1
That spring they made their first real acquaintance with the garish and
tragic night life of Paris that lies open to such people as Stephen
Gordon.
Until now they had never gone out much at night except to occasional
studio parties, or occasional cafés of the milder sort for a cup of
coffee with Barbara and Jamie; but that spring Mary seemed fanatically
eager to proclaim her allegiance to Pat’s miserable army. Deprived of
the social intercourse which to her would have been both natural and
welcome, she now strove to stand up to a hostile world by proving that
she could get on without it. The spirit of adventure that had taken her
to France, the pluck that had steadied her while in the Unit, the
emotional, hot-headed nature of the Celt, these things must now work
together in Mary to produce a state of great restlessness, a pitiful
revolt against life’s injustice. The blow struck by a weak and
thoughtless hand had been even more deadly than Stephen had imagined;
more deadly to them both, for that glancing blow coming at a time of
apparent success, had torn from them every shred of illusion.
Stephen, who could see that the girl was fretting, would be seized with
a kind of sick apprehension, a sick misery at her own powerlessness to
provide a more normal and complete existence. So many innocent
recreations, so many harmless social pleasures must Mary forego for the
sake of their union—and she still young, still well under thirty. And
now Stephen came face to face with the gulf that lies between warning
and realization—all her painful warnings anent the world had not served
to lessen the blow when it fell, had not served to make it more
tolerable to Mary. Deeply humiliated Stephen would feel, when she
thought of Mary’s exile from Morton, when she thought of the insults
this girl must endure because of her loyalty and her faith—all that
Mary was losing that belonged to her youth, would rise up at this time
to accuse and scourge Stephen. Her courage would flicker like a lamp in
the wind, and would all but go out; she would feel less steadfast, less
capable of continuing the war, that ceaseless war for the right to
existence. Then the pen would slip from her nerveless fingers, no longer
a sharp and purposeful weapon. Yes, that spring saw a weakening in
Stephen herself—she felt tired, and sometimes very old for her age, in
spite of her vigorous mind and body.
Calling Mary she would need to be reassured; and one day she asked her:
‘How much do you love me?’
Mary answered: ‘So much that I’m growing to hate . . .’ Bitter words to
hear on such young lips as Mary’s.
And now there were days when Stephen herself would long for some
palliative, some distraction; when her erstwhile success seemed like
Dead Sea fruit, her will to succeed a grotesque presumption. Who was she
to stand out against the whole world, against those ruthless, pursuing
millions bent upon the destruction of her and her kind? And she but one
poor, inadequate creature. She would start to pace up and down her
study; up and down, up and down, a most desolate pacing; even as years
ago her father had paced his quiet study at Morton. Then those
treacherous nerves of hers would betray her, so that when Mary came in
with David—he a little depressed, sensing something amiss—she would
often turn on the girl and speak sharply.
‘Where on earth have you been?’
‘Only out for a walk. I walked round to Jamie’s, Barbara’s not well; I
sent her in a few tins of Brand’s jelly.’
‘You’ve no right to go off without letting me know where you’re
going—I’ve told you before I won’t have it!’ Her voice would be harsh,
and Mary would flush, unaware of those nerves that were strained to
breaking.
As though grasping at something that remained secure, they would go to
see the kind Mademoiselle Duphot, but less often than they had done in
the past, for a feeling of guilt would come upon Stephen. Looking at the
gentle and foal-like face with its innocent eyes behind the strong
glasses, she would think: ‘We’re here under false pretences. If she knew
what we were, she’d have none of us, either. Brockett was right, we
should stick to our kind.’ So they went less and less to see
Mademoiselle Duphot.
Mademoiselle said with her mild resignation: ‘It is natural, for now our
Stévenne is famous. Why should she waste her time upon us? I am more
than content to have been her teacher.’
But the sightless Julie shook her head sadly: ‘It is not like that; you
mistake, my sister. I can feel a great desolation in Stévenne-and some
of the youngness has gone from Mary. What can it be? My fingers grow
blind when I ask them the cause of that desolation.’
‘I will pray for them both to the Sacred Heart which comprehends all
things,’ said Mademoiselle Duphot.
And indeed her own heart would have tried to understand—but Stephen had
grown very bitterly mistrustful.
And so now, in good earnest they turned to their kind, for as Puddle had
truly divined in the past, it is ‘like to like’ for such people as
Stephen. Thus when Pat walked in unexpectedly one day to invite them to
join a party that night at the Ideal Bar, Stephen did not oppose Mary’s
prompt and all too eager acceptance.
