The Birds and Other Stories

  The hours passed, and some of them went home, and others took their place, and he was still sitting there, hazy, comfortable, the warmth and the smoke blending together. Nothing of what he heard or saw made very much sense but somehow it did not seem to matter, for there was jolly, fat, easygoing Mrs. Hill to minister to his needs, her face glowing at him over the bar.

  Another face swung into his view, that of one of the laborers from the farm, with whom, in the old war days, he had shared the driving of the tractor. He leaned forward, touching the fellow on the shoulder.

  "What happened to the little girl?" he said.

  The man lowered his tankard. "Beg pardon, sir?" he said.

  "You remember. The little land girl. She used to milk the cows, feed the pigs, up at the farm. Pretty girl, dark curly hair, always smiling."

  Mrs. Hill turned round from serving another customer.

  "Does the gentleman mean May, I wonder?" she asked.

  "Yes, that's it, that was the name, young May," he said.

  "Why, didn't you ever hear about it, sir?" said Mrs. Hill, filling up his glass. "We were all very much shocked at the time, everyone was talking of it, weren't they, Fred?"

  "That's right, Mrs. Hill."

  The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  "Killed," he said, "thrown from the back of some chap's motorbike. Going to be married very shortly. About four years ago, now. Dreadful thing, eh? Nice kid too."

  "We all sent a wreath, from just around," said Mrs. Hill. "Her mother wrote back, very touched, and sent a cutting from the local paper, didn't she, Fred? Quite a big funeral they had, ever so many floral tributes. Poor May. We were all fond of May."

  "That's right," said Fred.

  "And fancy you never hearing about it, sir!" said Mrs. Hill.

  "No," he said, "no, nobody ever told me. I'm sorry about it. Very sorry."

  He stared in front of him at his half-filled glass.

  The conversation went on around him but he was no longer part of the company. He was on his own again, silent, in his corner. Dead. That poor, pretty girl was dead. Thrown off a motorbike. Been dead for three or four years. Some careless, bloody fellow, taking a corner too fast, the girl behind him, clinging onto his belt, laughing probably in his ear, and then crash... finish. No more curling hair, blowing about her face, no more laughter.

  May, that was the name; he remembered clearly now. He could see her smiling over her shoulder, when they called to her. "Coming," she sang out, and put a clattering pail down in the yard and went off, whistling, with big clumping boots. He had put his arm about her and kissed her for one brief, fleeting moment. May, the land girl, with the laughing eyes.

  "Going, sir?" said Mrs. Hill.

  "Yes. Yes, I think I'll be going now."

  He stumbled to the entrance and opened the door. It had frozen hard during the past hour and it was no longer snowing. The heavy pall had gone from the sky and the stars shone.

  "Want a hand with the car, sir?" said someone.

  "No, thank you," he said, "I can manage."

  He unhitched the trailer and let it fall. Some of the wood lurched forward heavily. That would do tomorrow. Tomorrow, if he felt like it, he would come down again and help to unload the wood. Not tonight. He had done enough. Now he was really tired; now he was spent.

  It took him some time to start the car, and before he was halfway up the side road leading to his house he realized that he had made a mistake to bring it at all. The snow was heavy all about him, and the track he had made earlier in the evening was now covered. The car lurched and slithered, and suddenly the right wheel dipped and the whole body plunged sideways. He had got into a drift.

  He climbed out and looked about him. The car was deep in the drift, impossible to move without two or three men to help him, and even then, if he went for assistance, what hope was there of trying to continue further, with the snow just as thick ahead? Better leave it. Try again in the morning, when he was fresh. No sense in hanging about now, spending half the night pushing and shoving at the car, all to no purpose. No harm would come to it, here on the side road; nobody else would be coming this way tonight.

  He started walking up the road towards his own drive. It was bad luck that he had got the car into the drift. In the center of the road the going was not bad and the snow did not come above his ankles. He thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat and plowed on, up the hill, the countryside a great white waste on either side of him.

  He remembered that he had sent the daily woman home at midday and that the house would strike cheerless and cold on his return. The fire would have gone out, and in all probability the furnace too. The windows, uncurtained, would stare bleakly down at him, letting in the night. Supper to get into the bargain. Well, it was his own fault. No one to blame but himself. This was the moment when there should be someone waiting, someone to come running through from the living room to the hall, opening the front door, flooding the hall with light. "Are you all right, darling? I was getting anxious."

