The Bracelet

by MONICA STIRLING

HAVING changed into her best clothes, Claude prepared to leave the room. But as she was feeling in her jacket pocket for Métro tickets, the telephone on the landing below began to ring. After a second’s indecision Claude stood still and listened. Whoever was calling was persistent. Ring, ring, ring: the urgent futility of the sound reminded Claude of distant voices heard during air raids. Convinced at last that she was the only person in the house, she opened the door. As she did so she heard the clip-clap of the concierge’s downtrodden slippers. Not daring to move, Claude held her breath.

The shrill clamor of the telephone was replaced by the gruff voice of the concierge. Yes, this was the number; no, Monsieur had not made a mistake — but it takes time to get upstairs, doesn’t it? Very well then; who? A pause, followed by a shout: “Mademoiselle Claude!” Claude remained silent, immobile. The shout was repeated, three times. Then the caller was told Mademoiselle Claude was out, the receiver was slammed down, and ruminative grumbles accompanied the clip-clap of the slippers downstairs.

Uneasily, Claude took a deep breath. She was an obliging girl and had never before refused herself to a telephone. She would not have done so now had it not suddenly occurred to her that the call might be an attempt to put her off on the part of the man with whom she was on her way to dine. Not that Andrée ever had put her off at the last moment — he was polite, in a careless way — but it had once or twice lately occurred to Claude that he might have liked to do so.

Claude was very much in love with André; André was not, to her belief, at all in love with Claude. Nevertheless, he appeared to enjoy her company and was at pains to obtain it. He was, thought Claude, difficult to understand. André was a painter, and though absorbed in his work — unlike most of his contemporaries he managed, by book illustrating and other exercises in diligence, to earn his living — he seldom mentioned it, and would sit among their friends at the Café de Flore enclosed in a silence so good-humored that no one but Claude was aware of it. Being young enough to expect love to produce comprehension, Claude often worried over the contrast between the placidity of André’s manners and the ferocity of his paintings. His imagination moved naturally among the fantastic and, when they were alone, he sometimes offered Claude specimens of his thoughts that disturbed her but increased her love.

The concierge must be back in the kitchen now, busy with the haricots verts that formed the common denominator of her interminable meals. Claude looked at her watch. It was earlier than she had supposed. Lacking the coquetry that would have led her to keep André waiting, she had enough sense not to make a ritual of waiting for him. Five more minutes, she thought — and began to fidget around the room, adjusting the paper-covered books on the mantelpiece into a neater line and shaking out the blue checked curtains.

No matter how preoccupied she was, Claude seldom failed to derive pleasure from her room. Three months in a Spanish prison, two years in English barracks and Nissen huts, had made her excessively place-conscious. And the room that her cousin Pierre had found for her was far from unattractive. Its whitewashed walls and russet tiled floor were as provincial as the house of which it formed a part: a three-storied, creeper-grown house separated from the narrow street that gave it its address by a semi-tended garden, an uneven flight of stone steps, a grass-grown passage, and a courtyard with a pump that attracted blackoveralled boys from the near-by École Communale to indulge in water fights that ended in the gruffvoiced concierge’s appearing with threats that varied from a good whipping to the guillotine.

Having finished her unnecessary tour of inspection, Claude looked at her reflection in the strip of mirror beside the washbasin. She took a long look, then smiled — not at her looks, to which she was accustomed, but at her clothes and hair. Plaid skirt, open-necked white shirt, belted jacket of scarlet corduroy, short brown curls outlining her head — all these made Claude look like half the girls in Paris. But as she had become accustomed to looking sallow in khaki, she thought her present appearance not only colorful but original.

Perhaps her telephone call had not been from André. Or, if it had, perhaps he had only wanted to change the place of meeting. In which case she might be disturbing his plans. So alarmed was Claude at this notion that she forgot to leave quietly. She clattered downstairs and was aware, as she ran across the untended lawn, of the concierge’s head at the window, shaking like that of a molting cormorant. “There is the youth of today for you,” the concierge was muttering. Not that she disliked Claude; but unless she affirmed her pessimism by phrases such as this, or “With this government one may expect anything,” someone might think she was being duped.

