“I have no objection to speaking plainly,” said Lemaître suddenly, as if he had made up his mind about something. “The cause is moral—or social if you will. Its origins no doubt are as wide as M. Cassis insists. But much I lay at the door of the young men of M. Cassis’s profession.…”
“At mine, m’sieu?”
“Well … the young writers, the intellectuals, the students, the men who think for their generation, who set the example—men often prominent in the best sense during the war. They were the leaders then, fighting the invader, risking death and torture. Those who died were rightly honoured as heroes. But some of those who lived—where are they now? Many are betraying their country as eagerly as they defended it!”
Bénat said something to Maggie Sorques which made her giggle. There was a minute’s pause. Lemaître was getting heated. I think, from her expression, Claire thought of changing the subject, but didn’t get it out in time. Alix unexpectedly was ahead of her.
“That’s one side of the picture, M. Lemaître.”
“And what is the other side, please, madam?”
She glanced at Bénat with her clear, cool eyes. “Being a woman, I don’t know it all. But one can see a little—try to understand. When a soldier comes back home from a war he has to change all his habits—just overnight. Yesterday he was a hero to kill other men. To-day he would be a criminal. That is hard for a time, but there are many other changes to bring his mind back to peaceful ways. So often he comes back and there is no trouble.… The man who has been in a resistance is different. He doesn’t come back; he stays just in the same place, and life goes on in the same way around him. His nerves have been at a greater stretch than the soldier, because for him there are no rest times, no leaves—and often for weeks he has worked alone, out of touch with his friends, not knowing if they are dead or have betrayed him. Well, he is in civil life already so he cannot come back to it—but all the laws of his land which it has been good to break are now suddenly no longer good to break. Everything is upside down. It isn’t killing; it is the little things. Yesterday it was clever to travel without a ticket, to hoard food, to tear up the tramlines, to print false notes, to lie, to cheat, to steal. To-day it is wrong. And not only have all the good laws come back but all the bad ones and the petty ones as well. Instead of the new world that he wanted to see he finds the old one thrust back on him with all its shabbiness, its frustrations, its betrayals.…” She stopped and looked again rather appealingly at Bénat. “I cannot finish. You go on, Charles.”
Captain Vigre said: “ Yes. Bénat is still a name to conjure with.
Twice captured, seven identity cards, decorated by De Gaulle. Let us hear you speak for your contemporaries, monsieur.”
Bénat moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. “This isn’t the time for speeches. I shouldn’t want to be thought of as the Fuhrer of the dinner table.”
There was a laugh.
“No,” said Walter in his gentle drawl. “We’d like to hear what you feel. If you go on too long we can always cry quits.”
“I shall not go on too long because I have nothing to go on about,” said Bénat. “What is M. Lemaître complaining of? He talks of betrayal, but that’s a big word. He casts up the shadow of a lion, but I think it’s only a mouse.”
“I’m complaining,” said Lemaître, “of just what Mme. Delaisse has spoken of. The revolt has continued. And I differ from her because I’m sure that with any faith or understanding it need not have continued at all. The intellectuals of M. Bénat’s generation—seven out of ten of them—are working against France. Many have become Communists, I know. Their aim is the overthrow of liberty as generations of Frenchmen have come to know it. As for the de Gaullists, they claim a better intention, but I wonder sometimes what the end would be—”
“That” said Vigre, “is not the—”
“But to-night I’m speaking specially of a third group. They are the men who are anti-social for shoddy personal ends. They became outlaws under Darnard and Pétain. They remain outlaws under the Fourth Republic. The highly organised black market, the immense illegal currency deals, the smuggling of gold, the manufacture of absinthe, the violence and intimidation where it occurs: these are all the work of educated and intelligent men. One can tell by a sort of conceptual stamp.… Such men would be of untold value in any legitimate sphere.”
“Well said!” muttered Deffand.
