Thalia Read online

  ‘In any case I think it’s getting too cold for bathing now. Rachel can continue if she likes but it’s too cold for someone who can’t swim.’

  ‘It’s still very warm in the water,’ I said, ‘and really Thalia can almost swim—another week would make all the difference. Do let her go on for one more week.’

  ‘I have said that it’s too cold for Thalia. You may do as you like, Rachel, although I should have thought that after pleurisy you shouldn’t swim at all.’

  ‘The doctors said it was excellent for me,’ I said, ‘and in Devonshire I’ve swum in the sea at Christmas.’

  ‘Mother, do let me have another week—really it’s not cold,’ Thalia begged.

  ‘It’s useless to argue, Thalia. I have said no.’

  ‘Shall you go on swimming, Rachel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Until it’s ice-cold and snow is on the ground?’ asked Claude.

  ‘They almost never have snow or ice here.’

  ‘Shall you go in on Christmas Day like you did in Devonshire?’

  ‘If it’s good weather, yes.’

  Cynthia looked at me as if I were a curious object. ‘Rather you than me. Ugh! the very idea makes me shiver. I’m always cold after India.’

  The next day I went alone to swim. Although she hadn’t made much progress, Thalia had enjoyed her bathes with me, but Mademoiselle Caron had begun her duties and a sulky Thalia and Claude were closeted with her in the little room on the first floor which Cynthia had set aside as a schoolroom. It looked on to the garden and tall palms reached to its balcony.

  Mademoiselle Julie Caron had been interviewed with me acting as interpreter. She had been sent by the agents for the villa. She was short, dark and plump, with lively eyes.

  ‘Ask her how old she is,’ said Cynthia after we had all shaken hands and the letters of introduction and references had been presented.

  I didn’t like asking her this. She seemed old to me—and I was not surprised when she replied that she was thirty-five.

  ‘It’s a very suitable age,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘Suitable for what?’ I asked. It seemed to me that thirty-five couldn’t be suitable for anything.

  ‘For the post of governess to Claude, and for teaching French to Thalia.’

  ‘She’s not Mademoiselle. She’s Madame,’ I said. ‘She’s a widow. Her husband was killed in the war. If the war ended in 1918 she must have been married terribly young.’

  ‘Seventeen,’ said Cynthia, ‘only a little older than Thalia is now. Tell her that I prefer to call her Mademoiselle.’

  I thought this ridiculous of Cynthia—as I explained to Madame Caron. She looked at me with a smile, and then at Cynthia.

  ‘As Madame wishes,’ she said demurely, ‘but as I have a son of sixteen—it isn’t seemly that I am addressed as Mademoiselle.’

  ‘If she has a son she will understand a little boy far better than if she were unmarried,’ I said.

  ‘Ask her where her son is,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘At sea with the French Navy,’ said Madame Julie proudly, pulling a photograph of a tall lad from her hand-bag and showing it to Cynthia.

  ‘Tell her I still prefer to call her Mademoiselle.’

  ‘I don’t like it—but I need the job,’ said Julie Caron. ‘What does it matter? Everyone here knows I was married in the St. Enogat church to my Jacques before he went back from his last leave.’ Tears filled her eyes and suddenly I hated Cynthia.

  ‘She married a soldier who was killed fighting for his country—she’s proud of having been married to him. Why can’t we call her Madame?’ I asked angrily.

  ‘I’m not asking your advice, Rachel. I’m asking you to translate for me. Ask Mademoiselle Caron when she is able to begin her duties here.’

  ‘At once,’ said the little widow simply.

  ‘She can start next week,’ said Cynthia, ‘and I want her to be very strict with Claude’s accent. I wish him to speak perfect French. Ask her if she’s French or Breton.’

  ‘French. We are all French. I am a Parisian—but my husband was Breton.’

  ‘I’m not interested in the husband or the son. She’s Claude’s governess here, and we’ll call her Mademoiselle.’

  ‘I shall address her as Madame,’ I said firmly.

  ‘You will do nothing of the sort, Rachel. She will be Mademoiselle to us all, and if she doesn’t like it she needn’t take the post.’

