The Last of Cheri Read online

  ‘Do you know how much champagne was drunk here last night, between four o’clock yesterday and four o’clock this morning?’

  ‘No,’ said Chéri.

  ‘And do you know how many bottles were returned empty from those delivered here between May the first and June the fifteenth?’

  ‘No,’ said Chéri.

  ‘Say a number.’

  ‘No idea,’ Chéri grunted.

  ‘But say something! Say a number! Have a guess, man! Name some figure!’

  Chéri scratched the table-cloth as he might during an examination. He was suffering from the heat, and from his own inertia.

  ‘Five hundred,’ he got out at last.

  Desmond threw himself back in his chair and, as it swerved through the air, his monocle shot a piercing flash of sunlight into Chéri’s eye.

  ‘Five hundred! You make me laugh!’

  He was boasting. He did not know how to laugh: his nearest approach was a sort of sob of the shoulders. He drank some coffee, to excite Chéri’s curiosity, and then put down his cup again.

  ‘Three thousand, three hundred, and eighty-two, my boy. And do you know how much that puts in my pocket?’

  ‘No,’ Chéri interrupted, ‘and I don’t give a damn. That’s enough. My mother does all that for me if I want it. Besides . . .’ He rose, and added in a hesitant voice: ‘Besides, money doesn’t interest me.’

  ‘Strange,’ said Desmond, hurt. ‘Strange. Amusing.’

  ‘If you like. No, can’t you understand, money doesn’t interest me . . . doesn’t interest me any more.’

  These simple words fell from his lips slowly. Chéri spoke them without looking up, and kicked a biscuit crumb along the carpet; his embarrassment at making this confession, his secretive look, restored for a fleeting instant the full marvel of his youth.

  For the first time Desmond stared at him with the critical attention of a doctor examining a patient, ‘Am I dealing with a malingerer?’ Like a doctor, he had recourse to confused and soothing words.

  ‘We all go through that. Everyone’s feeling a little out of sorts. No one knows exactly where he stands. Work is a wonderful way of putting you on your feet again, old boy. Take me, for instance. . . .’

  ‘I know,’ Chéri interrupted. ‘You’re going to tell me I haven’t enough to do.’

  ‘Yes, it’s your own fault.’ Desmond’s mockery was condescending in the extreme. ‘For in these wonderful times . . .’ He was going on to confess his deep satisfaction with business, but he pulled himself up in time. ‘It’s also a question of upbringing. Obviously, you never learned the first thing about life under Léa’s wing. You’ve no idea how to manage people and things.’

  ‘So they say.’ Chéri was put out. ‘Léa herself wasn’t fooled. You mayn’t believe me, but though she didn’t trust me, she always consulted me before buying or selling.’

  He thrust out his chest, proud of the days gone by, when distrust was synonymous with respect.

  ‘You’ve only got to apply yourself to it again – to money matters,’ Desmond continued, in his advisory capacity. ‘It’s a game that never goes out of fashion.’

  ‘Yes,’ Chéri acquiesced rather vaguely. ‘Yes, of course. I’m only waiting.’

  ‘Waiting for what?’

  ‘I’m waiting. . . . What I mean is . . . I’m waiting for an opportunity . . . a better opportunity. . . .’

  ‘Better than what?’

  ‘What a bore you are. An excuse – if you like – to take up again everything the war deprived me of years ago. My fortune, which is, in fact . . .’

  ‘Quite considerable?’ Desmond suggested. Before the war, he would have said ‘enormous’, and in a different tone of voice. A moment’s humiliation brought a blush to Chéri’s cheek.

  ‘Yes . . . my fortune. Well, the little woman, my wife, now makes that her business.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Desmond, in shocked disapproval.

  ‘Oh, yes, I promise you. Two hundred and sixteen thousand in a little flare-up on the Bourse the day before yesterday. So, don’t you see, the question now arises, “How am I to interfere?” . . . Where do I stand in all this? When I suggest taking a hand, they say . . .’

  ‘They? Who are “they”?’