Pat said they were going to do the round. Wanda was coming and probably
Brockett. Dickie West the American aviator was in Paris, and she also
had promised to join them. Oh, yes, and then there was Valérie
Seymour—Valérie was being dug out of her hole by Jeanne Maurel, her
most recent conquest. Pat supposed that Valérie would drink lemon squash
and generally act as a douche of cold water, she was sure to grow sleepy
or disapproving, she was no acquisition to this sort of party. But could
they rely upon Stephen’s car? In the cold, grey dawn of the morning
after, taxis were sometimes scarce up at Montmartre. Stephen nodded,
thinking how absurdly prim Pat looked to be talking of cold, grey dawns
and all that they stood for up at Montmartre. After she had left,
Stephen frowned a little.
2
The five women were seated at a table near the door when Mary and
Stephen eventually joined them. Pat, looking gloomy, was sipping light
beer. Wanda, with the fires of hell in her eyes, in the hell of a temper
too, drank brandy. She had started to drink pretty heavily again, and
had therefore been avoiding Stephen just lately. There were only two new
faces at the table, that of Jeanne Maurel, and of Dickie West, the much
discussed woman aviator.
Dickie was short, plump and very young; she could not have been more
than twenty-one and she still looked considerably under twenty. She was
wearing a little dark blue béret; round her neck was knotted an apache
scarf—for the rest she was dressed in a neat serge suit with a very
well cut double-breasted jacket. Her face was honest, her teeth rather
large, her lips chapped and her skin much weather-beaten. She looked
like a pleasant and nice-minded schoolboy well soaped and scrubbed for
some gala occasion. When she spoke her voice was a little too hearty.
She belonged to the younger, and therefore more reckless, more
aggressive and self-assured generation; a generation that was marching
to battle with much swagger, much sounding of drums and trumpets, a
generation that had come after war to wage a new war on a hostile
creation. Being mentally very well clothed and well shod, they had as
yet left no blood-stained foot-prints; they were hopeful as yet,
refusing point-blank to believe in the existence of a miserable army.
They said: ‘We are as we are; what about it? We don’t care a damn, in
fact we’re delighted!’ And being what they were they must go to
extremes, must quite often outdo men in their sinning; yet the sins that
they had were the sins of youth, the sins of defiance born of
oppression. But Dickie was in no way exceptionally vile—she lived her
life much as a man would have lived it. And her heart was so loyal, so
trustful, so kind that it caused her much shame and much secret
blushing. Generous as a lover, she was even more so when there could not
be any question of loving. Like the horseleech’s daughter, her friends
cried: ‘Give! Give!’ and Dickie gave lavishly, asking no questions. An
appeal never left her completely unmoved, and suspecting this, most
people went on appealing. She drank wine in moderation, smoked Camel
cigarettes till her fingers were brown, and admired stage beauties. Her
greatest defect was practical joking of the kind that passes all seemly
limits. Her jokes were dangerous, even cruel at times—in her jokes
Dickie quite lacked imagination.
Jeanne Maurel was tall, almost as tall as Stephen. An elegant person
wearing pearls round her throat above a low cut white satin waistcoat.
She was faultlessly tailored and faultlessly barbered; her dark, severe
Eton crop fitted neatly. Her profile was Greek, her eyes a bright
blue—altogether a very arresting young woman. So far she had had quite
a busy life doing nothing in particular and everything in general. But
now she was Valérie Seymour’s lover, attaining at last to a certain
distinction.
And Valérie was sitting there calm and aloof, her glance roving casually
round the café, not too critically, yet as though she would say: ‘Enfin,
the whole world has grown very ugly, but no doubt to some people this
represents pleasure.’
From the stained bar counter at the end of the room came the sound of
Monsieur Pujol’s loud laughter. Monsieur Pujol was affable to his
clients, oh, but very, indeed he was almost paternal. Yet nothing
escaped his cold, black eyes—a great expert he was in his way, Monsieur
Pujol. There are many collections that a man may indulge in; old china,
glass, pictures, watches and bibelots; rare editions, tapestries,
priceless jewels. Monsieur Pujol snapped his fingers at such things,
they lacked life—Monsieur Pujol collected inverts. Amazingly morbid of
Monsieur Pujol, and he with the face of an ageing dragoon, and he just
married en secondes noces, and already with six legitimate children. A
fine, purposeful sire he had been and still was, with his young wife
shortly expecting a baby. Oh, yes, the most aggressively normal of men,
as none knew better than the poor Madame Pujol. Yet behind the bar was a
small, stuffy sanctum in which this strange man catalogued his
collection. The walls of the sanctum were thickly hung with signed
photographs, and a good few sketches. At the back of each frame was a
neat little number corresponding to that in a locked leather
notebook—it had long been his custom to write up his notes before going
home with the milk in the morning. People saw their own faces but not
their numbers—no client suspected that locked leather notebook.
