Part 6 (1/2)

'The beds,' Pop said. And that room. We'll have to change that room, Ma and me, if we're going to stay here.'

For the third or fourth time Pop transfixed her with a smile that was at once perky, soft, and full of disquieting penetration, so that Mademoiselle Dupont found herself torn between the question of the unsatisfactory room and its bed and that brief, tormenting sc.r.a.p of reminiscence about Pop and Ma eloping and how Ma and she had the same creamy skin and the same dark soft hair.

This flash of romantic reminiscence confused her all over again, so that she pressed the key harder than ever into the palm of her hand and said: 'It is tres, tres difficile. I have no more rooms, Monsieur Larkin. Not one more.'

'Couldn't spend another night in that 'orrible room,' Pop said. He thought of his battle with the elements. He hadn't been dry all night. 'And Ma won't, what's more.'

Mademoiselle Dupont, without knowing why, felt suddenly ashamed. She felt inexplicably sorry that there had ever been any thought of ejecting Monsieur Larkin and his family.

'Nothing for it but the beach, I suppose,' Pop said. 'Bit difficult with Oscar, though.'

Mademoiselle Dupont inquired if Pop meant sleeping on the beach and who was Oscar?

'The baby,' Pop said and added that he thought Oscar was a bit young to start night-work.

Mademoiselle Dupont said, in French, how much she agreed. For some inexplicable reason she felt like weeping. She pressed the key harder and harder into the palm of her hand and listened confusedly while Pop inquired if there were other hotels.

'Mais oui, certainement,' she said, starting to think in French again, 'mais ils sont tous pleins all full. I know. All are full.'

'Like the sky,' Pop said and with a slow wearying hand directed Mademoiselle Dupont's glance through the window, beyond which the relentless Atlantic was stretching with still greyer thickness its imprisoning curtain over port, quayside, and plage. 'Fancy sleeping out in that lot. Eh?'

Mademoiselle Dupont found herself confronted by an emotional and physical dilemma: she was overcome by a violent desire to sneeze and at the same time wanted to weep again. She compromised by blowing her nose extremely hard on a very small lace handkerchief, almost masculine fas.h.i.+on, with a note like that from a trombone.

This stentorian call startled Pop into saying: 'Sound as if you've caught your death. Well, this rain'll give the car a wash anyway.'

Outside, in the hotel yard, the Rolls stood with expansive professorial dignity among a shabby crowd of down-at-heel pupils, the muddy family Citroens, the Peugeots, the Simcas, the Renaults of the hotel's French guests.

'That is your car? The large one?'

Pop confessed that the Rolls-Royce was his and with a wave of modest pride drew Mademoiselle Dupont's attention to the gilt monograms on the doors. These, he a.s.sured her, gave the car both cla.s.s and tone.

'Some duke or other,' he said. 'Some lord. Feller I bought it from wasn't sure.'

At the word lord Mademoiselle Dupont found herself flus.h.i.+ng: not from embarra.s.sment or shyness, but from sheer excitement. It was on the tip of her tongue to inquire if Pop was actually an English milord or not but she checked herself in time, content merely to stare down at the monogrammed aristocracy of the Rolls, so distinctive and splendid among the muddy plebeian crowd of family four-seaters parked about it.

Nevertheless she found it impossible to stop herself from supposing that Pop was, perhaps, a milord. She had once before had an English milord, a real aristocrat, to stay in the hotel. All day and even for dinner he had worn mud-coloured corduroy trousers, much patched, a French railway porter's blue blouse, a vivid b.u.t.tercup yellow neckerchief, and open green sandals. He had a large golden ambrosial moustache and thick, chestnut hair that was obviously not cut very often and curled in his neck like fine wood shavings. Mostly he smoked French workmen's cigarettes and sometimes a short English clay. He also took snuff and invariably blew his nose on a large red handkerchief.

From this Mademoiselle Dupont had come to the conclusion that the English were to some extent eccentric. All the lower cla.s.ses tried to behave like aristocracy; all the aristocracy tried to behave like workmen. The higher you got in the social scale the worse people dressed. The men, like the milord, dressed in corduroys and baggy jackets and workmen's blouses and had patched elbows and knees and took snuff. The women dressed in thick imperishable sacks called tweeds, flat boat-like shoes, and putty-coloured felt hats; or, if the weather became hot, in drooping canopies of cream shantung that looked like tattered sails on the gaunt masts of s.h.i.+ps becalmed.

The English were also very unemotional. They were immensely restrained. They never gave way. The women said 'My deah!' and the men 'Good G.o.d' and 'Bad show' and sometimes even 'Damme'. They were bluff, unbelievably reticent, and very stiff. They were not only stiff with strangers but, much worse, they were stiff with each other and this, perhaps, Mademoiselle Dupont thought, explained a lot of things.