The street, outside was a-shimmer with heat. Shirt-sleeved café proprietors dozed over stale newspapers or games of piquet that would never be finished; concierges had brought campstools to their doorsteps, where they sat knitting. Fruit and vegetables, left on barrows, looked warm. Half the shops had Annual Closing scrawled across the shutters, and traffic was so scarce that small children played in the street, disturbed only by bigger children swooping around on bicycles. Having pulled the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder, Claude thrust her hands in her pockets and began to walk more slowly, thinking happily that nothing but war would ever persuade her to leave Paris again in the summer.

At the street corner an old woman was selling papers, their edges already curled by the heat. The smudged black headlines of the dailies were interspersed with the immaculate faces of the film or fashion worlds. Mechanically, Claude bought a daily. The immorality of the Atom Age, the incompetence of the Occupation, the antagonism of the Allies: not one of the words in big print was followed by favorable comments in small. Suddenly as aware of exasperation as if it had been sweat breaking out all over her body, Claude hurried into the Métro.

No matter how empty the streets of Paris appear to be, the Metro is always full. Absent-mindedly, but with method, Claude fought her way down long warm passages and in and out of short hot trains, her love for her fellow creatures suffering in the process. But when she emerged, shaking herself as a dog does after a bath, at the corner where the Boulevard Raspail meets the Boulevard SaintGermain, it was to find herself once again in a semideserted city. Not even a ubiquitous roadmender disturbed the silence. Tall gray houses were shuttered, small bright shops closed, and the sunlight that flittered through the leaves of the trees was green. For a moment Claude thought of London summers she had known: the dust with which bombing seemed to have powdered the whole town; the big red buses with their windows papered against blast; and the houses in Carlton Gardens with the Cross of Lorraine painted over the entrance.

2

EVERY moment, happier, Claude crossed the boulevard and turned down a side street and into the Montana Bar. It was half empty and she was able to have her favorite table, which was in a corner where one could both escape notice and watch the door. Unfolding her newspaper she began to read an account of the black-market operations of some schoolboys. It was so funny that she forgot it was deplorable, and was still smiling when a pleasant voice said, “At last I’ve caught you.” Looking up, she saw a good-looking young man in army uniform.

Her attempt to hide vexation was gallant rather than successful. But the fact she had made it was enough for Pierre, whose tender heart was protected by a thick skin.

“May one join you?”

“Why — yes. Certainly.”

“Thank you. What will you drink? Oh come, you must drink something.” He called a waiter, gave an order, asked if they had any American cigarettes — managing, as he did so, to put Claude in the position of a spoiled woman surrounded by service. This was deliberate. Pierre was full of theories as to the behavior women prefer, and had not yet noticed that none of his theories had stood him in good stead. Claude sighed. Already she felt guilty.

All their relatives and many of their friends thought that Pierre and Claude would make an admirable couple. Pierre shared this view. Claude did not. She had made this clear, more than once, and it was with resentment as well as distaste that she now realized that Pierre was determined to make her repeat herself. If only, she thought, pressing her hands together and glancing anxiously at the door, if only he won’t ask me whom I’m waiting for. Pierre did not allow the fact that he was barely acquainted with André to prevent him from professing dislike for the latter. Claude would have resented this less had Pierre refrained from adding, fatuously, that it wasn’t a question of jealousy.

“I thought you might be here,” said Pierre after raising his glass to her. “St. Anthony of Padua must be on my side, after all. I was beginning to think he wasn’t. Because I called you up and —”

“Oh? When?” Her tone was eager.

Pierre’s tanned face darkened with pleasure. “About half an hour ago.”

“Oh, that’s all right then.” Relief made her give him a delightful smile.

“What’s all right about it?”

“Well, I wasn’t in.”

