Outside the traffic had almost stopped. Paris was asleep. Then a car with a noisy exhaust came from far in the distance racing at fifty or sixty along the length of the gardens. When it was past Sarah said:
‘‘He still thought a lot of your mother, didn’t he?’’
‘‘Oh, yes … I suppose so. Otherwise she couldn’t have touched him. And I used to think she felt the same for him. I used to think it was just her way of … But soon after his death I overheard her talking with Marion; and then I knew it wasn’t so, just by the tone of her voice. Perhaps it was poverty that had killed it.…”
There was a longish silence. Sarah stirred against my arm. She said: ‘‘You can build yourself a protection, can’t you—as high and as strong as you like—but there’s no protection against those you love. That’s the privilege and the responsibility of caring.”
I thought she spoke from her own experience.
We had eight days, really. Eight days until the thing came. I’d never known Sarah until that week. Falling in love with someone the way I had with her is like seeing two or three colours and thinking you see the whole spectrum. I hadn’t realized before—though I should have—how highly strung she was, how her vitality burned itself out at times. I hadn’t realized what fun there was in her or how she could flare up in a sudden anger that never lasted. I hadn’t known how easy she was to please or how hard she was to impress, or how sweet she could be in improbable and enchanting ways.
We didn’t do many of the obvious things. Of course we went to the ballet. I could see more in it now, and of course I would have gone in any case to see her pleasure. We tried a play or two, but I couldn’t follow them, and some of the night clubs. We dined at the most expensive restaurants and the cheapest. We shopped in the Faubourg St. Honoré and in the Boulevard de Clichy. We walked for miles, along the banks of the Seine, west to Trocadero, east to Notre Dame and the Ile St. Louis where the fishermen sit all day and watched the river creeping past. We travelled in the shabby old buses and the shakier tubes, north to the Sacré Cœur, south to Montparnasse. I don’t remember what the weather was, but I suppose it must have been fine. I remember there was a shower once when we were near the Rond Point, and we ducked into a café.
Above all we talked. I never knew there were so many subjects in the world or any of such passionate interest. We talked and argued and settled the world’s problems and faced our own, made plans and then threw them over for something better. And often and often there was laughter—which had been so absent from her during the week in London. It sparkled and bubbled in her until I felt that perhaps she really was as happy as she seemed.
I’ve not been in Paris since, but the sight of a word like Châtelet or Neuilly brings back the time and the mood and the memory.…
The eighth morning we got up and had our breakfast at the table by the window as usual. After the first morning in bed we did this because of the wonderful view. The Hôtel Continentale overlooks the Tuileries, and from it you can see nearly all the beauty of Paris. On the extreme right we could see the Arc de Triomphe set at the tip of the glimmering sword that the moving cars and the morning sun made of the Champs Elysées. Beyond it and south was the Eiffel Tower and the dome of Napoleon’s Tomb. The government building and the Chamber of Deputies were directly across the gardens, and away to the left was the Louvre, backed by the twin towers of Notre Dame—all set in a semi-circle for us to look at, over the tinted tree tops.
I was lazily finishing my coffee when the post came, and Sarah took it from the boy and passed me my share, which I could see was a letter from Michael and a bill for new tyres that somebody had mistakenly sent on. She had two letters as well, and she read the first from her father, with her bare elbows on the table. As her hair was quite loose it kept falling forward, and she’d push it back with a slow movement of her fingers. I got something out of seeing her just do that, and for a bit I didn’t read my letter. Then she looked up, met my look, and smiled with her eyes. I got up and went over to her chair.
She said against my face: ‘‘Daddy’s having some of the second thoughts he hadn’t breath for before we left.”
‘‘Decent of him to wait till now.”
‘‘We really are quite nice people, we Darnleys, in spite of what you once thought.”
‘‘I can’t remember what I once thought. It belongs to somebody else’s life. All I know is that if I’d been your father I should have made a lot of trouble about letting you go off with a man like me.”
