"Nine Coaches Waiting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

Chapter 5

The spring weather continued marvellous. There was still snow on the nearer hills, and the far high peaks that unrolled below the clouds were great dazzling beds of white as yet untouched by the spring. But the valley was green, and yet greener; the violets were out along the ditches, and all the urns and stone tubs that lined the château terraces held their constellations of narcissus and jonquil that danced with the wind.

Philippe and I went out every afternoon, coated and scarved against the breeze that blew off the snow. The mountain air seemed to be doing him good; colour came into the sallow cheeks: he even, occasionally, laughed and ran a little, though for the most part he walked stolidly at my side, and answered in his slow but excellent English my dutiful attempts at conversation.

One of our walks was a steep but easy track down through the meadows towards the village. At the foot of the slope a narrow wooden bridge crossed the Merlon, deep here and placid in its wandering from one wide and gleaming pool to the next. From the bridge the track led straight through water-meadows and budding orchards to the village.

On the occasions when it was known that our walk would take us to Soubirous, we were given small commissions to execute there, usually for Mrs. Seddon or Berthe, and sometimes for Albertine, but occasionally for Madame de Valmy herself.

One morning-it was the first of April-Philippe and I set out for the village soon after breakfast. It was Monday, and as a rule on Monday morning Monsieur St. Aubray, the curé of Soubirous, came up to the chateau to instruct the young Comte in Latin, Greek and the Roman Catholic religion. But M. le Curé had twisted an ankle, and, since it did not seem desirable for Philippe to miss his instruction, I took him down to the presbytery beside the church and left him there.

It was the first time I had been on my own in the village, with time to spare. I stood in the little square outside the church and looked about me.

The day was warm, the sunlight as it beat up from flags and cobbles was bright and almost hot. There was a white cat sunning itself on top of a low wall below which someone had planted primulas. The single bistro had put out its red-and-black striped awning, and in spite of faded paint and peeling walls the houses looked gay with their open doors and the coloured shutters fastened back from the windows. A canary, in a small cage hanging outside a shop, sang lustily. Some small children, black-haired and brown-limbed, were intent on something in a gutter. Outside a food-shop cabbage and cheeses and tired-looking oranges made a splash of colour. A boy on a bicycle shot past me, with a yard or so of bread under one arm.

It was a pleasant, peaceful, light-hearted little scene, and my own heart was light as I surveyed it. It was a lovely morning; I was free to do as I wished with it for two hours; I had some money in my pocket; the shadow of the Constance Butcher Home for Girls dwindled and shrank to nothing in the warm Savoyard light. It was also-as a stray warm breeze stirred fragrance from the primulas and brought a shower of early cherry-blossom floating out over the presbytery wall-it was also spring.

I walked slowly across the square, made sure that it was only marbles, and not a frog or a kitten, that was occupying the children in the gutter, then turned into the pharmacy beside the bistro to carry out what commissions I had for the day.

"Mademoiselle Martin?" The apothecary came out of his dark cave at the back. He knew me well by this time. Mrs. Seddon, in the intervals of anti-histamine, seemed to live exclusively on aspirin and something she called Oh Dick Alone, while I (after half a lifetime of White Windsor) had developed a passion, which had to be satisfied frequently, for the more exotic soaps.

I said gaily, in my most English French: "Oh, good morning, Monsieur Garcin. It is a fine day, is it not? It was a fine day yesterday. It will be a fine day tomorrow. Not? I am looking at the soaps, as usual."

I said par usuel, and the chemist's thin lips pursed. It was his weekly pleasure to correct my French, always with that pained, crab-apple face, and I didn't see why I should deny him anything.

"Comme d'habitude," he said sourly.

"Plaȋt-il?" I said, very fluently. He had taught me that one last week.

"Comme d'habitude," said Monsieur Garcin, raising his voice as to the slightly deaf.

"Comme quoi? I do not understand," I said carefully. I was behaving badly and I knew it, but it was a heavenly day and it was spring, and Monsieur Garcin was prim and dry and a bit musty, like herbs that have been kept too long, and besides, he always tried to put me in what he thought was my place. I raised my voice, too, and repeated loudly: "I said I was looking at the soaps, par usuel."

The chemist's thin nose twitched, but he restrained himself with an effort. He looked at me dourly across a pile of laxatives. "So I see. And which do you want?" He heaved up a box of Roger and Gallet from behind the counter. "There is a new box this week. Rose, violet, cologne, sandalwood, clove pink-"

"Oh, yes, please. The clove pink. I love that."

A slight gleam of surprise showed in the oyster-like eyes. "You know what flower that is? Oeillet mignardise?"

