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And Both Were Young

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON

"Where are you going, Philippa?" Mrs. Jackman asked sharply as Flip turned away from the group of tourists standing about in the cold hall of the château of Chillon.

"I'm going for a walk," Flip said.

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. "I'd rather you stayed with us, Flip."

She looked up at him, her eyes bright with pleading. "Please, Father!" she whispered. Then she turned and ran out of the château, away from the dark, prisoning stones and out into the sunlight that was as bright and as sudden as bugles. She ran down a small path that led to Lake Geneva, and because she was blinded by sudden tears and by the sunlight striking on the lake she did not see the boy or the dog sitting on a rock at the lake's edge, and she crashed into them.

"I'm sorry!" she gasped as the boy slid off the rock and one of his legs went knee-deep into the water before he was able to regain his balance. She looked at his angry, handsome face and said quickly, this time in French, "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't see you."

"You should watch where you're going!" the boy cried and bent down to wring the water out of his trouser leg. The dog, a large and ferocious brindle bull, began leaping up at Flip, threatening to knock her down.

"Oh —" she gasped. "Please — please —"

"Down, Ariel. Down!" the boy commanded, and the bulldog dropped to his feet and then lay down in the path in front of Flip, his stump of a tail wagging with such frenzy that his whole body quivered.

The boy looked at Flip's navy blue coat. "I'm afraid Ariel got your coat dirty. His paws are always muddy."

"That's all right," Flip said. "If I let it dry, it will brush off." She looked up at the boy standing very straight and tall, one foot on the rock. Flip was tall ("I do hope you won't grow any taller, Philippa dear," Mrs. Jackman kept saying), but this boy was even taller than she was and perhaps a year older.

"I'm sorry I knocked you into the lake," Flip said.

"Oh, that's all right. I'll dry off." The boy smiled; Flip had not realized how somber his face was until he smiled. "Is anything the matter?" he asked.

Flip brushed her hand across her eyes and smiled back. "No. I was just — in a rage. I always cry when I'm mad. It's terrible!" She blew her nose furiously.

The boy laughed. "May I ask you a question?" he said. "It's to settle a kind of bet." He reached down and took hold of the bulldog's collar, forcing him to rise to his feet. "Now sit properly, Ariel," he commanded, and the dog dropped obediently to its haunches, its tongue hanging out as it panted heavily. "And try not to drool, Ariel," the boy said. Then he smiled at Flip again. "You arestaying at the Montreux Palace, aren't you?"

"Yes." Flip nodded. "We came in from Paris last night."

"Are you Norwegian?"

"No. I'm American."

"She was right then," the boy said.

"Right? About what? Who?" Flip asked. She sat down on the rock at the edge of the water and Ariel inched over until he could rest his head on her knee.

"My mother. We play a game whenever we're in hotels, my parents and I. We look at all the people in the dining room and decide what nationalities they are. It's lots of fun. My mother thought you were American, but my father and I thought maybe you were Norwegian, because of your hair, you know."

Flip reached up and felt her hair. It was the color of very pale corn and she wore it cut quite short, parted on the side with a bang falling over her rather high forehead. Mrs. Jackman had suggested that she have a permanent, but for once Flip's father had not agreed. "She has enough wave of her own and it suits her face this way," he said, and Mrs. Jackman relented.

"Your hair's very pretty," the boy said quickly. "And it made me wonder if you mightn't be Scandinavian. Your father's so very fair too. But my mother said that your mother couldn't be anything but American. She said that only an American could wear clothes like that. She's very beautiful, your mother."

"She isn't my mother," Flip said. "My mother is dead."

"Oh." The boy dropped his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Mrs. Jackman came from Paris with Father and me." Flip's voice was as hard and sharp as the stone she had picked up and was holding between her fingers. "You'd have thought she was just waiting for Mother to die, the way she moved in."

"Was your mother ill long?" the boy asked.

"She was killed in an automobile accident. A year ago. She's always being terribly kind, Mrs. Jackman, I mean, and doing things for me, but I think she doesn't care if I live or die. What I think is, she lusts after my father." Now the words were muffled. She had never said this before. She had thought it, but she had not said it.

"I'm sorry," the boy said again, then, as though to cut the tension, "Watch out that Ariel doesn't drool on your skirt," he said. "One of his worst faults is drooling. What's your name?"

"Philippa Hunter. What's yours?" She tried to relax.

"Paul Laurens. People" — he hesitated — "people who aren't your own parents can sometimes be wonderful. I know —" He broke off as though he had said too much.

"Not Mrs. Jackman," Flip said.

"She's very beautiful."

"Beauty is only skin deep, according to my grandmother. And Eunice's skin may not be thick, but it's not deep either. She makes me call her Eunice, and I hate that. We're not friends. And when she calls my father 'darling' I want to hit her. She's the one I got so mad at just now, so I knocked you into the lake." She looked at Paul in apology and surprise. "I've never talked about Eunice before. Not to anyone."

