Where the street led into the harbour I hesitated again. It was so open. The Old Port was a vast open space, criss-crossed by tram-lines and railway tracks, bounded on three sides by houses and restaurants all flashing their gaudy neon signs in the face of the sunset, and open on the fourth side to the sea. The harbour waters were crowded with boats of all shapes and colours, and in the amber light the forest of masts swayed and bobbed amid the glancing web of their ropes.
I only hesitated for a second, then made across the open square towards the nearest crowd of people, hoping to lose myself among them, and get somehow to the other side of the square. There were about twenty or thirty people standing there, talking and laughing, between the railway tracks and the edge of the quay. I reached them and joined the crowd, ignored a pressing invitation from a couple of sailors obviously ashore for the evening, and took refuge behind what appeared to be a family party, papa, mamma, and two little boys in sailor suits with red pompoms on their bonnets. I threw a cautious glance at the mouth of the street I had just left. He was not there.
Then I discovered why the crowd had collected there on the quay.
An old boatman, with scarlet cheeks, a quantity of white whiskers, and a liquid and lascivious eye, suddenly appeared up a short gangplank which led from the quay beside us to the stern of a motor-boat moored below.
‘This way!’ he yelled. ‘This way for the Château d’If!’
Simultaneously, another old man, with whiskers slightly less white, and an eye proportionately more lascivious, shot up in rivalry in the next boat.
‘This way,’ he screamed. ‘This way for the Château d’If!’
The crowd, showing neither fear nor favour, turned as one and began to file down the twin gangplanks. It looked as if, my cover gone, I was going to be left high and dry on the edge of the Old Port.
I flung a look at the street corner, just in time to see Richard Byron emerge, glance once back over his shoulder, then turn to scan the square, but he was not looking at the quay; he was looking the other way towards the din of the Canebière.
I scuttered down the nearest gangplank and sat down under the awning, as far forward as I could get. The boat lay well below the level of the quayside, and I knew he could not see me from where he stood. But it looked as if, bating Buenos Aires, I were going on a trip to the Château d’If.
The boatman, with a good deal of quite unnecessary noise, cast off, and soon we were churning through the milky waters of the bay towards the harbour mouth.
I cannot pretend that I enjoyed any part of that trip to the Château d’If. I was caught again in the noose of the old fear, and now it was worse, threaded through as it was with the drab strands of hopelessness. It seemed that I literally could not get away from him, almost as if there were something so linking this dark and dangerous man with myself, that wherever I went, he was there. In the whole of Marseilles, to meet him the first moment I ventured out: in the whole of Provence, to meet him in the ruins of Les Baux. To whatever shifts I resorted, he found me: whatever falsehoods my brain devised, he knew the truth behind … this, at any rate, is how I was thinking, and how much was due to hunger and how much to inescapable fate I was in no fit state to judge …
I sat on the low parapet of the turret of the Château d’If, watching the white stone slowly flush to a tender rose. I watched the softly breaking water of the tideless sea wash and wash across the whispering white pebbles, aquamarine rippled through with liquid gold.
I saw it all in a kind of dream; and the whisper of the sea came like a dream’s echo.
The boat went, and I sat where I was. Another came, and discharged its noisy cargo of sightseers, who streamed chattering into the castle, and crowded through the prison-cells and across the wide flat roof where I was sitting. I got up suddenly, and went down to the boat which was waiting. My watch told me I had been on the island already over an hour: he would have gone, I said to myself, without conviction. With rather more conviction, and a good deal more common sense, I told myself that this state of numbed fatalism was the result of hunger and fatigue, and the sooner I got back and got a meal the better I should be.
The journey back seemed much shorter than the outward trip. It was almost dark by now, and along the shore the lights were strung out like a necklace. There were no waves, but bars of darkness slid softly towards the land to lap against the dim rock.
