The Splendour Falls (8 page)

I would have walked straight on past Paul, had he not called to me. He was sitting where we’d sat last night, near the top of the steps leading down to the river, his body folded in unconscious imitation of the brooding statue behind him. Resting his book face down upon his outstretched leg, he called again and waved.

Even with the zebra-striped pedestrian crossing, it took some minutes for me to cross the busy street and join him.

‘You’ve been drinking,’ he said, in a brotherly tone.

‘Only a little wine with lunch.’ I raised one hand to touch my flushed cheek. ‘Is it really that obvious?’

‘’Fraid so. Your eyes are kind of glazed.’

‘Oh, well.’ I took the news in stride, not overly concerned. Stepping with care over his leg, I settled myself on the next step down and linked my hands around my knees. It was a lovely place to sit and watch the world go by, to watch
the river coursing past and hear the ducks call out to one another as they paddled round the reeds that edged the sloping river wall. One could sit here all the afternoon, and never be disturbed.

I sighed, my worries sliding from me as I smiled up at Paul. ‘And how was your lunch?’ I asked.

‘Don’t ask.’ He grinned. ‘The Whitakers decided to go for Chinese food today as well.’

I laughed. ‘Oh, Paul, what rotten luck.’

‘You’re telling me. Martine and Garland spent the whole meal taking shots at one another – all terribly polite, you know, and smiling – and when Martine started scoring points Garland suddenly developed one of her headaches and made a big dramatic exit. You should have been there.’

‘Just as well I wasn’t,’ I replied. ‘Theatricals don’t impress me.’

Paul tucked one hand inside his jacket, searching for his cigarettes. ‘I don’t think they impress Jim much, either. He didn’t seem too upset when Garland left. He just ordered another drink.’

They were a most unlikely couple, Jim and Garland Whitaker. When I said as much to Paul, he smiled in agreement.

‘I like Jim, though,’ he said, placing a cigarette between his lips. ‘He’s a lot smarter than he lets on. And he really takes an interest in things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Oh … history, architecture, local food. He’s the one who wanted to tour the Loire Valley, you know – not Garland.
Garland couldn’t care less. And this trip is definitely not her style.’

‘Oh?’ I looked up, interested. ‘In what way?’

‘Every way. Garland stays at the Ritz when she’s in Paris. Christmas in the Swiss Alps. Easter on the Italian Riviera. Chinon,’ he told me, ‘would not have been her first choice for a holiday.’

‘Are the Whitakers rich, then?’

‘Disgustingly rich.’ He nodded, blowing smoke. ‘Of course, they’ll never say as much directly, but Jim’s clothes aren’t off the rack, they’re tailor made. And he’s got one suit that’s worth at least a thousand dollars.’

My expression must have been questioning, because he laughed and, mimicking a New York Yiddish accent, said: ‘My family’s in the garment business,
Mäusele
. I know from menswear.’

‘What’s a
Mäusele?
’ I wanted to know.

‘Little Mouse.’

‘Oh.’ Is that what I reminded him of, I wondered? A little mouse, afraid to come out of her hole? But I didn’t ask him that. Instead, I asked: ‘What does Jim Whitaker do, anyway? Do you know?’

‘He says he works for a private engineering company, but Simon thinks that’s just a smokescreen, a cover story to hide Jim’s real occupation.’

‘Which is?’

‘CIA, of course.’ He winked. ‘Simon gets a little paranoid sometimes – he’s studied politics too long. He sees conspiracy in everything and everybody, and the worst part is that it’s contagious. I’ve spent so much time listening to
Simon that even
I
look at Jim sometimes and think, yeah, he does look kind of secretive, you know? It catches.’

‘Maybe that’s my problem, then,’ I said, hugging my knees more tightly. ‘My own imagination’s been working overtime this afternoon. It must be Simon’s paranoia rubbing off.’

‘Why? What have you been imagining?’

‘I rather fancied I was being followed.’ Said like that, I thought, it sounded ridiculous. I smiled.

‘Who was following you?’

As I described the man, Paul’s eyebrows drew together in a frown of recognition. ‘What, the gypsy, you mean? The one with the little dog about that big?’ He held his hands a foot and a half apart, to simulate the size of the dog.

‘That’s the one. He’s a gypsy, really?’ I’d never seen an actual gypsy before – only fake ones in films.