I said composedly: "The name is on the soap. With a picture. Voilà." I reached across to pick the tablet out, sniffed it, smiled at him, and said kindly: ”C’est le plus bon, ça."

He rose to that one. "Le meilleur."

“Le meilleur,” I said meekly. "Thank you, monsieur."

"You are doing quite well," said Monsieur Garcin, magnanimously. "And have you any little commissions for your employers today?"

"Yes, if you please. Madame de Valmy asked me to get her medicine and the tablets-her pills for sleeping."

"Very well. Have you the paper?"

"Paper?"

"You must give me the paper, you understand."

I puckered my brows, trying to remember if Albertine had given me a prescription along with the shopping-list. The chemist made a movement of ill-concealed impatience, and his mouth drew up and thinned till it disappeared. He repeated very slowly, as to an imbecile: "You-must-have-a paper-from -the-doctor."

"Oh," I said evilly. "A prescription? Why didn't you say so? Well, she didn't give me one, monsieur. May I bring it along next year?"

"Next year?"

"I mean next week."

"No," he said curtly. "I cannot give you the drugs without the prescription."

I was already regretting having teased him. I said distressfully: "Oh, but Madame asked specially for the medicine. I'll bring the paper as soon as I can, or send it or something, honestly I will! Please, Monsieur Garcin, can't you trust me for a day or two?"

"Impossible. No." His bony fingers were rearranging the tablets of soap. "And what else do you want?"

I glanced down at the list in my hand. There were various things on it, listed-luckily for Monsieur Garcin's patience and my own ingenuity-in French. I read them out to him carefully: someone wanted tooth-powder and Dop shampoo: someone else (I hoped it was the sour-faced Albertine) demanded corn-plasters and iodine, and so on to the end, where came the inevitable aspirin, eau-de-cologne, and what Mrs. Seddon simply listed as "my bottle".

"And Mrs. Seddon's pills," I said finally.

The chemist picked up the packet of aspirin.

"No," I said, "the others." (I wouldn't know the word for asthma, would I? And I genuinely didn't know the word for anti-histamine.) "The pills for her chest."

"You got them last week," said Monsieur Garcin.

"I don't think so."

"I know you did."

His voice was curt to rudeness, but I ignored it. "Perhaps," I said politely, "she has need of more?"

"She cannot have, if she got them last week."

"Are you so sure she did, monsieur? She put them herself on the list today."

"Did she give you the paper-the prescription?"

"No," I said.

He said impatiently: "I told you she got them last week. You took them yourself. You were in a hurry and you handed me a list with a prescription for Madame Sed-don. I sent the tablets. Perhaps you forgot to give them to her. I have an excellent memory, me; and I remember handing them to you. Moreover, I have a record."

"I am sorry, monsieur. I just don't remember. No doubt you're right. I thought-oh, just a minute, here's a paper in my bag! Here it is, monsieur, the prescription! Voyez-vous. Is this it?"

I handed him the paper, carefully keeping anything of I-told- you-so out of my voice. Which was just as well, because he said tartly: "This is not for Madame Sed-don. It is the paper for Madame de Valmy's heart-medicine."

"Oh? I hadn't realised I had it. It must have been with the list. I came out in a hurry and didn't notice. I'm so sorry." I smiled winningly at him. "Then you can give me the medicine after all, monsieur. I'll get the tablets in Thonon on Friday."

He shot me a queer look out of those oyster eyes, and then, by way of teaching me (I suppose) that servants shouldn't argue with their betters, he proceeded to put on his spectacles and read the prescription through with exaggerated care. I watched the sunlight beyond the doorway and waited, suppressing my irritation. He read it again. You'd have thought I was Madeleine Smith asking casually for half a pound of arsenic. Suddenly I saw the joke and laughed at him.

"It's all right, monsieur. It's quite safe to let me have it. I'll see I deliver it promptly where it belongs! I don't often eat digitalis, or whatever it is, myself!"

He said sourly: "I don't suppose you do." He folded the paper carefully and pushed my purchases towards me. "There you are then. I'll give you the drops, and perhaps you will also see that Madame Seddon gets the tablets I sent up on Wednesday?" As I gathered the things up without replying I saw him throw me that queer, quick look yet again. "And I must congratulate you on the way your French has improved, mademoiselle," he added, very dryly.

"Why, thank you, monsieur," I said coolly. "I try very hard and study every day. In another three weeks you won't even guess that I'm English."