“Which was all wrong, from my point of view. However. Aren’t you going to ask me what I wanted?”

“Of course!” Disposed by relief to feel remorse, Claude’s acquiescence was friendly. “ What did you want, Pierre?”

“To know if you would have dinner with me.”

“When?”

Tonight.”

I’m so sorry, old thing. I’m already taken.”

“Less of the ‘old thing,’ if you don’t mind.” Bitterness crept into Pierre’s voice. He knew that using slang that dated from their childhood was one of Claude’s ways of keeping him at a distance.

“You couldn’t possibly cancel your dinner? You see, I’ve got to go back to Germany sooner than I’d hoped.” He despised himself for this plea — and realized as he uttered it that he was making a mistake. Claude’s war experiences had been too extensive for soldiering — particularly the soldiering of the Occupation — to have any erotic appeal to her.

“Oh, then I’m sorry,” said Claude, but destroyed the value of her sympathy by adding, “for you.”

“But you can’t cancel your dinner?”

“I’m afraid not.” She hesitated. Then, unable to bear the disappointment in his face because it reminded her of the dread with which she had heard the telephone ringing, she added, “Because it’s with people who may have work for me. The Americans won’t stay forever, and when they go, I shall have to get another job.”

Aware that she was lying in order to spare his pride, Pierre refrained from observing that if she married him she need not work. Supposing him incapable of this kind of forbearance, and realizing that her last remark was dangerous, Claude began to chatter, describing detail after detail of the household of her imaginary friends. Her chicanery made little impression upon Pierre, for he was not listening. Despite his eagerness to possess his cousin, he seldom attended to what she said. Neither of them was aware that this was one of the reasons why she despised his love. Smiling at her as though she were a small child, Pierre busied himself with thoughts of his financial prospects, colored by the assumption that two can live as cheaply as one. As soon as he had finished, he interrupted her.

“Oh well, in that case — it’ll have to be for another time.”

Relief at Pierre’s not having made a scene combined in Claude’s mind with the knowledge that on the following day André was to dine with his editor.

“What about tomorrow night?” she asked dutifully.

“Tomorrow?”

“Perhaps you’re not free?” Painstakingly, she kept hope from her voice.

“But of course I’m free. I’m always free for you.” He was so happy that her expression — which suddenly resembled that of an overworked nurse confronted by serious illness — only made him laugh. “All right,” he concluded lamely, but with good humor. “All right, let’s pretend I didn’t say it. Waiter, two more Martinis.”

Against her will, Claude was touched. “You are a dear,” she said.

Pierre groaned, but could not help smiling. Claude smiled back. For a few seconds they knew tranquillity in each other’s company.

“I mean it,” said Claude, who liked clarification. “You are a dear. If only —”

“I know, I know. But need that stop us amusing ourselves together occasionally? It isn’t as though I expected much and, after all, we are cousins.”

“Of course it needn’t.” Moved by a sudden impulse, Claude leaned across, took Pierre’s hand and patted it.

“Now it’s my turn to say you’re a dear,” he murmured, retaining her hand.

“Indeed I’m not.”

There was a short pause, during which Claude wondered how soon she might take her hand away without giving offense, and Pierre watched her more thoughtfully than usual. Then: —

“Claude — I don’t want to annoy you but — is there anyone else?”

She hesitated, then shook her head: no use adding to Pierre’s unhappiness while her love was unrequited. “When there is — if there is — I’ll tell you, Pierre.”

“I’m sure you will.” Again his tone was resentful.

“Don’t you want me to?” For a second she detested her cousin.

“I suppose I do really. In any case, you will. Your worst enemy couldn’t say you weren’t honest. Look, Claude, I don’t care much for this conversation, do you?”

His smile seemed to her so pitiful that her detestation vanished, leaving her weak and ashamed.

“Then let’s change it. As a matter of fact I didn’t really come here to talk to you, or anything of that kind — but it happens to be your birthday on Sunday.”

