The Avignon Quintet (115 page)

Quiminal said, “Are you fit to come with me? Good! Then you will take her directly to the morgue, dropping me off at the office. I will join you as swiftly as I can with a doctor and with Smirgel – it would be wise to implicate him as he is likely to help rather than hinder. Do you agree? You know the morgue people already.” Constance had been down once or twice to identify or advise them on civilian corpses picked up by the police. Yes, it was feasible, and this way she might avoid taking Blaise with her into town to help – it would spare him unwelcome publicity as a contact of hers. “We’ll have a try,” she said and jumped up with a new resolution.

Blaise was disappointed but said nothing; he went off to rejoin his wife. Together the two girls managed to carry and arrange the figure in the back of the car, somewhat awkwardly to be sure. Then they set off upon the icy road to Tubain, knowing that they must reach the town before nightfall. This bleak winter dusk with its hint of frost and snow was ideal for such an expedition. The sentries on the checkposts were half-asleep with the cold and could not bother with them – they waved them on almost with impatience. And so across the bridge and into the enceinte of the massive walls, threading their way towards the quarter where the morgue lay. Quiminal was duly dropped off by the square and scampered off like a hare to perform her part of the bargain. Constance went on alone now until she came to the ugly little building which had once been an abbatoir and now did service as a morgue. She ran up the steps and, pressing the bell, lifted the flap of the letterbox to shout through it the name of the warden: “François!
C’est Madame Constance
. Open up please.
Oui, c’est le docteur.”
With the customary sloth and groans the old man turned the key and the high doors swung open. “What do you bring?” he said, seeing nothing but an apparently empty car. “A client,” she replied according to the time-honoured pleasantry among those who dealt in corpses with as much emotion as a butcher does with meat. Grumbling, he turned back and she followed him to take one end of the old and stained stretcher into whose stout frame the slender wrapped form was placed, to be carried into the building where Constance herself elected to undress it before placing it in one of the long oak drawers which covered one whole wall of the establishment. François groaned and grumbled as he assisted her, but it was largely about the difficulty of running things in the present conditions. “Don’t blame me for the smell,” he said with bitterness. “How do they expect me to operate on half-power? No refrigeration plant could take it. The place is beginning to smell to high heaven.” He rambled on between groans as they conducted the body to the theatre where it would be placed upon a marble slab – an old-fashioned one which recalled those upon which fishmongers displayed their catch half a century before. “Careful with her – she’s a friend,” cried Constance in the face of his clumsy and negligent gestures, his attempts to undo the figure which was so professionally tied up by Blaise. “Let me do it.”

“How old is it?” he said, and then, “A woman did you say?” But he recoiled when he saw who it was. “It’s the nurse of Montfavet,” he said, “I know her all right.” This was an unexpected departure. He went on, “But she is in uniform, part of the army. We can’t take her in here.” This was one of the distinctions which Constance had foreseen and feared. She was examining those dreadful bruises upon the throat when a voice from behind her answered the objection. It was the voice of Smirgel and it said, “I will be responsible. Please do go ahead. A doctor is on his way here.” He seated himself upon the only chair and seemed about to make notes or fill in forms or perform some clerical work. Meanwhile they turned on the arc lamp above the high operating table, and which at once threw up the surroundings with its light. They were in a large crypt with white tiled walls, somewhat greasy; a number of hoses depended from the ceiling, with one of which they were now able to wash the quiet body – water so hot that it contributed a distinct tint of warmth to the marble flesh. They cut off the body’s dark hair which Constance put in her handbag – she would afterwards make keepsakes from it for the three survivors of the shared summer. Strangely enough while she was doing this Smirgel came to her side and stared down upon the recumbent figure for a moment before he gave a very small, a hardly audible sob, but whether of affection or contrition, or both, it was impossible to judge. Constance eyed him keenly and most curiously. “Was she anything to you?” she asked, on the spur of an impulse, but the German did not answer. He went back to his seat where he crossed his legs and closed his eyes. They went on with the preparations, drying her and cutting her nails short. Then came the cheap cotton shroud through which her shorn head peered with an expression of nervous vagueness. And now came Quiminal with a man who was apparently a doctor for he carried the forms which attested to the death of someone “from natural causes”. But first he went through the parody of verifying the death by placing a stethoscope upon the pulse. (The strangulation marks were hidden by the shroud.) Then he went into the outer office and wrote industriously for a moment upon several forms which he thrust upon Quiminal before taking his leave in perfunctory fashion.

