I paused a moment, considering my words, trying to understand the proper sequence of events. 'Yes,' I said, 'yes, it was a great success. She was very pleased.'
'And you managed to get the setting I told you about? They kept the locket for you, after my telephone call?'
'I did. It was quite perfect.'
'I'm so glad. It was a marvellous idea of yours, and must have come to you in one of your better moments. The child didn't mention it, so of course I did not either. She said her mother had been very much upset by the breakage this morning, so I gathered the dog and cat were precious. They won't mend, of course, but I can get duplicates from Paris. They're Copenhagen - I suppose you realized that? Come on, let's eat. I'm hungry, if you are not.'
She laid the table, drawing it up to my chair, and I thought to myself that this was, so far, the most effortless moment of my masquerade. It could be termed a gift, even, on the part of Fate, which had been sparing of indulgence up to date. The only trouble was Renee, walking the streets of Villars getting angrier every moment.
Jean de Gue's Bela must have divined my thought, for she said, 'Vincent will be back from lunch directly. When he comes I'll send him out to see if she's in the car. Did you leave it in the Place de la Republique?'
'Yes.' Had I? I wasn't sure.
'Don't worry. She'll drive it home. It's what I should do in her place. And then Gaston can bring it back again. Were you joking when you said the child had gone off in a lorry?'
'No, it's true. They gave me the message in the bank.'
'You take it very calmly.'
'I think it was a lorry from the verrerie. And what could I do? She and the lorry had disappeared when I came up from the vaults.'
'What were you doing in the vaults?'
'Looking in my safe.'
'That must have been a shock to you.'
'It was.'
I was eating the ham and the salad and breaking bread and, it struck me how much more pleasant was lunch today, with this woman opposite me, than it had been yesterday in the dining-room at the chateau. This train of thought led me to the one undelivered present.
'There's a bottle of scent for you,' I said, 'on the chest-of-drawers in the dressing-room at St Gilles.'
'Thank you. Am I supposed to go and fetch it?' she asked.
I told her without lying, able to laugh at it now, about the mistake in the initial B.
She looked bewildered. 'I don't see how it happened,' she said, 'since you never speak to your sister. Or had you really brought her something as a peace-offering at long last?'
'No,' I answered, 'my mind wasn't functioning properly. Too much to drink in Le Mans the day before.'
'You must have been insensible and dead drunk on the floor to have made a blunder of that magnitude,' she said.
'I was both.'
She raised her eyebrows. 'The visit to Paris was not successful?'
'Very unsuccessful.'
'Carvalet weren't cooperative?'
'They wouldn't extend the contract on our terms. I came back and told my brother Paul they had. My family and the workmen at the verrerie all believe it has gone through. Yesterday I reopened negotiations on the telephone, and the result is an extension of the contract on their terms. Nobody knows but me. That's why I went to the bank this morning - to see if I can stand the loss. I still don't know the answer.'
I looked up from eating and saw the wide blue eyes fixed upon me.
'What do you mean, you don't know the answer?' she said. 'Surely you do? You told me before you went to Paris that the verrerie is working at a loss, and that if Carvalet wouldn't agree to your terms you were going to close down.'
'I don't want to close down,' I said. 'It wouldn't be fair on the workpeople.'
'Since when have you bothered about the workpeople?'
'Since I got drunk in Le Mans.'
There was the sound of a door in the distance. She got up and went to the passage. 'Is that you, Vincent?' she called.
'Yes, Madame.'
'Go and see if the Comte de Gue's car is in the Place de la Republique, and if there is a lady waiting in it.'
'Very good, Madame.'
She came back and brought me the basket of fruit and the cheese, and poured me another glass of wine.
'You seem,' she said, 'to have made rather a mess of things since you returned. What are you going to do about it?'
'I haven't the slightest idea,' I said. 'I'm living from day to day.'
'You've done that for a long time.'
'I'm doing it more so now. From minute, in fact, to minute.'
She cut a slice of gruyere cheese and gave it to me. 'You know,' she said, 'it's a good thing, now and again, to take stock of oneself in life. To see where one has gone wrong. I sometimes wonder why I go on living here in Villars. I barely make a living out of the shop, and I exist mainly on what Georges left me, which is precious little these days.'
