The Saturdays (4 page)

It was easy to make this picture alive. Randy stared at it fixedly, hardly breathing, hardly thinking, and pretty soon she thought she could smell the mixture of damp earth and burning leaves and smoke from distant chimney pots; she thought she could hear the hum of the city and the clear voices of children somewhere out of sight. A day had come and gone, years ago, and still it was alive. I wish I'd known that girl, Randy thought.

She felt a touch on her shoulder that brought her back to her own world with a start. On her shoulder she saw a knuckly black glove, and against her cheek she felt the prickling of camphory fur. The Elephant, darn it, thought Randy crossly. Just when I was getting right
into
that picture, too.

“Well, well! Why, Mona dear! What are
you
doing here?” inquired Mrs. Oliphant in her deep cavernous voice with its faint foreign accent. “Or is it little Miranda?”

“Miranda,” replied Randy politely, with a smile that was nothing but stretching the corners of her mouth.

“Of course, of course. Mona is the one with the hair,” said Mrs. Oliphant, whacking Randy's shoulder absentmindedly. “You seem very interested in this picture, Miranda.”

“I think it's beautiful,” Randy said, sloping her shoulder out from under Mrs. Oliphant's hand as tactfully as she could.

“It isn't as beautiful as I remembered it,” observed Mrs. Oliphant, regarding it with a frown. “But then I haven't seen it for sixty years. Not since I was eleven years old.”

“Eleven years old!” repeated Randy. It was impossible that Mrs. Oliphant had ever been eleven. “Not since the day it was finished,” the old lady explained. “You see, I was the girl in the picture.”

“You!” cried Randy, amazed. Her mouth dropped open half an inch.

“That's I at the age of eleven,” said Mrs. Oliphant, very pleased at Randy's surprise. “Not much to look at, was I?”

“I think you looked nice.” Randy considered the girl in the picture. “Interesting and, well,
nice.
I was just wishing I'd known that girl.”

“And how she would have loved knowing you. Sometimes she was very lonely,” said Mrs. Oliphant. “Unfortunately she disappeared long, long ago.”

Randy looked up at her companion's face. What she said was true. The face was so old, crossed with a thousand lines, and the dark, fiery eyes were overhung by such severe black brows that every trace of the little girl she had once been had vanished with the past.

“What was that big city in the distance?”

“It was Paris,” said the old lady, with a sigh.

“Who was the dog?”

“Tartuffe, we called him. He was a selfish old beast, and very dull company.” Mrs. Oliphant shook her head and laughed, remembering. Then she looked about her questioningly. “Who is with you, Miranda? I don't see any of your family.”

“I'm all alone,” Randy told her.

“
Alone?
How old are you, child?”

“Ten,” said Randy.

Mrs. Oliphant shook her head again. “When I was your age such a thing was unheard of. My aunts would have fainted dead away at the suggestion. What a lucky girl you are!”

Randy agreed. Really, I am lucky, she thought.

“Well, since we are both alone,” suggested the old lady, “why don't you come with me and have a cup of tea, or an ice-cream soda, or a chocolate marshmallow walnut sundae, or whatever you prefer?”

Randy was beginning to like Mrs. Oliphant very much. “I'd love to,” she said.

Surrounded by an aura of camphor and eau de Cologne, and with all her chains jingling, the old lady swept splendidly from the gallery. Randy followed in her wake, like a dinghy behind a large launch.

Outside the moist air had become moister. A fine mist was driving down. Mrs. Oliphant disentangled an umbrella from her handbag and the tail of one of her furs. When it was opened the umbrella proved to be extremely large and deep. They walked under it, close together, as under a small pavilion. “I've had it for twenty-five years,” Mrs. Oliphant told Randy. “It's been lost once on a bus, twice on railway trains, and once at the London Zoo. But I always get it back. I call it the Albatross.”

After they had walked a block or two, they came to a large hotel which they entered, and the old lady, having checked the Albatross, led Randy to a large room full of little tables, gilt chairs, mirrors, and palms in fancy pots. At one end of the room on a raised platform there was a three-piece orchestra: piano, violin, and cello. All the musicians looked about fifty years old.

A waiter who looked old enough to be the father of any one of the musicians led Mrs. Oliphant and Randy to a table by a long window. After a period of deliberation, it was decided that the old lady would have tea and toast, and Randy would have vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.

“And, François, bring some petits fours, also.”

“Parfaitement, madame,” said François, creaking agedly away in the direction of the kitchen. Randy did not know what “petits fours” meant, but she did not like to ask.

“Ah, yes,” said Mrs. Oliphant when she had uncoiled from her layers of furs, taken off her gloves, untied her scarf, and arranged her necklaces. “My childhood was a very different thing from yours.”

“Tell me about it,” said Randy. Then “please,” as an afterthought.

“Would you like to hear the whole story?”

“Yes, yes, please, the whole story,” begged Randy, giving an involuntary bounce on the hard chair. She loved to be told stories.

“Well, it's a long time ago,” said the old lady. “Before you were born, even before your father was born, imagine it! The garden in the picture was the garden of my father's house in Saint-Germain near Paris. It was an old house even then, tall and narrow and grey, with patches of ivy. The inside of it was stuffy and dark and full of furniture. When house cleaning was going on, all the windows were opened; never any other time, and I can remember the smell of it to this day: the mixed odors of cloth and cough medicine and age. I was the only young thing in the house, even Tartuffe, the dog was older than I. My mother had died when I was born and my father's business kept him in Paris all day, so I was brought up by my aunts and an English governess. They gave me my lessons too, I was never allowed to go to school. The aunts were all maiden ladies years older than my father. They always wore black, took pills with their meals, worried about drafts, and spoke in quiet polite voices except when shouting at Tante Amélie, the deaf aunt, who carried a great curved ear trumpet like the tusk of an elephant. Ah, here is the tea.”

