"As for your friend last night, I didn't see him clearly enough. Besides, he must be inimitable."
There was a momentary silence. Paule smiled.
"He is."
"Whereas I'm just a pale copy of any number of spoilt young brats, bundled into the professions thanks to their family and filling their time trying to fill their time. It's a come-down for you: this lunch, I mean."
The aggressiveness of his voice roused Paule.
"Roger was tied up," she said. "Otherwise I shouldn't be here."
"I know," he said, with a note of sadness which disconcerted her.
For the rest of the meal they spoke of their respective jobs. Simon mimicked a complete hearing of a case of crime passionel. At one point he got to his feet in full spate and levelled a finger at Paule, who was laughing a good deal.
"As for you, I accuse you of failing in your duty as a human being. In the name of the deceased, I accuse you of letting love go by, of neglecting your duty to be happy, of living on evasion, subterfuge and resignation. You ought to be sentenced to death, you will be sentenced to loneliness."
He stopped and drained his glass at a gulp. Paule had not batted an eyelid.
"A stiff sentence," she said with a smile.
"The worst," he said. "I can think of nothing worse, nor more inevitable. It frightens me more than anything else. It frightens everyone. But no one will admit it. There are times when I want to shout it from the roof-tops: 'I'm frightened, I'm frightened —love me!' "
"Me too," she said, as though involuntarily.
In a flash she saw the wall beyond the foot of her bed. With the drawn curtains, the unfashionable picture, the little chest of drawers on the left. The view which daily confronted her, night and morning, which would probably still confront her in ten years' time. When she was even lonelier than she was today. What was Roger playing at? He had no right, nobody could condemn her to get old like this; nobody, not even herself . . .
"I must strike you as even more ridiculous and whimpering than last night," said Simon softly. "Or perhaps you think it's just a boyish trick to get round you?"
He sat facing her, his pale eyes rather bleary, his face so smooth and open that she nearly put her hand to it.
"No, no," she said, "I was thinking ... I was also thinking that you were a bit young for that. And certainly too well loved."
"One can't live alone," he said. "Come on, we'll stretch our legs. It's beautiful out now."
They went out together, he took her arm and they walked for a while, without a word. Autumn welled up in Paule's heart, with great sweetness. The damp, russet leaves, clinging and trampled on, merged slowly on the ground. She felt a kind of fondness for the silent figure holding her arm. For a few minutes this stranger became a companion, someone to walk with, down a deserted avenue, at the year's close. She had always experienced fondness for her male companions, whether she took walks with them or lived with them, a kind of gratitude to them for being taller than she, at once so different and so like. Into her mind came the face of Marc, the husband she had left at the same time as the easy life; the face of another who had greatly loved her. And finally Roger's face, the only face her memory projected live, with changes of expression. Three companions in one woman's lifetime, three good companions. Wasn't that after all considerable?
"Are you feeling sad?" asked Simon.
She turned to him and smiled without answering. They kept walking.
"I should like," said Simon in a strangled voice, "I should like ... I don't know you, but I should like to think you were happy. I—er, I admire you."
She had stopped listening to him. It was late. Roger might have rung to suggest coffee. She would have missed him. He had talked of leaving on Saturday and spending the week-end in the country. Would she be able to get through her work in time? Would he still want to go? Or was this another of those promises which love and night-time wrenched from him, when (as she knew) he no longer envisaged life without her and their love struck him as so self-evident that he no longer struggled? But the moment he left the flat, the moment—outside on the pavement—he inhaled the heady aroma of his independence, she lost him again. She said little during the ride back, thanked Simon for giving her lunch and swore she would be delighted if he rang her one of these days. Simon watched her walk away. He did not move. He felt gauche and very weary.
5
IT really was a pleasant surprise. Roger turned to the bedside table and rummaged for a cigarette. The young woman beside him gave a short laugh.
"Men always smoke, afterwards."
