Christmas Holiday Read online

  Simon took a long draught of the white wine they were drinking and sitting back in his chair began to laugh. His face writhed into a grimace of intolerable suffering.

  “I must tell you an incident that happened a few months ago here. They were having a meeting of the British Legion or something like that, I forget what for, war graves or something; my chief was going to speak, but he had a cold in the head and he sent me instead. You know what our paper is, bloody patriotic as long as it helps our circulation, all the dirt we can get, and a high moral tone. My chief’s the right man in the right place. He hasn’t had an idea in his head for twenty years. He never opens his mouth without saying the obvious and when he tells a dirty story it’s so stale that it doesn’t even stink any more. But he’s as shrewd as they make ‘em. He knows what the proprietor wants and he gives it to him. Well, I made the speech he would have made. Platitudes dripped from my mouth. I made the welkin ring with claptrap. I gave them jokes so hoary that even a judge would have been ashamed to make them. They roared with laughter. I gave them pathos so shaming that you would have thought they would vomit. The tears rolled down their cheeks. I beat the big drum of patriotism like a Salvation Lass sublimating her repressed sex. They cheered me to the echo. It was the speech of the evening. When it was all over the big-wigs wrung my hand still overwhelmed with emotion. I got them all right. And d’you know, I didn’t say a single word that I didn’t know was contemptible balderdash. Words, words, words! Poor old Hamlet.”

  “It was a damned unscrupulous thing to do,” said Charley. “After all, I daresay they were just a lot of ordinary, decent fellows who were only wanting to do what they thought was the right thing, and what’s more they were probably prepared to put their hands in their pockets to prove the sincerity of their convictions.”

  “You would think that. In point of fact more money was raised for whatever the damned cause was than had ever been raised before at one of their meetings and the organizers told my chief it was entirely due to my brilliant speech.”

  Charley in his candour was distressed. This was not the Simon he had known so long. Formerly, however wild his theories were, however provocatively expressed, there was a sort of nobility in them. He was disinterested. His indignation was directed against oppression and cruelty. Injustice roused him to fury. But Simon did not notice the effect he had on Charley or if he did was indifferent to it. He was absorbed in himself.

  “But brain isn’t enough and eloquence, even if it’s necessary, is after all a despicable gift. Kerensky had them both and what did they avail him? The important thing is character. It’s my character I’ve got to mould. I’m sure one can do anything with oneself if one tries. It’s only a matter of will. I’ve got to train myself so that I’m indifferent to insult, neglect and ridicule. I’ve got to acquire a spiritual aloofness so complete that if they put me in prison I shall feel myself as free as a bird in the air. I’ve got to make myself so strong that when I make mistakes I am unshaken, but profit by them to act rightly. I’ve got to make myself so hard that not only can I resist the temptation to be pitiful, but I don’t even feel pity. I’ve got to wring out of my heart the possibility of love.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t afford to let my judgement be clouded by any feeling that I might have for a human being. You are the only person I’ve ever cared for in the world, Charley. I shan’t rest till I know in my bones that if it were necessary to put you against a wall and shoot you with my own hands I could do it without a moment’s hesitation and without a moment’s regret.”

  Simon’s eyes had a dark opaqueness which reminded you of an old mirror, in a deserted house, from which the quick-silver was worn away, so that when you looked in it you saw, not yourself, but a sombre depth in which seemed to lurk the reflections of long past events and passions long since dead and yet in some terrifying way tremulous still with a borrowed and mysterious life.

  “Did you wonder why I didn’t come to the station to meet you?”

  “It would have been nice if you had. I supposed you couldn’t get away.”

  “I knew you’d be disappointed. It’s our busy time at the office, we have to be on tap then to telephone to London the news that’s come through in the course of the day, but it’s Christmas Eve, the paper doesn’t come out to-morrow and I could have got away easily. I didn’t come because I wanted to so much. Ever since I got your letter saying you were coming over I’ve been sick with the desire to see you. When the train was due and I knew you’d be wandering up the platform looking for me and rather lost in that struggling crowd, I took a book and began to read. I sat there, forcing myself to attend to it, and refusing to let myself listen for the telephone that I expected every moment to ring. And when it did and I knew it was you, my joy was so intense that I was enraged with myself. I almost didn’t answer. For more than two years now I’ve been striving to rid myself of the feeling I have for you. Shall I tell you why I wanted you to come over? One idealizes people when they’re away, it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and when one sees them again one’s often surprised that one saw anything in them at all. I thought that if there were anything left in me of the old feeling I had for you the few days you’re spending here now would be enough to kill it.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll think me very stupid,” said Charley, with his engaging smile, “but I can’t for the life of me see why you want to.”

  “I do think you’re very stupid.”

  “Well, taking that for granted, what is the reason?”

  Simon frowned a little and his restless eyes darted here and there like a hare trying to escape a pursuer.

  “You’re the only person who ever cared for me.”

  “That’s not true. My father and mother have always been very fond of you.”