It might explain, perhaps, why some of them never got married. It might be that the milords, the true aristocrats, were a law unto themselves. As with the corduroys and clay pipes and snuff, they could set aside the mere conventions of wedlock lightly.

Suddenly she was quite sure in her own mind that Monsieur Larkin was one of these: a milord whose only outward symbol of aristocracy was the Rolls and its flouris.h.i.+ng gilded monograms. In no other way could she explain the charm, the ease of manner, the captivating, even impetuous inconsistencies.

'I have been thinking,' she said. There is perhaps just one room that possibly you and madame could have.'

'I hope it's got something for emergency,' Pop said, thinking again of his elemental battle the night before.

'Please to come with me.'

With a final sidelong glance at the Rolls every time she looked at it now it shone like a princess, she thought, among a shabby crowd of kitchen workers she led Pop out of the Bureau and upstairs.

Once or twice on the way to the second floor Ma and Pop and the children were all high up on the fourth she apologized for the lack of an ascenseur. She supposed they really ought to have an ascenseur one day. On the other hand it was surprising how people got used to being without it and even, in time, learned to run upstairs.

'I haven't caught Ma at it yet,' Pop said.

Following Mademoiselle Dupont upstairs, Pop was pleased to make two interesting discoveries: one that her legs, though her black dress was rather long, were very shapely. They were, he thought, not at all a bad-looking pair. From his lower angle on the stairs he discovered also that he could see the hem of her underslip, It was a black lace one.

This, he decided, was a bit of all right. It was perfick. It interested him greatly, his private theory being that all girls who wore black underwear were, in secret, highly pa.s.sionate.

He set aside these interesting theoretical musings in order to hold open a bedroom door which Mademoiselle Dupont had now unlocked with one of her large bunch of keys.

'Please enter, Monsieur Larkin. Please to come in.'

The room, though not so large as the one he and Ma were occupying two floors above, was prettily furnished and a good deal lighter. It had one large mahogany bed, a huge Breton linen chest, several chairs covered in rose-patterned cretonne, and curtains to match. It also had a basin with running water. It lacked, Pop noticed, that odour of linseed oil, drainpipes, French cigarettes, and leaking gas that penetrated every other part of the hotel. It seemed instead to be bathed in a strong but delicate air of lily-of-the-valley.

'The room is not large,' Mademoiselle Dupont said. She patted the bed with one hand. 'But the bed is full size.'

That, Pop said, was the spirit, and almost winked again.

'And you see the view is also good.'

She stood at the window, still pressing a single key into the palm of her hand. Pop stood close beside her and looked out on a view of plage, sea, sand-dunes, and distant pines. As he did so he couldn't help noticing that Mademoiselle Dupont herself also smelled deeply of lily-of-the-valley.

'Very nice,' Pop said. Tm sure Ma would like this room.'

'I hope so,' she said. 'It is my room.'

Pop at once protested that this was far too good of her and under several of his rapid disquieting smiles of thanks Mademoiselle Dupont felt herself flus.h.i.+ng again. There was no need to protest, she said, only to accept. The pleasure was entirely hers: and a great pleasure indeed it was. She merely wanted him to be happy, to be comfortable there.

'And you see there is even a little annexe for the baby in here,' she said, and showed Pop into a sort of box-room, just large enough for little Oscar to sleep in.

Laughing richly, Pop said he was absolutely sure they would be very comfortable in that pleasant room, with that nice bed, with that nice smell of lily-of-the-valley.

'C'est curieux, c'est extraordinaire,' she said, starting to think in French again. 'How did you know this?'

Pop drew a deep breath and told her, in a swift flick of description, almost ecstatic, how he had a kind of sixth sense about flowers and their perfumes.

'Acts like a key,' he said. 'Marigolds I smell marigolds and in a jiff I'm back in Ma's front garden where I first met her. Bluebells straightaway up in our wood at home. Cinnamon and it's Christmas. Violets only got to smell 'em and I'm back in the woods as a kid. The same', he concluded, 'with your lily-of-the-valley. Never be able to smell it again without thinking of this room.'

Averting her face, watching the distant pines that she had already a.s.sured Pop several times were so exquisite in the strong Atlantic sunsets, Mademoiselle Dupont diffidently confessed that they were her favourite flowers, le muguet, they were all of springtime to her, as roses were of summer.

'They suit you,' Pop said and without waiting for comment or answer thanked her again for all her kindness about the room.

It was perfick, he said, he was tremendously grateful, and suddenly, feeling that mere words were not enough, he gave Mademoiselle Dupont an affectionate playful touch, half pinch, half pat, somewhere between the waist and the upper thigh.