  ‘But I don’t mind it at all,’ cried Julie Caron, more tears brimming over. ‘I need the money and I love children. I will do my best for Claude and for Thalia too. Please make that clear to Madame.’

  Did I fancy it or did she put the faintest insolence into the word ‘Madame’ as she used it of Cynthia?

  We started Italian lessons with Madame Valetta. She was fat and somnolent and smelt of sardine oil. I would look at her and think she was asleep; and she would suddenly snap a question at me as a crocodile will snap at its prey. She was a good teacher and I began to talk instead of merely reading Italian. Madame was impatient with Thalia, saying that she didn’t try. But Thalia had a quick brain and an excellent ear, and she just didn’t want to learn Italian.

  She knew some French—one of her father’s servants had come from Pondicherry, and from him she had picked up a little. But she had no intention of learning any more, she told me.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s stupid. In India we speak Hindi or Urdu. What’s the use of learning French? I like India—I don’t like France.’

  ‘You’d like to go back to India?’

  She became intent, closed as in some inner dream, and I watched her curiously.

  ‘Tell me about your life there—your home, what was it like?’

  ‘We’ve had heaps of homes. We move a lot in the Army. But they are always bungalows—all on one floor and always heaps of room with big compounds so that we could keep animals. It’s always hot and sunny, and everyone laughs a lot—except Mother.’

  ‘And you want to go back? But you are going back. Your father said that I could come out with you next year if all goes well.’

  She was delighted. ‘Did he really say that? Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said regretfully, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to go.

  ‘I’m longing to go back. I love India, and I want to keep house for father. I did it when Mother was up in the hills last year.’

  ‘If you were to learn French you could run the house here,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want to. I only want to do it for him—in India.’

  ‘He’s keen on your learning languages, he told me so. You must try more with them.’

  ‘I don’t want to. I like drawing and writing things.’

  Cynthia had asked me to teach Claude the elements of reading and writing. He didn’t want to learn either. It took all my powers of concentration, invention and patience. He was extremely intelligent, but, like Thalia, he didn’t want to concentrate. After the first week I went to Cynthia in despair.

  ‘I’m no good at teaching. Claude just won’t learn. He’d be much better with other children.’

  ‘He’s getting on very nicely. You can’t expect any progress in one week. I want him to learn to read and write in English, I don’t care for my son to read French before he can read English—and I dislike their pointed writing.’

  It was useless to argue. Claude and I sat opposite one another every morning in the little room with the balcony looking into the palm trees while Thalia and Mademoiselle Caron were in the salon below. The Reverend Cookson-Cander had sent me a set of readers for very young children. These, he said, were being used with great success in the church schools.

  Claude would look at me with his great fringed blue eyes.

  ‘R-A-N. Make the sound of R-A-N now. What is it, Claude?’

  ‘Cow,’ he would say gravely, his mouth set in a curiously firm line and his jaw jutting out.

  ‘But if C-A-N is can, R-A-N isn’t cow. Now thi
nk, Claude, make the sound of the letters. What is it?’

  ‘Cow,’ he would repeat firmly without taking his eyes from the window, ‘and if we were in India now there’d be monkeys in that palm tree, lots and lots of them, and they’d come in here and pull your hair and scratch your face and smash up all the silly things in this silly room and tear up this silly reading book.’

  And he would give me an angelic smile.

  I was so entranced by this vision that I would listen to his description of the monkeys who had got into Cynthia’s bedroom and upset and tom to pieces all the cosmetics on her dressing-table.

  ‘There are s’posed to be wire nets to keep them out—but Thalia took them away—she let the monkeys come in.’

  At the end of a month, Claude had learned practically no reading and writing but I had learned a great deal about his life in India and a smattering of Hindi. He was alarmingly observant; intelligent in the same curious way as his sister. They seemed to me to have been trained to see all those things which children shouldn’t see—or rather which adults think that they shouldn’t see. He not only knew all about monkeys but all about their mating habits, which he described at length and in detail.

