The Avignon Quintet (179 page)

And like lovers at any time and everywhere they suddenly found the need for privacy overwhelming; so much so that for several weeks after this critical re-evaluation of their loving they almost went out of circulation as far as their friends were concerned – preferring to dine early and lock up at an early bedtime rather than dawdling over dinner, even by moonlight, which was the time-honoured way of treating the slow Provençal nightfall. He found himself jealous not of her person but of her company. Nor was this change lost upon the Prince whose intuition was Egyptian in its sharpness of focus. “It’s happened at last,” he said with a chuckle in his most pleased and shocked tone of voice. “I shall be writing to the Princess, and I shall tell her that her worst fears have been confirmed! The spectre of love has begun to hang over this pious old bachelor’s head. Eh, Constance?” But she was sunk so deeply into the luxury of this marvellous pristine attachment that she was not put out of countenance by his banter. “She will be delighted,” she said, “the Princess has always had a soft corner for Aubrey and rather pitied his isolation.” Indeed the Prince was highly delighted and was already writing his letter in his head. As for Lord Galen, he had not noticed anything and he became plaintive when the Prince pointed out the obvious to him. “No one ever tells me anything,” he said with a sigh, “but I suppose it is a Good Thing, if you say so.”

“I most certainly do,” said His Highness with his characteristic tone, trenchant and cocksure. But it was less pleasant when the lovers disappeared from circulation for a few weeks, and rumour had it that they were somewhere secret in Italy. They were much missed by the Prince who was hopelessly gregarious and could not live without a staple diet of courtly gossip. Then, as if to complete the catalogue of unexpected happenings, Constance began to believe that she was pregnant and this provoked a further revision of options, a further period of reflection upon the future. It was marvellous to think about, and all the more so because neither had really foreseen such an eventuality, though at no time had any precautions been taken to obviate the fact. Blanford was highly delighted in a tremulous sort of way; he had begun to worry about being inadequate as a father and family man. “Does the man having nothing to do spend his time yawning and riffling a dictionary of Christian names? Surely you can set me to work doing something useful?” But for the moment she took her pleasure in encouraging his shiftlessness and the incoherence of his passion. She realised somewhere deep down that this sort of crisis would either make him or lose him!

To wake and find her arms round him – it surprised him to realise his former loneliness: how had he not been more conscious of the felicity of loving, the thrilling beauty of sharing? It was unnerving to find himself surprised like an adolescent at these departures into fine feeling, tenderness, passion. And then to find himself still thirsty and heartwhole after her love had passed over him, so to speak, parched anew like a landscape after rain. Sutcliffe wore a slightly reproachful air these days, but it was probably a case of sour grapes though he had never claimed to be in love with Constance himself, which would have provided an explanation of the fact. Fragments of rejected notebook material kept turning up, too, to add colour to the growing mountain of
obiter dicta
which one day would be polished and sited in the projected novel. He claimed to have invented the “extra-marital biscuit” as well as crumbless bread, not to mention the dildo called Recompense; it had wings and a snout which developed uterine suction by a system of spontaneous nibble. It was full of camshaft glory. Listen to the music of the spheres – the clash of Hercules’ testicles. “Enough!” cried Blanford. “In God’s name, enough!”

With the first days of summer weather the newly constituted tribunals set up to judge war crimes began to sit in the city, and the question of Smirgel’s guilt or innocence would soon come under debate. The whole subject was still confused and riddled with suppositions and false testimony. A typical search for heroes as well as scapegoats was going forward. Two members of the Judge Advocate’s staff were plied with attestations highly favourable to Smirgel, while the Prince found them places on the board of the treasure company and a promise of a share in the spoils. You would have thought from the way he went on that the German had been put up for a British DSO as well as the French Military Cross. It was hardly surprising that the case against him was quashed “for lack of conclusive evidence”. Meanwhile the courts had the good grace to publish the figures concerning the missing, which showed very clearly that Provence had taken a terrible beating from the Nazis. Of the 600,000 forced labourers sent into Germany 60,000 did not return, 15,000 were shot or beheaded, while 60,000 contracted tuberculosis … But the tribunal’s judgement on Smirgel was highly delightful, indeed was music to the ears of Lord Galen, for now nothing could stand in the way of their treasure-hunting. The company too had been set up to exploit their gains when the time came.