We shut off our engine and drifted towards the quay followed by our arrowing wake. The port was gemmed with neon lights, white, scarlet, green and amethyst, and under the more subdued orange glow of the street lamps the evening crowds were gathering. The city of the night-time was waking up. I sat in the silently moving boat, relaxed now, still in the trance-like drifting state of acute reaction from strain. I scarcely bothered to scan the quay in the twilight, to see if this last absurd bid for escape had worked. I knew it could not. I knew that there was something far stronger than anything I had known before, that would lead Richard Byron straight to the gangplank to wait for me.
We were tying up at the quay-side. The boatman yelled to a boy on shore, and between them they threw out the gangway. The other people in the boat got up, calling to one another and laughing, and trod awkwardly up the plank. I followed.
I hardly even looked at Richard Byron as he took my arm and helped me on to the quay.
14
Fate, I come, as dark, as sad
As thy malice could desire;
Bringing with me all the fire
That Love in his torches had.
(Marvell)
I walked across the quay beside him, his hand under my elbow. People passed us, walked at our shoulders, even jostled us, but we might as well have been alone. I saw the crowd vaguely, darkly through a glass, and the sounds of them were remote, in an anaesthetized distance. The only sound I heard in all the clamour was the tread of our feet on the cobbles, and the breathing of Richard Byron beside me.
He said, not ungently: ‘We still have to have our little talk, you know.’
Something deep inside me seemed to snap. The anger I had been too scared, too tired to feel, suddenly jetted up. I stopped abruptly, and swung to face him. People streamed past us, but they were not there at all; there was only myself and my enemy, in a little circle of anger.
I looked him straight in the eyes. I said furiously: ‘We can have as many little talks as you want, since you seem prepared to make such a damned nuisance of yourself to get them. But I can tell you one thing now, and it’s the most important thing of all, and it’s this. I am not going to tell you anything about David. I know perfectly well where he is, and you can bully me and threaten me as much as you like, but you’ll find out nothing. Nothing.’
‘But I—’
I swept on as if he hadn’t spoken: ‘You told me outright that you were a murderer. Do you think I am going to be a party to handing a child over to you, a child who, for all I know to the contrary, you did bash over the head in the dark the night you murdered your friend? Think again, Mr. Richard Byron. David is a darling, even if he is your son, and I – I’d murder you myself if you laid a finger on him!’
The hot tears were welling up in my eyes, tears of anger, anxiety and strain. I felt them spill over and begin to run down my cheeks. I could not see his face through them, and he did not speak for a long moment.
‘My God,’ said Richard Byron at length in a curious voice. But I hardly heard him.
‘Apart from which,’ I finished, ‘you – you’ve ruined my holiday, and I’ve been looking forward to it for ages.’
After which remarkably silly speech I suddenly broke; I began to cry helplessly, with my hands to my face, and the tears dripping out between my fingers. I turned blindly away from Richard Byron, stumbled over a rail-track, and would have fallen, but that his hand caught me again by the elbow and steadied me.
Then he said, in the same curious voice: ‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had something to eat. Come along.’
The neon
-lighted cafés were a blur. I felt him piloting me along the sidewalks, and I fought for self-control, groping in my bag for a handkerchief. Then suddenly we were in out of the street, in a little, beautifully appointed restaurant where the tables were set back in alcoves, lit softly by wall-lights. I caught a confused glimpse of napery and glass and silver, and a great spray of yellow flowers, then I was comfortably settled on a deep wall-seat upholstered with wine velvet, and Richard Byron was putting a glass into my hand. My own was shaking, and his hand closed on it, holding it steady until I regained sufficient control to raise it to my lips.
I realized, as from a great distance, that his voice was very gentle. He said: ‘Drink it up. It’ll make you feel better.’
I gulped some of it down. It was spirit of some kind, and it seemed to burst and evaporate inside my mouth and throat in an immediate aromatic warmth, so that I gasped and choked a little, but my breath came more evenly afterwards, and I found I could control the little shaking sobs that were racking me.
‘All of it,’ urged Richard Byron. I obeyed him, and lay back against the deep cushions with my eyes closed, letting my body relax utterly to the creeping warmth of the drink and the smell of food and wine and flowers. My bones seemed to have melted, and I was queerly content to lie back against the yielding velvet, with the soft lights against my eyelids, and do nothing, think of nothing. I was quiet and utterly passive, and the awful beginnings of hysteria were checked.
