The Avignon Quintet (78 page)

They stared at each other for a moment in silence while he hunted for a word or a phrase which might suit so strange an occasion. She smiled at him with a tender familiarity and reached out her hand to place it on his elbow, saying: “Of course you did. It is obviously there you met him.” Blanford nodded, it seemed to be the right thing to do. They took a few steps and on the other side of the flower-bed he saw an open French window giving on to a room furnished with a certain old-fashioned luxuriousness. There was a tapestry on the wall, and a concert-grand in the corner. Scissors and a bowl of flowers on the terrace explained what she had been doing when the sound of his step on the gravel had disturbed her. “I knew it all the time,” she said again, “I knew you would come from him, from Piers.” At that moment a flight of birds passed close overhead, and at the whirr of their wings a panic fear seized her. Her face clouded, her eyes became wide and glittered with apprehension. “It is only the birds,” he said, hoping to soothe her, but she gazed at him wildly and repeated hoarsely,
“Only
the birds? What are you saying?” Huddling the shawl round her thin shoulders she hurried away towards the terrace and the open window. He stood quite still until he heard the latch click home. Then he made his way thoughtfully to where the two grunting men moved about on the ground like apes, releasing their marvellous models with a high skill and a perfect enjoyment.

It was a full couple of hours before Galen came to himself; it was as if he at last awoke from a deep trance of perfect, transcendent happiness, and sighing, took his leave of Imhof who gazed unfeelingly at him, watched him move away, and then bent down resolutely once more to his trains. Nothing was said about the public school accent. There had been little chance to use it, so mute had been the harmony of the two train-lovers, so deep their concentration. As they drove away Galen said, sighing with repleteness, “Poor old Imhof. I so often think of him. He made just one big miscalculation and pouf! it played on his reason. A fearful bloomer! Shall I tell you? It was during a water shortage in England, a scandal. All the newspapers went on about it, and the Government asked people to save water as much as possible. Then the press said that the Englishman’s bath was the reason and gave statistics about the millions of tons of water we waste. It was here that Imhof got the idea of buying all those bidets – hundreds of thousands of them. He said that if England could be got to accept the bidet we could all make do with one bath a week. The saving in water would be immense. I forget the details but he spent millions on advertising his idea, and at the same time, not to be caught short, in buying up all the bidets he could find. A massive investment all lined up in warehouses on the coast waiting to invade across the channel.” He gave a sad chuckle. “They are still there. He seemed not to realise that one of the hardest things to do is to get a national habit modified. Bidets!”

Remembering this occasion, Blanford reflected compassionately upon Imhof and his bidets while the old man thoughtfully circumcised a cigar and struck a match to light it. He leaned back now in his chair and smiled round at them; he had expiated his guilt by his sincerity and now felt calmly himself again, though of course still saddened by the whole affair. Constance and Sam said little, and it was assumed that they were preoccupied with each other and deaf to the appeals of mere sociability. But she was filled also with a weight of apathy and weariness which astonished even herself. They were like people living upon the slopes of a volcano, Vesuvius or Etna, resigned to the knowledge that one day, nobody knew when, the whole of the world they knew would be blown apart by forces beyond their imagining. And yet they continued to respect social forms like automata, like the Romans of the silver age, when the Goths were already gnawing at the walls of the civilised world. As if he had intuited this feeling of remorseful apathy in her, Lord Galen patted her hand and sighed deeply. “If this goes on,” he said, and everyone knew what he meant by that, “why, money will become quite worthless.” He looked round the table. “And it’s a great pity. It has given us so much pleasure. Indeed there is something very inspiring about money.” The word was strangely chosen, but one could feel what he meant. Money, thought poor Felix, working his toes in his dinner shoes. He had contracted a hammer-toe from his solitary walking about the town. Money – if only he could get his hands on some. Blanford himself had a twinge of panic. “I suppose all investments will collapse?” he said with some alarm. The Prince nodded. “It depends,” he said, “some will. But if you have armament shares. …” Lord Galen now called to Max to wind up the old horn gramophone and set off the traditional
Merry Widow
waltz which closed all his dinner parties. They took themselves to the quiet terrace where they were supplied with drinks hard and soft and tobacco for Sam’s pipe. It was curious that no mention had been made of Livia, and Blanford wondered suddenly if they knew anything about her – was it perhaps a tactful silence? But then on the other hand nobody had mentioned Hilary either. The moon shone upon their glasses. There was no wind, but away over the hills there came a tremor of summer lightning like a distant bombardment going on, which must herald one of the thunderstorms which traditionally ushered in the harvest and the autumn. The Prince asked Blanford whether he would not like to visit Egypt. “I would be happy to engage you as a personal private secretary if that were the case. You would live in the Palace and meet the best people, the
top-notch
. It is a very picturesque land.”

