The Silver Dragon (10 page)

CHAPTER
SIX

The following morning J
ohn set out for Switzerland. He had decided to fly from Nice in order to save time, leaving his car at the airport, but Dixon suggested that they might drive him into the town and bring his car back to the villa, which would be more satisfactory all around. He could then wire them when he hoped to return.
.

“You will be coming back,” he pointed out, “since you meant to leave your car at the airport.”

“It’s jolly decent of you to ask me,” John returned somewhat warily. “Yes, I would like to come back, if it’s not asking too much.”

“We will have your car,” Dixon said with a faint smile. “At least you’ll want to collect that.”

They did not quite trust each other, Adele realized. She had heard them talking at the open window of the study for a long time after she had gone to bed the night before, but what they had had to say to one another she could not imagine. John had hardly been able to disguise his dislike of Dixon right from the beginning, but it was difficult to analyze her husband’s emotions where the doctor was concerned. He appeared watchful and reserved, as if he had attempted to sum up the situation many times without being able to come to any definite conclusion, and that alone would serve to irritate him.

It was surprising, too, that he should wish to accompany them to the airport. He had said so often that he
generally avoided Nice in the spring and summer, when it was crowded with holidaymakers.

They set out long before Olivia came down to breakfast. She had asked not to be disturbed after her journey of the day before, and Maria had carried some fruit juice to her room, supplying her with the news of their departure.

Looking up suddenly as she got into the car beside John, Adele was once again aware of being watched, and a slight movement of the long curtains at Olivia’s window convinced her that her mother-in-law was not in bed.

Nice was dazzling in the brilliant early morning sunshine, and when John’s plane soared away like a bird high over the Alps she was quite happy to spend the remainder of the morning shopping along its busy streets.

“I have a business call to make,” Dixon told her as he put her down at the end of the cours Saleya. “If you walk through the market I’ll pick you up here in half an hour. That should be long enough for all I want to do.”

The flower market had attracted her immediately and he had given in to her whim to buy an armful of carnations with a faint, almost indulgent, smile.

She wanted them to take back to the villa for his mother, but she did not tell him so. How could she explain that she wanted to break the ice between Olivia and herself, that in a moment of sudden enlightenment she had decided to win the older woman’s regard at all costs?

Slowly she walked from stall to stall, listening to the rapid chatter of the smiling Nigoises without being able to follow very much of what was said. The local patois was difficult and quite foreign t
o
her ear and the stout black-clad women laughed all the time, chaffing each other and the porters who carried the heavy fruit boxes on their heads with the greatest of ease.

At a stall on a corner she bought two dozen pink carnations, purchasing them with the money the professor had given her and thinking that she must mention the fact to Dixon so that they could reimburse her benefactor without delay. They could never hope to repay his kindness in full, of course, but the medical profession seemed to take that for granted. Repayment did not come into it at all, but they generally appreciated a word of gratitude when it was offered.

With the flowers in her arms, she began to make her way through the maze of stalls toward her rendezvous with Dixon. There was no need to hurry and she stopped from time to time, watching the natives of the town doing their marketing. Men came as well as women, stuffing cantaloupe melons and peaches and pimentos and eggplants into capacious black oilcloth bags, or piling them high in huge shopping baskets, which they hooked over their arms but supported with their hips.

There was a great deal of talk, and much argument attended each purchase. Adele stood near a stall piled high with mimosa, drinking in the heady perfume that she had always loved. Tiny yellow balls of it spilled onto the ground at her feet and swatches of it hung all along the back of the stall.

Impulsively she was about to buy a bundle to add to the carnations when she became aware of two beady black eyes observing her from the back of the stall. They looked furtive and mean, but she imagined she had seen them somewhere before.

It was madness, of course, unless
...
unless they belonged to the past!

In a sudden panic she rushed around the end of the stall, only to come face to face with a shabby little man in shapeless trousers and the kind of black coat generally worn by the less prosperous type of porter. The black eyes peered from the sallow face, however, with the same watchfulness, and she looked away from them with a sense of urgency, hurrying between the stalls to the place where Dixon had left her.

To her intense relief, the car was parked at the curb on the far side of the road and he was waiting for her. She ran swiftly across to him, narrowly missing a barrow piled high with empty fruitboxes and propelled by an unseen porter who swore at her with Gallic fervor when he passed.

“What’s the matter?” Dixon asked. “You look as if you’ve been running.”

She couldn’t very well tell him about the little man, because now, when he was here by her side, it all seemed rather ridiculous. Her fear vanished as he relieved her of her flowers.

“You’ve bought enough to swamp the villa!” he said, laying them along the back seat. “It’s quite early,” he added. “Would you like a drink before we go home, or a drive farther along the coast?”

“If you’re not awfully anxious about the drink, could we settle for the drive?” she asked, her eagerness sending a warm pink color into her cheeks and a sparkle into her eyes. “I’d love to go as far as Antibes, if we may?”

He looked down at her with an odd expression in his eyes, half indulgent, half querulous, as if he found her difficult to understand.

“Your desire is my command,” he said, getting in behind the wheel. “I don’t suppose Ordley would mind if he knew.”

“I don’t think so,” Adele said, her color deepening.

They drove to Antibes and farther on to La Garoupe, with its villas dotted among the
pins parasols
and the clear tideless blue of the Mediterranean sparkling in the sun.

