Thalia Read online

  I had found to my dismay that my aunt had said that I could teach Claude to read and write. I already disliked Claude. But I said nothing. I wasn’t at all sure that I liked Cynthia.

  ‘But it’s about Thalia that I want to talk to you,’ he said, turning to me with that same disarming smile which saved Thalia from ugliness. ‘It was I who insisted on your coming here, Rachel. Life hasn’t been very kind to my poor Thalia. She has been in a lot of trouble. You’ll find her affectionate and loyal—if you’ll try and win her confidence. She’s a darling—but she’s at some disadvantage. She just can’t compete with her mother . . . and it seems she’s backward in her education, although I find her disconcertingly clever.’

  ‘She should be at boarding school,’ I said abruptly.

  ‘She was,’ he said quietly. ‘We tried two. She couldn’t settle down and was so unhappy that they asked us to remove her.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘She’ll learn French here, and she’s to share your Italian lessons. She likes drawing. It seemed the perfect chance when your aunt wrote to Cynthia and said that you had to go abroad for the winter. We knew you were studying art. Thalia really has some idea of drawing. You will do all you can for her, won’t you? You can help her as no one else can. You’re young—but you’re just that much older than she is. And you’re so gay! She likes you. I’ve heard her laughing more this week than since we left India. Make her laugh, Rachel. She used to laugh so much but now she takes everything so hard. Try and give her more confidence in herself.’

  I could tell how much he loved this daughter who was so like him. He adored his wife and his handsome little son but this fear, this anguished love for Thalia moved me.

  I wasn’t pleased at being expected to be a kind of wet-nurse to his family. I had come here to get well. Not that I felt ill. I was resentful of the stupidity of the doctors in having interrupted my life at the Slade. But I hadn’t come here to look after a family. Or had I? My father had pointed out the fact that I was entering into a contract. The first one I had undertaken.

  ‘People don’t invite you for a whole year just for the pleasure of your company,’ he had said. ‘You’ll be expected to pull your weight. To give something to that girl. To help with that small boy. To cosset the woman. You’ve got plenty to give—the question is whether or not you’ll give it.’

  ‘But they’re not paying me a salary,’ I had objected.

  ‘They’re feeding and housing you—and paying your expenses,’ he retorted, ‘and you have a healthy appetite.’

  He said this as I was piling cream and jam on my bread at the water bailiff’s cottage that afternoon when he’d last taken me fishing.

  It seemed that he was right. Colonel Pemberton obviously thought that I had made a bargain and he expected me to keep it. Taking my hands he said gently, ‘I like you, Rachel. I like you very much. You’re so frank and open about things. Stay like that. It’ll get you into trouble sometimes . . . but . . .’

  ‘It already has,’ I interrupted. ‘I should be in Egypt now if I hadn’t said what I thought about a certain person.’

  ‘I think it’ll all turn out for the best, certainly for Thalia. If you’d gone to Egypt with your aunt, you couldn’t have come here. Thalia needs a friend very badly. She has no one. I can count on you, can’t I, Rachel? If anything goes wrong you can telegraph my sister. Here’s her address. But you’ll write to me, won’t you? Air-mail letters reach us quite quickly now. I’d like you to let me know how Thalia is getting on at the British school here. And how Cynthia’s health is. You will, won’t you?’

  I hesitated. He pulled me round so that I was facing him. ‘Of course I will,’ I said, feeling suddenly deeply ashamed of myself for the hesitation.

  ‘And you’ll be good to my Thalia? You’ll try and become real friends?’

  ‘I promise to be very good to Thalia,’ I said gravely—and I meant it.

  The night her father left for Marseilles I heard Thalia weeping. Her room was next door to mine, above Cynthia’s and Claude’s. Thalia and I were on the top floor. Our rooms had sloping eaves and a magnificent view of the sea. A third room on our floor was for the maids.

  I slept in a huge double bed carved in Breton style. The cupboards were old and carved in the same way. I loved my room. At night the many lighthouses flashed their revolving beacons on to my bed, and in the morning I could put my head out of the windows and smell the mimosa and the late jasmine on the walls of the villa.

