Quest for Alexis (14 page)

The sun was coming up now. Under the shadow of
the mountains it was still dark, but the sky was piling
to an oyster gray, touched in the east with the faintest
brushing of rose. Far out to sea the first rays of sun
light were glinting upon the water.

As we drove on, I watched color come back to the world, the clear vivid colors of Provence. Dark burnt
orange from sun-baked earth, every shade of green
and gray from the trees that hugged the slopes, the
white of almond blossom and the sharp spicy yellow of
mimosa. And there were bushes of some waxy-looking
coral flowers that I didn’t recognize. It all stood out in
high relief, glowing against the early-morning purity of the sky, the deep cobalt blue of the sea.

Soon we reached a little town called La Turbie,
and Brett found somewhere to park.

“I suppose you don’t want to look over the Roman
ruins,” he said. “There’s a spot where you get a fantas
tic view of Monte Carlo. Especially at night, with all
the lights.”

“You’ve been here before, then?”

“A few times. We were here in the summer, filming.”

We?
Bleakly, I thought of Brett with Elspeth Vane.
She was a woman suited to the glittering life of the
Cote d’Azur. Monte Carlo, Nice, St. Tropez ... World sophisticates both of them, she and Brett.

Suddenly I became conscious of what I must look
like at this moment. My clothes, straight out of a suit
case, dragged on in a rush. No time to do my hair
properly or make up my face.

I opened the car door and put a foot to the ground.
“Didn’t you say something about breakfast?”

“Yes, sure. Let’s go and find someplace.”

A couple of minutes’ walk through the streets of the
ancient town, and we came to an attractive little cafe
with gay orange awnings. Table and chairs were set
out in front. But at this altitude, at this time of day, it
was too cold to sit in the open, so we went inside. Brett
ordered coffee and croissants from the incredibly hand
some, dark young waiter, who looked Italian rather
than French.

While we waited, Brett said musingly, “God knows
where that pair are going to turn up next. There are
places dotted all over Europe just as eligible as Palma
and Nice.”

My mind was still occupied with thinking about
Elspeth—Elspeth and Brett. I said stupidly, “What do
you mean by eligible?”

“Smart enough—fancy enough. It’s the grand style
he’s been going for, isn’t it? Staying at the ritziest hotels he can find.”

I focused my attention. “Yes, that’s what I can’t
understand. It’s so completely unlike Alexis to be ostentatious.”

“Men change, Gail. Or perhaps Alexis was like that
underneath all the time.” He shot me a tentative look.
“It could be Belle’s price, you know—living it up in
the millionaires’ playgrounds.”

“Belle’s price?”

Brett drew his thumbnail across the starched
checked tablecloth, making a thin rasping sound.

“Gail, you’ve only seen Belle Forsyth as the capable,
devoted nurse-companion to Madeleine. Being a man,
I was shown a different side of her character. When Belle took her hair down she could be devastatingly
sexy. It was enough to make any man—”

“Not Alexis.” But a faint note of doubt had crept
into my voice.

“Any
man,” Brett insisted. “If it was not for the
fact that Belle isn’t my type, who knows?”

“Then what is your type?” I threw back at him and
instantly regretted it.

When Brett looked at me it seemed that a shutter had dropped across his eyes. “You know the answer
to that, Gail, don’t you?”

Yes, I knew. We were back to Elspeth again.

Brett inquired if he could use the telephone. He was
shown through a curtained archway at the back, and I heard a door close.

There was a sleepy hush upon the place. The only
other customer, a fat, elderly man in a black beret, was
studying his newspaper with deep concentration. Was he perhaps reading about Alexis? I wondered. Behind
the counter, the handsome waiter was polishing glasses
and kept glancing up at his reflection in a mirror. A
huge, sleek tortoise-shell cat lay in a patch of sunlight
by the window, lazily licking a paw. He eyed me im
passively for a moment, yawned, stretched, and settled
at once to sleep.

In less than five minutes Brett was back.

“All fixed, Gail. We’re to take some food for our
selves, though—the Shackletons aren’t prepared for
unexpected guests at this time of year, and it’s a long
way to the shops.”

“Brett, are you sure they don’t mind?”

He shook his head. “I’ve known Bill Shackleton ever since we were at Cambridge together. He writes scripts
for television nowadays, and Harriet writes those mad
ly successful children’s books. They’re a great pair.”

“What did you tell them about us? How much did
you explain?”

“What about leaving the organizing to me, Gail?
Make a big effort and trust me for once.”

I flushed. “There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

Brett smiled at me with maddening condescension.
“Drink up your coffee like a good girl, and we’ll go and
find an
epicene
and buy some food. I don’t know how long we’re going to be holed up, but we’d better take enough for a couple of days or so.”

“How about letting Dougal know where we’ll be?”

He gave me a withering look. “Bread and cheese,
eggs, ham, some fruit and coffee—how’s that? And
wine.”

“I suppose so.”

The thought of food didn’t interest me at all. I wasn’t
looking forward to the prospect of maybe two days’
complete inaction. But I had to go along with Brett’s
plan, because I knew that without him I’d get nowhere.
Without Brett’s help, I wouldn’t have a hope of catch
ing up with Alexis.

We were climbing higher all the time, thrusting deeper
into the mountains. The road wound its way through
a narrow gorge, just a rim on the edge of a seemingly
vertical rockface. At one point we had to cross the ravine by a slender metal bridge that looked as if it
would scarcely bear the weight of the car. Then at
once we plunged into a dark tunnel where Brett need
ed to use the headlights.

