Mediterranean Nights (11 page)

‘But the family?' I asked impatiently. ‘What did they do?'

‘Well, his old dragon of a mother intervened, my dear—went all the way to Rome and saw the Duce—can you imagine it? Of course, Mussolini is terribly hot-stuff on the aristocracy setting a good example—clean living, and all that—so he backed the old woman up and ordered a squad of Fascists off to Castello Neroni.'

‘What happened then?' I said quickly.

‘Oh, they asked for the wicked Madame Ribereau, and when Neroni said there was no such person there, only his new Contessa, they just laughed at him—positively roared, my dear—then there was a teu, teu ghastly scene. They tied him up to a statue of Venus in his own hall and went up to the lady's bedroom—told her she'd got ten minutes to pack—and they meant to run her out of Italy—Duce's orders.

‘Then she had a screaming fit—started to yell the house down, and threw her make-up bottles at their heads. Anyhow, they got her out to the car at last, golden hair and all—and they put her on the boat that night at Leghorn, so she'll never come back to Italy any more.'

‘Maybe,' I said, ‘but what's to prevent Nero from following her?'

‘Oh, but that's only half the joke,' Hummy tittered in a way that made me want to hit him; ‘the old Contessa signed an affidavit that Nero was insane, so the Fascists have locked him up in a fortress until he gets over it.'

‘But they can't do that,' I protested.

‘Can't they?' Hummy sniffed contemptuously. ‘Yeu don't know your Italy.'

Three hours later saw me on the boat at Leghorn, and the following evening I woke with the ship already at rest beside the quay in the little harbour of Nice. The P.L.M. took me to St. Raphael, and in the afternoon I chugged along in the snorting local that links up the sea coast villages as far as Toulon.

Cavalàire is just about half-way, and what with the heat and the smuts that are the worst part of the journey, I was thankful when it was over, and delighted to see Gandini waiting there to welcome me.

Monsieur le Propriétaire
Gandini is a character. He fetches the food from the market in his ramshackle car, collects the post, and meets his visitors; superintends the cooking in the kitchen and the service of the meals on the charming little terrace, with its eight or ten tables, that looks right out over the bay.

No sooner had I got to the
Surmer
Hotel than I decided for a bathe in the private bay that lay there blue and tempting below.

As I clambered down the rocks were hot to my feet from a long day's sunshine, and the slanting rays were still warm on my skin.

By comparison the water was icy, but as I struck out it rippled warm and caressing over my shoulders. Two hundred yards out I turned to swim in again; then I saw the girl.

She was just round the point from the hotel, stretched out on a slope of rock that formed a tiny cove sheltered from wind and sight on every side except the sea. Quite naked, basking in the late afternoon sunshine. Slim and straight-limbed, her body a glorious golden brown—her hair a tumbled mass of yellow gold, sharp and distinct against the bronze of her flesh and the sandy colour of the rocks behind.
A moment later she turned over on her side and caught sight of me—grabbed a pale blue wrap that lay beside her, drew it swiftly round her middle, and then sat up, her hands clasped round her knees, watching me swim in.

I clambered out smiling and a little breathless, shaking the water from my hair. ‘Sorry,' I said, ‘I'm afraid I've broken into your preserve, but unfortunately your haunt is open country to anyone swimming in the bay.'

‘It is all right,' she smiled at me, ‘usually at this hour there is no one bathing so I have the chance to bake myself all over alike—but you were a long way away.'

‘May I sit down?' I asked.

‘Why not?' She gave a little shrug, and then pulled her wrap up under her chin. ‘You have just arrived at the hotel, eh?'

‘Yes,' I told her, and then she said that she had only been there two days, but as we talked I discovered that she had stayed at Gandini's on a previous occasion and knew quite a bit about the surrounding country.

I found her broken English fascinating, and if there is one thing which is really beautiful in this world it is a blue-eyed Nordic woman whose naturally pink skin has been turned a rich golden bronze by southern sunshine.

‘Well,' I said at last, ‘I'm for a drink before dinner—what about making a move?'

