“My dear,” said the Prince, “I was choking. You must allow me my little choke from time to time. They are all great criminals.”
“Criminals?” echoed Galen with a swishing indrawn breath. “You are associating with criminals?”
“Alas,” said the Prince, “I wish it were so, for they would be so useful. But the situation does not permit me to risk any Egyptian money on their schemes. This wretched war …” It was as if every thought ended in the same cul de sac, the brick wall of the war situation. The Prince now explained that in France, when the great criminals became too hot to hold, they were submitted to a sort of exile in one of three great provincial towns, Toulouse, Nîmes, Avignon. They were forbidden to return to Paris. But in these towns they could reside at liberty and cool their ideas. How lucky, he added, that Avignon turned out to be one of these towns. It had provided him with a host of new contacts of the right sort, and had things been different he would by now have initiated several new schemes on behalf of the Egyptian companies he represented. Galen listened with popping eye.
Delighted by his theatrical effect the Prince permitted himself to embroider a little in his almost lapidary English. “Though they are all well bred,” he continued surprisingly, “yet there may be one or two who would think nothing of sentencing a rival to death!” He paused for a moment and then continued, “They simply have them clubbed insensible and then thrust through the medieval oubliettes into the Rhône!” He talked as if the river were choked with corpses. “Goodness me!” said Lord Galen, startled by his obvious relish. “What an idea!” It gave a whole new dimension to business methods.
A few more such sallies followed, but to tell the truth Blanford felt that the evening had begun to lag on in a rather spiritless fashion, as if its back had been broken by the approaching war and the impending separations. Outside the moon was high, and the vines seemed very still, with no breath of wind to stir their loaded fronds. Quatrefages became very thoughtful and sad when Galen told him that he must, in the coming week, close his office and transfer it back to London. “So soon?” he said and Galen nodded decisively. “I know it’s hard,” he said, “but something tells me it is time to move.”
It was, and for once his intuition was correct. But how ironic it seemed that the weather was maturing towards a record harvest – never had the prognostications for the wine been so full of tremulous optimism! “I could, of course, stay until after the vendanges, if I wished,” said the Prince. “Après tout Egypt is to be neutral so I could do as I please. Nevertheless I fear I must go too. The yacht can’t wait for ever.” He was thinking lustfully of all the up and coming young wines which were raising their proud crests upon the gentle slopes and terraces around them: and not less of all those shaggy old champions once again distilling and renewing their golden weight among the hundreds of square kilometres of vine stretching away on both sides of the swift green Rhône. The very thought made him thirsty. He suddenly became as merry as a cricket. “Must you really go home?” he asked again, and again Galen said he must. “Well, so be it,” said the Prince, raising his paws to heaven; and he closed the subject with an invocation to Allah, the Decider of all things.
“But I must not overlook anything,” said Lord Galen extracting from his breast pocket a tiny scarlet memorandum book which contained all his engagements written down in a minute spider-scrawl. “I must not forget to go down and play with Imhof once before I leave. It’s over two months since I went, and he must get awfully lonely down there in Montfavet surrounded by lunatics and alienists. He loves a game of trains!” Trains – it was the magical draw of the model railway which the authorities had permitted Imhof to construct in the hither end of the asylum garden! Blanford had been invited once to accompany Lord Galen to see his unfortunate ex-associate in his confinement. “Because,” he said, “you have a very soothing presence I find. You say little but when you talk it is with a public school accent. Imhof will like that.”
It was somehow typical of the essential inconsequentiality of Galen’s nature that these arresting things should be said, one after another, as if they were all of the same order of thought; for him, Blanford reflected, nothing was really unusual – it all flowed together with a phenomenological impartiality which carried the colour and tone to Galen’s innocent mind. “It must be dreadful,” the old man continued while they were bustling down the green lanes leading to Montfavet, nestling in its bowers of roses, “to be condemned to excrete always through a slit in the stomach wall directly into a rubber envelope. Yet he doesn’t seem to mind, he is positively cheery. He has had a very bad time has Imhof.” He went on to describe the slow downfall of his partner’s reason in equally colourful terms – terms which startled Blanford out of his ordinary equability and made him glance suspiciously at Galen, wondering if perhaps all this rigmarole did not stem from some secret sense of humour. But no, he was quite serious. It was no leg-pull. He described the first symptom which betokened the overthrow of Imhof’s reason. “He went into shops and asked the price of things. Then he would just give a high cracked laugh and leave. It startled people.”