To this room would come Monsieur Pujol’s old cronies for a bock or a
petit verre before business; and sometimes, like many another collector,
Monsieur Pujol would permit himself to grow prosy. His friends knew most
of the pictures by heart; knew their histories too, almost as well as he
did; but in spite of this fact he would weary his guests by repeating
many a threadbare story.
‘A fine lot, n’est-ce pas?’ he would say with a grin, ‘See that man? Ah,
yes—a really great poet. He drank himself to death. In those days it
was absinthe—they liked it because it gave them such courage. That one
would come here like a scared white rat, but Crénom! when he left he
would bellow like a bull—the absinthe, of course—it gave them great
courage.’ Or: ‘That woman over there, what a curious head! I remember
her very well, she was German. Else Weining, her name was—before the
war she would come with a girl she’d picked up here in Paris, just a
common whore, a most curious business. They were deeply in love. They
would sit at a table in the corner—I can show you their actual table.
They never talked much and they drank very little; as far as the drink
went those two were bad clients, but so interesting that I did not much
mind—I grew almost attached to Else Weining. Sometimes she would come
all alone, come early. “Pu,” she would say in her hideous French; “Pu,
she must never go back to that hell.” Hell! Sacrénom—_she_ to call it
hell! Amazing they are, I tell you, these people. Well, the girl went
back, naturally she went back, and Else drowned herself in the Seine.
Amazing they are—ces invertis, I tell you!’
But not all the histories were so tragic as this one; Monsieur Pujol
found some of them quite amusing. Quarrels galore he was able to relate,
and light infidelities by the dozen. He would mimic a manner of speech,
a gesture, a walk—he was really quite a good mimic—and when he did
this his friends were not bored; they would sit there and split their
sides with amusement.
And now Monsieur Pujol was laughing himself, cracking jokes as he
covertly watched his clients. From where she and Mary sat near the door,
Stephen could hear his loud, jovial laughter.
‘Lord,’ sighed Pat, unenlivened as yet by the beer; ‘some people do seem
to feel real good this evening.’
Wanda, who disliked the ingratiating Pujol, and whose nerves were on
edge, had begun to grow angry. She had caught a particularly gross
blasphemy, gross even for this age of stupid blaspheming. ‘Le salaud!’
she shouted, then, inflamed by drink, an epithet even less
complimentary.
‘Hush up, do!’ exclaimed the scandalized Pat, hastily gripping Wanda’s
shoulder.
But Wanda was out to defend her faith, and she did it in somewhat
peculiar language.
People had begun to turn round and stare; Wanda was causing quite a
diversion. Dickie grinned and skilfully egged her on, not perceiving the
tragedy that was Wanda. For in spite of her tender and generous heart,
Dickie was still but a crude young creature, one who had not yet learnt
how to shiver and shake, and had thus remained but a crude young
creature. Stephen glanced anxiously at Mary, half deciding to break up
this turbulent party; but Mary was sitting with her chin on her hand,
quite unruffled, it seemed, by Wanda’s outburst. When her eyes met
Stephen’s she actually smiled, then took the cigarette that Jeanne
Maurel was offering; and something in this placid, self-assured
indifference went so ill with her youth that it startled Stephen. She in
her turn must quickly light a cigarette, while Pat still endeavoured to
silence Wanda.
Valérie said with her enigmatic smile: ‘Shall we now go on to our next
entertainment?’
They paid the bill and persuaded Wanda to postpone her abuse of the
ingratiating Pujol. Stephen took one arm, Dickie West the other, and
between them they coaxed her into the motor; after which they all
managed to squeeze themselves in—that is, all except Dickie, who sat by
the driver in order to guide the innocent Burton.
3
At Le Narcisse they surprised what at first appeared to be the most
prosaic of family parties. It was late, yet the mean room was empty of
clients, for Le Narcisse seldom opened its eyes until midnight had
chimed from the church clocks of Paris. Seated at a table with a red and
white cloth were the Patron and a lady with a courtesy title. ‘Madame,’
she was called. And with them was a girl, and a handsome young man with
severely plucked eyebrows. Their relationship to each other was . . .
well . . . all the same, they suggested a family party. As Stephen
pushed open the shabby swing door, they were placidly engaged upon
playing belotte.
