Night Without Stars

  I said to tease: “ Did you expect me to go back to Paris?”

  “No, dear.… But one never knows, does one? Things have been

  very difficult for you lately.”

  I didn’t answer. She had never met Rachel, so there was nothing

  to be gained from discussing it.

  Hugh said: “ You must be lost in that big old house. Can you

  get staff?”

  “I’m thinking of selling it and taking a small flat somewhere in

  the West End. It’ll save the journey and I shall be handy for concerts

  and things. That’s if Caroline has no objection.”

  “I think you’re very wise,” she said. “ I never see any advantage

  in clinging to things for their sentimental value.”

  I looked at the table. “ One thing I’m always glad about when

  I come here, and that’s that Hugh isn’t a vegetarian as well.”

  “I only wish he were! He’d be so much healthier.”

  Hugh looked apologetic but nickered a slow eyelid. “Ad omnem

  libidinem projectus homo. A man abandoned to every lust.”

  It wasn’t long after this that things began to go back a bit. Several days the eye looked red and inflamed and it watered a good deal, and I couldn’t stick lights at all. So I went round to see Halliday who’d done the job. He was non-committal and grunted at me as he put his mirror thing back on the table.

  “Hm. Yes. The Keratome incision has caused a scar which isn’t quite as satisfactory as it might be. However, I shouldn’t worry about it. Your colour values are all right now, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “No headaches?”

  “No headaches.”

  “I’ll change your glasses and give you a little protection against the light. In the meantime take things easily. Plenty of fresh air and not too much hard work. Try to consider yourself convalescent still.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Presently I heard Rachel was married and had gone to live in Portsmouth. I hadn’t seen her since, but I thought it safe enough to relax now and sent her some Georgian silver as a wedding present. Probably if I had been able I should have salved my pains by finding some other girl to go about with, but that didn’t seem to make sense in the circumstances. I got to dining out and playing cards after. For the first time in my life I began to appreciate bridge and to take an interest in poker. Then one day I woke up to the fact that I could see definitely less than a week ago.

  At first I put it down to the weather; but after a bit of careful testing I realised that the rain wasn’t to blame for this.

  I took a taxi and drove round in a panic to see Halliday.

  As was to be expected I had to wait half the morning until he could fit me in between his appointments. He grunted and nodded through what I had to say and then took me in and did the same sort of things he had done three months ago.

  When he’d switched off the last light and made all the necessary notes on his card index he looked at me and said:

  “Of course you’re quite right, Mr. Gordon. Your sight has deteriorated since February. The cause, as I told you, is the scar of the earlier operation, which is contracting, and pulling the pupil up slightly towards the top of the eye. Normally, this would not happen, but for some reason that we don’t know, perhaps because of the foreign body we had to take out of the eye, the scar became entangled and has been drawn up.” He granted and turned to make another note. “It’s very disappointing, because it is reducing the value of the eye to you. I can only give you the advice I gave you before. Don’t worry, take things easily. You’re able to live a fairly normal life at present, aren’t you, and it may never get any worse.”

  There was something in the tone of his voice that I didn’t like.

  “Or it may?”

  “There’s really no reason why it should.”

  “And if it does?”

  He grunted again and shut his drawer. “If the pupil gets further drawn up it will naturally restrict sight further and it would be necessary to adapt your life accordingly.”

  “Can’t operate again?”

  “I should be afraid to with an eye in that condition. But why meet troubles before they come?”

  I got up, feeling slightly sick, and looked for my hat. He passed it.

  “Thanks,” I said. “ I’ll keep you up to date.”

  He’d evidently expected the thing to be rapid because when I went again in six months he showed no surprise. In the meantime I got about as usual.

  I sold the family house in the end and found a smallish flat in Portland Place which suited a lot better. There were a few disadvantages, of course. I’d thought of pottering about with music again and it was a wrench to sell the piano, but I couldn’t imagine myself doing much with it in the flat. Anyway I was in the centre of things.

  Spare evenings now were mostly spent at the club, and I began to make money at poker. I gave up golf, said it was a strain, and nobody suspected the truth. This slow loss of sight was quite different from the first go; all sorts of things helped: hearing, smell, touch.

  I developed a low cunning too. It became a sort of game, a matter of pride not to get caught out. I knew where everything was in the office, had my own table at the club. When at last it got so that I couldn’t read small print I depended more than ever on Marigold, and kept other people out of my office while the first business of the day was gone through.

  Then after a time it wasn’t a game any more but deadly earnest. I thought I’d go on as long as I could. After that it was anybody’s guess. I hated the thought of becoming helpless, an object of Sympathy. And I’d had one taste of complete darkness. I couldn’t seem to see myself there again. But what was there to do about it?

  One day I saw old Hampden and Cousin Lewis, and told them I was giving up. I think by now they suspected a good bit because they didn’t jib much but only argued pacifically over the use of the leisure I was going to take and the amount of the allowance they were to make me. Cousin Lewis said he thought a sea-trip would put me right, and old Hampden advised salmon-fishing, but I left them saying I’d let them know later on where to send the money.

