by Jane Arbor
‘If I may.’ The dogs were ordered to sit, which they did with well-bred obedience, and as Maryan stood aside for her, Ninon Barbe introduced herself. ‘You will have guessed who I am—Ninon Barbe. And you’—her glance measured Maryan—‘will be Raoul’s young English protegee, won’t you? But with a French name—Valois? ... Vaune?—There, how stupid of me to forget it!’
‘Vaile. Maryan Vaile. My father was French and came from this region,’ Maryan supplied, not caring very much for the patronage of ‘protegee.’ ‘I’m sorry Mademoiselle Leduc isn’t in. Perhaps you could leave a message for her,’ she added.
‘Willingly, if you would pass it on. It’s a question of her car. Too absurd, that a place like La Domaine should have only a double garage—room for my car and for just one guest’s—Raoul’s, for instance, when he comes over! But there it is, making it very inconvenient for Lois to continue to keep hers there. So if you would tell her I’d like her to make some other arrangement, I’d be very grateful. Perhaps she could manage with one of the stables, though I shall be needing two of the loose-boxes for my mares. Or’—a glance from under Ninon’s lashes invited Maryan’s agreement—‘between you and me, would you say that museum-piece of hers would come to much harm, supposing it stood out in the open for the rest of its natural life?’
Maryan thought it best not to be drawn on the subject of the Renault’s decrepitude. She said noncommittally, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll ask Mademoiselle Leduc about it when she comes in, Madame Barbe.’
‘Thank you. And—“Ninon”, please. We’re to be neighbours, aren’t we, while you are here? How long is that to be, and you are doing—just what? Raoul did say—’
Maryan explained, telling as much as she had told anyone who had asked about her job, and seeing Ninon’s eyes glaze a little with lack of interest before she had finished. She cut the recital short. ‘I may be here for several weeks,’ she said finally.
‘Really? But how fortunate for you that the Leducs—Raoul and Lois—have taken you up! You hadn’t known either of them earlier, had you?’ Ninon queried lazily.
Maryan’s eyelids dropped, lifted. ‘No,’ she lied. ‘I met Monsieur Raoul Leduc by chance when I was looking for somewhere to stay, and his sister needed a paying guest. He introduced me to her; she agreed to take me, and that was that.’
‘A very happy outcome for you, one hopes.’ Ninon paused, then uttered a small, light laugh which to Maryan’s ears didn’t ring as quite true amusement.
‘What?’ she asked bluntly of the laugh, and Ninon at once repudiated it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she claimed. ‘It was simply that your “by chance” has such a familiar sound in relation to Raoul Leduc, that was all. No! No, please’— she lifted a hand, checking Maryan’s interruption—’spare the details of your meeting with him, for one has almost certainly heard it all before. But perhaps—just a small hint which you won’t take amiss? Namely that, from my experience of Raoul, if a chance to pick up a pretty girl doesn’t offer, he will make one—only, one fears, to drop her as easily when it suits him. So very unwise, therefore, to count on any serious intent from him—you see?’
This, from one stranger to another at a first meeting! With difficulty Maryan kept her tone bland as she asked, ‘But what suspect intention do you suggest I could have read into the arrangement Monsieur Leduc was good enough to make for me?’
‘Why, none, of course!—if you are as sensible as you look, which I’m sure you are.’ Ninon’s smile softened her expression disarmingly as she added, ‘I should have thought before I spoke. I’ve misread the whole thing, evidently. After all, Raoul wouldn’t have introduced you to his sister, would he, if—? For one knows, doesn’t one, that men don’t, when—?’
She had the grace to break off there and was ready to leave after confirming that Maryan would pass her message to Lois.
‘And you must both, I insist, come to my housewarming party,’ she added on her way out. ‘As soon as I’m settled; probably next week; I’ll let you know.’
She gathered the dogs’ leash, then turned to study Maryan, a slight frown creasing her forehead.
‘Vaile—’ she murmured. ‘Vaile—you did say that was your surname?’
Maryan confirmed. ‘Vaile. Yes. Why?’