Imhof, it turned out, was a massively built, red-headed man who looked like a market-gardener or a station-master with his crumpled black suit and heavy cheap watch-chain. He was rather unshaven as well and smelt strongly of shag. But he gave no sign whatsoever of recognising Lord Galen, and stared at him uncomprehendingly. His model railway was, however, rather an ambitious affair, with several large stations and plenty of engines and rolling stock. But it was obviously too big for one man to enjoy and he grunted with pleasure when Lord Galen started to behave masterfully with switches and points, and make coal and passenger trains perform their various functions. They did not speak but exchanged little grunts of pleasure now as they played like a couple of absorbed children, a perfectly mated couple. They got down on their knees and directed expresses to race in various directions. No words were needed, the railway was in the hands of two experts. Blanford felt deserted. He sat for a while on a bench, and then went for a little walk among the magnificent rose gardens from which the establishment took its name. It was from one of these corners, hedged in by vivid flowers, that he saw emerge a tall frail girl with long and shapely hands. She came towards him, slowly drawing a shawl about her narrow shoulders. Her dark wavy hair framed a face which was beautiful but too thin; her shoes had very high heels. She advanced slowly with a smile and said: “So you are backs? O! how was India? I am dying to ask. How calm was India? Nowadays at night I seem to hear Piers walking about in the other room, but he is never there when I run to see. Did you meet him in India? Does the smell of the magnolia still remember me supremely?” Blanford did not know how to react. Though obviously an inmate, her speech was superficially so coherent and her pale beauty so striking.
They stared at each other for a moment in silence while he hunted for a word or a phrase which might suit so strange an occasion. She smiled at him with a tender familiarity and reached out her hand to place it on his elbow, saying: “Of course you did. It is obviously there you met him.” Blanford nodded, it seemed to be the right thing to do. They took a few steps and on the other side of the flower-bed he saw an open French window giving on to a room furnished with a certain old-fashioned luxuriousness. There was a tapestry on the wall, and a concert-grand in the corner. Scissors and a bowl of flowers on the terrace explained what she had been doing when the sound of his step on the gravel had disturbed her. “I knew it all the time,” she said again, “I knew you would come from him, from Piers.” At that moment a flight of birds passed close overhead, and at the whirr of their wings a panic fear seized her. Her face clouded, her eyes became wide and glittered with apprehension. “It is only the birds,” he said, hoping to soothe her, but she gazed at him wildly and repeated hoarsely, “Only the birds? What are you saying?” Huddling the shawl round her thin shoulders she hurried away towards the terrace and the open window. He stood quite still until he heard the latch click home. Then
he made his way thoughtfully to where the two grunting men moved about on the ground like apes, releasing their marvellous models with a high skill and a perfect enjoyment.
It was a full couple of hours before Galen came to himself; it was as if he at last awoke from a deep trance of perfect, transcendent happiness, and sighing, took his leave of Imhof who gazed unfeelingly at him, watched him move away, and then bent down resolutely once more to his trains. Nothing was said about the public school accent. There had been little chance to use it, so mute had been the harmony of the two train-lovers, so deep their concentration. As they drove away Galen said, sighing with repleteness, “Poor old Imhof. I so often think of him. He made just one big miscalculation and pouf! it played on his reason. A fearful bloomer! Shall I tell you? It was during a water shortage in England, a scandal. All the newspapers went on about it, and the Government asked people to save water as much as possible. Then the press said that the Englishman’s bath was the reason and gave statistics about the millions of tons of water we waste. It was here that Imhof got the idea of buying all those bidets – hundreds of thousands of them. He said that if England could be got to accept the bidet we could all make do with one bath a week. The saving in water would be immense. I forget the details but he spent millions on advertising his idea, and at the same time, not to be caught short, in buying up all the bidets he could find. A massive investment all lined up in warehouses on the coast waiting to invade across the channel.” He gave a sad chuckle. “They are still there. He seemed not to realise that one of the hardest things to do is to get a national habit modified. Bidets!”
