Caravan to Vaccares

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘Just an idle layabout laying about. Not funny?’

  ‘No.’ She had her lips compressed in a very school-marmish way.

  ‘I’m pressed for time. Ah!’

  ‘What is it?’ In even the most puritanical of females repugnance doesn’t stand a chance against curiosity.

  ‘This.’ He showed her a delicately fashioned rosewood lacquered box inlaid with ebony and motherof-pearl. It was locked and so exquisitely made that it was quite impossible to insert the point of even Czerda’s razor-sharp knife into the microscopic line between lid and box. Cecile seemed to derive a certain malicious satisfaction from this momentary problem for she waved a hand to indicate the indescribable wreckage that now littered almost every square inch of the caravan floor.

  ‘Shall I look for the key?’ she asked sweetly.

  ‘No need.’ He laid the rosewood box on the floor and jumped on it with both heels, reducing it at once to splintered matchwood. He removed a sealed envelope from the ruins, opened it and extracted a sheet of paper.

  On it was a typewritten – in capitals – jumble of apparently meaningless letters and figures. There were a few words in plain language but their meaning in the context was completely obscure.

  Cecile peered over his shoulder. Her eyes were screwed up and he knew she was having difficulty in seeing.

  ‘What is it?’she asked.

  ‘Code, looks like. One or two words straight. There’s “Monday”, a date – May 24th – and a place-name – Grau du Roi.’

  ‘Grau du Roi?’

  ‘A fishing port and holiday resort down on the coast. Now, why should a gypsy be carrying a message in code?’ He thought about this for a bit but it didn’t do him any good: he was still awake and on his feet but his mind had turned in for the night. ‘Stupid question. Up, up and away.’

  ‘What? Still two lovely drawers left unsmashed?’

  ‘Leave those for the vandals.’ He took her arm so that she wouldn’t trip too often on the way to the door and she peered questioningly at him.

  ‘Meaning you can break codes?’

  Bowman looked around him. ‘Furniture, yes. Crockery, yes. Codes, no. Come, to our hotel.’

  They left. Before closing the door Bowman had a last look at the two still unconscious and injured men lying amidst the irretrievably ruined shambles of what had once been a beautifully appointed caravan interior. He felt almost sorry for the caravan.

  CHAPTER 4

  When Bowman woke up the birds were singing, the sky was a cloudless translucent blue and the rays of the morning sun were streaming through the window. Not the window of an hotel but the window of the blue Peugeot which he’d pulled off the road in the early hours of the morning into the shelter of a thick clump of trees that had seemed, in the darkness, to offer almost total concealment from the road. Now, in daylight, he could see that it offered nothing of the kind and that they were quite visible to any passer-by who cared to cast a casual sideways glance in their direction and, as there were those not all that far distant whose casual sideways glances he’d much rather not be the object of, he deemed it time to move on.

  He was reluctant to wake Cecile. She appeared to have passed a relatively comfortable night – or what had been left of the night – with her dark head on his shoulder, a fact that he dimly resented because he had passed a most uncomfortable night, partly because he’d been loath to move for fear of disturbing her but chiefly because his unaccustomedly violent exercise of the previous night had left him with numerous aches in a variety of muscles that hadn’t been subjected to such inconsiderate treatment for a long time. He wound down the driver’s window, sniffed the fresh cool morning air and lit a cigarette. The rasp of the cigarette lighter was enough to make her stir, straighten and peer rather blearily about her until she realized where she was.

  She looked at him and said: ‘Well, as hotels go, it was cheap enough.’

  ‘That’s what I like,’ Bowman said. ‘The pioneering spirit.’

  ‘Do I look like a pioneer?’

  ‘Frankly, no.’

  ‘I want a bath.’

  ‘And that you shall have and very soon. In the best hotel in Arles. Cross my heart.’

  ‘You are an optimist. Every hotel room will have been taken weeks ago for the gypsy festival.’ ‘Indeed. Including the one I took. I booked my room two months ago.’

