Nine Coaches Waiting (13 page)

"No. What did happen?"

Léon said coldly: "Some fool out with a rifle in the woods has narrowly missed killing your cousin."

Raoul’s head jerked up at that. Some sherry splashed."
What?
Philippe? Someone shot at Philippe?"

"That's what I said."

"Was he hurt?"

"He wasn't touched."

Raoul straightened, glass in hand, his shoulders back against the mantel. He looked from one to the other of us. "What did the chap think he was doing?"

"That," said his father, "is what we would like to know." He tilted his head back to look at his son. "You've been out, you say. Did you see anyone?"

"No."

"What way did you go?"

"East. I told you I was going up through the new plantations. I went up from the kitchen gardens. I never saw a soul. Where did it happen?"

"On the track through the beechwood, half a mile north of the bridge."

"I know the place." He looked at me. "This is-shocking. He really wasn't hurt at all?"

"Not at all," I said. "He fell down, and the bullet missed him."

"And you? I take it you were there?"

"I was with him. It didn't go near me."

He stood looking down at the glass between his fingers, then set it carefully on the mantelpiece beside him. "Don't go yet, please. Sit down again. D'you mind telling me just what happened?"

Once more I told the story. He listened without moving, and his father leaned back in his chair, one hand playing with the stem of his empty glass, watching us both When I had finished Raoul said, without turning his head: "I assume you have the matter in hand?"

For a moment I thought he was speaking to me, and looked up, surprised, but Léon de Valmy answered: "I have," and proceeded to outline the various instructions he had given by telephone. Raoul listened, his head bent now, staring into the fire, and I sat back in my chair and watched the two of them, wondering afresh at the queer twisted relationship that was theirs. Today all seemed quite normal between them; last night's perverted cut-and-thrust might never have been. The two voices so alike; the two faces, so alike and yet so tragically different…my eyes lifted to the devil-may-care young face above the mantelpiece, with the pictured smile and the careless hand on the pony's bridle. No, it wasn't Raoul; it could never have been Raoul. There was something in his face, something dark and difficult that could never have belonged to the laughing careless boy in the picture. I had the feeling, watching Raoul as he talked to his father, that the young man of the picture would have been easier to know…

I came back to reality with a jerk. Léon de Valmy was saying: "We seem to treat our employees a little roughly. I would have liked to persuade Miss Martin to take the evening off, but she feels it her duty to entertain Philippe."

"I must," I said. "I promised."

"Then go out afterwards. Not"-that flash of charm again -"for a walk, as we seem so determined at Valmy to dog you with malice, but why not shake our dangerous dust from your feet, Miss Martin, and go down to Thonon? It's not late. A café, a cinema-"

"By the time she has put Philippe to sleep there'll be no buses to Thonon," said Raoul.

"It doesn't matter," I said quickly, surprised at the desire to escape that had swept over me. An evening outside Valmy- supper in a crowd, lights, voices, music, the common comings- and-goings of café and street-suddenly I longed desperately for these. I had had enough of drama this last two days. I got to my feet, this time decisively.

"It's very kind of you, but I did promise Philippe, and he's been upset… I mustn't disappoint him. I’ll rest after dinner."

"Tea alone in your room again and an early bed?" Raoul straightened his shoulders. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather go out?"

"Well, I-" I hesitated, laughing. "I can't, can I?"

"There are two cars at Valmy, and the requisite number of people to drive them." He glanced down at Léon. "I think we owe Miss Martin her escape, don't you?"

"Assuredly. But I'm afraid Jeannot has the big car in Geneva on my business, and the shooting-brake isn't back yet from the sawmill."

"Well," said Raoul, "there's mine." He looked at me. "Do you drive?"

"No. But look, you mustn't think-I wouldn't dream-"

"You know," said Raoul to the ceiling, "she's pining to go. Aren't you?"

I gave up. "It would be heaven."

"Then take my car." He looked at his father. "You can spare Bernard to drive it?"

"Of course."

"Where is he?"

"Out. I sent him straight away to look for traces of this fool with the gun, but it's dusk now so he should be back. No doubt he'll be in soon to report… That's settled, then. Excellent. It only remains for me to wish you-what, Miss Martin? A pleasant evening, an evening to remember?"