The smooth brow cleared. ‘Nothing. Just one of those things. You know—how one hears casually of a name or a place, only to find one’s attention caught by it again quite soon? But no; the name I had in mind wasn’t yours. It was something like it, but different—’
With which a hand was lifted in au revoir, the dogs were urged ahead, and Maryan was left to reflect that between Lois’s prejudice and her own first reaction to their neighbour there was little enough to choose.
And absurd though it was to read any real malice into Ninon’s minor cut-and-thrust, with a little gooseflesh shiver of distaste, Maryan knew that she had done just that.
CHAPTER THREE
As was to be expected, Lois flatly rejected Ninon’s offer of a stable for the Renault, grudgingly accepting instead the log carport which Raoul sent woodsmen from the estate to erect beside the Pavilion. He had no success, however, in persuading her to attend Ninon’s housewarming when the invitation to it came.
Not very fairly, Maryan thought, he took her to task over Lois’s refusal.
‘It’s the kind of problem I hoped might be solved by your joining Lois,’ he said.
Maryan agreed, ‘I realise that. But it’s not so easy. You told me yourself of the lack of sympathy there is between her and Madame Barbe, and if she has set her face firmly against accepting, what can I do about it?’
‘You could point out that, Ninon having made the first friendly move, she has no right to turn her down for no reason at all but blind prejudice.’
Maryan shook her head. ‘I don’t know Lois well enough yet to dictate to her on those lines. I gather she feels she has no obligations to Madame Barbe, and has no intention of accepting hospitality she doesn’t mean to return.’
‘She has obligations to me, as a friend of Ninon’s!’ Raoul retorted.
‘Maybe. But as the outsider I am, I couldn’t possibly use that as an argument. It’s a matter between you and her,’ Maryan said firmly.
Raoul tilted a glance at her. ‘So—opting out from our bargain, are you?’ he hinted.
‘I made no bargain with you!’
‘What then? A gentlemen’s agreement? You’ll admit to that at least?’
Maryan agreed reluctantly, ‘I promised you I would do what I could. But that was in the dark of having only met Lois once, and you yourself advised me to go slowly with her.’
‘Meaning you are finding it harder going than you expected?’
‘I’ve told you—I didn’t know what to expect.’
‘But you agreed to try. Why?’
She wondered what his reaction would be if she told him, ‘Because you asked it of me,’ or ‘Because it promised a thread of contact with you that I hadn’t the courage to break.’ She said instead, ‘I suppose I hoped it might be easier than it has proved so far. For one thing, I think you are wrong that Lois has any curiosity about me, and for another, she allows me to see so little of her. And when we do talk, usually before our very early bedtime, it’s only of trivialities, everyday things, nothing personal at all.’ She paused as a thought struck her. ‘I suppose I could try suggesting to Lois that I don’t care much for going to the party by myself?’
‘In the hope of shaming her into enough conscience towards you to agree to play chaperon? I doubt it. If the two of you are still at the distance you say, she’d probably tell you, “Go or stay—please yourself”, and I may add that, for no other reason than shyness, I’m not having you snub Ninon too.’
‘But I shan’t know anyone there,’ Maryan pointed out.
‘Which isn’t true. You know your hostess. You know me. That’ll do for a start. After all, what is a party for, if not for making contacts with strangers, with the gift-wrapped chanc
e that at this instant in time, one may be going to meet one’s romantic fate? No, I hope you’ll show Ninon the common courtesy of accepting. Will you?’
‘If you think I should.’
‘Good. I’ll call for you and take you along myself.’ While they talked they were standing beside his car, and as he took his seat Raoul added, ‘And what would you like me to pick for you from the evening’s lucky dip? A wealthy tycoon type? Or a prince incognito? Or a cosy Monsieur Slippers-by-the-Fire? Not that Ninon keeps many of the latter in her orbit. But I’ll do my best to please. Or won’t you trust my judgment for you?’
‘As long as your introductions are open-ended, and you aren’t trying to organise my “romantic fate”, I daresay I can,’ Maryan told him coolly.
‘Which latter service you’d regard as even more officious than my Lois-interested campaign to find you a lodging?’
‘Much more, I’m afraid.’
‘Blatant matchmaking, in fact? And supposing I asked you whether you find yourself already “suited”, as one says, that would be impertinent of me too?’
