The Avignon Quintet (64 page)

He knew, of course, that in law all treasure trove belongs to the Crown which has the right, but not the obligation, to reward the finder with a bounty. Lord Galen felt that if he could secure a government promise to reward him to the tune of fifteen per cent for anything he might find, the project might prove to be worth his while. The Prime Minister was a personal friend and was coming to dinner with him the following week. He took the opportunity to explore the situation. He was given a fair wind. Dealing at such a high level with such matters one does not ask for guarantees or formal contracts. He would, he said, be content with an exchange of letters serving as a declaration of intent. Of course it was a risk. The project was a costly one and might end in failure. The Government had nothing to lose. The upshot of the matter was that he was able to attract finance for the project and indulge his sense of romance by having the Wash surveyed from the air and inviting engineers to devise the sort of machinery necessary first to locate, then to raise, the buried treasure. It had taken over two years, but had at last been successful. Lord Galen became as famous in Fleet Street as he was in the City. The profits were extremely handsome.

“I agree,” said the Prince on a note of contriteness. “It was fully justified by the outcome, and a lesson to sceptics.” Galen accepted the accolade gracefully, nodding his personal agreement with the remark. “That is why I thought of you, my dear Prince, when we embarked upon this little venture – which is perhaps a trifle more risky even than old King John. Many more people have tried to locate what we are hunting for – and there is always a chance that someone might have found it and kept the matter secret in order not to surrender it to the French Government. But I have made exactly identical arrangements with the Government here, and have reserved a fine meaningful percentage for my shareholders. The rest is a matter of science, of luck, and the flair of Quatrefages who will bring you up to date on what we have so far found.”

Quatrefages looked steadily at the Prince and nodded gravely. “We will speak,” he said on a note of confirmation. And the Prince stroked his hand once more with a warmly oriental gesture, saying: “Of course; we understand each other, no?”

At which the conversation once more became general and the contingent of guests from Tu Duc began to feel a faint disposition to yawn despite the earliness of the hour. The candles had burnt down and begun to drip. Max docked them and changed some for new. “I think”, said Felix, “we should consult the clock and perhaps start moving off in good order.” But a sudden loneliness assailed Lord Galen at the thought of spending the night alone with his asthmatic cat. His voice became quite quavery and pleading as he said: “O do not go so early. Let us have a last stirrup-cup on the terrace. After all who knows when we shall meet again?” Blanford felt the words entangle the muscles of his throat as he looked at Livia across the table. She smiled at him with a slow affectionate expression, but he was so deeply sunk in his own conjectures that he did not respond. How brown she had become – almost the colour of a gipsy! All of a sudden he too was assailed by a fearful sense of anguish and disenchantment – later he would recognise this as premonitory; but an irrational and boundless fear of what might come to pass for them all, and in particular for himself and Livia who inhabited so temporarily this little enclave of passionate feeling in the immensity of a hostile world. The darkness inside was now (for they were on the terrace) matched by the darkness without.

They sat over new whiskies and coffees to accustom themselves to the faint glimmer of stars. Occasional fireflies snatched in the deep grass of the lawns which that year had not been mowed. The faint wind had turned a point or two northwards and brought with it a welcome and refreshing chill which towards dawn would cause (Felix noted this) a heavy dew upon the leaves and window-panes. “It’s beautiful,” said Lord Galen with an unwonted warmth of feeling as he gestured towards the star-scattered darkness where the dense mists turned and shifted, now hiding, now revealing the vibrating depths of the Provençal night sky. They heard Max yawning his violet yawns within as he disencumbered the table; each time he passed the stricken Wombat it snapped blindly at his ankles.

