Francie Again (2 page)

“I wouldn't have dreamed of putting you off, especially as I'd already upset all your plans for the winter. It does me a world of good to see you. Here, let's look at you.” She drew back and scrutinized Francie, and said, “You've grown up.”

“It's my American clothes, that's all,” said Francie. “Quite a change from that dismal Sunday frock model we all wore at Fairfields, isn't it?” She glanced down at herself with a touch of complacence, wondering if Aunt Lolly would notice the blouse. Aunt Lolly did.

“What's that enchanting pattern you're wearing?” she demanded.

“I picked it out of practically a rubbish heap. Do you like it? I love it myself—worked at it all night,” said Francie. “It's such a new kind of color. Sort of weird.”

“You have a flair,” said Mrs. Barclay thoughtfully.

“But Aunt Lolly, what does the doctor say about you?”

“Oh, my dear, that's what's so awful. I would have written to you at great length if only there had been time, but perhaps on the whole it's as well I didn't. Otherwise I'm not sure—Oh good, darling,” she broke off in a relieved way as Uncle Martin came in. “You're just in time. I haven't yet broken the news to Francie.”

Uncle Martin said, “Oh.” He sat down.

Francie, looking from one to the other, was alarmed again. Her first thought was that they had got bad news from Pop. She said impulsively, “Is it something about New York? But I've only just left there!”

Aunt Lolly took her hand. “No, no, dear, of course not. It's something else. I'm afraid we'll have to disappoint you cruelly. I do feel ashamed of being such a bother.”

Uncle Martin cut in. “Your aunt's not supposed to stay in Paris this winter,” he said. “The doctor's very definite about it. He says she must go somewhere sunny and warm, somewhere warmer than here, and stay right through until summer. It can get pretty darn cold in Paris.”

“So we decided on Portugal,” said Aunt Lolly. “It's gay there, and I think you'll like it.”

“Me?” Until this minute, Francie had not thought how the news would affect herself. But now that Aunt Lolly had said it, she realized that it was inevitable. Pop had refused to let her come to Paris and live here by herself, and now that Aunt Lolly wouldn't be here—Oh, it
was
a disappointment! No Paris, no art classes with Plessis, the whole academic year lost! From the heights of bliss Francie fell with a bump.

“Poor child. I'm so sorry,” said Aunt Lolly. “I know what it means to you. It really is a shame.”

“We wondered if maybe you'd rather go on with your course in New York after all,” said Uncle Martin, “but it's kind of late in the day to change that, I guess. Anyway for this term.”

Francie had to steady her voice before replying.

“I don't think they'd let me come in now. They've been in session a couple of weeks already.”

“No, I was afraid of that,” said Uncle Martin. “Anyway, to tell you the truth I'm just as glad, for selfish reasons. If you weren't here your aunt would have had to stay in Portugal by herself. I could have managed to go along and settle her in, but I couldn't have stayed. Now if you're with her—”

“Martin, you know that's not necessary,” said Mrs. Barclay. “I can manage beautifully by myself. Portuguese servants are very kind and helpful. If Francie would rather go back to America and carry on with her studies I'd understand perfectly, and so would her father, I'm sure.”

She meant it, Francie knew that. Aunt Lolly was always thoughtful and genuine. And it would be more pleasant for herself, she was sure, to go back to Pop and find some way of carrying on with the work she liked so much. There were private teachers. A whole year wasted in Portugal! But—

She stole a glance at Uncle Martin. He looked worried. He was hoping, hard, that she would go with Aunt Lolly. Francie suppressed a sigh, and said,

“I want to stay with you, of course, Aunt Lolly, if you'll have me.”

“Good girl,” said Uncle Martin.

CHAPTER 2

The windows reached to the top of the room, a long way above head height. When they were unobscured they looked on a wonderful near-emptiness of blue sea and blue sky. You could pull them open enough to squeeze halfway out, Francie had learned, to a little ornamental metal balcony. You couldn't go farther because there was simply nowhere to stand, but it was a good place there between the room and the sea. It was a wonderful place to stand and brood, romantically and sorrowfully, about life's buffets.