“So it is. How sweet of you to remember.”

“It isn’t sweet of me, and you know it. But the thing is, I shan’t be here on Sunday — so I want to give you my present now. No, wait — it puts you under no obligation, it didn’t cost me anything, and if you don’t accept it, I shall throw it away, in the Seine probably. It’s something that belonged to Mother.” He took a small, worn leather box from his pocket and slid it across the table.

“Shall I open it now?”

“I should like it if you would.”

Uneasily, she did so and found a bracelet: a curved plaque of dark blue enamel, chased with gold, encrusted with brilliants, and held on either side by a pair of serpentine chains of dull gold. Old-fashioned and pretty, Claude thought it.

“Oh Pierre, it’s sweet of you, but I can’t —”

“My God, can’t you even do that for me? You know you really are a selfish little devil at times, Claude. When I told you I’d throw it away if you didn’t accept it, I meant it. If you can’t bear anything that comes from me, think of it as a present from my mother — your aunt. Here—” Having destroyed his pleasure in making the gift, and any possibility that she might have enjoyed receiving it, Pierre laid hold of Claude’s wrist and put the bracelet round it.

The clasp was an unusual one and he fumbled with it, swearing under his breath as he did so.

Unable to speak, Claude watched in an agony of distaste. She did not want the bracelet, but still less did she want a scene, and she had enough experience of Pierre to know that another refusal would provoke a scene. Fortunately, the bracelet meant nothing to her. Had she wanted it she would have felt compelled to provoke the scene she dreaded. Her head was aching and she wished she need never see Pierre again.

“There!” he said, smiling proudly and without a trace of self-consciousness. “See how nice it looks, you silly little thing.”

3

FOR the second time that evening she detested him. The fact that she must now display gratitude did nothing to lessen this feeling. On the contrary. But Pierre was looking expectant. With an effort, she parted her lips for speech. As she did so a waiter came hastening towards them. Mademoiselle was wanted on the telephone. Claude stood up with alacrity.

The bracelet. was cool and heavy on her wrist. Consciousness of this, and gratitude for the interruption, prevented her wondering who was calling her.

“Hullo, dopey.”

“Oh —” At the sound of André’s voice she wanted to cry.

“Claude — are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“There must be something the matter with the telephone. For a change. Listen, dear, I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“It’s of no importance.”

“Yes it is. You hate waiting. But I couldn’t help it.” He sounded happy, triumphant. “Guess what’s just happened.”

“I don’t think I can,” said Claude, matching the happiness of his tones with her own. But she was trembling: he is going to put me off; he is, but I won’t behave like Pierre.

“Then I’ll tell you. I’ve sold the picture of you.”

“No!” Now her happiness was unfeigned.

“Yes. To the South American.”

“No!”

“Stop dealing me out negatives. He’s given me a couple more orders — and he’s paying in dollars.”

“Oh André. Oh darling. You’ll be a capitalist yet.”

“It’s an idea. Though, as the English aviators say, I’m afraid there’s no future to it.”

“I can’t tell you how glad I am.”

“You are a dear.”

Remembering her own words to Pierre, Claude shuddered.

“Claude — are you there?”

“Yes.”

“What is the matter with this telephone? The thing is, all this took longer than I expected, what with sales talk and sorties for drink. My patron has, in fact, only just left. So I thought, unless you’re set on eating in the Quarter, why don’t we spend some of the money I haven’t yet laid hands on and go to that place in the Bois? It’ll look much better if we confront the revolution with debts rather than assets. Hi! You still there?”

“Of course,” said Claude, who was crying with pleasure.

“What about it?”

“I’ll pick you up at the studio as fast as may be.”

“Sure you wouldn’t rather meet me there?”

“Oh no, the studio’s on the way. See you in ten minutes.”