Paul nodded. ‘There are a lot of gypsies around here. Some of them live in campers – caravans, I guess you’d call them – down by the beach. They’re not the cream of society, to be sure, but that guy you saw is pretty harmless. At least, he’s always been nice to Simon and me,’ he said, shifting his legs. ‘Simon always stops to pet the dog. So I wouldn’t worry about … oh, damn, there goes my book!’

I caught it for him as it came bouncing down the steps beside me. ‘There,’ I said, handing it back to him. ‘No damage done. But you’ve lost your place.’

‘That’s OK, I can find it again.’ He grinned. ‘I have a very intimate relationship with this book.’

‘Well, I should think so, if you’ve been reading it for two years.’

He turned the paperback over, balancing it carefully in his hand. ‘That was always my favourite poem, you know, when I was a kid. Tennyson’s
Ulysses
. I used to know it by heart.’

From what I’d seen so far of his memory, I was willing to bet he knew the poem still. I’d memorised it once myself, years ago, at school. I remembered how romantic it had seemed – the aged Ulysses throwing off the chains of boredom, leaving his dull hearth in search of new adventure. To
sail beyond the sunset
… I’d thought that beautiful, once. But now I knew it was a wasted effort, chasing sunsets. There was nothing on the other side.

Paul was watching me with those wise eyes that saw too much. I glanced away, quite casually, and asked him: ‘But however did you make the leap from Tennyson’s
Ulysses
to James Joyce? They’re not a bit alike.’

‘That,’ he told me, ‘was my sister’s fault. She saw this book in a used bookstore a couple of summers back, read the title, and bought it for me. She thought one Ulysses was the same as the next. I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I started reading it.’ He smiled again, and set the book aside. ‘It’s become sort of an obsession. I won’t be able to rest until I’ve finished the damn thing.’

I was vaguely surprised to learn that Simon and Paul had a sister. Not that it mattered, but for some reason I’d thought there were only the two of them. The curious thing about meeting people on holiday, I told myself, was that one formed opinions based on first impressions, or past experience. And one was so often wrong. I looked up at Paul. ‘How many brothers and sisters do you have?’

‘There are six of us, altogether.’

‘Six!’

‘Yeah. Simon’s the oldest, then Rachel, Lisa, Helen, me and Sarah. Sarah,’ he added, having counted everyone off in order on his fingers, ‘is the one who bought me the book.’

‘Six,’ I repeated, incredulous.

My reaction amused him. ‘Let me guess. You’re an only child.’

I admitted that I was. ‘But then my cousin was usually around at holidays and half-terms to keep me company. People used to mistake us for brother and sister, we looked so much alike.’ We still did, come to that. Especially around the eyes. The thought of Harry triggered a more recent memory. ‘I’ve had a message from him, by the way. He’ll be a few days late.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Paul said. ‘Simon will have the next few days planned out for us, just watch. He’s a man with a mission now.’

‘Queen Isabelle’s treasure, you mean?’ I smiled. ‘Well, he can hunt if he likes, but I doubt he’ll find it. Harry says the research alone could take years.’

‘God, don’t tell Simon that. The more impossible something is, the more he wants to do it.’ He stubbed out his cigarette, fraying the end of it, and lit another. ‘And don’t tell Simon you saw me doing this, either. He’d have my hide. He thinks I just come down here to feed the ducks.’

There were an awful lot of ducks, now that I noticed it. They seemed to be clustered mostly upriver, where a cobblestone ramp for launching boats slanted gently down to meet the water, although a handful of adventurous
ones had ridden the current down to where we sat and were paddling now around a flat-bottomed punt moored by chains to the river wall. The ducks were noisy little creatures, scolding and complaining as their feet beat time against the dragging river.

I’d often fed ducks myself, as a child, but now I simply put my chin on my hands and watched them, while Paul smoked his cigarette in mellow, undemanding silence. At length he stood and stretched, picking up his book. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and see if Thierry’s got the bar open yet. I could use a coffee or something.’

I walked back with him, but when he would have bought me a drink I shook my head, yawning. ‘Have a heart,’ I begged him. ‘I only got here yesterday, remember, and I’ve been on the go ever since. I’ll never make it through to suppertime if I don’t have a nap.’ The thought of supper made me frown. ‘Do you all eat together, every night?’

He laughed, and shook his head. ‘No, we usually end up doing our own thing. Why, did we scare you last night?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want to … heavens, is that Neil?’ I broke off suddenly to stare in wonder at the floor above us.

