Caravan to Vaccares

  ‘A slight strain, no more.’ The only obvious strain was in his face and voice.

  ‘Ah, but you must look after those slight strains – can develop very serious complications, you know. Yes, indeed, very serious.’ He removed his monocle, swinging it on the end of its thick black ribbon, the better to observe Searl. ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before – I don’t mean at the Abbey. Yes, yes, of course – outside the hotel this morning. Odd, I don’t recall you limping then. But then, I’m afraid my eyesight – ’ He replaced his monocle. ‘My thanks again. And watch that strain. Do exercise the greatest care, Monsieur le Curé. For your own sake.’

  Le Grand Duc tucked the notebook in an inner pocket and marched majestically away. Czerda looked at Searl, the unbandaged parts of his face registering no expression. Searl, for his part, licked dry lips, said nothing, turned and walked away.

  To even a close observer who knew him, the man behind the wheel of the gleamingly blue Citroën parked in the alleyway behind the hotel must have been almost totally unrecognizable as Bowman. He was dressed in a white sombrero, dark glasses, an excruciating blue-and-white polka-dotted shirt, an unbuttoned, embroidered black waistcoat, a pair of moleskin trousers and high boots. The complexion was paler, the moustache larger. Beside him on the seat lay a small purse-stringed bag. The offside front door opened and Cecile peered in, blinking uncertainly.

  ‘I don’t bite,’ Bowman said encouragingly.

  ‘Good God!’ She slid into her seat. ‘What – what’s this?’

  ‘I’m a gardien, a cowboy in his Sunday best, one of many around. Told you I’d been shopping. Your turn, now.’

  ‘What’s in the bag?’

  ‘My poncho, of course.’

  She eyed him with the speculative look that had now become almost habitual with her as he drove her to the clothing emporium they’d visited earlier that morning. After a suitable lapse of time the same manageress fluttered around Cecile, making gushing, admiring remarks, talking with her arms as much as with her voice. Cecile was now attired in the fiesta costume of an Arlésienne, with a long sweeping darkly embroidered dress, a ruched lace white bodice and a wimpled hat of the same material. The hat was perched on a dark red wig.

  ‘Madame looks – fantastic!’ the manageress said ecstatically.

  ‘Madame matches the price,’ Bowman said resignedly. He peeled off some more banknotes and led Cecile to the Citroën where she sat and smoothed the rich material of her dress approvingly.

  ‘Very nice, I must say. You like dressing girls up?’

  ‘Only when I’m being bankrolled by criminals. That’s hardly the point. A certain dark gypsy girl has been seen with me. There’s not an insurance company in Europe would look at that dark gypsy girl.’

  ‘I see.’ She smiled wanly. ‘All this solicitude for your future wife?’

  ‘Of course. What else?’

  ‘The fact that, quite frankly, you can’t afford to lose your assistant at the moment?’

  ‘Never occurred to me.’

  He drove the Citroën close to the point where the Hungarian and Rumanian caravans were parked in the square. He stopped the Citroën, lifted his purse-stringed bag, got out, straightened and turned. As he did so, he bumped into a large pedestrian who was sauntering slowly by. The pedestrian stopped and glared at him through a black-beribboned monocle: Le Grand Duc was not accustomed to being bumped into by anyone.

  ‘Your pardon, m’sieur,’ Bowman said.

  Le Grand Duc favoured Bowman with a look of considerable distaste. ‘Granted.’

  Bowman smiled apologetically, took Cecile’s arm and moved off. She said to him, sotto voce and accusingly: ‘You did that on purpose.’

  ‘So? If he doesn’t recognize us, who will?’ He took another couple of steps and halted. ‘Well, now, what could this be?’

  There was a sudden stir of interest as a plain black van turned into the square. The driver got out, made what was evidently an enquiry of the nearest gypsy who pointed across the square, entered the van again and drove it across to the vicinity of Czerda’s caravan. Czerda himself was by the steps, talking to Ferenc: neither appeared to have made much progress in the recovery from their injuries.

