dear, there is no doubt about it, you really are a lovely little thing.”
At the words her bosom lifted; she took a long breath of delight, half closing her eyes.
But even as she looked the smile faded from her lips and eyes. Oh God, there she was, back again, playing the same old game. False—false as ever. False as when she’d written to Nan Pym. False even when she was alone with herself, now.
What had that creature in the glass to do with her, and why was she staring? She dropped down to one side of her bed and buried her face in her arms.
“Oh,” she cried, “I am so miserable—so frightfully miserable. I know that I’m silly and spiteful and vain; I’m always acting a part. I’m never my real self for a moment.” And plainly, plainly, she saw her false self running up and down the stairs, laughing a special trilling laugh if they had visitors, standing under the lamp if a man came to dinner, so that he should see the light on her hair, pouting and pretending to be a little girl when she was asked to play the guitar. Why? She even kept it up for Stanley’s benefit. Only last night when he was reading the paper her false self had stood beside him and leaned against his shoulder on purpose. Hadn’t she put her hand over his, pointing out something so that he should see how white her hand was beside his brown one.
How despicable! Despicable! Her heart was cold with rage. “It’s marvellous how you keep it up,” said she to the false self. But then it was only because she was so miserable—so miserable. If she had been happy and leading her own life, her false life would cease to be. She saw the real Beryl—a shadow . . . a shadow. Faint and unsubstantial she shone. What was there of her except the radiance? And for what tiny moments she was really she. Beryl could almost remember every one of them. At those times she had felt: “Life is rich and mysterious and good, and I am rich and mysterious and good, too.” Shall I ever be that Beryl for ever? Shall I? How can I? And was there ever a time when I did not have a false self? . . . But just as she had got that far she heard the sound of little steps running along the passage; the door handle rattled. Kezia came in.
“Aunt Beryl, mother says will you please come down? Father is home with a man and lunch is ready.”
Botheration! How she had crumpled her skirt, kneeling in that idiotic way.
“Very well, Kezia.” She went over to the dressing table and powdered her nose.
Kezia crossed too, and unscrewed a little pot of cream and sniffed it. Under her arm she carried a very dirty calico cat.
When Aunt Beryl ran out of the room she sat the cat up on the dressing table and stuck the top of the cream jar over its ear.
“Now look at yourself,” said she sternly.
The calico cat was so overcome by the sight that it toppled over backwards and bumped and bumped on to the floor. And the top of the cream jar flew through the air and rolled like a penny in a round on the linoleum—and did not break.
But for Kezia it had broken the moment it flew through the air, and she picked it up, hot all over, and put it back on the dressing table.
Then she tip-toed away, far too quickly and airily. . . .
JE NE PARLE PAS FRANÇAIS
I DO not know why I have such a fancy for this little café. It’s dirty and sad, sad. It’s not as if it had anything to distinguish it from a hundred others—it hasn’t; or as if the same strange types came here every day, whom one could watch from one’s corner and recognise and more or less (with a strong accent on the less) get the hang of.
But pray don’t imagine that those brackets are a confession of my humility before the mystery of the human soul. Not at all; I don’t believe in the human soul. I never have. I believe that people are like portmanteaux—packed with certain things, started going, thrown about, tossed away, dumped down, lost and found, half emptied suddenly, or squeezed fatter than ever, until finally the Ultimate Porter swings them on to the Ultimate Train and away they rattle. . . .
Not but what these portmanteaux can be very fascinating. Oh, but very! I see myself standing in front of them, don’t you know, like a Customs official.
“Have you anything to declare? Any wines, spirits, cigars, perfumes, silks?”
And the moment of hesitation as to whether I am going to be fooled just before I chalk that squiggle, and then the other moment of hesitation just after, as to whether I have been, are perhaps the two most thrilling instants in life. Yes, they are, to me.
But before I started that long and rather far-fetched and not frightfully original digression, what I meant to say quite simply was that there are no portmanteaux to be examined here because the clientele of this café, ladies and gentlemen, does not sit down. No, it stands at the counter, and it consists of a handful of workmen who come up from the river, all powdered over with white flour, lime or something, and a few soldiers, bringing with them thin, dark girls with silver rings in their ears and market baskets on their arms.
Madame is thin and dark, too, with white cheeks and white hands. In certain lights she looks quite transparent, shining out of her black shawl with an extraordinary effect. When she is not serving she sits on a stool with her face turned, always, to the window. Her dark-ringed eyes search among and follow after the people passing, but not as if she was looking for somebody. Perhaps, fifteen years ago, she was; but now the pose has become a habit. You can tell from her air of fatigue and hopelessness that she must have given them up for the last ten years, at least. . . .
And then there is the waiter. Not pathetic—decidedly not comic. Never making one of those perfectly insignificant remarks which amaze you so coming from a waiter, (as though the poor wretch were a sort of cross between a coffee-pot and a wine bottle and not expected to hold so much as a drop of anything else). He is grey, flat-footed and withered, with long, brittle nails that set your nerves on edge while he scrapes up your two sous. When he is not smearing over the table or flicking at a dead fly or two, he stands with one hand on the back of a chair, in his far too long apron, and over his other arm the three-cornered dip of dirty napkin, waiting to be photographed in connection with some wretched murder. “Interior of Café where Body was Found.” You’ve seen him hundreds of times.
Do you believe that every place has its hour of the day when it really does come alive? That’s not exactly what I mean. It’s more like this. There does seem to be a moment when you realize that, quite by accident, you happen to have come on to the stage at exactly the moment you were expected. Everything is arranged for you—waiting for you. Ah, master of the situation! You fill with important breath. And at the same time you smile, secretly, slyly, because Life seems to be opposed to granting you these entrances, seems indeed to be engaged in snatching them from you and making them impossible, keeping you in the wings until it is too late, in fact. . . . Just for once you’ve beaten the old hag.
I enjoyed one of these moments the first time I ever came in here. That’s why I keep coming back, I suppose. Revisiting the scene of my triumph, or the scene of the crime where I had the old bitch by the throat for once and did what I pleased with her.
Query: Why am I so bitter against Life? And why do I see her as a rag-picker on the American cinema, shuffling along wrapped in a filthy shawl with her old claws crooked over a stick?
Answer: The direct result of the American cinema acting upon a weak mind.
Anyhow,
