Thalia Read online

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘They told me,’ she said simply. ‘But this girl, Clodagh, doesn’t even have to ask if she can have me—she can have anyone she likes.’

  Cynthia wasn’t enthusiastic about the invitation.

  ‘The mother of this girl hasn’t called on me,’ she demurred. ‘I don’t know who she is. One can’t be too careful in a place like this.’

  She sounded exactly like my aunt. Wasn’t it enough that Thalia, who had no friends, had been invited by the one girl she liked?

  ‘I haven’t met this Mrs. Tracey at any of the bridge parties yet,’ she said. ‘I must ask about her.’

  She was lying in bed giving me the day’s orders for Madeleine. Cynthia’s bed was different to all the other carved Breton ones in the villa. It was painted in late Louis XIV style—with swans and cupids and lovers’ knots. Above the head-piece two cupids held up a heart and from it fell small draped curtains forming a canopy. I don’t know why Cynthia always looked out of place in this bed—but she did. She lay there in a pale blue bed-jacket, her lovely hair in plaits like a little girl. Her night-dresses were ruffled and of finest crêpe de Chine—sewed and embroidered by Indian dirzis. She was very beautiful—but it was a beauty which made me uncomfortable.

  Every morning when Thalia had gone to school and Claude was with Mademoiselle Caron I went to her room. It never failed to give me a shock to see her lying there under those cupids holding up the heart. She would tap her teeth with a little gold pencil and write down the food and things to be bought for the day. I would then put it down in French on Madeleine’s kitchen slate.

  ‘Go with her to the market, Rachel, I’m tired of her saying that whatever I order wasn’t there—and do the bargaining yourself. Your aunt told me you’ve been thoroughly trained by her in shopping and keeping accounts.’

  It was useless to tell her that it didn’t matter which of us did the shopping, the prices had already been arranged between Madeleine and the stall-holders.

  I hadn’t seen Captain Mourne since the day of our arrival—Cynthia told me that he had been ill. He was living in an hotel quite near us. When I had said that I would like to go and inquire after him she said that there were plenty of people ready to do that. She said it so bitterly that I asked her if she knew him well. ‘Too well,’ was the cryptic answer, and she had changed the subject. I asked Thalia about him. ‘Didn’t you know?’ she said. ‘He was in India—in the army—and something funny happened—and he left. He used to come a lot when we lived at Dehra Dun.’

  ‘What d’you mean by something funny?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly what it was. I don’t like him—but Mother does.’

  ‘No. She doesn’t. I think she dislikes him.’

  ‘She dislikes him because she likes him. One day I’ll tell you how I know. But not now. Don’t let’s talk about her.’

  Just after this conversation I was going to the market with Madeleine and we encountered Captain Mourne in the rue de la Pionnière. We were swinging the large market basket between us and singing. Madeleine had taught me the song. It was not the sort which either Cynthia or my aunt would have appreciated—but it was good for my French to learn such things. I liked Madeleine more and more—she was so gay and made fun of everything. I hadn’t laughed so much for years. After the earnestness of life at my aunt’s I found it lovely. True, some of her language and swear words shocked me—but it was interesting to learn those. She wasn’t much older than I was—but she knew the world very much better. She had been sent out to service at the age of twelve, and had worked in private houses until she was seventeen. She spoke very little of what she had been doing since then; but I gathered from Cynthia that she had been in an hotel in St. Malo for the last three years until she had quarrelled with the proprietress.

  We were near the little cinema when we saw Terence Mourne.

  ‘C’est le beau Capitaine Mourne,’ said Madeleine, her face alight with interest. ‘You know him, Mademoiselle?’

  He looked from me to Madeleine, then said to me without any preamble, ‘I want to speak to you.’ To Madeleine he said quite roughly, ‘Go on, wait down the road.’

  Madeleine gave me a strange imploring look, then walked away and stood waiting outside the little cinema, staring at the posters on it.

  ‘That girl. What are you doing with her?’

  ‘She’s the bonne. She was in the villa when I arrived. We’re on our way to the market.’ I was resentful of his strange interest.

  ‘Good God! D’you mean to say she’s living in the villa?’

