A Favourite of the Gods and a Compass Error Read online

  We drew in and I was about to wave a porter when my mother touched one of her hands to the other and said, “My ring.” “Which ring?” I said. “Papa’s ring,” she said sharply, “the ruby!” “Oh,” I said, my heart sinking. “Did you have it on?” “You know I am never without the ring,” she said. This was true; I could not remember her not wearing it. It was a large ring, heavy, and it had been a present from her father, the prince in Rome. I called him that in my mind, although he was my grandfather, because I had never met him. We looked on the floor, we looked under the seats, we probed the upholstery, gingerly. We looked the way people look in such circumstances. “Think,” I said. We went over the day. “You washed your hands.” I went to look in the lavabo, but the corridor now was full of people getting on and the lavabo was locked. We went through bags, pockets. “Mummy,” I said, “we’ve got to get off.” Our berths on the Express were booked. Nonsense, she said, the Express could wait, we could take it somewhere further up the coast, it must stop at Cannes and all those places. “I am not getting off this train without the ring.”

  When we got a ticket collector, he called the chef du train. They looked as we had looked, only more competently. Under their hands, seats and cushions snapped apart like chunks of zigzag puzzle. Chiefly hair-clips and spent matches came to light. The men seemed as disappointed as my mother was. They seemed to be on her side.

  “Une bague de valeur, Madame?”

  “Valeur sentimentale.” Her French had the slight harshness with which Italians use that language. “But since you ask—yes. It’s a ruby, but a rather unusual one. Oh yes, a valuable ring.”

  We were pulling into Cannes station when the paper-work was under way. “Stop looking at your watch, Flavia,” said my mother. The ring, she told them, had still been on her hand at Alassio; she remembered touching it as we got on. The carriage had been empty. The train was an omnibus, a slow train, stopping everywhere, but there was in those days little local traffic into France. My mother talked; the men wrote down her name and father’s name.

  “Nom de jeune fille de la mère? Lieu de naissance de la mère?”

  My mother, though impatient of most kinds of footling, was inured to this process and spelt it all out in good heart.

  “Providence?” repeated the chief. “Et où cela se trouve?”

  “En Amérique du Nord,” my mother said, smiling at him.

  “Bougre.”

  My mother now said that she was hungry. She tended her purse. Would they be so kind and get us a couple of baskets off the trolley? The men said not to waste her money on a dried-up leg of chicken, a hard peach and half a drop of wine. We had plenty of good wine, said my mother. The chief said, “Si Madame me permet,” and unrolled a brown-paper bundle. My mother took a large veal sandwich.

  “Et la petite?——Mademoiselle?”

  I hardly thought of myself in those terms. I was tall already then and I felt—I think without selfconsciousness—a good deal older than my age, which was getting on for sixteen. My main interests at the time, or so I believed, were books and utopian politics; I hoped to go to Oxford, I hoped to be a writer, but I shared my mother’s willingness to accept good things that come one’s way. I reached for one of the flasks of Barolo which my grandmother’s chauffeur had put in, it was loosely corked—the four of us drank.

  We were moving again and it was by now quite dark outside. “Nationalité?” the chief resumed.

  “Anglaise,” said my mother.

  “On ne le dirait pas. Mariée?”

  “Veuve,” said my mother, giving me a wink. She had been divorced, but after my father had died she sometimes used the more convenient label.

  We had stopped at and left Fréjus before the men had it all pat. They chanted it back to one another with fascinated glee.

  “Veuve Herbert” (as such my mother emerged from their inky form). . . .

  “Née à Castelfonte. . . .

  “De paternité Italienne. . . .

  “De mère Américaine. . . .

  “Sujet Britannique. . . .

  “Sans Domicile. . . .

  “Accompagnée de sa fille. . . .

  “Se rendant à—se rendant où? WHERE were we going?”

  To Brussels, said my mother.

  “I am going to England,” said I.

