He sighed in satisfaction. 'That's better,' he said. 'I feel like myself again.' He moved towards the window. 'We'd better go out this way,' he said. 'It's safer. That gossip Julie may be in her lodge. There's another wicked old rascal for you. I suppose you loved her too.'
He climbed from the window and I followed him. The scent of the tumbled orchard filled the air. I brushed the vine with my shoulder as I passed.
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I shall have to ask you to walk in front of me. I'll direct you to the place where I've left your car.'
I stumbled across the orchard and the field. I saw the dim outline of the old white horse against the hedge. He snorted at sight of us, and made off.
'Poor Jacob,' said my pursuer, 'he's very old. Every tooth in his head is rotten - he can't even eat properly. I'll put a bullet through him one day to ease his troubles. You see, I can be sentimental too, at times.'
The dark woods closed upon us, and even now I could not be sure, even now it might suit his plan to kill me and have done with me forever. I walked on, through darkness, undergrowth, and moss, and now I had no present and no past, the self who stumbled had no heart or mind.
'There's the car,' he said suddenly.
The Ford, familiar, spattered with mud, was drawn up beside the forest track. It seemed to me, like my clothes, a phase outgrown. I patted the bonnet with my hand.
'Get in,' he said.
I settled myself in the well-known seat and switched on the lights and the ignition.
'Back her out into the track,' he said.
He got in beside me and we drove along the path. We turned into the forest road and followed it to the top of the hill. Below us were the lights of the village, and the clock struck eight.
'It may not be easy,' I said slowly. 'They have become different. Your mother, I mean, and Blanche, and Paul, and Renee. Only the child is the same. The child hasn't changed.'
He laughed. 'Even if she had,' he said, 'she'd soon be mine again. I'm the only one who matters in her world.'
We drove down the lime avenue and across the bridge. When I came to the gateway I stopped the car. 'I won't go any further,' I said. 'It wouldn't be safe.'
He got out and stood for a moment, an animal, sniffing the air. 'It's good,' he said. 'It's part of the place. It's St Gilles.'
Now at last, when all decisions had been taken, he emptied his gun. He put it, with the cartridges, into his pocket.
'Good luck,' he said, and then, with a smile, 'Listen.' He put his two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The sound was shrill and long. It was answered almost instantly by Cesar. He began to bark. Not savagely, not as he would do to a stranger, but excitedly, high-pitched, the bark changing to a howl, to a whine. The sound went on and on, filling the air. 'You didn't learn that trick?' he asked. 'Of course not, how could you know?'
He smiled, and waved his hand, and passed through the gateway on to the drive. Looking towards the terrace steps I saw a figure waiting there, the glow from the fanlight above the door shining upon her. It was Marie-Noel. When she saw the figure striding up the drive she gave a cry and ran down the steps towards him. I saw him swing her up in his arms and climb the steps. They went inside the chateau. The dog was whining still. I got into the car and drove away.
27
What I did was automatic. I don't remember thinking anything. I turned the car up the lime avenue and then to the right, on the road to Villars. The way was so familiar now, even in darkness, that the action was mechanical. I drove cautiously because my injured hand was awkward still, and the part of my brain that was working told me I couldn't afford to make a mistake and risk landing the Ford and myself in a ditch. I concentrated on holding the wheel and watching the road, and the effort of doing so shut out thoughts of anything else. I made no image of the life I had left. It was as though, when he entered the chateau, something like an iron clamp had come down, shutting me from it and them, and I had to hide, I had to seek the cover of darkness.
Coming into Villars was a strange relief. The country roads held menace: they were nerve cells leading back to St Gilles. Villars was lighted and had solidity, and people strolling in the streets. I turned down past the market-place and stopped the car just short of the Porte de Ville. I looked across the canal and saw that the long window of Bela's room was opened wide on to the balcony, and was lighted too. She was at home. When I saw the light, and the open window, something stirred within me that had been frozen since Jean de Gue and I had changed clothes in the darkness. The iron clamp was between me and the chateau, not between me and her. She was outside the taboo. The light in her window was consoling, kindly. It stood for reality, too, for the things that were true. It seemed to me that this was important, to know the false from the true, and I could no longer distinguish between either. Bela could tell me, Bela would know.
