Jonah and Co. (8 page)

In any event, expected or unexpected, here were we, all six, upon the road – my wife and cousins in one car, and Daphne, Berry, and I within the other.

As we swung into the paved streets of Orthez —

“And when,” said Berry, “when am I to drive?”

“From Peyrehorade,” I replied.

“Oh. I suppose that’s where the stones begin, or the road stops, or something.”

I shook my head.

“Not that I know of. And you can drive all the way back. But – well, there’s a hill or two coming, and – and I’d like just to take her so far,” I concluded lamely. But for my sister’s presence, I would have told him the truth. This was that I had bet Jonah that I could get from Orthez to Peyrehorade in twenty minutes. The distance was exactly thirty kilometres, and the road was perfect. There were no corners, and the bends were few. There were hills, certainly; but these were straightforward enough and could be taken, so to speak, in our stride. Moreover, there were no crossroads, and only two turnings worth thinking about. To some cars the feat would have been nothing. Whether it was within the reach of Ping and Pong remained to be seen… As we left Orthez, I looked at my watch.

Ten minutes to eleven.

I laid hold of the wheel…

To this hour I cannot tell why Daphne did not exercise the prerogative of a passenger and protest against the pace. But neither at the time or thereafter did she so much as mention it. Berry confessed later that he had been frightened to death.

Three kilometres out, there was a bend, and the needle of the speedometer, which, after rising steadily, had come to rest against the stop, retreated momentarily to record fifty-five… We sang past a wayside farm, dropped into a valley, soared up the opposite side, flashed in and out of an apparently deserted village, shot up a long incline, and slowed up for a curve… Then some poultry demanded consideration. As we left them behind, the agitation of two led horses necessitated a still further reduction of speed. We lost such time as I had made, and more also. Still, we were going downhill, and, as if impatient of the check, the car sprang forward… We rose from the bottom with the smooth rush of a non-stop elevator. As we breasted the rise, I saw another and steeper dale before us. The road was becoming a switchback…

At the top of the opposite hill was a big grey cabriolet coming towards us. At the foot was a panting lorry going our way. An approaching Ford was about to pass it. The cabriolet and Pong fell down their respective slopes…

The Ford was abreast of the lorry, and the cabriolet was prepared to pass the two when we arrived. It was a question of giving way – at least, it ought to have been. It was, however, too late. Happily, there was more room than time at our disposal – a very little more. There was no time at all…

For one never-to-be-forgotten instant there were four vehicles in a row. I doubt if an ordinary matchbox could have been passed between our nearside running-board and that of the cabriolet. I could certainly have touched the lorry, had I put out my hand…

Then we swept on and up and over the crest.

Thereafter all was plain sailing.

As we ran into Peyrehorade, I glanced at my watch.

I had lost my bet by about a quarter of a minute. But for the led horses, we should have run to time…

Upon one matter we were all agreed, and that was that the driver of the grey cabriolet was going much too fast.

So soon as we had passed through the town, Berry and I changed places. Almost immediately the road deteriorated. Its fine straightforward rolling nature was maintained: the surface, however, was in tatters…

After ten kilometres of misery, my brother-in-law slowed up and stopped. Then he turned to me.

“Have you ever driven upon this road (sic) before?”

I shook my head.

“Well, you can start now,” was the reply. “I’m fed up, I am. I’d rather drive on the beach.” With that he opened his door. “Oh, and give me back that cigar.”

“Courage,” I said, detaining him. “It can’t last.”

“Pardon me,” said Berry, “but it can last for blistering leagues. I know these roads. Besides, my right knee’s getting tremulous.”

“It’s quite good practice,” I ventured.

“What for?” was the bitter reply. “My future estate? Possibly. I have no doubt that there it will be my blithesome duty continually to back a charabanc with a fierce clutch up an interminable equivalent of the Eiffel Tower. At present—”

“And you were driving so beautifully,” said his wife.

“What – not with finesse?” said her husband.

“Rather,” said I. “Ginger, too.”

“What d’you mean – ‘ginger’?” – suspiciously.

“Determination,” said I hurriedly.

“Not the b-b-bull-dog b-b-breed?”

