by Mary Stewart
He paused a moment as we rounded the street corner, and put out a tentative hand again.
‘I – I don’t feel too good, Mrs. Selborne. I suppose it’s the heat. D’you mind if I don’t see the other things with you? I–I can wait for you somewhere.’
I took him by the arm.
‘I don’t mind at all. Of course not. I’m sorry you’re not feeling well, though. Shall we go back to the car?’
We retraced our steps to the square, then he stopped and faced me again. He looked better now; he was still very pale, but he had stopped shaking, and even smiled at me.
‘I’ll be fine now, Mrs. Selborne. I’ll sit in the church till you come back. It’s lovely and cool in there. Please don’t worry about me.’
‘What about a drink? An iced mint? Here’s a café.’
But he shook his head.
‘I’ll just go and sit in the church.’
‘What about the dog?’
‘Oh—’ he glanced uncertainly at the church door. ‘Oh. I expect it’ll be all right. I’ll sit near the back, and it’s not the time for service. He could stay in the porch anyway …’
In the end he had his way. I watched him into the cool shadow of the west doorway, then I turned away to look for the temple and the gardens. At least nobody appeared to have forbidden Rommel’s entry, and the church was the best place David could choose in this heat. I realized that, if he thought his indisposition had spoiled my day, he would be very embarrassed, so I decided to continue my sight-seeing tour of Nîmes, but to complete it as quickly as I could.
I saw the lovely pillared Maison Carrée, then I made my way along the stinking street beside the canal to the beautiful formal gardens which are the pride of Nîmes. The heat was terrific, and by the time I reached the gardens – so beautifully laid out around their stagnant and pestilential pools – even my enthusiasm for Roman remains had begun to waver.
I stood for a moment gazing up at the ranks of pine trees on the steep slope which leads up to the Roman Tower. It was very steep; the cicadas were fiddling in the branches like mad; the heat came out of the ground in waves.
‘No,’ I said firmly.
I turned my back on the tower, and made like a homing bee for the little ruined Temple of Diana – which has a café just beside it, where one can drink long iced drinks under the lime trees.
After two very long, very cold drinks, I felt considerably better. I still could not face the Tour Magne, but out of self-respect, as a tourist, I must use up the part of my tourist’s ticket dedicated to the Temple of Diana. I left my chair and went through the crumbled arches into the tiny square of the temple.
It was like being miles from anywhere. Behind me, back through the crumbled archway, was the hot white world with its people and its voices; here, within, was a little square of quiet and green coolness. Trees dipped over the high broken walls, shadows lay like arras in the pillared corners, fronds of ferns lent softness to every niche and crevice. And silence. Such silence. Silence with a positive quality, that is more than just an absence of sound. Silence like music.
I sat down on a fallen piece of carved stone, leaned back against a pillar, and closed my eyes. I tried not to think of Johnny … it didn’t do any good to think of Johnny … I must just think of nothing except how quiet it was, and how much I liked being alone …
‘Aren’t you well?’
I opened my eyes with a start.
A man had come into the temple, so quietly that I had not heard him approach. He was standing over me now, frowning at me.
‘What’s the matter? The heat?’ He spoke with a sort of reluctant consideration, as if he felt constrained to offer help, but hoped to God I wasn’t going to need it.
I knew there were tears on my eyelashes, and felt a fool.
‘I’m all right, thanks,’ I said crisply. ‘I was only resting, and enjoying being alone.’
He raised his eyebrows at that, and the corner of his mouth twitched sourly.
‘I’m sorry.’
I got up, feeling still more of a fool.
‘I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean that – I didn’t mean to be rude. I – it was actually the literal truth. I wouldn’t have said it, but you caught me a little off balance.’
He did not answer, but stood looking at me; I felt myself flushing like a schoolgirl and, for some idiotic reason, the tears began to sting again behind my eyes.
‘I’m not usually rude to perfect strangers,’ I said. ‘Especially when they have been kind enough to – to ask after my health. Please forgive me.’
