“Of course their marriage was a success,” said Celia. “Pappy adored Mama, we all three know that.”
“Adoring a person does not necessarily mean you’re happy,” said Maria.
“It generally means you’re miserable,” said Niall.
Celia shrugged her shoulders, and went on darning the children’s socks.
“Anyway, Pappy was never the same after she died,” she said.
“Nor were any of us,” said Niall. “Let’s change the subject.”
Maria sat cross-legged on the sofa, and stared into the fire.
“Why should we change the subject?” she said. “I know it was terrible for you, but it was just as bad for Celia and for me. Even if she was not my mother, she was the only one I had ever known and I loved her. Besides, it’s good for us to delve into the past. It straightens things out.”
She looked suddenly forlorn, there alone upon the sofa, with her legs tucked under her and her hair rumpled. Niall laughed.
“What does it straighten out?” he said.
“I see Maria’s point,” interrupted Celia. “It brings our own lives into focus, and heaven knows, after what Charles said about us just now, it’s time we did that.”
“Nonsense,” said Niall. “Wondering whether Pappy and Mama’s marriage was successful doesn’t help us to decide why Maria’s has suddenly become a flop.”
“Who says it’s a flop?” said Maria.
“You’ve sat there hinting it for the past hour,” said Niall.
“Oh, don’t start that sort of thing,” said Celia wearily. “I never can decide which is the more irritating, when you two agree or disagree. If you must play the piano, Niall, play something real. I hate that droning, I always did.”
“I won’t play at all if it’s a nuisance,” said Niall.
“Oh, go on, don’t take any notice of her,” said Maria. “You know I like it. It helps me to think.”
She lay back again upon the sofa, her hands behind her head.
“How much do you two really remember about that summer holiday in Brittany?” she asked.
Niall did not answer, but his playing turned to discords, harsh and unpleasant.
“It was very thundery,” said Celia, “one of the most thundery summers we ever had. And I learned to swim. Pappy taught me to with infinite patience. He never looked his best in a bathing suit, poor darling, he was much too big.”
But, she was thinking, surely the only real thing we remember was the climax. Did not that overshadow all the rest?
“I played cricket on the sands with those frightful boys from the hotel,” said Niall surprisingly. “They would use a hard ball and I hated it. But I thought it best to practice because of going to school in September. I was much better at jumping. I beat them hollow at jumping.”
What, in God’s name, was Maria up to, raking back the past? What good could it possibly do, what use was it to anyone?
“We were discussing earlier on about us all having different angles on the same thing,” went on Maria. “Niall said we saw things from a separate viewpoint. I think he is right. You say that summer was thundery, Celia. I don’t remember a single storm. It was hot and fine, day after day. No wonder nobody knows the real truth about the life of Christ. Those men who wrote the Gospels all told a different story.” She yawned, and settled a cushion behind her back. “I wonder at what age I ought to tell the children the facts of life,” she said inconsequently.
“You are the last person to do that,” said Niall. “You would make it sound much too exciting. Leave it to Polly. She will model little figures in plasticine, and demonstrate.”
“What about Caroline?” said Maria. “She’s long past the plasticine stage. The Headmistress of that school will have to tell her.”
“I believe nowadays they do it very well in schools,” said Celia seriously. “They make it clean, and bright, and unemotional.”
“What? Drawings on blackboards?” asked Maria.
“Yes, I think so. I’m not sure.”
“Wouldn’t that be rather rude, though? Like those awful chalked figures on the front at Brighton, with ‘Tom goes with Molly’ scrawled underneath.”
“Oh, well… Perhaps it’s not on blackboards. Perhaps it’s things in bottles. Embryos,” said Celia.
“That’s much worse,” said Niall. “I couldn’t bear to see an embryo. Sex is tricky enough, without embryos.”
“I didn’t know you found it so,” said Celia, “or Maria for that matter. But, anyway, we’re wandering from the point. I don’t know what sex has got to do with that summer holiday in Brittany.”
“No,” said Maria, “you wouldn’t.”
Celia wound up the darning wool on the card, and put it back in the basket with the socks.
“It would be much more important, Maria,” she said severely, “if instead of worrying about whether to teach the children the facts of life you taught yourself how to darn their socks.”
“Give her a drink, Niall,” said Maria wearily. “She’s going to start that preaching, spinster thing. So boring.”
Niall poured out a drink for Maria, and for himself and Celia.
Then he wandered to the piano. He put his glass down on the ledge beside the keys. He was whistling something under his breath.
“What were the words?” he said. “I can’t remember the words.”
He began to play very quietly, and with the tune the three of us swung back into the past.
“Au clair de la lune,
Mon ami Pierrot,
Prête-moi ta plume,
Pour écrire un mot.
Ma chandelle est morte,
Je n’ai plus de feu,
Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour l’amour de Dieu.”
Maria sang softly in her clear child’s voice; she was the only one to remember the words.
“You used to play it, Niall,” she said, “in that funny little stiff drawing room of the villa, while the rest of us sat out on the veranda. You played it over and over again. What started you?”
