Crusader's Tomb Page 8

  ‘Like to come with us, Emmy?’

  ‘How can I? Got to watch the shop. Thanks to that old soak.’

  ‘Another time then. We’ll be back before dark.’

  Stephen followed Glyn out to the street. They mounted and, bent double over the downswept handlebars, Glyn in the lead, moved off through the traffic along the Faubourg St Germaine to the Porte de Versailles. Outside the city gates they sped along the flat, straight road towards Ville d’Avray. Richard, with occasional backward glances, set a blinding pace. St Appoline, Pontchartrain, and Meul flashed past, then Juziers lay behind them, and Orgeval. At last, when in a circular sweep they had covered about thirty kilometres, Glyn drew up sharp at a buvette in the little village of Louveciennes. Breathing deeply, he looked critically at Stephen, stained with dust and sweat, completely winded. He smiled.

  ‘Not bad, my boy. You don’t like to give up, do you? It’s a quality that may serve you. Come in and have a beer.’

  In the dark, low-ceilinged bar they each had a cool bock, which slid deliciously down their parched throats. Glyn sucked the froth from his beard and sighed.

  ‘Good painting country around Louveciennes,’ he meditated. ‘Renoir and Pissarro used to hang out here. Sisley too. But we’ll push further out next time. We’ll get Emmy to set the pace. She can really go.’

  The recollection of the encounter in the bicycle shop still rankled with Stephen. He said stiffly:

  ‘That young woman struck me as a rather disagreeable person.’

  Glyn gave a shout of laughter.

  ‘Moderate your language, Padre.’ Then, after a pause. ‘As a matter of fact, she is a cheap little slut … your friend Chester could tell you that.… And a tough one. Practically brought up in an équipe on the circuit de France. Hangs around with a lot of the young pros. Tours six months of the year with the Peroz outfit.’

  ‘Peroz?’

  ‘Adolf Peroz. Used to be Peroz Brothers. Adolf is the survivor. I’ve met him. Quite a nice bloke. He runs a pretty decent circus. Emmy does a trick-cycling act. Supposed to be extremely risky. She gets high billing, and lets you know about it. She has no use for us, really, knows we don’t make a bean. But she’s incredibly vain, and wants me to paint her.’

  ‘Shall you?’

  ‘Not on your life. I don’t deal in gutter types. But it amuses me to put a spoke in her wheel. She is really such a perfect little bitch.’ He finished his beer. ‘Come on. Let’s get cracking.’

  They rode back slowly in the cool of the evening. Glyn was in great spirits, purged of his nervous tension, giving out snatches of Welsh folk songs, ready for the next day’s work.

  Outside the bicycle shop he looked at his watch and gave out a whistle.

  ‘I’m late. I have to meet Anna. Take this in for me like a good chap.’ He turned over his machine to Stephen and rushed off.

  With some difficulty Stephen manoeuvred the two cycles into the shop. As before, it was empty. He knocked on the counter, then, as no one appeared, he pushed through the door that led to the back premises and, in a dark little passage, bumped straight into Emmy, who had been coming towards the shop. The outer door swung shut leaving them together, confined in the darkness, in a space no greater than a cupboard. Quite disconcerted, he could find nothing to say, and all at once his pulse began to beat like a hammer. As she stood beside him, so close that he could feel her warmth, a sudden strange emotion made his throat tighten. She was watching him unmoved, without surprise, but as though his inner turmoil were perfectly apparent to her; she gave him a cool, critical smile.

  ‘Que veux-tu?’

  The double meaning in the question sent a wave of heat over him. There was a pause during which he heard the quick loud bumping of his heart. In an unnatural voice he answered:

  ‘I wanted you to know.… I’ve brought back the machines.’

  ‘Did you have a good ride?’ Still observing him through knowing, narrowed eyes, half amused by his emotion, though not partaking in it.

  ‘Yes … thank you.’

  Again silence. She was making no attempt to move. At last, with a great effort he forced his hand to the door behind him and thrust it open.

  ‘I hope,’ he stammered like a schoolboy, ‘I hope I shall see you again.’

  Shamed and overstrung, he tried without success to dismiss her from his mind.

