Mavis Gallant - From the Fifteenth District

Another thing still troubled Molly, but it was not a matter she could mention: she did not know what to do about her bosom — whether to try to hold it up in some way or, on the contrary, bind it flat. She had been granted, by the mistake of a door’s swinging wide, an upsetting glimpse of Mrs. Massie changing out of a bathing suit, and she had been worried about the future shape of her own body ever since. She pored over reproductions of statues and paintings in books belonging to Mr. Cranefield. The Eves and Venuses represented were not reassuring — they often seemed to be made of India rubber. There was no one she could ask. Barbara was too dangerous; the mention of a subject such as this always made her go too far and say things Molly found unpleasant.

She did remark to both Mrs. Massie and Mr. Cranefield that she hated the Rivabella school. She said, “I would give anything to be sent home to England, but I can’t leave my father.”

After a long conversation with Mrs. Massie, Mr. Cranefield agreed to speak to Alec. Interfering with other people was not his way, but Molly struck him as being pathetic. Something told him that Molly was not useful leverage with either parent and so he mentioned Will first: Will would soon be fourteen, too old for the school at Rivabella. Unless the Webb children were enrolled, and quickly, in good French establishments — say, in lycées at Nice — they would become unfit for anything save menial work in a foreign language they could not speak in an educated way. Of course, the ideal solution would be England, if Alec felt he could manage that.

Alec listened, sitting not quite straight in his chair, wearing a dressing gown, his back to a window. He found all light intolerable now. Several times he lifted his hand as if he were trying to see through it. No one knew why Alec made these odd gestures; some people thought he had gone slightly mad because death was too long in coming. He parted his lips and whispered, “French school … If you would look after it,” and then, “I would be grateful.”

Mr. Cranefield dropped his voice too, as if the gray of the room called for hush. He asked if Alec had thought of appointing a guardian for them. The hand Alec seemed to want transparent waved back and forth, stiffly, like a shut ivory fan.

All that Barbara said to Mr. Cranefield was “Good idea,” once he had assured her French high schools were not priest-ridden.

“It might have occurred to her to have done something about it,” said Mrs. Massie, when this was repeated.

“Things do occur to Barbara,” said Mr. Cranefield. “But she doesn’t herself get the drift of them.”

The only disturbing part of the new arrangement was that the children had been assigned to separate establishments, whose schedules did not coincide; this meant they would not necessarily travel in the same bus. Molly had shot up as tall as Will now. Her hair was dark and curled all over her head. Her bones and her hands and feet were going to be larger, stronger, than her mother’s and brothers’. She looked, already, considerably older than her age. She was obstinately innocent, turning her face away when Barbara, for her own good, tried to tell her something about men.

Barbara imagined her willful, ignorant daughter being enticed, trapped, molested, impregnated, and disgraced. And ending up wondering how it happened, Barbara thought. She saw Molly’s seducer, brutish and dull. I’d get him by the throat, she said to herself. She imagined the man’s strong neck and her own small hands, her brittle bird-bones. She said, “You are never, ever to speak to a stranger on the bus. You’re not to get in a car with a man — not even if you know him.”

“I don’t know any man with a car.”

“You could be waiting for a bus on a dark afternoon,” said Barbara. “A car might pull up. Would you like a lift? No, you must answer. No and no and no. It is different for the boys. There are the two of them. They could put up a fight.”

“Nobody bothers boys,” said Molly.

Barbara drew breath but for once in her life said nothing.

Alec’s remission was no longer just miraculous — it had become unreasonable. Barbara’s oldest brother hinted that Alec might be better off in England, cared for on National Health: they were paying unholy taxes for just such a privilege. Barbara replied that Alec had no use for England, where the Labour government had sapped everyone’s self-reliance. He believed in having exactly the amount of suffering you could pay for, no less and no more. She knew this theory did not hold water, because the Laceys and Alec’s own sister had done the paying. It was too late now; they should have thought a bit sooner; and Alec was too ravaged to make a new move.

The car that, inevitably, pulled up to a bus stop in Nice was driven by a Mr. Wilkinson. He had just taken Major Lamprey and the Major’s old mother to the airport. He rolled his window down and called to Molly, through pouring rain, “I say, aren’t you from Lou Mas?”

If he sounded like a foreigner’s Englishman, like a man in a British joke, it was probably because he had said so many British-sounding lines in films set on the Riviera. Eric Wilkinson was the chap with the strong blue eyes and ginger mustache, never younger than thirty-four, never as much as forty, who flashed on for a second, just long enough to show there was an Englishman in the room. He could handle a uniform, a dinner jacket, tails, a monocle, a cigarette holder, a swagger stick, a polo mallet, could open a cigarette case without looking like a gigolo, could say without being an ass about it, “Bless my soul, wasn’t that the little Maharani?” or even, “Come along, old boy — fair play with Monica, now!” Foreigners meeting him often said, “That is what the British used to be like, when they were still all right, when the Riviera was still fit to live in.” But the British who knew him were apt to glaze over: “You mean Wilkinson?” Mrs. Massie and Mr. Cranefield said, “Well, Wilkinson, what are you up to now?” There was no harm to him: his one-line roles did not support him, but he could do anything, even cook. He used his car as a private taxi, driving people to airports, meeting them when they came off cruise ships. He was not a chauffeur, never said “sir,” and at the same time kept a certain distance, was not shy about money changing hands — no fake pride, no petit-bourgeois demand for a slipped envelope. Good-natured. Navy blazer. Summer whites in August. Wore a tie that carried a message. What did it stand for? A third-rate school? A disgraced, disbanded regiment? A club raided by the police? No one knew. Perhaps it was the symbol of something new altogether. “Still playing in those films of yours, Wilkinson?” He would flash on and off — British gent at roulette, British Army officer, British diplomat, British political agent, British anything. Spoke his line, fitted his monocle, pressed the catch on his cigarette case. His ease with other people was genuine, his financial predicament unfeigned. He had never been married, and had no children that he knew of.

“By Jove, it’s nippy,” said Wilkinson, when Molly had settled beside him, her books on her lap.

What made her do this — accept a lift from a murderer of schoolgirls? First, she had seen him somewhere safe once — at Mr. Cranefield’s. Also, she was wet through, and chilled to the heart. Barbara kept refusing or neglecting or forgetting to buy her the things she needed: a lined raincoat, a jersey the right size. (The boys were wearing hand-me-down clothes from England now, but no one Barbara knew of seemed to have a daughter.) The sleeves of her old jacket were so short that she put her hands in her pockets, so that Mr. Wilkinson would not despise her. He talked to Molly as he did to everyone, as if they were of an age, informing her that Major Lamprey and his mother were flying to Malta to look at a house. A number of people were getting ready to leave the South of France now; it had become so seedy and expensive, and all the wrong people were starting to move in.