Wildfire Quest

by Jane Arbor

  His eyes widened. They were the warm brown of almonds, she confirmed before she looked away. ‘Really? Too bad,’ he commented equably. ‘So now, what plans have you when you leave here?’

  She supposed she owed it to him. ‘I found one other place myself,’ she admitted. ‘But I didn’t take it definitely. I said I’d think about it. Because for one thing’—her lips twitched with amusement at the memory—‘I’d have to share the bathroom with a full-grown Alsatian, who is kennelled there and is locked into it every night. A Madame Pinet, just off the Place.’

  Raoul Leduc threw up a hand. ‘Madame Pinet? Mon dieu, you can’t go there! That Alsatian of hers is the very least of it; you’d be sharing every meal with three cats at your elbow on the table, not to mention the bevies of hamsters she keeps in cardboard boxes on the kitchen floor. Pigeons too. No, I’ve a much better suggestion to make if you’ll consider it. When I tell you what it is, will you?’ he asked.

  Maryan wished he wouldn’t tilt his head like that. She found it disarming ... To his question she said cautiously, ‘I don’t know. I can’t promise. What is it?’

  He fingered the stem of his wineglass, then looked boldly at her. ‘That for whatever time you are here, you should go and share the Pavilion with my sister,’ he said.

  Maryan’s jaw dropped. ‘But that’s absurd! How could I? Mademoiselle Leduc couldn’t possibly want me!’

  He nodded, the brown eyes serious now. ‘You have a point there, and I agree that consciously Lois doesn’t want you or anyone. She could also claim she has a right to her own eccentricities. But the thing goes deeper and further than that. You’ve seen her; heard her; doesn’t it jump to the eye, as they say?’

  ‘I was only there for a very few minutes. Why should it?’ Maryan evaded.

  ‘I’d have thought—from the evidence of that room; her truculence with us both; her very appearance—’

  Maryan shook her head. ‘You couldn’t expect me to judge her on that. You mean—she is lonely?’

  ‘Not lonely in the ordinary sense. In fact, she’d go to the stake to prove she isn’t. But alone, withdrawn from life—disastrously. Listen’—his wineglass thumped the table for emphasis—‘Lois is only thirty-five; five years my senior, and look at her! Crabbed, critical, in hiding—old!’

  ‘Though surely with some cause? How long has she been so?’ Maryan asked, involved against her will.

  ‘Since we lost our mother, and since she and I agreed to part company. Maman was an invalid, and Lois had nursed her for years before she died—’

  ‘And was naturally bereft when she did lose your mother?’

  ‘Rather—bereft of the care she had lavished on Maman, who was a very difficult patient towards the end. The door of her cage suddenly opened, Lois refused to leave.’

  The daughter, tied by duty to a demanding parent; the parent with an unalienable right to loving care—how often and how poignantly it happened! Her sympathy very real now, Maryan said, ‘Yes, I understand. But as you yourself weren’t married, couldn’t she have found some satisfaction from acting as your chatelaine instead?’

  ‘We tried it for a time. It didn’t work. We are two different people, wanting different things of life, and when I chose to live my own, I hoped to free Lois to live and widen hers. Instead she chose a hermit existence in the Pavilion, and you’ve seen the result. It is time she was prised out of it, and how better to do it than to force someone on her on whom she has to exercise some time and care?’

  Maryan protested, ‘But you can’t force her to take a paying guest against her will!’

  There was a small pause. ‘I don’t have to force her. She has agreed to take you,’ Raoul said. ‘I went back to see her last night.’

  ‘I don’t believe it! Look at how she reacted even to your suggestion that she might help me in my work!’

  ‘Ah, but that was before I used some—er— leverage on her.’

  ‘Leverage?’ Maryan didn’t care for the word. ‘Of what kind?’

  ‘Just the suggestion that my new tenant, Madame Barbe, might press for the use of the Pavilion, and that in certain circumstances I might agree to let her have it.’

  ‘The circumstances being your sister’s refusal to take me? You couldn’t carry out a threat like that. Why, it’s blackmail!’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t carry it out. That’s what makes it leverage, not blackmail. But it worked.’