“We could have lunch here,” he suggested, glancing at his watch. “It’s going to be late before we get back to the villa.”

“But your mother?” she protested. “Won’t she expect us back?”

“She won’t postpone her o
w
n lunch, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” he said. “And Maria won’t worry unduly. I told her we might not be back,” he added abruptly.

She could not believe that he had planned this present excursion beforehand because it had been decided on quite spontaneously in the flower market. He had probably expected his business in Nice to take longer than it had done, that was all. And it was no use trying to convince herself that he was enjoying himself now that he had come. He was an enigma, a man accustomed to keeping his emotions fully in check, never allowing them to show.

Yet she had seen anger in his eyes and the chilling reflection of contempt.

Well, she wasn’t going to think of these things anymore. Not today.

They ate at a small restaurant at the edge of the tiny bay where they could look out to the promontory and the immensely blue water lapping at its foot. Dixon ordered
mostele
and a bottle of wine, and the waiter brought a large dish of green and red pimentos and radishes and celery and lettuce and cucumber to go with it. Olive trees protected them from the full glare of the sun, and it was all so informal and gay that Adele wanted to stay there forever.

On the way back Dixon turned the car inland and they climbed up the steep road to Grasse. The mimosa was almost past, but the scent of it was everywhere. She thought she would never smell it again without a strange little pain of longing in her heart.

The lovely winding road ran past vineyards and flow
er
gardens sheltered by maple and lime trees to the town itself. Grasse was a revelation to her. She knew that it was the perfume center of the world, but she had not expected her nostrils to be assailed by the scent of so many flowers wafting quite naturally down on the wind.

Cinnamon, oakmoss, patchouli, camomile, bitter orange blossom, cloves, jasmine and lavender. Dixon told her that she could probably smell them all.

Then, quite unexpectedly, he stopped at a well
-
known scentmaker and bought her a large bottle of their most famous product.

Tears stung her eyes as she tried to thank him.

“I
...
you needn’t have done that,” she protested. “I must have practically asked you for it!”

“That’s what husbands are for,” he reminded her with an oddly twisted smile. “Or don’t you agree?”

“Of course, if you wanted to do it
...
”

She was confused again, puzzled by his abrupt change of manner, by the return of the cynicism that had soured their conversation in the past.

“Let’s say I wanted to do it,” he suggested briefly, holding the door of the car open for her to get in.

They came to Gagnes, dominated by its grim fourteenth-century castle, and wandered down beside the gorges of Loup, past shuttered villas and olive groves and osiers and vast tomato plantations where the fruit was already turning yellow under the dark green leaves.

“All this ought to be familiar to you,” he said as they approached the shore again. “I wonder how long it will take before you begin to remember.”

The question plummeted her down to earth again.

“You’d think that something would ring a bell,” she said awkwardly. “It must be all
...
very difficult for you, Dixon.”

He took a full minute to answer that.

“Very difficult,” he said flatly at last.

The seven miles into Nice were covered in silence. Dixon kept to the Lower Co
rn
iche and soon they were at Villefranche and passing under the shadow of the castle. The harbor was full of battleships, with gay little pinnaces hurrying between them and the shore, and Adele found herself looking enviously at the strolling couples wandering in the shade of the cypresses or leaning idly against the stout stone wall of the quay.

The car seemed to be eating up the miles more quickly now, and soon they had turned off the main highway and were driving out along the peninsula. The swinging sign of Les Rochers Blanches hung above them and they turned once more, coming to rest on the graveled terrace in front of the main door.

It was all over. Their gay little adventure was at an end. It had been no more to Dixon than a tiny incident, which would fade from his memory, no doubt, with the departing sun. Well, she thought, perhaps that was how it had been with all their memories. They had not been able to guard them against the past.

A frankly disgruntled Olivia awaited them in the drawing room. She was in no way appeased by Adele’s flowers and, in fact, definitely resented the gesture. She did not see it as a friendly one.

“I’m not the sort of person you can placate with gifts of flowers, Adele,” she said icily, laying the carnations aside when Dixon had gone out of the room to garage John’s car. “I haven’t seen my son for months, and then you whisk him off to Nice for a whole day as soon as I arrive.”

“I
’
m sorry,” Adele apologized, picking up the discarded carnations to put them in water. “But it wasn’t exactly a whole day. I
t’
s only four o’clock.”

An ugly flush of anger mounted into Olivia’s cheeks.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come back since eleven,” she said. “Dixon knows that we have a great deal to talk about. All my affairs are in his hands and he has never been quite so
...
discourteous before. Perhaps that’s what comes of being married,” she added bitterly before she could restrain herself. “I always used to come first in his Calculations.”

And now he is married,
Adele thought,
and you are jealous. But you have no need to be. I mean nothing to him. Our marriage is a farce.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, trying to push the bitter thoughts away. “I don’t suppose we’ll be going back to Nice. Not while you’re here.”

Olivia took out a cigarette, her hands trembling as she fumbled with her jeweled lighter.

“I mean to stay,” she announced quite clearly, “for some time. My apartment in Paris is being redecorated and I can’t go into it until the workmen are out and it has been properly aired. Dixon wouldn’t hear of it. His home has always been at my disposal whenever I needed it, just as he has always been free to come to me.