Madam, Will You Talk? Read online

  She did not see me at all, which again was perfectly natural. She paused a moment when she saw David and the dog, then came forward with a kind of eye-compelling grace which would have turned heads in Piccadilly, Manchester, on a wet Monday morning. What it did in Provence, where men make a hobby of looking at women, I hesitated to think. I believe I had visions of the cafés along the Rue de la République emptying as she passed, as the houses of Hamelin emptied a different cargo after the Pied Piper.

  She paused by the upturned table and spoke. Her voice was pleasant, her English perfect, but her accent was that of a Frenchwoman.

  ‘David.’

  No reply.

  ‘Mon fils …’

  Her son? He did not glance up.

  She said, evenly: ‘Don’t you know what the time is? And what on earth happened to the table?’

  ‘Rommel upset it.’ The averted head, the sulky-sounding mumble which David accorded her, were at once rude and surprising. She took no notice of his manner, but touched him lightly on the shoulder.

  ‘Well, put it right, there’s a good boy. And hurry up and change. It’s nearly dinner-time. Where have you been today?’

  ‘By the river.’

  ‘How you can—’ She laughed and shrugged, all at once very French, then reached in her bag for a cigarette. ‘Well, put the table up, child.’

  David pulled the reluctant Rommel towards a tree, and began to tie him to its stem. He said flatly:

  ‘I can’t lift it.’

  A new voice interrupted, smoothly:

  ‘Permit me, madame.’

  The man who had come quietly out of the hotel was dark and singularly good-looking. His clothes, his air, no less than his voice, were unmistakably French, and he had that look of intense virility and yet sophistication – the sort of powerful, careless charm which can be quite devastating. It was all the more surprising, therefore, that the woman, after a glance of conventional thanks, ignored him completely, and lit her cigarette without glancing in his direction. I would have gone to the stake for my conviction that she, where men were concerned, was the noticing type.

  The newcomer smiled at David, lifted the heavy table without apparent effort, set it straight, then dusted his hands on a handkerchief.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said David. He began untying Rommel again from the tree.

  ‘De rien,’ said the Frenchman. ‘Madame.’ He gave a little bow in her direction, which she acknowledged with a faint polite smile, then he made his way to a table in the far corner of the courtyard, and sat down.

  ‘If you hurry,’ said David’s mother, ‘you can have the bathroom first.’

  Without a word the boy went into the hotel, trailing a somewhat subdued dog after him on the end of the string. His mother stared after him for a moment, with an expression half puzzled, half exasperated. Then she gave a smiling little shrug of the shoulders, and went into the hotel after the boy.

  The Frenchman had not noticed me either; his handsome head was bent over a match as he lit a cigarette. I went quietly back through my window, and stood for a moment in the cool shade of the room thinking over the little scene which, somehow, had hidden in it the elements of oddity. The exquisite film-starry creature, and the dilapidated dog … Christian Dior and Gilbert White … and she was French and the boy’s accent was definitely Stratford-atte-Bow … and he was rude to her and charmingly polite to strangers.

  Well, it was no affair of mine.

  I picked my bag up and went downstairs for a drink.

  2

  Ther saugh I first the derke ymaginyng

  Of felonye …

  (Chaucer)

  When I got down into the little courtyard, it was beginning to fill up. Louise was not down yet, so I found a table in the shade, and ordered a Cinzano.

  I looked about me, resigned to the fact that almost everybody in the hotel would probably be English too. But the collection so far seemed varied enough. I began to play the game of guessing at people’s professions – and, in this case, nationalities. One is nearly always wrong, of course, and it is a game too often played by those self-satisfied people who are apt to announce that they are students of human nature … but I played it, nevertheless.

  The two men at the next table to me were Germans. One was thin and clever-looking, and the other was the fat-necked German of the cartoons. And since I heard him say ‘Ach, so?’ to his companion, it didn’t need any great insight to hazard the rest. There was a young couple, honeymooning at a guess, and, at another guess, American. Then there was the handsome Frenchman, drinking his Pernod by himself in the corner, and another man sitting alone near the trellis, reading a book and sipping a bright green drink with caution and distrust. I puzzled for a long time over him – he might have been anything – until I saw the title of the book. Four Quartets, by T. S. Eliot. Which seemed to settle it. There were two other parties who might have been anything at all.

