‘Well,’ said Heidler, ‘here’s hoping.’
Marya smiled and answered: ‘Here’s hoping.’
She was cold. Her feet were soaked. She imagined that all the people
in the restaurant looked sleek, tidy and placid, and envied their
well-ordered lives. Then the vermouth warmed her throat and chest and
she felt less physically miserable.
‘Monsieur Lefranc,’ called Heidler.
The _patron_ hurried up to the table; a quick, lively little man, but
sparing of word and gesture, recommending this or that with an air
as if to say: ‘And I wouldn’t do this for everybody, mind you.’ One
saw at once why English people patronized his restaurant. That decent
restraint gave them confidence.
Mrs Heidler observed her guest with calm brown eyes.
‘But you’re wet through, poor child!’
Marya answered that it was nothing, just the sleeve of her coat.
‘Then take it off,’ advised Mrs Heidler.
She looked past Marya at a girl dressed in red, followed by two young
men, who passed the table with coldly averted head.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘did you see Cri-Cri cut me dead, H. J.? Considering
that she came to my party last Saturday.’
Cri-Cri, who was a bold spirit and a good sort, sat down with her legs
widely apart like some hardy cavalier, seized the menu and began to
talk rapidly in a rather cantankerous voice. She was a small, plump
girl with an astonishingly accurate make-up, a make-up which never
varied, day in and day out, week in and week out. Her round cheeks were
painted orange-red, her lips vermilion, her green eyes shadowed with
kohl, her pointed nose dead white. There was never too much or too
little, or a lock of her sleek black hair out of place. A wonderful
performance. She was the famous model of a Japanese painter, also
a cabaret singer and a character; and she had ignored the Heidlers
because she realized that she could afford to display coldness, and
that no good ever comes from being too polite.
Mrs Heidler watched her with a wistful expression, for she was unable
to avoid putting a fictitious value on anyone who snubbed her, and she
was really anxious to have people like Cri-Cri at her parties. People
who got written about. Characters. Types. She began to discuss the
famous lady, characters in general, beauty.
‘It’s an angle of the eyes and mouth,’ said Mrs Heidler. She repeated,
satisfied: ‘That’s what it is. I’ve noticed it over and over again.
It’s a certain angle of the eyes and mouth.’
Monsieur Lefranc served the fish.
When Marya looked across the table at Heidler, she noticed that he had
oddly shaped eyelids, three cornered eyelids over pale, clever eyes.
Not at all an amiable looking person. But nevertheless not without
understanding, for every time that her glass was empty he refilled
it. She began to feel miraculously reassured, happy and secure. Her
thoughts were vague and pleasant, her misery distant as the sound of
the rain. She watched through a slight mist a party of people who
had just come into the restaurant, the movements of arms taking off
overcoats, of legs in light-coloured stockings and feet in low-heeled
shoes walking over the wooden floor to hide themselves under the
tablecloths. Against a blurred background she saw, with enormous
distinctness, a woman’s profile, another’s back, the row of bottles
on the counter, a man’s shoulders and his striped tie. Marya sat
very upright on the leather bench, talking carefully and coherently.
A confused murmur of voices--Mrs Heidler’s loud and authoritative,
Heidler’s gentle and hesitating.
‘Oh, Lola,’ Heidler was saying, ‘Lola is Elizabethan.’ They were still
discussing types.
The grey-blue room seemed to be growing larger, the walls had receded,
the bulbs of the electric lights had expanded mysteriously. Now they
looked like small moons.
‘Ah, there you are, Anna,’ said Mrs Heidler to a small, neat American,
with baby-blonde hair, a keen eye and a very firm mouth indeed.
‘Lola is in the Select,’ remarked this lady. ‘She’ll be along in a
minute.’
Miss Lola Hewitt arrived, accompanied by a fresh-faced youth who wore a
_béret basque_, a jersey, and very shabby trousers. Lola was a pretty
lady, but she seemed moody. Her long thin fingers twitched on the stem
of her glass, and she announced: ‘Oh, I am not in my _assiette_, as the
dear French say.’
‘Darling,’ Lois told her, ‘don’t get depressed. Have another _fine_.’
A gaunt lady wearing a turban was also, it seemed, going to the party;
so was a pleasant gentleman who sat down next to Marya and invited her
to meet him in the Dôme at half-past ten on the following morning. He
added cheerfully: ‘I didn’t catch your name. Mine’s Porson.’ And Marya
realized from his tone that Mr Porson must be a celebrated person. The
turbaned lady was saying jerkily: ‘It’s a pity about Rolls and the
literary gathering, isn’t it? Yes, he’s got a literary gathering on
this evening at the Café Lavenue. Nine o’clock. Rolls and Boyes. Both
of them. All the Middle Westerners are going.’
‘I say,’ persisted Porson, ‘couldn’t you turn up tomorrow? I wish you
would. I feel that I’d like to talk to you. I know that half-past ten
is a bit early, but I’m going back to London in the afternoon.’ He
added, drooping his head mournfully, that he had been getting divorced.
‘And it’s a miserable business. Oh, wretched! Most depressing.’
It was difficult to listen to the details of Mr Porson’s divorce. Marya
heard the fresh-faced boy saying: ‘I can drink whatever I like, and
pull myself together in a minute with the stuff.’
‘What is it?’ she said, leaning over to him. ‘Let me look.’
‘Would you like to try one?’ asked the boy. He handed her over a small
capsule. ‘Break it, sniff it up, that’s right.’
Marya broke the capsule and inhaled. Her heart stopped with a jerk,
then seemed to dilate suddenly and very painfully. The blood rushed
over her face and neck. ‘I’m going to fall,’ she thought with terror,
and clutched the edge of the table.
‘That got you all right,’ said the fresh-faced boy, interested. He
appealed to the others: ‘I say, do look. She got that all right, didn’t
she?’
From a great distance Marya heard the voice of the lady with the
turban: ‘Rolls is, of course, the great stylist, but Boyes--Boyes is
the pioneer.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she began. Then she explained, speaking carefully that
she was afraid she could not go on to the party, that she was afraid
that she must go straight home. ‘I’ve had flu and it’s pulled me down a
bit. I must go home,’ she muttered, looking at Heidler with appeal.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It’s still pouring; you must have a taxi.’
As they walked to the door she felt passionately grateful to him. She
was sure that he knew she was ill and near to tears. He was a rock of a
man with his big shoulders and his quiet voice.
‘Good night,’ he said. ‘Lois will look you up as soon as we get back
from Brunoy. Take care of that cough. Don’t worry.’
He shut the taxi door.