François arranged the feast before them. Petits fours turned out to be the most wonderful little cakes in frilled paper collars: pink, and pale yellow, and chocolate, with silver peppermint buttons on top. Randy's eyes glittered with such enthusiasm that the old lady was delighted. “You shall have some to take home to the other children. François, please bring us a boxful of petits fours to take home.”

“That will be wonderful,” Randy said, not quite with her mouth full, but almost. “Please tell me some more.”

“Very well,” said her friend. “The English governess was also a spinster, also elderly. Her name was Miss Buff-Towers and she was related in some way to an earl, a fact she was very proud of and never forgot. She had long front teeth, the color of old piano keys, and a huge coiled arrangement of braided hair on top of her head like an orderly eagle's nest. She was a kindhearted creature but she knew as much about raising children as I know about raising coati-mundis. (I'm not even sure what they are.)

“You can see that my life was far from exciting. I knew no children, rarely left my own home at all. If it hadn't been for the garden I might have gone mad from boredom.

“This garden was very large, enclosed by a high wall, and shaded by old chestnut trees that bloomed every spring in great cornucopias of popcorn. There was a tiny bamboo jungle, and a summerhouse with a wasp's nest, and a little lead fountain, and two enormous mossy statues: one of Diana, and one of Apollo. At the end of the garden the wall was low enough to permit seeing the magnificent view of the city. In the distance the whole of Paris lay spread out like a map: golden in the morning, blue in the dusk, shining like a thousand fires at night.

“I spent all the time I could in the garden. I had a swing there, and many hiding places for myself, my dolls, and Tartuffe. I used to take my lessons to the wall at the end, looking up from my dull books every other minute to see the city far beyond. I never tired of looking at it and wondering about it.

“One September evening when I was eleven years old I had gone into the garden, and was sitting in my usual place on the wall looking at the city and hoping dinner would be ready soon. I heard steps on the little gravel path behind me and, turning, saw my father and another gentleman, a friend whom he had brought home for dinner. I stood up respectfully and was introduced to Monsieur Clairon. He was a tall man with a brown beard and pleasant eyes. I had a feeling, looking at him, that he was more alive than most people.

“‘Your daughter makes me think of the princess in a fairy tale who looks out of her tower at the world,' he told my father. ‘Someday I would like to paint her just as she was: sitting on that wall.'

“I was flattered and self-conscious, but only for a moment.

“‘We mustn't make her vain, Jules,' said my father in a stately voice. ‘That plain little face was never meant for Art.' Dinner, for once, was fun. Monsieur Clairon told jokes and stories, everybody laughed, and each story was repeated in loud brays for Tante Amélie with the greatest good will.

“‘I've been making sketches at the carnival down the street,' he told me. ‘I can never resist carnivals. This one has a camel and a dancing bear as well as the usual carousel and fortune-tellers. It makes good pictures. You've seen it, I suppose, mademoiselle?' He turned to me.

“‘No, monsieur,' I said sadly. I knew there was a carnival somewhere in the town. Bursts of music had been drifting over the wall all day.

“‘But you must see it!' Monsieur Clairon insisted. ‘It leaves at midnight. I should be happy to take you this evening—'

“‘Heaven forbid, Jules,' said my father, with a distressed smile. ‘Gabrielle would come home with smallpox or whooping cough or measles or all three.'

“‘And so
dreadfully dirty!
' added Miss Buff-Towers.

“‘Someone might even kidnap her!' said my Tante Marthe, who always expected the worst.

“‘It's out of the question,' stated my father firmly.

“For the first time since I was a tiny child I dared to defy the collective opinion of my aunts, father, and governess.

“‘But I want to go!' said I, laying down my fork. ‘I want to go
terribly
! Why can't I? I'll wear gloves and not touch anything, I promise. When I come home I'll gargle. Please let me go, please please please!'

“My father stared at me. Even his eyebrows and mustache looked annoyed.

“‘That will be enough, Gabrielle,' he said.

“‘You never let me go anywhere!' I persisted. ‘I've never seen a carnival. Or a real live camel. Or a dancing bear. I'd like to see
something
besides just this old house all the time!'

“My father's face was dark as the wine in his glass.

“‘Go!' he roared. ‘Upstairs, immediately! Without dessert!'

“And up I went, crying into my sleeve and hearing above my sobs the turmoil in the dining room: Monsieur Clairon interceding for me, my father expostulating, and above that the loud, toneless voice of Tante Amélie saying, ‘What's the matter? Why is Gabrielle crying? Why doesn't someone tell me something?' And Tante Marthe bellowing into the ear trumpet: ‘GABRIELLE HAS BEEN A VERY NAUGHTY GIRL!'

“After I had gone to bed and Miss Buff-Towers had heard my prayers, and wept a few embarrassing tears over my disobedience, I lay in bed very still and straight and angry. Through the closed window I could hear rowdy strains of music.

“At last I got out of bed and opened the window which looked out over the garden and the distant lighted city spread like a jeweled fabric. For the first time I was sorry that my room was not at the front of the house since then I might have glimpsed the carnival. The music sounded gayer than ever, and I could hear bursts of laughter above the noise. Slowly my anger turned to curiosity and active rebellion. An adventurous flame sprang to life within me. Quickly in the dark I dressed in my oldest dress. Quickly I stuffed the bolster under the blankets just in case someone should look in. But money! I wanted to ride on the carrousel and to see the dancing bear. There were only twenty centimes in my pocketbook, and then I remembered the gold piece! My father had given it to me on my last birthday; at the time I had been disappointed, but now I was glad. I took it out of its box, put it in my pocket with the twenty centimes, and cautiously opened the door to the hall.