It was not a very original reflection! Roger held the packet out to her. She shook her head.
"Maisy, may I ask you a question? What's got into you tonight? Two months we've known each other, and you've never left Monsieur Chérel's side . . ."
"Monsieur Chérel is useful for my work. I felt like having fun. Understand, my honey?"
He noted in passing that she was one of those women who became possessive the moment they lay on their backs. He laughed.
"But why me? There were some good-looking youngsters at the party."
"Oh, the young ones talk and talk. At least you look as though you know what you want. And that's getting to be rare, believe you me. It's a thing women can sense. Don't tell me you're not used to making a hit..."
"Not quite so soon," he laughed.
She was very pretty. No doubt her cribbed brain was teeming with petty notions about life, men, women. Given the slightest encouragement, she would tell him what made the world go round. He would have loved that. As always he felt remote yet touched, appalled by the thought of these beautiful bodies, all so different and so splendid to explore, wandering through the streets and through life guided by small, wavering, restricted heads. He stroked her hair.
"I bet you're an old softy," she said. "Great brutes like you always are."
"Of course," he said, absent-mindedly.
"I don't feel like leaving you," she went on. "If only you knew what a bore Chérel is . . ."
"I never shall."
"Suppose we went away for a couple of days, Roger? Saturday and Sunday. Wouldn't you like that? We'd put up at a country inn and not stir from our room all day."
He looked at her. She had propped herself up on one elbow; he saw the pulse racing in her neck; she was looking at him just as she had in the course of that precious party; he smiled.
"Say yes. Right this minute, do you hear me?"
"Right this minute," he repeated, drawing her to him.
She bit his shoulder and gurgled, and it crossed his mind that even love could be made stupidly.
* * *
"What a shame," said Paule. "Anyway, work well and don't drive too fast. All my love."
She hung up. That was the end of their week-end. Roger had to go to Lille on Saturday, he had explained, to do business with his associate there. It might be true. She always supposed it was true. Suddenly she thought of the inn where they generally went together, of the fires blazing everywhere, of the bedroom smelling slightly of mothballs; she imagined what those two days might have been, the walks with Roger, the conversations with Roger in the evening, the awakenings at each other's side, with time stretching before them, a whole day, warm and smooth as a beach. She turned back to the telephone. She could lunch with a friend, have an evening's bridge with . . . There was nothing she wanted to do. And she dreaded being alone for two days. She hated these spinster Sundays: staying in bed with a book for as long as she could; a crowded cinema; perhaps drinks with someone, or a dinner; and finally coming home to this unmade bed, feeling that she had not been even momentarily alive since morning. Roger had said he would ring her next day. He had spoken with his loving voice. She would wait in for his call. In any case, she had some tidying to do—some of those humdrum jobs which her mother had always prescribed, of those myriad trifles of a woman's life which vaguely disgusted her. As though time had been a flabby beast which needed fining down. B
ut she had come almost to regret her lack of this impulse. Perhaps a moment really came when one no longer had to attack one's life, but to defend oneself from it as from some old and tactless friend. Had it come already? And at her back she thought she heard an immense sigh, an immense chorus of "Already . . ."
At two o'clock on that same Saturday, she decided to ring Mrs. Van den Besh. If, by some miracle, she weren't at Deauville, she might be able to spend the afternoon working with her. It was the only thing that appealed to her. Like those men, she thought, who go to the office on Sundays to avoid their families. Mrs. Van den Besh was having slight trouble with her liver, sounded distinctly bored and greeted her proposal with enthusiasm. She found Mrs. Van den Besh in a damask dressing-gown, a glass of mineral water in her hand, looking slightly blotchy. Paule momentarily reflected that Simon's father must have been very handsome to offset the banality of her face.
"How is your son? You know we ran into him the other evening.''
She did not add that she had lunched with him only the day before; she was amazed at her own reticence. At once she met with a martyred expression.