  ‘What? Oh, my mother and my wife. They start saying: “Take it easy. You’re a warrior. Would you like a glass of orangeade? Run along to your shirt-maker, he’s making you look a fool. And while you are going the rounds, you might call in and collect my necklace, if the clasp’s been mended . . .” and so on, and so forth.’

  He was growing excited, hiding his resentment as best he could, though his nostrils were quivering, and his lips as well.

  ‘So must I now tout motor-cars, or breed Angora rabbits, or direct some high-class establishment? Have I got to engage myself as a male nurse or accountant in that bargain basement, my wife’s Hospital?’ He walked as far as the window, and came back to Desmond precipitately. ‘Under the orders of Doctor Arnaud, Physician-in-Charge, and pass the basins round for him? Must I take up this night-club business? Can’t you see the competition!’

  He laughed in order to make Desmond laugh; but Desmond, no doubt a little bored, kept a perfectly straight face.

  ‘How long ago did you start thinking of all this? You certainly had no such ideas in the spring, or last winter, or before you were married.’

  ‘I had no time for it,’ Chéri answered quite simply. ‘We went off on our travels, we began furnishing the house, we bought motors just in time to have them requisitioned. All that led up to the war. Before the war . . . before the war I was . . . a kid from a rich home. I was rich, damn it!’

  ‘You still are.’

  ‘I still am,’ Chéri echoed.

  He hesitated once more, searching for words. ‘But now, it’s not at all the same thing. People have got the jitters. And work, and activity, and duty, and women who serve their country – not half they don’t – and are crazy about oof . . . they’re such thorough-going business-women that they make you disgusted with the word business. They’re such hard workers it’s enough to make you loathe the sight of work.’ He looked uncertainly at Desmond. ‘Is it really wrong to be rich, and take life easy?’

  Desmond enjoyed playing his part and making up for past subservience. He put a protective hand on Chéri’s shoulder.

  ‘My son, be rich and live your own life! Tell yourself that you’re the incarnation of an ancient aristocracy. Model yourself on the feudal barons. You’re a warrior.’

  ‘Merde,’ said Chéri.

  ‘Now you’re talking like a warrior. Only, you must live and let live, and let those work who like it.’

  ‘You, for instance.’

  ‘Me, for instance.’

  ‘Obviously, you’re not the sort to let yourself be messed about by women.’

  ‘No,’ said Desmond curtly. He was hiding from the world a perverse taste for his chief cashier – a gentle creature with brown hair scraped well back, rather masculine and hairy. She wore a religious medallion round her neck, and smilingly confessed, ‘For two pins I’d commit murder: I’m like that.’

  ‘No. Emphatically, no! Can’t you mention anything without sooner or later dragging in “my wife, women”, or else “in Léa’s time”? Is there nothing else to talk about in 1919?’

  Beyond the sound of Desmond’s voice, Chéri seemed to be listening to some other, still unintelligible sound. ‘Nothing else to talk about,’ he repeated to himself. ‘Why should there be?’ He was daydreaming, lulled by the light and the warmth, which increased as the sun came round into the room. Desmond went on talking, impervious to the stifling heat, and as white as winter endive. Chéri caught the words ‘little birds’ and began to pay attention.

  ‘Yes, I’ve a whole heap of amusing connexions, with whom, of course, I’ll put you in touch. And when I say “birds”, I’m speaking far too frivolously of what amounts to a unique collection, you understand, utterly unique. My regulars are tasty
pieces, and all the tastier for the last four years. Just you wait and see, old boy! When my capital is big enough, what a restaurant I’ll show the world! Ten tables, at most, which they’ll fall over each other to book. I’ll cover in the courtyard. . . . You may be sure my lease provides for all additions I make! Cork-lino in the middle of the dance-floor, spotlights. . . . That’s the future! It’s out there. . . .’

  The tango merchant was holding forth like a founder of cities, pointing towards the window with outstretched arm. Chéri was struck by the word ‘future’, and turned to face the spot indicated by Desmond, somewhere high up above the courtyard. He saw nothing, and felt limp. The reverberations of the two o’clock sun smote glumly down upon the little slate roof of the old stables, where the concierge of Desmond’s had his lodging. ‘What a ballroom, eh?’ said Desmond with fervour, pointing to the small courtyard. ‘And it won’t be long now before I get it!’