  ‘Yes. Cynthia engaged her before I came.’

  ‘Tell Cynthia that I’m coming to call on her this afternoon. I’ll come about four.’

  ‘She’s playing bridge this afternoon.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At Mrs. van Klaveren’s.’

  ‘What time does she get back?’

  I remembered Cynthia’s remark of the morning. Would she want to see him? I said I didn’t know.

  ‘I’ll come about six—I’ll take my chance of finding her in.’

  ‘Why don’t you telephone her?’

  But he made some absurd excuse that the telephone was impossible in his hotel.

  ‘And you? How d’you like Dinard?’

  ‘Very much,’ I said politely.

  ‘What d’you do with yourself? Have you been round the coast at all?’

  ‘We walk miles in the afternoon. We’ve been round the cliffs from Paramé to St. Servan and from St. Enogat to St. Lunaire, and we go to La Vicomté very often.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Thalia and I.’

  ‘The freckled monstrosity. Poor Cynthia! Who’d have thought she’d produce that.’

  At this vile description of Thalia I felt a violently protective anger. I choked back my words and turned to join Madeleine. I was astonished at my own fury.

  ‘Rachel!’

  I turned.

  ‘You’re angry! Like a little ruffled hen. Come back! I want to ask you something. I haven’t seen you because I’ve been ill. Have you been to the Casino yet?’

  ‘No,’ I said shortly.

  ‘I’ll take you there on Saturday.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For your education. It’ll amuse you. I’ll tell Cynthia when I see her. That’ll amuse her.’

  ‘What will amuse her?’

  ‘That I’m taking you.’

  ‘I haven’t said I’m coming.’

  ‘But you will,’ he laughed. And in spite of my anger I knew that I would go.

  When I joined Madeleine she looked apprehensively at me. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing. He wants to see Madame.’

  ‘He’ll get me sent away, Mademoiselle Rachel, and I’m so happy with you. The Madame is mad—but she can’t help that. She’s kind to me and I’m so happy with you and Mademoiselle Thalia.’

  ‘Why should he get you sent away? It’s none of his business.’

  ‘He’s cruel—that one. Very cruel.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘He’s well known here, Mademoiselle. Life has hurt him and he wants to hurt. You’ll not let him get me sent away?’

  ‘I’ll do my best—but it’s Madame’s villa,’ I said unhappily.

  Did he intend to speak to Cynthia about Madeleine? He had looked so pointedly from her to me and told her so roughly to wait down the road. And yet there had been a look of amused tolerance in his face and a kind of secret delight when I had said that it was Cynthia who had engaged Madeleine.

  At lunch I said that I’d met him and that he was coming to call at six.

  ‘I won’t be back,’ Cynthia said. A colour had come into her cheeks at the mention of his name. She so seldom allowed any kind of emotion to show, that I was surprised. She had told me that laughter and any kind of strong emotion ruined one’s looks. ‘You’ll have lines all round your eyes and mouth if you go on with this incessant laughing.’ />
  I said that I didn’t care because I was not beautiful.

  ‘You’ve improved a lot since you’ve been here. You looked ill when you came and in one month you look quite different.’ She said it grudgingly as if she would have preferred me to stay the way I had been.

  ‘This is the afternoon that Thalia and I are invited to tea at the Traceys,’ I reminded her. ‘If it’s all right with you Mademoiselle Caron will give Claude his tea.’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘On the way to St. Brieuc. We can walk along the little railway track.’

  ‘I wish they had invited Claude. I don’t like him being left alone.’

  ‘We’re going to walk there. It’s too far for Claude.’

  ‘Don’t be late back. You must start early if it’s a long way.’

  Madeleine served the lunch in an exemplary fashion that day. Cynthia was delighted. ‘She’s really learned to do it the way I showed her,’ she said. ‘Tell her the food was excellent, Rachel.’ I told Madeleine.

  ‘Ah, Mademoiselle, the food is horrible cooked in so much water and without any butter—but if Madame likes it that way I am glad she is pleased.’

  In the afternoon Thalia and I set off. It was sunny and lovely but Cynthia insisted that we should carry mackintoshes.