"How should I know? He doesn't talk to me; he doesn't tell me about anything—except his money troubles, of course! What's more, he drinks. His father drank too, you know."
"He hardly looks a dipsomaniac," smiled Paule. She thought of Simon's smooth face and flourishing English complexion.
"He's handsome, isn't he?"
Mrs. Van den Besh grew animated and produced albums portraying Simon as a child, Simon on a pony with ringlets flowing down his cheeks, Simon as a gaping schoolboy, etc. There were, no doubt, a thousand photographs of him and Paule secretly marvelled that he had become neither odious, nor a sodomite.
"But there always comes a time when children grow away from you," sighed the aggrieved mother.
And a moment later she became the rather flighty woman she must once have been.
"I may say there's no lack of opportunities . . ."
"I'm sure," said Paule politely. "Would you like to look at these fabrics, Madame? There is one here that. . ."
"Do call me Teresa."
She grew friendly, rang for tea, asked questions. Paule reflected that Roger had slept with her twenty years before, and searched her doughy face in vain for some remnant of charm. At the same time, she tried desperately to keep the conversation on a professional footing, but watched Teresa sink inexorably into womanly confidences. It was always the same. There was something fine and stable about her face which unleashed the deadliest torrents of words.
"You are probably younger than I," began Mrs. Van den Besh (and Paule could not suppress a smile at the "probably"), "but you know what a difference surroundings can make . . ."
Paule had stopped listening to her. The woman reminded her of someone. She realised that she merely bore out the imitation Simon had given the day before; he must, she thought, have a certain intuitive faculty, a certain cruelty which was obscured by his shyness. What was it he had said? I accuse you of letting love go by, of living on subterfuge and resignation: I sentence you to loneliness. Had he meant her? Had he divined something of her life? Had he said it on purpose? She felt a wave of anger at the thought.
She had stopped listening to the ceaseless chatter at her side, and Simon's entrance made her jump. He stopped short at the sight of her and pulled a face to mask his pleasure. She was touched.
"I picked the right time to come in. I'll give you a hand."
"Alas, I must be going."
She felt like rushing out, taking to her heels, escaping from the stares of mother and son, hiding herself at home with a book. At this hour she should have been on the road with Roger, flicking the radio on and off, laughing with him or quailing—for as a driver he was prone to blind rages which sometimes brought them close to death. She got slowly to her feet.
"I'll see you out," said Simon.
At the door she turned and looked at him for the first time since his arrival. He looked out of sorts and she could not help saying so.
"It's the weather," he said. "May I come down with you?"
She shrugged and they started down the stairs. He walked behind her, without a word. On the final landing he stopped, and she turned automatically, no longer hearing his tread. He was leaning against the banister.
"Are you going back?"
The light went out and the huge staircase was left with only a faint glimmer from a casement window. Her eyes searched for the time-switch.
"It's behind you," said Simon.
He cleared the last flight and came towards her. He's going to grab me, thought Paule with annoyance. He reached his left arm past her head and switched on; then he set his right arm on the other side of her. She could not move.
"Let me pass," she said, very calmly.
He did not answer, but stooped down and cautiously rested his head on her shoulder. She heard her heart thudding away and suddenly felt perturbed.
"Let me pass, Simon . . . You're annoying me."
But he did not move. All he did was softly murmur her name twice—"Paule, Paule"—and beyond the back of his head she saw the well of the stairs, so dreary, so oppressively silent and gloomy.
"Mon petit Simon," she said, just as softly, "let me pass."
He drew back and she smiled at him for a moment before going out into the street.
6
SHE woke on Sunday to find a note under her door that would once have been poetically known as a bleu.; today she found it poetic because the sun, reappearing in the flawless November sky, filled her room with shadows and warm patches of light. "There is a wonderful concert in the Salle Pleyel at six," Simon wrote. "Aimez-vous Brahms? I'm sorry about yesterday." She smiled. She smiled on account of the second sentence: Aimez-vous Brahms? It was one of these questions young men had asked her when she was seventeen. And no doubt she had been asked the same things later, but with no one listening to the answer. In that set, and at that time of life, who listened to who? Come to think of it: did she care for Brahms?