“The same,” said I. “All underhung. ‘Shove-me-and-I’ll-shove-your-face’ sort of air. It was most noticeable.”

Berry slammed the door and felt for the self-starter…

As we bucketed down the next slope —

“I only wish,” he said, “that we could encounter the deceitful monger responsible for including this road among
les grands itinéraires
. I can stand pot-holes, but the remains of a railway platform which might have been brought from one of what we know as ‘the stricken areas,’ laid, like linoleum, upon a foot of brick dust, tend to make you gird at Life. Incidentally, is this fast enough for you? Or are your livers still sluggish?”

“I think,” said I, nodding at a huge pantechnicon, “that we might pass the furniture.”

I know no horn whose note is at once so compelling and offensive as that of the usher with which Pong was equipped. I know no din at once so obliterative and brain-shaking as that induced by the passage of a French pantechnicon, towed at a high speed over an abominable road. That the driver of the tractor failed to hear our demand was not remarkable. That he should have elected to sway uncertainly along the very crown of the road was most exasperating…

Three times did Berry essay to push by; three times at the critical moment did the tractor lurch drunkenly across our bows; and three times did Pong fall back discomfited. The dust, the reek, the vibration, the pandemonium, were combining to create an atmosphere worthy of a place in the Litany. One’s senses were cuffed and buffeted almost to a standstill. I remember vaguely that Daphne was clinging to my arm, wailing that “it was no good.” I know I was shouting. Berry was howling abusive incoherence in execrable French…

We were approaching the top of a hill.

Suddenly the tractor swung away to its right. With a yell of triumph, my unwitting brother-in-law thrust at the gap… Pong leapt forward.

Mercifully there was a lane on the left, and I seized the wheel and wrenched it round, at the same time opening the throttle as wide as I dared. I fancy we took the corner on two wheels. As we did so, a pale blue racer streaked by our tail lamp with the roar of an avalanche.

When Daphne announced that, if she reached Biarritz alive, she should drive home with Jonah, I was hardly surprised.

It was perhaps an hour later that, after passing grey-headed Bayonne, we came to her smart little sister and the villa we sought.

The great lodge-gates were open, but Ping was without in the road, while Jonah was leaning languidly against the wall. As we slowed up, he took his pipe from his mouth.

“I shouldn’t drive in,” he said. “They’re out. Won’t be back before six, the servants say.”

Black as was the evidence against him, my brother-in-law stoutly refused to be held responsible for the affair. All the way to the Hotel du Palais he declared violently that the engagement had been well and truly made, and that if Evelyn and her husband chose to forget all about it, that was no fault of his. Finally, when Jonah suggested that after luncheon we should return to the villa and inquire whether we had indeed been expected the day before, he assented with disconcerting alacrity. As we passed into the restaurant —

“And I’ll do the interrogating,” he concluded. “I don’t want any of your leading questions. ‘I quite expect we were expected yesterday, weren’t we?’ All sweet and slimy, with a five-franc note in the middle distance.”

“How dare you?” said Daphne. “Besides, I’d be only too relieved to find it was their mistake.”

“Blow your relief,” replied her husband. “What about my bleeding heart?”

“I’m not much of a physician,” said I, “but there’s some cold stuffed venison on the sideboard. I don’t know whether that, judiciously administered…”

Berry shook his head.

“I doubt it,” he said mournfully. “I doubt it very much… Still” – he looked round hungrily – “we can always try.”

We were at the villa again within the hour.

Almost immediately we elicited the information that Major and Mrs Swetecote had spent the previous day at San Sebastian.

Turning a withering and glassy eye in our direction, my brother-in-law explained the position and desired permission to enter and write a note. This was granted forthwith.

My sister and I followed him into a pleasant salon meekly enough. When he had written his letter, he read it to us with the air of a cardinal.

DEAR EVELYN,

“LEST WE FORGET.”

Yes, I know. But you should be more careful. Old friends like us, too. Disgraceful, I call it. To have been unprepared to receive us would have been bad enough, but to be actually absent from home… Well, as Wordsworth says, that’s bent it.

