Colonel Julian and Other Stories (21 page)

Up from the landing-stage the major was coming towards us with his wife. She staggered us. She was a black-haired girl
of twenty-five, wearing a very smart summer suit of white linen with scarlet cuffs and revers, with lipstick of the same colour. I do not know what it was about her, but even from that distance I could tell by the way she walked, slightly apart from the major and with her head up, that she was blazingly angry.

‘A Jungfrau indeed,' I said.

‘Be quiet!' my wife said. ‘They're here.'

A moment or two later we were face to face with them. The major had lost his habitual cool spruceness, I thought, and looked harassed and upset about something and seemed as if he would have gone past us, if possible, without speaking.

Instead, he stopped and raised his hat. His manners were always very correct and charming, and now they seemed painfully so.

‘May I present Mrs. Martineau?' he said.

Across the narrow roadway the orchestra on the restaurant terrace was playing at full blast, with sour-sharp violins and a stinging trumpet. Mingled with the noise came the sound of guitars played on the steamer as it drew away.

We both shook hands with Mrs. Martineau and said we were glad to meet her. She smiled at us in a politely savage sort of way and the major said:

‘Had an exhausting journey. Going to get her some tea and let her lie down.'

‘Not exhausting, darling,' she said. ‘Just tiresome.'

‘I thought you said you were exhausted, dear.'

‘I did not say I was exhausted. I am not exhausted.'

‘Sorry, dear, I thought you did.'

‘You shouldn't think,' she said. ‘I'm not exhausted. The last thing I am is exhausted.'

I could see by the way she looked over her shoulder at the restaurant orchestra that she already hated the place.

‘Perhaps you will join us this evening for an
apéritif
?' the major said.

We said we should be delighted, but Mrs. Martineau did not speak, and together, walking apart, she and the major went on to the hotel.

‘Oh! dear,' I said.

‘You sum people up so quickly,' my wife said. ‘Too quickly.'

‘I didn't say a word.'

‘Then what was behind that oh! dear?'

‘She makes up too much,' I said.

I really didn't know what lay behind that oh! dear. It may have been that Mrs. Martineau was very tired; it may have been that she was one of those women who, though young, get fretful and unsociable and angered by the trials of a journey alone; it may have been that she was a person of sensitive temperament and ear who could not bear without pain the terrace orchestras of Swiss Sunday afternoons. I did not know. I only knew that she was less than half the major's age and that the major, when he walked beside her, looked like a sorrowful old dog that had been beaten.

‘They didn't say any time for the
apéritif,'
my wife said. ‘Or where.'

It was about six o'clock that same evening and it was still very warm as we went downstairs.

‘The major always has his on the terrace,' I said. ‘We'll wait there.'

We waited on the terrace. The red and white sunblinds were still down, casting a rosy-yellow sort of light, and I asked the waiter to pull them up so that we could see the mountains. When he raised the blinds the whole range of the Jungfrau and the Blümlisalp shone, icily rose and mauve above the mountain-green waters of the lake, and in the gardens below us the flowers were rose and mauve too, tender in the evening sun.

It always seemed to me that you could sit there on the terrace for a long time and do nothing more than watch the changing colours of the lake, the flowers and the mountains.

‘The major's late,' I said.

From across the lake the smaller of the white steamers was coming in, and as it came nearer I could hear once again the sound of the guitars that were played by two Italian Swiss who travelled on the lake every Sunday, playing gay little peasant melodies from the south, earning a glass of beer or a coffee as they played on the boat or at the cafés of the landing-places.

The sound of the guitars over the water was very gay and hungry-sweet and charming in the still air.

And then suddenly as we sat listening to it the major came hurrying down.

‘So sorry.' He seemed agitated and begged several times that we should forgive him. ‘She'll be down in a moment. Waiter! Very exhausted after that journey. Awful long way. Waiter—ah! there you are.'

The major insisted on ordering drinks. He drank very rapidly and finished four or five glasses of Kirsch before Mrs. Martineau came down.

‘I've been waiting for hours in the lounge,' she said. ‘How was I to know?'

