the paper, and the soft turning of the pages of her novel. Sneaking a look, I can see that she has started again at the beginning.
The letters are very mixed. They range from the romantic to the pornographic in tone, but are always fervent in their enthusiasm. Five contain the phrase:
You are the greatest actress of your generation
. Two are semi-religious:
A living star come from our Lord to save us
. Ten or more are fiercely competitive, as if she was an army to be laid bets on:
My brother and I have fifty francs that you will be more famous than Max Linder in half a year
. All of them, without exception, write as if they know her; seven ask for her advice on matters of the heart.
Should I marry the man my parents require, for his farmland? But he bores me to tears. And his fingers are so square, the backs of his hands so wiry-haired, and besides,I always wanted tall children
. And then answer themselves:
I know you would tell me to marry for love, but where will I find a loveable stranger of reasonable height?
An hour or so passes and my writing hand starts to get tired. She looks up, though I have not spoken, only begun to massage the knuckles.
‘Do you need to stop?’
‘No.’
She bends her head to her novel again. Her eyebrows are drawn together in concentration, as if someone has put a stitch through them.
At midday the pile of outgoing letters is much higher than the incoming, neatly stacked instead of the tottering mess I had first found on the desk.
As the clock finishes chiming she closes the novel and looks up, smiling.
‘Quite the little worker,’ she says. ‘The previous—’
She clicks her tongue and looks at her feet; she was going to say,
The previous assistant
. ‘Not fair,’ she says.
I fuss with the composed letters, for something to do. I like the feeling of almost having been in on a secret.
In the afternoon, she shows me the garden behind the house.
There is a high wind which blows our hats half off our heads, and makes us walk at an angle.
After twenty paces she stops, and with a catch of a laugh says: ‘May I take your arm?’
For a moment I go blank, then I realise it is to steady her, and hold it out for her to take. She curls her arm round the crook of my elbow, and rests the palm on my wrist, a steady pressure but not too tight. The backs of her hands are very smooth, but unexpectedly covered in a mass of freckles.
She laughs as she catches me staring. ‘My whole arms are like that,’ she says, too loud because of the wind. ‘When wemade
La Dame aux Roses
, the amount of Leichner No. 2 to cover it, you wouldn’t believe.’
We walk on in silence for a few moments, and then she pauses, and looks around her, the mistress surveying her terrain, and says: ‘Where you’re from, is it like this, or something else?’
I pretend to be looking at the green lawn and the white blooms in the rose beds, and manage to think of a longish thing to say. ‘Not much like this. It’s hotter, and the plants are different. But there isn’t much, just a few houses, and occasionally people pass through on their way to somewhere else.’
She laughs. ‘Bandits and caravanserai, how exotic.’
‘No,’ I say, ‘just deserted.’
She frowns as she reaches for a white petal, bruising it between forefinger and thumb. ‘But you got out.’
I don’t say anything.
She pulls the petal off, taking a scattering of others with it, scurrying away on the wind.
We walk on for a while. Suddenly she stops, puts her hand palm up to the sky and tuts. ‘Rain,’ she says, and turns to direct us towards the house.
‘Thank you for your company,’ she says, when we are back in the salon. ‘See you at dinner.’
Then she bends to pick up
Thérèse Raquin
again.
All round the garden I’ve been thinking about whether I dare say it, and I do: ‘I’d use the poison from
Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare, to put him to sleep, and then make my escape. That way nobody has to die.’
‘Very
The letters are very mixed. They range from the romantic to the pornographic in tone, but are always fervent in their enthusiasm. Five contain the phrase:
You are the greatest actress of your generation
. Two are semi-religious:
A living star come from our Lord to save us
. Ten or more are fiercely competitive, as if she was an army to be laid bets on:
My brother and I have fifty francs that you will be more famous than Max Linder in half a year
. All of them, without exception, write as if they know her; seven ask for her advice on matters of the heart.
Should I marry the man my parents require, for his farmland? But he bores me to tears. And his fingers are so square, the backs of his hands so wiry-haired, and besides,I always wanted tall children
. And then answer themselves:
I know you would tell me to marry for love, but where will I find a loveable stranger of reasonable height?
An hour or so passes and my writing hand starts to get tired. She looks up, though I have not spoken, only begun to massage the knuckles.
‘Do you need to stop?’
‘No.’
She bends her head to her novel again. Her eyebrows are drawn together in concentration, as if someone has put a stitch through them.
At midday the pile of outgoing letters is much higher than the incoming, neatly stacked instead of the tottering mess I had first found on the desk.
As the clock finishes chiming she closes the novel and looks up, smiling.
‘Quite the little worker,’ she says. ‘The previous—’
She clicks her tongue and looks at her feet; she was going to say,
The previous assistant
. ‘Not fair,’ she says.
I fuss with the composed letters, for something to do. I like the feeling of almost having been in on a secret.
In the afternoon, she shows me the garden behind the house.
There is a high wind which blows our hats half off our heads, and makes us walk at an angle.
After twenty paces she stops, and with a catch of a laugh says: ‘May I take your arm?’
For a moment I go blank, then I realise it is to steady her, and hold it out for her to take. She curls her arm round the crook of my elbow, and rests the palm on my wrist, a steady pressure but not too tight. The backs of her hands are very smooth, but unexpectedly covered in a mass of freckles.
She laughs as she catches me staring. ‘My whole arms are like that,’ she says, too loud because of the wind. ‘When wemade
La Dame aux Roses
, the amount of Leichner No. 2 to cover it, you wouldn’t believe.’
We walk on in silence for a few moments, and then she pauses, and looks around her, the mistress surveying her terrain, and says: ‘Where you’re from, is it like this, or something else?’
I pretend to be looking at the green lawn and the white blooms in the rose beds, and manage to think of a longish thing to say. ‘Not much like this. It’s hotter, and the plants are different. But there isn’t much, just a few houses, and occasionally people pass through on their way to somewhere else.’
She laughs. ‘Bandits and caravanserai, how exotic.’
‘No,’ I say, ‘just deserted.’
She frowns as she reaches for a white petal, bruising it between forefinger and thumb. ‘But you got out.’
I don’t say anything.
She pulls the petal off, taking a scattering of others with it, scurrying away on the wind.
We walk on for a while. Suddenly she stops, puts her hand palm up to the sky and tuts. ‘Rain,’ she says, and turns to direct us towards the house.
‘Thank you for your company,’ she says, when we are back in the salon. ‘See you at dinner.’
Then she bends to pick up
Thérèse Raquin
again.
All round the garden I’ve been thinking about whether I dare say it, and I do: ‘I’d use the poison from
Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare, to put him to sleep, and then make my escape. That way nobody has to die.’
‘Very
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