“As it is, they are striking at the heart and stability of the country. And some of them, as I say, men with the most admirable of war records. They risked everything for France—now they are lining their pockets and living in luxury without caring what the cost will be.”
This time I heard what Bénat whispered to the actress. “ I thought I was supposed to be making the speech.”
“And so you shall,” said Lemaître, also hearing. “But at least you can’t say now that my complaint is unspecified.”
Another course was served. But there was no chance of the talk being diverted. Everyone was waiting for Bénat.
He dabbed his mouth with his table napkin. Alix was looking a bit upset, and one could tell the argument touched her closely. I didn’t like the way she looked at Bénat.
Bénat said: “I haven’t been briefed for the defence of my generation, so I can follow no instructions. Anyway, I’m entirely an individualist and couldn’t pretend to speak for them.” He looked at Admiral Carrol with narrowed eyes. “Always supposing there is any truth at all in M. Lemaître’s accusations, which I of course question, I am going to shift the responsibility elsewhere. First, I’d say that what M. Lemaître mistakes for the failure of a generation is really the symptoms of a graver complaint. In fact, the most fatal of all diseases: old age. Europe has been civilised for centuries; senile dementia is now setting in. People try to disguise it; but the heirs are already quarrelling over the death-bed. America has drawn from its parent most of Europe’s one-time faith in human progress. Russia—a half-brother, for its mother was Asiatic—believes in the civilisation of the ant. They are irreconcilable and argumentative. Would you blame our generation for slipping away from the noise and smell of the sick room?”
Captain Vigre tried to say something, but Bénat went on.
“No doubt you blame those who accept the Marxist mystique. But why should you blame the few who have abandoned themselves with courage of the doctrine of despair? Simply because it makes them less satisfactory citizens in a world where an acceptance of citizenship means exploitation? How very good this Veuve Clicquot is, Mr. Winterton. I’ve not often tasted better.”
“Thanks,” said Walter.
Deffand beside me broke his long silence. “I’m a plain man, not an intellectual,” but he didn’t say it apologetically. “ If you’ll pardon me, all this seems to be a pretentious way of dressing up what’s really only an evasion of common loyalty and common responsibility.”
Bénat contemptuous bottom lip dragged a bit at one side. “Let’s be unpretentious then. Loyalty to whom?”
“To France!” said Lemaître. “To one’s fellow citizens. To democracy.”
“What loyalty do I owe to my fellow citizens? Supposing I wished to go in for a life of crime—which is not likely since I have as much money as I want—what would deter me? Dear, dear. Loyalty to the shabby politicians in Paris, who change governments once a week and spend their lives in political trickery and manœuvre? Loyalty to the stupid peasantry or to the greedy property owners who now employ me in their legal troubles? Loyalty to those who escaped to England and stayed there all through the war making speeches? Loyalty to those who endured the occupation by first making a fortune out of the Germans and then doubled it catering for the Americans? Loyalty to the new rich or to the old poor? Loyalty to my old comrades in the Resistance who have suffered the common disillusion? Ah, yes, perhaps. And how better to show it than by keeping one illusion alive? To me—as to some of them—there is only one God, Charles Bénat, world without end, amen.”
He smiled and put the wineglass to his lips again. “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. How much easier we all find it to talk than to act. Now it’s Lemaître’s move.”
“I have nothing more to say.”
Captain Grabo said: “ I can see the way M. Bénat feels, and he’s put the case for the renegade, but it’ll only be a question of time before these men are rounded up—just as they were in the States. Prohibition created an artificial social order, just as in a different way foreign occupation did here. Breaking the law was in fashion. When the artificial condition was removed it went out of fashion, and the gangster went with it.”
Lemaître said: “ I think you will find that a strong new line is going to be taken over here. These men will be put down with a firm hand. Proof, we know, is hard to get, but—”
“Is there any truth,” Cassis said, “in the rumour that a man form the Paris Sûreté is already at work in this area?”