  At this point Louise joined me.

  ‘I have been kept from my drink,’ she complained, bitterly for her, ‘by the patronne, who is convinced that I cannot wait to know the history, business, and antecedents, of everyone in the hotel. And who, incidentally, was panting to find out mine and yours.’

  Her vermouth was brought, and she tilted it to the light with a contented sigh.

  ‘L’heure de l’apéritif. What a civilized institution. Ah, that must be M. Paul Véry.’ She was looking at the Frenchman in the corner. ‘Madame said he was handsome enough to suicide oneself for, and that hardly applies to anyone else here. He’s from Paris. Something to do with antiques.’

  ‘This is thrilling.’

  ‘The other lonely male is English, and a schoolmaster. His name is John Marsden and he is almost certainly a Boy Scout and a teetotaller as well.’

  ‘Why on earth?’ I asked, startled.

  ‘Because,’ said Louise drily, ‘any lonely male I ever get within reach of these days seems to be both, and to eschew women into the bargain. Is that the right word, eschew?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘At any rate, one would not suicide oneself for that one. I wonder why he looks so solemn? Do you suppose he’s reading Whither England, or something?’

  ‘It’s T. S. Eliot,’ I said. ‘Four Quartets.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Louise, who does not consider poetry necessary. Mr. Marsden was dismissed.

  ‘I suppose that couple are American?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes. Their name is Cornell, or they come from Cornell, or something. My French had a breakdown at that point. And Mama and Papa under the palm tree are hot from Newcastle, Scotland.’

  ‘Scotland?’ I said blankly.

  ‘So Madame informed me. Scotland, zat is ze Norz of England, n’est-ce pas? I like the daughter, don’t you? The Young Idea.’

  I looked cautiously round. The couple under the palm tree might have sat anywhere for the portrait of Suburban England Abroad. Dressed as only the British can dress for a sub-tropical climate – that is, just as they would for a fortnight on the North-East coast of England – they sat sipping their drinks with wary enjoyment, and eyeing their seventeen-year-old daughter with the sort of expression that barnyard fowls might have if they suddenly hatched a flamingo. For she was startling to say the least of it. She would have been pretty in a fair English fashion, but she had seen fit to disguise herself by combing her hair in a flat thick mat down over one side of her face. From behind the curtain appeared one eye, blue-shadowed to an amazing appearance of dissipation. Scarlet nails, spike-heeled sandals, a flowered dirndl and a cotton jersey filled to frankly unbelievable proportions by a frankly impossible figure … Hollywood had come to Avignon by way of the Scotswood Road. And it became apparent that this not inconsiderable battery of charm was turned full on for someone’s benefit.

  ‘The man in the corner …’ murmured Louise.

  I glanced towards M. Paul Véry, who, however, appeared quite indifferent to the effort being made on his behalf. He had a sligh
t frown between his brows, and he was tracing a pattern with the base of his glass on the table-top as if it were the only thing that mattered in the world.

  ‘She’s wasting her time, I’m afraid,’ I remarked, and, as if he had heard me (which was impossible) the Frenchman looked up and met my eyes. He held them deliberately for a long moment in a cool, appraising stare, then, just as deliberately, he raised his glass and drank, still with his eyes on me. I looked away to gaze hard at the back of the fat German’s neck, and hoped my colour had not risen.

  ‘She is indeed wasting her time,’ said Louise softly. She raised an amused eyebrow at me. ‘Here’s metal more attractive.’

  ‘Don’t be idiotic,’ I said with some asperity. ‘And control your imagination, for goodness’ sake. Don’t forget this is Provence, and if a woman’s fool enough to be caught staring at a man, she’s asking for it. That’s what’s called an æillade, which is French for leer.’