  But she grew upon him every time he saw her – occasions which became more frequent since, with the coming of the spring, Glyn insisted on regular weekly exercise. Emmy attracted and at the same time repelled him. He longed to ask her to sit for him, yet could not bring himself to do so. A favourable opportunity seemed never to arise. She remained, like an unsolved puzzle, a meaning sought for and not found, a strange irritant at the back of his mind.

  And time was passing with disconcerting rapidity. As the days lengthened, and the chestnuts broke into bloom again, he realised that his year of grace would soon be up. More and more the letters from Stillwater, from his father, Davie, and from Claire, began to anticipate his return, to demand it, indeed, with increasing urgency.

  July came, and from brassy skies a stifling air pressed down upon the city. Glyn, who hated hot weather, endured it for two weeks, then suddenly decided to go to Brittany with Anna, to wander round and paint Calveries. The Lamberts had already departed for La Baule and now Chester left to join them. Even Peyrat spoke of deserting Paris. The lease of the apartment was up in August and he planned to go to an uncle in Auvergne.

  Both Richard and Peyrat pressed Stephen to accompany them. But he could not accept – a final letter, tinged with severity, had arrived from the Rector in which he hoped that Stephen would not ‘go back upon your pledged word’ nor allow himself to be detained by ‘the gaieties and distractions of Paris.’

  After he had read it, Stephen threw down his brushes and went out into the streets. He could have gone to the Bois, where there is always shade beneath the trees, but his mood, depressed and irritable, forbade it. Instead, despite his fatigue, and a sense of being utterly rundown, he walked straight across the city, through miles of monotonous streets. Shops and cafés all the way, large at first, gradually growing smaller. All nearly empty. In one, deserted, a waiter, his head on his arms, asleep at a table. He went under railway bridges, passed the snake-like tracks of the great Termini, crossed canals, finally passed the octroi and stood in a dusty wasteland outside the barriers of Paris. By this time he was dripping with perspiration and kept repeating to himself: ‘My God, what a life.… And Father thinks my days are a round of pleasure!’

  When he got back he stopped at the Plaisance post office and wrote out a telegram.

  DESMONDE, THE RECTORY, STILLWATER, SUSSEX.

  CROSSING MORNING BOAT TOMORROW JULY NINETEENTH.

  STEPHEN

  Chapter Ten

  Nothing, thought Stephen, exceeds the joy of revisiting loved, familiar places, half forgotten, now seen to be more beautiful than before. Stretched on the grassy bank of Chillingham Lake, a fishing-rod beside him, warmed by the afternoon sunshine, he was watching Davie cast a silver minnow, still awkwardly but with an earnestness that brought improvement, amongst the flowering lily-pads, beneath whose coolness lay the shadowy pike. The air was clear and golden, wild flowers were everywhere, the trees wore their fullest, most tender foliage; upon the briars, dog roses, of a delicate pink, breathed out their perfume which mingled with the heady scent of meadowsweet. Pigeons flew over head and distantly, from the home farm of Broughton Court, he heard the clucking of fowls.

  It was difficult to realise that he had been home two weeks. From that moment when, at Halborough Junction he had been met by Davie and Caroline – a combination chosen with exquisite discretion – everything had gone so smoothly, time had been made to fly. Yes, it was good to be back – if only they would not treat him like the returned prodigal who was now forgiven and must at all cost be secured by kindness. Breakfast in bed, his father’s Times unbroken on the tray – until he had prote
sted he would rather rise and take his coffee downstairs with Davie; his favourite dishes at lunch and dinner, Beasley working overtime in the kitchen, Mould bringing in baskets of the choicest fruit; his wishes deferred to, excursions planned; clearly, all the members of the household were united in a diplomatic effort to disarm him.

  The subject of his painting was not discussed – it had been dead since that first evening when, at the Rector’s request, he had displayed his canvases. With a contraction of his brows, between a frown and a smile, he recollected how honestly yet vainly his father had striven to approve his work, nonplussed by all that he saw, his bewildered eye coming to rest, in particular, upon a scene of the banlieue which displayed a woman pegging a string of washing across her back yard on a windy day.

  ‘My dear boy … do you think this … beautiful?’

  ‘Yes. It’s one of my favourites.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. Why, of all things, should you paint a clothes line?’