But here again unexpected factors came into play, among them the fact that rumours of their find had somehow leaked out – perhaps Smirgel had committed a calculated indiscretion? At any rate the city fathers and the authorities in Avignon made it known that they would expect to be kept informed and that any treasure trove which accrued from their activities should be brought to the notice of the museum authorities and the civic authorities. “Bang goes any hope of keeping it secret, but perhaps we can limit the affair to a couple of bribed officials?” said the Prince, swallowing his disappointment as best he could. “Anyway, let’s not get worked up in case there is no treasure, or so little as not to be of interest.” Lord Galen put on his wistful-alarmed look. At any rate Smirgel had now only to wait for the official judgement which would restore him to the world as innocent, and he was free to produce his map and lead the expedition into the caves. “I don’t think we should be dog-in-the-mangerish about letting the officials come in at least for the initial discovery. It is of course a fact of great historic importance and under French law they might even consider impounding the whole thing in the name of the Louvre. Still, for the moment they have not gone as far as that and I think with a few judicious bribes we can get them to shrug their shoulders and declare the find of little interest – something like that.”

The era of enlightened self-interest had dawned, it was obvious, and everyone was going to become a millionaire overnight! Yet there were pockets of misgiving here and there. “Are you really confident in the
bona fides
of your map? I wanted to ask you that before,” said Lord Galen, and Smirgel cleared his throat and nodded vigorously. “After all, it is only logic for Schultz to keep a copy which would enable him to come back in peacetime and retrieve the treasure; can you see anything wrong with the reasoning? I can’t. He would hardly have held on to a dud map, would he?”

No, it stood to reason the map he had hidden about his person was a valid one. It could not be otherwise! On this optimistic note they separated for a day or so to allow all the papers to be sifted into some sort of provisional order. Details for the treasure hunt would be dealt with very shortly. One of the strokes of luck had been the discovery of Quatrefages – his opinion on the affair would be, everyone felt, invaluable. The doctor had kept in touch with him, and he was proposing to come back and work for the Prince once again; but he had become very old-looking, and his hair was quite white. But he had retrieved a good part of his documentation concerning the Templars and hoped to round off his studies with a long essay about them.

Once or twice, in order one supposes to whet their appetites, Smirgel led them as far as the entrance to the main grotto which had been barred to the public with wooden palisades bearing the word
“Danger”
and the phrase
“Defense d’entrer”
. They hung about in a desultory sort of way here, discussing ways and means and rather hoping that the German would decide to unburden himself of the famous map, but he was dogged and obstinate, and waited upon the document of the war crimes tribunal. Meanwhile there was another small flutter of excitement, for Quatrefages had unearthed a gipsy in Avignon who claimed to have wandered into the caves by accident and to have actually seen the treasure. According to him the door which Smirgel had firmly closed had opened again and one could enter the caves – or at any rate he had done so and had seen the massive oak trunks with their heaps of precious stones and various sorts of ornament. From these he had extracted a single ruby which he had had fixed in a nostril. Later on when he had learned of the danger he had run he had been horrified – but like everyone else he could not push the affair any further for lack of a guide or a map with the necessary instructions. Now, of course … But while his testimony sounded valid enough there was something about the man which did not inspire confidence – a suggestion of feverish hysteria which made one wonder whether he had not been fabulating in order to find out something to his profit.