I said, thinking of Philippe's face streaked with mud and tears: "I thought it was to be an evening to forget."

Léon de Valmy laughed.

Raoul crossed the room and opened the door for me.

"At eight, then?"

"Thank you. Yes."

"I'll see he's there. I-er, I gather we now speak French?"

I said, low-voiced: "I told him just now."

I didn't add that I was pretty sure my confession had been quite unnecessary. The Demon King had known already.

Punctually at eight the lights of the car raked the darkness beyond the balcony rail. Philippe was already sound asleep, and Berthe sat sewing beside the fire in my sitting-room. It was with a light step and a light heart that I ran downstairs towards mv unexpected evening of freedom.

The Cadillac was standing there, its engine running. The driver, a tall silhouette against the lights, waited by the off from door. I got in and he slammed it after me, walked round the front of the car, and slid into his seat beside me.

"You?" I said. "That wasn't in the bond, was it?"

The car glided forward, circled, and dived smoothly into the zigzag. Raoul de Valmy laughed.

"Shall we talk French?" he said in that language. "It's the language I always take girls out in. Construe."

"I only meant that I don't see why you should chauffeur me. Couldn't you find Bernard?"

"Yes, but I didn't ask him. Do you mind?"

"Of course not. It's very nice of you."

"To follow my own inclinations? I warn you," he said lightly, "I always do. It's my
modus vivendi."

"Why 'warn'? Are they ever dangerous?"

"Sometimes." I expected him to smile on the word, but he didn't. The light mood seemed to have dropped from him, and he drove for a while in an abstracted, almost frowning silence. I sat there rather shyly, my hands in my lap, watching the road twist and swoop up to meet us.

The car dropped down the last arm of the zigzag, turned carefully off the bridge and gathered speed on the valley road.

He spoke at length in a formal, almost cool tone. "I'm sorry you should have had such a bad two days."

“Two days?"

"I was thinking about last night's episode on the bridge back there."

"Oh, that." I gave a little laugh. "D'you know, I'd almost forgotten it."

"I'm glad to hear it. But perhaps that's only because what happened this afternoon has overridden it. You seem to have got over your scare now." He threw me a quick glance and said abruptly: "Were you scared?"

"Today? Ye-es. Yes, I was. Not of being shot or anything, because that part was over before I knew anything about it, but somehow-just scared." I twisted my fingers together in my lap, thinking back to that heart-stopping point of time, trying to explain. "I think it was the moment when I heard the shot and there was Philippe flat on the path… the moment before I realised he wasn't hurt. It seemed to last for ever. Just the silence after the shot, and the world spinning round out of gear with no noise but the tops of the trees sweeping the air the way you hear a car's tyres when the engine's off."

We were sailing up the curve towards Belle Surprise. The trees streamed by, a moment drenched in our flowing gold, then livid, fleeing, gone. I said: "Have you ever thought, when something dreadful happens, 'a moment ago things were not like this; let it be
then
,
not
now
,
anything but
now’?
And you try and try to remake
then
,
but you know you can't. So you try to hold the moment quite still and not let it move on and show itself. It was like that."

"I know. But it hadn't happened after all."

"No." I let out a long unsteady breath. "It was still
then
.
I-I don't think I'll forget the moment when Philippe moved as long as I live."

Another of those quick glances. "And afterwards?"

"Afterwards I was angry. So blazing angry I could have killed someone."

"It takes people that way," he said.

"Because they've been scared? I know. But it wasn't only that, if you'd seen Philippe's face-". I was seeing it myself a little too clearly. I said, as if somehow I had to explain: "He's so quiet, Philippe. It's-it's all wrong that he should be so quiet. Little boys shouldn't be like that. And today was better; he was playing the fool in that silly maddening way children have, shouting rubbish and hopping about, only I was so pleased to see him like that that I didn't mind. And then… out of the blue… that beastliness. And there was mud on his face and he didn't want to stop to look at the trout and then he-he cried." I stopped then. I bit my lip and looked away from him out of the window.