  The driver and an assistant jumped down, went to the rear of the van, opened the doors and, with considerable difficulty and not without willing help, they slid out a stretcher on which, left arm in a sling and face heavily bandaged, lay the recumbent form of Pierre Lacabro. The malevolent gleam in the right eye – the left one was completely shut – showed clearly that Lacabro was very much alive. Czerda and Ferenc, consternation in their faces, moved quickly to help the stretcher-bearers. Inevitably, Le Grand Duc was one of the first on the immediate scene. He bent briefly over the battered Lacabro, then straightened.

  ‘Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Nobody’s safe on the roads these days.’ He turned to Czerda. ‘Isn’t this my poor friend Mr Koscis?’

  ‘No.’ Czerda spoke with considerable restraint.

  ‘Ah! I’m glad to hear it. Sorry for this poor fellow of course. By the way, I wonder if you’d tell Mr Koscis that I’d like to have another word with him when he’s here? At his convenience, of course.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can find him.’ Czerda helped move the stretcher towards the steps of his own caravan and Le Grand Duc turned away, narrowly avoiding coming into collision with the Chinese couple who had earlier been on the patio of the hotel. He doffed his hat in gallant apology to the Eurasian woman.

  Bowman had missed none of the by-play. He looked first at Czerda, whose face was registering a marked degree of mixed anger and apprehension, then at Le Grand Duc, then at the Chinese couple: he turned to Cecile.

  ‘There now,’ he whispered. ‘I knew he could swim. Let’s not show too keen a degree of interest in what’s going on.’

  He led her away a few paces. ‘You know what I want to do – it’ll be safe, I promise.’

  He watched her as she wandered casually past Czerda’s caravan and stopped to adjust a shoe in the vicinity of the green-and-white caravan. The window at the side was curtained but the window itself slightly ajar.

  Satisfied, Bowman moved off across the square to where a group of horses was tethered by some trees close by several other caravans. He looked aimlessly around to check that he was unobserved, saw Czerda’s caravan door close as the stretcher was brought inside, dug into his bag and fetched out a fistful of coiled, brown-paper sheathed objects, each one fitted with an inch of blue touch-paper: they were, quite simply, old fashioned firecrackers. . .

  In Czerda’s caravan, Czerda himself, Ferenc, Simon Searl and El Brocador were gathered round Pierre Lacabro’s still recumbent form. The expression on what little could be seen of Lacabro’s face registered a degree of unhappiness that was not entirely attributable to his physical sufferings: he had about him the wounded appearance of one whose injuries are not being accorded their due meed of loving care and concerned sympathy.

  ‘You fool, Lacabro!’ Czerda’s voice was almost a shout. ‘You crazy idiot! No violence, I told you. No violence.’

  ‘Maybe you should have told Bowman instead,’ El Brocador suggested. ‘Bowman knew. Bowman was watching. Bowman was waiting. Who is going to tell Gaiuse Strome?’

  ‘Who but our unfrocked friend here,’ Czerda said savagely. ‘I do not envy you, Searl.’

  From the look on Searl’s face it was clear that he didn’t envy himself either. He said unhappily: ‘That may not be necessary. If Gaiuse Strome is who we now all think he is, then he knows already.’

  ‘Knows?’ Czerda demanded. ‘What can he know? He doesn’t know that Lacabro is one of my men and so one of his. He doesn’t know that Lacabro didn’t have a road accident. He doesn’t know that Bowman is responsible. He doesn’t know that once again we’ve managed to lose track of Bowman – while at the same time Bowman appears to know all our movements. If you think you have nothing to explain, Searl, you’re out of your mind.’ He turned to Fe
renc. ‘Round up the caravans. Now. We leave inside the half-hour. Tell them that tonight we camp by Vaccarés. What was that?’

  There had come clearly and sharply the sound of a series of sharp reports. Men shouted, horses whinnied in fear, a policeman’s whistle blew and still the series of flat staccato explosions continued. Czerda, followed by the three others, rushed to the door of his caravan and threw it open.

  They were not alone in their anxiety and curiosity to discover the source of the disturbance. It would hardly be exaggeration to claim that within thirty seconds every pair of eyes in the square was trained on the north-eastern part of it where a group of gypsies and gardiens, Bowman prominently active among them, was fighting to restrain a rearing, milling, whinnying and by now thoroughly fear-crazed group of horses.

