‘Go on,’ he would say, if she showed any signs of flagging. ‘Allons, des histoires!’
During the day she hardly saw him. He always lunched with his mother, who had the first-floor flat in the house where he lived on the ground floor. Sometimes he took Linda sightseeing in the afternoon, but generally he did not appear until about half-past seven, soon after which they dined.
Linda occupied her days buying clothes, which she paid for with great wads of banknotes given her by Fabrice.
‘Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,’ she thought. ‘And as he despises me anyway it can’t make very much difference.’
Fabrice was delighted. He took an intense interest in her clothes, looked them up and down, made her parade round her drawing-room in them, forced her to take them back to the shops for alterations which seemed to her quite unnecessary, but which proved in the end to have made all the difference. Linda had never before fully realized the superiority of French clothes to English. In London she had been considered exceptionally well dressed, when she was married to Tony; she now realized that never could she have had, by French standards, the smallest pretensions to chic. The things she had with her seemed to her so appallingly dowdy, so skimpy and miserable and without line, that she went to the Galeries Lafayette and bought herself a ready-made dress there before she dared to venture into the big houses. When she did finally emerge from them with a few clothes, Fabrice advised her to get a great many more. Her taste, he said, was not at all bad, for an Englishwoman, though he doubted whether she would really become élégante in the true sense of the word.
‘Only by trial and error,’ he said, ‘can you find out your genre, can you see where you are going. Continuez, donc, ma chère, allez-y. Jusqu’ à présent, ça ne va pas mal du tout’
The weather now became hot and sultry, holiday, seaside weather. But this was 1939, and men’s thoughts were not of relaxation but of death, not of bathing-suits but of uniforms, not of dance music but of trumpets, while beaches for the next few years were to be battle and not pleasure grounds. Fabrice said every day bow much he longed to take Linda to the Riviera, to Venice and to his beautiful chateau in the Dauphine. But he was a reservist, and would be called up any day now. Linda did not mind staying in Paris at all. She could sunbathe in her flat as much as she wanted to. She felt no particular apprehensions about the coming war, she was essentially a person who lived in the present.
‘I couldn’t sunbathe naked like this anywhere else,’ she said, ‘and it’s the only holiday thing I enjoy. I don’t like swimming, or tennis, or dancing, or gambling, so you see I’m just as well off here sunbathing and shopping, two perfect occupations for the day, and you, my darling love, at night. I should think I’m the happiest woman in the world.’
*
One boiling hot afternoon in July she arrived home wearing a new and particularly ravishing straw hat. It was large and simple, with a wreath of flowers and two blue bows. Her right arm was full of roses and carnations, and in her left hand was a striped bandbox, containing another exquisite hat. She let herself in with her latchkey, and stumped, on the high cork soles of her sandals, to the drawing-room.
The green Venetian blinds were down, and the room was full of warm shadows, two of which suddenly resolved themselves into a thin man and a not so thin man – Davey and Lord Merlin.
‘Good heavens,’ said Linda, and she flopped down on to a sofa, scattering the roses at her feet.
‘Well,’ said Davey, ‘you do look pretty.’
Linda felt really frightened, like a child caught out in some misdeed, like a child whose new toy is going to be taken away. She looked from one to the other. Lord Merlin was wearing black spectacles.
‘Are you in disguise?’ said Linda.
‘No, what do you mean? Oh, the spectacles – I have to wear them when I go abroad, I have such kind eyes you see, beggars and things cluster round and annoy me.’
He took them off and blinked.
‘What have you come for?’
‘You don’t seem very pleased to see us,’ said Davey. ‘We came, actually, to see if you were all right. As it’s only too obvious that you are, we may as well go away again.’
‘How did you find out? Do Mummy and Fa know?’ she added, faintly.
‘No, absolutely nothing. They think you’re still with Christian. We haven’t come in the spirit of two Victorian uncles, my dear Linda, if that’s what you’re thinking. I happened to see a man I know who had been in Perpignan, and he mentioned that Christian was living with Lavender Davis –’
‘Oh good,’ said Linda.