  ‘I see.’ She moved pointedly across to her own side of the seat which Bowman privately considered pretty ungrateful of her considering that she hadn’t disdained the use of his shoulder as a pillow for the most of the night. ‘You booked your room two months ago, Mr Bowman – ’

  ‘Neil.’

  ‘I have been very patient, haven’t I, Mr Bowman? I haven’t asked any questions?’

  ‘That you haven’t.’ He looked at her admiringly. ‘What a wife you’re going to make. When I come home late from the office – ’

  ‘Please. What is it all about? Who are you?’

  ‘A layabout on the run.’

  ‘On the run? Following the gypsies that – ’

  ‘I’m a vengeful layabout.’

  ‘I’ve helped you – ’

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘I’ve let you have my car. You’ve put me in danger – ’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry about that and I’d no right to do it. I’ll put you in a taxi for Martignane airport and the first plane for England. You’ll be safe there. Or take this car. I’ll get a lift to Arles.’

  ‘Blackmail!’

  ‘Blackmail? I don’t understand. I’m offering you a place of safety. Do you mean that you’re prepared to come with me?’

  She nodded. He looked at her consideringly.

  ‘Such implicit trust in a man with so much and so very recently spilled blood on his hands?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘I still don’t understand.’ He gazed forward through the windscreen. ‘Could it be that the fair Miss Dubois is in the process of falling in love?’

  ‘Rest easy,’ she said calmly. ‘The fair Miss Dubois has no such romantic stirrings in mind.’

  ‘Then why come along with me? Who knows, they may all be lying in wait – the mugger up the dark alley, the waiter with the poison phial, the smiler with the knife beneath the cloak – any of Czerda’s pals, in fact. So why?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  He started up the Peugeot. ‘I’m sure I don’t know either.’ But he did know. And she knew. But what she didn’t know was that he knew that she knew. It was, Bowman thought, all very confusing at eight o’clock in the morning.

  They’d just regained the main road when she said: ‘Mr Bowman, you may be cleverer than you look.’

  ‘That would be difficult?’

  ‘I asked you a question a minute or two ago. Somehow or other you didn’t get around to answering it.’

  ‘Question? What question?’

  ‘Never mind,’ she said resignedly. ‘I’ve forgotten what it was myself.’

  Le Grand Duc, his heliotrope-striped pyjamas largely and mercifully obscured by a napkin, was having breakfast in bed. His breakfast tray was about the same width as the bed and had to be to accommodate the vast meal it held. He had just speared a particularly succulent piece of fish when the door opened and Lila entered without the benefit of knocking. Her blonde hair was uncombed. With one hand she held a wrap clutched round her while with the other she waved a piece of paper. Clearly, she was upset.

  ‘Cecile’s gone!’ She waved the paper some more. ‘She left this.’

  ‘Gone?’ Le Grand Duc transferred the forkful of fish to his mouth and savoured the passing moment. ‘By heavens, this red mullet is superb. Gone where?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s taken her clothes with her.’

  ‘Let me see.’ He stretched out his hand and took the note from Lila. ’“Contact me Poste Restante Saintes-Maries.” Rather less than informative, one might say. That ruffianly fellow who was wit
h her last night – ’

  ‘Bowman? Neil Bowman?’

  ‘That’s the ruffianly fellow I meant. Check if he’s still here. And your car.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘One has to have the mind for it,’ Le Grand Duc said kindly. He picked up his knife and fork again, waited until Lila had made her hurried exit from the room, laid down knife and fork, opened a bedside drawer and picked up the notebook which Lila had used the previous night while she was acting as his unpaid secretary when he had been interviewing the gypsies. He compared the handwriting in the notebook with that on the sheet of paper Lila had just handed him: it was indisputably the same handwriting. Le Grand Duc sighed, replaced the notebook, let the scrap of paper fall carelessly to the floor and resumed his attack on the red mullet. He had finished it and was just appreciatively lifting the cover of a dish of kidneys and bacon when Lila returned. She had exchanged her wrap for the blue mini-dress she had been wearing the previous evening and had combed her hair: but her state of agitation remained unchanged.

  ‘He’s gone, too. And the car. Oh, Charles, I am worried.’