She smiled again. ‘Yes, it is time—but you must go
first
round the corner; if I stand up everything will fall off—and now I think you are a little near for that!'

Of course, I laughed and left her, but she didn't follow me at once, so I had my drink alone—did my unpacking and then came down to dinner.

The girl—or rather woman, I should say, for I put her down as round about thirty—gave me a little smile of recognition as I passed her table, and I noted that she was already half-way through her dinner. I saw, too, with sudden pleasure that she had a table to herself.

She naturally finished a good bit before I did and then went straight to her room.

By half past ten I was in bed, sleepily glad that I had elected to visit that lovely spot again, and my gladness considerably enhanced by the knowledge that I was certain to
see my bronze Venus on the following day.

I did, of course, after breakfast next morning—swimming like a graceful golden fish far out in the bay. I joined her and she did not seem at all displeased at my company; so we swam round the point together.

After our bathe I asked her if she would join me in a crayfish for lunch. It takes two to eat a crayfish—unless you are a pig.

I learned that her name was Madame Painlevé, and that she was recovering from a shock—something that only the peace and quietness of such a place could heal.

Next morning we went down in our bathing wraps to the plage on the other side of the headland—hired a canoe—and bathed from it in turns. Then we drank iced
Cassis
in the enclosure of the Grande Hotel.

The following day we went on an expedition to the old town of St. Tropez, in its almost land-locked bay. A picnic lunch under the walls of the ancient fortress on the hill above the town—a stroll through the narrow, crooked streets—hot chocolate at the famous pâtisserie down by the harbour—and so back to Cavalàire in time for our evening bathe.

I'm thirty-five, and I suppose I've lived my life as well as most people, but I wasn't feeling a day over eighteen. I suppose love does get one like that sometimes. I was simply bubbling over with vitality and enthusiasm like any boy. We swam the cape together—three miles, taken by easy stages, round to the plage, and on the fifth night we were climbing the headland opposite the hotel hand in hand, to see the moon silvering the waters and shining mysteriously on the low islands that lie farther down the coast towards Hyères.

It is amazing how intimate in a single week you may become with a perfect stranger, and yet know nothing of their history. I gathered that there was a husband who had not behaved too well—she was trying to forget, and therefore had taken her maiden name again.

On the seventh night she received a letter which upset her. It was, I think, from her lawyer—some hitch which would delay her divorce going through—so she excused herself and went early to her room. I was not tired, so stayed for a while on the terrace drinking Cordial Médoc with Gandini.

It would never have entered my head to discuss her with
him, but quite inadvertently I made a reference to her.

‘Ah! Madame Ribereau—at least she calls herself Painlevé now'—he shook his dark, clever head—‘two young men went quite mad about her last year—and you also have, what you say, fall for her—is it not?'

For the moment I was quite speechless—I will confess that it was an appalling shock; for had she not received that letter and gone early to bed, I had meant that night to ask her to marry me as soon as her divorce went through. Somehow I kept the conversation going till we finished our drinks, and then I crept up to my room.

The Notorious Madame Ribereau
—Nero's woman—it seemed impossible, and yet it
must
be true. The husband she had mentioned—and her divorce, the date of her arrival—the whole thing tallied.

Nero must be the ‘unfortunate experience' she was trying to forget. I don't think I slept at all that night.

What should I do?—tear myself away?—return to England immediately?—that seemed the safest thing. Yet never, since just after I left my public school, had I been so desperately attracted to any woman. At eight o'clock I flung the shutters wide, and there below on the rocks was that golden sylph-like figure—standing clear-cut against the sea, alone, intent upon an early morning bathe.

That day we had arranged to motor the few miles into Ste. Maxime to witness the little local
Concours d'Elégance
. Perhaps it was weakness on my part, but I decided to stay another day, that I might store my mind with memories of this extraordinary woman, so fair-seeming and sunny-natured, yet, if the old Contessa and Hummy were to be believed, responsible for wrecking a dozen lives by her extravagance and deceit.