‘What? And that you had left six weeks ago. I went round to Cheyne Walk and there you obviously weren’t, and then Mer and I got faintly worried to think of you wandering about the Continent, so ill suited (we thought, how wrong we were) to look after yourself, and at the same time madly curious to know your whereabouts and present circumstances, so we put in motion a little discreet detective work, which revealed your whereabouts – your circumstances are now as clear as daylight, and I, for one, feel most relieved.’
‘You gave us a fright,’ said Lord Merlin, crossly. ‘Another time, when you are putting on this Cléo de Mérode act, you might send a postcard. For one thing, it is a great pleasure to see you in the part, I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. I hadn’t realized, Linda, that you were such a beautiful woman.’
Davey was laughing quietly to himself.
‘Oh, goodness, how funny it all is – so wonderfully old-fashioned. The shopping! The parcels! The flowers! So tremendously Victorian. People have been delivering cardboard boxes every five minutes since we arrived. What an interest you are in one’s life, Linda dear. Have you told him he must give you up and marry a pure young girl yet?’
Linda said disarmingly: ‘Don’t tease, Dave. I’m so happy you can’t think.’
‘Yes, you look happy I must say. Oh, this flat is such a joke.’
‘I was just thinking,’ said Lord Merlin, ‘that, however much taste may change, it always follows a stereotyped plan. Frenchmen used to keep their mistresses in appartements, each exactly like the other, in which the dominant note, you might say, was lace and velvet. The walls, the bed, the dressing-table, the very bath itself were hung with lace, and everything else was velvet. Nowadays for lace you substitute glass, and everything else is satin. I bet you’ve got a glass bed, Linda?
‘Yes – but –’
‘And a glass dressing-table, and bathroom, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your bath were made of glass, with goldfish swimming about in the sides of it. Goldfish are a prevailing motif all down the ages.’
‘You’ve looked,’ said Linda sulkily. ‘Very clever.’
‘Oh, what heaven,’ said Davey. ‘So it’s true! He hasn’t looked, I swear, but you see it’s not beyond the bounds of human ingenuity to guess.’
‘But there are some things here,’ said Lord Merlin, ‘which do raise the level, all the same. A Gauguin, those two Matisses (chintzy, but accomplished) and this Savonnerie carpet. Your protector must be very rich.’
‘He is,’ said Linda.
‘Then, Linda dear, could one ask for a cup of tea?’
She rang the bell, and soon Davey was falling upon éclairs and mille feuilles with all the abandon of a schoolboy.
I shall pay for this,’ he said, with a devil-may-care smile, ‘but never mind, one’s not in Paris every day.’
Lord Merlin ‘wandered round with his tea-cup. He picked up a book which Fabrice had given Linda the day before, of romantic nineteenth-century poetry.
‘Is this what you’re reading now?’ he said. ‘ “Dieu, que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois.” I had a friend, when I lived in Paris, who had a boa constrictor as a pet, and this boa constrictor got itself inside a French horn. My friend rang me up in a fearful state, saying: “Dieu, que le son du boa est triste au fond du cor.” I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘What time does your lover generally arri
ve?’ said Davey, taking out his watch.
‘Not till about seven. Do stay and see him, he’s such a terrific Hon.’
‘No, thank you, not for the world.’
‘Who is he?’ said Lord Merlin.
‘He’s called the Duke of Sauveterre.’
A look of great surprise, mingled with horrified amusement, passed between Davey and Lord Merlin.
‘Fabrice de Sauveterre?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘Darling Linda, one always forgets, under that look of great sophistication, what a little provincial you really are. Of course we know him, and all about him, and, what’s more, so does everyone except you.’
‘Well, don’t you think he’s a terrific Hon?’
‘Fabrice,’ said Lord Merlin with emphasis, ‘is undoubtedly one of the wickedest men in Europe, as far as women are concerned. But I must admit that he’s an extremely agreeable companion.’