  Chéri stared intently at this man who, each day, expected and received his daily bread. ‘And what about me?’ he thought, inwardly frustrated.

  ‘Look, here comes my swipes-merchant,’ Desmond shouted. ‘Make yourself scarce. I must warm him up like a bottle of Corton.’

  He shook Chéri’s hand with a hand that had changed its character: from being narrow and boneless, it had become broad, purposeful, disguised as the rather firm hand of an honest man. ‘The war . . .’ thought Chéri, tongue in cheek.

  ‘You’re off? Where?’ Desmond asked.

  He kept Chéri standing on the top of the steps long enough to be able to show off such a decorative client to his wine merchant.

  ‘Over there,’ said Chéri, with a vague gesture.

  ‘Mystery,’ murmured Desmond. ‘Be off to your seraglio!’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Chéri, ‘you’re quite wrong.’

  He conjured up the vision of some female – moist flesh, nakedness, a mouth. He shuddered with impersonal disgust, and, repeating ‘You’re quite wrong’ under his breath, got into his runabout.

  He carried away with him an all too familiar uneasiness, the embarrassment and irritation of never being able to put into words all that he really wanted to say; of never meeting the person to whom he would have to confide a half-formed admission, a secret that could have changed everything, and which, for instance, this afternoon would have dispersed the ominous atmosphere from the bleached pavements and the asphalt, now beginning to melt under a vertical sun.

  ‘Only two o’clock,’ he sighed, ‘and, this month, it stays light till well after nine.’

  The breath of wind raised by the speed of his motor was like a hot dry towel being flapped in his face, and he yearned for the make-believe night behind his blue curtains, to the accompaniment of the simple drip-drop-drip of the Italian fountain’s sing-song in the garden.

  ‘If I slip quickly through the hall, I’ll be able to get in again without being seen. They’ll be having coffee by now.’

  He could almost catch a whiff of the excellent luncheon, of the lingering smell of the melon, of the dessert wine which Edmée always had served with the fruit; and, ahead of time, he saw the verdigrised reflection of Chéri closing the door lined with plate glass.

  ‘In we go!’

  Two motors were dozing in the shade of the low-hanging branches just inside the gates, one his wife’s and the other American, both in the charge of an American chauffeur who was himself taking a nap. Chéri drove on as far as the deserted Rue de Franqueville, and then walked back to his own front door. He let himself in without making a sound, took a good look at his shadowy form in the green-surfaced mirror, and softly went upstairs to the bedroom. It was just as he had longed for it to be – blue, fragrant, made for rest. In it he found every thing that his thirsty drive had made so desirable and more besides, for there was a young woman dressed in white, powdering her face and tidying her hair in front of a long looking-glass. Her back was turned to Chéri, and she did not hear him enter. Thus he had more than a moment to observe in the glass how flushed luncheon and the hot weather had made her, and to note her strange expression of untidiness and triumph and her general air of having won an emotionally outrageous victory. All at once Edmée caught sight of her husband and turned to face him without saying a word. She examined him critically from top to toe, waiting for him to speak first.

  Through the half-open window facing the garden floated up the baritone notes of Doctor Arnaud’s voice, singing, ‘Oy Marie, Oy Marie’.

  Edmée’s whole body seemed to incline towards this voice, but she restrained herself from turning her head in the direction of the garden.

  The slightly drunken courage visible in her eyes might well forebode a serious situation. Out of contempt or cowardice, Chéri, by putting a finger to his lips, enjoined silence upon her. He then pointed to the staircase with the same imperative finger. Edmée obeyed. She went resolutely past him, without being able to repress, at the moment when she came closest to him, a slight twist of the hips and quickening of the step, which kindled in Chéri a sudden impulse to strike her. He leant over the banisters, feeling reassured, like a cat that has reached safety at the top of a tree; and, still thinking of punishing, smashing, and taking flight, he waited there, ready to be wafted away on a flood of jealousy. All that came to him was a mediocre little feeling of shame, all too bearable, as he put his thoughts into words, ‘Punish her, smash up the whole place! There’s better to do than that. Yes, there’s better to do.’ But what, he did not know.

