Of course we shan’t leave it there, but I don’t know if it will be possible to get the decision altered. My own suggestion is that you should come home and consult Halliday again; he might be able to pull strings that we can’t as you’re a war victim. If you are set on remaining, perhaps there is some possibility of your earning some money out there. I don’t know if Chapel could help you in this, but there must be occasional legal work to do with the consulate.
I had a letter from Parker the other day, and he has definitely decided not to rejoin the firm. This is a disappointment, and his place will be difficult to fill.
You don’t mention the condition of your eyes, but your letter suggests they are not good. It may well be that the constant bright sunshine is bad for them and that a little London fog would rest them and bring about an improvement. But then no doubt you know best how you feel. Mother is keeping well, thank you, and sends her kind wishes.
Yours sincerely. L EWIS .
The typing was double-spaced, but I had to get Old Larosse to read it to me.
I took John and his wife out to a meal.
John said: “All the information we’ve got, old boy, is that things will get worse instead of better. What’s going to happen when sterling becomes convertible I don’t know. The rosy-faced boys in Westminster seem to think it won’t make any difference. But my guess is that every country in Europe—as well as some outside—will demand payment in dollars the minute they’re entitled to it. Then there’ll be a crisis and all the Westminster boys will have to eat their words. Obviously it’s going to be more and more difficult for Britons to live abroad or travel abroad unless they can earn money as they go.”
“I don’t know why everyone is so anxious to come away,” said Kay. “I long to see a bit of England.”
“Those who are in want to get out, and those who are out want to get back. That’s the way it comes, old dear. You shouldn’t have married an empire builder.”
She gave a little laugh. “ Is it builder or liquidator these days?”
John said to me: “There are some still carrying on the old Max Intrator trade. I expect you’ve discovered that?”
“The barman at the Bouquet d’or hinted as much.”
“Did you swallow the bait?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, I shouldn’t if you want to fiddle, do it with pound notes, not cheques; you haven’t got to sign ’ em.”
Kay said: “Are all consular officials as helpful?”
John shifted in his chair: I’m only giving sensible advice to an old school friend. I wouldn’t give it to every good-time playboy. They don’t need it anyhow.… Of course everything’s heading for chaos. The war’s put Europe in the crazy situation of needing a non-European currency to keep the wheels going. By the way, Giles, if you want to spend your time in France, why don’t you get tied up with our export drive? If you can only do that a grateful government will lavish sterling on you. Aren’t there any strings you can pull?”
“I’ve never been much of a string-puller.”
“Get Cousin What’s-it to go through the family clients for you: there’s sure to be one these days who’s exporting typewriters to Belgium or bottled pickles to the Alpes-Maritimes. It’s only a question of getting to know.”
“Weren’t those somebody’s famous last words?” Kay said.
But by now the wine was warming John to his theme. “Of course to do the thing properly you should get Lewis to find a family with a skeleton in the cupboard. Once you’ve proof that the second marquis was born out of wedlock you can practically go and demand anything you like.”
Kay said: “You’ll have to excuse John for being so out of date. He doesn’t realise yet that it isn’t the marquises who can pull the strings. And the people who can wouldn’t be frightened of a family skeleton. They probably take it with them every day to sit beside them in the House of Commons.”
I said with a grin: “I wonder if we export tin cups and mouth-organs.”
There was a faint embarrassed pause.
John said: “My dear old boy, blindness is a minor disability compared to what some of the people I meet are suffering from.”
“But John told me you could see a bit,” Kay said.
“I can see a lot,” I said, sorry now to have brought the thing up, even as a joke.
They went on for a while, asking what specialists I’d been under, etc. I had a feeling they were glad to get on a topic where there wouldn’t be any sparks struck, so I let them plug away. There was an air of strained cheerfulness about them to-night that suggested unmistakably a squabble not long blown over.
Later we went along to the Municipal Casino and gambled a bit, and I met a slim-built, sophisticated youngish man called Charles Bénat whom John said I ought to have much in common with, seeing that he was one of the most successful lawyers in Provence.
Bénat said: “ If your friend has been a lawyer he’ll know that isn’t difficult. It’s always a matter of deciding at the outset which of two litigants is the bigger rogue.”
“Or has the more money,” I suggested, in the same tone.
“But never I suppose,” John said, “taking into account the merits of the case.”
“Absolutely fatal,” agreed the Frenchman. “ It’s entirely a matter for the fudge, who of course decides solely on the legal technicalities.…”
We chatted amiably for a few minutes, and then he left. I could tell they thought him pretty important, and when he moved away John said:
“Don’t be deceived by his flippant way of talking. He’s a big shot around here. Everybody knows Bénat.”
We went on into the Baccarat room, where John lost three thousand francs and I won a hundred and fifty. Not an auspicious evening.
Twice more to the Café Gambetta in Villefranche.
