"You walk ahead," she said. "I want to look at you.
So he turned away from her and walked to where there was a bench and sat down. He could see a lake at a long distance and knew it was too far to ever walk to. He sat there on the bench and she sat down beside him and said, "It's all right."
But remorse had been there to meet him in the Retiro and now it was so bad he told Catherine that he would meet her at the cafe of The Palace.
"Are you all right? Do you want me to come with you?"
"No. I'm all right. I just have to go.
"I'll see you there," she said.
She looked particularly beautiful that morning and she smiled at their secret and he smiled at her and then took his remorse to the cafe. He did not think he would make it but he did and
later when Catherine came he was finishing his second absinthe and the remorse was gone.
"How are you, Devil?" he said.
"I'm your devil," she said. "Could I have one of those too?" The waiter went away pleased to see her looking so handsome and so happy and she said, "What was it?"
"I just felt rotten but I feel fine now."
"Was it that bad?"
"No," he lied.
She shook her head. "I'm so sorry. I hoped there wouldn't be any bad at all."
"It went away.
"That's good. Isn't it lovely to be here in the summer and no one here? I thought of something."
"Already?"
"We can stay on and not go to the sea. This is ours now. The town and here. We could stay here and then drive back straight through to la Napoule."
"There aren't many more moves to make."
"Don't. We've only just started."
"Yes . . . we can always go back where we started."
"Of course we can and we will."
"Let's not talk about it," he said.
He had felt it start to come back and he took a long sip of his drink.
"It's a very strange thing," he said. "This drink tastes exactly like remorse. It has the true taste of it and yet it takes it away."
"I don't like you to have to take it for that. We aren't like that. We mustn't be."
"Maybe I am."
"You mustn't be." She took a long sip out of her glass and another long sip and looked around and then at him. "I can do it. Look at me and watch it happen. Here in the outdoor cafe of
The Palace in Madrid and you can see the Prado and the street and the sprinklers under the trees so it's real. It's awfully brusque. But I can do it. You can see. Look. The lips are your girl again and I'm all the things you really want. Haven't I done it? Tell me.
"You didn't have to."
"Do you like me as a girl," she said very seriously and then smiled.
"Yes," he said.
"That's good," she said. "I'm glad someone likes it because it's a god damned bore."
"Don't do it then."
"Didn't you hear me say I did it? Didn't you watch me do it? Do you want me to wrench myself around and tear myself in two because you can't make up your mind? Because you won't stay with anything?"
"Would you hold it down?"
"Why should I hold it down? You want a girl don't you? Don't you want everything that goes with it? Scenes, hysteria, false accusations, temperament isn't that it? I'm holding it down. I won't make you uncomfortable in front of the waiter. I won't make the waiter uncomfortable. I'll read my damned mail. Can we send up and get my mail?"
"I'll go up and get it."
"No. I shouldn't be here by myself."
"That's right," he said.
"You see? That was why I said to send for it."
"They wouldn't give a hotones the key to the room. That was why I said I'd go."
"I'm over it," Catherine said. "I'm not going to act that way. Why should I act that way to you? It was ludicrous and un dignified. It was so silly I won't even ask you to forgive me. Besides I have to go up to the room anyway.
"Now?"
"Because I'm a god damned woman. I thought if I'd be a girl and stay a girl I'd have a baby at least. Not even that."
'That could be my fault."
"Don't let's ever talk about faults. You stay here and I'll bring back the mail. We'll read our mail and be nice good intelligent American tourists who are disappointed because they came to Madrid at the wrong time of year."
At lunch Catherine said, "We'll go back to Ia Napoule. There is no one there and we'll be quiet and good and work and take care of each other. We can drive to Aix too and see all the Cezanne country. We didn't stay there long enough before."
"We'll have a lovely time."
"It isn't too soon for you to start to work again is it?"
"No. It would be good to start now. I'm sure.
"That will be wonderful and I'll study Spanish really for when we come back. And I have so much I have to read."
"We have lots to do."
'We'll do it too."
70 7'
Chapter Nine
THE NEW PLAN lasted a little more than a month. They had three rooms at the end of the long low rose-colored Provencal house where they had stayed before. It was in the pines on the Esterel side of la Napoule. Out of the windows there was the sea and from the garden in front of the long house where they ate under the trees they could see the empty beaches, the high papyrus grass at the delta of the small river and across the bay was the white curve of Cannes with the hills and the far moun tains behind. There was no one staying at the long house now in summer and the proprietor and his wife were pleased to have them back.
Their bedroom was the big room at the end. It had windows on three sides and was cool that summer. At night they smelled the pines and the sea. David worked in a room at the further end. He started early each morning and when he was finished he would find Catherine and they would go to a cove in the rocks where there was a sand beach to sun and to swim. Sometimes Catherine was gone with the car and he would wait for her and
have a drink out on the terrace after his work. It was impossible to drink pastis after absinthe and he had taken to drinking whiskey and Perrier water. This pleased the proprietor, who was now doing a good defensive summer business with the presence of the two Bournes in the dead summer season. He had not hired a cook and his wife was doing the cooking. One maid servant looked after the rooms and a nephew, who was an apprentice waiter, served at table.
Catherine enjoyed driving the small car and went on buying and collecting trips to Cannes and to Nice. The big winter season shops were closed but she found extravagances to eat and solid values to drink and located the places where she could buy books and magazines.
David had worked very hard for four days. They had spent all the afternoon in the sun on the sand of a new cove they had found and they had been in the water until they were both tired and then come home in the evening with salt dried on their backs and in their hair to have a drink and take showers and change.
