In the evening we had a quiet dinner at Maxims, in the smaller room where Aunt Augusta thought to escape the tourists. There was one, however, whom we could not escape; she wore a suit and a tie, and she had a voice like a mans. She not only dominated her companion, a little mousy blond woman of uncertain age, she dominated the whole room. Like so many English abroad she seemed to ignore the presence of foreigners around her and spoke in a loud voice as though she were alone with her companion. Her voice had a peculiar ventriloquial quality, and when I first became aware of it I thought it came from the mouth of an old gentleman with a rosette of the Legion of Honour[116] in his buttonhole who sat at the table opposite ours, and who had obviously been taught to chew every morsel of his meat thirty-two times. Four-legged animals, my dear, always remind me of tables. So much more solid and sensible than two legs. One could sleep standing up. Everyone who could understand English turned to look at him. His mouth closed with a startled snap when he saw himself the centre of attention. One could even serve dinner on a man with a broad enough back, the voice said, and the mousy woman giggled and said, Oh, Edith, and so identified the speaker. I am sure the woman had no idea of what she was doing she was an unconscious ventriloquist, and surrounded as she believed by ignorant foreigners and perhaps excited a little by unaccustomed wine, she really let herself go.
It was a deep, cultured, professorial voice. I could imagine it lecturing on English literature at one of the older universities, and for the first time my attention strayed from Aunt Augusta. Darwin the other Darwin[117] wrote a poem on the Loves of the Plants. I can well imagine a poem on the Loves of the Tables. Cramping it might be, but how deliciously so, when you think of a nest of tables, each fitting so blissfully, my dear, into one another.
Why is everyone staring at you? Aunt Augusta asked. It was an embarrassing moment, all the more so as the woman had suddenly stopped speaking and had plunged into her carré dagneau[118]. The trouble is that I have an unconscious habit of moving my lips when I am thinking, so that to all except my immediate neighbours I seemed to be the author of her ambiguous remark.
I have no idea, Aunt Augusta, I said.
You must have been doing something very odd, Henry.
I was only thinking.
How I wish I could conquer the habit. It must have been established first when I was a cashier and silently counted bundles of notes. The habit betrayed me very badly once with a woman called Mrs. Blennerhasset, who was stone deaf and a lip-reader. She was a very beautiful woman who was married to the mayor of Southwood. She came to my private office once about some question of investments, and while I turned over her file my thoughts couldnt help dwelling a little wistfully on her loveliness. One is more free in thought than in speech and when I looked up I saw that she was blushing. She finished her business very quickly and left. Later, to my surprise, she dropped in to see me again. She made some small alteration to the decision we had reached about her War Loan and then said, Did you really mean what you told me? I thought she was referring to my advice about National Savings Certificates.
Of course, I said. That is my honest opinion.
Thank you, she said. You mustnt think I am at all offended. No woman could be when you put it so poetically, but, Mr. Pulling, I must tell you that I truly love my husband. The awful thing, of course, was that she couldnt in her deafness distinguish between the lip movements made by spoken words and the movements which expressed my unspoken thoughts. She was always kind to me after that day, but she never came to my private office again.
That night at the Gare de Lyon I saw my aunt into her couchette and ordered her petit déjeuner from the conductor for eight a.m. Then I waited on the platform for the train from London to come in from the Gare du Nord. It was five minutes late, but the Orient Express had to wait for it.
As the train moved slowly in, drowning the platform with steam, I saw Wordsworth come striding through the smoke. He recognized me at the same moment and cried, Hi, fellah. He must have learnt the Americanism during the war when the convoys for the Middle East gathered in Freetown Harbour. I went reluctantly towards him. What are you doing here? I asked. I have always disliked the unexpected, whether an event or an encounter, but I was growing accustomed to it in my aunts company.
Mr. Pullen, Mr. Pullen, Wordsworth said, you an honest man, Mr. Pullen. He reached my side and grasped my hand. Ar allays was your friend, Mr. Pullen. He spoke as if he had known me for years and I had been a long time in his debt. You no humbug me, Mr. Pullen? He gazed wildly up and down the train. Wheres that gel?
My aunt, I said, if thats whom you mean, is fast asleep by now in her couchette.
Then please go double quick tell her Wordsworth here.
I have no intention of waking her up. Shes an old lady and has a long journey ahead of her. If its money you want, you can take this. I held out to him a fifty-franc note.
