The Dangerous Years (19 page)

Joan stared at her, surprised by this sudden outburst of eloquence from so composed and quiet a woman.

“But I am beginning to see how different Adrian is from other children,” she whispered, by way of an excuse for her timidity.

“
Oh! là là
!” clucked Mrs. Batten, shrugging her shoulders and taking a gulp at her coffee. “My grandfather was a peasant. That boy has French mud and farmyard manure in his veins. Do not be misled by the blossoms. It is the root that matters. And your man, too! I would trust him, you know; perhaps more than you care to. But forgive me, I am too intimate?”

Joan could not reply to this, even had she understood Mrs. Batten, for Adrian was clamouring to be allowed to take his new skates, the gift from the American, Mr. Sturm, to try them on the pond in the Luxembourg. His disappointment when this was vetoed by the colonel, in the absence of the doctor, drove him to the other end of the flat, and the adults round the dining-table heard a burst of petulance from the distant piano. Joan listened, and again the odd recognition of something both painful and exquisite filled her mind. What could it be, this something in the boy's playing; was it style, due to clarity and the obstinate certainty of genius? She discovered how much more interested in music she was becoming. Adrian pulled at her. Furtively, she got up, pushed her chair in, and crept away from the dining-room. She lingered,
alone, in the little ante-room, and could see the boy through the open door into the
salon
. He sat doggedly at the instrument, watching first one hand then the other. He had lost his grievance, though he was improvising something full of protest and peevish rebellion. But how intently he was enjoying it, turning it into a shape, with beginning, middle, and end.

Joan followed that shape, the melody, the tricks he played with it, the amazing gift for filling out the structure with harmony. Again she was afraid of the force beyond her understanding. She advanced into the
salon
, and Adrian came shyly forward, drawing himself from the piano-stool to stand before her, staring up at her face. Then, on an impulse, he clasped her round the waist, seized her hand and rubbed it against his cheek.

“Joan! I'm going to have you to myself, to myself!” he whispered, with a wild passion that was half-insane.

“Hush!” she said, stooping over the boy, glancing back, and then kissing his silky hair, half in tears. “You must be calm, Adrian. You must not spend yourself.”

His response was to cling to her with an almost lascivious intensity, rousing her instincts too, a confused rabble of emotions that carried her along unwillingly, though she struggled against them. But in the alertness of mind caused by this struggle, she saw, and in the immediate future, indeed almost present, a certainty of something about to happen, something large, probably inconsequential, certainly devastating. She tried to tell herself it was a mere mood, a touch of fright because everything was happening so quickly since she had come to Paris.

The tiny lover, the nine-year-old Cupid, meanwhile was murmuring something into her waist, where his head was buried.

“I love the
smell
of you!” he said, jerking his head back and laughing up at her. She managed to extricate herself, without hurting him.

“Play something more to me,” she said, without allowing herself to hear what he had said. And she led him back to the piano, her hand firmly on his neck, the ball of her thumb smoothing the nape, and the silky tail of hair that came down to a point there.

He now chose a Beethoven sonatina, deceptively simple, and played it neatly, with precision. But she was prepared to suspect even that, so disturbed were her nerves by the recent little outburst of Cyprian paganism. She stared at the child as though to doubt still if he was wholly human, and might draw another arrow against her.

The rest of the luncheon party came in while the boy was playing, their conversation falling away, then reviving when he stopped. Plans were discussed, and by the time the English visitors departed, everything was in hand.

The rest of the day was fully occupied in practical matters concerned with the flight into Switzerland, and none of the three people wished to have much to say about events. They were all restrained by their personal moods, the only mood in common being, perhaps, embarrassment toward the other two, for a multitude of intricate reasons, or un-reasons.