  “Don’t talk such nonsense. Your father was as indifferent to me as he is to art, but it gave him a warm, comfortable feeling of benevolence to be kind to the orphan penniless boy whom he could patronize and impress. Your mother thought me unscrupulous and self-seeking. She hated the influence she thought I had over you and she was affronted because she saw that I thought your father an old humbug, the worst sort of humbug, the one who humbugs himself; the only satisfaction I ever gave her was that she couldn’t look at me without thinking how nice it was that you were so very different from me.”

  “You’re not very flattering to my poor parents,” said Charley, mildly.

  Simon took no notice of the interruption.

  “We clicked at once. What that old bore Goethe would have called elective affinity. You gave me what I’d never had. I, who’d never been a boy, could be a boy with you. I could forget myself in you. I bullied you and ragged you and mocked you and neglected you, but all the time I worshipped you. I felt wonderfully at home with you. With you I could be just myself. You were so unassuming, so easily pleased, so gay and so good-natured, merely to be with you rested my tortured nerves and released me for a moment from that driving force that urged me on and on. But I don’t want rest and I don’t want release. My will falters when I look at your sweet and diffident smile. I can’t afford to be soft, I can’t afford to be tender. When I look into those blue eyes of yours, so friendly, so confiding in human nature, I waver, and I daren’t waver. You’re my enemy and I hate you.”

  Charley had flushed uncomfortably at some of the things that Simon had said to him, but now he chuckled good-humouredly.

  “Oh, Simon, what stuff and nonsense you talk.”

  Simon paid no attention. He fixed Charley with his glittering, passionate eyes as though he sought to bore into the depths of his being.

  “Is there anything there?” he said, as though speaking to himself. “Or is it merely an accident of expression that gives the illusion of some quality of the soul?” And then to Charley: “I’ve often asked myself what it was that I saw in you. It wasn’t your good looks, though I daresay they had something to do with it; it wasn’t your intelligence, which is adequ
ate without being remarkable; it wasn’t your guileless nature or your good temper. What is it in you that makes people take to you at first sight? You’ve won half your battle before ever you take the field. Charm? What is charm? It’s one of the words we all know the meaning of, but we can none of us define. But I know if I had that gift of yours, with my brain and my determination there’s no obstacle in the world I couldn’t surmount. You’ve got vitality and that’s part of charm. But I have just as much vitality as you; I can do with four hours’ sleep for days on end and I can work for sixteen hours a day without getting tired. When people first meet me they’re antagonistic, I have to conquer them by sheer brainpower, I have to play on their weaknesses, I have to make myself useful to them, I have to flatter them. When I came to Paris my chief thought me the most disagreeable young man and the most conceited he’d ever met. Of course he’s a fool. How can a man be conceited when he knows his defects as well as I know mine? Now he eats out of my hand. But I’ve had to work like a dog to achieve what you can do with a flicker of your long eyelashes. Charm is essential. In the last two years I’ve got to know a good many prominent politicians and they’ve all got it. Some more and some less. But they can’t all have it by nature. That shows it can be acquired. It means nothing, but it arouses the devotion of their followers so that they’ll do blindly all they’re bidden and be satisfied with the reward of a kind word. I’ve examined them at work. They can turn it on like water from a tap. The quick, friendly smile; the hand that’s so ready to clasp yours. The warmth in the voice that seems to promise favours, the show of interest that leads you to think your concerns are your leader’s chief preoccupation, the intimate manner which tells you nothing, but deludes you into thinking you are in your master’s confidence. The clichés, the hundred varieties of dear old boy that are so flattering on influential lips. The ease and naturalness, the perfect acting that imitates nature, and the sensitiveness that discerns a fool’s vanity and takes care never to affront it. I can learn all that, it only means a little more effort and a little more self-control. Sometimes of course they overdo it, the pros, their charm becomes so mechanical that it ceases to work; people see through it, and feeling they’ve been duped are resentful.” He gave Charley another of his piercing glances. “Your charm is natural, that’s why it’s so devastating. Isn’t it absurd that a tiny wrinkle should make life so easy for you?”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “One of the reasons why I wanted you to come over was to see exactly in what your charm consisted. As far as I can tell it depends on some peculiar muscular formation of your lower orbit. I believe it to be due to a little crease under your eyes when you smile.”

  It embarrassed Charley to be thus anatomized, and to divert the conversation from himself, he asked:

  “But all this effort of yours, what is it going to lead you to?”

  “Who can tell? Let’s go and have our coffee at the Dôme.”

  “All right. I’ll get hold of a waiter.”

  “I’m going to stand you your dinner. It’s the first meal that we’ve had together that I’ve ever paid for.”

  When he took out of his pocket some notes to settle up with he found with them a couple of cards.

  “Oh, look, I’ve got a ticket for you for the Midnight Mass at St. Eustache. It’s supposed to be the best church music in Paris and I thought you’d like to go.”