I left the car and went over the footbridge to the balcony. I walked in through the open window. The room was empty, but she was there. I could hear her moving about in the kitchen across the passage. I stood there, waiting, and in a moment she was with me. She stood in the doorway, looking at me, and then she shut the door and came towards me.
'I didn't expect you,' she said, 'but it doesn't matter. If I'd known you were coming I would have waited dinner for you.'
'I'm not hungry,' I said. 'I don't want anything.'
'You look ill,' she said. 'Sit down, I'll get you a drink.'
I sat in the deep chair. I did not know what I was going to say to her. She gave me cognac, and watched me while I drank. The cognac brought some sort of warmth to me, but the numbness remained. I felt the solidity of the arm of the chair under my hand, and it was safety.
'Have you been in the hospital chapel?' she said.
I stared at her. It took me a moment to realize what she meant.
'No,' I said, 'no, I was there this morning.' I paused. 'Thank you for the porcelain. The child was pleased. She believed they were the old ones, mended. It was right of you to suggest that.'
'Yes,' she said, 'I thought it better that way.'
She looked at me with compassion. No doubt I seemed to her strained and queer. She must believe I was still shaken by the shock of Francoise's death. It might be better to let her think that. Yet I could not be sure. I wanted something for myself alone.
'I came,' I said, 'because I was not sure when I should see you again.'
'I understand,' she answered. 'Naturally the next few days, the next weeks, are going to be very hard for you.'
The next days ... the next weeks. They did not exist. It was not easy to tell her that.
'The child,' she asked, 'is she all right?'
'She's been wonderful,' I said. 'Yes, she's quite all right.'
'And your mother?'
'My mother too.'
She was still watching me. I saw her eye fall on my clothes. She did not recognize the suit. It was not dark, like the one I had been wearing since Francoise's death, but a tweed mixture. The shirt, the tie, the socks, the shoes - she had never seen any of them before. An odd silence seemed to come between us. I felt I must justify myself, give her some explanation.
'I want to thank you,' I said. 'You've shown me great understanding all this past week. I'm very grateful to you.'
She did not answer. And suddenly I saw comprehension come into her eyes, the flash of intuition that sweeps an adult hearing the confession of a child. In a moment she was kneeling by my side.
'He has come back then?' she said. 'The other one?' I looked at her. She put her hands on my shoulders. 'I might have known it,' she said. 'He saw the notice in the paper. That brought him back.'
Her words gave me such a sense of overpowering relief that all feeling of strain and tension went from me. It was like the stanching of a wound, the cessation of pain, the blotting out of fear. I put down the cognac and did something infantile and absurd. I laid my head on her shoulder and closed my eyes.
'Why you?' I asked. 'Why you and nobody else? Why not the moth
er, why not the child?'
I felt her hands on my head, soothing, gentle. It was surrender, it was peace.
'I suppose I was not easy to deceive,' she said. 'I did not realize at first - I could not have told from looking at you, from conversation, any more than they could. It was not till later that I knew.'
'What did I do?' I said.
She laughed, and the laugh was not mocking, as it might have been, or easy, or gay, but had a strange quality of warmth, of understanding.
'It was not what you did,' she said, 'but what you were. A woman would have to be a great fool not to distinguish between one man and another, making love.' I felt rebuffed. Yet still I did not mind, because she was with me. 'You have something,' she said, 'that he doesn't possess. That's how I knew.'
'What do I have?' I asked.
'You may call it tendresse,' she said. 'I don't know another word for it.' Then abruptly she asked my name.
'John,' I said. 'We share even that. Shall I tell you what happened?'