I no wan CTC, Wordsworth said, waving one hand hard for emphasis, while at the same time he took the note with the other. I wan my bebi gel.
Such an expression used in connection with Aunt Augusta offended me and I turned away to climb the steep steps into the coach, but he put his hand on my arm and held me back on the platform. He was a very strong man. You jig-jig with my bebi gel, he accused me.
Youre preposterous, Wordsworth. She is my aunt. My mothers sister.
No humbug?
No humbug, I said, though I hated the expression. Even if she were not my aunt, cant you understand that she is a very old lady?
No one too old for jig-jig, Wordsworth said. You tell her she come back here to Paris. Wordsworth wait long long time for her. You speak her sweet. You tell her she still my bebi gel. Wordsworth no slip good when she gone.
The conductor asked me to get onto the train, for we were about to leave, and Wordsworth unwillingly released me. I stood on the top of the steps as the train began to move out from the Gare de Lyon in short jerks, and Wordsworth followed it down the platform, wading through the steam. He was crying, and I was reminded of a suicide walking out fully dressed into the surf. Suddenly, staring at a window beyond me, he began to sing:
Slip gud-o, bebi gel:
An luk me wan minit
Befo yu slip.
The train gathered momentum and with a final jerk and strain it had left him behind.
I squeezed down the corridor to my aunts couchette which was number 72. The bed was made up, but there was a strange girl in a mini-skirt sitting on it, while my aunt leant out of the window waving and blowing kisses. The girl and I looked at each other with embarrassment. We could hardly speak and interrupt this ceremony of separation. She was very young, perhaps eighteen, and she was elaborately made up with a chalk-white face, dark-shadowed eyes and long auburn hair falling over her shoulders. With the strokes of a pencil she had continued her eyelashes below and above the lids, so that the real eyelashes, standing out, had a false effect like a stereoscopic photograph. Her shirt had two buttons missing at the top as though they had popped off with the tension of her puppy fat and her eyes bulged like a Pekinese dogs, but they were pretty nonetheless. They had in them what used to be called by my generation a sexy look, but this might have been caused by short sight or constipation. Her smile, when she realized that I was not a stranger intruding into my aunts compartment, was oddly timid for someone who looked so flagrant. It was as though someone else had dolled her up to attract. She was like a kid tethered to a tree to draw a tiger out of the jungle.
My aunt pulled in her head; her face was smeared with smuts and tears. Dear man, she said. I had to take a last look. At my age one never knows.
I said with disapproval, I thought that chapter was closed, and added for the sake of the girl, Aunt Augusta.
One can never be quite sure, my aunt said. This is Seventy-one, she added, indicating the girl.
Seventy-one?
The next-door couchette. Whats your name, dear?
Tooley, the girl replied. It might have been a pet name or a family name one couldnt be sure.
Tooley is going to Istanbul too. Arent you, dear?
En passant[119], she said with an American accent.
Shes going to Katmandu, my aunt explained.
I thought that was in Nepal.
I guess thats where it is, the girl said. Something like that.
She and I got talking, my aunt told me, because whats your name again, dear?
Tooley, the girl said.
Tooley has brought a sack of provisions with her.
Do you realize, Henry, that the Orient Express has no restaurant car? How times have changed. No restaurant car till after the Turkish frontier. We face two days of starvation.
Ive got a lot of milk chocolate, the girl said, and a little sliced ham.
And thirst, Aunt Augusta said.
Ive got a dozen bottles of Coke, but its getting pretty warm now.
When I think of the party I once had on this very train, Aunt Augusta said, with Mr. Visconti and General Abdul. Caviar and champagne. We practically lived in the dining-car[120]. One meal ran into another and night into day.
You are very welcome to share my Coke, Tooley said. And the milk chocolate. The ham too, of course, but theres not much of that.
At least the conductor has promised us coffee and croissants, I said, in the morning.
I shall sleep as late as I can, my aunt said, and we shall be able to get a bite at Milan station. With Mario, she added.
Whos Mario? I asked.
We stop at Lausanne and Mürren and Saint Moritz, said the well-informed girl.
Switzerland is only bearable covered with snow, Aunt Augusta said, like some people are only bearable under a sheet. Now I shall go to bed. You two young people are old enough to be left alone.
Tooley looked at me askance as though after all I might be the tiger type. Oh, Ill sleep too, she said, I love sleep. She looked at a huge wrist-watch on a strap an inch wide with only four numerals, coloured scarlet. Its not one yet, she said doubtfully. Id better take a pill.