The proposal was startling and novel and tickled the youth’s fancy. He asked for time to consider. As yet his own personal affairs were not sufficiently in order, or so he felt, to embark on what promised to be so exciting and enriching a career as that of social secretary to a prince.

Now, turning aside, the Prince addressed himself to Felix Chatto. They took a turn up and down the balcony and on the lawn, linked arm in arm. Felix was very flattered to be treated with the deference due to a senior diplomat, as if he was in possession of state secrets of the highest importance. The Prince gave a résumé of the political and military state of things and asked him to comment upon it with a becoming modesty and a keen attention. Rising to the occasion Felix did his best to present the balanced analysis so dear to the hearts of diplomats and leader writers. As usual it all depended on If, When and But. The Prince thanked him warmly. “In a few days,” he said, “I am going to have a little
spree
. After Lord Galen goes. Do not be offended if I do not send you an invitation, my dear. It will be rather an advanced sort of spree and you have a professional reputation to look after in this beautiful but somewhat sinister little town. But don’t take offence. You will understand everything when you talk to your friend Quatrefages.” But Felix needed no briefing, he could imagine very well what the little spree would entail. “I must pay back some social debts to my new friends,” explained the little man, and the young consul saw in his mind’s eye all those faces like crocodiles and ant-eaters and baboons, all dressed in dark suits with improbable ties and fingers with black hair sprouting through their rings. “I shall quite understand,” he said seriously, “and I take it as a compliment, sir, that you should bother to explain to me.” The Prince squeezed his arm and gave a ghost chuckle.

They broke up relatively early that evening, pervaded by a sense of weariness and loss. Perhaps because he felt that this was probably the last occasion they would meet round his table, old Lord Galen tried to infuse the occasion with a touch of valedictory ceremony. He called for a toast to the Prince and to Egypt which was willingly drunk, and which, by its unexpectedness, pleased the Prince very much indeed. He for his part replied by calling for a toast to His Majesty the King of England. He sprang up as he uttered the words with alacrity and a genuine enthusiasm. He had been received at Court with great kindness, which had seemed to him quite natural and unaffected. Besides, one of the younger members of the Royal Household had elected herself his mentor and Muse. What he admired so much, he told Chatto, was that in England you could do almost anything without getting into the newspapers. You felt so safe, while in Egypt those dreadful socialist and communist papers were always on the lookout for scandal. “They don’t like the upper class to have a little spree. Why are Marxists such spoilsports? I have never been able to understand it, especially when you think of the morals of Engels.”

The car came, with a tearful Max at the wheel, and they all said goodbye to the Prince with a genuine pang. When would they all meet again? Nobody could tell, nobody could say.

The inhabitants of Tu Duc took their leave with Max in the old rumble-dusty vehicle of Lord Galen; Quatrefages and Felix, since they were going into the town like the Prince, were offered the trip in his coach. The journey passed in friendly silence; the Prince spent most of it exploring the cavities between his teeth with a silver toothpick of great elegance. He said no more about his spree until the changing tone of the horses’ hooves upon the cobbled avenues of the town told them that they were almost home. “The little spree I spoke of,” he told Quatrefages, “will be at the end of the week, perhaps when Lord Galen has left the country.” Quatrefages asked if he could be of service in the matter and received the reply that everything was going to be arranged at an official level. “It is much safer that way. But I hope you will honour us with your presence. I think the occasion will be a memorable one – in all this fearful war-indecision which prevents us all from thinking or planning. They ring me up all the time from Abdin Palace with rumours and scares, telling me I must return. The palace yacht is already at Marseille waiting with steam up. But I think all this is quite premature.”