We emerged into a different world—a harshly arid
world that had its own sort of grandeur. The wide,
parched valley was encircled by distant peaks, some
crested with snow. Nearer, huge outcrops of limestone
rock, blindingly white, stood out like jagged scars.

Here and there was a single olive tree, its contorted
branches still winter-bare, and clusters of stunted pine
shivered in the wind. In the hollows, where the sun
could not penetrate, lay patches of crusted snow.

I shuddered at such bleakness. Yet people lived here,
somehow scratching themselves a livelihood. We
passed through a village, no more than a scattering of
tumbledown houses. It seemed deserted, but I sensed
eyes peering secretively from behind curtains.

Beyond the village the road divided, and Brett
stopped to consult the map he’d bought in La Turbie. With the engine switched off, I could hear the wind
sighing through the telephone wires beside the road. It
was a mournful sound.

“We take the right fork here,” said Brett, refolding the map. “It’s not far now. How does the thought of a
blazing log fire strike you?”

“Great.” I hugged closer into my coat. “I suppose it’s very beautiful, Brett, but...”

He laughed. “That’s the whole idea, isn’t it? No
body’s going to think of looking for us in this wilder
ness.”

Fifteen minutes later we came to a rough track
leading off to the right. A mailbox was nailed to a pole,
with a hand-painted sign beneath it - La Retraite.

“This is it,” said Brett and swung onto the track.
We bumped our way along for nearly a mile, twisting
and turning. Pine trees blocked our view of the house
until we were almost upon it.

La Retraite was a huddled mass of stone, crouching low upon the ground. The walls, the roof pantiles, the
tufty grass around it were the same tawny gray. If I’d
expected a welcome, I was disappointed. No figure
stood in the doorway, no smoke curled from the squat
chimney. The windows were tightly shuttered.

“Brett, are you quite sure this is the right place?”

“Of course I am.”

“It
...
it looks so deserted. All shut up.”

Brett made no comment as he stopped the car on
the square of roughly leveled ground. For a moment
or two he sat behind the wheel, making no move to get out. Then he said briskly, “Come on, let’s have a look
around.”

There was still no sign of life from the house. I ex
pected Brett to knock at the door, but instead he poked
about in a crevice between two stones in the wall and
withdrew a large and rusty iron key. He thrust it in the lock and without a backward glance at me opened the
door and stepped inside.

“Brett,” I began, “ought we to
...
?”

“Come on in, Gail. We’d better get a fire going right
away. It’s like an icebox.”

Inside, with the shutters up, it was dark. I could
see very little except that we were in a large oblong room, its flagstone floor partly covered by wool rugs.
It felt bitterly cold, the raw cold of a house long empty.

“There’s no one here,” I said, dismayed. Then sud
denly I understood and swung around on Brett ac
cusingly. “You knew there’d be nobody here, didn’t
you? There couldn’t have been when you were sup
posed to be phoning. This place hasn’t been lived in
for ages.”

“Not since autumn, actually,” he agreed. “Bill and
Harriet just spend the summer here. They say it’s the
only place they can escape and get some work done.
Luckily for us, it’s essential that the TV people can
reach Bill quickly, or there’d be no phone.” I heard a
ting as he lifted the receiver. “Yes, it’s working, so we’ll
be all right.”

“You’ve got a nerve. You told me they—”

“Keep cool, Gail. I had to spin you a yarn. I knew
you wouldn’t have come at all if you’d known the
Shackletons weren’t here.”

“Too true I wouldn’t. And I’m not staying, either.
You’d better think again, Brett.”

His voice reached me out of the gloom. Calm and reasonable. “There’s nowhere else as safe as this, Gail.
Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t stay.”

“There are all sorts of reasons. The Shackletons, for
one thing. What would they think if they knew you
were making use of their place like this?”

“Bill and Harriet wouldn’t care a damn. They’ve
often told me that if I ever wanted somewhere quiet to
go when I was on the coast, I could always come here.
How else do you imagine I knew where the key was
hidden?”

I was silent. There ought to be something I could
say, some retort that would crush Brett’s unbearable
self-assurance. But I couldn’t think of it.

He laughed softly. “Don’t tell me you’re having an
attack of frozen virtue. I thought you and I had got
past that stage long ago.”

I felt my cheeks flame and was grateful it was too
dark for him to see.

“We’ll freeze to death if we don’t get a fire going,”
said Brett, suddenly practical. “I’ll nip outside and open up the shutters, then I’ll fetch in some logs.
There’s always a pile kept around at the back. Look
and see if you can find some paper and kindling wood.”

Searching, I discovered the full extent of the
mas,
and it wasn’t much. Opening off the living room was a room with a large double bed. I shut the door quickly,
wondering about sleeping arrangements. The tiny lean-
to kitchen contained a shallow stone sink with no taps, a contraption that looked like a primitive oil stove, a
cupboard with cleaning things, and a larder that was
bare except for, on the bottom shelf, the very things I
wanted.

I had paper and sticks piled ready in the grate when
Brett came back with an armful of split logs. In about
three minutes the fire was roaring up the wide-throated
chimney. With the sun coming in through the open
shutters, the room began to look more cheerful. I was forced to admit that it possessed a certain charm.