Night Without Stars

  I said: “How forbearing you’ve been not to use your tot-schlager on me.”

  Bénat inclined his head. “ Glad you appreciate it.”

  “Several people have been predicting an early funeral.”

  Bénat said: “What people?”

  “Oh.… John Chapel among others.”

  “What does he know of this?”

  “Not more than he knew twelve months ago.”

  There was a minute’s silence.

  “Well,” said Bénat casually, losing interest again. “ Now you know the truth. Honour is satisfied. Is there anything more we can do for you?”

  “… I can understand your not wasting too many sleepless nights over Pierre.”

  “I’ve wasted none,” said Bénat. “And the conditions?”

  While they had been talking I’d been watching them both, trying hard to understand things that went a good lot deeper than the killing of Pierre Grognard.

  “Oh, the conditions.… Well, I’ve a proposal to make.”

  They both looked at me.

  I said: “ This has all been very friendly—except the last condition. For people of such good taste it strikes rather a wrong note, don’t you think? Robs the evening of its—warmth.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “That you extend your trust a bit further. What do you do with yourself when Charles is away, Alix?”

  “Oh … the usual things.”

  “Well, I suggest that—for the sake of last year—you agree to spend three or four days with me, doing the sort of things we did then. Perhaps it would be a bore to you, but it would be a gesture to end on. That done, I’ll leave Nice and not bother either of you any more.”

  Eventually Bénat said: “Are you a poker player, Giles?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so.”

  Alix said: “ I don’t think it will help anyone if I agree to meet you.”

  “It will help me.”

  “Is that important?”

  “I think so.”

  “He means,” said Bénat, “ that he still hopes to make you love him. Failing that, he will go back to the fogs with a beautiful memory.”

  “I don’t want to revive anything of those days,” she said. “ I’m trying to forget them.”

  “You’ll have the rest of your life to do that.”

  Bénat yawned. “ Why don’t you go to bed with him, Alix? Then he could return home satisfied.”

  “No,” I said. “ Profoundly dissatisfied.”

  She looked at me queerly through her lashes.

  “Grutli,” Bénat said, rubbing the dog’s ear, “ we are a patient and an understanding family, but this foreign gentleman requires all our patience and forbearance. We have confessed murder to satisfy him, and thrown in a little illegal trafficking to make a full load. We have bared our hearts and offered our bodies, but he rejects them and asks for our souls. What would you say to that?”

  The Great Dane barked gruffly.

  “Exactly. We would say that he is asking for the impossible, like the little dog baying at the moon. Or worse, for the moon does exist. The gentleman is out of date; he hasn’t read the right books; he is sublimating his sex instinct and giving it a halo. Very disgusting. Perhaps after all the spanner would have been more valuable.”

  “All right,” said Alix, who was still looking at me. “ If you want me to meet you I will for a few days. It won’t do any good, but I’ll do it. I don’t dislike you; I’ve nothing against you now. You don’t mind, do you, Charles?”

  “Nowadays,” said Charles, his lip drooping again, “ the fashionable word is not soul but Ego. A rose by any other name—at least it has the advantage of depriving the religious-minded of a useful lever. But be careful, Alix, that this ardent Englishman doesn’t re-convert you. Also, in turning your mind back to superstition, be sure that he doesn’t protestingly seduce you after all. It comes better that way, and one doesn’t need a cassock to be expert at the game.”

  I said to Alix: “You’ll do that?”

  “Yes.… If you want me to.”

  “Can I see you to-morrow?”

  She shrugged slightly, embarrassed. “As you please.”

  “I’ll keep to the contract. One week.”

  “One week. All right.”

  “I’ll phone you in the morning.”

  I glanced at Charles, and he looked down quickly at his glass.

  “I suppose you’ve no objection?”

  “Would you take notice of it if I had?”

  “No,” I said. “After all, you’ve had her for a year.”

  There was a sudden short silence.

  “As you graciously put it,” Bénat said.

  I realised as soon as I’d spoken that that was not the remark of a poker-player.

  We were back in Cagnes by soon after midnight. The sky was limpid, and the last clouds crouched over the sea. It seemed ages since Maurice had driven up under the shadow of the storm.

  The precautions I’d taken looked a bit juvenile: letter deposited with John, a chauffeur asked to wait. Bénat’s cool, logical, civilised brain had blown foolish suspicions away. His way of telling his story had put it all on a nice common-sense level. The German occupation, the betrayals, the killing of Pierre, were all “thrown away” as a sort of intellectual amusement. One didn’t imagine it as the violent truth.

  That was clear enough to reason. Everything was fine.

  But one’s reason doesn’t fill up the whole picture. Instincts get a share. It was pretty evident he was telling the truth about Grognard; no one could doubt that. This was something deeper that was troubling me.

  I came away feeling for some obscure cause that there was a tremendous antagonism growing up between us. And I drove back to Nice with the uneasy suggestion in my mind for the first time that my life was really in danger.

