The Complete Short Stories (22 page)

She hurried along the
Rue Paradis, keeping in the hot shade, among all the old, old smells of Nice,
not only garlic wafting from the cafés, and of the hot invisible air itself,
but the smells from her memory, from thirty-five summers at Nice in apartments
of long ago, Father’s summer salon, Father’s friends’ children, Father’s
friends, writers, young artists dating back five years at Nice, six, nine
years; and then, before the war, twenty years ago — when we were at Nice, do you
remember, Father? Do you remember the pension on the Boulevard Victor Hugo when
we were rather poor? Do you remember the Americans at the Negresco in 1937 — how
changed, how demure they are now! Do you remember, Father, how in the old days
we disliked the thick carpets — at least, you disliked them, and what you
dislike, I dislike, isn’t it so, Father?

Yes, Dora, we don’t care
for luxury. Comfort, yes, but luxury, no.

I doubt if we can afford
to stay at an hotel on the front this year, Father.

What’s that? What’s that
you say?

I said I doubt if we
ought to stay on the front this year, Father; the Promenade des Anglais is
becoming very trippery. Remember you disliked the thick carpets …

Yes, yes, of course.

Of course, and so we’ll
go, I suggest, to a little place I’ve found on the Boulevard Gambetta, and if
we don’t like that there’s a very good place on the Boulevard Victor Hugo.
Within our means, Father, modest and …

What’s that you say?

I said it wasn’t a
vulgar place, Father.

Ah. No.

And so I’ll just drop
them a note and book a couple of bedrooms. They may be small, but the food …

Facing the sea, Dora.

They are all very vulgar
places facing the sea, Father. Very distracting. No peace at all. Times have
changed, you know.

Ah. Well, I leave it to
you, dear. Tell them I desire a large room, suitable for entertaining. Spare no
expense, Dora.

Oh, of course not,
Father.

And I hope to God we’ve
won the lottery, she thought, as she hurried up the little street to the
lottery kiosk. Someone’s got to win it out of the whole of France. The
dark-skinned blonde at the lottery kiosk took an interest in Dora, who came so
regularly each morning rather than buy a newspaper to see the results. She
leaned over the ticket, holding her card of numbers, comparing it with Dora’s
ticket, with an expression of earnest sympathy.

‘No luck,’
Dora said.

‘Try again tomorrow,’
said the woman. ‘One never knows. Life is a lottery …’

Dora smiled as one who
must either smile or weep. On her way back to the sea-front she thought, tomorrow
I will buy five hundred francs’ worth. Then she thought, no, no, I’d better
not, I may run short of francs and have to take Father home before time. Dora,
the food here is inferior. — I know, Father, but it’s the same everywhere in
France now, times have changed. — I think we should move to another hotel,
Dora. — The others are all very expensive, Father. — What’s that? What’s that
you say? — There are no other rooms available, Father, because of the tourists,
these days.

The brown legs of lovely
young men and girls passed her as she approached the sea. I ought to appreciate
every minute of this, she thought, it may be the last time. This thoroughly
blue sea, these brown limbs, these white teeth and innocent inane tongues,
these palm trees —all this is what we are paying for.

‘Everything all right,
Father?’

‘Where have you been,
dear?’

‘Only for a walk round
the back streets to smell the savours.

‘Dora, you are a chip
off the old block. What did you see?’

‘Brown limbs, white
teeth, men in shirt-sleeves behind café windows, playing cards with green
bottles in front of them.’

‘Good — you see
everything with my eyes, Dora.’

‘Heat, smell, brown legs
— it’s what we are paying for, Father.’

‘Dora, you are becoming
vulgar, if you don’t mind my saying so. The eye of the true artist doesn’t see
life in the way of goods paid for. The world is ours. It is our birthright. We
take it without payment.

‘I’m not an artist like
you, Father. Let me move the umbrella — you mustn’t get too much sun.

‘Times have changed,’ he
said, glancing along the pebble beach, ‘the young men today have no interest in
life.’