She said: ‘‘ You’re not going to be an easy-going husband, are you?’’
I picked up the cigarettes from the dressing-table and was back in my seat when she put a knife through the flap of the envelope. Absently she took a cigarette, and I flipped my lighter and leaned across, but she didn’t take a light.
‘‘Doesn’t seem to be any letter in it,’’ she said. ‘‘But there is something. Very exciting! Wedding present, I believe.”
She unwrapped the bit of tissue paper and a ring fell out and rolled across the table. It rolled half way across to me and then fell on its side.
I’d no difficulty in recognizing it as Tracey’s signet ring.
Chapter Eighteen
I said: ‘‘Drink this: it’ll make you feel better. No, take a gulp, sips won’t help.”
She coughed. ‘‘ It’s all right. I’m all right now.” She slid her legs off the bed and put up the usual hand to her hair.
‘‘I should like to get hold of the swine who played this pretty little joke.”
‘‘I don’t know how it could have happened.”
‘‘Never mind. Forget it. Look, the sun’s coming out. Let’s be honest tourists for one day and do something really dashing. Take a car out to Fontainebleau or somewhere.”
She smiled and got up. ‘‘All right. Anything you say.”
While she was finishing dressing I picked up the ring and put it in my pocket, and we didn’t mention it again that morning, although it was so carefully ignored that it got more and more in the way. Over lunch she said again:
‘‘I don’t see how it can have happened.”
‘‘What does it matter? If we let it spoil our fun we’re playing their game.”
‘‘Oh, yes … if it were only that. What I can’t understand is how anyone—got it.”
‘‘I suppose sometimes he took it off?’’
‘‘Never, as far as I know.”
‘‘Then …?’’
‘‘Yes, that’s what I think.”
‘‘Who saw him—afterwards?’’
‘‘Only Victor. Mrs. Moreton wouldn’t go in. I didn’t.”
‘‘Maybe things like that are taken off the body before burial. But in that case they’d be returned to the next of kin, which was you. Victor …”
‘‘He wouldn’t do a thing like this. A barrister at the top of his profession. What has he to gain?’’
‘‘Mrs. Moreton—if she could have got it. But I can’t somehow see her.…”
‘‘In any case, they aren’t the sort of people.”
‘‘Perhaps somebody at the fire—or after—found it on the ground—someone with a grudge against you.”
‘‘I don’t know. It’s possible. There’s no one I can think of.”
‘‘I suppose it wouldn’t be Clive Fisher?’’
‘‘Oh, surely not.”
‘‘Isn’t he a man who could be catty in a womanish sort of way?’’
She looked at me with her glinting little smile. ‘‘Not very complimentary to women, are you?’’
‘‘Well, men—ordinary men—usually have a reason for their misdeeds, don’t you think? This is so pointlessly vindictive. No purpose except to give you an unpleasant shock.”
After a while she said sombrely: ‘‘That row Tracey and I had on the Saturday morning, it was about you. Did I tell you that?’’
‘‘Me? Why?’’
‘‘On the Monday before, when we came back so late from the ballet, he seemed
to make nothing of it, feel no resentment or suspicion at our lateness. Did you think so?’’
‘‘None at all.”
‘‘Well, I suppose it had meant something to him. Or he chose to let it. I realize that now. He may have picked the quarrel deliberately to get me out of the house … as he did so many things deliberately that I didn’t realize. He’d tried very hard to persuade me to go to Scarborough on the Friday without him. We almost squabbled over that. On the Saturday morning he … It made me so angry because there’d never been anything between us—except that one thing that seemed to happen unawares. And even that … In the end, after we’d both said a good many hot-tempered things, he said he was going to consult you next time you came, to see about taking out a policy against adultery.”
I said: ‘‘ That’s just about as nasty as …” I was going to say as nasty as sending a signet ring, but stopped in time.
‘‘Of course the result was what he expected.”
I smiled rather tenderly at her profile. ‘‘Yes. I imagine so.”