The others elected to be dropped at Tubain, and to walk the rest of the way in the deep moonlit dust, under the long avenues of planes and limes. And in silence for a change. Not necessarily the silence of despondency, but a silence which held the whole world of futurity in solution, as it were; the silence in which one waits for an orchestra to strike out its opening statement. Constance linked her little finger to theirs and walked with her face turned upward towards the moon. On the way, flickering among the trees like a firefly, came a bicycle-lamp which fluttered towards them and stopped. It was the son of the post-master of Tubain who had been up to the house to deliver a late telegram, and found nobody in. It was for Sam and they all knew what must be in it. It was only the date of his recall which was in question. He tipped the boy and said goodnight to him before opening the slip of blue paper. Blanford struck a match which gave a yellow hovering splash of light sufficient for him to read the contents. He gave a sigh. “I leave on Sunday,” he said, in a tone of elation; it was understandable. It was far better to know for certain – at least one could prepare the event. Yes, they all felt better armed against the future this way. They would have a few more days together before the parting. Constance was going back to Geneva for her work – she would quit Sam in Paris. Blanford would stay on for a while with his little car (which was at present in a garage, being repaired and serviced), and wait upon events. Never had he felt more useless, more undecided about his direction. The Egyptian project was most tempting; but would a war not qualify it? He presumed he would be called up, and as he could not conscientiously object, he would soon find himself in uniform like Sam.

They crossed the garden in single file, under the cork-oaks with their snowy crests, and turned the creaking key in the tall front door. The familiar smell of the house greeted them in darkness; it smelt of long forgotten meals, of herbs and of garden flowers, it smelt of cobwebs and expired fume of candles. All at once it seemed a pity to go to bed without a nightcap. In the kitchen they lit a paraffin lamp and by its mild unhovering yellow light sat down around the scrubbed and sanded table to brew tea and to play a hand of gin rummy. Blanford opted for a glass of red wine instead, however, despite the lateness of the hour and his general abstemiousness. It was late when they at last bade one another goodnight, and even now with such a fine moonlight outside it seemed a shame to go to bed; so he walked down to the water and took a silent, icy swim, letting the rushing wings of the water pass over him like rain. Closing his eyes he seemed to see in memory all the black magnetism of the dark light which shone out of the earth, whether among these trees and vines or out of the bald stone garrigues and pebbled hills with their crumbling shale valleys. Among these rambling dormitories of shards Van Gogh had hunted the demon of his black noonday sun – and found it in madness. Only when one was here did one realise how truthful to the place was his account of it. He was beginning to realise the difference between the two arts, painting and writing.

Painting persuades by thrilling the mind and the optic nerve simultaneously, whereas words connote, mean something however approximate and are influenced by their associative value. The spell they cast intends to master things – it lacks innocence. They are the instruments of Merlin or Faust. Painting is devoid of this kind of treachery – it is an innocent celebration of things, only seeking to inspirit and not coerce. Pleased with these somewhat rambling evaluations he scampered back to the house and to bed, shivery with cold all of a sudden, so that he was forced to climb between the sheets with his socks on. He would have liked to read for a moment or two, so delicious was the moonlit air outside, but sleep at last insisted. He sank to the pillow as if beheaded.

Down below, in the sleeping town, the pro-consul paced out his long penitential walk from bastion to dark bastion; the moonlight only emphasised the shadows, creating great caves of pure darkness out of which he dreamed that some brilliant gipsy might emerge and pounce on him; but more likely it would be a footpad. His fingers tightened upon the little scout penknife he carried on his person, not so much for security as for tedious pro-consular uses, such as cutting up string to make parcels. The prospect of the war filled him, strangely enough, with elation which was somewhat shame-making. Naturally he would never have confessed to such a thing publicly, for he wished nobody harm and was personally too much of a coward to hanker for firearms – he was in fact rather gun-shy. But the reality of war if it came.…