  ‘And you expect me to accept, knowing you had put Mademoiselle Leduc under that kind of duress to take me? No. Thank you, monsieur, but I’m sorry—’

  Maryan pushed aside her glass and rose, and Raoul made no effort to stop her. But as she moved out from behind the table he hooked an arm over the back of his chair and twisted to look up at her.

  ‘You need somewhere to lodge while you’re here,’ he said conversationally.

  ‘I’ll find somewhere. I can always go to Madame Pinet’s.’

  ‘And supposing that Alsatian chooses to hog all the hot water, what then?’

  If she hadn’t been so outraged, Maryan would have been tempted to laugh. As it was, her lips twitched as she retorted, ‘There are still other places. Even other villages than Peyrolle.’

  ‘But you chose Peyrolle. You said so. Look—’ He was standing too now, and he caught at her wrist, ‘Just one minute more; two perhaps. Sit down again and listen, will you?’

  She did not sit, but she stayed, facing him as, serious now, he said earnestly,

  ‘Just this. I needn’t have taken you to see Lois yesterday. I needn’t have made you free of her history. I needn’t have put pressure on her to accept you. But I did, from some instinct that you could do something for each other. She for you—merely to give you the lodging you need. You for her— more than that. Even more, perhaps, than by your being there, needing a bed and a bath and regular meals. Because it could be, don’t you think, that she might react in time rather differently from the way she repulsed you yesterday?’.

  Maryan looked at him doubtfully. ‘You mean—my job being what it is, I might be able to arouse again the interest in folk-music that she denied yesterday?’

  ‘If you didn’t try too hard or too obviously—yes. In fact, though she wouldn’t admit it, I sense that she is mildly curious already about you. Worth taking it from there, would you say?’

  Maryan bit her lip, wavering for the first time; realised he knew it, and gave in.

  ‘If you think it is,’ she agreed. ‘And if I can believe you’ve engineered it for your sister’s sake, rather than your being over-officious for mine!’

  The brown eyes laughed. ‘As long as I have bent you to my will and you stay bent, does it matter?’ he parried. ‘Your coat—Where is your luggage?’

  ‘There’s only a duffle-bag and a vanity case. I left them in the hall.’

  ‘Then to horse, to horse. What are we waiting for?’

  (And what have I done? thought Maryan as he led the way out to his car. When the crunch came, couldn’t I bear to lose touch? Was that it? Was it?)

  On the way Raoul remarked, ‘You know, there’s something else you may be able to do for Lois—play buffer-state between her and Ninon Barbe, our new tenant.’

  ‘Why should they need a buffer-state?’

  ‘Oh, come! You heard Lois on the subject of Ninon. Sheer prejudice, but when you meet Ninon yourself, you may realise why she makes as many enemies of women as she attracts men. Through no fault of her own either. Just the way her magnetism works. So I look to you to keep the peace as far as you can.’ He sent a swift smile at Maryan. ‘You must admit I’ve done some good thinking for Lois since yesterday! But there’s something else still—’

  They had reached the gates of the house now, and when he returned to the car after opening and closing them, Maryan prompted, ‘What else?’

  ‘A confession I needn’t make, but I will. You haven’t guessed why those mesdames I sent you to all refused you a room?’

  ‘They said they were full up,’ Mar
yan said carefully.

  ‘And you believed them? In each case, you had mentioned my name?’

  ‘Yes, though without result. I was still politely shown the door.’

  ‘Ah, but that was the result I had in view!’ His smile widened to a deprecatory grin. ‘I did warn you this was a confession of intrigue!’

  ‘And so—?’ Maryan invited coldly.

  ‘Well, that was your identity-tag, so to speak. As soon as you used my name, they weren’t to have a room to offer you, I’d told them.’

  ‘You had told them?’

  He nodded. ‘I had a busy evening—going back to the Pavilion; calling on all the pensions in Peyrolle, though I admit I missed Madame Pinet; describing you at each of them—’

  ‘Describing me? How?’

  The look which travelled over her was over-bold, but had no memory in it. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I threw in the reference to me for good measure, to make quite sure you would be refused.’

  Maryan worked it out. ‘You mean—you didn’t want me to find anywhere to stay? Why not?’