When I tell you that, in the belief that she was to enjoy a free lunch, my beloved yoke-fellow, who is just now very hot upon economy, forewent her breakfast and arrived upon your threshold faint and ravening, you will conceive the emotion with which she hailed the realisation that that same hunger which she had encouraged could only be appeased at an expensive hotel.

But that is nothing.

To bless your married life, I have hustled a valuable internal combustion engine over one of the vilest roads in Europe, twice risked a life, the loss of which would, as you know, lower half the flags in Bethnal Green, and postponed many urgent and far more deserving calls upon my electric personality. I was, for instance, to have had my hair cut.

Worse.

Upon hearing of your absence, the unnatural infidel above referred to charged this to my account. As is my humble wont, I bent my head to the storm, strong in the fearless confidence that France is France, and that, late as we were, the ever-open bar would not be closed.

“Tell me more of yourself,” I hear you say.

That may not be, che-ild.

For one thing, that venison has made me sleepy. Secondly, I am just off to find a suitable and sheltered grove, within sound of the Atlantic, where I may spend an hour in meditation. Thirdly, I live for others.

Jonah wants to know if your husband can play golf. He does, of course. But can he?

Your dear old friend,

BERRY.

P.S. – D’you happen to know who owns a large grey cabriolet with a “GB” plate? I imagine it lives at Biarritz. Anyway, they ought to be prosecuted. Driving about the country like a drunken hornet. Mercifully we were crawling. Otherwise… I tell you, it made my b-b-blood b-b-boil. Not at the time, of course.

The pine woods were wholly delightful.

The lisp of the wind among the branches, the faint thunder of the Atlantic, the soft sweet atmosphere showed us a side of Biarritz which we should have been sorry to miss. By rights, if music and perfume have any power, we should have fallen asleep. The air, however, prevented us. Here was an inspiriting lullaby – a sleeping draught laced with cordial. We plucked the fruit from off the Tree of Drowsiness, ate it, and felt refreshed. Repose went by the board. We left the cars upon the road and went strolling…

“D’you think you could get me that spray?” said Jill suddenly.

In my cousin’s eyes flora have only to be inaccessible to become desirable. Remembering this, I did as Berry and Jonah were doing – stared straight ahead and hoped very hard that she was not speaking to me.

“Boy!”

“Yes, dear?”

“D’you think you could…?”

By the time I had torn my trousers, strained my right shoulder, sworn three times, and ruined the appearance of my favourite brogues, the others were out of sight.

“Thanks awfully, Boy. You are good to me. And that’ll look lovely in the drawing-room. The worst of it is, this stuff wilts almost at once.”

“Seems almost a shame to have picked it,” I said grimly, “doesn’t it?”

“It does really,” Jill agreed. “Never mind,” she added cheerfully, slipping an arm through mine. “It was my fault.”

Subduing a desire to lie down on my back and scream, I relighted my pipe, and we strolled forward.

A country walk with Jill is never dull.

To do the thing comfortably, you should be followed by a file of pioneers in marching order, a limbered waggon, and a portable pond. Before we had covered another two hundred yards, I had collected three more sprays, two ferns, and a square foot of moss – the latter, much to the irritation of its inhabitants, many of whom refused to evacuate their homes and therefore accompanied us. I drew the line at frogs, on the score of cruelty to animals, but when we met one about the size of a postage stamp, it was a very near thing. Finally, against my advice, my cousin stormed a bank, caught her foot in an invisible wire, and fell flat upon her face.

“There now!” I cried testily, dropping our spoils and scrambling to her assistance.

“I’m not a bit hurt,” she cried, getting upon her feet. “Not a scrap. And – and don’t be angry with me, Boy. Jonah’s been cross all day. He says my skirt is too short. And it isn’t, is it?”

“Not when you don’t fall down,” said I. “At least – well, it is rather, isn’t it?”

Jill put her feet together and drew the cloth close about her silk stockings. It fell, perhaps, one inch below her knees. For a moment she regarded the result. Then she looked up at me and put her head on one side…

I have grown up with Jill. I have seen her in habits, in ball-dresses, in dressing-gowns. I have seen her hair up, and I have seen it tumbled about her shoulders. I have seen her grave, and I have seen her gay. I have seen her on horseback, and I have seen her asleep. But never in all my life shall I forget the picture which at this moment she made.