In bed the breeze came in from the sea. It was cool and they lay side by side in the dark with the sheet over them and Catherine said, "You said I was to tell you."
"I know."
She leaned over him and held his head in her hands and kissed him. "I want to so much. Can I? May I?"
"Sure."
"I'm so happy. I've made a lot of plans," she said. "And this time I'm not going to start so bad and wild."
"V/hat sort of plans?"
"I can tell but it would be better to show it. We could do it tomorrow. Will you go in with me?"
"Where?"
"To Cannes where I went when we were here before. He's a
very good coiffeur. We're friends and he's better than the one in Biarritz because he understood right away.
'What have you been doing?"
"I went to see him this morning while you were working and I explained and he studied it and understood and thought it would be fine. I told him I hadn't decided but that if I did I'd try to get you to have yours cut the same way.
"How is it cut?"
"You'll see. We'll go together. It's sort of bevelled back from the natural line. He's very enthusiastic. I think it's because he's crazy about the Bugatti. Are you afraid?"
"I can't wait. He wants to lighten it really but we were afraid you might not like it."
"The sun and the salt water lighten it."
"This would be much fairer. He said he could make it as fair as Scandinavian. Think how that would be with our dark skin. And we could make yours lighter too."
"No. I'd feel funny."
"Who do you know here that makes any difference? You'd get lighter swimming all summer anyway."
He did not say anything and she said, "You won't have to. We'll just do mine and maybe you'll want to. We can see.
"Don't make plans, Devil. Tomorrow I'll get up very early and work and you sleep as late as you can.
"Then write for me too," she said. "No matter if it's where I've been bad put in how much I love you.
"I'm nearly up to now.
"Can you publish it or would it be bad to?"
"I've only tried to write it."
"Can I ever read it?"
"If I ever get it right."
"I'm so proud of it already and we won't have any copies for
sale and none for reviewers and then there'll never be clippings and you'll never be self conscious and we'll always have it just for us."
David Bourne woke when it was light and put on shorts and a shirt and went outside. The breeze had died. The sea was calm and the day smelled of the dew and the pines. He walked bare footed across the flagstones of the terrace to the room at the far end of the long house and went in and sat down at the table where he worked. The windows had been open overnight and the room was cool and full of early morning promise.
He was writing about the road from Madrid to Zaragossa and the rising and falling of the road as they came at speed into the country of the red buttes and the little car on the then dusty road picked up the Express train and Catherine passed it gently car by car, the tender, and then the engineer and fireman, and finally the nose of the engine, and then she shifted as the road switched left and the train disappeared into a tunnel.
"I had it," she had said. "But it went to ground. Tell me if I can get it again."
He had looked at the Michelin map and said, "Not for a while."
"I'll let it go then and we'll see the country." As the road climbed there were poplar trees along the river and the road climbed steeply and he felt the car accept it and then Catherine shift again happily as it flattened the steep grade.
Later, when he heard her voice in the garden, he stopped writing. He locked the suitcase with the cahiers of manuscript and went out locking the door after him. The girl would use the pass key to clean the room.
Catherine was sitting at breakfast on the terrace. There was a red-and-white checked cloth on the table. She wore her old Grau
du Roi striped shirt fresh-washed and shrunk now and much faded, new gray flannel slacks, and espadrilles.
"Hello," she said. "I couldn't sleep late."
"You look lovely." "Thank you. I feel lovely." "Where did you get those slacks?"
"I had them made in Nice. By a good tailor. Are they all right?"
"They're very well cut. They just look new. Are you going to wear them into town?"
"Not town. Cannes in the off season. Everybody will next year. People are wearing our shirts now. They're no good with skirts. You don't mind do you?"
"Not at all. They look right. They just looked so well creased."
After breakfast while David shaved and showered and then pulled on a pair of old flannels and a fisherman's shirt and found his espadrilles Catherine put on a blue linen shirt with an open collar and a heavy white linen skirt.
"We're better this way. Even if the slacks are right for here they're too show-off for this morning. We'll save them."
It was very friendly and offhand at the coiffeur's but very professional. Monsieur Jean, who was about David's age and looked more Italian than French, said, "I will cut it as she asks. Do you agree, Monsieur?"
"I don't belong to the syndicate," David said. "I leave it to you two."
"Perhaps we should experiment on Monsieur," Monsieur Jean said. "In case anything goes wrong.
But Monsieur Jean began cutting Catherine's hair very care fully and skillfully and David watched her dark serious face above the smock that came close around her neck. She looked into the hand mirror and watched the comb and scissors lifting
and snipping. The man was working like a sculptor, absorbed and serious. "I thought about it all last night and this morning," the coiffeur said. "If you don't believe that, Monsieur, I under- stand. But this is as important to me as your metier is to you.
He stepped back to look at the shape he was making. Then he snipped more rapidly and finally turned the chair so the big mirror was reflected in the small one Catherine held.
"Do you want it cut that way above the ears?" she asked the coiffeur.
"As you like. I can make it more degage if you wish. But it will be beautiful as is if we are going to make it truly fair."
"I want it fair," Catherine said.
He smiled. "Madame and I have spoken of it. But I said it must be Monsieur's decision."
"Monsieur gave his decision," Catherine said.
"How fair did Monsieur say he wished it to be?"
"As fair as you can make it," she said.
"Don't say that," Monsieur Jean said. "You must tell me."
"As fair as my pearls," Catherine said. "You've seen them plenty of times."