While she was drying her eyes, Claude caught sight of her bracelet. The scene with Pierre seemed to her to belong to a far-distant past and she wondered, idly, why she had allowed anything so unimportant to upset her. Now that she looked at the bracelet objectively she saw that it was more than pretty: it was beautiful. Smiling, she stretched her fingers. Pierre had often said her hands were lovely, and she had dismissed the compliment as inaccurate. Now the brilliant blue of the enamel, the dull gold of the chains, threw into relief the pale brown of her skin. She pulled up her sleeve and, holding out her arm, looked at it with surprised pleasure. The light from the naked bulb over the telephone made the brilliants wink. Confidence flowing into her, Claude powdered her face and ran out to give Pierre more pain by her absentminded gratitude, her animated farewell, than she had yet done by recalcitrance.

4

SILVERY green in the summer twilight, the Boulevard Saint-Germain had never looked to Claude more beautiful than it did now. Ignoring the Métro station, she walked until she found a taxi. She had to repeat the address twice, and as she did so laughed without knowing why. “Ah, la jeunesse ,” said (he driver, shaking his head. But he did not say it as Claude’s concierge would have done, and when he looked into the mirror in front of him and saw Claude’s curly head bent in contemplation of her bracelet, he smiled. At the corner of the Rue de Vaugirard, he nearly collided with another taxi. Both drivers leaned out and abused each other with energy and variety. Neither was angry, each enjoyed the noise. More aware of this than of the fact she had narrowly escaped death, Claude felt she loved them both, that she loved everyone — except Pierre.

At last the taxi drew up beneath the acacias that lined André’s sidewalk. She tipped exorbitantly, pushed open the red wooden door, and ran down the cobbled yard lined by the half-glass walls of studios. André was standing in his open doorway. He was not, Claude suddenly realized with amused surprise, nearly so good-looking as Pierre; but it was clear that of the two, André found living the more natural. He had brown hair and gray eyes; his gestures were habitually quiet, and he seldom appeared hurried.

“If you go on like this,” he was saying, looking at her affectionately, “you’ll end up in the newsreels ns an Olympic runner.”

The whitewashed studio was cool and fresh. In an unobtrusive way, André was fastidious. Painting materials and books were stacked tidily; a kitchen cupboard was protected by a shabby screen on which faded pink parrots disported themselves; the bedroom was a small gallery at the top of the ladderlike wooden staircase. Half a dozen drawings by contemporaries, a couple of political posters, and a map of Mexico were pinned to the walls. André had a great many maps and pinned up a different one every few weeks.

Claude’s gaze wandered contentedly from the branches of the tree that grew immediately outside the window to the empty easel that had held her port rait.

“What good news!” she said. Then she remembered the sittings during which she had ached with longing for Andrée to stop looking at her and begin to think about her. But not even this memory had the power to disperse her present contentment.

In fact, André often thought about her and was doing so at this moment. The violence of her excitement at his good fortune surprised as well as touched him. Usually, he reflected, she was so quiet. André was not obtuse but as he rarely questioned his friends about their feelings, supposing they would tell him anything they wished him to know, he was as ignorant of Claude’s unfortunate relations with her cousin as of the fact that the subdued amiability of her manner towards himself was the unnatural result of Claude’s determination to spare André what Pierre inflicted upon her.

“Why, I believe you’re even more pleased than I am.”

“Nonsense.” Claude smiled. “But, after all, it was my picture.”

“True.” He smiled back. Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, delight flickered between them. Neither spoke. Each was astonished.

André’s character was not, as Pierre supposed, an irresponsible or exploiting one. The complicated parts of his nature found a direct outlet in his work, and for practical purposes he was on the simple side and inclined to take things for granted with friendly indifference. Because she had fallen in love with him at their first meeting, Claude had subsequently behaved towards him as a very quiet and mildly affectionate friend — and had continued to do so with so much determination that he had ended by accepting her as such and dismissing from his mind his first impression of her as a turbulent and exciting girl. But this evening she seemed to him to have recaptured her former manner. He accepted the second change as he had the first. It did not occur to him to ask her whom she had come from. And had he done so her answer would have told neither of them anything relevant. For Claude was as unaware as was André of the fact that her present glittering animation was the result of the battle of nerves to which Pierre had subjected her.

