The Avignon Quintet (77 page)

He turned, sighing, to place his glass upon the mantelshelf; the remains of his old cat Wombat gave a low gasp. It reminded him for a moment of the Prince’s chuckle, and he frowned upon the memory. “It has been a calamity,” he admitted, “and the whole thing my fault. Crest-fallen is the word. Yes, I am quite crest-fallen!” He bowed his head briefly and in some mysterious way managed to give the impression of an old rooster with bowed crest.

Shyly, from the depths of their youth, they raised their friendly glasses to toast him and to register their concern and affection; and at that moment there came the characteristic rumble of the Prince’s coach as it drew up before the house, all its damascened paintwork glittering with high polish, and even its horses burnished and cockaded in the best pantomime tradition. Blanford had last seen this sort of thing at the Old Vic, when Cinderella was carted off to the ball in her transmogrified pumpkin. Quatrefages rode with the little man. He had become very friendly with the Prince, who for his part treated him with affectionate familiarity, often throwing an arm round his shoulder as he talked. (“
Il est redoutable, le Prince
” explained the lean youth to Blanford during the evening; “
il connaît tous les bordels de la région.
”) It was not surprising, for the Prince like a good Egyptian had taken the precaution of calling on the Chief of Police during his first week in the city, and of inviting him for a ride in his coach. His knowledge now (compared to the limited knowledge of Quatrefages) was all but encyclopaedic. Lord Galen, however, while full of respect for the blue blood of the Prince, steadfastly refused to share the pursuits of the royal amorist. “He must have his little spree,” he might say, cocking his head roguishly, “but I need my eight hours!” Nor did the Prince insist, for he had all the tact of a gentleman of the old school. He went about on his lawful occasions, secure in the knowledge that apart from the factor of diplomatic privilege accorded him, he also enjoyed the esteem and respect of the Chief of the Police des Moeurs, who was not above giving him a ring at the hotel to pass the time of day. But he had, in a relatively brief delay, accumulated a lot of new acquaintances whose appearance was not somehow altogether reassuring to Lord Galen. There is an indefinable something which makes a gentleman who belongs to the
milieu
. It exudes from his person – some of the heavy slothful quality that emanates from the person of a great banker, or a promoter of national schemes which collapse in dust, or of an international criminal, a diplomat, a Pope. The Prince’s hotel was now full of sinister silent oracular personages, who spent hours locked up with him, discussing business or (who knows?) pleasures as yet to be experienced. There was a heavy air of mystery which hung about the velvet-lined double suite of the Prince. The telephone was always going. They smiled, these dark hirsute people, but the smile was not full of loving kindness; the smile was like the crêpe on a coffin.

“I wonder who all these new people
are,”
said old Galen in perplexity. “I ask him but he just says they are associates.” He was a little bit put out by the Prince’s discretion, and also a tiny bit anxious lest promising business mergers might be taking place just behind his back. At any event it was past worrying about, as he had decided that, in the light of the general war situation, his best move was to return home and brave the critics. After all, not everyone might be abreast of his activities; and this fearful mistake might as yet be hushed up. But he was very sad, he lay awake at nights and brooded; and in the deepening twilight of peace, dissolving now all round them, he felt the renewed ache of his missing daughter. So far all his expensive researches had yielded nothing concrete, though at times Quatrefages hinted that fruitful discoveries were just around the corner, not only on this topic but on the more challenging one of the Templar treasure – that mouth-watering project which, though he could not foresee it now, was to cause him the unwelcome attentions of the Nazis who were to prove hardly less romantic in their intellectual investments than Lord Galen himself.

