Night Without Stars

  “All right.”

  She swam like an eel, with hardly any splash, and was at the raft yards ahead of me.

  “You see,” she said breathlessly, her eyes glinting.

  “I see.”

  It’s difficult to be unfriendly on a raft with the sea water drying quickly on you under a blazing sun. I felt I was making good progress, though it wasn’t fundamental progress. It all might slip away again in a second.

  When we got back to the shore I suggested we should take a pédalo. This curious Mediterranean invention, in which two people lie back on a double-sized deck-chair fixed on buoyant metal floats and propel themselves precariously across the sea by means of pedals fixed to tiny paddle wheels, is a profoundly silly-looking but very pleasant way of spending an hour. I expected her to refuse, but she agreed after a short hesitation and we climbed in and were pushed off by the man in charge.

  We went round for about ten minutes almost without speaking but somehow I could tell that some of her defences were lowered. That was why I kept quiet. I steered well out to sea, and after a bit we both stopped paddling, and the craft rocked gently up and down on the swell.

  It was terrifically hot, but invigorating because of being so close to the sea.

  She said after a long time in a quiet voice: “ Why are you so hard on us, Giles?”

  “Hard? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Why d’you despise our way of life? We can’t help what we are. Circumstances made us. Perhaps it’s good to have illusions if you can cling to them; we’ve had them torn away.”

  “What Charles is hardly concerns me. What you are concerns me enormously.”

  “You mustn’t let it.”

  “You’ve lost the one person who could have made all the difference. I know.… And there’s no way back for you the way there has been for me.… Don’t think I’m questioning that. But what puzzles me is that all that had happened when we met before.”

  She said after a minute: “Last year you thought I was loving; this year I’m not. Isn’t that all?”

  “No.… I don’t think it is quite.”

  “So all our explanations to you last night were so much wasted breath? You’re still completely unsatisfied.”

  “I’m grateful for your confidences—I said so. You cleared up last year’s mystery. This year’s mystery remains.”

  “Oh, nonsense! There is no other mystery at all. You imagine it!”

  “We’re going round in circles,” I said.

  She raised her head. “Are we? Oh … you mean in argument”

  “I do indeed. If you can call this argument.”

  There was a fairly long silence, but it wasn’t quite such a peaceful one.

  I said: “ You complain that I’m hard in my judgments and despise your way of life, when all the time you’ve given me the impression that you despise mine.”

  “So I do,” she said sharply, as if reminded of it. “So I do.”

  For the life of me I couldn’t hold my tongue.

  “That sounds like the Gospel according to Charles. Book Three, Chapter One.”

  “You hate Charles,” she said. “ You think I can’t think for myself. That’s utterly wrong. He never pressed me in the least to go back to live with him. If I wanted to I should leave him to-day. But I don’t want to. I love and admire him—”

  “I can see that.”

  “We reason alike, we feel alike. We’ve the same sort of brains. I can be a great help to him. I’m proud to help him.”

  “Isn’t pride one of the weaknesses of the new philosophy?”

  “Oh, you’re so smug!” she said, sitting up and rocking the thing. “I hate you—with your self-satisfied judgments, your—your so careful sanity, your middle-of-the-road righteousness. I don’t think I can stand any more of it!”

  “Are you sure I’m the smug one? Or is it you and Charles? I don’t know. But look at it this way. Two men belong to more or less the same generation. When one of them grows up he sees a statement which says—which says, well, for instance, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’ It sounds nonsense to him, but he thinks the man who said it may just possibly have been wiser than he is. The other fellow reads the same sort of thing. Because it sounds nonsense he’s convinced it is nonsense, because he believes that no one wiser than himself has ever lived. Which of those two would you say was self-satisfied?”

  She said: “ I can’t answer all your arguments. Why don’t you go and say them to Charles? He will soon be able to answer them—and destroy them!”

  “Sheltering behind the big guns.…”

  “I cannot endure your insults!” she said angrily. “ You’re

  unbearable!”

  She got up and the floating deck-chair dipped violently.

  “Sit down!” I said. “ You’ll have us out!”

  Instead she balanced for a moment and then dived into the sea.

  The contraption, released of her weight, leaped up into the air at

  the front and I toppled over into the sea the other way.

  I came up gasping, having swallowed about a quart of water.

  The pédalo, of course, had righted itself. I still had a horror of

  getting my face under water, and this made me so furious that I

  left the pédalo there and struck out after her.

  We were a good way from shore, and by the time we were

  halfway there she had drawn well ahead. But from then on I began

  to overhaul her. About twenty yards from the beach I drew level.

  I swam alongside for a minute. “Disagreeable temper.”

  She looked at me as if I were a complete stranger and changed

  her course to make for the beach at a tangent.

  She had spurted again, but again I overtook her. This time I

  grabbed her ankle and pulled her down.

  She came up spluttering and looking rather white.

  “Don’t, Giles … I’m … nearly done.”

  “Say please.”

  “Leave me alone.… Let me go.”