Was Georges perhaps a husband? Some kind of comment seemed necessary.
'Why do you go on living here?' I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. 'Habit, I suppose. It suits me. I'm fond of this little house. If you think I exist for your occasional visits, you flatter yourself.'
She smiled, and I wondered whether Jean de Gue did flatter himself. Either way, the result was beneficial.
'Do you think,' she asked, 'that your sudden feeling for the verrerie is because it is, after all, two hundred and fifty years old, and you may be going to have a son at last?'
'No,' I said.
'Are you sure?'
'Perfectly. My feeling for it comes from having looked on it yesterday with new eyes. I watched the men working there for the first time. I realized they had a certain pride in it, and a feeling for its owner too. If the verrerie closes down they will be deceived in him, disillusioned, quite apart from being out of a job.'
'It is pride, then?'
'I suppose it is. Pride of a sort.'
She began to peel a pear and gave me the quarters from it. 'You make a mistake leaving so much of the administrative part to your brother. If you weren't so infernally lazy you would do it yourself.'
'That had occurred to me.'
'Is it too late to start now?'
'Much too late. Anyway, I don't understand it.'
'That's nonsense. You've watched it since you were a child. Even if you were never in the slightest bit interested, you must have picked up a working knowledge. I sometimes wonder ...' She paused, and began to peel an apple for herself.
'What do you wonder?'
'No ... it would be probing, and I never probe.'
'Go on,' I said, 'I'm curious. I want to be probed.'
'It's only,' she said, 'I sometimes wonder if your lack of feeling for the verrerie is because you don't want to think about it too deeply. You don't want to be reminded of what happened to Maurice Duval.'
I was silent. This was the fringe of something. The man Jacques had spoken of Maurice Duval: he was the man in the photograph album by the side of Jean de Gue.
'It could be,' I said slowly, after a moment or two.
'You see,' she said softly, 'you don't want me to probe.'
On the contrary it was essential to find out all I could about Jean de Gue. But not at the risk of committing another blunder.
'No,' I said, 'you're wrong. I want you to go on talking about it.'
She took her eyes off mine for the first time, and looked above my head, into the distance.
'The Occupation was over fifteen years ago,' she said, 'his part of it. Yet people go on remembering him - what a fine man he was, and how he died. It can hardly make for peace of mind for those involved.'
There was a tap at the door and a small thin man, wearing a beret, looked into the room. He smiled when he saw me.
'Bonjour, Monsieur le Comte,' he said. 'It's nice to see you. How are you?'
'Very well, thank you.'
'There was no lady in the car. But there was this note on the
seat.'
He handed it to me with a bow. It was short and to the point. 'I have been looking for you and Marie-Noel for nearly an hour. I have hired a car to take me back to St Gilles. R.' I showed it to my hostess.
'Now you can relax,' she said. 'Vincent, be a dear, and put these things through to the kitchen, will you?'
'Yes, Madame.'
'Peace, for how long? For me, till three o'clock. For you as long as you care to stay. Do you want another cushion?'
'No. I'm perfect.'
She cleared away the table and fetched cigarettes and coffee. 'I'm rather glad you have this sudden sentiment for the verrerie,' she said. 'It shows you have more feeling than you pretend. I still don't see, though, if it's losing money and you've arranged an even worse contract than before, how you can possibly afford to keep it running.'
'Nor do I,' I said.
'What about that friend who comes to shoot with you? He advises you, doesn't he? He'd be the one to ask.'
She had thrown off the bright blue jacket, revealing a thin wool frock of indeterminate grey. It was restful to look upon her, and to know that in this room nothing was expected of me. I wondered how often Jean de Gue came here from the chateau and sat with his head against a cushion, as I was doing now. Her casual friendliness was disarming, yet inviting, too. It held a quality of ease suggesting mutual understanding without emotional demand. I picked up the cat and stroked it. It would suit me, I thought, if this could be all my masquerade demanded of me: if, instead of being the owner of the chateau of St Gilles, I might stop here indefinitely in the sunshine, sitting where I was sitting now, with the cat on my lap, being fed with slices of pear by Bela of Villars.
