Night Without Stars (21 page)

Bénat contemptuous bottom lip dragged a bit at one side. “Let's be unpretentious then. Loyalty to whom?”

“To France!” said Lemaître. “To one's fellow citizens. To democracy.”

“What loyalty do I owe to my fellow citizens? Supposing
I
wished to go in for a life of crime—which is not likely since I have as much money as I want—what would deter me? Dear, dear. Loyalty to the shabby politicians in Paris, who change governments once a week and spend their lives in political trickery and manœuvre? Loyalty to the stupid peasantry or to the greedy property owners who now employ me in their legal troubles? Loyalty to those who escaped to England and stayed there all through the war making speeches? Loyalty to those who endured the occupation by first making a fortune out of the Germans and then doubled it catering for the Americans? Loyalty to the new rich or to the old poor? Loyalty to my old comrades in the Resistance who have suffered the common disillusion? Ah, yes, perhaps. And how better to show it than by keeping one illusion alive? To me—as to some of them—there is only one God, Charles Bénat, world without end, amen.”

He smiled and put the wineglass to his lips again. “The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. How much easier we all find it to talk than to act. Now it's Lemaître's move.”

“I have nothing more to say.”

Captain Grabo said: “ I can see the way M. Bénat feels, and he's put the case for the renegade, but it'll only be a question of time before these men are rounded up—just as they were in the States. Prohibition created an artificial social order, just as in a different way foreign occupation did here. Breaking the law was in fashion. When the artificial condition was removed it went out of fashion, and the gangster went with it.”

Lemaître said: “ I think you will find that a strong new line is going to be taken over here. These men will be put down with a firm hand. Proof, we know, is hard to get, but—”

“Is there any truth,” Cassis said, “in the rumour that a man form the Paris Sûreté is already at work in this area?”

Lemaître picked up his fork, scraped round his plate sombrely.

“I don't know,” he said.

I'd been watching the expressions on Alix's face. It came as a bitter pill to realise she was in love with Charles Bénat.

After dinner I saw her alone for a minute at the other end of the room, and moved round to speak to her. She didn't look towards me, but I could tell by some change in her attitude that she knew I was on the way.

I said: “It's thirteen months since you phoned. The taxi service in this town is bad.”

She didn't look up. “Is your eyesight better, Giles? How much can you see?” At close quarters the “ roundness” of her voice was unchanged, deeply reminiscent.

“Enough to tell when the game isn't straight I think.”

She flushed. “I'm very sorry about last year. It must have seemed strange to you.”

“Strange isn't an overstatement.”

“Why have you come back?”

“I wanted to see you again. To see you for the first time.”

“It won't do any good.”

“So I noticed this evening.”

“What do you mean?”

“I came back, too, because of Pierre. Last year I found him with a wound in his head, and it puzzles me how he got into a car afterwards and drove a hundred-odd miles into the mountains.”

She said in a cool undertone: “ Pierre had an accident in his car. That was all.”

“I suppose you did phone me from his flat that evening?”

There was a little burst of laughter behind us. Bénat was having fun with Cassis and Maggie Sorques.

“Oh, what's the use of talking about it?” Alix said. “I don't want to talk about it. Pierre was nothing to you.”

“No,” I said, “ but you were.”

“I
wasn't
.”

“D'you remember the last day we spent together at Monte Carlo, and then home, where Pierre was waiting on the stairs?”

“I must have been crazy.”

“Agreeably so.”

She half turned, as if wanting to get away. “It was some midsummer madness. I was—sorry for you. Well, I'm not sorry for you any longer.”

“I'm glad of that. We can start on a different basis.”

She smoothed out a crease in her frock—a gesture that began gracefully enough, but ended with a disquieted flick. “There's no question of starting again, Giles. I want to make it quite clear.”

“Nothing at all is clear at the moment.”

“Will you please go away? Go back to England. If you think I care anything for you, you're wrong. Please understand that.”

“Are you afraid of what I'll find out?”