  ‘All right,’ said Louis tranquilly. ‘Well, that’s all that Madame told me. I think the other lot are Swiss – nobody else except Americans could afford a gorgeous vulgar car like that – and are just en passant. The only other resident is a Mrs. Bristol, who’s either a widow or divorced. Et voilà tous. Shall we have another drink?’

  Then the blonde appeared, threading her way between the tables, to sit down near the trellis, two tables away from Mr. Marsden. She crossed one exquisite nyloned leg over the other, took out a cigarette, and smiled at the waiter. There was a sort of confusion, which resolved itself into three separate movements – the fat German beat the waiter and Mr. Marsden by a short head – to light her cigarette. But Mr. Marsden won on points, because the German’s lighter refused to work, and Marsden had a match. She flung a smile to Fat-Neck, an order for a drink to the waiter, and a look across the flame of the match to Marsden that made the flame look awfully dim. At any rate he read Burnt Norton upside down for quite some time afterwards. I had been right about the Pied Piper.

  ‘Eschew,’ said Louise, ‘was definitely not the right word. I suppose that is Mrs. Bristol.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to correct her when the waiter, travelling like a Derby winner, brought the drink.

  ‘Madame Bristole’s drink.’ He bowed it on to the table, and himself away.

  She settled back in her chair, and looked about her. Seen at close quarters, she was as lovely as ever, which is saying a lot. It was a carefully tended, exotic loveliness, like that of a strange flower. That is a hackneyed metaphor, I know, but it describes her better than any other … her skin was so smooth, and her heavy perfume seemed part of her. Her eyes, I saw, were a curiously bright blue, and large. Her hands were restless, and at the corners of mouth and eyes I could see the faint lines of worry. These deepened suddenly as I watched her, and then I realized that David had come out from the hotel. He followed the waiter, who was bringing another drink for Louise, and, as he passed our table, saw me. He gave me a sudden little half-apologetic grin, which the waiter masked, I think, from the woman. Then the queer sullen look came down over his face again, and he sat down opposite her. She looked approvingly at his clean shorts and white shirt, and said something, to which he did not reply. She looked at his bent head for a moment, then resumed her casual scrutiny of the tables.

  The place was filling up rapidly now, and the waiters were handing round the menus.

  ‘Have you met that boy before?’ asked Louise, ‘or was that just another leer?’

  I said that I had spoken to him for a moment in the courtyard. For some reason which I could not analyse, I did not want to talk about it and I was glad when she dropped the subject without further question.

  ‘We’d better order,’ she said.

  We studied the menu with some enthusiasm …

  But when Louise asked me if I wanted côte d’agneau or escalope de veau, I replied ‘Shelley’ in an absent sort of way, and between the petities pommes de terre sautées and the tarte maison I was still trying to fit the lovely (and French) Mrs. Bristol in with Gilbert White and that appalling dog and the expression on a child’s face of something being borne that was too heavy for him to bear.

  And I didn’t mean the iron table, either.

  After dinner Louise announced that she was going to get her book, and sit over her coffee and cognac until bedtime. So I left her to it, and went out to explore Avignon alone.

  Avignon is a walled city, as I have said, a compact and lovely little town skirted to the north and west by the Rhône and circled completely by medieval ramparts, none the less lovely, to my inexpert eye, for having been heavily restored in the nineteenth century. The city is dominated from the north by the Rocher des Doms, a steep mass of white rock crowned by the cathedral of Notre Dame, and green with singing pines. Beside the cathedral, taking the light above the town, is the golden stone palace of the Popes. The town itself is slashed in two by one main street, the Rue de la République, which leads from the main gate straight up to the city square and thence to the Place du Palais, at the foot of the Rocher des Doms itself.

  But these things I had yet to find. It was dusk when I set out, and the street was vividly lit. All the cafés were full, and I picked my way between the tables on the pavement, while there grew in me that slow sense of exhilaration which one inevitably gets in a Southern town after dark. The shop windows glittered and flashed with every conceivable luxury that the mind of the tourist could imagine; the neon lights slid along satin and drowned themselves in velvet and danced over perfume and jewels, and, since I have learned in my twenty-eight years to protect the heart a little against too much pity, I kept my eyes on them, and tried not to think about the beggars who slunk whining along the city gutters. I went on, carefully not thinking about those beggars, until I reached the end of the street, where the Rue de la République widens out and becomes the main square of the city, and where all Avignon collects at night, together with, one would swear, every child and every dog in France.