  He paused for breath at the top of the hill and saw his home, shrouded by trees, at the end of the short drive. It looked dark and forbidding, without a light in any window. There was more friendliness in the open, under the bright stars, standing on the crisp white snow, than in the somber house.

  He had left the side gate open, and he went through that way to the terrace, shutting the gate behind him. What a hush had fallen upon the garden--there was no sound at all. It was as though some spirit had come and put a spell upon the place, leaving it white and still.

  He walked softly over the snow towards the apple trees.

  Now the young one stood alone, above the steps, dwarfed no longer; and with her branches spread, glistening white, she belonged to the spirit world, a world of fantasy and ghosts. He wanted to stand beside the little tree and touch the branches, to make certain she was still alive, that the snow had not harmed her, so that in the spring she would blossom once again.

  She was almost within his reach when he stumbled and fell, his foot twisted underneath him, caught in some obstacle hidden by the snow. He tried to move his foot but it was jammed, and he knew suddenly, by the sharpness of the pain biting his ankle, that what had trapped him was the jagged split stump of the old apple tree he had felled that afternoon.

  He leaned forward on his elbows, in an attempt to drag himself along the ground, but such was his position, in falling, that his leg was bent backwards, away from his foot, and every effort that he made only succeeded in imprisoning the foot still more firmly in the grip of the trunk. He felt for the ground, under the snow, but where he felt his hands touched the small broken twigs from the apple tree that had scattered there, when the tree fell, and then were covered by the falling snow. He shouted for help, knowing in his heart no one could hear.

  "Let me go," he shouted, "let me go," as though the thing that held him there in its mercy had the power to release him, and as he shouted tears of frustration and of fear ran down his face. He would have to lie there all night, held fast in the clutch of the old apple tree. There was no hope, no escape, until they came to find him in the morning, and supposing it was then too late, that when they came he was dead, lying stiffly in the frozen snow?

  Once more he struggled to release his foot, swearing and sobbing as he did so. It was no use. He could not move. Exhausted, he laid his head upon his arms, and wept. He sank deeper, ever deeper into the snow, and when a stray piece of brushwood, cold and wet, touched his lips, it was like a hand, hesitant and timid, feeling its way towards him in the darkness.

  The Little Photographer

  The Marquise lay on her chaise longue on the balcony of the hotel. She wore only a wrapper, and her sleek gold hair, newly set in pins, was bound close to her head in a turquoise bandeau that matched her eyes. Beside her chair stood a little table, and on it were three bottles of nail varnish all of a different shade.

  She had dabbed a touch of color onto three separat
e fingernails, and now she held her hand in front of her to see the effect. No, the varnish on the thumb was too red, too vivid, giving a heated look to her slim olive hand, almost as if a spot of blood had fallen there from a fresh-cut wound.

  In contrast, her forefinger was a striking pink, and this too seemed to her false, not true to her present mood. It was the elegant rich pink of drawing rooms, of ballgowns, of herself standing at some reception, slowly moving to and fro her ostrich feather fan, and in the distance the sound of violins.

  The middle finger was touched with a sheen of silk neither crimson nor vermilion, but somehow softer, subtler; the sheen of a peony in bud, not yet opened to the heat of the day but with the dew of the morning upon it still. A peony, cool and close, looking down upon lush grass from some terraced border, and later, at high noon, the petals unfolding to the sun.

  Yes, that was the color. She reached for cotton wool and wiped away the offending varnish from her other fingernails, and then slowly, carefully, she dipped the little brush into the chosen varnish and, like an artist, worked with swift, deft strokes.

  When she had finished she leaned back in her chaise longue, exhausted, waving her hands before her in the air to let the varnish harden--a strange gesture, like that of a priestess. She looked down at her toes, appearing from her sandals, and decided that presently, in a few moments, she would paint them too; olive hands, olive feet, subdued and quiet, surprised into sudden life.