I would leave tomorrow on the morning train for Toulon-Marseilles—and safety in the quiet reaches of the Norfolk Broads.

We lunched together and after, in a hired car, drove through the pine forests to Ste. Maxime. The
Concours d'Elégance
had attracted quite a crowd. Some fifty cars, beribboned—polished—with their drivers clad in their smartest beach creations, drove slowly up and down.

The obvious winner was a great silver sporting Rolls, driven by a small, fair woman.

‘Look—look—she has won, that one,' cried my companion, as the judges hung a placard on the bonnet of the silver car. ‘I knew she would—it is always so.'

‘You know her then?' I murmured, my thoughts on other things.

‘Of course,' a rather bitter little smile parted the lips of the loveliness at my side, ‘she is my sister-in-law—
the notorious Madame Ribereau
; you must have heard of her; but to see her again has spoilt it here for me—let us go back to the
Surmer
: I wish only to be alone with you…. Oh! please—what is it?—you are hurting!'

Well, I'm afraid I was—for my grip on that golden arm must have been a hard one as I hurried her away.

STORY VII

T
HIS
story of the Korean War dates the period in which it was written. I was greatly tempted to write a full-length novel about that war, because it offered a promising background for my character Julian Day. He first appeared in
The Quest of Julian Day
, which enabled me to give my readers an account of many of the marvels of the ancient Egyptian civilisation, as I had recently returned from a long and fascinating trip up the Valley of the Nile. Julian's second appearance was in
The Sword of Fate
which described General Wavell's magnificent campaign in which, against great odds, he drove the Italians out of Libya, and our disastrous campaign in Greece.

But I have never visited the Far East; so I feared that I might not be able to give a novel the authentic background touches that have proved such an asset to most of my other books.

THE LAST CARD

W
U
-C
HIN
sat cross-legged on the stone floor of the cellar. Had a light pierced the pitch darkness, his young, flattish face and velvety brown eyes would have betrayed no sign of emotion, but he thought his chances of living through the night very slender.

The occasional boom of long-range guns had suddenly been submerged in a thunderous drum fire; the Americans had opened their barrage so he knew that the attack that was to take place would not now be long delayed. He regarded their penetration to the North Korean Divisional Headquarters at which he was held prisoner as a foregone conclusion, but had little hope that he would still be there to be rescued by
them on their arrival. There would be ample time for his captors first to remove or shoot any prisoners they had in the locality, and as he was not in uniform he expected to be shot.

He was not afraid to die. The Confucian philosophy which he had imbibed with his mother's milk armoured him against the fear of death and made him regard it as imperative that he should conduct himself with irreproachable behaviour when taken to execution; but all the same, he was far from accepting his situation with the resigned fatalism habitual among Orientals of the lower castes. As a student at Seoul University he had assimilated many Western ideas, and among them the belief that it was wrong to meet death half-way unless by surrendering life one could render some worth-while service to those one loved, or to one's country.

It was of the awful fate which had overtaken his country that he was thinking now. Its people, although far from rich, were normally happy, contented and well-behaved. The past quarter of a century had seen considerable progress both in their industries and social well-being. With the ending of the Great War there had seemed good hopes of Southern Korea taking an honourable place among the free nations of the East. Then, almost without warning, she had found herself the focal point of an issue utterly beyond her control. She had become the first testing place in which the two great ideologies of democracy and Communism had clashed. Now she was rent from end to end, her cities devastated, her farmsteads burning, her people homeless and stampeding, first one way then another, as the contending armies surged to and fro in terrible tidal waves of hurtling aircraft, whistling bullets, crashing shells, and bursting bombs.

To a young man of Wu-Chin's cultured upbringing, Communism meant the reduction of the individual to a machine and the death of all spiritual values; so immediately the war started he had volunteered and he had been enormously heartened by the United Nations' decision to maintain South Korea's freedom by force of arms. He still felt confident that they would emerge victorious and afterwards rehabilitate his shattered country. His main regret now was that he would not live to see that glorious day.