“I don’t know,” said Niall, “I can’t remember.”
“Pappy would sing it,” said Celia, “after we had gone to bed. We had nets, because of mosquitoes. Mama used to lie in a long chair, in that white frock; she used to have a fly whisk in her hand which she used as a fan.”
“It did thunder, I remember now,” said Maria. “The whole of the lawn would be flooded in five minutes. We ran up from the beach with our frocks over our heads. There were sea-fogs too. The lighthouse.”
“That man who wanted to write a ballet for Mama and never understood that she despised ballet, that she did her own individual form of dancing—what was his name?” asked Celia.
“Michel Something-or-other,” said Niall. “He was always looking at Mama.”
“Michel Laforge,” said Maria, “and he was not always looking at Mama.”
We remembered the house too clearly and too well. It stood back a little from the cliffs, which were steep and dangerous. A path wound down through the gardens to the sea. There were rocks and pools, and curious, dark, cold caves, through which the sun filtered slowly like a torch’s beam. Wild flowers grew upon the cliffs. Sea-pinks, and thrift, and celandine…
6
When the weather was thick the foghorns used to sound throughout the day and night. There was a little cluster of islands about three miles offshore; they were uninhabited, rockbound, and dangerous. Beyond them was the lighthouse. The foghorn sounded from there. In the day it was only a minor irritant; we soon grew used to it. But at night it was different. The muffled boom was like a threat, coming with ominous regularity. We would wake in the small hours after a preceding day that had been clear and warm with no hint of fog, and suddenly in the stillness of the summer night the thing that had woken us would sound again, moaning and persistent. We tried to picture it as something friendly, a mechanical device worked by the lighthouse keeper, some sort of engine or machine that could be turned
by hand. But it was useless. The lighthouse could never be reached, the sea was too rough, the rocky islands were denied us. And the voice of the foghorn remained the voice of doom.
Pappy and Mama changed their room to the spare room at the back of the villa because Mama could not bear to wake up and hear the foghorn in the night. The spare room had no view. It looked out upon a piece of kitchen garden, and the road leading to the village. Mama was more than usually tired that summer. The season had been a long one. We had been in London all the winter, and had gone to Rome for Easter, and then on to Paris for May, June and July. Plans were being made for another long tour in the autumn, to America and Canada. There was talk of Niall going to school, and possibly Maria too. We were all growing too fast, we were all getting out of hand. Maria was as tall as Mama, which was not saying much, perhaps, for Mama was small, but when Maria leapt from rock to rock down on the shore, or stood for a moment poised on a ledge before diving, Pappy said she had become a woman overnight and none of us had realized it. We were all depressed when he said this, Maria most of all. She had no wish to be a woman. It was a word she hated, anyway. It sounded like someone old, like Truda; it sounded like a very dull person, Mrs. Sullivan perhaps, shopping in Oxford Street and carrying parcels.
We sat round the table on the veranda, sipping cider through straws, discussing it.
“We ought to take something to stunt our growth,” said Maria. “Gin or brandy.”
“It’s too late,” said Niall. “Even if we bribed André or someone to get us gin from the village, it wouldn’t work. Look at your legs.”
Maria stretched out her long legs from under the table. They were brown and smooth, and golden silky hairs ran down the center of them. She began to laugh suddenly.
“What’s the matter?” said Niall.
“You know when we were playing vingt-et-un the other evening after supper,” she said, “and Pappy made us laugh so much telling us about his young days in Vienna, and Mama had gone to bed early with a headache, and Michel came and joined us from the hotel.”
“Yes,” said Celia, “he was very unlucky at vingt-et-un. He lost all his counters to me and Pappy.”
“Well,” said Maria, “guess what he did. He kept stroking my legs under the table. I got such giggles, I was afraid you would see.”
“Rather cheek,” said Niall, “but I should think he’s the sort of man who likes stroking things. He always makes a fuss of the cats here, haven’t you noticed?”
“Yes,” said Celia, “so he does. I think he’s very affected, and I’m sure Pappy does too. I don’t think Pappy likes him.”
“He’s really Mama’s friend,” said Niall, “they’re always having talks about this ballet he wants to write for her, for the autumn tour. They went on and on about it yesterday afternoon. What did you do when he stroked your legs? Kick out under the table?”
Maria shook her head, and sipped comfortably at her cider.
“No,” she said, “I liked it. It was rather a nice feeling.”
Celia stared at her in surprise, and looked down at her own plump legs. She never tanned properly like Maria.
“Is it?” she said. “I should have thought it was silly.” She leaned forward and stroked her own leg and then stroked Maria’s.
“It’s not the same, you doing it,” said Maria. “That’s dull. The whole point is to have someone doing it who you don’t know very well. Like Michel.”
“Oh, I see,” said Celia. She was puzzled.
Niall felt in his pocket for a sucette. It was lime and very bitter. He sucked it thoughtfully. It was being a strange sort of summer. We none of us played the games we used to play. Catholics and Huguenots, English and Irish, explorers up the Amazon. There was always something else to do. Maria would wander off on her own, or become friendly with grown-up people from the hotel like this boring Michel, who must be quite thirty anyway, and Celia had started a new, irritating business of wanting to be good at swimming. She took things up with such enthusiasm, concentrating hard on her strokes, counting loudly and then jumping up in the water and calling out, “How many strokes that time? Was it better? Do watch, someone.”
