The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [83]
All at once we had an invasion of the American Navy. Then things really started moving. They were in terrific form. The little French jazz band started playing (they turned out to be not half-bad, really très zazou) and as I was practically the only girl there, I danced with all the sailors.
If anyone had put it to me an hour before that I would suddenly find myself in the midst of a bunch of exquisitely mannered seamen whose whole purpose in life was to request the pleasure of my company for the next dance, or see to it that I was constantly supplied with cigarettes and lights and ash trays and pretty compliments, I would have been frankly incredulous (only I wouldn’t have used that phrase). But the boys, before coming ashore that day, had apparently been given one of the stiffest chewings-out in their naval careers about behavior becoming to the uniform and a long list of do’s and don’ts relating to their treatment of civilians, with the result that I might have been at one of those gracious Southern Balls Missy’s always going on about, with all those well-brought-up Southu’n genne’lmen in full chivalric flower. Which just shows you.
Isn’t it funny, I had so definitely planned to write Jim when I got back that night. In fact the letter had been forming itself in my mind the whole way out to Biarritz. But when we did get back it was five o’clock in the morning and I just flopped into bed. And when I woke up the next afternoon the sun was out and I’d forgotten every word of it.
Now we eat breakfast every day in our bathing suits on the patio, the early morning air pungent with aromatic smells of food and flowers, and the coffee tasting of the sun.
I sit on for hours afterward staring idly at the snails clinging to knife-blade leaves growing in our garden. Sometimes I pick them off. They make a sucking noise and there’s a small round wet spot where they sat. Are they eating the leaves or just balancing on them? Everything shimmers and hums around me— the sun and the sand and the sea—a pale sky high above and gravel crunching under foot—breezes blowing butterflies.
The sun burns through the iron garden chairs and insects fall into my coffee cup and try to crawl out. I get dizzy and close my eyes and open them again on the rest of the garden—mimosa and large tousled magenta roses with bright red buds, orange gladioli, a pine tree dead as if strangled by the morning glory vines climbing up it, its long tan needles blowing in the soft warm wind like hair.
Eventually the sun gets too hot and burns the ground under my feet. Then I put on my sandals and go down the stone steps into the sea.
We take sandwiches with us for lunch and spend the rest of the day at the beach. The cat is furious because we’re never around to feed him any more. He’ll probably bring us that mouse again.
Received a sweet letter from Jim today. Must write him soon. Must, must, must.
May 22
Wednesday
Boy, we met a real nut on the beach today. A skinny young American with a fierce black mustache called Hugo McCarthy. He’d just left the South of France a couple of days ago, where he’d been kicked out of Somerset Maugham’s villa in Cap Ferrat for the third time. Every time he thought about it he became absolutely doubled up with rage, his whole body trembling under the impact of his emotions.
“Where does he come off giving me the bum’s rush?” he steamed. “Who the hell does he think he is anyway? He needs me, boy, I don’t need him! I’m the colorful eccentric all these characters write about. Hey, do you know I’m in three books already? Met an Englishman called Tynan in Spain a while ago and he put me in his bullfight book, and a couple of Americans I ran into last year skiing at Klosters—wouldn’t be fair to tell you their names until I hear how it comes out, but they’re very well known—anyway they’re still fighting about which one’s going to get to have me in his.”
“But Somerset Maugham doesn’t write novels any more, does he?” I asked.
“That