‘Let me get you something to drink,' I said. ‘What will it be?'

‘Whisky,' she said, ‘if I may.'

‘There's never any whisky,' the major said.

‘Good grief!' she said.

I got up. ‘I think it'll be all right,' I said.

I walked to the end of the terrace and found the waiter. The hotel had a bad brandy that tasted spirituous and harsh like poor whisky, and I arranged with the waiter to bring a double one of that.

When I got back to the table my wife and Mrs. Martineau were talking of the mountains. My wife was trying to remember the names of those you could see from the terrace, but she was never very clear as to which they were.

‘I think that's Eiger,' she said.

‘No,' the major said, ‘that's Finsteraarhorn.'

‘Then which is the one with pigeons on top?' she said, and I knew she was trying to avoid the question of the Jungfrau. ‘It has bits of snow on all summer that look like white pigeons,' she explained.

‘You can't see it from here.'

‘The one straight across,' the major said, ‘the big one is the Jungfrau.'

My wife looked at me. Mrs. Martineau looked very bored.

‘There's a railway goes almost to the top,' my wife said. ‘You must really go up while you're here.'

I knew the major did not think very much of climbing mountains by rail. ‘I don't think you'd find it very exciting crawling up in that cold little train.'

‘Oh! don't you?' Mrs. Martineau said. ‘I think it would be awful fun.'

‘No sense of conquest that way,' the major said.

‘Who wants a sense of conquest? The idea is to get to the top.'

‘Well, in a way——'

‘Oh! don't be so vague. Either you want to get to the top or you don't go.'

I said something very pointed about the mountain being called the Jungfrau, but it made no impression on her.

‘Have you been up there yet?' she said.

‘No,' I said, ‘we're always meaning to go. We've been as far as Wengen, that's all.'

‘Why don't we all go up together?' my wife said. ‘I think it would be lovely.'

‘Marvellous idea,' Mrs. Martineau said.

‘It means being up very early,' the major said. ‘Have to be up by six. Not quite your time.'

‘Don't be so rude, darling,' she said.

‘Anyway, you'll be tired tomorrow.'

‘I shall not be tired. Why do you keep saying I'm tired? I'm not tired. I simply don't know the first thing about being tired, and yet you keep saying so. I can certainly be up by six if you can.'

I could see that she was very determined to go. The major drank three more glasses of Kirsch and looked more than ever like a beaten dog. The sound of the guitars came faintly over the lake, and Mrs. Martineau said, ‘What is that ghastly row?' and we ended up by arranging to go to the Jungfrau the following morning, and then went in to dinner.

The train to Jungfraujoch goes very slowly up through lovely alpine valleys rich in spring and summer with the flowers of the lower meadows, violet salvia and wild white daisy and pink lucerne and yellow burnished trollius, and peasants mow the flowery grass in thick sweet swathes. There is a smell of something like clover and butter in the bright snow-lit air. As the train goes higher the flowers by the track grow shorter and finer until on the slopes about Scheidegg there are thousands of white and pale mauve crocus, with many fragile purple soldanellas, and sharp fierce blue gentians among yellow
silken anemones everywhere about the short snow-pressed grass.

As we rode up in the little train that morning under the dazzling snow-bright peak, the major was very interested in the flowers and kept asking me what they were. He was quite dazzled by the blueness of the gentians, and kept saying, ‘Look at that blue, darling, look at it,' but I had never seen anyone quite so bored as Mrs. Martineau. Gradually we climbed higher and nearer the snow until at last the air was white with the downward reflection of snow-light from the great peaks above; so that the powder on her cheeks, too heavy and thick for a young girl, looked scaly and blue and dead, and the scarlet of her lips had the flakiness of thin enamel wearing away.

‘God, I simply loathe tunnels,' she said.

Above the Scheidegg the train goes into the mountain and climbs darkly and coldly inside, with funereal creakings and clankings every yard or so, for several hours. Mrs. Martineau was furious every yard of that cold gloomy climb.

In the half-darkness she said she could not think why the hell the major had not told her it was this kind of train.