But all this lay in the fastnesses of the futurity; tonight was a quiet and sedate affair, imbued with a valedictory atmosphere. He bade them welcome to one of the finest dinners one could command in the region and the amateur gourmets of Tu Duc did ample justice to it. But they were sorry when the old man said: “I have just decided to return to London the day after tomorrow. Things are slowly going from bad to worse and I feel that I must be at my post in the old country if the die is cast and England finds herself at war.” It was true, he was moved by a patriotic impulse, but it was mixed with the feeling that it would be more prudent to be nearer his investments. (As a matter of fact, as the Prince explained to Quatrefages, he was not going to London at all, but to Geneva.) He was just naturally secretive, he did not want gossip. And yet, with half his mind, he felt the welling up of warm sentiments for the Old Country. Tonight he talked in a warmly human way of what might be expected to happen after the hypothetical war – for even now the whole thing seemed such madness that one half expected a last-minute compromise or perhaps an assassination to change the trend of things. “We must move steadily towards greater justice and great equality of opportunity,” said the old man, appearing to be unaware that such sentiments had been expressed before. He filled them with his own pure and innocent conviction. At such times he would actually inflate his breast, almost levitate, with idealism and emotion. He wished the whole world to have a second helping. Usually this was after dinner over a
fine à l’eau
and with his Juliet drawing smooth as silk.

The Prince also seemed a little sad and withdrawn into himself; he did not like partings and there were partings in the air now – just when he had stumbled upon several very promising lines of activity with his new associates. When Galen first probed him he did not reply directly in order not to shock the old man unduly. It was also a bit from a desire to keep his new friends as far as possible to himself. He had been carefully and conscientiously studying their portraits in the police files which had been placed at his disposal by the head of the Gendarmerie, who had himself been offered a marvellous job in Cairo at an excellent salary, in order to train the Egyptian police. The whole situation was full of promise – only this wretched war threatened to compromise his initiative; if only one could be sure that France would remain free. … He thought of the great gallery of photographs of his new friends: Pontia, Merlib, Zogheb, Akkad.… Such prognathous jaws, such cuttlefish regards, such jutting forelocks, such rhinoceroid probosces! It was wonderful! Yet they all looked just like great religious figures, like Popes in mufti. He stroked their images mentally like so many imaginary cats. Perhaps he should tease Galen? He gave his dry little clicky chuckle, and saw his host stiffen with pain. “You ask about my new associates?” he said. “I wonder if you would be surprised if I told you they were all bishops and abbots and chaplains and parish priests – all
religious
men?” Galen looked really startled and the Prince released another dry click of a chuckle, though this time he softly struck his knee and followed it up with a laugh, a small laugh, aimed at the ceiling. He looked like a chicken drinking. Quatrefages, who was in the secret, gave a hardly less wounding guffaw. But Galen could now see that his leg was being pulled. “Indeed so?” he said, slightly huffed, slightly pipped.

“My dear,” said the Prince, “I was choking. You must allow me my little choke from time to time.
They are all great criminals.”

“Criminals?”
echoed Galen with a swishing indrawn breath. “You are associating with criminals?”

“Alas,” said the Prince, “I wish it
were
so, for they would be so useful. But the situation does not permit me to risk any Egyptian money on their schemes. This wretched war …” It was as if every thought ended in the same
cul de sac
, the brick wall of the war situation. The Prince now explained that in France, when the great criminals became too hot to hold, they were submitted to a sort of exile in one of three great provincial towns, Toulouse, Nîmes, Avignon. They were forbidden to return to Paris. But in these towns they could reside at liberty and cool their ideas. How lucky, he added, that Avignon turned out to be one of these towns. It had provided him with a host of new contacts of the right sort, and had things been different he would by now have initiated several new schemes on behalf of the Egyptian companies he represented. Galen listened with popping eye.

Delighted by his theatrical effect the Prince permitted himself to embroider a little in his almost lapidary English. “Though they are all well bred,” he continued surprisingly, “yet there may be one or two who would think nothing of sentencing a rival to
death
!” He paused for a moment and then continued, “They simply have them clubbed insensible and then thrust through the medieval
oubliettes
into the Rhône!” He talked as if the river were choked with corpses. “Goodness me!” said Lord Galen, startled by his obvious relish. “What an idea!” It gave a whole new dimension to business methods.

A few more such sallies followed, but to tell the truth Blanford felt that the evening had begun to lag on in a rather spiritless fashion, as if its back had been broken by the approaching war and the impending separations. Outside the moon was high, and the vines seemed very still, with no breath of wind to stir their loaded fronds. Quatrefages became very thoughtful and sad when Galen told him that he must, in the coming week, close his office and transfer it back to London. “So soon?” he said and Galen nodded decisively. “I know it’s hard,” he said, “but something tells me it is time to move.”