Lemaître picked up his fork, scraped round his plate sombrely.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I’d been watching the expressions on Alix’s face. It came as a bitter pill to realise she was in love with Charles Bénat.
After dinner I saw her alone for a minute at the other end of the room, and moved round to speak to her. She didn’t look towards me, but I could tell by some change in her attitude that she knew I was on the way.
I said: “It’s thirteen months since you phoned. The taxi service in this town is bad.”
She didn’t look up. “Is your eyesight better, Giles? How much can you see?” At close quarters the “ roundness” of her voice was unchanged, deeply reminiscent.
“Enough to tell when the game isn’t straight I think.”
She flushed. “I’m very sorry about last year. It must have seemed strange to you.”
“Strange isn’t an overstatement.”
“Why have you come back?”
“I wanted to see you again. To see you for the first time.”
“It won’t do any good.”
“So I noticed this evening.”
“What do you mean?”
“I came back, too, because of Pierre. Last year I found him with a wound in his head, and it puzzles me how he got into a car afterwards and drove a hundred-odd miles into the mountains.”
She said in a cool undertone: “ Pierre had an accident in his car. That was all.”
“I suppose you did phone me from his flat that evening?”
There was a little burst of laughter behind us. Bénat was having fun with Cassis and Maggie Sorques.
“Oh, what’s the use of talking about it?” Alix said. “I don’t want to talk about it. Pierre was nothing to you.”
“No,” I said, “ but you were.”
“I wasn’t.”
“D’you remember the last day we spent together at Monte Carlo, and then home, where Pierre was waiting on the stairs?”
“I must have been crazy.”
“Agreeably so.”
She half turned, as if wanting to get away. “It was some midsummer madness. I was—sorry for you. Well, I’m not sorry for you any longer.”
“I’m glad of that. We can start on a different basis.”
She smoothed out a crease in her frock—a gesture that began gracefully enough, but ended with a disquieted flick. “There’s no question of starting again, Giles. I want to make it quite clear.”
“Nothing at all is clear at the moment.”
“Will you please go away? Go back to England. If you think I care anything for you, you’re wrong. Please understand that.”
“Are you afraid of what I’ll find out?”
“There’s nothing to find out. Nothing you can find out. Pierre fell over a cliff, and was killed. He has been buried twelve months. D’you think anything you can do or say …”
“Why did you phone me that night?”
“I have regretted it ever since!”
“Well, that’s something to go on.”
“It’s nothing to go on. I’ve—regretted ever meeting you. It made you unhappy and—it was no use to me. It was a foolish interlude, without a future. Now it’s over, has been a long time. I’ve got my own life to live—in my own way. Please leave me alone.”
Lady Funchal was drifting towards us. She seemed to have her eye on me. I said: “Back in England I was laid up for a time—used to imagine meeting you, but it wasn’t a bit like this. Is it you or I who have the grievance?”
She looked up a minute through her lashes but didn’t say anything.
I said: “ I’ve not often been good at telling myself fairy stories, but this was one I got away with. It helped a lot at the time. I knew you might be married to Pierre—if I was mistaken and he was alive; Bénat told me you’d married him—but I used to try and imagine it the other way. I used to think, the rest may be fraud but she’s genuine—somehow; she must be. The thing I wanted sight for more than anything was to see you. Well, in a way, that’s quite a success.… But one thing’s missing. I used to imagine a rather different sort of welcome. I seem to have been building castles in the wrong part of Spain.”
She said: “Please leave me alone.”
The party went on until about two o’clock in the morning. We played chemmy, and I stayed till the end because I wanted to know where the Wintertons had met Bénat and Alix.
When the last guest had gone Claire said: “ Of course you must stay the night, Giles. We wouldn’t think of your going home now. We still have a pair of your pyjamas and your old room’s ready.”
I made various protests which as usual were swept aside. When Claire had got her way Walter said:
“Let’s see, where did we meet the Bénats? It was at that evening affair at the Negresco, wasn’t it? Last December, some sort of an evening celebrating the heroes of the Resistance. He was quite the lion of the evening. Made a witty speech, I remember.”
