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

Then the blonde appeared, threading her way between the tables, to sit down near the trellis, two tables away from Mr. Marsden. She crossed one exquisite nyloned leg over the other, took out a cigarette, and smiled at the waiter. There was a sort of confusion, which resolved itself into three separate movements --the fat German beat the waiter and Mr. Marsden by a short head--to light her cigarette. But Mr. Marsden won on points, because the German's lighter refused to work, and Marsden had a match. She flung a smile to Fat-Neck, an order for a drink to the waiter, and a look across the flame of the match to Marsden that made the flame look awfully dim. At any rate he read Burnt Norton upside down for quite some time afterwards. I had been right about the Pied Piper.
"Eschew," said Louise, "was definitely not the right word. I suppose that is Mrs. Bristol."
It was on the tip of my tongue to correct her when the waiter, travelling like a Derby winner, brought the drink.
"Madame Bristole's drink." He bowed it on to the table, and himself away.
She settled back in her chair, and looked about her. Seen at close quarters, she was as lovely as ever, which is saying a lot. It was a carefully tended, exotic loveliness, like that of a strange flower. That is a hackneyed metaphor, I know, but it describes her better than any other . . . her skin was so smooth, and her heavy perfume seemed part of her. Her eyes, I saw, were a curiously bright blue, and large. Her hands were restless, and at the corners of mouth and eyes I could see the faint lines of worry. These deepened suddenly as I watched her, and then I realized that David had come out from the hotel. He followed the waiter, who was bringing another drink for Louise, and, as he passed our table, saw me. He gave me a sudden little half apologetic grin, which the waiter masked, I think, from the woman. Then the queer sullen look came down over his face again, and he sat down opposite her. She looked approvingly at his clean shorts and white shirt, and said something, to which he did not reply. She looked at his bent head for a moment, then resumed her casual scrutiny of the tables.
The place was filling up rapidly now, and the waiters were handing round the menus.
"Have you met that boy before?" asked Louise, "or was that just another leer?"
I said that I had spoken to him for a moment in the courtyard. For some reason which I could not analyse, I did not want to talk about it and I was glad when she dropped the subject without further question.
"We'd better order," she said.
We studied the menu with some enthusiasm. . . .
But when Louise asked me if I wanted c6te d'agneau or escalope de veau, I replied "Shelley" in an absent sort of way, and between the petites pomm.es de terre sautees and the tarte maison I was still trying to fit the lovely (and French) Mrs. Bristol in with Gilbert White and that appalling dog and the expression on a child's face of something being borne that was too heavy for him to bear.
And I didn't mean the iron table, either.

After dinner Louise announced that she was going to get her book, and sit over her coffee and cognac until bedtime. So I left her to it, and went out to explore Avignon alone.
Avignon is a walled city, as I have said, a compact and lovely little town skirted to the north and west by the Rhone and circled completely by medieval ramparts, none the less lovely, to my inexpert eye, for having been heavily restored in the nineteenth century. The city is dominated from the north by the Rocher des Doms, a steep mass of white rock crowned by the cathedral of Notre Dame, and green with singing pines. Beside the cathedral, taking the light above the town, is the golden stone palace of the Popes. The town itself is slashed in two by one main street, the Rue de la Republique, which leads from the main gate straight up to the city square and thence to the Place du Palais, at the foot of the Rocher des Doms itself.
But these things I had yet to find. It was dusk when I set out, and the street was vividly lit. All the cafes were full, and I picked my way between the tables on the pavement, while there grew in me that slow sense of exhilaration which one inevitably gets in a Southern town after dark. The shop windows glittered and flashed with every conceivable luxury that the mind of the tourist could imagine; the neon lights slid along satin and drowned themselves in velvet and danced over perfume and jewels, and, since I have learned in my twenty eight years to protect the heart a little against too much pity, I kept my eyes on them, and tried not to think about the beggars who slunk whining along the city gutters. I went on, carefully not thinking about those beggars, until I reached the end of the street, where the Rue de la Republique widens out and becomes the main square of the city, and where all Avignon collects at night, together with, one would swear, every child and every dog in France.