It was, and for once his intuition was correct. But how ironic it seemed that the weather was maturing towards a record harvest – never had the prognostications for the wine been so full of tremulous optimism! “I could, of course, stay until after the
vendanges
, if I wished,” said the Prince.
“Après tout
Egypt is to be neutral so I could do as I please. Nevertheless I fear I must go too. The yacht can’t wait for ever.” He was thinking lustfully of all the up and coming young wines which were raising their proud crests upon the gentle slopes and terraces around them: and not less of all those shaggy old champions once again distilling and renewing their golden weight among the hundreds of square kilometres of vine stretching away on both sides of the swift green Rhône. The very thought made him thirsty. He suddenly became as merry as a cricket. “Must you really go home?” he asked again, and again Galen said he must. “Well, so be it,” said the Prince, raising his paws to heaven; and he closed the subject with an invocation to Allah, the Decider of all things.

“But I must not overlook anything,” said Lord Galen extracting from his breast pocket a tiny scarlet memorandum book which contained all his engagements written down in a minute spider-scrawl. “I must not forget to go down and play with Imhof once before I leave. It’s over two months since I went, and he must get awfully lonely down there in Montfavet surrounded by lunatics and alienists. He loves a game of trains!” Trains – it was the magical draw of the model railway which the authorities had permitted Imhof to construct in the hither end of the asylum garden! Blanford had been invited once to accompany Lord Galen to see his unfortunate ex-associate in his confinement. “Because,” he said, “you have a very soothing presence I find. You say little but when you talk it is with a public school accent. Imhof will like that.”

It was somehow typical of the essential inconsequentiality of Galen’s nature that these arresting things should be said, one after another, as if they were all of the same order of thought; for him, Blanford reflected, nothing was really unusual – it all flowed together with a phenomenological impartiality which carried the colour and tone to Galen’s innocent mind. “It must be dreadful,” the old man continued while they were bustling down the green lanes leading to Montfavet, nestling in its bowers of roses, “to be condemned to excrete always through a slit in the stomach wall directly into a rubber envelope. Yet he doesn’t seem to mind, he is positively
cheery
. He has had a very bad time has Imhof.” He went on to describe the slow downfall of his partner’s reason in equally colourful terms – terms which startled Blanford out of his ordinary equability and made him glance suspiciously at Galen, wondering if perhaps all this rigmarole did not stem from some secret sense of humour. But no, he was quite serious. It was no leg-pull. He described the first symptom which betokened the overthrow of Imhof’s reason. “He went into shops and asked the price of things. Then he would just give a high cracked laugh and leave. It startled people.”

Imhof, it turned out, was a massively built, red-headed man who looked like a market-gardener or a station-master with his crumpled black suit and heavy cheap watch-chain. He was rather unshaven as well and smelt strongly of shag. But he gave no sign whatsoever of recognising Lord Galen, and stared at him uncomprehendingly. His model railway was, however, rather an ambitious affair, with several large stations and plenty of engines and rolling stock. But it was obviously too big for one man to enjoy and he grunted with pleasure when Lord Galen started to behave masterfully with switches and points, and make coal and passenger trains perform their various functions. They did not speak but exchanged little grunts of pleasure now as they played like a couple of absorbed children, a perfectly mated couple. They got down on their knees and directed expresses to race in various directions. No words were needed, the railway was in the hands of two experts. Blanford felt deserted. He sat for a while on a bench, and then went for a little walk among the magnificent rose gardens from which the establishment took its name. It was from one of these corners, hedged in by vivid flowers, that he saw emerge a tall frail girl with long and shapely hands. She came towards him, slowly drawing a shawl about her narrow shoulders. Her dark wavy hair framed a face which was beautiful but too thin; her shoes had very high heels. She advanced slowly with a smile and said: “So you are backs? O! how was India? I am dying to ask. How calm was India? Nowadays at night I seem to hear Piers walking about in the other room, but he is never there when I run to see. Did you meet him in India? Does the smell of the magnolia still remember me supremely?” Blanford did not know how to react. Though obviously an inmate, her speech was superficially so coherent and her pale beauty so striking.