  She had wriggled free.

  “Say please.”

  She looked at me as if to say, I’ll drown first.

  We were nearly home. I caught her arm, though this time only

  the threat was there.

  “Please …” she said.

  When our feet touched the stones she stumbled and nearly fell,

  but I took her elbow and we got out of the water together. I was

  dreadfully out of condition for this sort of thing. The young Italianate

  beach attendant burst upon us.

  “My God, m’sieu, this will cost you a pretty penny if the pédalo

  is lost! They are not to be used as diving-buoys. I will have your name and address! My God, this is a formidable liberty. It will cost you—”

  When I got my breath I said: “I’ll come out with you in a canoe and get it in a moment.”

  I saw Alix back to her umbrella and then we went out and got the pédalo. It took time because the thing had drifted westwards, and then of course I had to chug back alone.

  When I arrived back at the umbrella she had gone.

  Chapter 14

  I didn’t see her again that day. When I thought it over it didn’t seem to me that I had come out of the first meeting very well. It was silly to squander one’s opportunities on argument and then get into a temper because one got one’s eye wet.

  Next morning she rang me up. I’d been half expecting it.

  “Giles? Oh … this is Alix.… I’ve decided not to see you again.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “I thought yesterday would have made it clear.”

  “I understood you’d promised to meet me for a week.”

  “I promised to try. Obviously no good will come of it.”

  “Good for whom?”

  “For either of us.”

  “I don’t think you can judge for me.”

>   “Well, I’m not willing to risk being drowned.”

  “I was under the impression you began the drowning episode.”

  “You see, it’s useless. We should begin to quarrel again as soon as we met. Besides, I’m not willing to go on. I’m tired of being insulted, thank you.”

  I said: “Quite frankly I’m rather ashamed about yesterday. Whoever started it, it was unpardonable of me to take the liberties I did. I’m extremely sorry if I upset you.”

  “Oh,” she said, and sounded a bit nonplussed. “ Well, it wasn’t all …” and stopped.

  There was a long pause. I thought she’d rung off.

  “Hullo!”

  “Hullo,” she said. “I’d like to put a proposition to you—that we go out to-day

  and that you should call the tune—decide where we go, what we

  shall talk of. On my side I promise to change the subject when

  anything displeases you. Does that seem fair? And if we quarrel

  to-day that ends it.”

  There was another pause.

  “Why not let it end here?” she said.

  “I should like to try once more.”

  There was another pause. I could hear Grutli barking.

  She said: “To-day is Sunday. I didn’t promise to meet you every

  day.… I’ll meet you to-morrow—on those terms.”

  I thought swiftly. “All right. And thank you for your forbearance.”

  She said something but I couldn’t tell what it was, and rang off.

  In spite of what I’d said to Alix I was getting used to sight again. If the body is adaptable in disablement, so it is in taking recovery for granted. Already there were hours, almost half days when I forgot having been that way: the present preoccupation of course helped. It seemed monstrously ungrateful to let the smaller things become important again.

  I spent Sunday alone and didn’t go far. The next day I met Alix as arranged and kept scrupulously to the bargain. I had to. These were high stakes. We drove to Cannes for lunch and had dinner at St. Raphael, played baccarat at the Casino there and got back to Nice about twelve. I wanted to go with her to the Villa Lavandou, but she said she was safe on her own. We made arrangements to meet on the Wednesday.

  This second day together went fairly well. She had evidently decided to ignore the enormities of Saturday. We talked quite a bit in something of the old friendly strain of last year. Sometimes we laughed and joked in the old way, and we kept away from controversy most of the time. Yet the whole impression of this day was that I’d not made as much progress as on the first. She was keeping me quietly at a distance.

  A cleft stick. These were the only terms on which she would see me. Yet only by molding the issues … And time was getting short. A meeting on the Wednesday, then perhaps another on the Friday, and she would consider her promise discharged. No condition had been attached to the promise that we should spend the time arguing first principles. She was giving me her company.

  And all the time I was getting in deeper water. There was no question about that.

  On the Tuesday morning someone called to see me at the hotel. I was in the lounge at the time writing a letter desultorily on my knee, and I didn’t quite get what the concierge said. I saw Deffand’s tall figure in the doorway and rose to meet him.

  By himself, away from the glitter of the Wintertons’ candlelit dining-room, he was more impressive. He looked a bit like a schoolmaster with his narrow scholarly nose, but he wasn’t the sort of schoolmaster one would have wanted for tender children. His close-set eyes acknowledged me with a gleam of politeness, and then went quickly round the room, summing up, perhaps, the imitation Louis Quinze furniture, the three elderly French women chattering together on the veranda.

  “M. Gordon? We met at the Wintertons’, you’ll remember. I hope you’ll excuse the informality of the call.”

  I asked him to sit down.

  He said: “ We’re quite private here? I’m not keeping you from any appointment? Good. It’s a small matter I came to see you on. Would you care to see my credentials?”

  I looked over the leather-bound carte didentité with the photograph, the police embossment, the grease marks.