"Anglaise?" The word was echoed, in a man's voice, just behind me. I looked round, startled. I had heard nobody come in, but now realised that a newcomer's large body was blocking the door of the pharmacy, while his enormous shadow, thrown before him by the morning sun, seemed to fill the shop. He came forward. "Excuse me, but I heard you say 'Je suis anglaise ‘. Are you really English?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I-that is a relief I" He looked down at me half-shyly. Seen properly now, and not just as a colossal silhouette framed in the shop door, he still appeared a very large young man. He was dressed in khaki shorts and a wind-cheater. His head was bare, and covered with an untidy thatch of fair hair, very fine and thick. His eyes were blue in a tanned face. His hands and legs were tanned, too, and on them in the sunlight the far hair glinted, pale as barley in September.

He groped in an inner pocket and produced a tattered old envelope. "I wonder-could you possibly help me, d'you think? I've got a whole list of stuff to get, and I was wondering how on earth to ask for it. My French is non-existent, and yours seems terribly good-"

I said firmly: "My French may sound wonderful to you, but it sounds like nothing on earth to Monsieur Garcin."

I sent a bright smile to the chemist, who still watched me, sourly, from behind the stack of laxatives. No response. I gave it up and turned back to the Englishman, who was saying, unconvinced: "It seems to get results anyway." He gestured towards my purchases.

I grinned. "You'd be surprised what a fight it is sometimes. But of course I'll help-if I can. May I see your

list?"

He surrendered it relievedly. "This is awfully good of you to let me bother you." He gave his disarmingly shy grin. "Usually I just have to beat my breast like Tarzan and point."

"You must be very brave to come holidaying here without a word of French."

"Holidaying? I'm here on a job."

"Paid assassin?" I asked, "or only M.I.5?"

"I-I beg your pardon?"

I indicated the list. "This. It sounds a bit pointed." I read it aloud. "Bandages; three, one-and-a-half, and one-inch. Sticking-plaster. Elastoplast Burn-dressing. Boracic powder…" I looked at him in some awe. "You've forgotten the probe."

"Probe?"

"To get the bullets out."

He laughed. "I'm only a forester. I'm camping off and on in a hut at four thousand feet, so I thought I'd set up a first-aid kit."

"Do you intend to live quite so dangerously?"

"You never know. Anyway I'm a confirmed hypochondriac. I'm never happy till I’m surrounded by pills and boluses and thermometers marked in degrees Centigrade."

I looked at his six-feet-odd of solid bone and muscle. "Yes. One can see that you should take every care. Do you really want me to struggle with sticking-plaster and burn-dressings for you?"

"Yes, please, if you'd be so good, though the only item I'm really sure I shall need is the last one, and I could ask for that myself at a pinch."

"Cognac? Yes, I see what you mean." Then I turned to Monsieur Garcin and embarked on the slightly exhausting procedure of describing by simple word and gesture articles whose names I knew as well as he did himself. Monsieur Garcin served me reservedly, and as with Philippe, his reserve sometimes bore a strong resemblance to the sulks. I had twice tried the amende honorable of a smile, and I was dashed if I would try again, so we persevered in chilly politeness to the last-but-one item on the Englishman's list.

At last we had finished. The Englishman, weighed down with enough pills and boluses to satisfy the most highly-strung malade imaginaire, stood back from the doorway and waited for me to precede him into the sunlight.

As I picked up my own parcels and turned to go the chemist's voice said, as dry as the rustle of dead leaves: "You are forgetting the drops for Madame de Valmy." He was holding out the package across the counter.

When I reached the sunny street the young man said curiously: "What's biting him? Was he being rude? You're-forgive my saying so-but you're as pink as anything."

"Am I? Well, it's my own fault. No, he wasn't rude. It was just me being silly and getting what I deserved."

"I'm sure you weren't. And thank you most awfully for being such a help. I'd never have managed on my own." He gave me his shy grin. "I still have to get the cognac. I wonder if you'd help me to buy that too?"

"I thought you said you could ask for that yourself."

"I-well, I rather hoped you'd come with me and let me buy you a drink to thank you for taking all that trouble."

"That's very nice of you. But really, there's no need-"

He looked down at me rather imploringly over his armful of packages. "Please," he said. "Apart from everything else, it really is wonderful to talk English to someone."

I had a sudden vision of him up in his lonely hut at four thousand feet, surrounded by pills and boluses and thermometers in degrees Centigrade.

"I'd like to very much," I said.

He beamed. "That's fine. In here? It's Hobson's choice anyway-I think this is the only place apart from the Coq Hardi half-a-mile away."

The bistro with its gay awning was next door to the pharmacy. Inside it looked dim and not very inviting, but on the cobbles outside there were two or three little metal tables, and some old cane chairs painted bright red. Two small clipped trees stood sentinel in blue tubs.