The frost held through the night, and the day of departure was steely. Paris shrank to a monochrome of grey shades; only the faces of her citizens adding touches of pink, red, purple to the metallic scene. Dr. Batten was to have brought the car to the hotel, to collect mother and daughter, John Boys having arranged to meet them at the station. The doctor, however, had been called out and the occupants of the car were Mrs. Batten and the two children, driven by the colonel. He was inscrutable, sitting at the wheel like a taxi-man, avoiding any contact. He got out stiffly, directed the stowing of Joan's small amount of luggage, and took his place again, with hardly a greeting. Joan found herself with Mrs. Batten, the children between them in the back. Mary sat with the
colonel, and he put a rug round her legs, in a shamefaced way.

‘I've got to see those damned lawyers again,” he said, quietly. “Do you mind?”

“Should I mind?” she said. “I have no idea what it is all about.”

“I'm not sure myself. I've been swimming out of my depth, perhaps. Dabbling in things I know nothing about. I'll try to explain when we have an opportunity.”

“When will that be, Tom?” She spoke without caution, hardly caring to lower her voice. The rest of the world was rapidly becoming a vague body which she had only to defy. “We've not had a moment together since …”

“I know,” he said, glancing guiltily over his shoulder at the family in the back. “It's rather knocked us over, Mary. I had no idea I was worth it. You see, I had none. Life has been like that for the past few years; no sense of direction; a general failure, maybe. I should not have left the Service. That broke my marriage. Sorry!”

The car had nearly hit a new Citroën whose proud driver was putting it through its paces, ignoring the morning traffic and the frozen surface of the setts. Batten thrust his foot on the brake, the wheels squealed, and little Jeannette tumbled into the bottom of the car. Nobody minded, however, and with a wave of the hand, the offending driver grinned and rushed on. Batten's jaw was set, but he said nothing, and resumed the drive to the station without further revelation about his past. The present was demanding his attention.

The interior of the station hummed with human life, and the reverie of locomotives, with an occasional start to life as a train shrieked, and began to rumble out. Timetables were disregarded, owing to the severe frost, and the party learned that their train might be half an hour late. They found John Boys, with a porter, waiting by the booking
guichets
, beside his contribution to the luggage,
which included the two pairs of skis. He wore his climbing boots, as something less to carry.

“Everything behind time,” he said, “except ourselves. Don't you wait, sir.” But the colonel ignored this suggestion.

“Time's our own,” he said, and glanced at Mary for confirmation. She, however, was occupied with little Jeannette, who had suddenly discovered that her brother was about to be torn from her, and took exception to this fact. She had begun to demand to go too, and a scene loomed ahead. Mary walked her away from the party, and fortunately found a flower-stall, where she bought her a small bunch of violets, whose odour so ravished the infant that her tears were checked, though they remained ready for action.

Everybody succumbed to the universal blankness of mind and spirit which attends these ceremonies of departure and farewell. Questions about luggage, comfort, connections, were asked and answered again and again. Feeble jokes were cracked, passports and tickets were patted to ensure their safety. The minutes were marked ironically on the station clock.

“When are we going?” demanded Adrian, for the tenth time; and for the tenth time Jeannette looked doubtfully at her mother, and hovered on the brink of lamentation.

Just at the moment when patience began to fail, there was a bustle and hurry along the platform, and out of the semi-darkness under the dome, came Mr. Aloysius Sturm, waving his arm.

“Well now, should I make it, I said to myself! And if that fool of a porter at the Meurice did not give me the wrong correction on time. And I gave a hundred and twenty dollars for this watch last time I was in Zurich. You know, Mrs. Batten, there is something about me that upsets watches. Time does tricks where I am concerned. It must be an extra dose of magnetism, I guess.”

“Have you tried an hour-glass?” said Joan. She found herself increasingly antagonistic toward this man, and she suddenly knew why. He and she were contending for the soul and safety of Adrian Batten.

Mr. Sturm would not be drawn by that. He grinned at her, recognising the challenge almost in a professional way.

“I have learned not to distress myself with time, Mrs. Boys. The man who can wait is the man who will win.”