“I shall do another picture of you,” said André, trying unsuccessfully to look at her and pour out drinks. “May I?”

“Yes, you may.” She would have liked to add, “You may do anything you like with me,” but refrained because the remark savored to her of Pierre. Avoiding André’s gaze, she looked around the studio, comparing its colored lightness, its branch-filled windows, with the dark apartment, apparently all sideboards, with which Pierre had been provided by his father. For a moment, irresistible malice gave a touch of piquancy to her expression.

“Won’t you take your jacket off?” André helped her to do so, then handed her a drink and continued to stare at her. Her hair and her clothes were much as usual, but her expression was not and it was at Claude’s expression that André now stared. As he did so, her face became paler, her eyes more brilliant. But in losing composure she gained authority. Now it was André’s turn to look down. For the first time he noticed her bracelet. Oldfashioned and sophisticated, glowing in the last of the evening light, it emphasized the beauty of Claude’s hands and suggested both maturity and exoticism. “What a lovely object!” he murmured.

Following his gaze, Claude too looked down at the bracelet. For a moment they stood, close together but not touching, their heads bent. Then Claude began to tremble. She was afraid André was going to ask her how she had acquired the bracelet. It no more occurred to her to lie than it did to him to question her. Unconsciously, she put the fingers of her left hand over the bracelet, swallowing as she did so. André looked at her thoughtfully. But his thoughts were not, as she supposed, of the bracelet.

“Do we have to go and eat in the Bois?” he asked, and the gravity of his tone would have been appropriate to a far more serious question.

Had André asked her this before her meeting with Pierre, Claude would have replied firmly, “Not necessarily in the Bois, but we have to eat somewhere,” her view of André’s feeding being primarily maternal. But Pierre and three Martinis having temporarily uncivilized her, she merely smiled and shook her head.

“You’re so beautiful,” said André, in the tone of one making a belated discovery.

“Well I’m not” — in her old manner. “But” — returning to her new one — “I like to hear you say so.”

“Do you?” André sounded dreamy. He had joked about the South American’s dollars, but the South American’s discernment had provided him with his first moment of worldly success, and the part of André that was steady and anxious to justify its existence was wildly exhilarated.

“Yes I do,” said Claude, scarcely recognizing the sound of her own voice. All sense of individuality, as she had hitherto known it, was slipping away from her. If one could become in a few hours as different from the self with which one was familiar as she now felt herself from the girl who had stood in her room, listening fearfully to a ringing telephone, how could one assume one had a self? Uncovering her bracelet, she smiled down at it. It was so beautiful that, having some instincts of self-preservation, she had almost forgotten how she came by it.

“Claude.”

“Yes.”

“Look at me.”

She did so.

“Oh my darling, I have been such an imbecile.”

“Have you?”

“Most certainly.”

“Why?”

“Because, I think — I love you.”

For a second Claude shut her eyes. Passionately, but anxiously, André put his arms round her.

“Do you — do you think that you —”

“Yes,” she whispered, “oh yes.”

He kissed her. Her reaction was the one she had expected. As soon as her happiness allowed her to speak she asked, “Shall I stay with you?”

Her tone was so businesslike that, despite the gravity of his mood, André could not help smiling. “Yes, please,” he said, then hesitated. Unlike Pierre, he respected the prejudices of those for whom he cared. “Yes, please,” he repeated, “but not just for tonight. I meant, would you marry me?”

Incredulously, Claude watched her room fade, alter, become André’s studio; heard her own voice whispering fervent affirmatives.

They kissed again, growing every moment more conscious of what they were doing and more gratified by it.

Neither of them referred to the bracelet: André because he had already forgotten its existence, Claude because she wished to do so now that it had, as she thought, served its purpose. But the kindness with which she subsequently treated Pierre led her cousin, eventually, to dislike her.