“There's nothing to find out. Nothing
you
can find out. Pierre fell over a cliff, and was killed. He has been buried twelve months. D'you think anything you can do or say …”

“Why did you phone me that night?”

“I have regretted it ever since!”

“Well, that's something to go on.”

“It's nothing to go on. I've—regretted ever meeting you. It made you unhappy and—it was no use to me. It was a foolish interlude, without a future. Now it's over, has been a long time. I've got my own life to live—in my own way. Please leave me alone.”

Lady Funchal was drifting towards us. She seemed to have her eye on me. I said: “Back in England I was laid up for a time—used to imagine meeting you, but it wasn't a bit like this. Is it you or I who have the grievance?”

She looked up a minute through her lashes but didn't say anything.

I said: “ I've not often been good at telling myself fairy stories, but this was one I got away with. It helped a lot at the time. I knew you might be married to Pierre—if I was mistaken and he was alive; Bénat told me you'd married him—but I used to try and imagine it the other way. I used to think, the rest may be fraud but she's genuine—somehow; she must be. The thing I wanted sight for more than anything was to see you. Well, in a way, that's
quite
a success.… But one thing's missing. I used to imagine a rather different sort of welcome. I seem to have been building castles in the wrong part of Spain.”

She said: “Please leave me alone.”

The party went on until about two o'clock in the morning. We played chemmy, and I stayed till the end because I wanted to know where the Wintertons had met Bénat and Alix.

When the last guest had gone Claire said: “ Of course you must stay the night, Giles. We wouldn't think of your going home now. We still have a pair of your pyjamas and your old room's ready.”

I made various protests which as usual were swept aside. When Claire had got her way Walter said:

“Let's see, where
did
we meet the Bénats? It was at that evening affair at the Negresco, wasn't it? Last December, some sort of an evening celebrating the heroes of the Resistance. He was quite the lion of the evening. Made a witty speech, I remember.”

“Then we saw them a second time at the Casino in Monte. She's a pretty creature, isn't she? Where had you met them before, dear boy?”

I said too casually: “Oh, last year they were about Nice. In those days she was friendly with a man called Pierre Grognard.”

Claire moved her eyebrows into a cautious frown. “ By the way, Walter, conversation got rather dreary at dinner tonight. Arguments are such fun if no one takes them seriously. Lemaître might have been in his
cour d'assises
.”

I said, “Who was the fellow sitting next to me; Deffand? He only opened his mouth twice.”

“We don't know,” Walter said. “Lemaître introduced him. He's down from Paris for a month or two. Claire swears he's the man from the Sûreté.”

When I got to Villefranche about five on the Monday I found it
en fête
. The crews from the American warships were ashore and the little inscrutable town was full of young sailors. Nearly all of them looked as if they'd just been turned out by some immense dry-cleaning store, as if they'd all been steamed and polished and brushed until no blemish was left. A single stain in a hundred duck suits would have stood out a mile. The town was fuller than usual of locals, girls and others who had come in to see the fun—or share it. The quay was as busy as any main street on a Saturday night, and much more interesting. Dark youths in turbans peddled oriental jewellery, old women sold scents, jeeps sputtered over the flagstones, cafés hung out banners of greeting, officers strolled about on their long non-European legs.

About eight a French military band appeared in honour of the visitors and played a number of marches with magnificent
élan
underneath the Hotel Welcome. Then a dance was started outside the Pavilion. I had passed the Café des Fourmis twice earlier on, but as dusk began to fall I climbed up again and made my way through the narrow alleys of the town.

Up here were the less immaculate of the visitors. A piano tinkled in a shabby bistro and a sailor danced with an Algerian girl. Their shadows swelled and shrank on the rough stone wall. Two older sailors, half drunk, argued interminably in the middle of the street with a naval policeman, while half a dozen ragged children gaped. A glare of light showed five ratings in another café flirting with some girls of the town.