  “Not tonight,” said the chief.

  Yes, yes, said my mother. After another look for the ring. “What is your next stop?”

  “Les Arcs.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “A junction, Madame.”

  “Oh good,” she said, “we might as well change to the Express there.”

  “What express?”

  “Ours.” She made me hand them the sheaf of Wagon-Lits tickets.

  The men became excited. “The 6.59 from Nice? But that’s impossible, Madame.”

  “Doesn’t it stop at your junction?”

  “It did——”

  “Oh, very well,” said my mother, “let’s catch it at Toulon.”

  “Madame!” they cried, “do you know what time it is?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “If it’s material, do tell me.” We all did.

  “That’s not so very late,” she said.

  “It is the time the Calais Express is due at Avignon.”

  “Oh,” said my mother: “it passed us. The devil! Why, of course——” She turned to me. “Why didn’t you figure it out?”

  I told her I had been taking a gloomy view all the time.

  “The ring,” she said quickly. “Not a good omen. We must not lose the ring.”

  The men were waiting.

  “This is a new development,” said my mother, but there must be other trains. There were. “Will you get us another pair of sleepers?” Not a chance, the men said, not tonight, not with the Salon d’Autos, there wasn’t a couchette left either side of Lyon.

  “Decidedly,” said my mother, “the fates cannot be with us.”

  The men suggested that we get off somewhere and spend the night.

  “I am a little tired of this train,” she said, “though it appears that time has flown.”

  Once more I began to gather our things.

  Let’s get out at Hyères, said my mother. But Hyères was not on the main line, Hyères was behind us. Toulon? The men named the hotel, it wasn’t very good they said, she would not like it, a murky place.

  “By all means suggest somewhere cheerful.”

  We stopped; they told us to stand by. The chief hung out of the window and yelled into the darkness: Mari-usse——Someone shouted back. “The bus is gone,” said the chief and banged up the window. The train moved on. We sat down again. The next stop was marked by an equal absence of life and light. This time it was my mother who peered out. “Here?” she asked with calm indecision. Dépêchez-vous, said the men. The train moved on. At the third, she wanted to know about the direction of the sea. “Madame,” they told her, “if you don’t get off soon you’ll find yourself at Marseilles. “Oh, very well,” she said, “Yes or no?” She looked from me to them, into the night. “Perhaps yes——?” The men fell to. Thirty seconds later we stood on a platform, our bags about our feet. The train was gone.

  “And why not,” said Constanza, “why not after all?”

  •

  My memory of the conjunction of events that followed—that night, the next day, the days after—does not stand out so clear; it has become merged with too many later memories. There was a shaky bus ride in a preposterous little vehicle along a nocturnal road that did not seem short but cannot have been more than a mile; we came out on a waterfront, tight-shut and silent. It was late by then, late certainly for the South of France at that time of the year. The hotel was the Hotel du Port. A woman I do not remember ever seeing again took us up.

  My mother asked for Saint-Galmier water to be brought. When I was alone in my room I felt tired, dumbly depressed and went to sleep very soon. Next morning it was warm and clear. The sun shone. I
found my mother on a balcony, having her breakfast. Below lay a small harbour. “This is charming,” she said.

  It was. The houses of the front formed two wings turned at a sheltering angle. There was a sketch of a promenade set with eucalyptus and five sturdy palms, so brief that it might have been laid out in parody. The mairie was blue-washed and sported a flag-tower like a minaret; the square in front of it touched the sea. The quay-side was spread with nets. It was, and it was not, like the Mediterranean ports we knew.

  My mother took up my thought. “Mare nostrum,” she said, “but not Italy, not really.” For an instant she looked sad, then she rallied. “We have never been here. It is France. It is new.”

  I looked at the mairie, the four cafés almost in a row, the awnings: “I have seen this before,” I said.