He didn’t smile, but said, kindly enough:
‘It was my fault for catching you – off balance. Hadn’t you better have a cigarette to put you back on again before you go out?’
He handed me his case, and added, as I hesitated: ‘If you don’t accept cigarettes from perfect strangers either, we had better remedy that. My name’s Coleridge. Richard Coleridge.’
I took a cigarette. ‘And mine’s Charity Selborne. Though it ought to be Wordsworth, I feel.’
He lit a match for me, and his look over it was sardonic.
‘Don’t tell me you feel a bond between us already?’
‘No … though as a matter of fact I did wonder for a moment if we’d met before. There’s something familiar—’
He interrupted, his voice rough again: ‘We haven’t. I don’t know any Selborne outside of Gilbert White.’
I lifted my head, startled.
‘Gilbert White?’
‘Yes. You know the book—’
‘Of course. It was just that somebody else the other day connected me with it too, and not so very many people read it now. And I was surprised at David, because he’s only a boy.’
I suppose I should have been more careful; I suppose I should have heard the way his voice altered then. But I was still embarrassed, wanting to get away, chattering aimlessly about nothing.
He said, very quietly: ‘David?’
‘Yes. David Shelley. That’s who I was thinking of when I said I should have been called Wordsworth. All the Romantic poets seem to be in—’
‘Where did you meet this David Shelley?’
I heard it then. I stopped with my cigarette half-way to my lips and looked at him. His hand was quite steady as he flicked the ash from his cigarette, and his face showed no expression. But there was a look behind his eyes that made my heart jolt once, sickeningly.
He said again, softly, almost indifferently: ‘Where did you meet this David Shelley?’
And looked at me with David’s eyes.
Shelley–Coleridge–Byron. I knew now. I was alone in that quiet little temple with Richard Byron, who had been acquitted of murder on the grounds of insufficient evidence, and who was looking at me now as if he would like to choke me.
He threw away his cigarette and took a step towards me.
6
Escape me?
(Browning)
‘Excuse me, monsieur.’
Richard Byron stopped and swung round. The concierge stood just inside the doorway of the temple, looking at him with a sort of mournful reproach.
‘Your ticket, monsieur. You nevaire show it.’ His limp moustache drooped with rebuke. His eyes were pale watery brown, and slightly bloodshot. I thought I had never seen anybody I liked better. I ground out my cigarette with shaking fingers, and started – oh, so casually! – for the door. But the concierge must have thought that Richard Byron and I were together, for he stood his ground.
As I fished hurriedly in my bag for my ticket, Byron handed over his paper slip with an abrupt gesture of impatience. The concierge took it, eyed it with the same spaniel-like reproach, and shook his head.
‘It is torn, monsieur. It is defaced. It is perhaps not the right ticket. …’
Richard Byron spoke harshly: ‘I cannot help its being torn. It was torn when I got it.’
‘Where did monsieur get it?’
‘At the Maison Carrée.’
Something else jolted in my mind. The voice in the Arena, protesting about the same ticket in almost the same words; and David, who had been leaning over the parapet gazing into the Arena, coming flying down the steps to me, and dragging me away. David, white and shaking, going to hide in the church.
David had seen his father all right, and was even now hiding in the church like a rabbit in its burrow. At the thought of David, I was suddenly not afraid of Richard Byron any more. I held out my ticket again to the concierge, who took it, looked mournfully at it, and clipped it. Then I was out in the sunlight again walking past the café tables, back towards the canal. I was trying desperately to think of some way to get back to David and the car without Byron’s seeing me. But the lovely gardens stretched ahead of me, open as a chessboard, and then there were the long, straight streets … I began to hurry; if only the concierge would keep him … but he must have squared the old man somehow, for I had hardly gone fifty yards towards the canal when I heard his step behind me, and he said:
‘Just a minute. Please.’
I turned to face him.
‘Look,’ I said, pleasantly, casually, ‘it’s been very pleasant meeting you, and thank you for the cigarette. But I must go now. Goodbye.’