We sat down in the sun. "What will you have?" He was carefully disposing his life-saving parcels on an empty chair.

"Do you suppose they serve coffee?"

“Surely." And it seemed, indeed, that they did. It arrived in large yellow cups, with three wrapped oblongs of sugar in each saucer.

Now that we were facing one another more or less formally across a café table, my companion seemed to have retreated once more behind a rather English shyness. He said, stirring his coffee hard: 'My name's Blake. William Blake." On this last he looked up with a trace of defiance.

I said: "That's a good name to have, isn't it? Mine's only Belinda Martin. Linda for short-or for pretty, my mother used to say."

He smiled. "Thank you."

"For what? Making you free of my name?"

"Oh-yes, of course. But I meant for not making a crack about the Songs of Innocence."

" 'Little lamb, who made thee?'"

"That one exactly. You'd be surprised how many people can't resist it."

I laughed. "How awfully trying! But me, I prefer tigers. No thank you, Mr. Blake"-this to a proffered cigarette-"I don't smoke."

"Mind if I do?"

"Of course not."

Across the spluttering flare of a French match he was looking a question. "If one may ask-what are you doing in Soubirous? Not a holiday, I take it?"

"No. I'm here on a job, too. I'm a governess."

"Of course. You must be the English girl from the Château Valmy."

"Yes. You know about me?"

"Everybody knows everybody else hereabouts. Anyway I'm a near neighbour, as things go round here. I'm working on the next estate, in the plantations west of the Merlon."

"Oh," I said, interested. "Dieudonné?"

"That's it. The château-it's only a country-house really, a quarter the size of Valmy-lies in the valley a bit beyond the village. The owner's hardly ever there. His name's St. Vire. He seems to spend most of his time in Paris or down near Bordeaux. Like your boss, he gets a lot of his money from his timber and his vineyards."

"Vineyards? Valmy?"

"Oh, yes. They own chunks of Provence, I believe."

"Of course," I said. "Bellevigne. But that's Monsieur de Valmy's own property, and Valmy isn't. Even he wouldn't spend its income on Valmy."

"Even he?"

To my surprise my voice sounded defensive. "I believe he's an awfully good landlord."

"Oh, that. Yes, second to none, I imagine. He's pretty highly thought of hereabouts, I can tell you. And the gossip goes that most of the Bellevigne income did get diverted up here until a few years back; there used to be plenty of money, anyway."

"There still is," I said, "or so it seems."

"Yes. Things are waking up again, I gather. Two good vintages, and you get the roof repaired…He laughed.

“Funny how everyone in these places minds everyone else’s business, isn’t it?” He looked at me. "Governessing. Now that's a heck of a life, isn't it?"

"In story-books, yes; and I suppose it could be in real life. But I like it. I like Philippe-my pupil-and I love the place."

"You're not lonely-so far from home, I mean, and England?"

I laughed. "If you only knew! My 'home in England' was seven years in an orphanage. Governessing or not, Valmy's a wild adventure to me!"

"I suppose so. Is that what you want, adventure?"

"Of course! Who doesn't?"

"Me, for one," said Mr. Blake firmly.

"Oh? But I thought all men saw themselves hacking their way with machetes through the mangrove swamps and shooting rapids and things. You know, all hairy knees and camp-fires and the wide wide world."

He grinned. "I got over that pretty young. And just exactly what is a machete?"

"Goodness knows. They always have them. But seriously-"

"Seriously," he said, ‘I don't know. I'd like to get around, yes, and I like travel and change and seeing new things, but- well, roots are a good thing to have." He stopped himself there and flushed a little. "I'm sorry. That was tactless."

"It's all right. And I do see what you mean. Everybody needs a-a centre. Somewhere to go out from and come back to. And I suppose as you get older you enjoy the coming back more than the going out."

He gave me his shy, rather charming smile. "Yes, I think so. But don't listen to me, Miss Martin. I have a stick-in-the-mud disposition. You go ahead and chase your tigers. After all, you've done pretty well up to now. You've found one already, haven't you?"

"Monsieur de Valmy?"

His eyebrows lifted. "You were quick onto that. He is a tiger, then?"

"You did mean him? Why?"

"Only that he seems a little fierce and incalculable by reputation. How do you get on with him? What's he

like?"

"I-he's very polite and kind-I'd even say charming. Yes, certainly he's charming. He and Madame seem terribly anxious that I should really feel at home here. I don't see an awful lot of them, of course, but when I do they're awfully nice…”

I looked away from him across the square. Two women came out of the boulangerie, and paused to glance at us curiously before they moved off, their sabots noisy on the stones. Someone called, shrilly, and the group of children broke up, chattering and screaming like jays. Two of them raced past us, bare feet slapping the warm cobbles. The clock in the church, tower clanged the half-hour.

