"Mary Stewart - Madam Will You Talk [txt]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

And the conversation slipped comfortably back to the things that really matter.

When Louise had gone to her own room, I washed, changed into a white frock with a wide blue belt, and did my face and hair very slowly. It was still hot, and the late sun's rays fell obliquely across the balcony, through the half-opened shutter, in a shaft of copper-gold. Motionless, the shadows of thin leaves traced a pattern across it as delicate and precise as a Chinese painting on silk. The image of the tree, brushed in like that by the sun, had a grace that the tree itself gave no hint of, for it was merely one of the nameless spindly affairs, parched and dust-laden, that struggled up towards the sky from their pots in the hotel court below. But its shadow might have been designed by Ma Yuan.
The courtyard was empty; people were still resting, or changing, or, if they were the mad English, walking out in the afternoon sun. A white-painted trellis wall separated the court on one side from the street, and beyond it people, mules, cars, occasionally even buses, moved about their business up and down the narrow thoroughfare. But inside the vine-covered trellis it was very still and peaceful. The gravel between the gay little chairs was carefully raked and watered; shade lay gently across the tables, some of which, laid for dinner, gleamed invitingly with glass and silver. The only living thing in the court was a thin ginger cat, which was curled round the base of my spindly tree, like--who was it? Nidhug?--at the root of Yggdrasil.
I sat down by the half-shuttered window and began to think about where I should go tomorrow.
Avignon Bridge, where one dances, of course; and after Avignon itself, the Pont du Card--in spite of the fact that I, too, had seen Holborn Viaduct. I picked up the Michelin Guide to Provence, and looked at the sketch of the great aqueduct which is on the cover. .. .
To-morrow, I said to myself, I would take things easy, and wander round the ramparts and the Popes' Palace. Then, the day after . . .
Then fate, in the shape of Nidhug, took a hand.
My cue had come. I had to enter the stage.
The first hint I had of it was the violent shaking of the shadows on the balcony. The Chinese design wavered, broke, and dissolved into the image of a ragged witch's besom, as the tree Yggdrasil vibrated and lurched sharply under a weight it was never meant to bear. Then the ginger cat shot on to my balcony, turned completely round on a space the size of a sixpence, sent down on her assailant the look to end all looks, and sat calmly down to wash. From below a rush and a volley of barking explained everything.
Then came a crash, and the sound of running feet.
The cat yawned, tidied a whisker into place, swarmed in a bored manner up an impossible drainpipe, and vanished on to the roof. I got up and looked over the balcony railing.
The courtyard, formerly so empty and peaceful, seemed all of a sudden remarkably full of a boy and a large, nondescript dog. The latter, with his earnest gaze still on the balcony, was leaping futilely up and down, pouring out rage, hatred and excitement, while the boy tried with one hand to catch and quell him, and with the other to lift one of the tables which had been knocked on to its side. It was, luckily, not one of those which had been set for dinner.
The table, which was of iron, was very heavy, and the boy seemed to be having some difficulty in raising it. Eventually he let go the dog, and taking both hands to the job, succeeded in lifting the table almost half-way. Then the dog, who appeared to be a little slow in the uptake, but a sticker for all that, realized that his prey was gone from the balcony and leaped madly in several directions at once. He crashed into the boy. The table thudded down again.
"Oh Rommel!" said the boy, surprisingly enough.
Before I could decide what language this was, the boy looked up and saw me. He straightened, pushed his hair back from his forehead, and grinned.
"J'espere," he said carefully, "que ce n'etait fas votre chat, mademoiselle?"
This, of course, settled the question of his nationality immediately, but I am nothing if not tactful. I shook my head.
"My French isn't terribly good," I said. "Do you speak English, monsieur?"
He looked immensely pleased.
"Well, as a matter of fact, I am English," he admitted. "Stop it, Rommel!" He grabbed the dog with decision. "He hadn't hurt the cat, had he? I just saw it jump for the balcony."
"It didn't look very worried."
"Oh, that's all right, then. I can't persuade him to behave decently, as---as befits a foreigner. It seems funny to be foreigners, doesn't it?"
I admitted that it did indeed.
"Have you just arrived?"
"At about four o'clock. Yes."
"Then you haven't seen much of Avignon yet. Isn't it a funny little town? Will you like it, do you think?"
"I certainly like what I've seen so far. Do you like it here?"
It was the most trivial of small-talk, of course, but his face changed oddly as he pondered the question. At that distance I could not read his expression, but it was certainly not what one might expect of a boy--I judged him to be about thirteen--who was lucky enough to be enjoying a holiday in the South of France. Indeed, there was not much about him at that moment, if you except the outward signs of crumpled shirt, stained shorts, and mongrel dog, to suggest the average boy at all. His face, which had, even in the slight courtesies of small-talk, betrayed humour and a quick intelligence at work, seemed suddenly to mask itself, to become older. Some impalpable burden almost visibly dropped on to his shoulders. One was conscious, in spite of the sensitive youth of his mouth, and the childish thin wrists and hands, of something here that could meet and challenge a quite adult destiny on its own ground, strength for strength. The burden, whatever it was, was quite obviously recognized and accepted. There had been some hardening process at work, and recently. Not a pleasant process, I thought, looking at the withdrawn profile bent over the absurd dog, and feeling suddenly angry.
But he came out of his sombre thoughts as quickly as he had gone in--so quickly, in fact, that I began to think I had been an over-imaginative fool.
"Yes, of course I like it. Rommel doesn't, it's too hot. Do you like the heat?" We were back at the small-talk. "They said two English ladies were coming to-day; that would be you--Mrs. Selborne and Miss Crabbe?"
"Cray. I'm Mrs. Selborne," I said.
"Yes, that's it." His grin was suddenly pure small-boy. "I'm bad at remembering names, and I have to do it by--by association. It sometimes goes awfully wrong. But I remembered yours because of Gilbert White."
Now most people could see the connection between cray and crab, but not many thirteen-years-olds, I thought, would be so carelessly familiar with Gilbert White's letters from his little Hampshire village, which go under the title of The Natural History of Selborne. I had been right about the intelligence. I only knew the book myself because one is apt to be familiar with most of the contexts in which one's name appears. And because Johnny----
"My name's David," said the boy. "David Shelley."
I laughed.
"Well, that's easy enough to remember, anyway. How do you do, David? I shall only have to think of the Romantic poets, if I forget. But don't hold it against me if I address you as David Byron, or -"
I stopped abruptly. The boy's face, smiling politely up at me, changed again. This time there could be no mistake about it. He went suddenly rigid, and a wave of scarlet poured over his face from neck to temples, and receded as quickly, leaving him white and sick-looking. He opened his mouth as if to speak, fumbling a little with the dog's collar. Then he seemed to make some kind of effort, sent me a courteous, meaningless little smile, and bent over the dog again, fumbling in his pocket for string to fasten him.