There was a good deal of noise and music at the Café des Fourmis, but most of the noise was being made by the usual patrons. Four sober American lads sat a bit self-consciously at a table by the door. I didn't go in but went across to the bistro on the other side. The official difference between a bistro and a café is that in a bistro you're supposed to stand at the bar for your drink. But this place, like many, had one table, and I found that from it you could look into the Café des Fourmis. I ordered Vin Ordinaire and prepared to wait and see if anything happened.

Nothing did happen for half an hour, except that a few people entered and a few came out. Three more Americans went in and sat at another table without speaking to the four who were already there. A van drove up and some bales were brought up the alley and loaded into it. On the side of the van was “
Bonnet et Cie. Du pain bien boulangé. Rue des Martyrs, Nice
.” I didn't take much notice of it until a reflection of light caught the face of the driver and I saw it was Scipion. I got up from the table and moved to the bar to pay, then strolled outside. The van had just started its engine. I heard Scipion say to a big man standing by the side: “Back in an hour, maybe.”

The van drove off. The big man slouched into the café. The street was quiet again. I walked to the end and back. It was a quiet night but cool for the end of June. Down on the quay the music was fast and cheerful; the picket boats were busy like phosphorescent insects; and, a little withdrawn, the two cruisers glittered in the dark blue silence of the bay. I went back to the alley, and, seeing there was no one about, turned down.

It was dark between the high walls, and the narrow way was cobbled, with big uneven stones. But blindness teaches some things, and I didn't stumble or make a noise. At the bottom was a bit of a garden about twelve feet square with a low wall round it, and within the garden down some steps were two doors leading into the Café des Fourmis. One was ajar and a slit of light came through. The other was shut. I'd never heard a dog but it was something to look out for. Otherwise there didn't seem a lot of risk. I tried the gate and it opened easily.

There was a palm tree in the middle and a few vegetables growing; at the end were grapevines. Not an inch of space was wasted. The garden was about four feet above the level of the doors, and from halfway across it you could see into the room that was lighted. It was a storeroom and wine cellar. There was no one in it. A couple of mosquitoes danced around the unshaded electric bulb. Then a man and an old woman came down. The man was a stranger, but I recognised the voice of Mère Roget. She was smaller and older than I thought.

She said: “ They should have sent two vans. My God, what organisation. By the time they come back it will be midnight.”

“No,” said the man. “ It's only half an hour's run each way. And if it is too public we'll send them back and they can come to-morrow.”

Mère Roget picked up an armful of bottles. “I don't like it. We have had the stuff a week. Get rid of it, I say. What are the Americans drinking?”

“Not much. They are not the right type.”

They went back up the stairs.

Silence fell. Down in the next street two voices were singing:

“It ain't kinda fair on Maudie.
Who's faded round the edges
An' a haybag too.…”

Some of the right type for Mère Roget.

Down the steps and up to the first door. I tried the latch, but the door would not open. On to the next door. It was plain that the cellar was empty. Wooden steps led up to the kitchen above, but some sort of a door had been shut at the top because the voices from up there were muffled. In the left-hand wall of the cellar was another door, leading into the second cellar whose outer door I'd tried.

Weigh up the risks. If the communicating door was open it wouldn't be difficult to slip through the lighted cellar to the other.

What gain? A knowledge perhaps of the goods Mère Roget didn't like to store.

One does things on impulse sometimes and without the best of reasons. It didn't seem so rash at the time.

Open the door eight inches more; inside; the smell of wine and straw and old stone; shut the door the same amount. Six steps across the flagged floor. The middle door was shut. Lift the latch. It's open. Very dark. Go in and pull the door to behind you, then quietly lift the latch and shut out the last light. Well, that much done.

Same smell in here. I felt for the switch and found it, but this seemed too risky just at present. A match. Four scrapes before it flickered. Square cellar. Wine bottles by the dozen poking their heads out at me. Bales of the sort I'd seen loaded; boxes; big square cardboard containers sealed along the tops with brown paper.