  One pair of eyes was otherwise engaged and those belonged to Cecile. She was pressed close in to the side of the green-and-white painted caravan, standing on tiptoe and peering through a gap she had just made in the curtain.

  It was dark inside the curtained caravan but the darkness was far from total and even Cecile’s eyes quickly became accustomed to the gloom: when they did it was impossible for her to restrain her involuntary shocked gasp of horror. A girl with dark cropped hair was lying face down on a bunk – obviously the only way she could possibly lie. Her bare and savagely mutilated back had not been bandaged but had been liberally covered with salves of some kind. From her continuous restive movements and occasional moans it was clear that she was not sleeping.

  Cecile lowered the curtain and moved off. Madame Zigair, Sara and Marie le Hobenaut were on the steps of the caravan, peering across the square, and Cecile walked by them as unconcernedly as she could, which was not easy when her legs felt shaky and she was sick inside. She crossed the square and rejoined Bowman who had just succeeded in calming down one of the panic-stricken horses. He released the horse, took her arm and led her towards where they’d left the Citroën parked. He looked at her, but didn’t have to look closely.

  ‘You didn’t like what you saw, did you?’ he said.

  ‘Teach me how to use a gun and I’ll use it. Even although I can’t see. I’ll get close enough.’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  ‘As bad as that. She’s hardly more than a child, a little thin creature, and they’ve practically flayed the skin from her back. It was horrible. The poor child must be in agony.’

  ‘So you don’t feel so sorry for the man I threw in the Rhône?’

  ‘I would. If I met him. With a gun in my hand.’

  ‘No guns. I don’t carry one myself. But I take your point.’

  ‘And you seem to take my news very calmly.’

  ‘I’m as mad as you are, Cecile, only I’ve been mad about it for a long time now and I can’t keep showing it all the time. As for the beating the girl got, it had to be something like that. Like Alexandre, the poor kid got desperate and tried to pass on a message, some information, so they taught her what they thought would be a permanent lesson to herself and the other women, and it probably will.’

  ‘What information?’

  ‘If I knew that I’d have those four women out of that caravan and in safety in ten minutes.’

  ‘If you don’t want to tell, don’t tell.’

  ‘Look, Cecile – ’

  ‘It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.’ She paused. ‘You know that I wanted to run away this morning? Coming back from the Rhône?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have been surprised.’

  ‘Not now. Not any more. You’re stuck with me now.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be stuck with anyone else.’ She looked at him almost in surprise. ‘You said that without smiling.’

  ‘I said it without smiling,’ he said.

  They reached the Citroën, turned and looked back towards the square. The gypsies were milling around in a state of great activity. Ferenc, they could see, was going from one caravan to the next, speaking urgently to the owners, and as soon as he left them they began making preparations to hitch their towing units on to the caravans.

  ‘Pulling out?’ Cecile looked at Bowman in surprise. ‘Why? Because of a few firecrackers?’

  ‘Because of our friend who’s been in the Rhône. And because of me.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘They know now, since our friend returned from his bathe, that I’m on to them. They don’t know how much I know. They don’t know what I look like now but they know that I’ll be looking different. They do know that they can’t get me here in Arles because they can’t have any idea where I am or where I might be staying. They know that to get me they’ll have to isolate me and to do that they’ll have to draw me out into the open. Tonight they’ll camp in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the Camargue. And there they’ll hope to get me. For they know now that wherever their caravans are, there I’ll be too.’

  ‘You are good at making speeches, aren’t you?’ There was no malice in the green eyes.

  ‘It’s just practice.’

  ‘And you haven’t exactly a low opinion of yourself, have you?’

  ‘No.’ He regarded her speculatively. ‘Do you think they have?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She touched the back of his hand in a gesture of contrition. ‘I talk that way when I’m scared.’

  ‘Me too. That’s most of the time. We’ll leave after you’ve picked your things up from the hotel and, in the best Pinkerton fashion, tail them from in front. Because if we follow them, they’ll string out watchers at regular intervals to check every car that follows. And there won’t be all that many cars moving south – tonight’s the big fiesta night in Arlies and most people won’t be moving down to Saintes-Maries for another forty-eight hours.’