That other question that I’d wanted to ask before kept pushing itself to the front—yet I couldn’t think how to put it in a casual way. At last it came out almost without meaning to.
‘‘Did Victor say—did he mention if Tracey was badly burned?’’
‘‘I don’t think he said. Obviously he wouldn’t to me. Why?’’
‘‘I was only wondering.”
‘‘Yes, but why were you wondering?’’
‘‘I don’t know. It’s not a pleasant subject. But I thought one of the salvage men perhaps …”
Fortunately the excuse seemed to satisfy her. But I wasn’t satisfied or content any more. Once I’d almost told her of the breathing I’d imagined I’d heard in the house that night. Now I couldn’t, not ever, because of what she might think.
We had supper that night at a little place near the Rue Dauphine, in the artists’ quarter just on the left bank. The meal took four hours, and all the diners talked to each other, and shouted at each other and flirted with each other and pinched the waitresses; and people acted the fool and gave recitations in a variety of languages; not because they were drunk—there wasn’t a drunk among them—but because they were full of high spirits and were out for an evening’s fun.
The great advantage, of course, was that we couldn’t talk here even if we wanted to because there was far too much noise. Now and then, if I specially wanted to say something I had to put my lips against Sarah’s ear.
About half way through, I shouted to her:
‘‘I think we’re the only English people in the place.”
Some echo of this must have reached the stringy middle-aged man who, with a blonde girl he’d obviously never seen till that evening, was sharing our table. Although he’d been chattering in French, he leaned across at me and shouted in English:
‘‘No, sir. You’re very much mistaken. Don’t you recognize the old Royal Artillery tie?’’
I got out: ‘‘No, really?’’
‘‘Yes. Was born in Hove. Have moved about a bit since then, of course. What part are you from?’’
We both felt a bit silly, and I could feel Sarah quivering with suppressed laughter at the way he’d enlightened us. But a man at the next table, a real poilu-type with a blue beret, had also heard, and he immediately got up and did a dude English officer act that nearly brought the house down. He used a silver five-franc piece for an eye-glass and a roll of bread for a cane, and the English he put on was an absolutely impeccable drawl.
When he sat down and the cheering was over the Englishman opposite me got up and tried to tug something out of his pocket. There was more or less silence while he struggled, but a cheer went up as he got out a blue beret of his own and put it on his head. Then he did an imitation of a French pimp trying to persuade a tourist to come and sleep with his grandmother. It was rich, it was lewd, it was magnificent. You didn’t need to know much French to tell that; but I could see Sarah, who did, getting rather pink. When it was over the place fairly rocked, and the French poilu came across and kissed him on both cheeks.
About twelve I could see Sarah had had enough, and we managed to fight our way out, followed by the love-calls and adieus of our neighbours. When we got out she was trembling, and I hailed a cab and we drove quickly home. In the bedroom she was still full of laughter at the antics of the people in the café, but the laughter was a bit too near tears for my liking, and when she got in bed she couldn’t stop trembling.
I held her close to me. Her body was cold, as if she’d caught a chill; but I knew it wasn’t that.
‘‘Darling, don’t. You’ve been overplaying your hand. Try to relax. Lie quiet; you’ll be all right in a minute.” I didn’t know what to say or what to do; but perhaps I did the right thing after all, because she began slowly to get warm; and then after a bit she gave a deep sigh and the trembling quieted down.
I reached up with my free arm and plugged off the light, and we lay for a long time while her breathing steadied and deepened. I thought perhaps she’d gone to sleep; I couldn’t see her face, and her hair lay in a cloud across the pillow. But after a long time she said:
‘‘Breakdown in morale. Sorry.”
‘‘Nonsense. This morning was to blame.”
‘‘Oh, yes. When somebody puts a jinx on your mind …”
‘‘Go on,’’ I said, when she stopped. ‘‘ Talk. You can’t rub a thing out of your thoughts but sometimes you can talk it out.”