I turned to go, but he was at my elbow again.
‘I just wanted to ask you—’
I tried to freeze him – to act as if I thought this was just the usual pick-up, and to get away before he could ask any more questions.
‘Please allow me to go,’ I said icily. ‘I prefer to go alone, as I said to you before.’
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘I’m afraid I—’
‘You said you knew a boy called David Shelley.’ He was scowling down at me, and his voice had an edge that I by no means liked. Against this direct attack I felt helpless, and in spite of myself, panic started to creep over me again. I wanted time to think – to think what to do, what to say. ‘Where did you see him?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ I must have sounded feeble, but I could only stall weakly for time.
‘I know him,’ he said shortly. ‘If he’s hereabouts, I’d like to look him up. He’s – he’s the son of an old friend. He’d want to see me.’
Like hell he would, I thought, hiding away like a panic-stricken rabbit in the church, poor little kid.
I said: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t really know him.’
I could see people approaching up the long flight of steps from the gardens below, and I felt better. He could hardly detain me, make a scene, when there were people there. When they reached us I would break away from him, move off with them, lose myself among the other tourists …
I looked candidly into Richard Byron’s angry grey eyes: ‘I only met him casually on a sight-seeing trip – the way I met you. I couldn’t tell you where he’s staying.’
‘When was this?’
‘Two days ago.’
‘Where?’ The question was quiet, but somehow I could sense behind it some intolerable strain. I was reminded sharply again of David.
‘In Tarascon,’ I said, at random, some memory of the morning’s encounter with the bus no doubt still in my mind. The people were nearly up the steps now, were pausing on a landing to look back at the view. …
‘Whereabouts in Tarascon? Did he say if he was staying there?’
‘No. I told you I didn’t know. I only met him for a short time when we were looking at—’ Panic flooded me for a moment. What was Tarascon? What did one look at in Tarascon? I plunged on a certainty – ‘At the Cathedral.’
I heard him take in his breath in a long hiss and looking up I saw his eyes narrowing on me in a look that there was no mistaking. It was not imagination this time to see violent intentions there. If ever a man looked murder at anyone, Richard Byron looked it at me on that bright afternoon between the flaming beds of flowers in the gardens of Nîmes.
Then the little group of tourists was round us, and I turned to go with them. Anywhere, so long as I was among people, safe in a crowd, safe from the danger of betraying David to this hard-eyed man who stood in the sunlight looking like murder.
‘Why, hallo,’ said a soft American voice. ‘Didn’t I see you before – down at the bull-ring? Kind of a quaint l’il place, isn’t it? Where’s yuh li’l boy?’
It was the woman who had picked up my bag. She smiled charmingly at me, but my mouth felt stiff. I just looked at her.
‘Mom,’ came a plaintive voice, ‘Hi, Mom! Can yuh fix this film for me?’
She smiled at me again, and hurried towards Junior, who was wrestling with his Kodak at a café table. I started to follow, but a hand closed round my wrist, and gripped it hard.
‘Just a minute,’ said Richard Byron again.
He pulled me round to face him. I turned as if I were a wax doll – I had no more resistance. His grip was hurting my wrist, and he pulled me close to him. The group of tourists, self-absorbed and chattering, moved by, paying no attention. He drew me behind a group of statuary.
‘Let me go!’
‘So you were in the Arena today with a boy?’
‘Let go my wrist or I’ll call the police!’
He laughed, an ugly little laugh. ‘Call away.’
I bit my lip, and stood dumb. The police – the questions – my papers, my car – and I still had to get quietly out of Nîmes with David. Richard Byron laughed again as he looked down at me.
‘Yes, you’d be likely to call the police, wouldn’t you?’ His grip tightened, and I must have made a sound, because his mouth twisted with satisfaction before he slackened his hold. ‘Now, where’s this boy you were with?’
I couldn’t think. I said, stupidly: ‘She’s mistaken. He wasn’t with me. I was just talking to him. It wasn’t David.’
