In the Memorial Room (8 page)

Dorset began to talk about the French and the English and the French revolution.

Suddenly I said goodnight to them. They finished drinking their glass of wine, said goodnight to me, and went home. They were laughing as they went up the path to their house.

When they had gone I sat alone in the room and looked at the light bulbs and the heater and the desk with its six drawers and the red curtains over the windows and the orange marigolds, five, in a small earthenware vase, which Elizabeth had brought in from the garden and put on my table. As the curtains were not yet drawn I could see the objects in the room reflected in the darkness of the windows. I could hear the palm trees rustling as a wind sprang up among them.

Then I went down the stairs to the bedroom and after washing and cleaning my teeth and going to the lavatory I went to bed. Once in bed I closed my eyes to stop seeing what was outside, but I could not stop seeing it. I slept.

Each day the patterns of light in the room were different. If the sun did not shine there were no light-patterns. When the sun shone, window-shapes patterned themselves on the rust-red rug of which there were two, of equal size, square, on the polished wooden floor. The light fell also on the table by the window, on the orange cotton tablecloth printed with white petalled flowers with green and red centres, each whole flower measuring nineteen centimetres in diameter. I looked at these patterns from time to time during the day to observe their changing positions and to note, when the sun had moved out of range of the room where I worked, the moment when the yellow light was withdrawn and there was no longer window-shaped yellow light lying on the carpet. Night came then. The sky was grey with crescents of darker grey. The mountains of Italy always reflected from their white rocks a white light, although in the daytime large dark shadows, unmoving, lay upon the slopes.

From time to time the trains passed, the brakes squealing as the train prepared to enter the region of the station; trains from Nice to Ventimiglia or Vintimille as it is known in France, from Strasbourg through Mulhouse, with the words
WELTEN SCHAFFT
written on some of the carriages, and at night the Rome Express. Through the night the trains pounded more heavily on the rails and by their pounding one knew that they were long trains filled with people asleep in the first class
Wagons-Lit
, which are comfortable, or in the second class
couchettes
which had six in a compartment, three on one side, three on the other, each narrow, though I do not know the exact measurement. As the trains passed sometimes when I was visiting the Memorial Room, and the train after a long night’s journey had moved into morning on the Côte d’Azur and many passengers had already disembarked and others were sitting upright waiting for the end of the journey, I could see into the couchette compartment where the rugs and the pillows were strewn on the narrow beds, and the length of leather strap used to steady the passenger when the train swayed on its fast journey was dangling unused, and the narrow aluminium ladders by which one climbed up to the
couchette
(if one had the top
couchette
one’s body was very close to the ceiling of the coach) hung, also unused, on the hooks by the door and window. I could see that the train which began its journey away in the north with the
Wagons-Lits
and the
couchettes
made up with clean rugs and pillows and the litterbins empty and the toilets clean, had overnight been used and had come to the end of its use. The sunlight shone through one side window of the carriages and out the other, revealing the dust-beams travelling with the train and lighting up the emptiness of the compartments. The sun was always a morning sun, approaching a midday sun, and its beams were hot against the windows. You could see where some of the passengers, waking into morning, had pulled down the blinds to shield them from the light. In summer the trains would be hot and the windows would warm up quickly and the compartment seats would be burning.

At night the motion and sound of the train entered my bedroom and my heart beat faster, hearing them, and waiting for them to pass with their sleeping passengers who did not know that I was listening to the trains and who had never heard my name and would not know if I met them on the station that I had listened to them travelling when they were fast asleep.

So I spent my days, writing in my new apartment and sometimes going to the Memorial Room where someone had left a typewriter with Elite type (my new typewriter provided by the Fosters was Elite type suitable for manuscripts). To get to the Memorial Room I now had to walk along the promenade past the old town with its pale blue and green and pink shutters, and its mass solid with not a sight of trees or streets between, the only growth visible being the row of cypress trees forming the boundary of the cemetery on the hill. Looking up I could see the rows of tombstones. I said to myself that one day I would walk to the cemetery and inspect the graves and the gravestones.

Each day I did almost the same thing. I woke. I opened the dark green shutters of my bedroom window. I washed and dressed. I went to the restaurant, which was always crowded with workers having
petit déjeuner
, for the newspaper,
Nice-Matin
. I walked home and read the newspaper, choosing what to read from the headlines. I read the local news and advertisements of Nice, Monaco, Menton and the small mountain villages and the seaside places between these larger towns. I read the births and the names of the newly born and their parents. I read the deaths and took note of the ages of those who had died. I read the page of foreign news, the page of traffic accidents, robberies, holdups, murders, the weather with the temperature in France and Europe and beyond, the television programmes although I did not have a television, and the radio programmes, taking note of the classical and modern music and what time it was to be played, although I never listened to it. I read the answers to queries about the rights of tenant and landlord and the problems of those with widow’s and old-age pensions. I read the list of blood-donors who had been awarded a medal or congratulations for releasing a certain amount of blood. Then in the classified advertisements I read the offers of employment for
Gens de Maison
; villas for sale; offers and demand for furnished accommodation; the legal notices; miscellaneous advertisements; animals; lost and found; and sometimes the marriage column. Then I’d read the back page which would have a late news story of a murder or robbery or the story, continued, of a disaster which had half-filled the front page.