  ‘It’s the interplay of brilliant tones, Father … against the drab background, the old woman’s grey-and-white dress …’

  He had tried to explain the basis of his idea, how the raw colours were put on with a palette knife. Yet it was plain that the Rector remained perplexed and unconvinced. A long pause followed. At last, after a final survey, his father turned doubtfully yet inquiringly towards him.

  ‘I suppose an expert might appreciate this.’

  ‘I think he might.’

  Thereafter consideration had supplanted criticism. Caroline, much softer in her manner, had pressed his suits, sewed buttons on his shirts, and his mother, prodded from her own solitary and peculiar world, had suddenly discovered, and declared that she would use, a hank of wool from which, while he was at Oxford, she had proposed to knit him socks.

  They had been, for the most part, a self-contained family group – rather to Stephen’s relief General Desmonde and his wife were in Scotland with Geoffrey, for the shooting – but this afternoon, aware that Davie and he were to be at Chillingham, Lady Broughton had invited them for tea. With a glance at the sun, now slanting across the crest of the Downs, Stephen judged they had better be off. He got to his feet, strolled along the bank and stood behind his brother, who, though showing signs of fatigue, still perseveringly, cast his line upon the unresponsive water. The catch, so far, had been a poor one – three yellow perch so small they would fail to satisfy the Rectory cat. Aware of the passionate ardour which Davie had for this, and indeed for every outdoor sport – a feeling so contrary to his own indifference, so touchingly incongruous, too, when one considered the boy’s delicate constitution and far from robust health – he wished that a large and worthy trout might even now impale itself upon the hook. He could well visualise the joy and triumph which such a capture would provoke.

  But although he waited patiently, with an occasional word of encouragement, no such stroke of fortune occurred. Davie, he reflected with momentary sadness, never had any luck. And as his young brother reeled in his line, he put his arm about his shoulders and by praising his advance in skill, condemning the unfavourable elements of heat and light, finally, by magnifying the size and virtue of the three small fishes now curled dryly in the basket, he brought him back to cheerfulness.

  ‘I do think I have improved,’ Davie answered hopefully. ‘ I’ve tried terribly hard. And, as you say, these perch aren’t half bad. Do you think they’ll make good eating?’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Of course … they are rather small.’

  ‘The smaller the sweeter,’ said Stephen wisely.

  As they set off through the meadows, avoiding the long way round by Foxcross Corner and, since it was so dry, cutting across the lower sedges into the Broughton coverts, Davie chatted away with that eager animation which was the keynote of his character. He had grown lately, seemed tall for fourteen years, and his limbs had the nervous inco-ordination of his difficult age, making him appear to move by fits and starts. Yet the expression on his thin face was less feverish than before, and his attacks, Stephen had learned from Caroline, while no less severe, showed a steady dimutation in frequency. Listening with sympathy, watching the play of light upon those clean-cut features, Stephen was conscious of a deep surge of affection for his brother. They had been together almost continuously during the past two weeks.

  Breaking out of the woods, they climbed the iron rail that fenced the park, where cattle were placidly grazing, and presently reached the avenue which, skirting the formal garden that fringed the lawn, brought them eventually to the mansion itself, a Victorian pile of massive red sandstone, bedevilled with towers and turrets, which Lady Broughton proudly contended to be the highest house in Sussex.

  It was she who received them, reclining on a chaise longue by the open French windows in the south drawing-room, asking to be excused for her apparent indolence – her doctor had lately been ridiculously severe towards her – making them immediately at home with the quiet warmth of her welcome.

  ‘So you are back, Stephen.’ Still holding his hand, she looked him up and down. ‘ Full of the knowledge of beautiful things. I am sorry you have no beard. Yet I believe Paris has improved you. Can you kiss my wrist like a Frenchman?’

  ‘I have not been studying that art.’

  ‘What a pity.’ She smiled. ‘Isn’t it, Davie?’

  ‘It will only be a pity if my brother goes back, Lady Broughton.’

  ‘Well said. You see how glad we are to have you home again, Stephen. In proof, I shall give you Sussex johnny cakes for tea. Don’t you remember how you liked them when you were Davie’s age?’

  ‘I do indeed. I still like them. And Davie does too.’