The square is surrounded with cafes, which overflow the narrow pavements with a froth of gay little tables and wicker chairs, and even cast up a jetsam of more little tables across the roads and into the centre of the square itself. Here, as I said, Avignon collects at night, and for the price of a cup of coffee, which secures you a chair, you may sit for an hour and watch France parade for you.
I paid for my coffee, and sat in the milk-warm air, marvelling, as one has to in Provence, at the charming manners of the children, and the incredible variety of shapes possible among the dogs, at the beauty of the half-naked, coffee-brown young men in from the fields, and the modest grace of the young girls, One in particular I noticed, an exquisite dark creature who went slowly past with downcast eyes. Her dress was cut low over her breasts, and gathered tightly to a tiny waist, but her face might have been that of a nun, and she walked demurely between her parents, stout, respectable-looking folk who made [' the girl as difficult of access, no doubt, as Danae. And she was followed, I could see, by dark-eyed glances that said exactly what had been said to Bele Yolanz and fair Amelot, five hundred years before, when the troubadours sang in Provence.
"Excuse me," said a woman's voice behind me. "But didn't I see you at the hotel?"
I turned. It was Mamma from Newcastle, Scotland, and she was smiling at me rather hesitantly from a near-by table. "I'm Mrs. Palmer," she said. "I hope you don't mind me speaking, but I saw you at dinner, and -"
"Of course I don't. My name's Charity Selborne." I got up and picked up my coffee-cup. "May I join you?"
"Oh, do." She moved her chair to make way for me. "Father and Carrie--they go off walking about the place, exploring they call it--only sometimes they seem to take so long, and -"
"And it seems longer when you don't know anyone to talk to," I finished for her.
She beamed as if I had said something brilliant. "That's exactly how I feel! Fancy! And of course it's not like home, and what with people talking French it's different, isn't it?"
I admitted that it was. "Of course if I go in for a cup of tea at home," said Mrs. Palmer, "in Carrick's, you know, or it might be Fenwick's, there's always someone I know comes in too, and you can have a nice chat before you get the bus. That's why it seems kind of funny not knowing anybody here, and of course it isn't tea anyway, not real tea, as you might say, but I just can't seem to fancy this stuff they give you with lemon in, can you?"
I said on the whole, no, and how very brave of her to come all this way for a holiday.
"Well," said Mrs. Palmer, "it wasn't really me that suggested it, it was Carrie. I'd never have thought of a grand holiday like this, you know. But I just thought to myself, why not? You always read about the South of France and what's the good of just going every year to Scarborough and reading about the South of France? Well, I just thought, we can afford it, and why not? So here we are."
I smiled at her, and said why not indeed, and good for her, and what a splendid idea of Carrie's.
"Of course she likes to be called Carole," said Mrs. Palmer hastily. "I think it's these films, you know. She will try to dress like them, say what I will."
I said Carole was a pretty girl, which was true.
"Now that Mrs. Bristol, poor thing," said Mrs. Palmer. "She does look the part, the way Carrie never will. Of course she was on the stage or something, before It Happened."
I sat up straight.
"Before what happened, Mrs. Palmer?"
"Oh, didn't you know? I recognized her straight away. Her photo was in all the Sunday papers, you know. Before she married that dreadful man, I meant."
"What dreadful man? What happened?"
"The murderer," said Mrs. Palmer, lowering her voice to a whisper. "He was tried for murder, the Brutal Murder of his Best Friend, it said in the papers." The quoted headlines echoed queerly. "He thought his friend was carrying on with her-- with his wife--so he murdered him. It was all in the papers."
I stared at her stupid, kindly, half-excited eyes, and felt a bit sick.
"David's father, you mean?" I asked numbly. "David's father a murderer^."
She nodded.
"That's right. Strangled with a blind cord. Horrible. An Act of Jealous Madness, it said."
I said, inadequately, looking away from her: "Poor little boy . . . how long ago was all this?"
"The trial was in April. Of course, she's not the boy's mother, you know, she was his second wife. But of course she took the boy away: she couldn't leave David to him. Not after what happened."
"What do you mean? D'you mean he's still alive?"
"Oh yes."
"In prison?"
She shook her head, leaning a little closer.
"No. That's the awful part of it, Mrs. Selborne. He's At Large."
"But -"
"He was let off. Insufficient evidence, they called it, and they acquitted him."
"But perhaps he's not guilty. I mean, the courts of law -"