  ‘With Le Grand Duc by your side, worry is a wasted emotion. Saintes-Maries is the place, obviously.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She was doubtful, hesitant. ‘But how do I get there? My car – our car – ’

  ‘You will accompany me, chérie. Le Grand Duc always has some sort of transport or other.’ He paused and listened briefly to a sudden babble of voices. ‘Tsk! Tsk! Those gypsies can be a noisy lot. Take my tray, my dear.’

  Not without some difficulty, Lila removed the tray. Le Grand Duc swung from the bed, enveloped himself in a violently-coloured Chinese dressing-gown and headed for the door. As it was clear that the source of the disturbance came from the direction of the forecourt the Duke marched across to the terrace balustrade and looked down. A large number of gypsies were gathered round the rear of Czerda’s caravan, the one part of the caravan that was visible from where Le Grand Duc was standing. Some of the gypsies were gesticulating, others shouting: all were clearly very angry about something.

  ‘Ah!’ Le Grand Duc clapped his hands together. ‘This is fortunate indeed. It is rare that one is actually on the spot. This is the stuff that folklore is made of. Come.’

  He turned and walked purposefully towards the steps leading down to the terrace. Lila caught his arm.

  ‘But you can’t go down there in your pyjamas!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Le Grand Duc swept on his way, descended the steps to the patio, ignored – or, more probably, was oblivious of – the stares of the early breakfasters on the patio and paused at the head of the forecourt steps to survey the scene. Already, he could see, the parking lot beyond the hedge was empty of caravans and two or three of those that had been in the forecourt had also disappeared while others were obviously making preparations for departure. But at least two dozen gypsies were still gathered round Czerda’s caravan.

  Like a psychedelic Caligula, with an apprehensive and highly embarrassed Lila following, Le Grand Duc made his imperious way down the steps and through the gypsies crowding round the caravan. He halted and looked at the spectacle in front of him. Battered, bruised, cut and heavily bandaged, Czerda and his son sat on their caravan’s steps, both of them with their heads in their hands: both physically and mentally, their condition appeared to be very low. Behind them several gypsy women could be seen embarking on the gargantuan task of cleaning up the interior of the caravan, which, in the daytime, looked to be an even more appalling mess than it had been by lamplight. An anarchist with an accurate line in bomb-throwing would have been proud to acknowledge that handiwork as his own.

  ‘Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!’ Le Grand Duc shook his head in a mixture of disappointment and disgust. ‘A family squabble. Very quarrelsome, some of those Romany families, you know. Nothing here for the true folklorist. Come, my dear, I see that most of the gypsies are already on their way. It behoves us to do the same.’ He led her up the steps and beckoned a passing porter. ‘My car, and at once.’

  ‘Your car’s not here?’ Lila asked.

  ‘Of course it’s not here. Good God, girl, you don’t expect my employees to sleep in the same hotel as I do? Be here in ten minutes.’

  ‘Ten minutes! I have to bath, breakfast, pack, pay my bill – ’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  She was ready in ten minutes. So was Le Grand Duc. He was wearing a grey double-breasted flannel suit over a maroon shirt and a panama straw hat with a maroon band, but for once Lila’s attention was centred elsewhere. She was gazing rather dazedy down at the forecourt.

  ‘Le Grand Duc,’ she repeated mechanically, ‘always has some sort of transport or other.’

  The transport in this case was a magnificent and enormous handmade cabriolet Rolls-Royce in lime and dark green. Beside it, holding the rear door-open, stood a chauffeuse dressed in a uniform of lime green, exactly the same shade as that of the car, piped in dark green, again exactly the same shade as the car. She was young, petite, auburn-haired and very pretty. She smiled as she ushered Le Grand Duc and Lila into the back seat, got behind the wheel and drove the car away in what, from inside the car, was a totally hushed silence.

  Lila looked at Le Grand Duc who was lighting a large Havana with a lighter taken from a most impressively button-bestrewed console to his right.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ she demanded, ‘that you wouldn’t let so deliciously pretty a creature stay in the same hotel as yourself?’