  Not yet, though. She must rest, relax. It was too hot to move from the supporting back of the chaise longue and lean forward, crouching, Eastern fashion, for the adorning of her feet. There was plenty of time. Time, in fact, stretched before her in an unwinding pattern through the whole long, languorous day.

  She closed her eyes.

  The distant sound of hotel life came to her as in a dream, and the sounds were hazy, pleasant, because she was part of that life yet free as well, bound no longer to the tyranny of home. Someone on a balcony above scraped back a chair. Below, on the terrace, the waiters set up the gay striped umbrellas over the little luncheon tables; she could hear the maitre d'hotel call directions from the dining room. The femme de chambre was doing the rooms in the adjoining suite. Furniture was moved, a bed creaked, the valet de chambre came out onto the next balcony and swept the boards with a straw brush. Their voices murmured, grumbled. Then they went away. Silence again. Nothing but the lazy splash of the sea, as effortlessly it licked the burning sand; and somewhere, far away, too distant to make an irritation, the laughter of children playing, her own among them.

  A guest ordered coffee on the terrace below. The smoke of his cigar came floating upwards to the balcony. The Marquise sighed, and her lovely hands dropped down like lilies on either side of the chaise longue. This was peace, this was contentment. If she could hold the moment thus for one more hour... But something warned her, when the hour was past, the old demon of dissatisfaction, of tedium, would return, even here where she was free at last, on holiday.

  A bumblebee flew onto the balcony, hovered over the bottle of nail varnish and entered the open flower, picked by one of the children, lying beside it. His humming ceased when he was inside the flower. The Marquise opened her eyes and saw the bee crawl forth, intoxicated. Then dizzily once more he took the air and hummed his way. The spell was broken. The Marquise picked up the letter from Edouard, her husband, that had fallen onto the floor of the balcony: "... And so, my dearest, I find it impossible to get to you and the children after all. There is so much business to attend to, here at home, and you know I can rely on no one but myself. I shall, of course, make every effort to come and fetch you at the end of the month. Meanwhile, enjoy yourself, bathing and resting. I know the sea air will do you good. I went to see Maman yesterday, and Madeleine, and it seems the old cure..."

  The Marquise let the letter fall back again onto the balcony floor. The little droop at the corner of her mouth, the one telltale sign that spoiled the smooth lovely face, intensified. It had happened again. Always his work. The estate, the farms, the forests, the businessmen that he must see, the sudden journeys that he must take, so that in spite of his devotion for her he had no time to spare, Edouard, her husband.

  They had told her, before her marriage, how it would be. "C'est un homme tres serieux, Monsieur le Marquis, vous comprenez." How little she had minded, how gladly she had agreed, for what could be better in life than a Marquis who was also un homme serieux? What more lovely than that chateau and those vast estates? What more imposing than the house in Paris, the retinue of servants, humble, bowing, calling her Madame la Marquise? A fairy-tale world to someone like herself, brought up in Lyon, the daughter of a hardworking surgeon, an ailing mother. But for the sudden arrival of Monsieur le Marquis she might have found herself married to her father's young assistant, and that same day-by-day in Lyon continuing forever.

  A romantic match, surely. Frowned on at first by his relatives, most certainly. But Monsieur le Marquis, homme serieux, was past forty. He knew his own mind. And she was beautiful. There was no further argument. They married. They had two little girls. They were happy. Yet sometimes... The Marquise rose from the chaise longue and, going into the bedroom, sat down before the dressing table and removed the pins from her hair. Even this effort exhausted her. She threw off her wrapper and sat naked before her mirror. Sometimes she found herself regretting that day-by-day in Lyon. She remembered the laughter, the joking with other girls, the stifled giggles when a passing man looked at them in the street, the confidences, the exchange of letters, the whispering in bedrooms when her friends came to tea.

  Now, as Madame la Marquise, she had no one with whom to share confidences, laughter. Everyone about her was middle-aged, dull, rooted to a life long-lived that never changed. Those interminable visits of Edouard's relatives to the chateau. His mother, his sisters, his brothers, his sisters-in-law. In the winter, in Paris, it was just the same. Never a new face, never the arrival of a stranger. The only excitement was the appearance, perhaps, to luncheon of one of Edouard's business friends, who, surprised at her beauty when she entered the salon, flickered a daring glance of admiration, then bowed, and kissed her hand.