  “You have. It’s been painted over and over again, by a number of people. There must be three or four at the Tate. . . . I never knew where it was: now we are there. The name is on the tip of my tongue, Saint, Saint—, Saint-Something——”

  I took the last peach off her tray, peeled and ate it. Then it became time to do something.

  “Telegrams,” said my mother. “Telegrams, first of all. One for mama. I don’t like mama in on this, she always hated my wearing the ring. She won’t like my losing it either. Notre bague de valeur. Find me a pen, my sweet, will you? At least she’ll be delighted to hear I’m not in Brussels.”

  “A postponement,” I said.

  “So it is,” said my mother. “Now then—one for Lewis.”

  “And what will you say to him, Constanza?” I had begun to call her that at times. Lewis was the man she was going to marry in Belgium at the end of that week.

  “Yes, what?”

  “The facts.”

  “Darling? That I lost a ring and missed a train? Une bague de valeur?”

  “That’s what happened.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t know.” One of her flashes of frankness was upon her. “Shall I telegraph Lewis that I lost papa’s ruby and got rattled? Shall I say that my mother had just made an all-out scene? Shall I tell him what it was like when she heard I was going to marry again? And what a shock this was to me as I had believed she would be pleased?” Constanza was making her voice cold, but there was an element of humility in her outspokenness. “Shall I telegraph Lewis that pleasing my mother must have been a part of my decision to marry him?”

  It was then that I felt a twinge of fear about my own future. But I also felt the surge of protective affection for my mother that came so often now that I was growing up and seeing more and loving her so much. I tried to do what she liked best, laugh at her and with her. “You know what I thought at Genoa? That you were marrying Lewis to please me.”

  She gave me a conspiratorial look. “No, darling, not to please you: you have your life in front of you and can please yourself.”

  “And she cannot?” I said, meaning my grandmother.

  “Ah, I wish she had not lost that talent!” said Constanza.

  “She was . . . different once?”

  “She seemed different.”

  “Constanza,” I said, “I’ve never known you actually married.”

  “No, not quite. Except when you were too little to remember.”

  “Will it make a big change?”

  “People change when they know you are their wife.”

  “Is it the home-life?” I said.

  She said, “I don’t expect we shall have much of that with Lewis.”

  “Because he has so many flats? He has one in New York, one at Amsterdam——”

  “That’s more than he told me,” she said, “I barely know his house-number at Brussels. Well then—will you write it? Say: UNPREDICTABLE DELAY WRITING LOVE.”

  “Lewis must be at the station now,” I said. “I can’t help that,” said Constanza. “I did marry to please her; the first time.”

  “Because she was so fond of him?”

  “I married for love to please my mother—it does sound queer. Of course it was a great mistake: That way. For all of us.”

  “My father?”

  “He got out of it. Poor Simon.”

  “And now?” I asked.

  “Now?”

  “You are marrying——?”

  She hesitated. Then came an answer that surprised us both. “It seems to complete a design.”

  “Mummy,” I said, “I must telegraph my family.” My family was the tutor and his wife at Hampstead I was going to for a belated education. It was something I had wanted very much and it had not been at all easy to bring about.

  “So many people at so many stations,” Constanza said, “and just look at us here.”

  •

  The telegrams did not get off that day. It was Sunday, as we eventually learnt, and the office had shut at eleven o’clock. “We did half our best,” Constanza said, grinning at me. We still did not know the name of the place and when we asked the manager, he said: “But you are the lady with daughter who wrote about the villa.” Not to her knowledge, said Constanza. The villa was ready for her to look at after luncheon, said the manager.