“Then we saw them a second time at the Casino in Monte. She’s a pretty creature, isn’t she? Where had you met them before, dear boy?”
I said too casually: “Oh, last year they were about Nice. In those days she was friendly with a man called Pierre Grognard.”
Claire moved her eyebrows into a cautious frown. “ By the way, Walter, conversation got rather dreary at dinner tonight. Arguments are such fun if no one takes them seriously. Lemaître might have been in his cour d’assises.”
I said, “Who was the fellow sitting next to me; Deffand? He only opened his mouth twice.”
“We don’t know,” Walter said. “Lemaître introduced him. He’s down from Paris for a month or two. Claire swears he’s the man from the Sûreté.”
Chapter 9
When I got to Villefranche about five on the Monday I found it en fête. The crews from the American warships were ashore and the little inscrutable town was full of young sailors. Nearly all of them looked as if they’d just been turned out by some immense dry-cleaning store, as if they’d all been steamed and polished and brushed until no blemish was left. A single stain in a hundred duck suits would have stood out a mile. The town was fuller than usual of locals, girls and others who had come in to see the fun—or share it. The quay was as busy as any main street on a Saturday night, and much more interesting. Dark youths in turbans peddled oriental jewellery, old women sold scents, jeeps sputtered over the flagstones, cafés hung out banners of greeting, officers strolled about on their long non-European legs.
About eight a French military band appeared in honour of the visitors and played a number of marches with magnificent élan underneath the Hotel Welcome. Then a dance was started outside the Pavilion. I had passed the Café des Fourmis twice earlier on, but as dusk began to fall I climbed up again and made my way through the narrow alleys of the town.
Up here were the less immaculate of the visitors. A piano tinkled in a shabby bistro and a sailor danced with an Algerian girl. Their shadows swelled and shrank on the rough stone wall. Two older sailors
, half drunk, argued interminably in the middle of the street with a naval policeman, while half a dozen ragged children gaped. A glare of light showed five ratings in another café flirting with some girls of the town.
There was a good deal of noise and music at the Café des Fourmis, but most of the noise was being made by the usual patrons. Four sober American lads sat a bit self-consciously at a table by the door. I didn’t go in but went across to the bistro on the other side. The official difference between a bistro and a café is that in a bistro you’re supposed to stand at the bar for your drink. But this place, like many, had one table, and I found that from it you could look into the Café des Fourmis. I ordered Vin Ordinaire and prepared to wait and see if anything happened.
Nothing did happen for half an hour, except that a few people entered and a few came out. Three more Americans went in and sat at another table without speaking to the four who were already there. A van drove up and some bales were brought up the alley and loaded into it. On the side of the van was “Bonnet et Cie. Du pain bien boulangé. Rue des Martyrs, Nice.” I didn’t take much notice of it until a reflection of light caught the face of the driver and I saw it was Scipion. I got up from the table and moved to the bar to pay, then strolled outside. The van had just started its engine. I heard Scipion say to a big man standing by the side: “Back in an hour, maybe.”
The van drove off. The big man slouched into the café. The street was quiet again. I walked to the end and back. It was a quiet night but cool for the end of June. Down on the quay the music was fast and cheerful; the picket boats were busy like phosphorescent insects; and, a little withdrawn, the two cruisers glittered in the dark blue silence of the bay. I went back to the alley, and, seeing there was no one about, turned down.
It was dark between the high walls, and the narrow way was cobbled, with big uneven stones. But blindness teaches some things, and I didn’t stumble or make a noise. At the bottom was a bit of a garden about twelve feet square with a low wall round it, and within the garden down some steps were two doors leading into the Café des Fourmis. One was ajar and a slit of light came through. The other was shut. I’d never heard a dog but it was something to look out for. Otherwise there didn’t seem a lot of risk. I tried the gate and it opened easily.