‘Do you remember in Venice,’ said Davey, ‘one used to see him at work in that gondola, one after another, bowling them over like rabbits, poor dears?’
‘Please remember,’ said Linda, ‘that you are eating his tea at this moment’
‘Yes, indeed, and so delicious. Another éclair, please, Linda. That summer,’ he went on, ‘when he made off with Ciano’s girl friend, what a fuss there was, I never shall forget, and then, a week later, he plaqué’d her in Cannes and went to Salzburg with Martha Birmingham, and poor old Claud shot at him four times, and always missed him.’
‘Fabrice has a charmed life,’ said Lord Merlin. ‘I suppose he has been shot at more than anybody, and, as far as I know, he’s never had a scratch.’
Linda was unmoved by these revelations, which had been forestalled by Fabrice himself. Anyhow, no woman really minds hearing of the past affairs of her lover, it is the future alone that has the power to terrify.
‘Come on, Mer,’ said Davey. ‘Time petite femme got herself into a négligée. Goodness, what a scene there’ll be when he smells Mer’s cigar, there’ll be a crime passionel, I shouldn’t wonder. Good-bye, Linda darling, we’re off to dine with our intellectual friends, you know, will you be lunching with us at the Ritz to-morrow? About one, then. Good-bye – give our love to Fabrice.’
When Fabrice came in he sniffed about, and asked whose cigar. Linda explained.
‘They say they know you?’
‘Mais bien sûr – Merlin, teliement gentil, et l’autre Warbeck, toujours si malade, le pauvre. Je les connaissais à Venise. What did they think of all this?’
‘Well, they roared at the flat’
‘Yes, I can imagine. It is quite unsuitable for you, this flat, but it’s convenient, and with the war coming –’
‘Oh, but I love it, I wouldn’t like anything else half so much. Wasn’t it clever of them, though, to find me?’
‘Do you mean to say you never told anybody where you were?’
‘I really didn’t think of it – the days go by, you know – one simply doesn’t remember these things.’
‘And it was six weeks before they thought of looking for you? As a family you seem to me strangely décousu.’
Linda suddenly threw herself into his arms, and said, with great passion:
‘Never, never let me go back to them.’
‘My darling – but you love them. Mummy and Fa, Matt and Robin and Victoria and Fanny. What is all this?’
‘I never want to leave you again as long as I live.’
‘Aha! But you know you will probably have to, soon. The war is going to begin, you know.’
‘Why can’t I stay here? I could work – I could become a nurse – well, perhaps not a nurse, actually, but something.’
‘If you promise to do what I tell you, you may stay here for a time. At the beginning we shall sit and look at the Germans across the Maginot Line, then I shall be a great deal in Paris, between Paris and the front, but mostly here. At that time I shall want you here. Then somebody, we or the Germans, but I am very much afraid the Germans, will pour across the line, and a war of movement will begin. I shall have notice of that étape, and what you must promise me is that the very minute I tell you to leave for London you will leave, even if you see no reason for doing so. I should be hampered beyond words in my duties if you were still here. So you will solemnly promise, now?’
‘All right,’ said Linda. ‘Solemnly. I don’t believe anything so dreadful could happen to me, but I promise to do as you say. Now will you promise that you will come to London as soon as it’s all over and find me again. Promise?’
‘Yes,’ said Fabrice. ‘I will do that’
*
Luncheon with Davey and Lord Merlin was a gloomy meal Preoccupation reigned. The two men had stayed up late and merrily with their literary friends, and showed every sign of having done so. Davey was beginning to be aware of the cruel pangs of dyspepsia, Lord Merlin was suffering badly from an ordinary straightforward hangover, and, when he removed his spectacles, his eyes were seen to be not kind at all. But Linda was far the most wretched of the three, she was, in fact, perfectly distracted by having overheard two French ladies in the foyer talking about Fabrice. She had arrived, as, from old habits of punctuality drummed into her by Uncle Matthew she always did, rather early. Fabrice had never taken her to the Ritz, she thought it delightful, she knew she was looking quite as pretty, and nearly as well dressed, as anybody there, and settled herself happily to await the others. Suddenly she heard, with that pang which the heart receives when the loved one’s name is mentioned by strangers:
‘And have you seen Fabrice at all?’