Now she was ready; but before tilting her off the table Constance asked for the traditional scalpel which the old man kept handy for such a purpose, and made a deep incision in the artery of the thigh, binding it up with a strip of tape against leakage. So she was propelled on a spider-like trolley towards the huge filing cabinet of oak which, like a gigantic chest-of-drawers, held the dead. “And the funeral?” said the keeper, who was about to start once more upon his theme concerning the current, and the difficulties of refrigeration. “She will be buried,” said Smirgel unexpectedly, “with full military honours. I have seen to everything.” Constance looked at him curiously. It seemed so strange that he should seem to be so moved. “Do I come?” she said, and was relieved when he shook his head. “I can’t ask you, it will be in the Citadel.”

Poor Livia! What an apotheosis!

They would, she supposed, fire a salute over the grave. “Natural causes” is after all the best description of such events, so refactory do they seem to human logic. A siren sounded somewhere: they had forgotten the war for a moment. The car stood in the dark street waiting for them. All of a sudden Constance felt passionately hungry, for she had eaten little or nothing all day. In the pocket of her greatcoat she found a slip of chewing gum which would have to sustain her until she got home. And Quiminal: “Do you want me to come?” she asked Constance. “Or would you prefer to be alone?” Constance nodded on the word alone, but then another thought struck her: “If I don’t reappear at the office tomorrow it’s because the Swiss consul has come and we’ve left for Geneva; you will not forget to come up and fetch the car?” It was agreed, and after a warm embrace the little car set off to carry her home across the bridge. The Rhône was ominously high; Constance’s dimmed headlights did not meet with approval from a passing patrol which hooted at her. She slowed to shout “Emergency” at them, and then took the desolate and dark side-roads leading away into the hills.

The whole episode throbbed inside her, matching her fatigue which came and went in waves, stirred, it would almost seem, by the swaying and bucking of the little car. So that was the end of Livia, an end with no beginning, with no explanation. Had she been Smirgel’s mistress? An idle enough thought: Livia belonged to nobody. She thought of her now, lying wrapped in her cotton
burnous
in the great sideboard – what else could one call it? – of the morgue, a companion now for tramps picked up in the frozen ditches, or elderly and half-starved citizens of the town laid low by frost on their shopping expeditions. She would lie there all night in her abstracted, withdrawn death mood, the silence only broken by the little withered noise of the machinery working at half-current. She would never see her again; she repeated the words “Never again” in order to come to grips with the idea. It was as though someone had thrown a stone to make a sudden hole in the décor of their lives, just as Sam’s death had done; smashed reality like a pane of glass. She realised then to what extent the dead exercise the profession of alibi-makers for the living; she lived in part because she was reflected in these people – they gave her substance and being. And then another, heavier thought visited her: what would Aubrey feel about it? Should she tell him or wait for someone else to do so? She had a sudden picture of his expressive face conveying sadness, and with a shock of surprise felt a sudden wave of love for him. The beloved old slowcoach of the almost forgotten summer. In one of the cupboards upstairs she had found a discarded and forgotten exercise book of his which still contained notes and jottings, though now half illegible from damp. Moreover the book had been torn across and obviously flung carelessly into the cupboard. She made no attempt to decipher any of the annotations, feeling that in some way it would be a violation of Aubrey’s privacy – he was, like her, touchy about such things. But she put it carefully in a folder with the intention of returning it to him when next they met. She could not have possibly guessed how soon this would be: the surprise must wait upon her return to Geneva and the Head Office.

At the house, however, there was another surprise. A man sat in front of the fireplace warming his hands, or trying to for the fire was almost out. It was the Swiss consul. She greeted him wonderingly. “I didn’t see your car,” she said, and he explained that he had hidden it in the trees. “As I warned you, it is very sudden; we must start for Geneva tonight, as soon as you can get ready. I have had the
laissez-passer
, everything is in order. But we must hurry. I will tell you more when we get on the road.” It would not take her long, for her affairs were in tolerable order, her packing almost done. “Very well,” she said, between exhaustion and elation. “Very well.”