She knew what her father
meant. All along the beach, the young men playing with the air, girls, the sun;
they were coming in from the sea, shaking the water from their heads; they were
walking over the pebbles, then splashing into the water; they were taking an
interest in their environment with every pore of their skin, as Father would
have said in younger days when he was writing his books. What he meant, now,
when he said, ‘the young men today have no interest in life’, was that his
young disciples, his admirers, had all gone, they were grown old and
preoccupied, and had not been replaced. The last young man to seek out Father
had been a bloodless-looking youth — not that one judged by appearances — who
had called about seven years ago at their house in Essex. Father had made the
most of him, giving up many of his mornings to sitting in the library talking
about books with the young man, about life and the old days. But this, the last
of Father’s disciples, had left after two weeks with a promise to send them the
article he was going to write about Father and his works. Indeed he had sent a
letter: ‘Dear Henry Castlemaine, — Words cannot express my admiration …’
After that they had heard no more. Dora was not really sorry. He was a poor
specimen compared with the men who, in earlier days, used to visit Father. Dora
in her late teens could have married one of three or four vigorous members of
the Henry Castlemaine set, but she had not done so because of her widowed
father and his needs as a public figure; and now she sometimes felt it would
have served Father better if she had married, because of Father — one could
have contributed from a husband’s income, perhaps, to his declining years.

Dora said, ‘We must be
going back to the hotel for lunch.’

‘Let us lunch somewhere
else. The food there is …’

She helped her father
from the deck-chair and, turning to the sea, took a grateful breath of the warm
blue breeze. A young man, coming up from the sea, shook his head blindly and
splashed her with water; then noticing what he had done he said — turning and
catching her by the arm — ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ He spoke in English, was an
Englishman, and she knew already how unmistakably she was an Englishwoman. ‘All
right,’ she said, with a quick little laugh. The father was fumbling with his
stick, the incident had passed, was immediately forgotten by Dora as she took
his arm and propelled him across the wide hot boulevard where the white-suited
policemen held up the impetuous traffic. ‘How would you like to be arrested by
one of those, Dora?’ He gave his deep short laugh and looked down at her. ‘I’d
love it, Father.’ Perhaps he wouldn’t insist on lunching elsewhere. If only
they could reach the hotel, it would be all right; Father would be too
exhausted to insist. But already he was saying, ‘Let’s find somewhere for
lunch.’

‘Well, we’ve paid for it
at the hotel, Father.’

‘Don’t be vulgar, my
love.’

In the following March,
when Dora met Ben Donadieu for the first time, she had the feeling she had seen
him somewhere before, she knew not where. Later, she told him of this, but he
could not recall having seen her. But this sense of having seen him somewhere
remained with Dora all her life. She came to believe she had met him in a
former existence. In fact, it was on the beach at Nice that she had seen him,
when he came up among the pebbles from the sea, and shook his hair, wetting
her, and took her arm, apologizing.

‘Don’t be vulgar, my
love. The hotel food is appalling. Not French at all.’

‘It’s the same all over
France, Father, these days.’

‘There used to be a
restaurant — what was its name? — in one of those little streets behind the
Casino. Let’s go there. All the writers go there.’

‘Not any more, Father.’

‘Well, so much the
better. Let’s go there in any case. What’s the name of the place? — Anyway,
come on, I could go there blindfold. All the writers used to go …’

She laughed, because,
after all, he was sweet. As she walked with him towards the Casino she did not
say — Not any more, Father, do the writers go there. The writers don’t come to
Nice, not those of moderate means. But there’s one writer here this year,
Father, called Kenneth Hope, whom you haven’t heard about. He uses our beach,
and I’ve seen him once — a shy, thin, middle-aged man. But he won’t speak to
anyone. He writes wonderfully, Father. I’ve read his novels, they open windows
in the mind that have been bricked-up for a hundred years. I have read
The
Inventors,
which made great fame and fortune for him. It is about the
inventors of patent gadgets, what lives they lead, how their minds apply
themselves to invention and to love, and you would think, while you were
reading
The Inventors,
that the place they live in was dominated by inventors.
He has that magic, Father — he can make you believe anything. Dora did not say
this, for her father had done great work too, and deserved a revival. His name
was revered, his books were not greatly spoken of, they were not read. He would
not understand the fame of Kenneth Hope. Father’s novels were about the
individual consciences of men and women, no one could do the individual
conscience like Father. ‘Here we are, Father — this is the place, isn’t it?’