‘Yeah. He’s good, isn’t he?’ Paul listened for a moment, then flashed a sympathetic smile. ‘And he’s just getting started, from the sounds of it. I hope you can sleep through Beethoven.’

I couldn’t, as it happened, but it was my own fault more than Beethoven’s. My restless mind would not keep still enough for sleep to settle on it. It conjured images of gypsies and of castles and of dark-eyed men with blindingly fair hair. In the room below, Neil finished playing the
symphony’s opening
allegro
, and moved smoothly on into the funeral march. A new set of images rose to join the ones already swirling behind my closed eyelids – a black-
and-white
cat and a mournful church and a spray of flowers, red as blood. And through it all, the gypsy’s face turned, watching me with a strange and secret smile.

I opened my eyes, and sat up.

It was no use, I thought. I wasn’t going to sleep. I might as well go down and have that drink with Paul. What happened next, I later decided, was
entirely
Beethoven’s fault. If he hadn’t written such a beautiful piece of music, I wouldn’t have paused on my way downstairs to listen to it. And if I hadn’t paused, there on the first floor landing, I wouldn’t have been anywhere in sight when the Whitakers’ door opened further down the hall, and Garland came out into the passage. She hadn’t seen me yet – she was looking down, one hand shielding her forehead – but I felt a moment’s panic. I didn’t like the woman, didn’t want to be drawn into conversation, didn’t want Neil Grantham to hear her piercing voice and know that I was standing there, outside his room …

I looked round, seeking some escape. Not down the stairs, I dismissed the obvious. There wasn’t time, and she was bound to see me. But beside the stairs a glass door stood propped open to the outside air, and, feeling a proper coward, I ducked my head and darted through it. Behind me, the rustle of footsteps swept by without stopping, and a heartbeat later I heard a sharp knock. The violin fell silent. Cautiously, I edged along the wall, away from the open doorway, away from the murmur of voices.

I hadn’t picked the best of hiding places, really. I was standing on a sheltered terrace, built upon the flat roof of the hotel’s garage – a broad, square stretch of pavement bordered by a wooden portico and hugged on three sides by the bleached stone walls of the hotel. One couldn’t truly hide, out here. All someone had to do was poke their head around the door, and there you were, in plain view. But for the moment, at least, the terrace was deserted, except for me.

The voices stopped. A door clicked shut. The rustling steps retreated down the corridor. But instead of going back inside, I crossed on tiptoe to the centre of the terrace, where a neat grouping of table and chairs basked in the fickle sunlight of the afternoon. Wiping the dampness from a chair. I sat down. From here I had a panoramic view along the cliffs, from the wedge-shaped Clock Tower guarding Château Chinon to the wilder fringes of the hills beyond the town.

High above me on the cliff path a small cluster of sightseers had paused against the waist-high wall, and their red and purple jackets made a splash of welcome colour on the drab white rise of rock behind them. One of the couples was holding hands and laughing, and I hated them without reason.

The violin began again. I closed my eyes against the beauty of it, settling back with a sigh. He wasn’t playing the Beethoven any more. No, this was stranger music, sweeter, more seductive … yet familiar. I searched my memory for it. Elgar, I decided. That was it. Edward Elgar. The
Salut d’Amour
.

Neil played it beautifully, with such emotion that the air around me trembled from the sound. I remember wishing he would stop, because I didn’t want to think of love just now. I remember squeezing my eyes shut tighter still, and feeling the sudden damp of tears upon my lashes. And after that, I don’t remember anything.

I hadn’t meant to sleep. But when I next opened my eyes the terrace was in darkness, and a scattering of stars gleamed faintly where the clouds had been before. The chill had penetrated to my bones. I rose and flexed my stiffened shoulders, picking my way cautiously across to the glass door into the hotel. Someone, while I’d slept, had closed that door. I tried the handle. ‘Damn,’ I said, aloud. They’d locked me out.

Hugging my arms to ward off the cold, I pressed my face against the glass and peered along the corridor. I knocked twice, loudly. No one came. ‘Damn,’ I said again, cursing my own stupidity. And then, quite by chance, I saw the stairs. It was a narrow flight of stone stairs, nearly invisible in the dark, curving downwards from the level of the terrace. Remembering that the hotel’s garage was underneath me, I plucked up my courage and started down, my hand clutching at the railing, expecting at any moment to miss my footing on the uneven stone. It was a relief to feel the ground again, safe and solid beneath my feet and, after a moment’s search, to find the door that I had hoped would be there.