  It took two days to get in touch with the outside world. When we were, it was unsatisfactory. Lewis did not take it well; he sent hourly telegrams to Constanza asking her when she was coming. She telegraphed back asking if he had never heard of the Salon d’Autos. My grandmother sent a brief message from Alassio telling us to await her letter. Constanza filled in time by allowing herself to be led to see the villa. Was it not in all respects, they told her, exactly what she had been asking for? They may have taken her denials for a bargaining point, for they came down a good deal with the rent, which was low. The principessa’s letter arrived by express. It was one of those outpourings she had begun to indulge in at that time. She accused Constanza of levity and selfishness, she accused her of laying waste her life and mine and of wearing flashy jewellery on a railway journey. She also wrote that rings did not vanish into thin air, and were we doing all we should about it? That evening brought a milder note, asking me to keep at my mother to keep at the police; and the next day the principessa announced her coming over and seeing for herself. That was, she wrote, if the drive and back again was not going to prove too much for her man; she had heard that it was not the kind of place one would want to spend the night. By the same post came a civil note from the Préfecture at Draguignan asking us to call about our loss. There did not appear to be, so far, the slightest trace of the ring.

  “It doesn’t look,” Constanza said, “does it, as if we were getting off tomorrow or the next day?” As a matter of fact we stayed for eleven years.

  PART ONE

  A Rational Education & The Story of a Marriage

  1

  WHEN I was a child I thought of my grandfather as a great villain; a little later on I thought of him as a man to emulate. Still later I began to see it as what talk had made it—a part of a story. It did not concern me, it could not touch my life: there is always a point when one is newly young when one is able to see oneself detached from all that went before. I was still curious and liked to hear about it. But my mother, great talker though she was, had always seemed content to let it lie. I knew that she, also, had not been allowed to see her father at one time, until she came of age and was free to choose. She only said that he was a dear, and an ill-used man, it had all been very silly and disastrous, and of course her mother’s fault, and now it was too late.

  •

  Constanza’s early youth must have been a singularly flawless one. Born into surroundings of great physical beauty, into a society both easy and confined, well loved and splendidly endowed herself, her large advantages might have imposed curbing limitations; yet all the dice seemed to have been loaded in her favour and every discordant circumstance combined to leave her undivided, free, untouched by convention, perplexity or trouble.

  She was born the first child to young parents. They were very pleased to have her but did no
t look on her arrival as an exceptional event. Indeed they would have regarded childlessness as a misfortune, but neither of them felt the slightest misgiving that such could be their own lot. If the prince always had a streak of tempered disillusionment, while his American wife then saw life and the world with an unbounded hope, they both shared that superb sense of personal immunity that came so easily to people like them at that time. That the child was not a boy did not bother them a scrap. The boy no doubt would come. Meanwhile, and very soon, they began to adore Constanza. They had reason to. From the first she was sound in health, equable in temper, lively and affectionate, and she showed the signs of great good looks. She appeared to have no fear and she seldom cried. She also knew what she wanted, but exercised her will with grace and what she did want amused her parents and the servants who looked after her, and when she got it she was pleased. They did not have to teach her much, she could ride almost as soon as she could stand, and read soon after she could talk. Her father greeted this youthful familiarity with print as a kind of circus trick and talked about it at his club; the principessa felt more deeply gratified. It was not long before Constanza’s mind took an inquiring turn.

  “Mama, is God really everywhere?”

  “Oh yes, my darling.”

  “If he’s Everywhere why do we have to go to mass? and why don’t we curtsy in the houses and the street, only in Church?”

  “God is everywhere, but he is perhaps more present in our beautiful churches.”

  “I see,” said Constanza. “Most present in San Pietro?”

  •

  “Papa, why is it getting dark more early in the evenings?”

  “Something to do with the sun, my treasure, the sun moves more slowly in winter.”

  Here his wife intervened. It was the earth, she said firmly, which did the moving.

  “And so it does,” said the prince comfortably, “so it does.”

  Constanza looked from one to the other. In due course she was to grow into a Titian; then she was at the Murillo stage: large dark eyes, short curls, a golden-olive skin and clothes which if not exactly rags were of becoming briefness and simplicity because her mother, though herself one of the most fashionable women in Rome, did not believe in dressing up little girls. “Why?” she said. “And why is slow more dark?”