Night Without Stars (3 page)

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. Claire 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.

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

now it had been just a thought, a threat, a promise with a hint of

bravado. Now it leered at me like a challenge to my own integrity

and guts. You can't be so very sorry for yourself if all the time it's

in your own hands to do something about it.
And it seemed to me just then that hesitation would be admitting

you were beaten. If you hesitated, all the weak comforting thoughts

would creep in and you'd never have the courage again. Now.

Now. Make a move while the anger is there.
Someone took the other seat at my table.
The girl from the shoe-shop said: “Forgive me. But you
are
ill.”
I peered at her. I felt a bit of a fool, as if my inmost thoughts

had been surprised.
“I'm all right.”
“I came out for lunch and saw you here.”
“I'm all right.”
She didn't speak for a minute, seeming to weigh me up.
I said with a sort of casual irritableness, to throw her off the

scent: “ Do these winds ever get on your nerves, or are you all

immune?”
“We don't like them, of course.”
“First you get the Mistral—and now it's something else.”
“The Tramontane. It will drop to-morrow.”
“Then I shall be better to-morrow.”
She said: “ Do you want to be left alone? You have only to say.”
“I do.”
She didn't move. “ You're blind, aren't you.”
I tapped on the table for the waiter but didn't answer. I was

angry now—not so much with her as at that weak part of myself

which was trying to be glad of her interest.
“It's the war, isn't it? I know the signs so well. The war-injured

are different from other people—afraid of showing themselves, afraid of sympathy. Well, I'll not give you sympathy if you don't want it. But … I thought you were a stranger in a foreign country. I thought it was the least I could do to come and see.…”

“M'sieu?”

“Bring this lady something to drink. What will you have, mad'moiselle?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

“An aperitif for Mad'moiselle.”

He reeled off the usual list, and after a minute she chose one. I don't remember what it was. The waiter went away.

She said: “Have you been in France long?”

“Since November.”

“You speak the language very fluently. But your accent is bad. What has made you so ill to-day?”

The waiter came back with her aperitif.

“I'm not ill”

“… I'm sorry. But I mustn't be sorry, must I? At least I'm sorry that you fell in our shop.”

“Your carpet was commendably clean.”

“It—upset us all very much.… What are you going to do now?”

“Have lunch, I should think. Perhaps you'll join me.”

She moved her chair. “ No, thank you. That was not what I meant at all.”