  ‘Certainly not. Not that I lack concern for my employees.’ He selected a button in the console and the dividing window slid silently down into the back of the driver’s seat. ‘And where did you spend the night, Carita, my dear?’

  ‘Well, Monsieur le Duc, the hotels were full and – ’

  ‘Where did you spend the night?’

  ‘In the car.’

  ‘Tsk! Tsk!’ The window slid up and he turned to Lila. ‘But it is, as you can see, a very comfortable car.’

  By the time the blue Peugeot arrived in Arles a coolness had developed between Bowman and Cecile. They had been having a discussion about matters sartorial and weren’t quite seeing eye to eye. Bowman pulled up in a relatively quiet sidestreet opposite a large if somewhat dingy clothing emporium, stopped the engine and looked at the girl. She didn’t look at him.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She was examining some point in the far distance. ‘It’s not on. I think you’re quite mad.’

  ‘Like enough,’ he nodded. He kissed her on the cheek, got out, took his case from the rear seat and walked across the pavement, where he stopped to examine some exotic costumes in the drapery window. He could clearly see the reflection of the car and, almost equally clearly, that of Cecile. Her lips were compressed and she was distinctly angry. She appeared to hesitate, then left the car and crossed to where he was standing.

  ‘I could hit you,’ she announced.

  ‘I wouldn’t like that,’ he said. ‘You look a big strong girl to me.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, shut up and put that case back in the car.’

  So he shut up and put the case back in the car, took her arm and led her reluctantly into the faded emporium.

  Twenty minutes later he looked at himself in a full-length mirror and shuddered. He was clad now in a black, high-buttoned and very tightly fitting suit which gave him some idea how the overweight and heroically corseted operatic diva must feel when she was reaching for a high C, a floppy white shirt, black string tie and widebrimmed black hat. It was a relief when Cecile appeared from a dressing-room, accompanied by a plump, pleasant middle-aged woman dressed in black whom Bowman assumed to be the manageress. But he observed her only by courtesy of his peripheral vision, any man who didn’t beam his entire ocular voltage directly at Cecile was either a psychiatric case or possessed of the visual acuity of a particularly myopic barnyard owl.

  He had never thought of her as an eyesore but now
he realized, for the first time but for keeps, that she was a stunningly lovely person. It wasn’t because of the exquisite dress she wore, a beautiful, beautifully fitting, exotic and clearly very expensive gypsy costume that hadn’t missed out on many of the colours of the rainbow, nor because of her white ruched mantilla head-dress affair, though he had heard tell that the awareness of wearing beautiful things gives women their inner glow that shows through. All he knew was that his heart did a couple of handsprings and it wasn’t until he saw her sweet and ever so slightly amused smile that he called his heart to order and resumed what he hoped was his normally inscrutable expression. The manageress put his very thoughts in words.

  ‘Madame,’ she breathed, ‘looks beautiful.’

  ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘is beautiful,’ then reverted to his old self again. ‘How much? In Swiss francs. You take Swiss francs?’

  ‘Of course.’ The manageress summoned an assistant who started adding figures while the manageress packed clothes.

  ‘She’s packing up my clothes.’ Cecile sounded dismayed. ‘I can’t go out in the street like this.’

  ‘Of course you can.’ Bowman had meant to be heartily reassuring but the words sounded mechanical, he still couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘This is fiesta time.’

  ‘Monsieur is quite correct,’ the manageress said. ‘Hundreds of young Arlésiennes dress like this at this time of year. A pleasant change and very good for them it is, too.’

  ‘And it’s not bad for business either.’ Bowman looked at the bill the assistant had just handed him. ‘Two thousand, four hundred Swiss francs.’ He peeled three thousand-franc notes from Czerda’s roll and handed them to the manageress. ‘Keep the change.’

  ‘But monsieur is too kind.’ From her flabbergasted expression he took it that the citizens of Arles were not notably open-handed when it came to the question of gratuities.

  ‘Easy come, easy go,’ he said philosophically and led Cecile from the shop. They got into the Peugeot and he drove for a minute or two before pulling up in an almost deserted car-park. Cecile looked at him enquiringly.