I'll Never Be Young Again (28 page)

After the evening at the film I was restless and dissatisfied with going back to the old routine of seeing her at five o’clock. The next evening, when she rose to go at a quarter to seven, I had to remember that the night before she had stayed, and now it was all over, and perhaps another whole week would go by before she would come out with me again. The five-o’clock meetings had lost their value.

I pretended that knowing her, anyway, was a marvellous thing in itself, and that I must beat down my restlessness and my irritability at being dissatisfied with what I had, so when she was gone I would go to my room and throw myself into a frenzy of work that meant nothing, for there was her face staring at me across the table, sometimes solemn, sometimes gay, her eyes larger than any eyes had ever been, the fair hair slipping down from under her orange béret.

So that working was not any good to me, eating and sleeping were not any good to me, nothing was any good to me but seeing her, and that not occasionally, but all the time.

On Easter Sunday she came with me to Versailles, and after that we made a fixed thing of every Sunday going into the Bois and walking if it was fine, or staying in Paris and seeing a film if it was raining. She liked going to concerts, too, because of her music, and I would go with her, not understanding much about music, her sort of music, but just for being next to her and watching her face, enrapt, immobile, following the meaning of it. At Versailles she fell into a mood of sadness that it was no longer a palace, when people had walked in the galleries, proud and supreme, kings and princesses, the sweep of dresses rustling on the floor, the hum of voices; and now there was a guide with a flow of meaningless words, and us not bothering to listen, and a man yawning behind his hand, and a group of schoolgirls giggling at a young soldier who had followed them.

‘Oh! Dick . . .’ said Hesta, ‘Oh! Dick! . . .’ and she did not go on with her sentence, and I said: ‘What is it?’ and she sighed and looked out of the window in the mirrored hall, down the long avenue and the last two trees at the end, between which the sun set in a ball of fire, and she said: ‘All this - it’s gone, never any more,’ and I did not know whether she meant the beauty of what had been, the colour and the pageantry, the something that was France and was now nothing but Americans in straw hats, saying: ‘Jesus!’ caring not at all, or whether she meant our little day, and our being together, that would never happen in the same way again.

I took hold of her hand and smiled and said: ‘It’s all right,’ and she said ‘Yes,’ and she smiled too, and we went out of the palace and into the gardens, and I went on swinging her hand, but we did not say very much.

 

It was warm at the end of April, like a heat-wave, premature and sudden; the trees were a riot in the Bois, and the chestnuts bloomed in the Champs-Élysées; the cafés hung out their sun-blinds, and their sun umbrellas, and people sat out, limp and dusty, tired after one day, the women in thin dresses and no sleeves, the men with hats tilted at the back of their heads, wiping their brows with handkerchiefs.

In the Place de la Concorde the fountains played, and children ran bare-legged in the Tuileries, the sun beating down on the gravel paths, colour everywhere, blossom, a smell of early summer, open taxis massed together in a block below the Pont d’Iéna, a gendarme whistling, waving his arm, and then the traffic sweeping over the bridge, the water of the Seine grey and sluggish beneath. Hesta could not bear staying indoors at the pension in this weather. She would come out in the evening with me two or three times a week now. We would sit at a café and have a drink, watching the people, or we would go over to the other bank, into the Paris we did not know so well, where there was greater heat, and more glitter and noise, more people, a certain excitement and suggestion of gaiety different from our Montparnasse. Here we were younger, and yet older in a thousand ways; here we were not so light-hearted, not so gay, but wrought and bewildered in a new way, I restless and swept by a strange excitement, impressed by all these people who were wanting the same thing as myself, and Hesta, lovely beside me, flushed, not so remote, and we were aware of each other, laughing, looking away, catching our breath.