  ‘But don’t tell Mother, she’d be cross with Ali for letting me see. When Ali let me see the little goat’s throat cut in the Kali temple I woke up in the night and screamed. Mummy said Ali must be sent away. He’s a Mohammedan and shouldn’t go near the Temple—Kali’s a Hindu goddess, you know. So when Mummy said he must go I screamed and screamed until they got him back.’

  ‘You like Ali?’

  His eyes went dark and his chin quivered a little: ‘Better’n anyone in the world. I love Ali.’

  I asked Thalia about Ali.

  ‘He’s Claude’s personal bearer. His own servant. He’s had him from a baby. Ali’s a Mohammedan.’

  ‘But I thought you both had an ayah?’

  ‘Yes. We have. She’s a Hindu. She’s gone to her village until we get back. She still belongs to us. But boys have a bearer as well. He brings all the things for ayah—the meals and milk and things, and he carries Claude when he’s tired.’

  ‘Until we go back. When we go back. In India we did this or that. In India it was always sunny. In India people always laugh. . . .’ These phrases were constantly on both children’s lips. My own family had always been connected with India, and the family albums at home were full of photographs of cousins with ayahs and bearers in attendance. Claude was a maddening child—but the look of wistful misery on his face whenever he spoke of India moved me. Thalia said less, but when I asked her about India she had the same nostalgic tone when she spoke of the jungle and the wild life there. She was passionately fond of animals, and both children were missing their pets.

  There was a British school in Dinard which Thalia was to attend for certain classes. But to comply with the French authorities’ regulations almost all the teaching was in French. As her French was so poor it was arranged that she should attend for English subjects only until it was possible for her to follow the teaching in French. On the first day of her attendance I went with her to the school. As we approached the building she became very agitated.

  ‘I feel sick. I can’t go.’

  ‘It’s only nerves—you’ll be all right. I know how you’re feeling. It’s only the first time. To-morrow’ll be better.’

  ‘You don’t know. I can’t go. There’ll be heaps of girls all staring at me because I’m so ugly.’

  We had reached the iron gates of the school. Thalia refused to go in. ‘Why should they stare at you? They’ve other things to be interested in.’ But how well I knew how she was feeling. So I had felt when I had grown so fat last year. Everyone was staring at me. Everyone was laughing. There is no agony like self-consciousness—I knew it; but to help Thalia over her form of it was beyond me.

  ‘And I’m stupid—and backward—they’ll all laugh at me—they did at the other school.’

  She stood leaning against the railings and wouldn’t open the gate. Her head poked forward on her lumpy chest—her arms and legs were too long and thin. Her suit had been made by Cynthia’s Indian tailor who had certainly never studied the girl’s figure. Her straggling hair escaped constantly from the thin plaits and hung in wisps over her freckled face. The freckles were the worst blemish—for whenever she was frightened or overcome with any form of emotion they stood out as livid stains when her skin paled.

  ‘Thalia,’ I said, ‘you have one lovely thing which I envy you more than anything. I’d give you all my good points for it.’

  She looked at me in sullen astonishment. ‘What?’

  ‘Your voice.’

  She stared, puzzled.

  ‘It’s a very pretty voice—it will be a beautiful voice later on,’ I said.

  ‘What’s the good of that? I want to look beautiful. I don’t want to be clever. I want people to like me. Mother can’t speak French and she never reads a book—but all the men look at her. In India she’s surrounded as soon as she goes into a room.’

  ‘You’ll have another kind of beauty. There are lots of kinds. You must learn to be amusing and witty and then people will surround you even if you’re not beautiful in actual features.’

  ‘But that’s the only kind I want. It’s all very well for you. You’re very pretty—even Mother says so.’

  ‘Thalia,’ I said impatiently, ‘it’s something I never bother about. There are so many other lovely and interesting things to do and see I don’t think of my own looks.’

  ‘You don’t have to bother,’ she said obstinately, ‘it’s all there for you.’

  I opened the gate. ‘You’re already late for your lesson. Come on. I’ll go in with you.’