  ‘Say, yes; and we’ll leave them in the bushes near the gate,’ said Thalia. ‘It saves a lot of bother. Ayah always did that, so did Ali. It’s no use arguing with Mother.’

  We hid the mackintoshes under a myrtle bush. Claude howled because he couldn’t come with us.

  ‘Let him howl,’ said Thalia when I suggested that perhaps the Traceys wouldn’t mind if we took him. ‘We’d only have to carry him—he’s used to Ali lugging him around.’

  ‘He ought to be able to walk—he’s almost seven.’

  ‘No European born in India can walk.’

  ‘In time they’ll be born without legs—sort of tadpoles.’

  ‘They couldn’t drive a car—unless they used their tails—and tails fall off. Imagine Mother without legs! Imagine it!’

  ‘And you. You were born there too.’

  ‘No. No, I wasn’t. I was born in Camberley. I can walk.’

  We went along the railway track giggling at everything we talked about. It was the sort of day which was made for laughter.

  ‘I mustn’t laugh,’ I said. ‘Your mother says I’ll get lines and wrinkles . . . lots of them. . . .’

  ‘Bet I’ll make you laugh . . . how much will you bet?’

  ‘A bouchée.’

  These were the most delectable, very large chocolates with all kinds of fillings—Thalia and I adored them. Claude liked sucettes.

  ‘A praline bouchée?’

  A praline bouchée. Go ahead . . .’ and in less than a minute I was laughing and Thalia had won the bouchée. She was an incomparable mimic and had given a perfect imitation of Cynthia telling me that if I laughed so much I would get lines round my eyes. We giggled so much that we sat helplessly at the side of the railway track. An old peasant came along and stood looking at us.

  ‘Better get up, there’s a train coming!’ he said. It was a little single track and no one would mind us walking along it, Clodagh had told us.

  ‘How good it is to be young—one laughs at nothing—wait until you’re old and you’ll cry at nothing . . .’ he said, wagging his head sagely. We got up, thanking him for telling us about the train. It came puffing by as we stood up on the bank—the driver in a blue shirt waving his bare brown arms and blowing us each a kiss. . . . We began laughing again. . . . ‘Ah, c’est la jeunesse! C’est la jeunesse!’ sighed the old man, regarding us as if we were strange objects indeed.

  As soon as he had gone, Thalia gave an imitation of him. She reproduced his Breton accent so perfectly that I stared.

  ‘Thalia! You’re a wonderful mimic. You could make a fortune. If you catch an accent so quickly and easily you could learn languages with no trouble at all. Why don’t you learn French?’

  ‘Why don’t you learn French?’ She mimicked me. Did my voice sound like that? It must. For she had caught the others marvellously. But what a voice she had! It could change from the old man’s deep throaty one to Cynthia’s clipped cold one and now to my own light, clear tones.

  ‘Thalia, darling! You’re wonderful! What a gift. When did you discover it?’

  ‘In India. I amused Ali and all the servants imitating the silly memsahibs . . . I can do animals too. Listen . . . I’ll do the hoolach monkeys in the jungle, they call like this. . . .’

  Her voice began in a strange low key and rose and fell in an extraordinary call. ‘And this is the hyena or jackal at night. And this is a tiger . . . and this is a rogue elephant trumpeting. . . .’

  I was so enchanted that I could visualize the whole jungle as she made the sounds she had loved in the wild parts of India. Then she suddenly stopped. ‘You called me darling. Did you mean it?’

  Had I? It had slipped out unconsciously. It was an endearment I never used. We used none at home—and my aunt neither kissed, embraced, nor called me by any endearment at all.

  ‘Yes. I meant it.’

  ‘You like me then?’

  I thought of that wild moment this morning when I’d wanted to smash Terence Mourne’s face. ‘Yes, I like you, Thalia.’

  The face she turned to me for my answer was alight and eager. ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘I’m glad, Rachel. You see I like you quite terribly. . . .’

  A curious embarrassment fell over us both. I pulled out two brioches and some chocolate.

  ‘Oh joy! Food, glorious food.’

  We fell upon the rolls, which smelt of my jersey under which they had been hidden.