  ‘Obvious, surely? I was already hatching my own plan—this one.’

  ‘Then why did you give me those names and addresses at all?’

  ‘I needed to buy a little time to get it organised. And perhaps I hoped you would be impressed by my eager goodwill.’

  Still rather out of her depth, though aware of a small relief that she had apparently been wrong about the cause of her rejection by those landladies, Maryan retorted, ‘I’m much more—and not very favourably—impressed by your double-dealing. With your sister. With me. With— Do you always try to—to manoeuvre people your way like that?’

  He edged the car forward, letting it gather a little speed. ‘I’m not a Leduc for nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Not a Leduc? What do you mean?’

  ‘Our family motto—“Nous cherchons l’inaccessible. Neanmoins ...” ’

  Though she understood, for some reason Maryan translated aloud into English, ‘ “We seek the unattainable. Nevertheless ...” ’ She frowned, puzzled. ‘Nevertheless— What comes after that?’

  ‘Nothing comes after that. “We seek the unattainable. Nevertheless ... That’s all there is.’

  ‘Meaning you still contrive somehow to achieve the unattainable? Is that what it is supposed to mean?’

  ‘We’ve always read it so. Neat, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Neat! As a sentiment—why, it’s pure arrogance!’

  ‘What of it? As a spur, it has proved its worth for a good many generations, and on present showing, still can,’ Raoul countered unanswerably as he drew up at the Pavilion and handed Maryan out of the car.

  A week later the pattern of her days was fairly well set.

  She always rose earlier than Lois, who frequently did not dress until mid-morning, Maryan gathered, though by that time she herself had left the house. Being shy of making any local contacts before she knew more of her subject, she regularly took the bus into Bayonne and spent the morning at the Basque Museum, delving into the history of the region. After a picnic lunch or a drink and a snack in a cafe-bar, she either returned to the Museum library or explored Bayonne, getting the feel of the city, eavesdropping on its life. She travelled back to Peyrolle in the late afternoon and in the evening she wrote up her notes more fully, took supper with Lois and either talked to her or listened to the radio until the early hour at which Lois chose to go to bed. Then, in duty bound, Maryan retired too. But the hot still nights called to her youth and she longed to be out in them, listening to night sounds, savouring night scents; walking, talking with someone ... a friend ... anyone she cared about. Or just enjoying the night hours alone; not wasting them prematurely in bed, letting them slip by.

  When she knew Lois a little better, she resolved, she would suggest they take a walk last thing. But for the moment Lois’s bedroom door closed firmly at half-past nine and perforce, since Lois made it clear that it was Lights Out in the living-room, Maryan’s door did the same.

  At least she was thankful that Lois was less obstructive than she had been at their first meeting. She was neither cordial nor openly hostile; the climate about her was negative. She seemed to have no hobbies; no women friends who ‘dropped in’. She shopped sketchily; in her larder there was frequently only the makings of that day’s meals, which were cooked unimaginatively and served and eaten at a speed which was a sheer affront to Maryan’s own healthy respect for food.

  When Lois sat at ease her hands folded emptily in her lap; so idle that it was hard to imagine them busy with the years-long care of an invalid or mischievously adroit on the strings of a guitar. What skills had they lost, and why had their owner allowed them to run to such seediness of effort now? Maryan wondered. But remembering Raoul’s advice to hasten slowly with Lois, she asked no questions yet, biding Lois’s time for confidences; a time which of course might never come.

  Nor did Lois evince to any degree the curiosity about Maryan which Raoul had claimed she felt. Her questions were desultory, her interest in the answers lacklustre. Maryan had to volunteer such information about herself as she felt she owed to anyone whose house she shared. At the end of that week Lois had learned about as much of her circumstances as she had told Raoul, and to neither of them had she mentioned the errand which had taken her to consult Maitre Druot.

  Though why hadn’t she? Was it that she was shy of admitting to either of them her share in the folly of her father’s pipe-dream? She thought not. She hadn’t deliberately held it back. It was simply that she had let it go unspoken, by default; an innocent omission which needn’t trouble her candour overmuch, so little concern had it now for anyone, least of all for the man in rightful possession of Feu-Follet—Raoul Leduc. And even in her own mind it had already begun to lose importance, as a dream, vivid enough by night, blurs and fades by morning—an outcome which Maitre Druot would surely approve, she knew.