Remembering this occasion, Blanford reflected compassionately upon Imhof and his bidets while the old man thoughtfully circumcised a cigar and struck a match to light it. He leaned back now in his chair and smiled round at them; he had expiated his guilt by his sincerity and now felt calmly himself again, though of course still saddened by the whole affair. Constance and Sam said little, and it was assumed that they were preoccupied with each other and deaf to the appeals of mere sociability. But she was filled also with a weight of apathy and weariness which astonished even herself. They were like people living upon the slopes of a volcano, Vesuvius or Etna, resigned to the knowledge that one day, nobody knew when, the whole of the world they knew would be blown apart by forces beyond their imagining. And yet they continued to respect social forms like automata, like the Romans of the silver age, when the Goths were already gnawing at the walls of the civilised world. As if he had intuited this feeling of remorseful apathy in her, Lord Galen patted her hand and sighed deeply. “If this goes on,” he said, and everyone knew what he meant by that, “why, money will become quite worthless.” He looked round the table. “And it’s a great pity. It has given us so much pleasure. Indeed there is something very inspiring about money.” The word was strangely chosen, but one could feel what he meant. Money, thought poor Felix, working his toes in his dinner shoes. He had contracted a hammer-toe from his solitary walking about the town. Money – if only he could get his hands on some. Blanford himself had a twinge of panic. “I suppose all investments will collapse?” he said with some alarm. The Prince nodded. “It depends,” he said, “some will. But if you have armament shares. …” Lord Galen now called to Max to wind up the old horn gramophone and set off the traditional Merry Widow waltz which closed all his dinner parties. They took themselves to the quiet terrace where they were supplied with drinks hard and soft and tobacco for Sam’s pipe. It was curious that no mention had been made of Livia, and Blanford wondered suddenly if they knew anything about her – was it perhaps a tactful silence? But then on the other hand nobody had mentioned Hilary either. The moon shone upon their glasses. There was no wind, but away over the hills there came a tremor of summer lightning like a distant bombardment going on, which must herald one of the thunderstorms which traditionally ushered in the harvest and the autumn. The Prince asked Blanford whether he would not like to visit Egypt. “I would be happy to engage you as a personal private secretary if that were the case. You would live in the Palace and meet the best people, the top-notch. It is a very picturesque land.”
The proposal was startling and novel and tickled the youth’s fancy. He asked for time to consider. As yet his own personal affairs were not sufficiently in order, or so he felt, to embark on what promised to be so exciting and enriching a career as that of social secretary to a prince.
Now, turning aside, the Prince addressed himself to Felix Chatto. They took a turn up and down the balcony and on the lawn, linked arm in arm. Felix was very flattered to be treated with the deference due to a senior diplomat, as if he was in possession of state secrets of the highest importance. The Prince gave a résumé of the political and military state of things and asked him to comment upon it with a becoming modesty and a keen attention. Rising to the occasion Felix did his best to present the balanced analysis so dear to the hearts of diplomats and leader writers. As usual it all depended on If, When and But. The Prince thanked him warmly. “In a few days,” he said, “I am going to have a little spree. After Lord Galen goes. Do not be offended if I do not send you an invitation, my dear. It will be rather an advanced sort of spree and you have a professional reputation to look after in this beautiful but somewhat sinister little town. But don’t take offence. You will understand everything when you talk to your friend Quatrefages.” But Felix needed no briefing, he could imagine very well what the little spree would entail. “I must pay back some social debts to my new friends,” explained the little man, and the young consul saw in his mind’s eye all those faces like crocodiles and ant-eaters and baboons, all dressed in dark suits with improbable ties and fingers with black hair sprouting through their rings. “I shall quite understand,” he said seriously, “and I take it as a compliment, sir, that you should bother to explain to me.” The Prince squeezed his arm and gave a ghost chuckle.
They broke up relatively early that evening, pervaded by a sense of weariness and loss. Perhaps because he felt that this was probably the last occasion they would meet round his table, old Lord Galen tried to infuse the occasion with a touch of valedictory ceremony. He called for a toast to the Prince and to Egypt which was willingly drunk, and which, by its unexpectedness, pleased the Prince very much indeed. He for his part replied by calling for a toast to His Majesty the King of England. He sprang up as he uttered the words with alacrity and a genuine enthusiasm. He had been received at Court with great kindness, which had seemed to him quite natural and unaffected. Besides, one of the younger members of the Royal Household had elected herself his mentor and Muse. What he admired so much, he told Chatto, was that in England you could do almost anything without getting into the newspapers. You felt so safe, while in Egypt those dreadful socialist and communist papers were always on the lookout for scandal. “They don’t like the upper class to have a little spree. Why are Marxists such spoilsports? I have never been able to understand it, especially when you think of the morals of Engels.”
The car came, with a tearful Max at the wheel, and they all said goodbye to the Prince with a genuine pang. When would they all meet again? Nobody could tell, nobody could say.
The inhabitants of Tu Duc took their leave with Max in the old rumble-dusty vehicle of Lord Galen; Quatrefages and Felix, since they were going into the town like the Prince, were offered the trip in his coach. The journey passed in friendly silence; the Prince spent most of it exploring the cavities between his teeth with a silver toothpick of great elegance. He said no more about his spree until the changing tone of the horses’ hooves upon the cobbled avenues of the town told them that they were almost home. “The little spree I spoke of,” he told Quatrefages, “will be at the end of the week, perhaps when Lord Galen has left the country.” Quatrefages asked if he could be of service in the matter and received the reply that everything was going to be arranged at an official level. “It is much safer that way. But I hope you will honour us with your presence. I think the occasion will be a memorable one
– in all this fearful war-indecision which prevents us all from thinking or planning. They ring me up all the time from Abdin Palace with rumours and scares, telling me I must return. The palace yacht is already at Marseille waiting with steam up. But I think all this is quite premature.”
The Avignon Quintet Page 53