The first time everything was fine. Mère Roget still kept her distance—she was very much the martinet in her own home—but the others welcomed me practically as one of themselves. Among the friendliest were Roquefort the fisherman and a man called Scipion. Scipion had fought with the Free French in the invasion of Normandy and had lived two years in England, so that made us virtually blood brothers. He fancied himself as a military strategist, and I could hear him moving wine bottles and ashtrays about to illustrate his points. He’d got a duodenal ulcer, and all the fight went out of his voice when he told me about that Roquefort was a specialist in butterflies, and spent nearly all his spare time watching them or catching them. It was a queer hobby for a fisherman, and they pulled his leg about it, but he was in deadly earnest; and someone said his collection was worth a hundred thousand francs.
Alix seemed to get something out of seeing me welcome among her friends and relations, otherwise I shouldn’t have gone again. I knew the strength of family ties in France. The more I saw of them all, the more I felt that the Delaisse family was at the back of the Alix-Pierre arrangement. Right at the start I’d thought Alix’s feelings for Pierre weren’t really quite as warm as she tried to make them. Our own friendship couldn’t have gone on if they had been.
Altogether I seemed to be working my way out on a limb, and no decent way of retreat. If a marriage on the grounds of convenience had been fixed up between her and Pierre Grognard—not so much to blot out Jacques’s memory as to perpetuate it—my showing up on the scene could only complicate life for everyone. To the Delaisses I was an obstruction and a pitiable nuisance, to Alix I was an unsettling influence plucking at her affections when they were better buried, to Pierre I was an object of bitter jealousy just because I was unsettling Alix that way. The only reasonable thing really was to cut the entanglement right out and go back to England.
But so long as there was a chance of going on as we were, I hadn’t the courage to do the operation for myself.
The third visit to Villefranche was quite different from the other two.
It was Alix’s idea as usual. We’d walked out from Nice about two miles, and suddenly she said why
not go on to Villefranche, have a drink there and get the last bus back. I said all right, if she felt like that. The place was busier than usual, it being a Sunday, and as we turned into the Rue St Agel there was the sound of singing from the bistro on the opposite corner. At the Café Gambetta someone was playing a concertina. The rusty music and the babel of voices met us as we went in.
“Go on into the inner room,” Alix said. “ I’II tell Mère Roget we’ve come.”
I went in, pushing through the jingling bead curtains, and Gaston, who happened to be there, stumped across and led me to an empty table. Now from the first Gaston had been one of the friendliest. Last week he’d stood for ten minutes leaning on an empty chair telling me how he lost his leg; a customer had had to bang on a table three times before Gaston would move. To-night I could hardly drag a word out of him. It was “yes, m’sieu,” “no, m’sieu”; and “but certainly.” As soon as he could he hobbled away.
The inner room was much quieter than the outer one tonight—in fact there were only four people in the room: Uncle Henri Delaisse, a fellow called Dramont, another called Jean Roux, and a new man addressed as Rastel. None of them spoke to me, but I soon picked out each voice for myself. I wondered what the devil was wrong. They’d all been talking freely a minute before I walked in.
The boy Maurice came in, and I ordered the usual coup de blanc and lit a cigarette and waited for Alix. After a minute or two the conversation loosened up, but it was self-conscious stuff, about a cycle race that was going to begin in a couple of days.
Then the concertina stopped in the outer bar, and I suddenly realised that there was someone else in this room.
It’s surprisingly hard to cheat a blind man. He comes to hear and identify the slightest sounds, for no one ever stays quite still. He almost always knows when someone is near him and what they are doing.
But this was the stillest sitter I’d come across. He could hardly have moved a muscle, and certainly wasn’t moving now; it was only because the concertina had given out for a minute that I heard his breathing, which was quiet enough but with a just detectable and distinctive tick-tick sound at the back of the nose.
At first I thought of saying something but decided against it. If somebody didn’t want to be sociable it was really not my affair.
Gaston came limping across from the kitchen. “ Mère Roget has some special wine to offer you, m’sieu, and would like you to come into the kitchen to take it.”
“Very well.” The inner room wasn’t for me to-night.
As I got to the kitchen door someone came out and stood on one side to let me pass. I thanked him, but he didn’t speak, so I couldn’t be sure that it was Armand Delaisse.
Things were a bit distant in the kitchen too, and we left fairly early. On the way home Alix, for the only time ever, talked too much. She was bright and lively, but the brightness didn’t ring true, and there was a jarring note somewhere.
In the end I said: “ Look, Alix, dear, you don’t need to be the life and soul of the party. In fact there’s no party, and I’d rather have you in your depressed mood than—this way.”
She stopped. “This way?” she said. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘this way.’ ”
“Oh … faintly over-anxious to convince yourself that you don’t care a damn for anybody.”
She was silent a bit, faintly whistling through pursed lips. “ Why should I have to convince myself of what I know to be the truth?”
“Why indeed? If it is the truth.”
