Unclouded Summer (10 page)

“Is that how you think it would be? “

“Mightn't it be, if the two liked each other?”

He looked at her as she sat beside him, cross-legged like a Bedouin with her heels tucked under her. Marriage was something that he had not considered much. He had been too busy painting. He had thought of it as something that would come a good deal later; he had thought of it in terms of his parents' marriage; in terms of a home and children; as something you came back to. He had not seen it in terms of a ragamuffin gypsy comradeship, a living in suitcases, a wandering from coast to coast. She looked up at him and smiled. Yes, it could be pretty nice, that kind of marriage.

Slowly the afternoon wore on. For the most part she sat
in silence watching him. Though she did not speak, he was conscious of her company. It did not disturb him, nor distract him; nor was it exactly soothing. It had a curious quality of stimulation. He had a sense of working with a lighter heart. At length she got to her feet, and stood up behind him, looking at the canvas.

“It's strange to think of what may happen to that picture,” she remarked. “If I were a novelist, I'd like to write a story about that, about a picture's destiny.”

“What do you think is the destiny of this picture, to change hands one day for ten thousand dollars? “

He said it with a laugh, but her face was serious. “It may do so, but I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of all the people who will see it, of all the people whose lives may be affected by it. You spend, as its painter, perhaps five days on it. You send it to an exhibition; it's sold, very likely, to somebody that you don't know. In all human probability you'll never set eyes on it again. You'll probably forget all about it, you'll be busy with other pictures, with better pictures. Yet all the time that picture will be existing somewhere, being seen by people. A picture's a substantial object after all. It isn't something that one throws away. Once sold it'll hang on a wall somewhere. Every day of the year someone will be looking at it. Thinking about it, perhaps being influenced by it. Have you ever thought of that?”

“Not in that way exactly.”

“I have so often. There's a picture in one of our guest rooms at Charlton. It was painted some time in the 1840's. None of us know who painted it. Probably it's by someone who never came to anything. It's imitative, in the Morland style. A pond and a paddock and a few sheep with a farm in the distance and a hedge with honeysuckle. Maybe it's not very good. But it's a happy picture. Every time I look at it, I feel that the world's a more cheerful place. I think of all the week-end guests who must have looked at it. I wonder what effect it may have had on them. I've wondered how many lives may not have been altered by it. I'd like to write a book of stories about the different effects that it might have had on different people, how it might reconcile an urban husband to a life lived away from cities, how its sentimentality might exasperate a bored wife into deserting a bucolic husband. Twenty people might be affected in twenty different ways. That may happen to the picture that you're painting now. Over the fifty or so years you've got to live, twenty or thirty
lives may be altered by that picture. Have you ever thought of that?”

He shook his head.

“When I've finished a picture, I lose interest in it.”

“But when you're actually painting it, don't you think sometimes of the effect that it will have?”

Again he shook his head.

“Never. I've a mood to express, a problem to solve, I'm only concerned with getting the thing down right.”

“Really, is that all? Yes, but I suppose you're right. If a painter, if any artist once considered the effect his work would have, he'd become obsessed with its importance, he'd come to think that nothing else – certainly not his personal life – mattered in comparison. And of course he'd get misled if he did that. It's out of his personal life that his work flowers, nothing is more important really than that he should be congenially life-based.”

“Judy, you say the oddest things.”

“Do I. I daresay I do. I chatter on Flippertigibbet, that's what Henry calls me. I don't make sense.”

“But you do, that's just the point. Sometimes when you're actually talking, it sounds just chatter, but then when I think it over afterwards …”

“So you do think it over afterwards?”

“Of course.”

“It'll be nice to remember that, when you're no longer here.”

It was close on six before they got back to Villefranche. He had invited his guests for eight. He had planned to dine, not in the usual first-floor dining room but in front of the bar, in the open, on the waterfront itself.

“I thought,” he explained to her, “that people who are used to villas and smart restaurants would find it more of a change that way. A kind of gone native atmosphere.”

He showed her the menus he had designed. He had painted a special plate card for each guest. He had put no names but a pattern that would be appropriate to the person.

“I can't wait to see what you've done for me,” she said.

A border of tuberoses was set round a gray-green Chevrolet.

“I'll treasure it,” she said, “forever.”

He showed her his seating plan.

“This is how I thought we'd sit.”

“You've put me a long way away.”

“I thought I ought to put myself next to the people I knew less well.”

“If you are going to treat me as your hostess, you should allow me to rearrange your flowers.”

She took a long time over their arrangement. It was after seven before they were free to stroll back onto the terrace. Dusk was falling and the sea was losing its pale white-blue shimmer. The lamps were lit under the plane trees. Sailors in their blue sleeveless
maillots
were lounging against the railings, watching the tall dark-haired girls who sauntered slowly in couples, arm in arm along the quay.

“Let's sit at this table,” she said, “it's the same one we had that first time.”

He ordered her a champagne cocktail.

“I'm having them for everyone as soon as they arrive. I thought it would be easier than taking separate orders.”

“Now you are not to start worrying about this party.”

“I should be feeling so much happier about it if you really were my hostess.”

“It would be nice, wouldn't it, if I were?”

“That must be one of the best things about a marriage, having parties together, talking about them afterwards.”

“It can be.”

She sipped slowly at her glass. There was a pensive expression on her face.