The walls of the room were hung with mirrors thickly painted with
cupids, thickly sullied by flies. A faint blend of odours was wafted
from the kitchen which stood in proximity to the toilet. The host rose
at once and shook hands with his guests. Every bar had its social
customs, it seemed. At the Ideal one must share Monsieur Pujol’s lewd
jokes; at Le Narcisse one must gravely shake hands with the Patron.
The Patron was tall and exceedingly thin—a clean-shaven man with the
mouth of an ascetic. His cheeks were delicately tinted with rouge, his
eyelids delicately shaded with kohl; but the eyes themselves were an
infantile blue, reproachful and rather surprised in expression.
For the good of the house, Dickie ordered champagne; it was warm and
sweet and unpleasantly heady. Only Jeanne and Mary and Dickie herself
had the courage to sample this curious beverage. Wanda stuck to her
brandy and Pat to her beer, while Stephen drank coffee; but Valérie
Seymour caused some confusion by gently insisting on a lemon squash—to
be made with fresh lemons. Presently the guests began to arrive in
couples. Having seated themselves at the tables, they quickly became
oblivious to the world, what with the sickly champagne and each other.
From a hidden recess there emerged a woman with a basket full of
protesting roses. The stout vendeuse wore a wide wedding ring—for was
she not a most virtuous person? But her glance was both calculating and
shrewd as she pounced upon the more obvious couples; and Stephen
watching her progress through the room, felt suddenly ashamed on behalf
of the roses. And now at a nod from the host there was music; and now at
a bray from the band there was dancing. Dickie and Wanda opened the
ball—Dickie stodgy and firm, Wanda rather unsteady. Others followed.
Then Mary leant over the table and whispered:
‘Won’t you dance with me, Stephen?’
Stephen hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she got up abruptly and
danced with Mary.
The handsome young man with the tortured eyebrows was bowing politely
before Valérie Seymour. Refused by her, he passed on to Pat, and to
Jeanne’s great amusement was promptly accepted.
Brockett arrived and sat down at the table. He was in his most prying
and cynical humour. He watched Stephen with coldly observant eyes,
watched Dickie guiding the swaying Wanda, watched Pat in the arms of the
handsome young man, watched the whole bumping, jostling crowd of
dancers.
The blended odours were becoming more active. Brockett lit a cigarette.
‘Well, Valérie darling? You look like an outraged Elgin marble. Be kind,
dear, be kind; you must live and let live, this is life. . . .’ And he
waved his soft, white hands. ‘Observe it—it’s very wonderful, darling.
This is life, love, defiance, emancipation!’
Said Valérie with her calm little smile: ‘I think I preferred it when we
were all martyrs!’
The dancers drifted back to their seats and Brockett manœuvred to sit
beside Stephen. ‘You and Mary dance well together,’ he murmured. ‘Are
you happy? Are you enjoying yourselves?’
Stephen, who hated this inquisitive mood, this mood that would feed upon
her emotions, turned away as she answered him, rather coldly: ‘Yes,
thanks—we’re not having at all a bad evening.’
And now the Patron was standing by their table; bowing slightly to
Brockett he started singing. His voice was a high and sweet baritone;
his song was of love that must end too soon, of life that in death is
redeemed by ending. An extraordinary song to hear in such a
place—melancholy and very sentimental. Some of the couples had tears in
their eyes—tears that had probably sprung from champagne quite as much
as from that melancholy singing. Brockett ordered a fresh bottle to
console the Patron. Then he waved him away with a gesture of impatience.
There ensued more dancing, more ordering of drinks, more dalliance by
the amorous couples. The Patron’s mood changed, and now he must sing a
song of the lowest boites in Paris. As he sang he skipped like a
performing dog, grimacing, beating time with his hands, conducting the
chorus that rose from the tables.
Brockett sighed as he shrugged his shoulders in disgust, and once again
Stephen glanced at Mary; but Mary, she saw, had not understood that song
with its inexcusable meaning. Valérie was talking to Jeanne Maurel,
talking about her villa at St. Tropez; talking of the garden, the sea,
the sky, the design she had drawn for a green marble fountain. Stephen
could hear her charming voice, so cultured, so cool—itself cool as a
fountain; and she marvelled at this woman’s perfect poise, the genius
she possessed for complete detachment; Valérie had closed her ears to
that song, and not only her ears but her mind and spirit.
