She spent the whole day on the beach, gathering mussels among the rocks,
for she had taken it into her head to cook them and give the British
family a taste of this delicacy. The dog, Vicky, accompanied her, and
halted before each mussel-covered rock with the patient air of a good
English dog.
The sun was quite warm. Ursula took off her shorts and sunbathed in her
swimming suit, and then she ran into the water, splashing, swimming,
floating, as happy as the great dog whose head stuck out of the water
beside hers.
When Ursula came out of the water she found a deserted crevice among the
rocks, and there she rolled in the sand with Vicky. He leaped about and
rubbed himself joyfully against the rocks, and it seemed to Ursula that
life was beautiful.
The mussels were received with a good deal of suspicion. Each member of
the family ate one out of politeness toward the little French girl,
saying, “It’s odd, isn’t it?” Ursula emptied the plate all by herself,
because she was very hungry, and for the honor of France.
In the afternoon she returned to the beach. The sea was mounting, with a
constant roar of breaking waves. A plane passed far overhead and later
there was the distant sound of antiaircraft fire. Ursula had almost
forgotten that there was a war. A goat was browsing on a hillock, and
from time to time the goat raised its head with a graceful movement.
Ursula thought of Philippe, and a strange shiver passed down her back.
Her heart began to beat faster, she felt cold, and her throat
contracted.
What’s the matter with me? she wondered.
From that moment until evening, the strange shivering continued
ceaselessly up and down her back, and her heart kept beating, beating.
She wished that it were already seven o’clock, and at the same time she
wanted to run away, no matter where. Or perhaps to the soft arms of
Claude, resting her head on Claude’s breast.
She dressed nervously, telling herself she was an idiot. She couldn’t
manage to make a respectable knot in her tie, and her hair was full of
sand. Her hostess gave her a key in case she should return late. She
left at last, quite a bit early, and arrived ahead of time at the church
in the central square where they had agreed to meet. The wind was so
strong that she was barely able to keep erect. She went into the church
to wait.
Ursula had rarely had occasion to enter a church. She sat down in a
corner and looked about. It must have been a Catholic or an Anglican
church, for there were statues and flowers. There was the odor of
incense and of candles. It was very calm. It must be so strange, she
thought, to belong to a church and to feel at home in this huge house.
And this little girl without religion, without a creed, without a past,
left to herself in a world of which she was ignorant, felt herself in
some way linked to a deity who received the prayers of mankind. Not a
special god called by a certain name, and endowed by mankind with a list
of attributes, but simply that unknown and mysterious force to which
people everywhere build temples and toward whom prayers are raised. “God
of Mankind,” she said, in a very low voice, “you see, I am here. My name
is Ursula. I don’t know anything about anything. Please make it so that
I can understand—so that someone explains to me why everything is, and
what I must do. And thank you, God of Mankind, for the sea, the sun, and
the sand.”
She felt quite content and much reassured when she went out into the
daylight. Just outside the church, Philippe waited, turning over his
uniform cap, which was covered with gold braid.
The other officer was a friend of Philippe’s. He was the ship’s doctor,
and quite naturally Philippe called him Doc. The young woman with him
was a very pretty English girl, highly self-assured, very feminine,
smartly dressed, and well made up. She examined Ursula with an air of
superiority. Philippe, like Doc, seemed to go out of his way to please
this young woman, and Ursula found herself with nothing to say. She felt
awkward, embarrassed by her heavy khaki clothes and her hair falling
into her eyes, and conscious of her hands with the nails cut short. She
wished that she also were a grown woman, knowing how to laugh with
self-assurance and how to look men in the eye without blinking, and
wearing a low-cut black dress, revealing her provoking breasts. She
wished she could dance perfectly, wearing high heels and transparent
stockings. But instead of being like that, there she was saying nothing,
feeling queasy ever since yesterday’s meal on the boat, and not able to
eat anything.
Philippe exclaimed at her leaving her plate untouched. He was very fond
of eating, and it seemed to him a sacrilege to refuse smoked salmon and
to leave a roast untasted. To please him, Ursula managed to drink the
wine that was served to her.
The young Englishwoman had the art of turning the conversation easily
around all sorts of obvious subjects, which one couldn’t remember a
moment afterward. The dinner was rather long. Afterward, Philippe
suggested that they finish the evening at his place in town. And since
there were four of them, Ursula accepted, reassured by the presence of
the other woman.
They took a taxi to Philippe’s apartment. It was a modern three-room
flat filled with Chinese and Indian knickknacks that Philippe had
brought back from his voyages. They all made themselves comfortable in
the living room. Philippe brought out whisky glasses. The conversation
languished. Doc and the young woman exchanged glances and whispered to
each other. Suddenly the young woman rose and left the room. Doc
followed her, and Ursula found herself alone with Philippe.