"Well," Paul said, "sometimes you get to a point where you have to spill things out, or you burst."

"I guess I was there," Philippa said. "Thanks for not being put off."

"Don't be silly. And it's safe with me. Ariel's made your coat very dirty. I hope it will brush off. You have on a uniform, don't you?"

"Yes," Flip answered, and her voice was harsh again because tears were threatening her again. "I'm being sent to boarding school, and it's all because of Eunice Jackman wanting me out of the way so she can get her claws into Father. He'd never have thought of making me go away to school if Eunice hadn't persuaded him it was — what did she say? — inappropriate — for me to travel around with him while he makes sketches for a book."

"That's too bad. But — well, my mother has to be travelling all winter. She's a singer, and she's going to be on tour. So Father and I are managing alone."

"But you'll be with your father," Flip said. She looked out across the lake, forcing the tears back.

"What do you want to do when you get out of school?" Paul asked.

"Be an artist, like Father. School won't help me to be an artist." She continued to stare out over the water, and her eyes rested on a small lake steamer, clean and white, passing by. "I should like to get on that boat," she said, "and just ride and ride forever and ever."

"But the boat comes to shore and everybody has to get off at last," Paul told her.

"Why?" Flip asked. "Why?" She looked longingly after the boat for a moment and then she looked at the mountains that seemed to be climbing up into the sky. They looked like the mountains that she imagined when she looked up at cloud formations during the long, slow summers in Connecticut. Now she was in Switzerland and these were real mountains, with real snow on their dazzling peaks. "Well —" She stood up, dislodging Ariel. "I'd better go back now. Eunice Jackman will think I'm off weeping somewhere. She says Mother's been dead nearly a year and I should stop moping. She's doing her best to stop Father moping, that's for sure." Now that she had started talking about Eunice, it seemed she could not stop. "She's already had two or three husbands, and she wants to add Father to her collection. If I'm in boarding school I can't stop her. I don't know what's the matter with me, going on this way. I'm sorry, Paul."

"It's all right." Paul took her hand. His grip was firm and strong. "Ariel doesn't usually take to people the way he's taken to you. When Ariel doesn't like people I know I'm never going to like them, either. He has very good taste. Perhaps we'll meet again sometime. I'd like that."

"I'd like it, too." Philippa returned his smile. "It doesn't sound likely, with me being incarcerated in boarding school."

"I'm sorry about that," Paul said. "It sounds awful. I hate institutions. But Switzerland's a small country, and my father and I are going to spend the winter up on the mountain while Mother's on tour. She goes tomorrow. They've been wandering around the château this morning; they love it. It's where my father proposed to my mother." He smiled again and then his face changed and became so serious that Flip looked at him in surprise. "I don't like it, because I don't like any place that's been a prison." But then his face lightened and he said, "Do you know that poem of the English poet, Byron? The Prisoner of Chillon? It's about a man who was a prisoner in the château."

"Yes," Flip said. "We studied it in English last year. I didn't like it much, but I think I shall pretend that my school is a prison and I am the prisoner and at Christmas my father will rescue me."

"If he doesn't," Paul said, "I will."

"Thank you," Flip said. "Are you — do you go to school?"

The same odd, strained look came into Paul's eyes that had darkened them when he mentioned prisons. "No," he said. "I'm not going to school right now."

"Well ... good-bye," Flip said.

"Good-bye." Paul shook hands with her again. She turned clumsily and patted Ariel's head; then she started back up the path toward the château of Chillon.

About halfway to the château she saw her father coming down the path toward her. He was alone, so she ran up to him and caught hold of his hand.

"All right now, Flippet?" Philip Hunter asked.

"Yes, Father."

"It's not as though it were forever, funny face."

"I know, Father. It's all right. I'm going to pretend that the school is the château of Chillon and I'm the prisoner, and then at Christmas you'll come and liberate me."

"I certainly will," Philip Hunter said. "Now let's go find Eunice. She's worried about you."

Eunice Jackman was waiting for them, her hands plunged into the pockets of her white linen suit. Her very black hair was pulled back from her face into a smooth doughnut at the nape of her neck. "Only a very beautiful woman should wear her hair like that," Philip Hunter had told Flip. Now he waved at Eunice and shouted, "Hi!"

"Hi!" Eunice called, taking one hand leisurely out of her pocket and waving back. "Feeling better, Philippa?"

"I can't feel better if I haven't been feeling badly," Flip said icily. "I just wanted to go for a walk."

Eunice laughed. She laughed a great deal, but her laugh never sounded to Flip as though she thought anything was funny. "So you went for a walk. Didn't you like the château, Philippa?" Eunice never called her Flip.

"I don't like to look at things with a lot of other people," Flip said. "I like to look at them by myself. Anyhow, I like the lake better. The lake and the mountains."