She opened the lid of her record-player, poked about among her records and found, on the back of a Wagner overture she knew by heart, a Brahms concerto she had never listened to. Roger loved Wagner. "It's beautiful," he would say, "it makes a noise, it's music." She put the concerto on, found the beginning romantic and forgot to listen to all of it. She awoke to the fact when the music stopped and was angry with herself. Nowadays she took six days to read a book, lost her place, forgot music. She could not keep her mind on a thing, except fabric samples and a man who was never there. She was losing herself, losing track of herself; she would never be herself again. Aimez-vous Brahms? For a moment she stood by the open window; the sunlight hit her full in the eyes and dazzled her. And this little phrase, Aimez-vous Brahms, seemed suddenly to reveal an enormous forgetfulness: all that she had forgotten, all the questions that she had deliberately refrained from asking herself. Aimez-vous Brahms? Did she care for anything, now, except herself and her own existence? Of course, she said she loved Stendhal; she knew she loved him. That was the word: knew. Perhaps she merely 'knew' she loved Roger. Sound acquisitions. Sound touchstones. She felt an itch to talk to someone, as she had felt at twenty.
She rang Simon. She did not yet know what to say to him. Probably: "I don't know whether I care for Brahms. I don't think so." She did not know whether she would go to the concert. It would depend on what he said to her, on his tone of voice; she was hesitant and found this hesitancy delightful. But Simon had gone out into the country for lunch, he would be back at five to change his clothes. She hung up. Meanwhile she had decided to go to the concert. She told herself: "It isn't Simon I'm going for, but the music. Perhaps I'll go every Sunday evening if the atmosphere isn't too awful: it's just the thing for a single woman to do." And at the same time she regretted that it was Sunday and she couldn't rush out to the shops and buy the Mozarts she loved and a few Brahms. Her only fear was that Simon might hold her hand during the concert; t
his she feared especially because she was expecting it, and the confirmation of her expectations always bored her beyond words. She had loved Roger for that, too. He always side-stepped the obvious, giving a certain twist to the most humdrum situations.
At six o'clock in the Salle Pleyel she was caught in the press of late-comers and nearly missed Simon, who silently handed her a ticket; they tore upstairs amid a flurry of attendants. The hall was huge and shadowy, and the orchestra produced a few particularly discordant sounds by way of preamble, as though to make the audience more appreciative of the miracle of musical harmony. She turned to her companion.
"I didn't know whether I cared for Brahms."
"And I didn't know whether you'd come," said Simon. "I assure you I'm not bothered whether you care for Brahms or not."
"How was the country?"
He looked at her in astonishment.
"I rang you," said Paule, "to say that. . . that I should be glad to come."
"I was so afraid you would say the opposite, or not ring at all, that I went out," said Simon.
"Was the country looking lovely? Whereabouts did you go?"
It gave her a sad feeling of pleasure to imagine Houdan hill in the evening light; she would have loved Simon to talk about it. By this time she would have stopped in Septeuil with Roger, they would have followed the same track beneath the russet trees. "Oh, here and there," said Simon, "I didn't look at the names. Anyway, the concert is starting."
There was applause, the conductor bowed, he raised his baton and they settled into their seats at the same time as two thousand others. It was a concerto which Simon thought he recognised, a trifle pathetic, a trifle too pathetic at times. He felt Paule's elbow against his and when the orchestra soared, he soared with it. But as soon as the music flagged he grew conscious of their neighbours' coughing, of the shape of a man's head two rows in front, and—most of all—conscious of his anger. In the country, at an inn near Houdan, he had met Roger—Roger with a girl. He had stood up and greeted Simon, without introducing him.