  “Oh, Simon, how nice of you. I should love to. You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

  “I’ll see how I feel when the time comes. Anyhow take the tickets.”

  Charley put them in his pocket. They walked to the Dôme. The rain had stopped, but the pavement was still wet and when the light of a shop window or a street lamp fell upon it, palely glistened. A lot of people were wandering to and fro. They came out of the shadow of the leafless trees as though from the wings of a theatre, passed across the light and then were lost again in another patch of night. Cringing but persistent, the Algerian peddlers, their eyes alert for a possible buyer, passed with a bundle of Eastern rugs and cheap furs over their arms. Coarse-faced boys, a fez on their heads, carried baskets of monkey-nuts and monotonously repeated their raucous cry: cacaouettes, cacaouettes. At a corner stood two negroes, their dark faces pinched with cold, as though time had stopped and they waited because there was nothing in the world to do but wait. The two friends reached the Dôme. The terrace where in summer the customers sat in the open was glassed in. Every table was engaged, but as they came in a couple got up and they took the empty places. It was none too warm, and Simon wore no coat.

  “Won’t you be cold?” Charley asked him. “Wouldn’t you prefer to sit inside?”

  “No, I’ve taught myself not to mind cold.”

  “What happens when you catch one?”

  “I ignore it.”

  Charley had often heard of the Dôme, but had never been there, and he looked with eager curiosity at the people who sat all round them. There were young men in turtle-neck sweaters, some of them with short beards, and girls bare-headed, in raincoats; he supposed they were painters and writers, and it gave him a little thrill to look at them.

  “English or American,” said Simon, with a scornful shrug of the shoulders. “Wasters and rotters most of them, pathetically dressing up for a role in a play that has long ceased to be acted.”

  Over there was a group of tall, fair-haired youths who looked like Scandinavians, and at another table a swarthy, gesticulating, loquacious band of Levantines. But the greater number were quiet French people, respectably dressed, shopkeepers from the neighbourhood who came to the Dôme because it was convenient, with a sprinkling of provincials who, like Charley, still thought it the resort of artists and students.

  “Poor brutes, they haven’t got the money to lead the Latin Quarter life any more. They live on the edge of starvation and work like galley-slaves. I suppose you’ve read the Vie de Bohême? Rodolphe now wears a neat blue suit that he’s bought off the nail and puts his trousers under his mattress every night to keep them in shape. He counts every penny he spends and takes care to do nothing to compromise his future. Mimi and Musette are hard-working girls, trade unionists, who spend their spare evenings attending party meetings, and even if they lose their virtue, keep their heads.”

  “Don’t you live with a girl?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? I should have thought it would be very pleasant. In the year you’ve been in Paris you must have had plenty of chances of picking someone up.”

  “Yes, I’ve had one or two. Strange when you come to think of it. D’you know what my place consists of? A studio and a kitchen. No bath. The concierge is supposed to come and clean up every day, but she has varicose veins and hates climbing the stairs. That’s all I have to offer and yet there’ve been three girls who wanted to come and share my squalor with me. One was English, she’s got a job here in the International Communist Bureau, another was a Norwegian, she’s working at the Sorbonne, and one was French—you’d have thought she had more sense; she was a dressmaker and out of work. I picked her up one evening when I was going out to dinner, she told me she hadn’t had a meal all day and I stood her one. It was a Saturday night and she stayed till Monday. She wanted to stay on, but I told her to get out and she went. The Norwegian was rather a nuisance. She wanted to darn my socks and cook for me and scrub the floor. When I told her there was nothing doing she took to waiting for me at street corners, walking beside me in the street and telling me that if I didn’t relent she’d kill herself. She taught me a lesson that I’ve taken to heart. I had to be rather firm with her in the end.”

  “What d’you mean by that?”

  “Well, one day I told her that I was sick of her pestering. I told her that next time she addressed me in the street I’d knock her down. She was rather stupid and she didn’t know I meant it. Next day when I came out of my house, it was about twelve and I was just going to the office, she was standing on the other side of the street. She came
up to me, with that hang-dog look of hers, and began to speak. I didn’t let her get more than two or three words out, I hit her on the chin and she went down like a ninepin.”

  Simon’s eyes twinkled with amusement.

  “What happened then?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose she got up again. I walked on and didn’t look round to see. Anyhow she took the hint and that’s the last I saw of her.”

  The story made Charley very uncomfortable and at the same time made him want to laugh. But he was ashamed of this and remained silent.

  “The comic one was the English communist. My dear, she was the daughter of a dean. She’d been to Oxford and she’d taken her degree in economics. She was terribly genteel, oh, a perfect lady, but she looked upon promiscuous fornication as a sacred duty. Every time she went to bed with a comrade she felt she was helping the Cause. We were to be good pals, fight the good fight together, shoulder to shoulder, and all that sort of thing. The dean gave her an allowance and we were to pool our resources, make my studio a Centre, have the comrades in to afternoon tea and discuss the burning questions of the day. I just told her a few home truths and that finished her.”