Lord Galen contemplated the long empty reaches of insomnia which awaited him as a condemned man might think of an age of servitude ahead. He had started taking sleeping pills which guaranteed him some rest but was depressed to notice that he needed increased doses to maintain the equilibrium. It was the time of night when the thought of his daughter echoed and ached within him with a dull neuralgic insistence, poisoning his peace of mind. Sometimes after midnight he rang for his secretary and bade him produce the chessmen. They would sit silently hunched over a game until the first pale streaks of dawn woke the birds in the park. Sometimes he took a stroll in the icy dew, his footfalls silenced by the deep grass. It was rare that he could return to his bed on such occasions. He hung around until five-thirty when he heard the alarm go off in Max’s room. Pretty soon the yawning black man would come and give him breakfast in the kitchen – waffles and maple syrup. Galen ate hungrily. By then he had already despatched his yawning secretary to his room. Soon it would be time to dip down the dusty hill into the town and watch the first passenger train set off for Paris.…

Rehearsing all this in his mind he felt the weariness and spleen assail him anew. “I suppose you all want to go to bed,” he said at last, rather bitterly. “I can see you yawning and stretching, Felix – not very polite.” Felix sprang to attention, metaphorically speaking, and blushed his apologies. He too was quailing at the thought of the night which confronted him; this temporary sleepiness would serve to get him to bed all right, but after an hour or two he would find himself switched on like a light and unable to prevent himself rising to make coffee, and at last, to walk the silent town. They smiled now at each other but the weariness engendered by their thoughts suffused the air, and at last the Prince, fearing that people could not leave before a prince of the blood took his leave, called in soft Arabic for his landau. The tall major-domo was standing just inside the drawing-room, and relayed the message in a low voice. There was a long period of confused noise and at last the travel-apparatus of the Prince rumbled round the house and came to rest before the flight of marble stairs where the restless horses struck sparks from the cobbles with their hooves and whinnied softly.
Noblesse oblige
.

The Prince accepted his fez and fly-whisk from the hands of his servant and then turned smiling to take his leave. “Well, if you young people will forgive me.…” he said, pressing their hands for a second in his. “I will expect you all to a drink tomorrow in my hotel at seven.” He did not wait for a formal acceptance, but turned to embrace his host in the French fashion, giving him a dab on the cheek with his lips. He smelt aromatic, he smelt of camphor like a mummy – so thought Lord Galen as he returned the accolade. Now the Prince climbed into his coach and turning back said: “Can I give anyone a lift? Surely Mr. Chatto? Quatrefages, no?” They accepted his offer in order to spare Max an extra detour. As they stepped into the landau and sat down beside the Prince he remarked rather unexpectedly: “I feel like a bit of fun tonight, to be sure.”

They rumbled off into the darkness and the Prince began a long and animated conversation with his staff in guttural Arabic. He seemed to be asking them for information about something. Then, aware perhaps that it was somewhat impolite to talk in a language the others did not understand, he ventured on an explanation directed largely at Quatrefages. “I am asking them to take us to a good house – surely there must be a nice
pouf
in Avignon?” Felix choked with astonishment but Quatrefages acted as if he had foreseen such a departure and chuckled as he slapped the Prince on the knee in a manner as familiar as it seemed to the dismayed consul downright vulgar. “Of course, of course,” said the clerk with a gesture towards the night sky, as if invoking all its starlit bounty upon the head of the grinning Prince.

Felix found that something distasteful had entered the expression of the Prince; those grave, sweet expressions, those silent modesties, had given place to a new set of facial looks – a trifle perky and monkey-like. He looked elated and full of zest; it seemed as if his intentions and desires had become a trifle debased, a trifle vulgar. “You aren’t taking him to a brothel?” he said
sotto voce
to Quatrefages, who himself had changed but in a milder degree. He looked slightly tipsy and insolent. “Indeed I am,” he said in an airy way, “the old darling is a Gypp and needs a cleanser. He will absolutely love Riquiqui. I will hand him over to old Riquiqui and see what she can provide.” Felix looked miserable and alarmed. The Prince was talking Arabic again, heedless of them. “If he catches something,” said Felix, “my uncle will never forgive you. Anyway I shan’t go; it’s too risky. If my uncle thought …” Quatrefages said simply but trenchantly “F**k your uncle.”