  Each morning for him, whether he woke early or late, was the start of a long day’s vigil. At first he paid but scant attention, believing it to be merely the persistence of an unhealthy habit picked up in the army.

  In December 1918, after putting his knee-cap out of joint, he had eked out in his bed at home a short period of convalescence. He used to stretch himself in the early morning and smile. ‘I’m comfortable. I’m waiting for the time when I feel much better. Christmas this year is really going to be worth while.’

  Christmas came. When the truffles had been eaten, and the holly twig dipped in brandy set alight on a silver platter, in the presence of an ethereal Edmée, very much the wife, and to the acclamations of Charlotte, of Madame de La Berche, and members of the nursing staff of the Hospital, together with a sprinkling of Romanian officers and athletic adolescent American colonels, Chéri waited. ‘Oh, if only those fellows would go away! I’m waiting to go to sleep, head in the cool air and feet warm, in my own good bed!’ Two hours later, he was still waiting for sleep, laid out as flat as a corpse, listening to the mocking call of the little winter owls in the branches – a challenge to the blue light of his unshuttered room. At last he fell asleep; but a prey to his insatiable vigilance from the peep of dawn, he began to wait for his breakfast, and gave utterance to his hearty impatience: ‘What the hell do they think they’re doing with the grub downstairs?’ He did not realize that whenever he swore or used ‘soldiers’ slang’, it always went with an affected state of mind. His jolliness was a method of escape. Breakfast was brought to him by Edmée; but in his wife’s bustling movements he never failed to discern haste and the call of duty, and he would ask for more toast, or for another hot roll which he no longer really wanted, simply from a malicious wish to delay Edmée’s departure, to delay the moment when he would once more, inevitably, resume his period of waiting.

  A certain Romanian lieutenant used to be sent off by Edmée to look for concentrated disinfectant and absorbent cotton wool, or again to press a demand upon Ministers – ‘What the government refuses point-blank to a Frenchman, a foreigner gets every time,’ she affirmed. He used to bore Chéri stiff by cracking up the duties of a soldier, fit or nearly fit, and the paradisal purity of the Coictier Hospital. Chéri went along there with Edmée, sniffed the smells of antiseptics which relentlessly suggest underlying putrefaction, recognized a comrade among the ‘Trench Feet’, and sat down on the edge of his bed, forcing himself to assume the cordiality prescribed by war novels and patriotic plays. He kne
w well enough, all the same, that a man in sound health, who had come through unscathed, could find no peer or equal among the crippled. Wherever he looked, he saw the fluttering white wings of the nurses, the red-brick colour of the faces and hands upon the sheets. An odious sense of impotence weighed upon him. He caught himself guiltily stiffening one of his arms as if held in a sling, or dragging one of his legs. But the next moment he could not help taking a deep breath and picking his way between the recumbent mummies with the light step of a dancer. He was forced reluctantly to reverence Edmée, because of her authority as a non-commissioned angel, and her aura of whiteness. She came across the ward, and, in passing, put a hand on Chéri’s shoulder; but he knew that the desire behind this gesture of tenderness and delicate possession was to bring a blush of envy and irritation to the cheek of a young dark-haired nurse who was gazing at Chéri with the candour of a cannibal.

  He felt bored, and consumed by the feeling of weariness that makes a man jib at the serried ranks of masterpieces before him as he is being dragged round a museum. The plethora of whiteness, thrown off from the ceiling and reflected back from the tiled floor, blotted out all corners, and he felt sorry for the men lying there, to whom shade would have been a charity, though no one offered it. The noonday hour imposes rest and privacy upon the beasts of the field, and the silence of deep woodland undergrowth upon the birds of the air, but civilized men no longer obey the dictates of the sun. Chéri took a few steps towards his wife, with the intention of saying: ‘Draw the curtains, install a punkah, take away that macaroni from the poor wretch who’s blinking his eyes and breathing so heavily, and let him eat his food when the sun goes down. Give them shade, let them have any colour you like, but not always and everywhere this eternal white.’ With the arrival of Doctor Arnaud, he lost his inclination to give advice and make himself useful.