Authors: Philippa Carr
The French seemed to consume a great deal of wine, so I was not surprised when he chose it.
He went up into the room which was called the
salon.
It was not exactly large but was comfortably furnished. I waved to a chair with a little table beside it and went to the cabinet to get the wine.
Then he told me his name was Georges Mansard and he was a friend of Jacques.
“I heard that you had arrived from England,” he said. “Tell me, how do you like Paris?”
“Enchanting,” I told him.
“You have visited the well-known spots, I’ll be bound. Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower. What do you think of Montmartre?”
“I was delighted by all,” I said.
“Your home was … ?”
“In Cornwall. We had a place right on the coast.”
“That must also have been enchanting.”
“It is reckoned to be so.”
He lifted his glass. “Welcome to France.”
We talked easily and his English, being only slightly accented, was not difficult to understand. He knew England. He had even been to Cornwall. He himself came from the south of France, near Bordeaux.
“Where the wine comes from,” I said.
“Exactly so. All the best wine in France … in the world … comes from the Médoc.” He lifted his hands and smiled whimsically. “Of course, there will be many who deny this … for instance those who do not have the good fortune to live among those delectable vines.” He smiled and looked into his glass. “This is a good claret.”
“I am glad. I am sure that Monsieur Dubois, like most of his countrymen, would drink only the best.”
He told me a great deal about Bordeaux and how he came to Paris on business, marketing his wines.
“We have an office here, you see.”
“So I suppose you travel back and forth to Bordeaux frequently,” I said.
“That is so.”
“I thought you must be an artist when you first came.”
“Oh, do I look like one?”
“No … I don’t think so. How does an artist look? One imagines them in flowing smocks, splashed with paint—but I have found them not like that at all.”
“This is the Latin Quarter. This is where they abound.”
“I suppose the days of La Bohème are no more.”
“I expect things have changed now. There is the art of commerce. What do you say, commercial art? This is more now to employ the artists. They are not so poor. It is not a matter of exchanging a picture for a meal, if you understand.”
“I do.”
He stayed for two hours and I felt elated by his visit.
When Jacques returned and I told him Georges Mansard had called, he received the news nonchalantly.
“He’s a charming man,” I commented. “We got on very well.”
“I am sure you did. I knew he would be enchanted by my little cabbage.”
He seized me and swung me round. We danced. Our steps, like everything else, fitted perfectly.
He stopped suddenly, kissed me intensely and said: “It seems years since I saw you.”
That was how it was with Jacques.
Georges Mansard called the next day and went up to the attic where he remained with Jacques for a long time. He greeted me like an old friend before he went up. I guessed they were talking about wine and Georges was going to get an order. He had talked very enthusiastically about his products during our conversation the previous day and had betrayed his pride in them.
“I hope you got a good order,” I said to him as he was leaving.
Georges Mansard smiled broadly.
“Very good,” he said. “Very good indeed.”
He came fairly frequently. I gathered that he was a friend of Jacques besides being his wine merchant, but I met him often in the streets, so often, in fact, that I began to think he sought me out.
Violetta always said that I changed when I was in the company of men. I opened out, she said, like a flower does in the sun or when it is given needed water. She is right, of course. I am frivolous and susceptible to admiration, but I do pride myself in knowing my weaknesses.
When we met he would suggest we take a glass of wine together; he knew the right place to take me. It was a kind of wine bar with secluded corners where people could talk in peace. He told me a great deal about his family’s winery and was quite eulogistic describing the gathering of grapes; then he would tell me about the pests, the inclement weather, and all the hazards that had to be watched.
He knew, of course, that I had left my home to go off with Jacques. He talked often of Jacques and the people who called at the studio; he was one of those people who is very interested in others and in what is going on.
When I was alone I liked to stroll in and out of the secondhand book shops which abound on the Left Bank. I constantly thought how much Violetta would like to have been there. Then I would grow morbid, wishing that she were with me and thinking how different it would have been if she were and we were on holiday together, carefree, eventually to return to our real home in Caddington. Then the enormity of what I had done would be brought home to me. I thought of them all mourning me.
If I had known then that Violetta would become engaged to Jowan Jermyn and in the course of events would become my neighbor, I might never have left Tregarland. But what was the use? It was done now. Characteristically, I had plunged into this adventure. It was the sort of thing I had been doing all my life—but never so irrevocably as I had now.
I had realized it was a mistake—perhaps the greatest of my life. What I had felt for Jacques was slowly slipping away. Not only for me, but for him. I recognized the signs. As for myself, here I was, in a foreign land, dead to all I had known in the past … my sister … my beloved family … my husband, who, after all, had cared for me, and my child.
It was no use. I deserved whatever was coming to me. I knew I did. But that did not make it any easier to bear—in fact, it only made it harder because of the knowledge that it was my own actions which had brought it about.
One day when I was wandering rather aimlessly round the secondhand bookshops, I met the Baileys. It was one of those encounters which happens simply because one meets fellow countrymen abroad, like that other occasion when we had met Dermot. He had heard us speaking English in the cafe near the schloss and had stopped. Then he noticed me. I believe that he would have found some way of getting to know me, but it was the language which had first attracted his attention.
I had paused by a shelf to look at a book—a very old one called
Castles of France.
As I stood there, a middle-aged man standing close to me reached out to take a book from a shelf and, as he did so, another book was dislodged. It was a heavy one and it fell, grazing my arm as it dropped to the floor.
The man turned to me in dismay.
“Mademoiselle,
” he stammered,
“Pardonnez-moi.”
The accent was unmistakably English and I replied in our tongue. “That’s all right. It hardly touched me.”
“You’re English,” he said with a delighted smile.