  The square is surrounded with cafés, which overflow the narrow pavements with a froth of gay little tables and wicker chairs, and even cast up a jetsam of more little tables across the roads and into the centre of the square itself. Here, as I said, Avignon collects at night, and for the price of a cup of coffee, which secures you a chair, you may sit for an hour and watch France parade for you.

  I paid for my coffee, and sat in the milk-warm air, marvelling, as one has to in Provence, at the charming manners of the children, and the incredible variety of shapes possible among the dogs, at the beauty of the half-naked, coffee-brown young men in from the fields, and the modest grace of the young girls. One in particular I noticed, an exquisite dark creature who went slowly past with downcast eyes. Her dress was cut low over her breasts, and gathered tightly to a tiny waist, but her face might have been that of a nun, and she walked demurely between her parents, stout, respectable-looking folk who made the girl as difficult of access, no doubt, as Danaë. And she was followed, I could see, by dark-eyed glances that said exactly what had been said to Bele Yolanz and fair Amelot, five hundred years before, when the troubadours sang in Provence.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a woman’s voice behind me. ‘But didn’t I see you at the hotel?’

  I turned. It was Mamma from Newcastle, Scotland, and she was smiling at me rather hesitantly from a nearby table.

  ‘I’m Mrs. Palmer,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind me speaking, but I saw you at dinner, and—’

  ‘Of course I don’t. My name’s Charity Selborne.’ I got up and picked up my coffee-cup. ‘May I join you?’

  ‘Oh, do.’ She moved her chair to make way for me. ‘Father and Carrie – they go off walking about the place, exploring they call it – only sometimes they seem to take so long, and—’

  ‘And it seems longer when you don’t know anyone to talk to,’ I finished for her.

  She beamed as if I had said something brilliant. ‘That’s exactly how I feel! Fancy! And of course it’s not like home, and what with
people talking French it’s different, isn’t it?’

  I admitted that it was.

  ‘Of course if I go in for a cup of tea at home,’ said Mrs. Palmer, ‘in Carrick’s, you know, or it might be Fenwick’s, there’s always someone I know comes in too, and you can have a nice chat before you get the bus. That’s why it seems kind of funny not knowing anybody here, and of course it isn’t tea anyway, not real tea, as you might say, but I just can’t seem to fancy this stuff they give you with lemon in, can you?’

  I said on the whole, no, and how very brave of her to come all this way for a holiday.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs. Palmer, ‘it wasn’t really me that suggested it, it was Carrie. I’d never have thought of a grand holiday like this, you know. But I just thought to myself, why not? You always read about the South of France and what’s the good of just going every year to Scarborough and reading about the South of France? Well, I just thought, we can afford it, and why not? So here we are.’

  I smiled at her, and said why not indeed, and good for her, and what a splendid idea of Carrie’s.

  ‘Of course she likes to be called Carole,’ said Mrs. Palmer hastily. ‘I think it’s these films, you know. She will try to dress like them, say what I will.’

  I said Carole was a pretty girl, which was true.

  ‘Now that Mrs. Bristol, poor thing,’ said Mrs. Palmer. ‘She does look the part, the way Carrie never will. Of course she was on the stage or something, before It Happened.’

  I sat up straight.

  ‘Before what happened, Mrs. Palmer?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t you know? I recognized her straight away. Her photo was in all the Sunday papers, you know. Before she married that dreadful man, I meant.’

  ‘What dreadful man? What happened?’

  ‘The murderer,’ said Mrs. Palmer, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘He was tried for murder, the Brutal Murder of his Best Friend, it said in the papers.’ The quoted headlines echoed queerly. ‘He thought his friend was carrying on with her – with his wife – so he murdered him. It was all in the papers.’