‘No, Dora, it’s further
along.’

‘Oh, but that’s the
Tumbril; it’s wildly expensive.’

‘Really, darling!’

She decided to plead the
heat, and to order only a slice of melon for lunch with a glass of her father’s
wine. Both tall and slim, they entered the restaurant. Her hair was drawn back,
the bones of her face were good, her eyes were small and fixed ready for
humour, for she had decided to be a spinster and do it properly; she looked
forty-six and she did not look forty-six; her skin was dry; her mouth was thin,
and was growing thinner with the worry about money. The father looked eighty
years old, as he was. Thirty years ago people used to turn round and say, as he
passed. ‘That’s Henry Castlemaine.’

Ben lay on his stomach on his mattress on
the beach enclosure. Carmelita Hope lay on her mattress, next to him. They were
eating rolls and cheese and drinking white wine which the beach attendant had
brought to them from the café. Carmelita’s tan was like a perfect garment,
drawn skin-tight over her body. Since leaving school she had been in numerous jobs
behind the scenes of film and television studios. Now she was out of a job
again. She thought of marrying Ben, he was so entirely different from all the
other men of her acquaintance, he was joyful and he was serious. He was also
good-looking: he was half-French, brought up in England. And an interesting
age, thirty-one. He was a schoolteacher, but Father could probably get him a
job in advertising or publishing. Father could do a lot of things for them both
if only he would exert himself. Perhaps if she got married he would exert
himself.

‘Did you see your father
at all yesterday, Carmelita?’

‘No; as a matter of fact
he’s driven up the coast. I think he’s gone to stay at some villa on the
Italian border.’

‘I should like to see
more of him,’ said Ben. ‘And have a talk with him. I’ve never really had a
chance to have a talk with him.’

‘He’s awfully shy,’ said
Carmelita, ‘with my friends.’

Sometimes she felt a
stab of dissatisfaction when Ben talked about her father. Ben had read all his
books through and through — that seemed rather obsessive to Carmelita, reading
books a second time and a third, as if one’s memory was defective. It seemed to
her that Ben loved her only because she was Kenneth Hope’s daughter, and then,
again, it seemed to her that this couldn’t be so, for Ben wasn’t attracted by
money and success. Carmelita knew lots of daughters of famous men, and they
were beset by suitors who were keen on their fathers’ money and success. But it
was the books that Ben liked about her father.

‘He never interferes
with me,’ she said. ‘He’s rather good that way.

‘I would like to have a
long talk with him,’ Ben said.

‘What about? — He doesn’t
like talking about his work.’

‘No, but a man like
that. I would like to know his mind.’

‘What about my mind?’

‘You’ve got a lovely
mind. Full of pleasant laziness. No guile.’ He drew his forefinger from her
knee to her ankle. She was wearing a pink bikini. She was very pretty and had
hoped to become a starlet before her eighteenth birthday. Now she was close to
twenty-one and was thinking of marrying Ben instead, and was relieved that she
no longer wanted to be an actress. He had lasted longer than any other
boyfriend. She had often found a boy exciting at first but usually went off him
quite soon.

Ben was an intellectual,
and intellectuals, say what you like, seemed to last longer than anyone else.
There was more in them to find out about. One was always discovering new things
— she supposed it was Father’s blood in her that drew her towards the
cultivated type, like Ben.

He was staying at a tiny
hotel in a back street near the old quay. The entrance was dark, but the room
itself was right at the top of the house, with a little balcony. Carmelita was
staying with friends at a villa. She spent a lot of time in Ben’s room, and
sometimes slept there. It was turning out to be a remarkably happy summer.

‘You won’t see much of
Father,’ she said, ‘if we get married. He works and sees nobody. When he doesn’t
write he goes away. Perhaps he’ll get married again and —’

‘That’s all right,’ he
said, ‘I don’t want to marry your father.’