“You were sitting there,” she said, “in profile. You were reading a newspaper. I saw you as I drove round the corner. I was flustered. I was a little late. When I found the whole place quiet, I thought that the ship must have gone. I didn't know. I came across to you. You didn't look French: anyhow you were reading the
Herald Tribune.
I spoke to you in English. Then when you answered, I knew you were an American. I liked your voice. I thought I'd join you. You offered me a fig. We began to talk. I began to feel … This afternoon while you were painting, I tried to remember what it was I felt. It wasn't just that you were so good-looking…”

“Good-looking? “

“Surely you don't need to be told that.”

“I've a mirror. I spend a good ten minutes a day looking at my reflection. I must have a pretty good idea of what I look like.”

She shook her head.

“Oh no, you don't. We none of us know what we really look like. Have you ever seen yourself in a film? You'll see a
group of your friends and there'll be a stranger among them and that stranger will be you. None of us know what our voices sound like. Have you ever heard your voice on a gramophone record? It's unrecognizable. The face you see when you are shaving isn't the face your friends see when you are amused, or interested or depressed. You don't know what expressions shadow or light up your face. None of us do. But it wasn't your looks that gave me that queer feeling, as we sat talking here. No, it wasn't that.” She paused. She looked away again. “When I got back that night to Mougins, I asked myself what it was that had given me that feeling. I suppose it was that look of independence. I couldn't place you. I told you that the first day we met. Then you said that you were a painter, and I understood.”

“You were surprised, though, when you saw my pictures.”

“I know; but it wasn't surprise, not really. It was a very mixed feeling – in a way it was disappointment.”

“You were disappointed?”

“Not in the way you mean. I wanted you to be good. I wanted you desperately to be good. I was afraid you wouldn't be. Most people who paint, aren't. But when I saw your pictures, when I knew that you were good, yes it was a kind of jealousy. There's something inviolable about the artist, something entirely his own; he has defenses and reserves that others haven't. I knew when I saw those pictures that there were sides of you I could never touch, palisades you could withdraw behind. Yes, I think it was jealousy; yes, it must have been.”

He stared at her, astonished.

“I had no idea you were feeling like that about me.”

“If you had, I shouldn't have felt that way.”

She looked at him, intently, self-questioningly.

“How soon,” she asked, “can you come to England?”

“I didn't know that I was coming.”

“Didn't you? Then how did you think we were going to meet again? Were you expecting me to come over to America? I could of course. But it would be rather difficult. It would be much easier for you to come to me, or wouldn't it?”

She spoke banteringly; treating a serious subject lightly, in the way he liked, refusing to be intense. “There's so much more point, isn't there, in your traveling than in mine?” she said. “You need new subjects. That's true now, isn't it?”

Yes, he admitted, it was very true.

“And you remember, don't you, what Henry said, about
getting your pictures shown at a London gallery? It would be a good opportunity, wouldn't it, of fixing a second string to your bow?”

Yes, he admitted. It would be that all right.

“Then how soon can you come over, in time for Christmas?”

He laughed. He shook his head. There would be a great deal to settle up when he got back. He would have to make arrangements with his New York dealer. He had spent on this trip nearly all the money he had saved. He would have to start saving up again. It would take quite a time before the result of his economies had accumulated to a point where he could consider transatlantic passages.

“Even if you work very hard?”

“Even if I work very hard.”

“But you will work very hard.”

“Of course I shall.”

“And once you got over, well it would be a great economy.”

“What about all that tipping in your country houses?”

“Ah, there'd be that of course.”

“How many servants have you got?”

“I've never counted, but there aren't more than three that you would need to tip.”

They were still talking on the same bantering note when a car swung down from the Corniche Road into the square. “There's your first guest,” she said. “Now don't be nervous. It'll be all right.”

It was all right. It was very much all right; but it was due to her in large part, almost in whole part that it was. Not that she played the hostess, she played the guest, the perfect guest; the guest whose enjoyment of the party was infectious, who so completely gave the impression that she was at the perfect party that the other guests came to feel that they were too. Never had he seen her more radiantly high-spirited.

Minute by minute his gratitude to her, his admiration for her increased. There was no one like her in the world. If only he could find the words to tell her what she meant to him.

On his right was Lady Ambrose. “I can't really believe you are leaving us,” she said, “as I said to Bob this very evening, it won't seem the same place with Francis gone.”

Her use of the word Francis touched him. It was the first time she had called him by his Christian name.

“But Judy tells me that you're coming over in the spring,” she said.

“I wish I could.”

“Surely if you really tried, you could. If you made your coming over the one thing to aim at. You always can you know; bring off one thing, I mean.”

“Can you?”

“Provided you don't try to do too many things. Aim for one target, and one target only. Charlton is a dream of a place. You'd love it there. And you must be sure to stay with us. Our place can't compare with Charlton, but it's cosy.”

She meant it, he thought. She genuinely did. And to think that a month ago he had not known any of these people. How astonished he would have been had he known that morning when he walked down from the station along the waterfront, intending to stay a week in Villefranche, that before he came to leave he would be the host here at a party such as this. Had he known would not his first thought have been: What a fine story this'll make when I get back home? He remembered how he had thought just that, the first time that Judy had driven him up to lunch at Mougins. Now it was the last thing he thought. This whole month, these hours that he had spent with Judy and her friends were his personal and treasured property, not to be shared not to be talked about, with people who would not appreciate the particular quality of these times and talks. It was not so much that he had met a number of prominent and important people as that through Judy he had been introduced to a new world, to a new way of living. Never had his admiration for Judy glowed more warmly.

It was not, however, till the last guest had gone, that he had a chance to speak to her.

“You were marvelous,” he said. “You made the party. If only I could tell you all the things I thought tonight, as I sat looking down the table at you.”