After reading the newspaper I sat down to write, looking out of the window from time to time at the palm trees and the mountains. I wrote all morning after which I made myself lunch, pottered around the small house keeping it in order as I had promised to do, sweeping the carpet with the carpet sweeper and so on. Or if the weather were fine I washed my shirt and socks and pegged them on the clothes line that was strung over the private terrace; and being up there and in the sun I’d stretch out in the green deckchair, which had the name of a hotel in Venice on the back, and I’d close my eyes and sleep a while or lie looking down over the olive grove to the water.

Later in the day when people began to stir again after their meal, I’d go on the promenade and join the throngs of people walking up and down beside the sea. Then when four o’clock came I had the opportunity to call on the one or two English inhabitants of the city who had told me they ‘took tea’ at four o’clock and if I were walking that way I could join them. This was how I came to meet Haniel and Louise Markham, who had arrived from London about the same time as I arrived from New Zealand. Their apartment overlooked the Casino, and the avenue of oranges.

I knew the ages of Haniel and Louise because someone had told me; I think it was Connie Watercress. Haniel who had known Rose Hurndell in his early twenties when he married was now thirty-nine. Louise was forty-seven. He was tall, slim with golden hair thinning to an ash grey. His face was delicately constructed and pale. His mouth was small and red-lipped. He was clean shaven. He moved with grace and his voice was soft. Louise had put on weight. (I had seen a photograph of her in her younger days.) She was stout, dressed in a brown costume with a cream-coloured blouse and a tie. Although her arms were not long in proportion to her body, her reach was long as her shoulders were wide and powerfully built and acted as an effective hinge when she leaned forward to grasp her teacup or the plate of cakes that she had made, round volcano-shaped pastries with a preserved cherry swimming in its lake of red syrup on each peak.

Haniel and Louise introduced me to Harvey Pulsifer, who had arrived that afternoon from America for a skiing holiday in one of the local resorts. He and Haniel, whom he had known in London when he was there as an economics student, were leaving the next day for one of the mountain villages. Haniel said he did not ski himself but he was accompanying his friend.

Before ten minutes of my visit had passed we began to speak of Rose Hurndell.

—My wife was her constant companion, Haniel said.

His eyes were small and pale blue. He concentrated them on his wife’s face. His head leaned forward a little.

Louise laughed rather loudly.

—Rose and I were great chums, she said. —I looked after her. We came down here in the late fifties. Haniel said, ‘Go with her to Menton, to the Villa Florita.’ And I did.

—I was in London then, wasn’t I, with my parents. It was my last year at school. I met Haniel at the Victoria and Albert, Harvey said.

—I was looking at the china. And I moved to the glass room.

—I was in the glass room.

Just then Louise clattered her teacup, and spilled a little of the tea, about two spoonsful, on the blue carpet.

Harvey jumped to his feet and went to the small kitchen and returned with a cloth. He bent to the carpet and rubbed at it hard because it was an error. He erased it at last.

He stood up.

—Now, he said, —it does not show.

We each inspected it to see if it showed. We agreed it did not.

—So you are the new Watercress-Armstrong Fellow, Louise said, stretching out her wide foot and making a last rubbing movement upon the tea stain. —Are you going to write about Rose?

As she spoke I saw the muscles in her throat tighten.

—No, I hadn’t planned to.

—Her sister Elizabeth is here. She and her husband have retired here. Elizabeth is editing her letters. You know?

—Yes, I said. —I’m living in their small house.

—Oh, you are! We had thought of asking you would you live here. There’s a complete apartment downstairs. Private. Quite complete. You would not have to know we were above you. I don’t have a very light tread but I take care. Haniel has a light tread. And we don’t play musical instruments. A record now and again in the evening. If you are changing your apartment again, then, there’s our apartment downstairs. Shall we show it to you?

I said that I would not be moving immediately from where I was.

—And you’re writing a novel. We’ve read about you. You write historical novels. Are you a bestseller?

My book
Wairau Days
had been a bestseller in New Zealand.

—One of my books sold quite well, I said.

Just then Haniel finished his cup of tea and he and Harvey, with a smile and a pleased to have met you, left the room.

—These men! Louise sighed as she watched them go.

I had not seen such a used face since I looked on the old maid of all work at the hotel where I stayed.

—I’m a busy woman, Louise said. —I miss Rose of course. And Haniel’s only a boy, really. He was on the stage in London.

—Really?

—Yes.

—Did Rose Hurndell have false teeth? I asked suddenly.

Louise replied calmly.

—She had the top ones out when she first came to London. He was a good dentist. But things have changed.

—Yes, things have changed. I’m English too. At least I was born there.

—Were you? What part?

—Sussex.

—Oh.

—I must go now, I said, standing.

—Your time is your own, Louise said. Her lips made a tasting motion and she made a sour face.

—It isn’t, you know, I said. —You have spoken the first lie in approximately three thousand words. My time is my own! Should I be grateful to you for the lie?

She looked confused; she did not understand me.

—I have a big powerful car, she said. —I will drive you home.

—No, I said. —I will walk.

I walked back.

A week later I made my visit to George and Liz Lee, in their home on the road to the mountain village of Sainte-Agnès. They too had invited me for tea. I caught the three o’clock bus from the Gare Routière not far from the railway station and sat myself in a back seat where I would not be disturbed by passengers joining and leaving the bus en route. The weather had been fine for seven days although a storm and lowered temperatures were predicted for the next morning. I could see the clouds massing over the mountains.