‘Well, I have, because I quite often see him at Mme de Sauveterre’s, but he never goes out anywhere, as you know.’
‘Then what about Jacqueline?’
‘Still in England. He is utterly lost without her, poor Fabrice, he is like a dog looking for its master. He sits sadly at home, never goes to parties, never goes to the club, sees nobody. His mother is really worried about him.’
‘Who would ever have expected Fabrice to be so faithful? How long is it?’
‘Five years, I believe. A wonderfully happy ménage.’
‘Surely Jacqueline will come back soon.’
‘Not until the old aunt has died. It seems she changes her will incessantly, and Jacqueline feels she must be there all the time – after all, she has her husband and children to consider.’
‘Rather hard on Fabrice?’
‘Qu’est-ce que vous voulez? His mother says he rings her up every morning and talks for an hour –’
It was at this point that Davey and Lord Merlin, looking tired and cross, arrived, and took Linda off to luncheon with them. She was longing to stay and hear more of this torturing conversation, but, eschewing cocktails with a shudder, they hurried her off to the dining-room, where they were only fairly nice to her, and frankly disagreeable to each other.
She thought the meal would never come to an end, and, when at last it did, she threw herself into a taxi and drove to Fabrice’s house. She must find out about Jacqueline, she must know his intentions. When Jacqueline returned would that be the moment for her, Linda, to leave as she had promised? War of movement indeed!
The servant said that M. le Duc had just gone out with Madame la Duchesse, but that he would be back in about an hour. Linda said she would wait, and he showed her into Fabrice’s sitting-room. She took off her hat, and wandered restlessly about. She had been here several times before, with Fabrice, and it had seemed, after her brilliantly sunny flat, a little dismal. Now that she was alone in it she began to be aware of the extreme beauty of the room, a grave and solemn beauty which penetrated her. It was very high, rectangular in shape, with grey boiseries and cherry-coloured brocade curtains. It looked into a courtyard and never could get a ray of sunshine, that was not the plan. This was a civilized interior, it had nothing to do with out-of-doors. Every object in it was perfect. The furniture had the severe lines and excellent proportions of 1780, there was a portr
ait by Lancret of a lady with a parrot on her wrist, a bust of the same lady by Bouchardon, a carpet like the one in Linda’s flat, but larger and grander, with a huge coat of arms in the middle. A high carved bookcase contained nothing but French classics bound in contemporary morocco, with the Sauveterre crest, and open on a map table lay a copy of Redouté’s roses.
Linda began to feel much more calm, but, at the same time, very sad. She saw that this room indicated a side of Fabrice’s character which she had hardly been allowed to apprehend, and which had its roots in old civilized French grandeur. It was the essential Fabrice, something in which she could never have a share – she would always be outside in her sunny modern flat, kept away from all this, kept rigidly away even if their liason were to goon for ever. The origins of the Radlett family were lost in the mists of antiquity, but the origins of Fabrice’s family were not lost at all, there they were, each generation clutching at the next. The English, she thought, throw off their ancestors. It is the great strength of our aristocracy, but Fabrice has his round his neck, and he will never get away from them.
She began to realize that here were her competitors, her enemies, and that Jacqueline was nothing in comparison. Here, and in the grave of Louise. To come here and make a scene about a rival mistress would be utterly meaningless, she would be one unreality complaining about another. Fabrice would be annoyed, as men always are annoyed on these occasions, and she would get no satisfaction. She could hear his voice, dry and sarcastic:
‘Ab! Vous me grondez madame?’
Better go, better ignore the whole affair. Her only hope was to keep things on their present footing, to keep the happiness which she was enjoying day by day, hour by hour, and not to think about the future at all. It held nothing for her, leave it alone. Besides, everybody’s future was in jeopardy now the war was coming, this war which she always forgot about.