  “Really,” I said. “I’d no idea.”

  He breathed down his nose. “You must be one of the few people in Nice, then. It’s hard to keep a secret in a small community, m’sieu; and although Nice is the third city of France, it has the elementary make-up of a country town. It was the same when your Scotland Yard inspector came to inquire about the illegal currency transactions. At least I have kept my name out of the papers.”

  I said: “ Can I help you in some way?”

  “That’s what I hope.”

  I offered him a cigarette, and he took it with yellow-stained fingers, put it between his lips, rolled it across slowly to one corner of his mouth.

  “I understand, M. Gordon, that you’ve had some interesting experiences in Villefranche.”

  This was rather a shock. I cursed John. It seemed impossible that anyone else … “Oh, last year. I was very short-sighted at the time. There was some confusion over the name of the streets. But it was all cleared up eventually.”

  He looked at me. “This year?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I mean, was it cleared up this year?”

  “… Yes. Naturally when one can see properly.…”

  “Naturally. You found the street you were looking for?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the café?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was its name?”

  I hesitated. “Would that be of interest?”

  “It could be.”

  “The Café Gambetta.”

  “I don’t know the name. Where is it?”

  “In the Rue St. Agel.”

  “Where does that lie?”

  “Not far up from the quay. You go up from the Pavilion and turn right.”

  “I see.” Deffand breathed thin spirals of smoke from his nose. “Villefranche has recently been the centre of certain black-market activities—unfortunately. Also there have been shipments of gold over the Italian frontier. We suspect that the consignments start from there. I wonder if, in your movements about Villefranche, you have seen anything to rouse your suspicions?”

  I lit my cigarette. The old ladies were chattering away.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “I only wish I could.”

  Deffand leaned back. He had the air of a man who has met with and quietly overcome a million setbacks.

  “An interesting discussion we had the other night at the Wintertons’. You know them well?”

  “They’re old friends.”

  “It was the first time I’d met them. I was invited through the courtesy of M. Lemaître.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said politely.

  “Do you know the Bénats well?”

  “I’ve met him half a dozen times.”

  “Wasn’t it you I saw in Cannes yesterday with Mme. Delaisse?”

  “… It was.”

  He blew another couple of spirals. “I confess I thought their attitude a little unbecoming last Sunday.”

  “Surely they were only putting the other side of the picture.”

  “Surely. But I think M. Lemaître had them well beaten.”

  “Of course.”

  There was silence for a bit.

  “Unhappily in law-breaking,” he said, “there is no middle course.”

  “I’m inclined to agree.”

  “Who is not for the law is against the law. One cannot have the best of both worlds.”

  “It would be folly to expect it”

  “Certainly. Did you know that some of Mme. Delaisse’s relatives live in Villefranche?”

  “She told me so. Relatives by marriage, I think she said.”

  “Have you met any of them?”

  “… Yes. I believe I did
once. A brother-in-law—Armand, was it—and an uncle. But of course I was blind at the time.”

  “Did you ever meet her mother-in-law, Jeanne-Marie Friedel?”

  “No-o. I don’t think so.”

  “Her second husband was an Austrian Jew who shot himself when France collapsed. It is said that she organised the escape of more than a hundred young Frenchmen to England during the war.”

  “Very good.”

  “Yes. Very good. But one wonders what she is organising now.”

  “Perhaps she has retired to pass her old age in peace.”

  His eyes met mine. “ Women like that never retire, m’sieu. They are born to active conspiracy. Tell me, are you likely to be seeing Mme. Delaisse again?”

  “Yes. To-morrow.”

  “I should like your undertaking that you will say nothing of this call.”

  “I give it you.”

  He got up. “You’re staying in France a few weeks more?”

  “It’s rather indefinite. Probably only a week or two.”

  “I’m sorry you don’t feel willing to help me in my task.”

  “Not unwilling. Unable.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Divided loyalties. Dangerous, as I’ve pointed out British nationality, at times so valuable, is at others a snare. One feels a little withdrawn, aloof, and so becomes more deeply entangled than one realises.”

  We walked to the door.

  “If at any time you feel you want to talk things over you will find me at M. Lemaître’s house, or care of any police station.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and watched him go.

  Chapter 15

  I had to force the pace on Wednesday. Either way I stood to lose, so it was better to go down making a fight of it.

  It may be at that time that I gave the impression of being an obstinate and persistent man to more people than Charles Bénat. If so there was another cause beyond the obvious one. The feeling I’d mentioned to Rachel had never been shaken off: it was a confused conviction that because of getting my sight back I “owed” something to life. I’d never got properly straight with myself over it; and now this feeling had perversely associated itself with Alix. Of course I wanted her for herself; but the moral issue had wormed its way in and wouldn’t be got rid of. I felt I had to help her, somehow.

  Possibly Charles’s cynical comments weren’t far off the mark; I don’t know. I remember when I saw her walking across the square to me on the Wednesday all these things seemed to come up together.