  Watching such a one, during luncheon, she would make a fantasy to herself of how they would meet in secret, how a taxi would take her to his apartment, and entering a small, dark ascenseur she would ring a bell and vanish into a strange unknown room. But, the long luncheon over, the business friend would bow and go his way. And afterwards, she would think to herself, he was not even passably good-looking; even his teeth were false. But the glance of admiration, swiftly suppressed--she wanted that.

  Now she combed her hair before the mirror, and parting it on one side tried a new effect; a ribbon, the color of her fingernails, threaded through the gold. Yes, yes... And the white frock, later, and that chiffon scarf, thrown carelessly over the shoulders, so that when she went out onto the terrace, followed by the children and the English governess, and the maitre d'hotel, bowing, led the way to the little table at the corner, under the striped umbrella, people would stare, would whisper, and the eyes would follow her, as deliberately she would stoop to one of the children, pat its curls in a fond maternal gesture, a thing of grace, of beauty.

  But now, before the mirror, only the naked body and the sad sulky mouth. Other women would have lovers. Whispers or scandal came to her ears, even during those long heavy dinners, with Edouard at the far end of the table. Not only in the smart riff-raff society to which she never penetrated, but even among the old noblesse to which she now belonged. "On dit, vous savez..." and the suggestion, the murmur, passed from one to the other, with a lifted eyebrow, a shrug of the shoulder.

  Sometimes, after a tea party, a guest would leave early, before six o'clock, giving as an excuse that she was expected elsewhere, and the Marquise, echoing regrets, bidding the guest au revoir, would wonder--is she going to a rendezvous? Could it be that in twenty minutes, less perhaps, that dark, rather ordinary little comtesse would be
shivering, smiling secretly, as she let her clothes slip to the floor?

  Even Elise, her friend of lycee days in Lyons, married now six years, had a lover. She never wrote of him by name. She always called him "mon ami." Yet they managed to meet twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. He had a car and drove her into the country, even in winter. And Elise would write to the Marquise and say, "But how plebeian my little affair must seem to you, in high society. How many admirers you must have, and what adventures! Tell me of Paris, and the parties, and who is the man of your choice this winter." The Marquise would reply, hinting, suggesting, laughing off the question, and launch into a description of her frock, worn at some reception. But she did not say that the reception ended at midnight, that it was formal, dull and that all she, the Marquise, knew of Paris was the drives she took in the car with the children, and the drives to the couturier to be fitted for yet another frock, and the drives to the coiffeur to have her hair rearranged and set to perhaps a different style. As to life at the chateau, she would describe the rooms, yes, the many guests, the solemn long avenue of trees, the acres of woodland; but not the rain in spring, day after day, nor the parching heat of early summer, when silence fell upon the place like a great white pall.

  "Ah! Pardon, je croyais que madame etait sortie..." He had come in without knocking, the valet de chambre, his straw brush in his hand, and now he backed out of the room again, discreetly, but not before he had seen her there, naked before the mirror. And surely he must have known she had not gone out, when only a few moments before she had been lying on the balcony? Was it compassion she saw in his eyes as well as admiration, before he left the room? As though to say, "So beautiful, and all alone? We are not used to that in this hotel, where people come for pleasure..."

  Heavens, it was hot. No breeze even from the sea. Trickles of perspiration ran down from her arms to her body.

  She dressed languidly, putting on the cool white dress, and then, strolling out onto the balcony once more, pulled up the sun-blind, let the full heat of the day fall upon her. Dark glasses hid her eyes. The only touch of color lay on her mouth, her feet, her hands, and in the scarf, thrown about her shoulders. The dark lenses gave a deep tone to the day. The sea, by natural eye a periwinkle blue, had turned to purple, and the white sands to olive brown. The gaudy flowers in their tubs upon the terrace had a tropical texture. As the Marquise leaned upon the balcony the heat of the wooden rail burned her hands. Once again the smell of a cigar floated upwards from some source unknown. There was a tinkle of glasses as a waiter brought aperitifs to a table on the terrace. Somewhere a woman spoke, and a man's voice joined with the woman's, laughing.