One evening we had been inside a restaurant where there was music, my sort of music, a saxophone throbbing beneath the melody, a moan and a sigh, and something that went on beating, getting quicker and quicker. Then they played a tune, low and humming, a little wailing note coming from nowhere, and the time was perfect. There were people dancing. I said: ‘Dance?’ to Hesta, and she nodded, and we got up on the floor, too. I knew I was no good at this; it would not be any fun for her, but for me it meant holding her, and, being very close, her hair touching my cheek. She seemed small, smaller than I had realized, and she moved as though she had no will of her own and was part of me. I did not know what was happening at all. I just went on holding her, and she held me, too, and it was unlike anything that had ever been before.

When the music finished we went, she had a coat over her arm and a béret in her hand, and we passed through the doors and into the street, the lights flickering, people’s faces passing us, meaning nothing, and I shouted for a taxi - a yellow Citroën came grinding up, stuffy and closed, but it did not matter, and we got in, not speaking, not knowing what was going on anywhere or where he should take us. I took hold of her, burying my face in her hair, and I felt her heart beating and her body trembling. I had never dreamt it possible that I could go on kissing anyone for so long. Still I did not speak, but clung to her, not letting her go, and she lay quite still, and then turned away, with her head against my shoulder.

‘Hesta,’ I said, ‘Hesta, darling, you don’t mind, do you?’

‘No - I don’t mind.’

‘It’s so marvellous, being with you; I couldn’t go on any longer, Hesta, not doing anything.’

‘No.’

‘Put your arms round me.’

‘Why?’

‘I want you to. Put your arms round me.’

‘Where’s the taxi taking us, Dick?’

‘I don’t know - it doesn’t matter. I love you so terribly.’

‘Dick - they’ll make a fuss at the pension if I’m late again.’

‘No, they won’t. It doesn’t matter. You can’t go back yet; you can’t. I’m not going to let you go. Hesta, you must keep your arms round me; you must. I’ve got to kiss you again. I can’t help it. Oh! darling - Oh! darling . . .’

There had never been anything like this.

‘You’re not angry; say you’re not angry?’ I said.

She took my face in her hands, and I saw her eyes were troubled, sad.

‘I don’t want you to kiss me any more,’ she said; ‘I want you to take me home,’ and her voice was a little shadow of a voice, coming from far away, bewildered and lost.

‘You don’t hate me, do you?’ I said. ‘Hesta, if you only knew what this means to me, loving you. Darling - don’t go away, please don’t go away.’

‘You know I don’t hate you,’ she said, and her voice was still muffled and strange, as though it were frightened of itself. ‘That’s why I want you to take me home. Tell him where to go, Dick.’

‘If I say drive straight to the Boulevard Raspail, will you put your arms round me again, will you kiss me, too, like you did before?’

‘Yes.’

When the taxi drew up in front of the pension she pushed me away, and she sat very still in her corner, looking out of the window, her hands on her lap.

‘Hesta,’ I said, ‘tell me what you’re thinking; you’re unhappy, darling, you’re sad.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘What is it?’ I said.

She looked back at me then, and she was solemn, and she came close to me once more and put her arms round me, her face against mine.

‘It’s queer,’ she said.

‘What’s queer, beloved?’

‘All this . . .’

‘Why, my darling, why?’

‘I don’t know. It’s queer to me. I’ve never loved anyone before,’ she said.

‘Oh! darling . . .’

‘I never wanted to love anyone. I wanted to be free. And now it’s come, and I don’t know what to do about it. Dick, what am I to do about loving you?’

‘Hesta, sweetheart, it’s marvellous, so marvellous . . .’

‘I’ve never felt like this, Dick.’

‘Felt like what?’

‘Queer - I can’t explain. Let me go now.’

‘No, darling, no.’

‘Please, Dick.’

‘You’re not angry with me?’

‘No - no.’

‘We’ll go on being like this?’

‘Yes.’

‘I love you, Hesta, more than anything in the world.’

‘Dick . . .’

‘Let me kiss you once more - just like that - that’s all. Darling, it’s so wonderful, don’t be sad. We won’t ever be serious, will we, never, never?’

‘Not if you don’t want to.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘At five o’clock.’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll have dinner?’

‘I don’t know - I don’t think we can, not again.’

‘I’ll see you, though.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good night, darling.’

‘Good night.’