‘‘What must I talk about?’’
‘‘The ring—and Tracey—and his death—and your life with him—and who can have sent the ring: on and on till you fall asleep.”
‘‘I shan’t fall asleep that way.”
‘‘Well, I’m not your doctor but I should have thought it a good way. We’ve funked it to-day. Fatal. Face up. To begin with, tell me why it upset you so much.”
‘‘Isn’t it obvious? Perhaps I’ve a sort of guilt complex.”
‘‘Guilt complex?’’
‘‘Well, I don’t know what else to call it.” She was silent again for a minute. ‘‘Last week you said you were good material for a psychiatrist. Perhaps I am too. You remember that day we went riding … you told me I was frustrated.”
‘‘No, I didn’t. I only said you hadn’t done what you were capable of doing. It’s a favourite opening of the professional seducer—didn’t you know?’’
She wouldn’t rise to that. ‘‘At the time I pretended I didn’t cotton on—had to. But it was absolutely true. I’ve been an absolute failure. Somehow you knew.”
‘‘Oh, nonsense! You’ve been true to yourself and the things you believe in——’’
‘‘It isn’t nonsense, Oliver. And I haven’t been true to myself. If I had I shouldn’t have felt such a desperate sense these last years of—of emptiness, of non-existence—of the sort of failure when you owe something and can’t begin to pay.” She stirred restlessly. ‘‘Tracey’s being ill made it worse. One felt so useless—incapable of helping to build anything, because there was nothing to build on. I shouldn’t have minded what it was.… Something left from yesterday’s efforts that could be used to-morrow.”
‘‘I know. I know the feeling exactly. But——’’
‘‘When the ring came I had a sense of guilt. Because since Tracey died there’s been a sort of ease-up inside me that I haven’t allowed myself to think was relief. Nor was it—exactly. Certainly not relief that he was dead but a release from the kind of life that …”
‘‘I don’t know if you’re helping yourself by talking,’’ I said, ‘‘ but you’re doing me a lot of good.”
She said: ‘‘I think ever since I can remember I’ve wanted something I couldn’t find. Not discontentedly—but to give point to being alive. Sometimes I’ve thought it was there—but it hasn’t been, not really ever—always only the escape; the make-do, the second-best the failure.…”
I said: ‘‘ You’ve taken a risk, marrying me.”
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Well …” I didn’t know quite how to say what I wanted to say: that first she’d married a man who had become a victim of the post-war years; and now she’d married one with a hang-over from the pre-war years. A bad bargain in both cases. ‘‘If you need a meaning to your life——’’
She said: ‘‘I don’t want a meaning, just to my life. I want it to be to our lives. I don’t see why that can’t be.”
‘‘It can be. I only hope one thing.”
‘‘What?’’
‘‘That you won’t ever be content with second best between us—at least.…” I was going to say ‘‘at least unless everything between us is bound to be second best for you.” But on the brink I funked it.
She said: ‘‘When that thing came this morning … You know those old melodramas that used to speak of ‘a voice from beyond the grave’ … Why does one have to be frightened?’’
‘‘Oh, darling, don’t be that. The thing’s over and done with. There’s nothing more to come.”
‘‘Isn’t there? How do we know?’’
‘‘Well, what can there be?’’
She didn’t answer, and I was glad. The fear in my own mind couldn’t be rationalized out of existence because it didn’t have the strength to stand and be examined. I hoped and prayed it never would.
We flew back from Paris on the Saturday because we wanted Sunday free to go prospecting for somewhere to live. It sounded a forlorn hope. We couldn’t afford fancy prices and it wasn’t specially encouraging to feel that about a thousand others had trod this way before. But I wasn’t going to see Sarah start life afresh in my horrible flat. I had a bit of my gratuity left and had saved something over the last two years—more accidentally than by design—and the few hundred pounds might help to pay a premium or something. She wanted me to have some of the money she’d legitimately inherited from Tracey, but I couldn’t stomach that.