Cloudless May by Storm Jameson Read Free Book Online Page B

her fear and uncertainty rushed back.
    â€œMadame is getting a bargain.”
    â€œSend it to me to the Manor House.” She was dry and unfriendly. Wretched at the thought of the money she had spent, she went out again. The possessive fury had gone; it might never have been there: nothing consoled her for the mistake she had made, least of all the cape, hanging small and draggled in a corner of her mind. What a fool I’ve been, she thought, exasperated and baffled.
    She was going to see her closest friend, her only close friend. Mme Vayrac lived not far from the Abbey Church of St. Peter. The courtyard had two entrances: the one used by Mme Vayrac’s friends was a narrow door leading into a walled-in cloister, carpeted in red, the walls hung with curtains in heavy red and black brocade. It was the most relentlessly carpeted and curtained house in Seuilly; silk draped the sides of mirrors, bedsteads, dressing-tables, thick carpets hid every inch of wood or stone in the rooms and on the stairs. Far more than her car and her jewels, these carpets gave Mme Vayrac the sense of her luxury.
    From the disguised cloister a staircase led to the first floor. Marguerite passed, without greeting her, a handsome young woman in a dressing-gown. She went directly to her friend’s sitting-room. It was a large room, so over-furnished that a stranger would look all round it before discovering Mme Vayrac sitting, like a snail, among whorled cushions.
    She was older than Mme de Freppel, a woman of fifty-two or three, shapeless and uncorseted, with the face of an intelligent and battered clown, dark eyes, a loose handsome mouth with upturned corners. A slight lameness of one leg made her prefer to sit: everything she needed, a decanter of sherry, crystallised fruits, skeins of silk, a box holding rouge and headache powders, in arm’s reach. She pressed her cheek against Marguerite’s and made room for her on the couch.
    â€œWell, my dear?”
    â€œI passed one of your nieces on the half-landing,” Mme de Freppel said. “I think, a new one.”
    â€œShe came last night. From Lille. She’s placed already.”
    Mme de Freppel was not listening. She was stretching herself at her end of the couch, kicking off her shoes, adjusting a suspender. She began to repair her face, moist from the heat. This was the only place outside her own bedroom where she felt no need to behave politely. She could say what she was thinking, be indiscreet, violent, foolish.
    â€œLéonie, I’ve bought a fur cape. It’s a beautiful thing, but I can’t afford it. Do you feel like buying it off me?”
    â€œWhat did you pay for it?” Léonie asked. Her voice had a precise muted resonance, very like the sounds made by a worn-out piano.
    Mme de Freppel hesitated. Her friend was rich. “Twenty thousand francs.”
    â€œToo much for me. If it would help you, I’d give you seventeen.” Her fingers, crossed on her stomach, moved as she counted.
    â€œI’ll wait,” Mme de Freppel said evasively. With the idea of parting from it, the fur recovered its gloss. And now that she could. She felt light-hearted. Jumping up, she ran across the room to a long mirror, and stood smoothing her frock.
    â€œDo you remember dancing between two mirrors in that café in Brussels?” Léonie said, smiling.
    â€œBut I can still kick over my head.”
    Pulling dress and petticoat to her waist, she stood in creased drawers and flung her leg—it was shapely but not slim-straight out and up, holding it steady for a second. She fell back into a chair. Mme Vayrac laughed at her. They sat without speaking for a few minutes, in a warmth which reached them more easily than the heat filtering into the room from outside; it came from a past of stuffy rooms in hotels, third-class railway carriages where they clung together for a little warmth, glances exchanged across café tables, lies one of them