  I didn’t go to see Caroline and Hugh but dropped them a letter. It saved trouble. At that point it was hard to decide where to go, except that I’d a vague hankering to sit in the sun and let things slide. Then I thought of the Wintertons.

  The Wintertons had reached England with other refugees from the South of France in 1940. Because they knew my father they came in to our office and I had been able to help them with credits and recommendations, and also to get a passage to America in the following year. When the war was over they went back to their villa in Beaulieu near Monte Carlo, and since then had sent me three letters asking me out.

  It seemed worth trying. I had memories of hot sun and mountains and bathing in the Mediterranean when I was a kid. Too many of these precious months had drifted away in offices and the courts and among the fogs that had nothing to do with my eyesight. I wanted the sun.

  I wrote them and got a wire back: “ Delighted. Come and stay the winter.”

  Walter Winterton was a tall Europeanised American of about fifty. Claire was an indefinite forty-five, half French and half something else, I never knew what. She was small and rather plump, had a tired caressing voice and liked her hair in vivid colours.

  They met me at the station in an enormous car—I could just recognise their figures on the platform—drove me to their white Italian villa overlooking the beach, and entertained me like a king. I stayed two months, browning in the winter sunshine, driving with them into Monte Carlo or Nice, talking endlessly and pleasantly on the veranda, sipping champagne cocktails, or taking up a corner at one of their sherry parties. Claire’s hair changed with the seasons, from a luscious mahogany to a glamorous primrose yellow. Walter talked about cars and Wall Street and winter sports and radiograms and the international situation. Cla
ire talked about the ballet, shopping, food, her friends, the latest novels and sometimes, to please her husband, cars. She said that cars were Walters middle-aged vice. When he felt restless or discontented he took a new car the way other men took a mistress.

  To a man with a mission they would have been supreme time-wasters, but just then it was ideal company for me. There was always something of interest happening, plenty of new society, no responsibilities or worries, and very little opportunity of being alone. I had my glasses changed into the fashionable pale rims and so looked exactly like everyone else.

  But in the end I tired of it. The deterioration was going on all the time. The pupil was becoming more or less the same colour as the iris. That wasn’t the way Halliday would have described it, but that was how it looked. My eyes are pretty dark so the change was hardly noticeable, but I could tell that by the time the change was complete I should no longer be able to see. And there was nothing to do to stop it. The eye was clear now and had stopped getting inflamed, but the damage was done.

  So I wasn’t very good company inwardly, and after a time the constant entertaining and idle talk began to get on my nerves. I wanted to be alone. I wanted time to think and reason it all out and face up to it. Early in the new year I told them I was leaving for Théoule which is the other side of Cannes. There were the usual regal protests, the motions gone through of sweeping my protests aside. But this time they wouldn’t be swept.

  “It’s no good, both of you,” I said.“I’ve booked my hotel. There’s no escape. I must go.”

  “Impossible” said Claire. “ The hotels at Théoule are beyond belief. You’d be dead with ennui in a week.”

  “Then I must die. I can’t sponge on you for the rest of my life.”

  They didn’t reply. “ I can’t see you very clearly,” I said, “ but I believe you’re both looking offended, as if I’d said something rather vulgar.”

  “So you have, darling,” said Claire.

  “I can’t help, it, it’s true. And I can’t begin to thank you for the wonderful time you’ve given me for more than nine weeks. You’ve both been simply grand.”

  “One gaffe after another,” said Claire.

  “What will you live on?” asked Walter. “You can’t get by on seventy-five pounds and what you can sell.”

  “I took a chance and brought a good bit over. Thanks to the way you behave I’ve only succeeded in getting rid of about a quarter of it, so I shall be in the clear for some months.”

  “They ought to give you just as much as you want,” said Claire. “Anyway, you can’t possibly leave here. Please change the subject.”

  “I want to go,” I had to say. “Even if only for a few weeks. D’you know what it is? I want to see how I get on by myself. I’m afraid of getting too dependent.… It’s—psychological. That ought to appeal to you, Claire. You ought to understand.”

  She sighed. “ But Théoule. No amenities. Not even a casino.…”

  “I’ll be back,” I promised. “In time for Walter’s new car.”

  Claire got up. “You’re very difficult, Giles. I will go and see what Marie has for dinner.”

  So I went to Théoule. It’s a good centre for exploring the Estérels, and I stayed at a little hotel-restaurant and got some satisfaction out of it because they never guessed more than that “monsieur was a little short-sighted.” I bought a Victorian reading-glass and with it was able to write letters and transact ordinary business.

  But I didn’t stay long. Claire had been right in one respect.

  The change was too drastic. After all the company and the chatter, and the driving about to concerts and the social amenities of the villa, an entirely solitary life in my condition was insupportable. So in a few weeks I quietly moved back to Nice and took an apartment off the Avenue de Verdun.

  I let the Wintertons know, but by now they realised I had to work the thing out for myself and they couldn’t help. There was one other man I knew in the district: John Chapel who was attached to the British Consulate. We’d been at school together, and when he heard I was staying in the town he phoned asking me over to meet his wife. But in the mood I was then in I made an excuse and the thing lapsed.