'Can't you sell some securities, or some land?' she asked. 'What about your wife? The money's tied up, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'Unless you have a son. I remember now.'
She poured me out another cup of coffee. 'How is your wife? She's not very strong, is she? Who's looking after her?'
I thought a moment. 'Dr Lebrun,' I said.
'He's getting rather old, isn't he? I should have insisted on a specialist. You've been oddly detached about it all along. I hope you show more sympathy at home.'
I stubbed out my cigarette. She was the one person who wouldn't be hurt by the truth, yet oddly enough I should have hated her to know. I could imagine the raised eyebrows, the amused laughter, and the practical approach, deciding what must be done, followed by quick, inevitable withdrawal and the courtesy one shows to a stranger.
'I'm not really detached,' I said. 'I try to show sympathy. The trouble is, I don't know enough about Francoise.'
She gazed at me thoughtfully. The candid eyes were disconcerting.
'What's the matter?' she said. 'It's not just finance, is it? It goes much deeper. What really happened to you in Le Mans?'
I thought of the old childhood game of hunt-the-thimble. I used to play it with a maiden aunt. It was a restful, easy game for the adult, who did not have to move but only to close her eyes while I, the child, tip-toed about a sitting-room filled with furniture and, heart beating, hid the thimble behind a clock. Then, with opened eyes, the dreaded questions began. As her eyes travelled towards the clock, honesty would compel me to say, 'You're getting warm,' though reluctantly, fearfully, not wanting the small gold thimble to be revealed in its precious quiet seclusion. This time I closed my eyes and went on stroking the cat upon my knee. Safety lay in evasion, and in the truth as well.
'You said something a little while ago about taking stock of oneself,' I said. 'Perhaps that's just what I've been doing, over a period of time, and it came to a head that evening in Le Mans. The self I knew had failed. The only way to escape responsibility for failure was to become someone else. Let another personality take charge.'
She did not say anything. I suppose she was considering. I could not see because my eyes were closed.
'The other Jean de Gue,' she said, 'the one who's been hidden for so long beneath the surface gaiety and charm, I've often wondered if he existed. If he's going to emerge, he'd better do so now. Time's getting on.'
Intuitively, uncannily, she had understood something of my meaning, but not the real sense. The thimble behind the clock was safe, the guesser cold. It was peaceful lying in the deep chair and I did not want to move.
'You don't really understand what I'm trying to tell you,' I said.
'Yes, I do,' she answered. 'You aren't the only one with a dual personality. We all have our multiple selves. But no one avoids responsibility that way. The problems remain to be tackled just the same.'
Colder and colder. The seeker was looking at the other end of the room.
'No,' I said, 'you've missed the point. The problems and responsibilities are new, because the man in charge is somebody else.'
'How does he seem to you, then, the man in charge?' she asked.
The great church in Villars sounded two o'clock. The sonorous bell of any church, any cathedral, always rings a summons, and this one, solemn, deep-toned, was far too near for peace of mind.
'Sometimes I see him without any feeling at all,' I said, 'and sometimes with far too much. One moment he's considering murdering those closest to him, and the next he's giving up his life for a stranger. He says he believes that the only motive which moves the human race is greed, and by ministering to this greed he himself survives. I think he has twisted ideas, but he's terribly near to the truth.'
I heard her get up, put my coffee on a tray, and carry the tray to the hatch. Then she came back and sat on the arm of my chair. It was strange that I resented, not the favour, which was casual and natural in itself, but that it was done to my other self, the Jean whom she believed me to be. I also resented the present on the chest-of-drawers at the chateau.
'The man in charge,' I said, 'why does he buy you "Femme"?'
'Because he likes the smell, and so do I.'
'Do you suppose that's ministering to greed?'
'It depends on the size of the bottle.'
'It's a very big bottle.'
'Then I call it foresight.'
I was not sure if I knew the scent of 'Femme'. I had never given anyone a bottle, and most scented women I avoided and abhorred. This one was not scented: she smelt of apricots.