Unfortunately the hotel chambermaid didn't seem to understand that windows were for opening. She carried on relentless war against fresh air and light. First thing in the morning when she came in with Francie's chocolate she would go and close not only the glass casements but the little shutters inside them. When Francie objected, she pretended not to understand. Perhaps she really didn't, because Francie's Portuguese was scanty. The maid would say something about heat, and sunlight in the middle of the day, and then she would pull down a sunblind behind the shutter before she went out.

“It's a Portuguese custom,” Aunt Lolly said when Francie complained. “They think the room is cooler if you never open the shutters. And really, dear, they might possibly be right. They've lived here, you know, all their lives.”

Francie sighed with impatience, but complained no more. She went back to her room and opened the window for the tenth time.

It wasn't fair to bother Aunt Lolly, especially as the change of scene and air seemed to be doing her a lot of good. They had been in Estoril, the seaside suburb of Lisbon, for little more than a fortnight, but already Mrs. Barclay was getting about, now and then, without her cane. It was the sun, she said gratefully. She could feel it sinking into her bones and comforting them.

One afternoon Francie squeezed out on the balcony and peered down at the sandy ribbon that curled around the hotel's feet and stretched down the coast. On one side stood an ancient fort. On the other, the beach disappeared beyond an immense white turreted palace with its own private pier. Francie knew what it was like beyond. She knew all this stretch of coast. She had walked up and down as far as she had time to go between meals, or on decorous outings with Aunt Lolly. She knew the electric train line and the well-barbered gardens with their palm trees, and the dignified little villas, and the tame little hills. It was all very Los Angeles, she told herself. Not that she disliked California, when she was there! But one hadn't come to Europe just for this.

“Anyway, what
do
I want?” she demanded, bored with her own discontent. “I'm having a very good time. All these friends of Aunt Lolly's are very nice. It would have been just the same in Paris, really.”

But would it? Of course, even in Paris she wouldn't have been allowed to lead the deliciously adventurous life she had vaguely imagined back in New York. In Paris, as here, her companions would have been friends of the Barclays, sober, quiet-living gentlefolk and their quiet, well-behaved young daughters and sons. But still it would have been Paris, a magic name, whereas Francie had never even heard of Estoril until a month ago.

“And in Paris I'd have been hard at work by this time,” she added. “Here I'm just playing around. Tennis and golf and cards, and not really a terrific rush even so. That's another thing; it seems to me people are awfully slow-moving in Portugal. They seem too peaceful.”

Again she peered at the sand, disapprovingly, for it was hushed and deserted at three in the afternoon. In Estoril, most people liked to rest after a long, late lunch. At four, she knew, there would be a change when Portugal woke up. Then the beach would suddenly be thronged.

“I think I'll go swimming right now,” she resolved, “before I'm crowded out and stared at.” She put on her bathing suit and robe and hurried down to the beach door. It had been the subject of some argument with Mrs. Barclay as to whether a young girl ought to go out alone in this manner. Aunt Lolly said Francie should behave like the Portuguese girls they had heard of in Paris, who were carefully chaperoned everywhere they went.

“But you can't go around with me,” Francie pointed out, “because it's bad for you. And I'm not Portuguese, and they're used to foreigners behaving in their own way. Phyllis Wilkinson goes around on her own.”

It was a telling argument. Phyllis was the daughter of one of Aunt Lolly's English acquaintances who were resident in Portugal.

“If you're sure,” said Aunt Lolly uncertainly.

“Positive.”

So now, with a clear conscience, Francie stepped out to the beach, where the sand was hot enough to feel glowing even through the rope soles of her sandals. She dropped her towel and robe, and waded in for the first long swim of the afternoon. The water was cool for such a warm day, and as she went in deeper, moving slowly along the shallows, she felt her querulousness ebbing away. She swam straight out from the tall, civilized façade of the hotel, until at last she was satisfied and rolled over to paddle idly along with a backstroke, eyes closed against the sun.

Over there beyond the shoreline, she mused, was a foreign country that held all kinds of possibilities. She was eager to know more than the countryside she had seen during the little motor tours she and Mrs. Barclay had taken, though that was fascinating. She wanted to know what the people were like. It was not enough to see them, moving against the hills or harbors in their opera-chorus clothes, though all that was thrilling. What were they really like?