  ‘We turn left here,’ I said, looking at the piece of paper Clodagh had given Thalia. ‘It says turn left by the first signal box and cut through the orchards down to the coast-line, then left again.’

  The cider apples on the trees were ripening, they hung low over the track. We plunged into the thick, sweet grass, bending low to avoid the laden branches. The scent from the ripening fruit was strong as the sun caught the trees. Thalia seized my arm. ‘Look, look, the sea! And that must be the house . . .’

  Framed in apples the sea lay ahead, scintillating and unreal like scenery in a play, and to the left through more trees was cradled a low white house.

  To say that I liked Catherine Tracey on sight was to put it mildly. I was absolutely fascinated by her. She lay, on that first visit, in a bed near the balcony of a room overlooking the sea. It was a perfectly plain iron bedstead and she wore a plain white wrap. She lay there not because she was lazy, but because she had been suffering from a migraine.

  She had copper-coloured hair which grew in strong, shining waves from a high rounded forehead, a lazy gurgling way of talking—as if the whole world were a huge joke—and dimples appeared whenever she laughed.

  The house, delightfully untidy, was noisy with dogs, littered with papers and books, gay with flowers, and from everywhere one caught glimpses of the sea. It seemed to me the perfect house. My aunt’s lovely house looked like an advertisement for one of our largest furnishing firms and Cynthia, in our rather grim fortress-like villa built into the granite cliffs, had a mania for what she called tidiness. Thalia had to fold her clothes in the most ridiculous fashion and I had to fold Claude’s jerseys and knickers in a similar way. In this white rambling villa it was evident that nobody ever dreamed of hanging anything up.

  An elderly plump lady known as Aunt Phoebe appeared to control the household. She gave us tea at which five dogs were present, then took me up to Catherine.

  She held out a slim hand to me. ‘Come and let me see you. Clodagh says you’re an artist. That you’re going to be a painter. Go away, you two—and play with the dogs or eat fruit or something. Leave Rachel with me. I like her.’

  I sat down in a low chair. The two girls, Clodagh and Thalia, went away happily enough.

  ‘Come and sit near me where I can
see you. Clodagh has taken a liking to Thalia. It’s splendid. She hasn’t many friends.’

  ‘Thalia has none.’

  ‘Poor child. She looks so awkward. I hear she has a very beautiful mother.’

  ‘Cynthia is beautiful.’

  ‘She’s your friend?’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t call her my friend. I’m really here doing a job for her although I’m not paid. I’m here for Thalia, to go about with her; and I help with the little boy.’

  ‘But she could still be your friend.’

  ‘I don’t think she likes me,’ I said firmly.

  Catherine Tracey began to laugh—a rich, infectious gurgle. ‘It’s not surprising if she prizes her beauty. You’re much younger. Beauty doesn’t last, Rachel. There are always younger ones coming up.’

  ‘Does it matter so much—age?’ I asked.

  ‘Not if you have the things which are ageless.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The inner knowledge that nothing dies.’

  ‘But it does,’ I insisted.

  ‘No. Only the obvious dies. Age won’t matter at all to you if you’re going to be a painter.’

  ‘Cynthia minds very much.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s not sure of what she’s got.’

  ‘She’s unhappy. I don’t know why—except that her husband’s in India. She doesn’t care much for Dinard.’

  ‘We’re mostly grass widows or real widows here. Haven’t you noticed the surplus women?’

  I hadn’t but then I hadn’t been looking for them.

  ‘Most of the husbands are in India or Egypt or abroad somewhere. It’s cheap here, you know, and much warmer than England for those who’re accustomed to the East.’

  Clodagh had told Thalia that her parents were separated. Her father was in Ireland and she spent her summer holidays with him. I hadn’t passed this information on to Cynthia. She had funny ideas on separations.

  Catherine asked me a little about myself. She wasn’t inquisitive, but she wanted to know why I was in Dinard. I told her about the disastrous portrait of the Reverend Cookson-Cander. She went into gurgles of laughter . . . ‘Clodagh told me you want to be a portrait painter. Would you like to try and do one of me? A friend of mine very much wants a portrait of me.’