  Meanwhile it was to take the advent of Raoul’s tenant to goad Lois from her usual apathy.

  For days there was a flurry of activity in and about the main house. Electricians and soft furnishers arrived to do their stint; the lawns were mown, the garden borders trimmed; indoor staff comprising a married couple and two resident maids were installed in time to receive the removal vans and to arrange the incoming furniture. Madame Barbe’s two dogs—a pair of Afghan hounds—arrived in advance of Madame herself, as did her glass cases of tropical fish. It was the delivery van of these latter, effectually blocking the passage of Lois’s ancient Renault up the drive one day, which evoked from her a fresh tirade against the new regime.

  ‘If the woman were Madame President herself, she could hardly cause more fuss!’ Lois raged. ‘What is she, after all? A purse-proud nouveau-riche merely by reason of a marriage of convenience, engineered by a scheming mother who hadn’t two brass sous to rub together. Yet she now lounges in a Nice appartement, while the daughter—! What Raoul could be thinking of, to make her free of La Domaine, I don’t know. Though no doubt she is currently the latest object of his interest, just as, before she married old Hercule Barbe, she was one of the earliest of his various petites amies. And, mon dieu, if one believes all one hears of his Bayonne set, there have been enough of them, all told!’

  (Not to mention one of whom you’ve never heard; one girl he once danced with, and teased, and kissed, and promptly forgot, thought Maryan, chilled.) Aloud she asked, though knowing the answer, ‘Then you’ve known Madame Barbe for some time?’

  ‘But of course—until she married and went to Limoges. Her father, Jules Gerard, was the local druggist, a very decent man. It was Madame Gerard who had ideas above the dispensary counter for Ninon. And one must allow, she succeeded in hooking Hercule Barbe for the girl—he then a widower in his middle fifties and she barely nineteen. That was about seven years ago. No children of the marriage. Simply an inherited fortune for Madame Widow to spend as she chooses. And what happens? At her whim and my own brother’s convenience, I, Lois Ledu
c, must witness her doing it on my very doorstep; in my parents’ house!’

  Behind the sour words there was a world of bitterness which Maryan had to pity. But perversely, she preferred Lois showing open animosity to Lois showing nothing at all. Lois roused to this degree of fight, even for false, cruel prejudice, was at least as alive as the one spark still glowing in a fire gone mostly to ash. And pure whimsy though that thought was, it afforded Maryan her first hope of the mission which she seemed to have allowed Raoul to entrust to her. Challenged, she knew she wanted to reach Lois ... to try to fuse again whatever spirit had died in her with the death of her mother. Though why it had died, perhaps even Lois did not know.

  Maryan’s own first meeting with Ninon Barbe was at the Pavilion at a time when Lois happened to be out. Madame Barbe arrived, walking both the tall Afghans on a double leash. As she came up the path, the dogs straining before her, Maryan at the open door was forcibly reminded of the kind of glossy advertisement which featured such canine aristocrats as extensions of the top-model quality of glamour which this woman undeniably had. The eye, caught first by the perfections of the dogs, was meant to travel on to the perfections of their owner. As Maryan’s eye did now, admitting, half against her will, the careless elegance of what it saw.

  The informality was in the open-necked yellow silk shirt with rolled-up sleeves, the chocolate-brown linen slacks, the thonged sandals on bare feet. The elegance was in the one-sided heavy swing of the burnished copper-coloured hair; in the studiedly lazy drop of eyelids; in the lack of obtrusive makeup, in the heavy rings which were no mere costume jewellery; in the willow-wand figure, slim as a boy’s. Unbidden, Raoul’s word for Ninon Barbe thrust itself to the forefront of Maryan’s mind—‘magnetic’ he had said of her—which her looks certainly were. And her voice, when she spoke, had cadences and a lilt with which Maryan knew jealously that her own, speaking French with an accent, could never match.

  Madame Barbe said, ‘I called to see Mademoiselle Leduc. Is she at home?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, but will you come in?’ Maryan invited.