A Year to Remember by Alec Waugh

Author:Alec Waugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

IX

I said in the first chapter of this book that fate vouchsafed me two romances in 1931. The second began during June. One morning as I was sitting on the terrace writing, with Evelyn beside me reading the Eclaireur de Nice, a taxi drove up to the hotel. From it stepped a young woman. She was alone. She had two suitcases. She was blonde. She was very thin. She was simply dressed in an ochre yellow sheath of linen. She moved with a lissom ease. Evelyn and I looked at each other. We knew exactly what each was thinking. ‘Let’s toss for it,’ I said. ‘A three day first refusal,’ Evelyn suggested. I won the toss.

That evening I was sitting on the terrace with my parents and Keith Winter over a coffee and a fine: Evelyn and Patrick were in Nice. She strolled slowly along the waterfront. I stood up. ‘I’m going to ask her to join us.’ My mother suggested that it would be more proper if the invitation came from her. ‘She probably only speaks French,’ I said. But that was not so. She spoke English with an individual but educated accent. Her name was Mary G … She was a Canadian, she said. Her husband was an American, a painter. He was in Russia. He was going to join her here in a few days. They had a flat in Paris. She had two daughters. She was so slim that it was very hard to think of her as having daughters. She was very quiet, almost demure. I had not gained much by winning my bet, I thought.

Two evenings later, I had a small dinner party to which I invited her. During the previous day and a half I had scarcely seen her. She had not been to the beach. She had dined in Nice. She had gone in by bus. We had a short gossip by the Octroi, which was pleasant enough, but she had a remote air. Later she told me that at the time she was taking drugs. At the dinner – we were a party of six – she sat at the other end of the table. She looked very beautiful, but very abstracted. She did not take much part in the conversation, and I wondered if Evelyn would have better luck with her when my three days were up. We dined at what was then called the Cabanon and is now Jimmy’s. After dinner we went to the Garden Bar. She sat against the wall, her head rested against it. She scarcely spoke, then, afterwards, as we walked back to the hotel, she slipped her hand into mine and pressed her sharp pointed nails into my palm. It was one of the most electric sensations of my life. In ten minutes we were in bed.

Many years later she was to say to me, ‘If you want to get to know a man, you’ve got to go to bed with him.’ I do not think she bothered to get to know a man, until she had been to bed with him.

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