  I went to Thalia’s door and knocked softly. A muffled ‘Come in,’ answered me. She was lying buried in the same kind of bed as mine, her face hidden in the great square pillows. ‘Thalia . . . Thalia . . .’ I whispered. She put out a hand but did not raise her face.

  ‘Is it your father?’ I asked gently.

  ‘He’s gone to that beastly place. And all alone,’ she cried bitterly. ‘I wanted so much to go with him . . . I can look after him better than anyone can. He oughtn’t to go alone . . . I’ll never see him again. Never.’

  ‘Thalia!’ I cried sharply. ‘What nonsense. Supposing I cried like this because I’ve had to leave my father. Pull yourself together now!’

  She sat up in bed. The shutters were open, and every twenty seconds or so the beacon of one of the many lighthouses on that lonely, treacherous coast flashed its light across her white face. I studied her curiously, her face half lost in shadow and its sharp outlines lit vividly by the flashing light, and I decided that the Old Masters would have made her quite beautiful in a painting. If you dissect most of the world-famous portraits the subjects are very ugly. It is the knowledge of the trick of lighting which creates beauty. I was so interested in my discovery that I found it difficult to concentrate on the shaking misery I was regarding. And then her voice intruded on my reflections. ‘Rachel . . . Rachel. . . .’ Just at that moment the lighthouse beacon caught her and showed me her long nose and the red blotchy eyes and cheeks. ‘She’s really ugly—like a mouse . . .’ I thought disgustedly and I couldn’t bear to touch her, so that when she suddenly clutched me and buried her wet face in my shoulder I felt a violent revulsion. But my promise to her father was still fresh with me and I patted her harsh mousy hair. She snuggled her face up against my neck and I could feel her whole body shaking with sobs.

  The door opened suddenly and Cynthia was framed in the doorway. She wore a pale blue ruffled négligée and her golden hair hung down in two long plaits. Her blue eyes were dark now.

  ‘Thalia!’ she said harshly. ‘What do you mean by this childish behaviour? You’re a soldier’s daughter. Get off her bed, Rachel, and leave her alone. If I hear you making any more noise, Thalia, I shall punish you. Go to sleep.’

  ‘She’s unhappy about her father going,’ I said angrily. ‘She can’t help it.’

  ‘There’s no such word as “can’t help it” for a soldier’s daughter any more than there is for a soldier’s wife,’ she said sternly. ‘Go back to bed, Rachel. Good night.’

  I waited until she had closed her door, and then I stole back to Thalia. It was chilly with the night air coming in the wide open windows. She was crying silently with her face buried again, her shoulders shaking with her sobs. I climbed into the great bed and pulled her head on to my shoulder. I hated the touch of her body against mine but I felt a profound pity for her. I held her close until her sobs grew quieter and then I found to my amazement that I was crying too—and so we fell asleep.

  III

  SUDDENLY the season was ended. Gone were the visitors from the plage, the hotels, the pensions, the shops and the cafés. They seemed to have departed in one great flash. Overnight from the crowded noisy beaches and streets there was a silence, then a few days of furious activity everywhere. Chattering, singing young girls throwing blankets over the balconies and cleaning furniture on the terraces and in narrow streets behind hotels and pensions; older women grumbling as they scrubbed floors and tables and wiped out drawers and cupboards before shutting them away for the winter. Then
overnight the whole great sweeping arc of hotels on the promenade of the Plage de l’Ecluse presented a dead, closed face. The heavily shuttered windows looking on to flowerless, flagless terraces stripped of tables, chairs and umbrellas gave a curious blind look to the great deserted plage. Only the residents themselves came now in the afternoon sun with their children, grandchildren and friends. The Casino and the Hotel Crystal remained open, and some of the smaller hotels and pensions which catered for the British and Americans—but they were few compared with the great mass of those closed for the winter.