Still from that same dimensionless distance, I heard him speaking in French. I supposed he was ordering food. And presently at my elbow I heard the chink of silver, and opened my eyes to see the big glittering trolley of hors d’œuvre with its hovering attendant.
Richard Byron said something to him, and without waiting for me to speak, the man served me from the tray. I remember still those exquisite fluted silver dishes, each with its load of dainty colours … there were anchovies and tiny gleaming silver fish in red sauce, and savoury butter in curled strips of fresh lettuce; there were caviare and tomato and olives green and black, and small golden-pink mushrooms and cresses and beans. The waiter heaped my plate, and filled another glass with white wine. I drank half a glassful without a word, and began to eat. I was conscious of Richard Byron’s eyes on me, but he did not speak.
The waiters hovered beside us, the courses came, delicious and appetizing, and the empty plates vanished as if by magic. I remember red mullet, done somehow with lemons, and a succulent golden-brown fowl bursting with truffles and flanked by tiny peas, then a froth of ice and whipped cream dashed with kirsch, and the fine smooth caress of the wine through it all. Then, finally, apricots and big black grapes, and coffee. The waiter removed the little silver filtres, and vanished, leaving us alone in our alcove.
The liqueur brandy was swimming in its own fragrance in the enormous iridescent glasses, and for a moment I watched it idly, enjoying its rich smooth gleam, then I leaned back against the cushions and looked about me with the eyes of a patient who has just woken from the first long natural sleep after an anaesthetic. Where before the colours had been blurred and heightened, and the outlines undefined, proportions unstable, and sounds hollow and wavering, now the focus had shifted sharply, and drawn the bright little restaurant into sharp dramatic outline.
I looked across at Richard Byron.
He was sitting, head bent, watching the brandy swirl in the bottom of his glass, the light of the subdued wall-lamp falling upon him from behind and to the left. I found myself for the first time really looking at him without any underlay of fear and suspicion to colour my picture of him. The light lit sharply the angles of cheek-bone and jaw, and the fine line of the temple, throwing a dramatic slant of shadow from his lowered lashes – David’s lashes – across the hard line of his cheek. And the first thing that struck me was the deep unhappiness of that face; it was unhappiness rather than harshness that had driven those furrows down his cheeks, and given the eyes such sombre shadowing. As he sat with his head bent, obliviously toying with his brandy-glass, the angry lines of brow and mouth were smoothed away, and instead there was a withdrawn and brooding look, an aspect harsh and forbidding enough, until it was betrayed by the unhappiness of the mouth.
His lashes lifted suddenly and he looked at me. I felt my heart jolt once, uncomfortably, then I met his gaze squarely.
‘How do you feel now?’
I said: ‘Much better, thank you. It was good of you to salvage the wreck – I must look like—’
He laughed, and it was suddenly like coming face to face with a complete stranger, where you had been talking to someone you thought you knew.
He said: ‘You must be feeling better, if you’re beginning to worry about how you look. But don’t let it distress you. You’ll pass, indeed you will.’
He lit a cigarette for me, and suddenly his eyes were grave over the flame and very intent. He said, quietly: ‘There are only two things I want to ask you just at this moment—’
My face must have changed, because he added sharply: ‘Don’t look like that. Please. I’ve been every kind of a damned fool, and I’m sorry, but for God’s sake don’t look at me like that any more. They’re very harmless questions, but if you’ll tell me the answers, I’ll leave you alone till you feel like telling me the rest.’
He paused, and all of a sudden it was as if the room were as still as the pole.
Here it comes again, I thought. He looked down at his glass, so that I could not see his eyes, but under the noncommittal voice I could feel the urgency that had frightened me before.
He said: ‘How is David? Does he seem well – and happy?’
I looked at him in surprise; I had expected a very different question. I said: ‘As far as I could see, he is very well indeed. But I don’t imagine that he’s happy. For one thing, he’s lonely, and for another, he’s too scared.’