‘I did tell you,' he said. ‘I said it would be no fun.'

‘You said absolutely nothing of the kind.'

‘My dear, indeed I did. Did you expect the train would climb outside the mountain all the time?'

‘How the hell did I know what to expect, darling, if you didn't say a word?'

‘I said——'

‘The whole trouble is, darling, you haven't a clue.'

‘It isn't far to the top, anyway,' he said.

‘It seems a hell of a way to me!' she said. She looked terribly restless and shouted something about claustrophobia.

So we climbed up in the cold gloom of the tunnel, with Mrs. Martineau growing more and more furious, exclaiming more and more of claustrophobia, and all the time calling the major darling more often, as her anger grew. In the queer unworldly coldness of the clanking little train it was hard to believe in the pleasant heat of summer shining on the lake below. Mrs. Martineau shivered and stamped her feet at the halts where we changed carriages and in her white and scarlet suit, with
her scarlet lips and her white lambskin coat thrown over her shoulders she looked like a cold angry animal pacing up and down.

But if she hated the journey up in the wearying little train under the mountain, she hated even more the hotel at the terminus on top.

The hotel was bright and warm and flooded with the brilliant sunlight of high places, snow-sharp as it leapt off the glacier below. There was a pleasant smell of food, and the menu said
potage parmentier
and escallops of veal with spaghetti. But Mrs. Martineau said she was height-sick and did not want to eat.

‘In any case I loathe spaghetti!' she said.

‘All right, dear,' the major said. He had been quite gentle, in an almost frightened way, under the most trying circumstances in the train. ‘Have the veal alone.'

‘I'm not frightfully fond of veal, either. I'm not hungry.'

‘Try it, dear.'

‘Why should I try it if I hate it, darling? Why should I eat if I'm not hungry?'

The major looked terribly embarrassed for us and did not know what to do.

‘Well, can't you get the waiter, the manager or something? At least we could order a drink!' she said.

The major sent for the manager.

The manager was a very pleasant fat man with glasses who was amiably running about the large pine-wood dining-room with two or three bottles of wine in each hand. There was a great popping of corks everywhere and in the high alpine sunlight, with the smell of food and pine-wood and sun-warmed air, nothing could have been more pleasant than to eat and drink and talk and watch that amiable man.

In a few moments he spared the time to come over to us. The major explained how Mrs. Martineau did not like the menu. Wasn't there something else? he said.

‘It would mean waiting,' the manager said. ‘The veal is very good.' He pronounced it weal instead of veal.

‘She doesn't like veal. What else could you do?'

‘It would mean waiting.'

‘Isn't there a steak or something?' Mrs. Martineau said.

‘A steak, yes.'

‘All right, dear, if you'd like a steak?'

‘Or I could do you a
fritto misto,'
the manager said.

‘What is that?' Mrs. Martineau said. ‘What is
fritto misto
?'

The manager explained what
fritto misto
was. I am exceedingly fond of
fritto misto
myself; I like the spaghetti, and the delicate morsels of fried meat of various kinds, including, as the manager said, the small tender escallops of weal. It was, after all, a refined and more poetical version, with Italian variations, of the dish already on the menu.

‘It sounds wonderful,' Mrs. Martineau said. ‘I'll have that.'

The manager did not smile. ‘And something to drink? Some wine?'

‘Two bottles of the Dôle,' the major said.

The manager smiled very nicely and went away.

‘These people are always the same,' Mrs. Martineau said. ‘They don't do a damn thing until you tear the place down.'

The one thing it is not necessary to do in Switzerland in order to eat is to tear the place down. And when the
fritto misto
arrived, fifteen minutes late and looking not very different from the escallops of veal we had eaten with so much pleasure, I thought Mrs. Martineau ate them with great gusto for a woman who hated spaghetti and veal and was height-sick and not hungry.

Before the train took us back down the mountain the major drank four more glasses of Kirsch after the wine. He drank them too fast; he also had a cognac with his coffee. And by the time we went upstairs to the men's room he was a little stupid and unsteady from the Kirsch, the wine, the cognac and the rarefied Jungfrau air.