He sneered at me.
‘Still lying? So you were just talking to him, were you? The way you talked to David Shelley in the Cathedral at Tarascon?’
I nodded.
‘Would it surprise you to be told,’ said David’s father, ‘that Tarascon is a small and dirty village whose main claim to fame is a castle on the Rhône? And that, though I suppose there must be one, I have never even seen a church there?’
I said nothing. I might have known. Johnny always said I was a rotten liar.
‘And now, damn you,’ said Richard Byron, ‘take me to David.’
And he pulled my arm through his own, and led me towards the steps.
He did not speak as we went down the long shallow flight of stone steps to the lower gardens, and I was grateful for the chance to think. Why he was acting like this I could not imagine, and I did not intend to waste time thinking about it yet. I must think of nothing but how to shake him off, and get out of Nîmes and back to Avignon without his following me or seeing David.
One thing was certain, I thought, remembering the boy’s panic-stricken flight from the Arena on hearing his father’s voice, David was mortally afraid of meeting his father. So all that mattered for the moment was that David should get away. If only he had told me then, we could have left Nîmes straight away. And after meeting Richard Byron, I knew that, sooner than let him get his hands on David, I’d murder him myself.
I stole a glance at his profile, with its expression of brooding bitterness, and the unpleasant set to the mouth. Then I remembered, with a queer cold little twist of the stomach, what Mrs. Palmer had said.
‘He must have been mad … they ought to have locked him up … he must be mad!’
Panic swept over me again, and at the same time a queer sense of unreality that I believe does come to people when they are in fantastic or terrifying situations. This could not be happening to me, Charity Selborne; I was not walking along the canal-side in Nîmes, Provence, with my arm gripped in that of a man who might be a murderer. A man who had hurt me and cursed me, and looked as if he would like to kill me. These things didn’t happen … my mind spiralled stupidly; I wonder if Johnny thought it couldn’t be happening to him, when he came down o
ver France with his wings in flames …?
‘Well?’ said Richard Byron.
He had paused at the corner leading to the Arena, and looked down at me.
I said nothing, and his brows came down sharply into a scowl.
‘Well?’ he repeated with the sneer in his voice. ‘You beautiful little bitch, what about it?’
Then suddenly, gloriously, I was angry. Someone once described it as a ‘chemically useful reaction’; I believe it is. At any rate, my mind cleared at that moment and I forgot to be afraid of him, madman or no. And I knew what to do.
I looked up the street that leads to the Arena, and saw, parked at the extreme end of it, a big grey car, and I remembered Loraine’s panicky whisper … ‘A big grey car with a GB plate …’ I looked the other way towards the square; there was a bus standing there, and I could see its destination: MONTPELLIER.
Then I put a hand to my eyes, and my lip quivered.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I was lying to you, but you frightened me, and I wanted to get away. I was with David Shelley in the Arena.’
His arm moved sharply under mine.
‘That’s better. Where is he now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Now look here, my girl—’
I shook my head impatiently: ‘Can’t you see I’m telling the truth now? He didn’t want to go up to the Tour Magne with me. He went off on his own.’
‘Where are you meeting him again?’
I hesitated, and I could feel him tensing.
‘In the square,’ I said reluctantly. Oh, David, I prayed, if it doesn’t work, forgive me!
‘When?’
‘In time for the bus. You’re making me late.’
He whirled round, his eyes on the square. There was no sign of David.
‘The Montpellier bus,’ I said sulkily.
His eyes showed his satisfaction.
‘That’s the Montpellier bus standing there now,’ he said. ‘When does it go?’
I peered towards it, screwing up my eyes. ‘Is it? Yes, it is.’ I saw the drivers standing about in the sun, as if they had all the time in the world, and once again I took a chance. ‘It goes in about ten minutes.’ Then I looked up at him, and my eyes really did swim with tears. ‘And now, please may I go? I – I’m sorry if I annoyed you, but you scared me so.’