  ‘They would recognize us? In these rigouts? Surely they can’t – ’

  ‘They can’t recognize us. They can’t possibly be on to us yet. Not this time. I’m positive. They don’t have to be. They’ll be looking for a car with a couple in it. They’ll be looking for a car with Arles number-plates, because it’ll have to be a rented car. They’ll be looking for a couple in disguise, because they’ll have to be in disguise, and in those parts that means only gypsy or gardien fiesta costumes. They’ll be looking for a couple with by now certain well-known characteristics such as that you are slender, have high cheekbones and green eyes, while I’m far from slender and have certain scars on my face that only a dye can conceal. How many cars with how many couples going south to Vaccarès this afternoon will match up with all those qualifications?’

  ‘One.’ She shivered. ‘You don’t miss much, do you?’

  ‘Neither will they. So we go ahead of them. If they don’t catch up with us we can always turn back to find out where they’ve stopped. They won’t suspect cars coming from the south. At least, I hope to God they don’t. But keep those dark glasses on all the time: those green eyes are a dead giveaway.’

  Bowman drove back to the hotel and stopped about fifty yards from the patio, the nearest parking place he could get. He said to Cecile: ‘Get packed. Fifteen minutes. I’ll join you in the hotel inside ten.’

  ‘You, of course, have some little matter to attend to first?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Care to tell me what it is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s funny. I thought you trusted me now.’

  ‘Naturally. Any girl who is going to marry me – ’

  ‘I don’t deserve that.’

  ‘You don’t. I trust you, Cecile. Implicitly.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded as if satisfied. ‘I can see you mean that. What you don’t trust is my ability not to talk under pressure.’

  Bowman looked at her for several moments, then said: ‘Did I suggest, sometime during the middle watches of the night, that you weren’t – ah – quite as bright as you might be?’

  ‘You called me a fool several times, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘You can get around to forgiving me?’

  ‘I’ll work
on it.’ She smiled, got out of the car and walked away. Bowman waited till she had turned into the patio, left the car, walked back to the post office, picked up a telegram that was awaiting him in the Poste Restante, took it back to the car and opened it. The message was in English and uncoded. It read: MEANING UNCLEAR STOP QUOTE IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT CONTENTS BE DELIVERED AIGUESMORTES OR GRAU DU ROI BY MONDAY MAY 24 INTACT AND REPEAT INCOGNITO STOP IF ONLY ONE POSSIBLE DO NOT DELIVER CONTENTS STOP IF POSSIBLE RELATIVE EXPENDITURE IMMATERIAL STOP NO SIGNATURE.

  Bowman re-read the message twice and nodded to himself. The meaning was far from unclear to him: nothing, he thought, was unclear any more. He produced matches and burnt the telegram, piece by piece, in the front ashtray, grinding the charred paper into tiny fragments. He glanced around frequently to see if anyone was taking an unusual interest in his unusual occupation but no one was. In his rear mirror he could see Le Grand Duc’s Rolls stopped at traffic lights some three hundred yards away. Even a Rolls, he reflected, had to stop at a red light: Le Grand Duc must find such annoying trifles a constant source of ducal irritation. He looked through the windscreen and could see the Chinese and his Eurasian lady leisurely sauntering towards the patio, approaching from the west.

  Bowman wound down his window, tore his telegram envelope into tiny shreds and dropped them to the gutter: he hoped the citizens of Arles would forgive him his wanton litter-bugging. He left the car and passed into the hotel patio, meeting the Chinese couple on the way. They looked at Bowman impassively from behind their reflector glasses but Bowman did not as much as glance their way.

  Le Grand Duc, stalled at the traffic lights, was, surprisingly enough, displaying no signs of irritation at all. He was absorbed in making notes in a book which, curiously, was not the one he habitually used when adding to his increasing store of gypsy folklore. Satisfied, apparently, with what he had written, he put the book away, lit a large Havana and pressed the button which controlled the dividing window. Carita looked at him enquiringly in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘I need hardly ask you, my dear,’ Le Grand Duc said, ‘if you have carried out my instructions.’