It seemed hopeless that she should ever find out. Portugal, for an American girl living in a luxury hotel in Estoril, might as well be Florida. Those peasant girls in their black or red skirts and gold necklaces, those fishermen had their own lives and cared nothing for hers. As for the middle-class Portuguese, nobody ever got to know them—the English had told her so. It was no use trying; Francie was typed. She was merely one more of the foreigners who invaded the city and made it look like every city in the world.

Francie began to swim back slowly to shore. Beyond the hotel, up a steep, stone-built bank, she saw the main highway to Lisbon. A few cars like shiny monsters whizzed past, high above her head. Farther back were the electric train tracks, and then came little villas, pink or green or cream, scattered among the hills. It was pretty and it was dull. Francie turned again to the sea, and for reassurance looked at the old fort that had stood there in the water for centuries.

“I'd like to paint that,” she thought, “only I bet every single visitor does it.”

The only thing to do, she decided as she left the water, was to make the best of it, enjoy her stay as much as possible in the ordinary, conventional way, and look forward to the future when Aunt Lolly would be well enough to go back to Paris. Release was bound to come sooner or later, she reflected. In the meantime, there were plenty of girls in Jefferson and New York who wouldn't mind changing places with her. And that was putting it mildly.

Thinking deeply, she walked as if in a dream across the hard-packed wet sand and then on the dry, looser stuff toward the place where she had left her towel and bathrobe. At least she assumed it was the same place; she wasn't really thinking. At the back of her mind was a happy confidence that her clothes were the only ones on the beach. She picked up the white robe.

“Excuse me,” said a gentle voice.

Francie was realizing with embarrassment at the same moment that it wasn't her robe at all. The towel and slippers lying underneath it were unfamiliar.

“Oh,
sorry.”

She looked up and saw a girl standing there smiling—a dark-haired girl, wearing a dark bathing suit and carrying her rubber cap in her hand, all wet and fresh from the sea. Beyond, Francie's own clothes lay where she had left them.

“It doesn't matter at all,” said the other girl. There was a touch of accent in her speech.

“I thought they were mine, you see,” said Francie.

“Naturally. Our wraps are the same,” said the girl. “And as we are the only people on the beach—”

“But I was stupid. I mean, I wasn't really looking,” said Francie. It seemed to her that she had pretty well exhausted the subject, though she didn't want to stop talking. Francie liked talking to people she encountered by herself, but in a foreign country like this she felt shy of pushing such a chance acquaintance. She was just moving on when the girl said quickly, as if to detain her,

“The water is good today, isn't it? Not too warm.”

So Francie sat down on the sand with her, and they talked.

“I've made a friend,” Francie announced to Aunt Lolly. Her voice was full of triumphant excitement.

“My goodness. By yourself?” asked Mrs. Barclay. They were drinking lemonade instead of tea, in the dim coolness of the patient's bedroom. Aunt Lolly usually spent most of the day quietly in bed.

“By myself, in the most unexpected way. She was swimming alone, the way I was. You see, Aunt Lolly, you and I were all wrong. She's actually a young Portuguese girl, but she was all alone, just the same.”

“I think it must be unusual,” said Aunt Lolly.

Francie confessed, “It was, as a matter of fact. I guess her mother let her do it because it was the quiet, unfashionable time of day, and she was right inside the hotel lounge all the time—her mother, I mean, sitting there with some aunts or something. This girl Maria is more independent than most of them. She's been to America for a visit. Isn't that queer?”

“Not particularly, dear. Lots of people go to America.”

“Yes, I know, but I mean it's queer we should have started to talk. Her name's Maria da Souza. She has other names too, but she said that will do to go on with. Portuguese names are terribly hard to remember at first.” Francie drank the last sugary drops of her lemonade. “If you don't mind, I'm going back to join them now,” she said. “They're staying at this hotel for a week or two—Maria and her mother and a brother named Ruy, and she wants me to meet them. It really is luck, isn't it?—running into the one Portuguese girl in the whole place who knows about America. Maria's crazy about New York.”