The Avignon Quintet (102 page)

“I shall do so,” she said, and with that the car which had stolen back into the grey town, took an abrupt turn and entered the drive of the Egyptian Legation. On the steps under the portico a young man was alerted and came towards them. He was a tall and extremely handsome personage. The Prince tooted softly at him and said, “Ah there he is at last! This is Mr. Affad, my conscience, my guide, my banker, my confessor – anything you wish. I know you will like him.” He was indeed an extraordinarily attractive man with his quiet and well-bred air, his attentive serviability. He opened the door of the car and offered her his capable brown hand, saying as he did so, “I am by now a friend of Aubrey, a firm friend, so I have no hesitation in asking you to please accept me too as a friend. I have heard a great deal about you, and have been hoping to meet you. There! I have said my piece.” She asked if he was with the Prince and he replied that he was. “I am supposed to be his business adviser and to keep him out of mischief, and I try to. But it’s not always possible.”

It was nearly tea-time and the Prince led the way to the garden where in a glassed-in verandah full of hot-house blooms there stood an elaborate tea-table prepared for such as wished with cakes of every sort. A servant also appeared with water for the tea-pot and they seated themselves comfortably around the metal garden table to have a cup of China tea. Affad seemed about to embark on a remark involving some of the Prince’s business when he caught himself up and lapsed into silence; noticing this the Prince said, “It’s all right, Affad, you can talk in front of
her;
she is a close friend.” Affad looked pleasingly confused and replied, “You read my mind wrong. I was about to start talking shop, but it was not for security reasons I braked: it seemed to be impolite to talk shop before a third party – that’s all.” The Prince wagged his head impatiently and said, “Hoighty-toighty, what a pother! She won’t mind if we speak freely, eh my dear? I thought not.”

He turned to Affad and said, “Well.”

The banker produced a small red notebook from his pocket and turned the pages. “Very well,” he said, “first the journey to Sweden and to Paris is fixed. Communications are so haphazard that it may take longer than you think. I have had a long talk with the astrologer Moricand. It is true that he was invited to visit Hitler but he could not get through the lines with all the fighting, so he returned here to wait.”

The Prince was absentmindedly feeling in his own pockets for a memorandum book with the manifest intention of jotting down some notes, but he came upon some snaps of his children and began to study them carefully, with a pleasure that was almost unction. He listened to his adviser with only half an ear, so to speak. “Astrologer!” he said vaguely. “What next?” The children stood staring into the camera with their doe-like regard. “How beautiful they are, little children,” mused the Prince. “Each carries its destiny in its little soul – a destiny which slowly unrolls like a prayer-mat.” He was suddenly overcome by guilt and came to himself with a start. He put the photos away with despatch and turned back to Affad who was saying, “You know, he lives by predictions, like a sort of Tiberius; there is great competition among soothsayers to capture his ear. We may turn this weakness to our own profit later on. I am glad you brought your Templar head on the off-chance. It’s the kind of thing … we shall see. But what seems imminent is Russia; the whole machine has wheeled round in that direction. I suppose with Greece defeated and the English pinned back in Egypt by Rommel the little man feels free to move: no flank problems.”

“I have so many irons in the fires,” sighed the Prince to Constance. “I must also arrange a trip to Vichy. The Jewish community of Egypt is offering vast sums to ransom their own kith and kin in France and I must find someone who has the ear of Laval. That is why Avignon, you see; then also the British have unearthed some new intelligence which informs us that the Nazis believe that the Templar treasure still exists somewhere in the Provençal area of France, indeed that Lord Galen’s team had actually pinpointed the place but were forced to decamp before they could dig it up. Two members of the staff who stayed on have been arrested already, and one has died under torture. Ironically enough a secretary who was dumb, and could not speak to them! They thought he was just being obstinate and tortured the poor chap until he died. What a world, what vermin!” He stood up and said, “Well, I have things to settle before I leave.” Tenderly, reluctantly, he took his leave of her, promising that he would contact her directly he got back, perhaps in ten days or so. “Affad will drive you home. He is going to stay on a while here, and has messages for Aubrey’s friends.”

“I can tell you where to find them,” she said, “with a fair degree of certainty; they foregather almost every evening about this time at a rather disreputable old pub. I can show you where it is if you are going to run me back to my flat, which is quite near.”

“With pleasure,” he said, and the three of them crossed the rotunda and descended the marble stairs into the drive where the old limousine waited for them. The Prince did not make heavy weather of his goodbyes, for he did not think he would be long away. Time proved him to be mistaken but this was not to be foreseen now, as they parted company among the green lawns and gravel stretches of the Egyptian Legation. Affad drove very slowly and carefully, talking to Constance in a low voice about ephemeral, indeed frivolous, matters until they reached her flat, after they had passed the bar and he had duly taken note of its address. He was really an extraordinarily attractive man, or at least she found him to be so; but as she did not approve of this feeling she frowned upon it and upon him and informed herself sententiously, “Charm is no real substitute for character. There!” Nevertheless she stayed chatting to him in the car for a moment, telling herself that she must be nice to the friends of the Prince. But she found herself admiring his brown hands as they rested on the wheel of the car, and the easy negligence of his dress; for his part he found her very beautiful but slightly mannish – he mentally tried divesting her of all that beautiful hair and crediting her with a moustache. It was a trick he often used when he wanted to “see” into the character of someone, to change their sex mentally. Often it was quite a revelation. But in this case the moustache didn’t really fit, and even as a boy she made a very pretty Narcissus. He gave up at last and said, smiling, “The Prince says you are now an analyst. I suppose you treat our dreams as bottled wishes.” She laughed and replied, “More or less.”