No one wanted to watch, but Pappy would glance up with an indulgent smile, and answer back, “Very good. Keep at it. I’ll come and show you directly.”
Once, thought Niall, we would be together, Maria choosing the game, saying who was to be who, what were their names, which was to be the enemy. And now it was changing, the thing of pretending to be other people. That was what Pappy meant about us all growing up, about Maria becoming a woman. Soon we won’t be children anymore. We shall be like Them.
The future held no security with this talk about the American tour, taking only Celia, with school for himself and Maria. Niall threw away the bitter end of his lime sucette, and went indoors to the sitting room. It was cool and quiet inside, the shutters were all down. He went over to the piano and gently lifted the lid. It was only this summer that he had discovered how simple it was to find a combination of notes, turn them into chords, and make sense from them. When the others were down on the beach, bathing or lying in the sun, he would come into the empty house and do this. He wondered why people bothered to learn the piano properly, read music, weary their brains with things called crochets, and quavers, and semiquavers, when it was the simplest thing in the world to find the right sound of something that you had heard once, and play it straight off upon the piano.
Already, he knew all Pappy’s songs. You could change the meaning of them too by the alteration of the notes; you could turn quite a bright, jolly song into something sad by putting in or omitting one single chord, and by making the melody run, as it were, downhill. He could think of no other way of expressing it. Perhaps if he went to school somebody would teach him properly, give him lessons. Meanwhile, there was endless fascination in this private method of exploring. It was, in a way, as much fun as the old games of pretence with Maria and Celia, possibly even better, because he could choose his own sounds, whereas in the games he had to play whatever game Maria proposed.
“Au clair de la lune
Mon ami Pierrot,
Prête-moi ta plume
Pour écrire un mot.
Ma chandelle est morte,
Je n’ai plus de feu,
Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour l’amour de Dieu.”
Pappy used to sing this for a final encore very often. The simpler the song, the wilder became the audience. They would scream, and wave handkerchiefs, and stamp with their feet—just because he did nothing at all but stand perfectly still on the stage and sing a little simple song that everybody had learned in their cradle. It was the voice going soft that did it—you got the same effect with a muted string on a fiddle. And, more exciting still, you could get the same sadness out of “Mon ami Pierrot” by changing the notes around; the melody was the same and the general sense, but by changing the chords, the note of despair became sharper. It was even more exciting to play the melody to a different time.
Pappy used to sing every word for its own value, and that was why it came over so well and with such grace—
“Au clair de la lune.”
But if you changed that, if you started with emphasis on the “Au” and then ran on and emphasized again on “lune,” breaking the lune into two, it became a dance rhythm and was altogether different. The pathos was gone; nobody need be sad anymore. Celia would not have to cry. Niall would not have that awful feeling that swept over him at times of being terribly unhappy for no reason.
“Au clair beat… beat… de la lu… beat… beat… ne
Mon ami… beat… beat… Pierrot”
(ding-a-dong-and a ding-a-dinga-dong).
Yes, of course, that was the answer. It was gay, it was fun. Pappy ought to sing it in this fashion. Niall repeated the song over and over again, making the new beats come in at the most surprising places, and he began to whistle the song against the timing of the beats. Suddenly, he did not know how
it was, but it came to him that he was no longer alone in the room. Someone had come in through the door that led into the hall behind him. He had at once a furtive feeling of guilt, of shame. He stopped playing; he turned round upon the stool. Mama was standing in the doorway, watching him. For a moment they looked at one another. Mama hesitated. Then she shut the door and came towards him and stood beside the piano.
“What made you play like that?” she said.
Niall watched her eyes. She was not angry, he saw that at once, and he was relieved. Nor was she smiling. She looked tired rather, strange.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I felt I wanted to. It just—happened.”
She stood there looking down at him, and he realized, sitting upon the stool, that Truda was right about her after all. He had never noticed it before, but she was not tall, she was smaller than Maria. She was wearing that loose peignoir that she generally wore at breakfast, or in her room, and straw sandals without heels.
“I had a headache,” she said. “I was lying down in my room upstairs, and I heard you.”
It was queer, thought Niall, that she had not rung the bell for Truda or someone to come and tell him to stop. Or even thumped on the floor. As a rule, if they made too much noise and she was resting, she always did this.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. I thought everyone was out. The others were on the veranda a while ago, but they went off, to the beach I think.”
Mama did not seem to be listening. It was as though she was thinking of something else.
“Go on,” she said. “Do it again.”
“Oh, no,” said Niall quickly. “I can’t play properly.”
“Yes, you can,” she said.
Niall stared at her. Had her headache turned her queer? Was she all right? And she was smiling now, not a mocking smile, but kind.
He swallowed hard, and turned once more to the piano, and began to play. But now his hands stumbled and slipped, the sounds were false.