  ‘Now it’s our own town. Now it’s the Dinard we love,’ said the residents. The shopkeepers were not so pleased. Many of them closed too. Life was settling to a routine for me. Cynthia wished me to take over the shopping. It was useless to explain to her that in a French household the bonne expected to do the shopping and got some small rake-off from the stall-holders, and that Madeleine would resent it. Cynthia was adamant. All French shopkeepers cheated —it was no use my telling her that she only thought so because she couldn’t understand the language. ‘It’s the same as in India. I never allowed the cook to do the shopping,’ she said firmly. ‘Other women did so—they were abominably cheated.’

  ‘No,’ intervened Thalia suddenly. ‘You were cheated, Mother, because you wouldn’t let Ali go to the bazaar.’ She explained to me in detail the system of marketing in India. ‘The cook always does the shopping. He gets a dasturi from all the stall-holders—and if they don’t get the custom he still has to pay them. It’s a kind of blackmail.’

  Yes, I thought, Cynthia must have been a very unpopular mem-sahib—and she was going to be an equally unpopular one here if she did not allow the bonne to do the marketing.

  So I went every day with Madeleine to the market where the fish, the meat, the vegetables and the eggs were all mixed up with necklaces, brooches, materials, sabots, rosaries and crucifixes. Madeleine was treated with a curious familiarity of affectionate contempt by the men and with indifference by the women. They looked from her to me and laughed and sniggered. I wondered what was the matter but Madeleine seemed to me to be an excellent market woman. She bargained in a way I knew I could never copy and she invariably knocked off a few sous. She soon made it clear to me that almost the same system as that which Thalia had described in the Indian bazaars was also the custom here. The bonne or the cook got the equivalent of the dasturi, and there was great resentment if she wasn’t allowed to do the marketing.

  I liked Madeleine. She was pretty, gay and good-natured, and went out of her way to introduce me to all her acquaintances there.

  ‘You are Madeleine’s friend?’ they would say, and laugh loudly when she said proudly that I was staying with her English Madame. One morning old Yves was outside the market with Napoleon and the cart. ‘Hola!’ he called, ‘wait a minute, mademoiselle.’

  Madeleine was bargaining for a cabbage and I went up and patted Napoleon. ‘You’ve still got her, then?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Madeleine.’

  ‘You can see we’ve still got her.’

  ‘My sister won’t come until she’s gone. She’ll come then.’

  ‘Madame won’t get rid of Madeleine until she has seen Marie.’

  ‘That’s fair enough—but my sister Marie’s a good woman.’

  He put such an accent on the ‘good’ and gave such a leer at Madeleine as she came hurrying to me carrying a large cabbage triumphantly that for the first time I began to wonder about her. Cynthia—who had engaged her—was becoming every day more dissatisfied with the girl. She was untidy, she was dirty, she was unpunctual. According to Cynthia she had no good qualities at all, but I didn’t tumble to Madeleine’s profession until one morning when she had brought in my early-morning tea, an innovation which Cynthia had taught her. She looked at me in the great Breton bed, then flung back the shutters. ‘Don’t you ever sleep with a man?’ she said casually. I was taken aback but did not show it.

  ‘Not as yet,’ I said, as casually.

  ‘You are a virgin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How dull!’ She used the word ennuyeuse. I hadn’t considered the subject much but this aspect of it amused me.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because you’re a woman. What’s the use of being a woman if you’re a virgin?’

  ‘One has to begin sometime,’ I agreed.

  ‘There’s some of the Navy putting into port at St. Malo next week. If you like to come over there with me I’ll soon fix you up. I’ve plenty of friends in the Navy.’

  And then I saw why the local people were so amused at Madeleine being in Cynthia’s household—and at my being her constant companion in the market. I sat up in bed and laughed. The idea of Cynthia having found and chosen this particular girl amused me enormously. Madeleine was affronted at my laughter. She dumped my tea down and began a volley of angry French at me—she called me all kinds of unpleasant names ending up with accusing me of being an ungrateful fool. But it was no good—I couldn’t stop laughing. The thought of my aunt’s face if she could have heard that within two weeks of coming to France I was being offered an introduction to the unmentionable profession amused me even more than the vision of Cynthia’s face when she discovered what she was harbouring.

  At last I stopped, and asked her weakly why she should think that I would receive such suggestions with anything but anger.