She went upstairs to where the cupboard stood which housed her few clothes and rapidly completed the packing of her small suitcase; with this and a briefcase of papers and toilet gear she rejoined her companion who was now betraying every sign of anxiety, looking at his watch, and standing now upon one leg, now upon the other. Blaise appeared to lock up after her and take the keys. She explained rapidly and in low tones the chain of events which concerned the fate of Livia, reassuring him that there would be no repercussions to worry about. Then the three of them walked into the forest clearing among the tall planes to where the diplomat’s car stood with its double pennants in their leather sleeves and emphatic diplomatic insignia. The consul slipped off the leather cases and released the flags – one Swiss and one with a swastika. He climbed in and started the motor. “I am ready,” he said, and Constance made her goodbyes, promising to return before the end of the month. They moved off slowly down the hill and turning away from the city engaged the complicated loops and gradients of the northern road, which soon brought them down to river level. It was possible to increase speed, though in places the Rhône was exceptionally high and ran in the counter sense within a few metres of their wheels.

But the run was not all to be so calm for already at Valence they ran into a cloud of command cars buzzing about like insects to clear the main highway; they were deflected to side roads and were not sorry, for they ran through remote and beautiful villages which seemed deserted. Obviously there was a push southwards being organised, forming like a cloud upon the invisible horizon. The car was cold but the steady murmur of the powerful engine was reassuring, comforting. Apart from the grand turmoil in Valence they ran into no other traffic of consequence, but it was well after midnight when they reached the border and were halted by a military barrier. Lanterns and hurricane lamps flared everywhere inside a disused railway shed, a desolate rotting edifice full of wooden sleepers. Some human ones also.

Here they were roughly told to get out and shift their baggage on to trestles for inspection, which they did, yawning. After a methodical search through their affairs they were permitted through, though she had to walk the hundred or so yards of dark permanent way while the Swiss, being a diplomat, was allowed the privilege of driving his car along a dirt track, to emerge behind the barbed wire which marked the Swiss frontier. A man was waiting for her arrival, lurking in the shadows.

“How ill, how pale she looks,” he thought as he watched her from his point of vantage in the shadow of the building. “And her hair all in rat’s tails and dirty.” He had half a mind to turn away and vanish, for he had not been expected and would not be missed. But his heart held him there, like a compass pointed upon Stella Polaris, yet without the courage as yet to go forward, to announce himself. She must at most have expected a duty car with a driver. He thought of that abundant blonde hair with a pang of memory. Now her head was casually done up in a coloured scarf tied under her chin. She looked like a French peasant from the occupied zone, dirty, listless and tired. He had not expected to find her in such a state of fatigue and disarray, and he did not know whether his presence might make her feel humiliated. But retire he could not, nor advance, nor decide anything whatsoever for himself.

He was revealed to her sleepy eyes by a bar of gold light thrown from a doorway suddenly opened by a militia man. “Mr. Affad!” There was no ambiguity in her relief and enthusiasm; she went up to him in a somewhat irresolute fashion, as if about to put out her hand; but they embraced instead, and stood for a moment yoked thus, absurdly relieved and delighted by the other’s presence. It was wonderful to feel his body breathing in her arms. Caresses! That is what she had been missing all this time, she realised, that is what her own body hungered for. Yet she had thought little of him, and had never as far as she could remember, dreamed of him. Now all of a sudden she was set alight by the touch of him and the firm resolution of his arms around her. She relinquished him with regret for she was obliged to introduce him to her travelling companion. To her delight she distinctly saw a frown of jealousy appear on his charming face. It was wonderful to see him feign a coldness he did not feel now, imagining heaven knows what about this portly and unimaginative figure who was all too anxious to relinquish her and head for home. She thanked him suitably, promised to keep in touch about their joint return to duty, and turned to follow Affad who already had her affairs in hand. His private car, an old American sedan, stood at the side of the road, and they piled into its warmth with gratitude. As he started the motor he said, “Look at me, Constance,” and she obeyed, though it at once made her conscious of her appearance. She put her hand up to her hair and slipped off her scarf. “Why?” He smiled. “I wanted to see how you look when you are away, working.”