The woman who was obviously with him was beaming at me. I guessed that they were in their late forties. Their look of pleasure at finding a compatriot amused me.
“And you knew that we were,” added the man.
“As soon as you spoke,” I said.
He grimaced. “Was it so obvious?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
We all laughed. We might have passed on and that would have been an end of it, but the man showed concern about the book which had hit me. He picked it up and said: “It’s rather heavy.”
He replaced it on the shelf while the woman said: “Are you on holiday?”
“No. I’m staying with a friend.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“I hope the book didn’t hurt you,” said the man. “Look. Why don’t we sit down for a bit? Have a coffee. There’s a nice place a step or two away.”
“I do like those little cafes,” said the woman. “And isn’t it a relief not to have to think how to say what you want to for a little while? And if you do get it out fairly well, they rush back at you so fast that I for one am completely lost.”
I was thinking: Why shouldn’t I have a coffee with them? It will be something to do.
So I found myself sitting with them in the cafe near the bookshop. They told me they were Geoffrey and Janet Bailey. He was working in the Paris branch of an insurance company and they had been here for six months or so. They were not sure how long they would stay. They had a house at home near Watford, convenient for the City, and they had a married daughter who lived close by who was keeping an eye on things for them.
They asked where my home was.
“Well … er …” I said. “It’s in Cornwall.”
“Cornwall! A delightful place. Geoff and I thought of having a cottage there. In fact, we might retire down there, mightn’t we, Geoff?”
He nodded.
“Looe,” she went on. “Fowey … somewhere like that. We have had many a holiday there. Are you near there?”
“Not very far …” I was getting a little embarrassed. I could not tell them then that I used to live there before I ran away with my lover.
I felt a sudden insecurity. I had really thought of Tregarland’s as my home. But I had abandoned all that. Their mention of their home and retirement had had an effect on me. They could see ahead. I could not.
Then Geoffrey Bailey said: “I don’t like the way things are going, do you?”
“Things?” I said vaguely.
“The political situation. This man Hitler … what will he be up to next?”
“Didn’t Mr. Chamberlain come back with that agreement from him?”
“Oh, you mean Munich? Do you trust Hitler? Our people in London don’t like the way things are going, Czechoslovakia and all that. It will be Poland next … and if he dares … well, I think we shall be in it … deep.”
“Well, let’s hope for the best,” said Mrs. Bailey. “I’m so glad we spoke to you in that bookshop.”
“My clumsiness turned out well in the end,” added Geoffrey.
They talked about Paris then and I was relieved that they asked no more questions about me. They thought I was staying with a friend; but I must have seemed somewhat reticent about my background.
However, it was only a casual meeting and I should not have got as far as drinking coffee with them if they had not had a guilty conscience about letting a book drop on me.
I was wrong about its being a casual meeting. They insisted on seeing me home, as they said, and they took me to the house. I did not ask them in but said goodbye in the street.
I think that after that Mrs. Bailey was so determined to see me again that she did. It was not really difficult.
She was a motherly type of woman, and I realized later that she had sensed that there was something rather mysterious about me. The fact that I had been evasive about my home had not escaped her. I was staying with friends apparently indefinitely, but I had said nothing of these friends. I must have given an impression of frailty. Violetta had always said that drew men to me. I looked helpless and they longed to protect me. Perhaps Mrs. Bailey felt this, too.
In any case, I had caught her interest and the idea had come to her that I might need help.
About a week after our encounter, when I came out of the house, I saw her strolling towards me. She expressed surprise, which did not seem quite natural, and I guessed at once that she had been looking for me since our meeting. She said why didn’t I go along with her and have a nice cup of tea in their apartment. Not that the tea tasted like it did at home, but it would be more comfortable than a cafe, and she would enjoy being able to talk to someone in English.
I was persuaded. Jacques had gone out and if he did return it would do him good to know that I could amuse myself quite happily without him. So I went to the Bailey apartment.
It was a pleasant place in a block of such apartments. She told me that it was the company’s and staff used the place when they were over to work, which several of them did for spells from time to time.
We had a pleasant two hours together, which I thoroughly enjoyed, until I realized that she might expect to be invited back. I supposed I could do it. Jacques wouldn’t object. It would have to be when he was out, for I was sure he would find the Baileys dull and not his type. He was worldly and sophisticated. It was those qualities which had attracted me in the first place. But the Baileys were comforting. I knew instinctively that in an emergency they would be there. And I was not sure of Jacques. That was the truth. It was beginning to be brought home to me how very rash I had been.
I
T WAS SUMMER—THAT
long, hot summer when war clouds were gathering over Europe. I was not particularly interested in the war situation. I was too deeply concerned with my own affairs—but then, as Violetta had said, I always had been.
I was feeling definitely uneasy. Things were not the same between Jacques and me. I had a feeling that something was going on all around me—something which I should know because it was important to me.
Georges Mansard, the wine merchant, came frequently and I looked forward to his visits. With my usual vanity, I thought he might be falling in love with me and, as Jacques seemed less ardent, that was gratifying.
I began to ask myself during those summer days what would become of me. It was, of course, a question I should have asked myself before I embarked on this adventure, but, as I have admitted, I always ask myself these questions too late.
What a fool I had been! I knew I had been bored at Tregarland’s but my sister was not far off, and my parents would always have provided a refuge. And now they believed me to be dead. It is only when one realizes how much one may need a refuge that it becomes of paramount importance.
I looked forward to those days when Georges Mansard took me to the wine bar for a glass of wine. He asked a great many questions. I was a little evasive about myself, but I expect I betrayed a good deal.
He was very interested to know if I did any work for Jacques.
“You mean modeling?”
“That … or anything else.”
“What else should there be?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Just … anything.”
“Nothing at all.”