  Nice is a pleasant town. It’s got fun if you want fun, it’s got the quaintness of the old streets and the quiet; there’s industry and miles of shops, and fishing and the rest. I settled down, or tried to settle down, to live out the remaining months until I grew completely helpless, until I took to a white stick and a dog, and people began to help me across roads and exchange pitying glances and be self-consciously kind.

  Chapter 4

  I’ve never been able to count the number of shoe-shops in the Avenue de la Victoire. Anyway I met her in one on the right-hand side going up from the sea.

  I’d gone in to buy a pair of walking shoes, having worn out three pairs during the winter.

  A young thin sort of girl served me. I didn’t take much notice at first, as I was feeling pretty low, and anyway she was only a blur at two feet.

  When people’s faces and figures shimmer about in the shadows and only come into focus now and then at close range like fishes in an aquarium, one grows to have all sorts of new ways of summing them up. But to-day things were so bad with me that I only remembered afterwards that I’d liked her voice from the start.

  She brought me some shoes and I had to ask her what colour they were.

  I did catch the surprised upward glance of her eyes.

  “Brown, m’sieu. A dark brown like the leather of books. They are made in our workshops and hand stitched. They will wear better than most. That is not saying much, is it.” She gave a short laugh.

  “The last pair I had were reinforced paper.”

  “From here?”

  “No, I got them in Juan.”

  “Ah, that explains it exactly.”

  “Professional rivalry?” I said.

  She laughed. “Really at present everything is bad. In a year or two it will be altogether different. The Germans took all the leather, as you will realise.”

  I tried them on.

  “These are good English shoes you are wearing, m’sieu. Brogues don’t you call them?”

  “Yes, I had them before the war. You know the English term, I see.”

  “Oh, it’s a technical word. My English is very poor.” She went briskly away and came back with another clutter of boxes.

  “There are these of a lighter shade. But no, I think not, do you, m’sieu? And these are very strong. Possibly you will find them a little hard. Have you a fancy for the crêpe sole? Many people wear these now. Built into the heel, here, though you can’t see it, is a metal rim. Very soon the top crêpe wears away. That is why we all go tap—tap.”

  “You don’t go tap—tap,” I said.

  “Oh, no, in the shop it would be terrible. I wear sandals, as you see.”

  I stood up. “ I’ll try these.”

  A few steps across to the window and back. Anyway, I turned to come back, and then suddenly didn’t know which way to go. It was the first time in almost all this time that I’d gone wrong in my sense of direction. I had always been too canny and so busy cheating other people that I’d partly been able to cheat myself.

  I took two or three steps and then stumbled over a foot-rest and went slap on the floor full length.

  When I was a boy I’d fallen on the ice with much the same result. All the breath went out and nothing came in, until I found myself sitting up and the slim girl had got her arm round my shoulders and about eight other women were crowding round chattering like birds.

  I got up and they found me a chair, and somebody brought sal volatile, and it was some time before we got back to the business of shoes.

  When eventually there was just the one girl left as before I said:

  “I’ll take these I have on. How much are they?”

  “You would be very welcome to stay and rest a while longer if you want to.”

  “I’m all right, thank
you. How much are the shoes?”

  “Two thousand, eight hundred, fifty. Will m’sieu keep them on?”

  “What?”

  “Shall I pack the new shoes or the old?”

  “The old.”

  She hesitated again, and then moved off. I got up to show them how fit I was. It was only a question of making a dignified exit.

  She came back with the change and the parcel, and I thanked her for her kind attention.

  “Very welcome,” she said formally. And then, “I do hope you will be no worse for your fall.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be getting along. Good day.”

  I went out.

  It was near lunch-time but I couldn’t do anything about that. I went across to the café on the opposite corner and ordered a drink and sat listening to the sound of the traffic and the passing bubble of people’s voices. Overhead the wind was making a noise like a waterfall in the great plane trees. An old woman was going from table to table selling lottery tickets. When she came to my table I waved her away and just said “ aveugle” and left it at that. No use disguising it any more. There was a wireless playing somewhere, jigging out a cheap dance tune. A man whistled it as he went out The waiter came across and wiped over the vacated table; I heard the slur of his cloth and the scrape of the ashtray.

  My ankle was beginning to ache.

  Since leaving the Wintertons I’d been avoiding company, living within myself waiting for the crash, and now it had come—literally, only by chance, to symbolise the rest.

  I drank my wine and wrestled with the devil who’d been conjured up in loneliness and was only waiting to pounce. I thought I wasn’t real any longer. I might be a ghost, I thought, kicking around in the old haunts, just passing the time until some summons came from another world. All the warmth and the light and the noise was going on as usual but I’d no longer any share in it. Somebody’d

  shut the glass door. Inside, the symphony—or maybe it was a

  cacophony—blared away, but I was out in the cold and the dark.

  Better to be really dead.

  And suddenly it seemed to me that that was the way out. Till