  Chapter 13

  So I’ll not need my black tie this week,” John said. “ Here’s the letter. I suppose you wouldn’t like me to read it before you destroy it?”

  “I’ll not destroy it. It’s going in the bank, with certain additions.”

  “And where did you go last night that you needed to do all that cloak-and-dagger stuff?”

  “Only out to dinner with a friend.”

  “Lady?”

  I made a non-committal noise.

  John took out his pipe and began to fill it. “And Pierre Grognard?”

  “That’s satisfactorily cleared up. More so than I’d reason to hope. He brought the accident on himself.”

  “Um? Sworn to secrecy or something?”

  “Yes. My feelings—in this—are with the person who told me.”

  John lit his pipe. In between gasps he said:

  “I’d like to know sometime. Remember and tell me when we meet in England.”

  “I’m not likely to forget.”

  “By the way, d’you recollect mentioning a man called Deffand? Met him yesterday.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. He is the man from the Sûreté.”

  “Ah.”

  “Rather a new type. Somebody means business sending him down. If he gets proper support he may do a lot. You should meet him.”

  “I have. At the Wintertons’.”

  “Don’t know how the devil those people get to know everybody. Look, I’m going to lunch in half an hour. Join me if you like.”

  “Thanks very much,” I said. “But I have a date.”

  He looked slowly up, appraisingly. “With the girl you were with last night? Or is it rude to ask?”

  “Yes to both questions,” I said. “ With Alix.”

  She was waiting as arranged at the corner of the Place Masséna.

  It was very hot, and she was hatless and bare-legged, in white sandals and a white, full-skirted silk frock. I came up beside her and stood looking at her for a minute, taking in the shape of her nostrils and the fair hair down in front of her ears and the single faint line along her forehead mad
e when she raised her eyebrows; the dark level, pencilled but not distorted line of her eyebrows and a small mole at the nape of her neck and the thickness of her hair at the parting.

  Then she turned and saw me, and the sudden glint of recognition didn’t seem wholly hostile.

  “Have you been there long?” she asked.

  “Not long. It was pleasant while it lasted.”

  As if to divert attention she said: “I really don’t know what good this is going to do. After you left I was sorry about this arrangement.”

  “Let’s have an apéritif.”

  I led her up the Avenue de la Victoire and we walked in silence for a few minutes. The street looked different for having her beside me.

  I said: “ D’you mind if we try this shabby little place?”

  We went into the café opposite her shoe-shop, where we had first met. The table we’d had was empty and I went across to it. The same waiter came over and I ordered the same drinks. Her face was polite but expressionless.

  She said: “What are you going to do when you go back to England?”

  “Try to become a lawyer again. Like Charles.”

  “Charles is—everything,” she said.

  “So I’ve noticed. Naturally I won’t attempt everything. In England it doesn’t always pay.”

  “Lucky England,” she said coolly.

  “Have you ever been?”

  “No.”

  “It would have its drawbacks to a Niçoise. But the sun is seen from time to time.”

  “I’m not a Niçoise.”

  There was a brief silence while we sipped our drinks. I said politely: “ Do you like your new life?”

  She looked up. “ My new life?”

  “Well, there must be a difference. Did you bring your car down this morning?”

  “Yes. I parked it.”

  “I have a car, too, though modest. I thought it would be useful for going about.”

  She stared out at the passing people. “ When I came over that morning I didn’t think it would amount to all this.”

  “No.… One suffers the penalty of being kind. You interfered that day and saved me from—dramatising my grievance. Now I’d like to repay the debt by saving you from yourself—as Charles would say.”

  “I don’t want saving from myself, thank you very much.”

  “Nor at the time,” I said, “ did I specially want saving from suicide.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll know better next time.”

  It was queer, all the noises were the same: the thin rattle of the trams, a woman arguing about lottery tickets at the next table, a man selling newspapers. To-day it was hotter, that was almost the only difference.

  I said: “ What made you change?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After Pierre was killed, what made you go in with your brother?”

  “Wasn’t it the natural thing to do? Besides …”

  “Besides what?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Besides what?”

  She made a little gesture. “Who wouldn’t? Why be a shop assistant at a few thousand francs a week when everything’s there for the taking?”

  “No conditions attached?”

  “What do they matter? That’s part of the fun. I help sometimes; the risks are small but there’s excitement. Life’s too short to sit in a corner all day learning the rules.”

  “Don’t be sure the risks are so small,” I said. “ You remember Deffand at the Wintertons?”

  “Oh, the Sûreté man. He’s clever, they say; but you can’t swim in a bog. In a few weeks he’ll be recalled and someone else sent down. It does not worry us.”

  “So you like your new life?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why did you jib at it at first then? Why did I find you in the shoe-shop to begin?”

  “I don’t think it was part of our agreement that I should sit and be cross-examined.”

  I smiled. “All right. Let’s go and lunch at Biffi’s. You don’t mind, do you?”