I had made a mistake, it seemed. But I had not been mistaken when I had sensed that there was something very wrong somewhere. I am not a person who interferes readily in other people's affairs, but suddenly, unaccountably, and violently, I wanted to interfere in this one.
I need not have worried; I was going to.
But not for the moment. Before I could speak again we were interrupted by a woman who came in through the vine-trellis, from the street. She was, I guessed, thirty-five. She was also blonde, tall, and quite the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The simple cream dress she wore must have been one of Dior's favourite dreams, and the bill for it her husband's nightmare. Being a woman myself, I naturally saw the enormous sapphire on her left hand almost before I saw her.
She did not see me at all, which again was perfectly natural. She paused a moment when she saw David and the dog, then came forward with a kind of eye-compelling grace which would have turned heads in Piccadilly, Manchester, on a wet Monday morning. What it did in Provence, where men make a hobby of looking at women, I hesitated to think. I believe I had visions of the cafes along the Rue de la Republique emptying as she passed, as the houses of Hamelin emptied a different cargo after the Pied Piper.
She paused by the upturned table and spoke. Her voice was pleasant, her English perfect, but her accent was that of a Frenchwoman.
"David."
No reply.
"Mon jils.. . ."
Her son? He did not glance up.
She said, evenly: "Don't you know what the time is? And what on earth happened to the table?"
"Rommel upset it." The averted head, the sulky-sounding mumble which David accorded her, were at once rude and surprising. She took no notice of his manner, but touched him lightly on the shoulder.