'The thing is, it isn't greed at all,' I said. 'It's hunger. That's where he's wrong. And if it's hunger, what about the conflicting claims? Mother, wife, child, brother, sister-in-law, even workpeople - I can't satisfy them all. Frankly, I don't know where to start or what to do.'
She did not answer, but I felt a soothing hand on my head. Anonymity closed in upon me. I was on a border-sea between two worlds. The narrow island that once confined me had slipped away, rock-bound and isolated; the crowded continent waiting to receive me, vociferous, demanding, was momentarily out of sight. Wearing another skin had spelt release, yet bondage too. Something had been resurrected but was also spent. If the claims could be forgotten and the oblivion kept, which man should I be, myself or Jean de Gue?
I put out my hands and felt her face. 'I don't want to have to think,' I said.
She laughed, and, hardly brushing them, kissed my closed eyes.
'That's why you come here, isn't it?' she said.
13
When I came away from the house the sun of late afternoon had turned all the lichen-coloured roofs to gold. Boys and girls carrying satchels and school-books ran out of the house next door and crossed the canal by another footbridge. A clip-clopping horse, drawing a covered cart, plodded past the Porte de Ville, the driver slumped on his seat, cracking a lazy whip. Shutters had been flung back and doors were open in the shopping streets within. In the avenue of plane trees, close to the market-place, beside which lorries and carts had parked during the bustle of morning, old men and women now sat about in groups, basking in the warmth before the air turned chill, while smaller children, chattering like birds, shuffled the falling leaves and kicked the dust. I wondered how it would look at nightfall, t
his town of Villars, turning early to sleep and silence like all provincial market-towns, the inhabitants behind their shutters and in bed, the houses in shadow, the mellow roofs sloping to pitchy eaves, the flamboyant Gothic spire of the cathedral church stabbing an ink-blue sky; no sound, perhaps, but the passing footstep of a loiterer homeward bound and the hardly perceptible ripple of the canals still and dark beside the walls.
It was the sort of town that in the past had tempted me to pass a night en route. Having dined, no wayfarer but myself left in the street, I used to wander past the silent houses whose shuttered windows told me nothing, only now and again a glimmer of light through the chinks betraying the life within. Sometimes an open window on an upstairs floor revealed a gulf of darkness, or a candle threw a shadow on a ceiling, or a baby cried; but mostly all was still, and I would prowl alone in company with hungry cats who, sleek and stealthy, nosed the gutters of the cobbled street. How casually I would have passed that Porte de Ville, stared down into the canal, glimpsed the footbridge and the small house tucked in beyond, and so returned to my tourist's bed and been off by morning, none the wiser. Whereas now, in another mood, my whole life changed, some part of Villars was my possession.
The light of the late day gave warmth and colour; this was a friendly town where people smiled. The Renault, waiting in the Place de la Republique, was suddenly familiar as my own, and Marie-Noel's white plastic bag, left on the seat where she had thrown it with the market purchases, was not like any object in a stranger's car but full of meaning: I saw it dangling on the small wrist above the short white cotton glove. Even the bank at the corner had its own place and purpose in the background. Villars was a citadel, a refuge; and as I drove out of it I wondered why the gift of another man's mistress should prove such a curious antidote to strain. It seemed to me that nothing would move me now, neither tears from Francoise nor tantrums from Renee. The mother could be coaxed with affection, the child indulged to a limit set by reason, the brother pacified, the sister soothed: none of them seemed a problem, as they had done during those first forty-eight hours under the chateau roof.
The reason was hard to find. Physical ease alone was not enough: in the past I had proved it valueless. Could change of identity alter the body's pulse, release some matter in the mind hitherto held back by prejudice? The world was full of tragic misfit phantoms seeking escape by making love disguised. I was not one of them. The Bela of Villars completed a pattern, a pattern containing mother, wife, and child. The warmth of one, the dependence of the second, the laughter of the third, shaped themselves to make a fourth of her, and, finding this, I lost myself in all. Here was a part of the solution, but not the whole.