Further truisms were cut short by a shrill whistle, a waving of arms, slamming of carriage doors, and a scrambling of passengers into their places, while friends and relatives crowded round the windows and doors for a last farewell. Joan found herself being kissed by her mother, and she shuddered again, averting her eyes from the colonel who stood with Jeannette in his arms, who had begun to weep, with the violets clasped in her tiny fist. But she was persuaded to wave her flowers as the train began to move. The last Joan saw of the party was the child held aloft in the colonel's arms. Her mother stood hidden behind him, while Mrs. Batten remained in the background, one arm raised aloft, as though she were a statue carrying a torch. Mr. Sturm had temporarily disappeared.

The anti-climax, the foreboding and sense of emptiness, that always follow a train departure, were warded off by the need to console Jeannette, whose grief suddenly became tempestuous. She had to be passed to her mother, and in that capacious retreat she gradually recovered, though the bunch of violets was shattered in the process.

“Well now,” said Mr. Sturm, “if that's not too distressing! Let us take a cup before we part. May I escort you, Mrs. Winterbourne?”

He gallantly took her under the arm, steering her towards the café. Mrs. Batten, however, had an appointment, one of her many committees, and with a smile and wave of the hand, she was gone, having returned her daughter to the care of the colonel.

Mary sipped her Dubonnet, trying to bring home to herself the fact that Joan had gone. Everything had happened so quickly since they arrived in Paris. The speed of events alone might have hypnotised her. But in addition was their momentousness. After fifteen years of placid life, tethered by reminiscent sorrow and acceptance of loss, here she sat with change and passion whirling round her. The only coherent reaction that she could recognise was her complacence, and indeed eagerness.

As though unwilling to betray these feelings in front of a third person, she took the child on her knee, and busied herself
with chatter and small attentions, to which Jeannette responded freely, already comforted by the fullness of the passing moment. The colonel sat brooding, studying the picture of this handsome little lady, her silvered head bent over the gold of the child's, her clothes neat and appropriate, her small and well-kept hands moving with expressive confidence. From time to time he glanced with suspicion at the American, wondering if his own obsession had been noticed by that shrewd opportunist. But why, he told himself with pride, should he disguise his folly; if it could be called folly, to abandon himself to this eleventh-hour love for a woman so desirable still. It was not as though he had delivered himself into the hands of a young girl who might pretend to humour him, and cheat him in the end. He was sore still, in this matter of being cheated because of his own simplicity, and ready to associate the tricks of men in the City with the caprices of women, young women at least. Mary Winterbourne was different. She beckoned him to safety: but more than that. Her beauty, and the quick responsiveness of her character; he had never known such riches, so readily offered. He looked at her now, and the blood in his elderly body throbbed. Good God! he said to himself, good God! with no meaning to the words; but a wealth of emotion.

Nor was Mary unaware of this concentration of feeling. She did not look up, for she too was shy, at present, of acknowledging to the world this new force, strange yet familiar, which had caught her up and pulled her out of all the dull assurances, the safety and even the self-respect with which she had surrounded herself during her widowhood. A delicious patience held her back, the patience of the senses once indulged, and now certain of their power and ascendency. She caressed the little girl; but she was still in the arms of the man sitting near her, still urging him with those small physical persuasions that are love's perpetual surprise. Love! No doubt of that, she said to
herself, with such conviction that she had to look up, to see him there. And he caught the glance, absorbed it into himself.

The signal made them both restless.

“We'd better get back,” said Batten. “Can we drop you anywhere, Sturm?”

The impresario, however, had other fish to fry. He had done what he wanted to do in this direction for the time being.

“I guess I'll get along to the Opera House by the Metro,” he said. “I may have to go out of Town for a while. It depends where Schnabel is. I'm hoping to sign him up again. He went over big last trip. You know, Mrs. Winterbourne, it's the solid worth that I go for; not the flash stuff. I can smell that quality, mind you. I can believe only in that; it's the commodity I want to deal in.”

He had much to say about this as they found their way back to the car. Mary listened, but her attention flickered under the wind of this excitement that came out of the spring-time of the universe, driving her on to recklessness and, if necessary, martyrdom.