The place was becoming intolerably hot, the room too over-crowded for
dancing. Lids drooped, mouths sagged, heads lay upon shoulders—there
was kissing, much kissing at a table in the corner. The air was fœtid
with drink and all the rest; unbreathable it appeared to Stephen. Dickie
yawned an enormous, uncovered yawn; she was still young enough to feel
rather sleepy. But Wanda was being seduced by her eyes, the lust of the
eye was heavy upon her, so that Pat must shake a lugubrious head and
begin to murmur anent General Custer.
Brockett got up and paid the bill; he was sulky, it seemed, because
Stephen had snubbed him. He had not spoken for quite half an hour, and
refused point-blank to accompany them further. ‘I’m going home to my
bed, thanks—good morning,’ he said crossly, as they crowded into the
motor.
They drove to a couple more bars, but at these they remained for only a
very few minutes. Dickie said they were dull and Jeanne Maurel
agreed—she suggested that they should go on to Alec’s.
Valérie lifted an eyebrow and groaned. She was terribly bored, she was
terribly hungry. ‘I do wish I could get some cold chicken,’ she
murmured.
4
As long as she lived Stephen never forgot her first impressions of the
bar known as Alec’s—that meeting-place of the most miserable of all
those who comprised the miserable army. That merciless, drug-dealing,
death-dealing haunt to which flocked the battered remnants of men whom
their fellow men had at last stamped under; who, despised of the world,
must despise themselves beyond all hope, it seemed, of salvation. There
they sat, closely herded together at the tables, creatures shabby yet
tawdry, timid yet defiant—and their eyes, Stephen never forgot their
eyes, those haunted, tormented eyes of the invert.
Of all ages, all degrees of despondency, all grades of mental and
physical ill-being, they must yet laugh shrilly from time to time, must
yet tap their feet to the rhythm of music, must yet dance together in
response to the band—and that dance seemed the Dance of Death to
Stephen. On more than one hand was a large, ornate ring, on more than
one wrist a conspicuous bracelet; they wore jewelry that might only be
worn by these men when they were thus gathered together. At Alec’s they
could dare to give way to such tastes—what was left of themselves they
became at Alec’s.
Bereft of all social dignity, of all social charts contrived for man’s
guidance, of the fellowship that by right divine should belong to each
breathing, living creature; abhorred, spat upon, from their earliest
days the prey to a ceaseless persecution, they were now even lower than
their enemies knew, and more hopeless than the veriest dregs of
creation. For since all that to many of them had seemed fine, a fine,
selfless and at times even noble emotion, had been covered with shame,
called unholy and vile, so gradually they themselves had sunk down to
the level upon which the world placed their emotions. And looking with
abhorrence upon these men, drink-sodden, doped as were only too many,
Stephen yet felt that some terrifying thing stalked abroad in that
unhappy room at Alec’s; terrifying because if there were a God His anger
must rise at such vast injustice. More pitiful even than her lot was
theirs, and because of them mighty should be the world’s reckoning.
Alec the tempter, the vendor of dreams, the dispenser of illusions
whiter than snow; Alec, who sold little packets of cocaine for large
bundles of notes, was now opening wine, with a smile and a flourish, at
the next-door table.
He set down the bottle: ‘Et voilà, mes filles!’
Stephen looked at the men; they seemed quite complacent.
Against the wall sat a bald, flabby man whose fingers crept over an
amber chaplet. His lips moved; God alone knew to whom he prayed, and God
alone knew what prayers he was praying—horrible he was, sitting there
all alone with that infamous chaplet between his fingers.
The band struck up a onestep. Dickie still danced, but with Pat, for
Wanda was now beyond dancing. But Stephen would not dance, not among
these men, and she laid a restraining hand upon Mary. Despite her sense
of their terrible affliction, she could not dance in this place with
Mary.
A youth passed with a friend and the couple were blocked by the press of
dancers in front of her table. He bent forward, this youth, until his
face was almost on a level with Stephen’s—a grey, drug-marred face with
a mouth that trembled incessantly.
‘Ma sœur,’ he whispered.
For a moment she wanted to strike that face with her naked fist, to
obliterate it. Then all of a sudden she perceived the eyes, and the
memory came of a hapless creature, distracted, bleeding from bursting
lungs, hopelessly pursued, glancing this way, then that, as though
looking for something, some refuge, some hope—and the thought: ‘It’s
looking for God who made it.’