I said: "And what made you come here? Tell me about your job."

"There's nothing much to tell." He was drawing little patterns on the table-top with the handle of his spoon. And indeed, the way he told it, his life had taken a very ordered course. A pleasant, reasonably well-to-do suburban home; a small public school; two years in the Army, doing nothing more eventful than manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain; then the University-four years' hard work, with holidays (more or less of the busman variety) in Scandinavia and Germany; finally a good degree and the decision to go on to a further two years' research on some Conifer diseases, which he proceeded to explain to me very carefully and with much enthusiasm… Far from lacking adventure, it appeared that (what with butt rot, drought crack, larch canker, spruce bark beetle, and things with names like Phomopsis and Megastismus and even lps) life in a conifer forest could positively teem with excitement. I gathered that Mr. Blake himself was seriously involved with the Pine Weevil… there was a magnificent infestation of these creatures (Hylobius, mark you, not Pissodes), in a plantation west of the

Merlon…

But here he recollected himself and flushed slightly, grinning at me. "Well, anyway," he finished, "that's why I'm here. I'm busy getting the best of both worlds-thanks to Monsieur de St. Vire, who's a remarkably decent chap for a Frenchman." He added, seeming to think this phenomenon worth explaining: "My father knew him in the War. He's given me a job here' of a sort-at any rate I'm paid a bit for doing what's really my own research programme anyway. I'm getting some valuable material as well as experience, and I like working in this country. It's small-scale stuff hereabouts, but these people-at any rate the Valmys and St. Vires, really do care about their land. But there's a lot to learn." He looked wistful. "Including the language. It seems to escape me, somehow. Perhaps I've no ear. But it would be a help."

"If you're living alone, with thermometers," I said, "I can't see why."

"Oh, I'm not up at the hut all the time. I work up there mostly, because it's near the plantation I'm 'on' at present, and it's quiet; I keep all my stuff up there, and I sleep there when I'm short of cash." He grinned. "That's quite often, of course. But I do come down to the Coq Hardi pretty frequently. It's noisy, but the boss speaks English and the food's good… ah, is that your little boy?"

From where we were sitting we could see the high wall of the presbytery garden, and now the gate in it opened, and Philippe appeared in the archway, with the broad figure of the curé's housekeeper behind him.

"Yes, that's Philippe," I said. "I'll have to go."

I got to my feet, and the child saw me, said something over his shoulder to the woman, and then ran across the square in our direction.

"I'm glad you waited. I told Madame Rocher you would go- would have gone for a walk. But here you are."

"Here I am. You're early, aren't you, Philippe? Did Monsieur le Curé get tired of you?"

"I do not know tired of”

"Ennuyé."

He was solemn. "No. But he is not very well. He is tired, but not at-of-me. Madame Rocher says I must come away."

“I’m sorry to hear that," I said. "Philippe, this is Monsieur Blake, who works for Monsieur de St. Vire. Mr. Blake, the Comte de Valmy."

They shook hands, Philippe with the large gravity that sat on him rather attractively.

"What do you work at, monsieur?"

"I'm a forester."

"Forest-oh, yes, I understand. There are foresters at Valmy also."

"I know. I've met one or two of them. Pierre Detruche, Jean-Louis Michaud, and Armand Lestocq-he lives next door to the Coq Hardi."

"As to that," said Philippe, "I do not know them myself yet. I have not been here very long, vous comprenez.”

"Of course not. I-er, I suppose your uncle manages these things."

"Yes," said Philippe politely. "He is my trustee."

The look he shot me was merely one of minor triumph that he should have remembered the word, but it tinged the reply with a sort of smug stateliness that brought the beginnings of amusement to Mr. Blake's face. I said hastily: "We'd better go, I think. Mr. Blake, thank you so much for the coffee. I'm awfully glad we met." I held out my hand.

As he took it, he said quickly: "I say, please-don't just vanish. When can we meet again?"

"I'm not a very free agent. Sometimes I've a morning, but I don't often get as far as this."

"Are you free in the evenings?"

"No, not really. Only Fridays, and a Sunday here and there."

"Then that's no good," he said, sounding disappointed. "I've arranged to meet some pals of mine this week-end. Perhaps later on?"

Philippe had given a little tug to my hand. "I really must go," I said. "Let's leave it, shall we? We're sure to meet-the valley isn't all that big. And thank you again…"

As we crossed the square I glanced back, to see him laboriously gathering up the bandages and the sticking-plaster and all the homely remedies which were to reassure life at four thousand feet.

I hoped he would remember to get the cognac.