We walked along some way. She gave a little irritable flick at her skirt. “I don’t think you understand me as well as you think you do.”
“I don’t think I understand you at all.”
“You find me—unreasonable?”
“Rarely, if ever.”
“… If so I wonder you trouble to come out with me.”
I said: “ You know why I come out with you. That’s not at issue.… If to-night for some reason you’d like to find something to quarrel about, go right ahead, but don’t expect me to help you.”
“I think you’re helping me very well.”
I thought it out “ Yes, I suppose I am.”
We both laughed, but it was still half-hearted. She said: “ When you are angry the shell comes back—but much thicker. Truly aloof then.”
“Very far from it, believe me. More than ever painfully involved.”
“And when I’m angry …” She sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. I think the world is rather a mess, don’t you?”
“Let’s forget it.”
“Yes, let’s forget it.”
We changed the subject then, and there were no more sparks; but there was something different about her all the rest of the evening.
Chapter 8
We’d arranged to meet on the Monday, but she rang up making an excuse. We put it off till the following Monday, and I think she would have got out of that if it hadn’t been a long-promised date to go to Monte Carlo. I wondered how we should meet, if the mood of Sunday night would carry over the eight days between. But when we met there was no sign of it at all. She was a bit subdued but at her nicest—and that was saying something.
We went by train in the afternoon—one of those diesel trains with the driver in a raised cabin in the roof. When we halted at Villefranche she said:
“Giles, I think I must stop meeting you.”
I’d been expecting it, but it was a jolt all the same.
“Think so?”
“It isn’t fair to you.”
“I’ll look out for that.”
“No. It’s not fair to any of us. I have told Pierre that I’m not seeing you any more. If he finds out there will be trouble.”
“Don’t you want to go on seeing me?”
“Should I have lied to Pierre if I hadn’t? But it can’t go on for ever. There must be a break, Giles. Perhaps in a—”
She stopped.
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing. It’s for the best that we should give this up.”
“I suppose nobody’s suggested that you should give Pierre up instead?”
“I have had feelings that way.”
“Then …” I swallowed. “If you can say that …”
The diesel engine started with that sound like the tired battery of a motor car, and we moved slowly out of the station.
I felt happy and miserable together. I said: “Listen, Alix.”
“Yes?”
“I’m no use to you. I can’t expect any woman … But at least there’s no compulsion to throw yourself away. Pierre doesn’t make the grade. There are other men in the world—plenty of them. Don’t sacrifice yourself just to please your first husband’s friends—”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s pretty plain, isn’t it? You don’t really love the man. The marriage is tied up with the Delaisse family: they look on Pierre as an old comrade of Jacques, a rich man, a comfortable and seemly match for little Alix.
She said after a minute: “ Well, aren’t those all good reasons?” It was as if by saying over their arguments I’d strengthened their case instead of my own.
“No, they aren’t if the man is a man like Pierre.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
I shrugged. Facing it, what was there? A mild personal antipathy. “You loved Jacques Delaisse, you say?”
“I still do.”
“Then don’t spoil his memory by taking a man you don’t care for.”
“That can’t spoil his memory.”
I said, suddenly angry: “ You told me the other night I didn’t understand you as well as I thought. Well, I tell you again: I don’t understand you at all. I’m crazy about you—you know that—but I don’t understand. You’ve got me completely beaten.”
She didn’t say anything. There was no anger in her to-day. The train stopped at another station, but I didn’t know which it was and didn’t care.
I said: “ Surely there’s someon
e of your own family to advise you? You’re not really one of the Delaisse family.”
“I’m proud to belong to it.”
“Aren’t there any of your own blood alive?”
“I’ve told you, I have a brother in Dakar. There is no one else. I am a Delaisse.”
Off again, gathering speed with a deepening dynamo hum, the sound pressing back upon itself as we drilled into the mouth of a long tunnel.
“You mustn’t be crazy about me, Giles,” she said in a softer tone.
“At least you can’t stop that.”
“No.… Perhaps I don’t want to stop it. But I hate to think of hurting you.”
“I’ll take care of that too.”
“I am sorry I had to tell you this now. It will spoil our day.”
“… Whatever else, I’d like to finish up this business between you and Pierre.”
“Let’s not talk about it any more. It is something I have—made up my mind to. You can’t alter it, dear Giles. None of us can alter the past”
“We can change our view of the past—according to circumstances. If we don’t it may push the present out of shape.”
“Oh, well … we shall see. Forget it now. Let’s try to be happy as we have been other days.”
We tried to be happy. When darkness fell we were sitting on a seat in the garden of the Casino. It was the warmest evening there had been for some time, and the smell of mimosa was everywhere.
Alix was sitting with her legs curled under her. She said: “ I don’t think to-day has been as good as the others. Let’s go home.”
“So this is really good-bye?”
“… It must be.”
After a bit she said: “ What shall you do?”
“I may have to go back to England, anyhow.”
“… Perhaps that will be for the best”