  Lady Broughton smiled, and continued her flow of amiable banter. Yet, listening quietly, Stephen was conscious of the change in her. He had always liked this short, high-coloured, completely undistinguished-looking woman, whose energetic good nature and sound common sense were apparent in all her actions. And now it pained him to observe her passive attitude, that quick catch in her breathing, the faint purplish tinge in her already vivid cheeks.

  ‘Claire should be here soon,’ she now remarked. ‘I daresay she wishes to make her entry with a large hat and a basket of roses, like something by Gainsborough.’

  Almost as her mother spoke Claire entered, not from the garden and without flowers, bareheaded too, looking unlike a Gainsborough and rather like a Burne-Jones in her linen dress square cut at the neck and of a russet colour that matched the red gold in her hair.

  Although he had doubtless forgotten, Stephen had once told her that she suited this rich Pre-Raphaelite shade.

  Her bearing was admirable. One would never have guessed how fast her heart was beating or how long she had looked forward to this moment.

  ‘Claire.’ Stephen went towards her.

  ‘It’s so good to see you.’ She smiled. ‘And you, Davie.’ She hoped the faint flush she felt rising to her cheeks would pass unnoticed. To see him again, to feel the touch of his fingers upon hers, tested her composure more than she could have believed.

  Just then tea was brought in, no meagre repast of dry biscuits and thin bread and butter but a regular schoolboy spread of boiled eggs and crumpets, sandwiches and johnny cakes, with strawberries and whipped Sussex cream, all arranged upon a wheeled satinwood table.

  ‘We thought you’d be hungry after your fishing,’ said Claire, looking at Davie.

  ‘We are,’ he agreed enthusiastically. ‘We hadn’t much lunch.’ He took the cup that Claire poured and carried it politely though rather shakily to Lady Broughton before sitting down.

  ‘Thank you, Davie.’ Breaking the slight constraint, she went on, in her teasing manner, ‘Claire, don’t you think Stephen has acquired quite a Parisian air?’

  ‘He is thinner, perhaps.’ What a stupid answer. But he was home – the disquieting sweetness of the thought bathed her eyes in light.

  ‘I don’t think French food is particularly nourishing,’ Davi
e ventured seriously. ‘At least I shouldn’t care for snails and frogs’ legs and that sort of thing.’

  Everyone laughed, and after that they were a merry party. Davie, as though to prove the virtue of an Anglo-Saxon diet, had two helpings of johnny cake, then entered into a lively discussion with Claire upon the methods of catching pike, at the end of which they both agreed that on such a day as this a mayfly would have far surpassed a silver minnow.

  ‘I believe there are some flies in the billiard-room,’ Claire reflected, after a moment. ‘ Would you like to have them?’

  ‘Oh, I say,’ Davie murmured. ‘ Don’t you want them for yourself? I mean … are you serious?’

  ‘Of course. No one uses them. Come along and we’ll take a look.’

  Asking if he might be excused, Davie rose with alacrity, held open the door for Claire. They went out together.

  When they had gone, Lady Broughton gazed meditatively at Stephen, whom she had always sincerely liked and, indeed, admired. It did not in the least distress her that he had given up the Church – with a nature so sensitive, passionate and shy she considered him not cut out to be a country parson. Nor did his recent artistic adventures cause her deep uneasiness. These she regarded merely as a passing fancy, a temporary tendency which derived no doubt from certain freakish traits on the distaff side – she well remembered how as a child she had been petrified by the colourful eccentricities of Mrs Desmonde’s worthy father – and which in no way detracted from the essential fineness of Stephen’s character. Yet it was less this genuine regard than her knowledge of Claire’s feelings which made her wish to say something compatible with good breeding which might bring the matter to a head. In these past months she had observed with sympathy her daughter’s indifference and absent-mindedness, noted too, not without misgiving, her occasional efforts to break these pensive moods and find distraction in pursuits quite foreign to her. Recently Geoffrey Desmonde had been a persistent visitor and, if only for the way in which he drawled his sentences, Lady Broughton detested him. She regarded him as stereotyped and commonplace, a spoiled, conceited and affected young fop, and having herself been married to a man whose bumptious dullness had for more than twenty years made her life a penance, she desired no such fate for Claire.