‘Well, wouldn’t it? Just about as impertinent as if I asked you the same question and expected to be told the truth.’
‘And so you’re not asking it?’
‘No.’
He grinned provocatively. ‘What a pity, when the truth is there for the asking—namely that I’d rather not commit myself to choosing the contents until I’ve made a survey of all the more attractive gift wrapping on offer.’
‘I see. Then I suppose one must hope for you that your final choice in the matter of contents is going to appreciate the favour of being chosen? But supposing it doesn’t?’
‘Ah well, one has to risk that. An occupational hazard, as it were. But’—he allowed his eyes to widen in exaggerated shock—‘the unattainable, out of reach of a Leduc who is really trying? Why, the very suggestion is enough to set all my shrouded ancestors turning in their graves!’ With which he flicked the engine switch and the car shot away, leaving Maryan with only the small pride of having, she hoped, played the nonsense of the exchange as lightly as he had—giving flippancy for flippancy; daring any of it to hurt.
As it happened, that few minutes of their pause outside the Pavilion prompted Lois to an unusual interest in what they had been discussing, and was to offer Maryan her first invitation to Lois’s confidence.
Maryan told her she had agreed to attend Ninon’s housewarming party and that Raoul had promised to escort her, facts which Lois acknowledged with an indifferent nod, though adding sourly, ‘Not that you should count on seeing much of him when you get there. She will see to that, and he will let her! ‘
Maryan queried mildly, ‘You mean Ninon will claim him? Well, he has promised to introduce me to other people, and I can hardly grudge him to his hostess, can I?’
‘His—hostess!’ There was a world of scornful innuendo in Lois’s tone. ‘Hostess to him, yes, for this evening or that of public showing. But what she is to him, or schemes to be, now that she is free, who knows? Though not too difficult to guess And “business affairs”? Oh yes, one hears that while she was waiting to be rid of old Hercule Barbe, she learned to be as shrewd in money matters as he. But what business that she couldn’t conduct from Limoges or Bayonne could bring her to La Domaine? Her father dead, his business sold, she has had no foothold hereabouts for years. No, one must look elsewhere—and not too far—for her reasons for returning and as to how she bewitched Raoul into allowing her the house, knowing full well the insult to me, the—the affront!’
Maryan listened in dismay. This, she felt, was the dangerous ground of calumny, and wanting no part in it, she did her best to turn its edge.
‘But hasn’t he said he did that because he didn’t want it to stand empty any longer?’ she queried.
‘Which it needn’t for a day, if he understood his duty!’ Lois retorted. ‘But who could expect that of him, when he had shown as little as he decently could towards Maman through her illness? Nurses, he demanded for her! Nurses! Professionals!—when Maman was his responsibility and mine, and she had me to care for her until her last breath. Ah no, all he wanted was to ease his conscience of Maman by handing her over to strangers!’
‘Your mother was an invalid for a very long time?’
‘For over seven years.’
‘And you looked after her by yourself?’ That must have taken a lot of your time and attention?’
‘All of it. I dropped friends, interest, music. But what of that? I knew my duty, if Raoul did not.’
‘Yet afterwards, since you have begun to get over your loss, you haven’t wanted to take up threads again—your music, for instance? Your old friends? Or make new ones?’
Lois shrugged indifferently. ‘New friends call for effort. Old ones, in seven years, move on and away. They marry, have children and—forget.’
Maryan prompted gently, ‘But isn’t it rather a pity to feel convinced of that? Some of them, surely, must remember you and be there for you still?’ There was a moment of silence while Lois looked emptily into space—her inner eye fixed on whatever scene or particular figure had rejected her? Then she said harshly, ‘None that I know of. None, at least, who once cared for me and don’t any more. Nor I for them—now. As for the nonsense of my amateur music—that is well behind me now, and will stay there!’
‘Amateur?’ Maryan echoed. ‘Yet I understood from your brother that you were as highly skilled as any professional? The guitar is your instrument, isn’t it? Do you own one still?’
“Yes. It is in my room. In its case, where it will remain.’
Maryan shook her head. ‘Do you know, I didn’t think it was possible to deny a talent one had once had; to reject it for good like that?’