‘Too scared?’ He looked at me this time. He set his glass down so sharply that the brandy splashed and sparkled, and then his hands came down to grip the table’s edge, the whites of the knuckles showing. From the ash-tray, where his cigarette burned unheeded, a pencilled blue line of smoke spiralled up between us. Richard Byron stared at me through the smoke, and he repeated, very softly: ‘Too scared – of what?’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Of you, of course.’
There could be no doubt about his first reaction to that uncompromising reply; it was stupefaction, sheer, speechless stupefaction. He stared at me across the table, and his eyes widened. Then, suddenly, as if he had understood or remembered something, the old bitter look was back in his face, and he seemed to withdraw once more into himself. He said, in a curiously flat voice:
‘Of me? Are you sure it’s of me? Did he say so?’
Then suddenly, I knew. I felt my own eyes widening as his had done, and I sat staring at him like an owl.
‘Why,’ I whispered, ‘why, I don’t believe you killed your friend. I don’t believe you ever hurt David in your life. I believe you love him. Don’t you. Don’t you.?’
Richard Byron gave me a queer little twisted smile that hurt. Then he picked up his cigarette again and spoke lightly.
‘I love him more than anything else in the world,’ he said, quite as if it didn’t matter.
Then suddenly, the bubble was broken, and the illusion of privacy dispelled. The head waiter came hovering, his face split with a smile, his hands fluttering before him like large pursy moths.
‘Madame has enjoyed her dinner? Monsieur has fed well? The Chapon marseillais, he is good, yes? He is the specialité de la maison, you understand, Madame….’
We assured him that everything had been perfect, and, wreathed in smiles and mothlike swoops of the hand, he bowed himself off, and another waiter, with the faint air of apology that is worn by a man committing an act in questionable taste, sidled up with the bill.
Richard Byron glanced at it, put a quite staggering amount of money down on the salver, and waved the bowing waiter aside. Then he hesitated oddly, and loo
ked at me.
‘I know it’s useless saying I’m sorry for what has happened,’ he said, ‘but as far as the inadequate phrase can go, I am sorry. I’ve been a damned fool and a blind one. I should have known that someone like you wouldn’t have been mixed up in this thing. I promise not to pester you again – but could we go somewhere, take a walk or something, and will you let me explain? It’s quite a long story, and somehow I’d rather you knew it.’
His face looked white and strained in the subdued light. I had a sudden sharp memory of David’s face, wearing much that same look, and of a hesitating childish voice asking me: ‘How did he look?’
I said: ‘If it concerns David, I’d like to hear it. And as for what’s in the past, shall we forget it for a while? It looks as if you’re not the only one who’s made mistakes – and mine, perhaps, were the bigger.’
‘You had the more excuse.’
He smiled his sudden warm smile, and to my own amazement, I smiled back, and rose.
‘If I promise not to climb out of a back window, may I go and powder my nose?’
‘You—’ he bit off something he had been going to say. ‘Yes, of course.’
As I went I saw him get out another cigarette, and settle back in his chair to wait for me.
We went out into the dark streets that ray from the Old Port and turned, instinctively and as if by mutual consent, towards the sea. Presently we found ourselves in a cobbled street which slanted along the sea front, with tall houses to the left of us, and a low sea-wall to the right. Away ahead, floating in the starlit air like a vision, glimmered the gold statue of Our Lady who stands high on the summit of Notre Dame de la Garde.
The houses were dark and secret, and the occasional lamps cast only a furtive light on the cobbles. Boats bobbed and curtseyed at the water’s edge, rubbing each other’s shoulders, the sea lipping at them with small sucking sounds. Where the shamefaced lamplight let fall a reflection on the water, the shifting surface cast a pattern of light upwards on to the bellies of the boats, so that they seemed to be swimming, netted in a wavering luminous mesh. Further out in the bay, the green and red and golden riding-lights of the bigger ships drowned themselves in long liquid shadows. The ropes looked as fragile and as magical as gossamer.