Nine Coaches Waiting

He was probably hardly aware of who it was he had in the car. So much for Cinderella. I sat quietly beside him and nibbled the bitter crusts of commonsense.

Banquets abroad by torchlight! music! sports! Nine coaches waiting – hurry – hurry – hurry – Ay, to the devil … Tourneur: The Revenger’s Tragedy.

She was sitting very still, but her stillness wasn’t even a travesty of the poise I knew. The delicate flower had wilted to pulp. She lay back in her chair as if she had no bones, and her hands were motionless at last on the shredded silk of the chair-arms.

‘I can’t promise anything. All I can say is that we’ll try and compromise between what’s right and what’s best.’

2 This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle sense … Shakespeare: Macbeth. The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under our battlements … Ibid.

Quite suddenly I ceased to be sorry I had come. It was as if the past, till then so longed-after, so lived-over, had slipped off my shoulders like a burden. The future was still hidden, somewhere in the lights that made a yellow blur in the sky beyond the end of the dark street. Here between the two I waited, and for the first time saw both clearly

Someone was coming down the stairs. I could hear the click of high-heeled shoes. I waited, perhaps still in some faint hope that it might be somebody I knew. It wasn’t. It was a young woman, cheap and smart, with that tight-black-sweater-and-skirt smartness made to look very Place Vendôme with ropes of improbable pearls. She was blonde, and chewed

It was very good of Madame de Valmy to have provided me with the money for a taxi into Paris. She was hardly likely to do much more for the hired help. And that was what I was. I had better start remembering it, as from now.

Some of the baggage was out on the tarmac. I could see my own shabby case wedged between a brand new Revrobe and something huge and extravagant in cream-coloured hide. Mine had been a good case once, good solid leather stamped deeply with Daddy’s initials, now half hidden under the new label smeared by London’s rain. Miss L. Martin, Paris. Symbolic