‘You should remember your parables better,’ Lois returned drily. ‘A talent kept under a bushel for long enough dies for want of air. As mine has, long since, and I’ve no wish to revive it now.’
‘You mean that, supposing you hear the old songs of the region played or sung now, your fingers don’t itch to join in or to play them better? As for myself, up to date, I haven’t heard them at all, though I’m anxious to, and I’ve taken the names of some of them from the Museum—’
‘Names? Such as—?’ It was Lois’s first sign of even tepid interest, and Maryan snatched at it. Eagerly she quoted, ‘Let’s see—“Cadichonne.” “Calicots.” “Pont de Bordeaux.”
‘Ah yes. The market-songs of the Bordelais.’
‘You know them? The words and their tunes?’
‘Those and others. There is a Cadichonne dance too, for fete-days.’ As if involuntarily Lois hummed a bar or two of music, then broke off and stood up. ‘But no, I have forgotten them. You must go into the streets on the next holiday and hear them for yourself.’
It was her dismissal of the subject, but Maryan felt slightly encouraged to broach it again.
She shopped in Bayonne for something to wear at Ninon Barbe’s party, choosing a cocktail suit of maroon and silver corded silk. Afterwards she repaired to her favourite bench under the trees on the ramparts and was eating her picnic lunch there before going on to the Museum when she recognised one of two men strolling her way. The one she knew was the clerk in Maitre Druot’s chambers, who had importuned her that first day, and she saw he had also recognised her when, halting short of her bench, he spoke a few words to his companion, causing the other man to walk on without him. He came over, gesturing for permission to join her. Reluctantly she moved the precious carton containing her suit in order to make room for him, and he sat down.
This time he introduced himself by name. ‘Georges Tissot. I see you remember me, mademoiselle. I am flattered! And you are still with us in Bayonne?’
‘Not in Bayonne.’
‘Not? Where then?’
‘In the country.’ Unguardedly she added, ‘At Peyrolle, in fact.’
‘Peyrolle? You have been there ever since you visited Maitre Druot, mademoiselle?’
&nbs
p; ‘Yes, ever since.’
‘Really? But one thought—? That is, how long do you plan to stay there, may one ask?’
Though she was tempted to the snub direct of ‘One may not,’ Maryan answered more obliquely, ‘I can’t say for certain, but as long as my business keeps me here.’
She met the calculation in his unattractive eyes. He nodded, ‘Ah yes. Of course. Your business—one understands. And afterwards you will be consulting us again, perhaps?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’ Not getting the drift of his questions at all, she made a business of brushing crumbs from her lap and returning her luncheon napkin to her satchel. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me?’ she said, standing.
He stood too, a detaining hand on her arm. ‘You are not leaving, mademoiselle? You will let me offer you a drink? Or coffee?’
She shook off the hand. ‘No, thank you. I must go.’ She glanced across to the shade of another tree. ‘And your friend is waiting for you, I think, isn’t he?’
Georges Tissot’s glance followed hers. He muttered angrily, ‘Psst, that type! I told him—’ But what he had said to the other man in order to be rid of his company, Maryan did not wait to hear. Taking the opposite direction from theirs, she sped away, trusting that by whatever laws chance worked, they wouldn’t contrive to put Maitre Druot’s clerk in her path again. Twice was quite enough. Three times would be too many.
Late social hours were the order of the warm Midi, and Lois had already gone to her room for the night when Raoul called to take Maryan to the party.
Frank now with herself that she wanted him to find her attractive, she took pleasure in dressing for him and was rewarded by his appraisal of her when she went to join him in Lois’s living-room.
Was it abject to have worked so hard to earn his glance of seeming approval of her, head to toe? Perhaps it was. For if all Lois said of his conquests were true, how many of his escorted women would his connoisseur’s eye have looked over in just that same way, judging for or against the effect they had created for him and for the hour? That made her one of their company now. But for the moment—for this moment of his looking at her and appearing to like what he saw—this was enough ... almost. Though even this she knew she would have traded willingly for just one questioning gleam in the look that would have shown thought was at work, remembering the girl of five years ago ...