"Don't talk about it any more if you'd rather not."

"It… gets me a bit. But I feel better now I've told someone." I managed a smile. "Let's forget it, shall we?"

“That's what we came out for." He smiled suddenly, and said with an abrupt, almost gay change of tone: "You'll feel quite different when you've had dinner. Have you got your passport?"

"What?"

"Your passport. I suppose you carry it?"

"Yes, it's-here it is. This sounds serious. What is it, a deportation?"

"Something like that." We were approaching the outskirts of Thonon now. Trees lined the road, and among them globed lamps as bland as melons made fantastic patterns of the boughs. "What d'you say," said Raoul, slowing a little and glancing at me, "shall we make a night of it? Go into Geneva and eat somewhere and then dance or go to a cinema or something like that?"

"Anything," I said, my mood lifting to meet his. "Everything. I leave it to you."

"You mean that?"

"Yes."

"Excellent," said Raoul, and the big car swept out into the light and bustle of Thonon's main square.

I am not going to describe that evening in detail though, as it happens, it was desperately important. It was then, simply, one of those wonderful evenings… We stopped in Thonon beside a stall where jonquils and wallflowers blazed under the gas-jets, and he bought me freesias which smelt like the Fortunate Isles and those red anemones that were once called the lilies of the field. Then we drove along in a clear night with stars aswarm and a waxing moon staring pale behind the poplars. By the time we reached Geneva-a city of fabulous glitter and strung lights whose reflections swayed and bobbed in the dark waters of the Lake-my spirits were rocketing sky-high; shock, loneliness, the breath of danger all forgotten.

Why had I thought him difficult to know? We talked as if we had known each other all our lives. He asked me about Paris and I found myself, for the first time, talking easily-as if memory were happiness and not regret-of Maman and Daddy and the Rue du Printemps. Even the years at the orphanage came gaily enough to hand, to be remembered with amusement, more, with affection.

And in his turn Raoul talked of his own Paris-so different from mine; of a London with which it seemed impossible that the Constance Butcher Home for Girls could have any connection; of the hot brilliance of Provence, where Bellevigne stood, a little jewel of a chateau quietly running down among its dusty vines…

Anything but Valmy. I don't think it was mentioned once.

And we did do everything. We had a wonderful dinner somewhere; the place wasn't fashionable, but the food was marvellous and my clothes didn't matter. We didn't dance there, because Raoul said firmly that food was important and one must not distract oneself with gymnastics, but later, somewhere else, we danced, and later still we drove back towards Thonon, roaring along the straight unenclosed road at a speed which made my blood tingle with excitement, yet which felt, in that wonderful car, on that wonderful night, like no speed at all. The frontier checked us once, twice, momentarily, then the big car tore on, free, up the long hill to Thonon. Along the wide boulevard that rims the slope to the Lake, through the now-empty market-place, past the turning that led up to Soubirous…

"Hi," I said, "you've missed the turning."

He glanced at me sideways.

"I'm following one of my dangerous inclinations."

I looked at him a little warily. "Such as?"

He said: "There's a casino at Évian."

I remembered Mrs. Seddon, and smiled to myself. "What's your lucky number?"

He laughed. "I don't know yet. But I do know that this is the night it's coming up."

So we went to the casino, and he played and I watched him, and then he made me play and I won and then won again and then we cashed our winnings together and went out and drank
café-fine
and more
café-fine,
and laughed a lot and then, at last, drove home.

It was three in the morning when the great car nosed its way up the zigzag, and-whether from excitement or sleepiness or the
fines
-I might have been floating up it in a dream. He stopped the car by the side-door that opened off the stableyard, and, still dreamily and no doubt incoherently, I thanked him and said goodnight.

I must have negotiated the dark corridors and stairways to my room still in the same trance-like daze. I have no recollections of doing so, nor of the process by which eventually I got myself to bed.

It wasn't the brandy; the coffee had drowned that effectively enough. It was a much more deadly draught. There was one thing that stood like stone among the music and moonfroth of the evening's gaieties. It was stupid, it was terrifying, it was wonderful, but it had happened and I could do nothing about it.