  We lunched at Biffi’s, at the same table, and the same waiters served us.

  She said: “It’s so strange you can see. I keep feeling I must help, tell you things.… It’s uncanny.”

  “Be careful of that. Mother instinct. It can lead to all sorts of disturbing complications.”

  She glanced at me. “ I don’t think there’s any danger now.”

  I helped her to wine. “I wonder, has Charles any illusions?”

  “Why should he have? It’s safer to be clear-sighted.”

  “I don’t know.… Personally I like my illusions. The universe is pretty terrifying; and so’s the world—getting more so every year. People talk about the law of the jungle, but the jungle is a haven of peace and mercy compared with Europe this last fifteen years. It seems to me that the only things that now make life and one’s common humanity bearable are just those little graces, the spiritual adventures—call ’em what you like—which altogether weigh practically nothing in any material scale. Why shouldn’t one believe in God and Santa Claus and the Moonlight Sonata if one chooses to? Perhaps it’s sad to be the victim of sentimentality, but is it sadder than to be the victim of one’s own disillusion?”

  She said: “ We in Europe are the victims of the time. Isn’t that it? Everyone learns from experience, and we have learned that the only way to survive is to see clearly, to believe in nothing but what we personally know, to accept nobody on trust, to work for ourselves alone and to take pleasure where we find it.”

  “Conviction’s grown on you in the last year.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “When I met you we’d a lot in common. We were both off balance because of the war. Since then, thank God, I’ve lost my grudge; but yours has completely changed. Resentment’s one thing; rebellion shows spirit, don’t you think. But disillusion isn’t spirit. It’s death.”

  “As I said,” she answered coolly, “ we’ve nothing whatever in common now. That’s why there is no point in these meetings.”

  “Alix, I could shake you.”

  “That was not in the agreement either.”

  “Well, be sure you don’t goad me too far.”

  The waiter brought the fruit.

  She said suddenly: “I don’t think you can say Charles trusts no one. Last night he told you the whole story of Pierre Grognard. What greater trust could anyone put in your honour?”

  “I thought it a generous gesture. But—is it trust if you add a threat? And I wonder sometimes whether there isn’t a certain relief, even a certain satisfaction to one’s vanity in—”

  “You’re most unfair to him,” she said. “He’s been generous to you all along. D’you think it would have been difficult for him to have had you put away? Instead he’s treated you with every courtesy, entertained you, explained everything as it happened, put himself—”

  I said: “I’m glad loyalty isn’t one of the virtues you’ve entirely thrown overboard.”

  “You don’t like Charles, do you?”

  “I like him. But I’m sorry for him.”

  “Sorry!”

  I met her indignant look. “ Yes. I think he’s a man with a brilliant past and no future.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Absolutely nothing at all. It’s only one of these feelings one gets.”

  She didn’t speak.

  I said: “In a way he’s symptomatic. As you are, Alix. You remember at the Wintertons he talked about Europe being sick. Well, he’s right. And he’s one of the signs of the sickness. If the symptoms multiply, the patient will die. If the patient recovers, the symptoms will disappear. What shall we do this afternoon?”

  “What you please.”

  “We didn’t meet that first afternoon, so the field is open. It’s hot. Shall we bathe?”

  “As you please.”

  “Have you a costume?”

  “In the car.”

  “Can I get it?”

  “No.
I’ll walk down with you.”

  We sat on the beach under a large blue-fringed umbrella, and the heat shimmered all round us on the stones. For a time we talked hardly at all. She wore a two-piece white bathing costume.

  She was sitting with her hands about her knees; and after a bit she glanced at me and saw me looking at her.

  I said: “ Do you mind?”

  “What?”

  “Admiration. Or does it offend the new rules?”

  She said: “I should hardly have thought you wanted to admire a running sore on the face of Europe.”

  “Oh, I didn’t specify the disease.”

  “Well, most symptoms are disagreeable.”

  “Seriously. Before I lost my sight I took it for granted, like breathing, hearing, taste. I don’t suppose I shall ever do quite that again. And I suppose it’s natural to be more susceptible now to shape and colour—quicker to see beauty in any form aesthetically appreciative, if that word’s allowed. For instance, the glitter of light on a fish’s scales—or the different shades of blue in the sea at this moment—or the silky sheen on a woman’s back—or the way—”

  She said: “I think you’re making it up. You were always interested in those things.”

  “Interested, but not so conscious of them. Anyway, what would you rather I took note of: the khaki shadings on a black-market sock?”

  She turned her face away. “I wish you were not so silly.”

  “It might be a saving grace. At least you’d never need to extend your hero-worship to me.”

  She looked at me quickly, the laughter dying from her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.… But I’m used to groping in the dark.” (And sometimes by chance the gropings found an unexpected mark.) “Do you swim?” I asked, anxious now to change the subject.

  “Of course.”

  “Let’s go out to the raft, shall we?”

  “All right.”

  When we got in the water I said: “ I’ll race you.”