The advice, Felix felt, was apposite and chimed with his own feelings. But it was all too easily said. Moreover he was not at all sure how the sentiment could be implemented. It was partly his cursed uncle and partly the dignity of the Foreign Office which nagged him. He sighed under the importunity of these ideas and set his mind firmly against this frivolous excursion, stifling all his regrets. Actually he would have given anything for an evening of good fellowship and a touch of profligacy. Ah well! The coach went stumbling and swaying through the dark olive glades to where at the outer edges of the darkness the lights of the city gleamed; from the quarter of the gipsies there came a thin plume of wood-smoke. It was still early. Owls whistled in the secret trees. The faint rumour of the city gradually evolved itself from their own noise of creaking coachwork, jingling harness and clattering horseflesh. The Prince was in a great good humour as he sat with an arm thrown round the shoulders of Quatrefages. He was occasionally slipping into his elegant French now as a concession to his companion. “I have a few small oddities of conduct”, he said thoughtfully, “which are not unusual for a man of my age. Do you think they will understand?” Quatrefages gave a reassuring grin as he answered. “At Riquiqui they are used to everything, they cater for everything. And as they are frequented by the chief of police they are very much
à l’abri.”
Reassured, the Prince beamed and squeezed his knee.

Felix had never been to Riquiqui’s sordid establishment except with Blanford – and that for no questionable purpose. Once they had hunted for Livia during a night walk and the gipsies had directed them to try Riquiqui. The sordid surroundings and the darkness did not commend themselves to the two young men; and the personage of Riquiqui herself inspired the worst misgivings. She had opened a cautious inch in response to their tapping upon the rotten oak door. The little side street in which the house stood was pitch dark, and smelt of blocked drains and dead rats. The houses immediately to right and left of Riquiqui’s had fallen down or been knocked down; their foundations gaped. Weeds sprouted everywhere. Blanford professed to find the place sinister but romantic – but of course he was lying. Felix was plainly nervous.

Riquiqui had enormous breasts bulging out of the top of a sort of sack dress, divided at the waist by a primeval drawstring. She had a wall-eye which gave her the air of looking over your shoulder while she spoke to you – which they found disconcerting. Moreover, lupus had ravaged her impure face – a burst of purple efflorescence covered one side of it. She tried to present her clear side rather too obviously, but from time to time she was forced to turn and present the diseased profile with its great splash of suffused blood vessels turning to crimson-lake and purple. A faint candle illumined the scene – the gaunt stairs behind her. She could give them no indication of Livia’s whereabouts though she seemed to know, from their explanations, the person they were speaking about, for she nodded a great deal and said, “Not today” repeatedly, which suggested, at any rate, Livia was in the habit of calling in at this disreputable establishment. Curiously enough the information, far from depressing Blanford, elated him; he admired the insouciant and courageous way Livia went her own way, busied herself with her own affairs, without expecting their protective company. But Felix found this attitude inconsequent, even compromising.

But tonight, he told himself, there was to be no such excursion for the consul. Pleading a slight headache he had himself dropped off at the station; there was still time to sit and relax at the buffet over a coffee – after the bustle and conversation of a party he loved to spend a few moments alone, thinking his own modest thoughts. A train had pulled out for the north; the engine gave a whiff or two, as if it were calling back over its shoulder. The little
fiacres
stood anchored in the monotony of their function as train-waiters. Later when he set out on his walk he might feed the horses a sugar-lump or two if he felt lonely; this would lead to a conversation with the sleepy drivers.

But for the moment he had had his fill of conversation. The Prince had rumbled off into the darkness with his coach. From the neighbouring livery-stables came the noise of horses coughing and stamping. A bell trilled and wires hummed. Avignon was beginning to settle down for the night – that long painful stretch of time which must somehow be affronted. Felix yawned – yes, it was all very well, but would it last? He paid for his coffee and sauntered across under the frowning darkness of the Porte St.-Charles. It would not take him long to return. Then he would undress and go to bed doggedly; yes, doggedly. But as he neared the villa his nerves gave a jump for there was the figure of a man sitting on his front door-step smoking and waiting for him. It was a mere silhouette; he could not at first make out his identity.