And on that note, with a laugh and a warm handshake, they agreed to part, though he asked if he might ring up and keep her informed of the Prince’s movements. “Of course,” she said and wrote down her number. The car drew away, and turning the corner, came to a stop outside the old Bar de la Navigation, where Sutcliffe who had just missed an easy shot was using very bad language. Seeing the car he cried to his friend, “There’s the black car, Toby. Look out. There’s an armed man just crossed the road. He’s coming in here.” That performance was so lifelike that Toby almost bolted to the lavatory to hide. It took a moment to reassure him, though Affad did not look at all like a gunman; but when he said that he had just come with messages from Blanford everyone raised their heads and expressed great interest. Affad obtained a drink from the gloomy bar-tender and joined them round the billiard table, to talk while they played on. It was his first introduction to the little group of which he was soon to become an inseparable part.

SEVEN

Orientations

T
HE HARSH WHITE LIGHT OVER THE GREEN BILLIARD
table outlined the massive forms of the two stout men, making a contrast with the more slender silhouette of Constance, who had agreed to form a trio with them. It was a restful way of spending the twilight – nobody had spoken for a full ten minutes. Seated in an armchair by the cue-rack sat the negligent and elegant form of Affad, who was watching intently and drawing from time to time upon a cigar. The balls clicked contentedly as they rumbled about the green cloth. Sutcliffe paused to take a swig of his beer and said, for the fourth time that evening, “I’m blowed if I know what has been eating you; why, I mean, you have come to this decision, which seems futile, romantic, dramatic … I mean to say?” He chalked his cue petulantly, as if to alleviate his perplexity and annoyance.

Constance showed signs now of creating a “break”, so that she did not answer directly; she pursued her advantage until a missed stroke halted her progress. “I have told you why, but you won’t grasp it. I want to do something more active. What good is a poor psychiatrist when the whole world has gone out of its mind?”

Toby failed to exploit a lucky shot now and whispered a very abrasive epithet to himself. “It’s just maidenly vapours,” he said disagreeably. “Believe what you please,” she snapped, “but at any rate I am going into France to see for myself if such a posting wouldn’t be just what I need at the moment. I know what you are thinking – that all this is a backlash from Sam’s death; but that Only catalysed things! My dissatisfaction with medicine has been going on a long time, and it’s not connected only with that, it has also to do with being a woman. Yes, damn it, being a woman.”

“How is that?” said Affad curiously, for she had sounded quite specially intense. “What has being a woman got to do with the matter – and specially this journey?” Constance chalked her cue with robust determination and said, “A woman doctor is no good. The masculine shaman is too strong for her, she will never be taken really seriously even though she is twice as good as any man. When the door opens and the doctor is announced the appearance of a woman doctor creates anti-climax. The patient’s heart sinks when he sees he has to deal with a woman when he needed to see her husband. Woman can cure, all right, but only the man, her husband, can
heal
. It is all rubbish of course but the patient’s soul
feels
this, his infantile soul feels it; for when illness comes one becomes a child again, helpless, passive. What can a woman do? O yes, she has learned a trick or two from her husband about chemicals; but she can’t convey the massive authority and warmth and paternalism of the man-doctor.” Toby shook his head firmly and said, “I think you are exaggerating, Constance.” The girl pursed her lips as she played on, letting her theme elaborate itself in her mind.

With compressed lips and concentrated eye she bent to her strokes, while her sigh of exasperation filled in the moment or so of respite. “I know what I am talking about,” she went on sadly. “After all I’ve been in this business for years, some of them in general practice before I specialised. I can only say that, however good you may be, and I reckon I’m good, being a woman spoils everything.” Pausing, she transferred her cue to her other hand in order to give a thumbs down sign in the Roman manner! “Even if you perform miracles of healing! We are working against a shaman of great antiquity and great tenacity. It will take several hundred years for us to come to terms with it – if we ever do. It isn’t possible, is it, to imagine Hippocrates as being a woman – though God knows, why not?”

Toby seemed about to launch indignantly into a tirade in response to this pessimistic formulation, but Sutcliffe motioned him to be silent so that she could continue; he was genuinely puzzled, while the silent Affad was deeply touched and looked away, as if what she had said had had the effect of wounding him. How beautiful she looked at this moment of doubt and contrition! “Tell us more,” said Sutcliffe quietly, “It seems so strange.”

“Very well,” she said, “let me give you a simple example. It is not possible to examine a male patient without making him undress and actually palping him all over. Just the classical routine examination, I mean. Well, I don’t know any man who can respond to this elementary routine without getting excited sexually, and in some cases even getting an erection! This should not be so, but it is. I have had to evolve a technique in order to get over this situation – which is as embarrassing for the patient as for myself, for neither of us wish to let sex intrude upon such a transaction. I talk to him all the time, telling him what I am doing, localising his interest so that he forgets his risk of excitement, often by pure shame or funk. I say, ‘Now I will examine your liver, so! If it hurts just say.’ So I talk on and he takes an interest in his liver. As for touching him with my hands, which can be powerfully exciting, I have adopted another ploy. I bought the short drumstick that bassoon players use in orchestras. It’s stubby and has a rubber head. I plant this cold instrument on the organ in question before following up with my hand! But in God’s name what a bore this whole thing is! Now in psychiatry the sexual game is only verbal and one can counter male or female susceptibility more easily, or so I imagine. Also one does not have to
see
one’s patient, which helps.”