different person, with the loveliest moments of his life ahead and he not knowing it. A different world and he a different person. I'll probably never finish it, he thought.

He put away his brushes. He had better, he supposed, do something about his packing. He had little to pack, however; he was traveling light, a suitcase and a knapsack. He walked out again onto the balcony. It was raining harder. Rivulets of water that were fast becoming streams were running down
the steep cobbled streets from the upper town. A wind was springing up, the boats were rocking against their moorings. The waterfront was a stretch of pavement. No nets were laid out along its stones. Cap Ferrat was invisible across the water. It was not yet eleven. How quickly the time had passed when the sun was shining and she with him. I'd better go into the upper town and have a drink, he thought.