  ‘You draw pictures of naked men. You must be interested in their anatomy,’ was her answer. This sent me off into fresh peals of laughter.

  ‘You’ve been looking in my portfolio!’ I accused her. ‘It’s tied up—you must have untied it.’

  She reddened, then admitted it. ‘It’s because of Monsieur Xavier Tréfours,’ she explained. ‘He’s a painter from Pont Aven, and he’s always asking me to take my clothes off—not for any good purpose, you understand—just to draw pictures of me. I would never allow such a thing and I told him in no uncertain terms. I’m a modest girl.’

  This upset me again and I laughed so much that Thalia came in. Madeleine whisked out, angrily slamming the door.

  ‘What’s the matter? Do tell me.’

  ‘She’s just suggested that she shall fix me up with a sailor next week,’ I said weakly. ‘She’s what is known as a bad girl.’

  Thalia’s eyes flickered—then she broke into one of her smiles. ‘I knew it! I knew it! And Mother’s so proud of having engaged her herself.’

  ‘How did you know?’ I asked curiously—I hadn’t known—and I was nearly three years older than Thalia.

  ‘Ali had girls from the bazaar. They all walk, move and look at men in the same way—one gets to know them. And the little English she knows—it’s all those sort of words.’

  ‘What sort of words?’

  ‘Oh, you know—they begin with f and b.’

  But this sent me off into more laughter. Thalia lay down on the bed with me and, the tea forgotten by the bedside, we clung together laughing immoderately.

  ‘Don’t tell Mother—it’s too lovely!’

  Our laughter became an uncontrolled gale.

  It was still warm enough to bathe, and every day we went down the steps from the villa in our bathing suits and, leaving our wraps there, ran across the hard firm sands. When I had first arrived, Tom Pemberton had come with us. He found the water cold after India, but he wanted to satisfy himself that Thalia would be safe with me. ‘There are strong, treacherous currents all round most of this savage coast,’ he said to me. ‘I know you can swim—but even good swimmers are helpless against a relentless current.’

  It was difficult to believe that this dreaming, hazy coast-line with its rose-tinted islands and its hard white sands was dangerous, but his statement was borne out by the notice-boards on every plage warning bathers of the dangerous currents.

  ‘Wait until the weather changes,’ said the fishermen. ‘You’ll see how cruel is our land of Armor.’

  But now it was peaceful with the strange quality o
f a fairytale coast where any of the Cornish legends of the Arthurian kingdom could take place even now. I would lie after swimming on the sands with Thalia and tell her all the stories of the Knights of the Grail. She did not know any of them. As far as I could make out she had read almost nothing except Kipling and seen practically no films or plays, except Tarzan of the Apes, which she had seen seven times, and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer which she had seen almost as many. Tom Pemberton had told me that these two films ran permanently in the Indian cinemas. I was not only trying to teach her to swim but to get to know her. She was not an easy pupil as regards either. Both she and Cynthia had a quality of remoteness difficult to assess, but whereas with Cynthia it embodied coldness, in Thalia I sensed a repressed spontaneous warmth.

  With swimming she was nervous and acutely self-conscious. She made excellent progress until Cynthia began watching us from the terrace.

  ‘You can’t drown if you keep your head,’ I would reassure Thalia. ‘It’s easy to keep afloat even if you can’t swim if you keep your arms down and your head up.’

  But she would suddenly become conscious of her mother on the terrace, and immediately her arms would go up and her head under and she was hauled out spluttering and choking, red and blotchy.

  ‘Why d’you look at your mother?’ I demanded angrily one morning after several hopeless efforts. ‘Look at me, swim to me, watch my arms and legs. Don’t look at the shore at all.’

  ‘Couldn’t you ask Mother not to come out on the terrace?’ she pleaded. ‘I can’t do anything when she’s looking at me.’

  I asked Cynthia at lunch that day. She only smiled in a remote irritating way and said that she didn’t watch us just for pleasure, but for our safety.

  ‘You couldn’t do anything if we got into difficulties,’ said Thalia. ‘You can’t swim.’