Stephen shivered and stared at her tightly clenched hands; the nails
whitened her flesh. ‘Mon frère,’ she muttered.
And now some one was making his way through the crowd, a quiet, tawny
man with the eyes of the Hebrew; Adolphe Blanc, the gentle and learned
Jew, sat down in Dickie’s seat beside Stephen. And he patted her knee as
though she were young, very young and in great need of consolation.
‘I have seen you for quite a long time, Miss Gordon. I’ve been sitting
just over there by the window.’ Then he greeted the others, but the
greeting over he appeared to forget their very existence; he had come,
it seemed, only to talk to Stephen.
He said: ‘This place—these poor men, they have shocked you. I’ve been
watching you in between the dances. They are terrible, Miss Gordon,
because they are those who have fallen but have not risen again—there
is surely no sin so great for them, so unpardonable as the sin of
despair; yet as surely you and I can forgive. . . .’
She was silent, not knowing what she should answer.
But he went on, in no way deterred by her silence. He spoke softly, as
though for her ears alone, and yet as a man might speak when consumed by
the flame of some urgent and desperate mission. ‘I am glad that you have
come to this place, because those who have courage have also a duty.’
She nodded without comprehending his meaning.
‘Yes, I am glad that you have come here,’ he repeated. ‘In this little
room, to-night, every night, there is so much misery, so much despair,
that the walls seem almost too narrow to contain it—many have grown
callous, many have grown vile, but these things in themselves are
despair, Miss Gordon. Yet outside there are happy people who sleep the
sleep of the so-called just and righteous. When they wake it will be to
persecute those who, through no known fault of their own, have been set
apart from the day of their birth, deprived of all sympathy, all
understanding. They are thoughtless, these happy people who sleep—and
who is there to make them think, Miss Gordon?’
‘They can read,’ she stammered, ‘there are many books. . . .’
But he shook his head. ‘Do you think they are students? Ah, but no, they
will not read medical books; what do such people care for the doctors?
And what doctor can know the entire truth? Many times they meet only the
neurasthenics, those of us for whom life has proved too bitter. They are
good, these doctors—some of them very good; they work hard trying to
solve our problem, but half the time they must work in the dark—the
whole truth is known only to the normal invert. The doctors cannot make
the ignorant think, cannot hope to bring home the sufferings of
millions; only one of ourselves can some day do that. . . . It will need
great courage but it will be done, because all things must work toward
ultimate good; there is no real wastage and no destruction.’ He lit a
cigarette and stared thoughtfully at her for a moment or two. Then he
touched her hand. ‘Do you comprehend? There is no destruction.’
She said: ‘When one comes to a place like this, one feels horribly sad
and humiliated. One feels that the odds are too heavily against any real
success, any real achievement. Where so many have failed who can hope to
succeed? Perhaps this is the end.’
Adolphe Blanc met her eyes. ‘You are wrong, very wrong—this is only the
beginning. Many die, many kill their bodies and souls, but they cannot
kill the justice of God, even they cannot kill the eternal spirit. From
their very degradation that spirit will rise up to demand of the world
compassion and justice.’
Strange—this man was actually speaking her thoughts, yet again she fell
silent, unable to answer.
Dickie and Pat came back to the table, and Adolphe Blanc slipped quietly
away; when Stephen glanced round his place was empty, nor could she
perceive him crossing the room through the press and maze of those
terrible dancers.
5
Dickie went sound asleep in the car with her head against Pat’s
inhospitable shoulder. When they got to her hotel she wriggled and
stretched. ‘Is it . . . is it time to get up?’ she murmured.
Next came Valérie Seymour and Jeanne Maurel to be dropped at the flat on
the Quai Voltaire; then Pat who lived a few streets away, and last but
not least the drunken Wanda. Stephen had to lift her out of the car and
then get her upstairs as best she could, assisted by Burton and followed
by Mary. It took quite a long time, and arrived at the door, Stephen
must hunt for a missing latchkey.
When they finally got home, Stephen sank into a chair. ‘Good Lord, what
a night—it was pretty awful.’ She was filled with the deep depression
and disgust that are apt to result from such excursions.
But Mary pretended to a callousness that in truth she was very far from
feeling, for life had not yet dulled her finer instincts; so far it had
only aroused her anger. She yawned. ‘Well, at least we could dance
together without being thought freaks; there was something in that.
Beggars can’t be choosers in this world, Stephen!’