'If you want to,' she said. 'I can guess a great deal. The past is done with, for both of you. The future is what matters now.'
'Yes,' I said, 'but not mine, theirs.'
As I said this I knew with urgency, with conviction, that what I was saying was right and true. The old self of Le Mans was dead. The shadow of Jean de Gue had also vanished. In their place was something else that as yet had no substance, no flesh, no blood, but was born of feeling, that could not die, and it was like a flame, contained in the body's shell.
'I love them,' I said. 'I'm part of them now, forever. That's what I want you to understand. I shall never see them again, but because of them I live.'
'I understand,' she said, 'and it could be the same for them. Because of you they also live.'
'If I could believe that,' I said, 'then nothing matters. Then everything is all right. But he's gone back to them. It's going to be as it was before. It will start all over again - the carelessness, the unhappiness, the suffering, the pain. If that were to happen, I should want to go out now and hang myself on the nearest tree. Even now ...' I stared over her shoulder at the darkness outside the window, and the iron barrier thinned, and it was as though I stood beside him inside the chateau, and I saw him smile, and I saw the mother look at him, and the child, and Blanche, and Paul, and Renee, and Julie too, and her son Andre.
'I want them to be happy,' I said. 'Not his sort of happiness, but the kind that is buried inside them, locked up, that I know is there. Bela, it exists, I've seen it, like a light or a hunger, waiting to be released.'
I stopped, because what I said was perhaps nonsense. I couldn't explain myself. 'He's a devil,' I said, 'and they belong to him again.'
'No,' she said, 'that's where you're wrong. He's not a devil. He's a human, ordinary man, just like yourself.'
She rose and drew the curtains, and then came back to me again. 'Remember, I know him,' she said, 'his weakness and his strength, his good points and his bad. If he were a devil I shouldn't waste my time here in Villars. I should have left him long ago.'
I wanted to believe her, but I could not be sure, when a woman loves a man, how true is her judgement. To see no evil could be the one blindness. Little by little I told her what I knew, the bits and pieces of the past I had put together during the week that had gone. Some of it she knew already; some of it she guessed. Yet as I talked, wishing to condemn him, it was as if it was the shadow I condemned, the man who had moved and spoken and acted in his place, and not Jean de Gue at all.
'It's no use,' I said at last. 'I'm not describing the man you know.'
'You are,' she answered, 'but you're describing yourself as well.'
There was the fear. Which one of us was real? Who lived, and who had died? It struck me suddenly that if I should now look at myself in a mirror I should see no reflection.
'Bela,' I said, 'hold me. Tell me my name.'
'You are John,' she said, 'you are John, who changed places with Jean de Gue. You lived his life for a week. You came here twice to my house and you loved me as John, not as Jean de Gue. Is that reality for you? Does that help you to become yourself?'
I touched her hair and her face and her hands, and there was no falsity about her, no pretence.
'You've given something to all of us,' she said, 'to me, to his mother, to his sister, to his child. Just now I called it tendresse. Whatever it is, it can't be destroyed. It's taken root. It will go on growing. In future we shall look for you in Jean, not for Jean in you.' She smiled, and put her hands on my shoulders. 'Do you realize I know nothing about you?' she said. 'I don't know where you come from, or where you are going, or anything at all except that your name is John.'
'There is no more to know,' I said. 'Let's leave it at that.'
'If he hadn't come back,' she asked, 'what was he going to do?'
'He was going to travel,' I told her. 'He was going to take you with him. Or so he said. Would you have gone?'
She did not answer at once. For the first time she seemed nonplussed.
'He's been my lover for three years,' she said. 'He's familiar, part of my daily existence. I believe he's fond of me. But he would soon find someone else.'
'No,' I said, 'he would never find anyone else.'
'What makes you so sure of that?'
'You forget,' I said. 'I've lived his life for a week.'
I looked at the window and the curtains she had drawn across it.
'Why did you draw the curtains?' I asked.