She was indoors, and I paid off the taxi and walked home up the Boulevard Raspail to the Rue du Cherche-Midi, not seeing where I went, nor what was in front of me, nor anything at all.

 

Knowing her now made the knowing of her before a small and pitiful thing. Then she had been an incident, something to look forward to at the end of the day, a relaxation, a method of casting oneself away after work, but now she was the whole purpose of the day, the reason why I went on living, and I stayed in my room and wrote only because it was a means of filling the time until I should see her. Generally she managed to meet me for lunch, and this at least was an hour, hurried perhaps and difficult, but better than nothing at all, and then she would have to go off to her music, getting away again at five to meet me at the Dôme or the Rotonde. If she could not manage dinner with me she would slip out of the pension for an hour or two afterwards, and these meetings, which once would have been miraculous and exquisite, were wretched snatches of time to me, gone in a flash, so that it seemed I was always outside the pension saying good night, and never sitting at the café waiting for her to come. The first part of the time would be spoilt by my restlessness and my hurry of looking forward to the last, and the last part was spoilt by her fretting she would be late at the pension.

We would take a taxi and tell the fellow to drive anywhere - the Bois, of course, was too far if Hesta had to be back - and so he would rattle along the streets and the boulevards, bumping over the tram-lines and the cobble-stones, and I going mad with Hesta in my arms, thrown from side to side by the filthy, jolting taxi, not being able to do anything, feeling like hell, not even kissing her properly. And then in a moment we were in the Boulevard Raspail, the drab front of the pension looming up ahead of us, and she was combing her hair, distant and remote, and I was staring moodily in front of me, my hands in my pockets.

‘This is hopeless,’ I said; ‘we can’t go on like this,’ and she would stare at me bewildered, and put her hand on my knee, and say: ‘What’s the matter, Dick? What’s the matter?’ and I did not know how to explain, pushing her away almost roughly, and then holding her close again to say good night, and she would kiss me, not knowing what she did to me, and then was gone, and another evening spent.

It was not always like this, though, because on Sundays there was the day-time, and we went to places and saw things, and there was not the fever of being absolutely alone, thinking of nothing but ourselves. Now that there was this business of intimacy between us I was no longer shy of her, no longer speechless when she looked at me, no longer humble. It made a whole lot of difference. The very fact of kissing her and holding her, it meant that I knew her well and I never had to be awkward in front of her, that there was no strangeness left for us. There was the fun of being together, of laughing at the same things, of swinging hands across a street. There was the fun of going over what we had thought when we first saw each other, I looking down above the table in the Coupole at a girl with fair hair under an orange béret, and she glancing up and not taking much notice, seeing any sort of man without a hat.

It seemed to us that there wasn’t a past and there wasn’t a future, but this was our time, this bright day, this warm evening, and these little momentary plans meaning so much and so much.

She did not talk about her music, nor I about my book; they were tiresome bothering things not worth the trouble of mentioning, part of the day’s routine, like cleaning our teeth; and we did not talk about war or death, or other men or other women; but we sat at a table and looked and laughed, and lost ourselves in looking, and did not talk at all.

There was the fun of nonsense, of pointing up at the sky above her head and saying: ‘See that patch of blue, the square bit, between the two clouds, you can have that . . .’ and she sucking her lemonade through a straw. ‘What, that bit, only that?’ and I, considering the matter for a moment, screwing up my eyes: ‘Maybe you can have the clouds, too.’

And knowing we were fools, and other people could not hear, and reaching for her hand, and kicking at her ankle, and, anyway, that man who went out of the café leaning on a stick was old, old . . .

So we jumped up from the table, and swung along the streets, and we laughed at a fat priest climbing on a bus, and we laughed at a thin boy with long hair like a girl, and it seemed there had never been such laughter and such fun, until we were in the taxi and then I wasn’t gay any more, but tortured and distressed, with her face against my shoulder, and her hands around my neck.

And ‘Hesta, darling, what’s going to happen about us?’ I said. ‘What’s going to happen?’ and ‘Aren’t you happy?’ she would say, and she would not understand.