  But she hung back and her mouth was trembling, her eyes flickering wildly as they did when she was acutely nervous.

  ‘I can’t, Rachel. I can’t.’

  ‘All right. We’ll go on the beach. But if you don’t go to your classes to-morrow I won’t take you sketching with me. I promised your father I’d get you here——’

  ‘To-morrow I’ll come alone. I promise you.’

  We went on the Plage de l’Ecluse and looked for anemones and shells in the pools left in the hollows of the rocks by the tide. Here, leaning over the sea treasures with her hair hanging almost in the water, Thalia was absolutely happy. We bought a prawning net in the town and spent the morning trying to catch the darting brown shrimps hiding under the seaweeds. The sun was quite hot and we waded in the pools with our skirts tucked up. It was lovely.

  ‘To-morrow I’ll wear my shorts,’ I said, ‘and I’ll lend you a pair, too.’ But I had made a gaffe.

  ‘But I shan’t be here to-morrow,’ she said shortly, ‘I’ll be at school.’

  When we got back to the villa, Cynthia greeted us angrily. ‘The school telephoned to ask where Thalia was. What on earth have you been doing, Rachel?’

  ‘We went prawning. Thalia didn’t feel well.’

  ‘And Madeleine hasn’t returned from the market this morning. There’s no lunch. She just hasn’t come back. I’ll speak to you presently, Thalia. Rachel, go down to the market and see what’s happened to Madeleine. Claude’s hungry—he wants his lunch.’

  Thalia and I were hungry, too, but to Cynthia only Claude mattered. It never occurred to her to do anything for herself when there was anyone else about. She had always had servants in India and simply expected whoever was about to wait on her. I went to the market and asked our usual stallholders whether they had seen Madeleine. They laughed and chuckled in a knowing way. Yes, she’d been there. ‘But she’s gone now—she’ll be back soon and all the richer for it. Tell your Madame that!’

  I bought a long roll of bread which they called a baguette and stuck a piece of chocolate in it and put it under my coat. Thalia and I would take it with us on our afternoon ramble round the coast.

  When I got back Madeleine had returned. Cynthia was speaking to her in louder and louder English. Madeleine was sl
icing potatoes deftly, her head downbent over a piece of steak which she had covered with butter before putting it under the grill.

  ‘I won’t have all that butter on the meat! You know that,’ Cynthia was saying furiously. ‘And what were you doing all this time?’

  ‘I had some important business,’ said Madeleine without looking up from the food she was preparing.

  Thalia and I exchanged glances, and went off into hopeless giggling. Madeleine looked up at our laughter, then she began laughing too.

  ‘Je m’excuse, Madame, the lunch is ready immediately,’ she said demurely.

  Cynthia was very angry with all of us. Claude had been tiresome and Mademoiselle Caron had complained of his behaviour.

  ‘I’m disappointed in you, Rachel,’ she said to me when the children were washing for lunch. ‘I thought you had enough sense to know that Thalia was playing up—she wasn’t ill. She didn’t want to go to school.’

  ‘She was ill because she dreaded going to school. She looked terrible.’

  ‘And Madeleine! She goes off like that and you just laugh. You must support me with the servants. I expect that, Rachel. You’re always giggling with Thalia. I should have thought you were past that silly giggling stage.’

  ‘Your husband asked me to make Thalia laugh as she used to do. He said she took things too seriously.’

  ‘There isn’t so much to laugh about if one does one’s duty properly. Life isn’t a joke. You should know that by the age of twenty.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I was only eighteen and not twenty. But what did it matter? For after only four weeks in her house I knew that Cynthia and I would never understand each other.

  IV

  AFTER the first week when she came home tense and white and merely played with her food, Thalia began to settle down at school.

  ‘It’s not so bad as it was at that English boarding school, the girls here aren’t so clever. Some of the Americans know less than I do. There’s one girl I like very much. She’s asked me there next Wednesday—and you, too, Rachel.’

  Her face was radiant as she told me this. ‘It’s the first time anyone’s ever asked me to tea themselves. They’ve always asked me because their mother made them,’ she said.