'It's a signal,' she said. 'He doesn't come in when they're drawn. It means I'm not alone.'
The same thought, then, had come to both of us. Once he had dined, and said good night to the child, and left his mother in the tower room alone, he might go down to the car once again, and drive from St Gilles to Villars, and cross the footbridge as I had done. He belonged here, just as he did there. He was the man in possession, I the intruder.
'Bela,' I said, 'he doesn't know I've been here. He need never know, unless it comes out through Gaston, which is unlikely. Keep it from him, if you can.'
I got up from the chair.
She said, 'What are you going to do?'
'Leave the house,' I answered, 'before he comes. If I know anything of him, he'll need you tonight.'
She looked at me thoughtfully. 'I could leave the curtains drawn,' she said.
When she said this I remembered what he had done to me. I remembered how he had not only taken up his own life once again but had destroyed the one that had been mine. I no longer had a job, or a roof in London, or anything that belonged to me but a suit of clothes, and the Ford, and a wallet containing some French money.
'I asked you a question a moment ago,' I said to her, 'but you never answered it. I asked you if you would have gone with him, travelling, had he suggested it.'
'I suppose so,' she said, 'if I felt he wanted me.'
'It would have been a sudden plan,' I said, 'without much warning. Remember, he couldn't have shown himself in Villars, in case he was recognized.'
'He wouldn't have come to Villars,' she said. 'He would have written to me, or telegraphed, or even telephoned, asking me to join him.'
'And you would have gone?'
She hesitated for one brief moment. 'Yes,' she said, 'yes, I should have gone.'
I glanced at the window. 'Pull the curtains back when I've left the house,' I said. 'I'll go down the stairs and through the door to the street.'
She followed me out of the room to the passage beyond. 'What about your hand?'
'My hand?'
'It has no dressing.'
She went to the bathroom and fetched an oilskin packet, similar to the one she had used on Sunday. As she held my hand, and dressed it, I thought of Blanche who had done the same for me in the morning, and I thought of the mother, whose hand had lain in mine throughout the night. I remembered, too, the firm, warm clasp of the child.
'Look after them,' I said. 'You can do it, but nobody else. Perhaps he'll listen
to you. Help him to love them.'
'He loves them already,' she said. 'I want you to believe it. It wasn't just the money that brought him back.'
'I wonder,' I said. 'I wonder ...'
When she had dressed my hand and I was ready to leave, she said to me, 'Where are you going? What are you going to do?'
'I have a car outside,' I answered, 'the one he took from me a week ago. The one he would have driven you in, to Sicily or Greece.'
She came with me down the stairs, and standing there, at the dark entrance to the shop, she paused a moment before opening the barred door and letting me out into the night, and in a troubled voice she said, 'You're not going to harm yourself in any way? You haven't said to yourself, "This is the end"?'
'No,' I said, 'it isn't the end. It may be the beginning.'
She drew back the bolts from the door. 'A week ago,' I told her, 'I was a man named John, who didn't know what to do with failure. I thought of a place I might go to, to find out. Then I met Jean de Gue, and went to St Gilles instead.'
'And now you are John again,' she answered, 'but you don't have to worry about failure. It doesn't exist for you any more. You learnt what to do with failure at St Gilles.'
'I didn't learn what to do with it,' I said, 'it merely became transformed. It turned into love for St Gilles. So the problem remains the same. What do I do with love?'
She opened the door. The shops and houses opposite were shuttered and closed. There was nobody in the street.
'You give it away,' she said, 'but the trouble is, it stays with you just the same. Like water in a well. The spring remains, under the dried depths.' She put her arms round me and kissed me. 'Will you write to me?' she asked.
'I expect so.'
'And you know where you're going?'
'I know where I'm going.'
'Will you be there long?'
'I've no idea.'
'This place, is it far away?'
'Oddly enough, no. Only about fifty kilometres.'
'If they could have shown you there what to do with failure, can they also show you what to do with love?'