A still further complication was the arrival on the scene of the new Préfet of the country who at once asked if he might address them all on a topic which concerned him as it affected law and order in the province. It was not possible to refuse, and the courteous elderly gentleman duly presented himself before the board which was holding its first executive meeting at the Pont du Gard in order to discuss dates and means for the final act. The Prince, Lord Galen, Smirgel and Quatrefages were the most important executives, while vaguer associates like, for example, the doctor Jourdain, played backgammon with Blanford and Sutcliffe in the garden. The Préfet who, like all Frenchmen, had a strong sense of occasion, ordered champagne all round, before rising to his feet to toast the Prince and open the ball with a polished little speech. “I expect you will wonder why I intruded upon your deliberations. Gentlemen, it is to ask you to have some charitable thoughts about my own problems. Avignon is a thorny place, and among other thorns I have always to keep our gipsies in mind. It is a quite large colony and they provide us with a number of headaches – worse really than Marseilles. But it would be ill-advised for a governor not to humour them because they are not only troublesome but also extremely useful to him. Practically all police intelligence of any depth and cogency has been sifted and evaluated by the gipsies before it reaches us at the executive level. Naturally one of my first tasks has been to make their acquaintance and find out if there is any way in which I can show myself as prepared to be an obliging and friendly patron to the tribe of Saint Sara – such a little gesture goes down very well as you can imagine! And in the course of these manoeuvres I happened upon a remarkable English woman turned gipsy – a daughter of a certain Lord Banquo who may be familiar to you. She has proved a mine of useful information and penetrating judgements, and it was largely on her advice that I hit upon the notion of visiting your organisation.

“It was from her that I learned that long before the Austrian sappers started their ammunition stockpiling in these caves the gipsies kept a grotto here as a chapel sacred to Saint Sara where baptisms and initiations took place at certain times of the year. Yes, the ‘tenebrous one’ was a flourishing cult figure – sometimes she even encouraged prophecy and the gift of tongues. Naturally the Germans threw out the gipsies when they started stocking the caves. I have been asked to keep these facts in mind if ever there should be a question of spring-cleaning the place and defusing the ammunition contained in the caves. Obviously your own preoccupations centre upon the same matters though for a different set of reasons. I am hereby asking for the sympathy and the good offices of your board when such matters are undertaken in the near future. You will understand that in my present position I can hardly refuse to return the grottoes to Saint Sara whose old mud statue and icons must still be knocking about inside. So far I have only made one approach – I have sounded out Herr Smirgel, and he is perfectly agreeable to a gipsy representation on the first exploration, who will follow him into the caves just as soon as he gets his clearance from the war crimes tribunals. Ouf!”

He paused, somewhat out of breath after so long a disquisition, and gazed from face to face with a self-confident diffidence – for when had his charm failed to convince? But the Prince betrayed a certain disconsolate dismay. There would be far too many people in the know, he opined, and most specially semi-official agencies like the Beaux Arts with largely undemarcated areas of responsibility. Suppose the treasure proved to be not only tangible but immense … The whole thing was becoming too swollen for his liking, it was sliding out of control, for now they were even talking of making a photographic record of the findings – to film each item as it was disinterred!

“O dear!” said Lord Galen who had been listening with an expression of ruefulness, for he had begun to enumerate in his mind the number of things which could or might go wrong and qualify their own hold upon the treasure. (And yet suppose there is no bloody treasure, he kept thinking!)

As for Smirgel, he had chosen his day after due and weighty consultations with Quatrefages, aware that it would have to satisfy certain mystical provisions. It must, for example, be a Friday Thirteen in order to echo not only the Name Day of Sara in her prophetic form but also to echo the fatal day when the Order of Templars was abolished. Why does one instinctively seek a continuity in things as if syn-chronicity satisfied some deep cosmic need? (The question was posed by Blanford to himself and answered with: “Because you fool the world of consciousness is a world of historic echoes which cry out to be satisfied. One grabs at every connection. For example the Templars were abolished in that dismal town Vienne where I once spent ten days in winter haunted by a simple historic fact which I had picked up somewhere – namely, that Pontius Pilate when he retired from the civil service chose Vienne as his town of residence because he found Rome too noisy and too sophisticated and too expensive for a poor pensioner of the state.” The result of that visit was a little monograph purporting to be his memoirs written here. It was called “The Memoirs of PP” and it received a condescending but friendly review by Purse warden.)