Mrs. Jackman looked over at Philip Hunter and raised her eyebrows. Then she slipped her hand through his arm. Flip looked at him, too, at the short straw-colored hair and the intense blue eyes, and her heart ached with longing and love because she was to be sent away from him.

"Wait till you get up to the school," Mrs. Jackman said. "According to my friend, Mrs. Downs, there's a beautiful view of the lake from every window. You're going to adore school once you're there, Philippa."

"Necessities are necessary, but it isn't necessary to adore them," Flip said. She hated herself for sounding so surly, but when she was with Mrs. Jackman she always seemed to say the wrong things. She stared out over the lake to the mountains of France. She wanted to go and press her burning cheeks against the cool whiteness of the snowy tips.

"Well, if you're determined to be unhappy, you probably will be," Mrs. Jackman said. "Come on, Phil," and she patted Philip Hunter's arm. "It's time to drive back to the hotel and have lunch, and then it will be time to take Philippa up to the school. Most girls would consider themselves extremely fortunate to be able to go to school in Switzerland. How on earth did you get so dirty, Philippa? You're all covered with mud. For heaven's sake, brush her coat off, Phil. We don't want her arriving at the school looking like a ragamuffin."

Flip said nothing. She reached for her father's hand and they walked back to the tram that would take them along the lake to the Montreux Palace.

While they were washing up for lunch Flip said to her father, "Why did she have to come?"

"Eunice?"

"Yes. Why did she have to come?"

Philip Hunter was sitting on the edge of the bed, his sketch pad on his knee. While Flip was drying her hands he was sketching her. She was used to being sketched at any and all odd moments and paid no attention. "Father," she prodded him.

At last he looked up from the pad. "She didn't have to come. She offered to come since it was she who suggested this school, and it was most kind of her. You're very rude to Eunice, Flippet, and I don't like it."

"I'm sorry," she said, leaning against him and looking down at the dozens of little sketches on the open page of his big pad. She looked at the sketch he had just finished of her, at the quick line drawings of people in the tram, of Eunice in the tram, of sightseers in the château, of Eunice in the château, of Eunice drinking coffee in the salon of the Montreux Palace, of Eunice on the train from Paris, of Eunice sitting on a suitcase in the Gare Saint-Lazare. She handed the pad back to him and went over to her suitcase filled with all the regulation blouses and underclothes and stockings Eunice had bought for her; it was so very kind of Eunice. "I don't see why I can't stay with you," Flip said.

Philip Hunter got up from the bed and took her hands in his. "Philippa, listen to me. No, don't pull away. Stand still and listen. I should have left you in New York with your grandmother. But I listened to you and we did have a beautiful summer together in Paris, didn't we?"

"Oh, yes!"

"And now I suppose I should really send you back to New York to Gram, but I think you need to be more with young people, and it would mean that we couldn't be together at Christmas, or at Easter. So in sending you to school I'm doing the best I can to keep us together as much as possible. I'm going to be wandering around under all sorts of conditions making sketches for Roger's book, and you couldn't possibly come with me even if it weren't for missing a year of school. Now be sensible, Flip, please, darling, and don't make it harder for yourself and for me than it already is. Eunice is right. If you set your mind on being unhappy, you will be unhappy."

"I haven't set my mind on being unhappy," Flip said. "I don't want to be unhappy."

"Everything's understood then, Flippet?"

"I guess so."

"Come along down to the dining room then. Eunice will be wondering what on earth's keeping us."

After lunch, which Flip could not eat, they took her to the station. Flip's ticket said: No. 09717 Pensionnat Abelard — Jaman — Chemin de Fer Montreux Oberland Bernois Troisième Classe, Montreux à Jaman, valable 10 jours. Eunice was very much impressed because there were special tickets for the school.

The train went up the mountain like a snake. The mountain was so steep that the train climbed in a continuous series of hairpin bends, stopping frequently at the small villages that clustered up the mountainside. Flip sat next to the window and stared out with a set face. Sometimes they could see the old grey stones of a village church, or a glimpse of a square with a fountain in the center. They passed new and ugly stucco villas occasionally, but mostly old brown chalets with flowers in the windows. Sometimes in the fields by the chalets there would be cows, though most of the cows were grazing farther up the mountain. The fields and roadsides were full of autumn flowers and everything was still a rich summer green. At one stop there was a family of children, all in blue denim shorts and white shirts, three girls and two boys, waiting for the pleasant-looking woman in a tweed suit who stepped off the train. All the children rushed at her, shouting, "Mother! Mother!"

"Americans," Eunice said. "There's quite a considerable English and American colony here, I believe."

Flip stared longingly out the window as the children and their mother went running and laughing up the hill. She thought perhaps Paul and his mother were happy in the same way. She felt her father's hand on her knee and she said quickly, "Write me lots, Father. Lots and lots and lots."

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Excerpted from And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'engle. Copyright © 1983 Crosswicks, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
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