by Jane Arbor
When he held her off from him and said, ‘You’ve been wondering when I’d make opportunity for that; bracing yourself for it, haven’t you?’ for a wild ecstatic moment she believed he had remembered her after all, and that he had intended his kiss as confirmation of whatever charm she had had for him that first time; picking up their story where it had left off. But something less tender than amused in his tone warned her of hoping too soon. Just as well, for with his echo of her hesitant question—‘Why should you think so?’ she was to see the empty hope die.
‘Why?’ He still sounded amused. ‘Because you’ve been warned that I’m someone to guard against, and you’re intrigued, that’s why! On all sides you’ll have heard what an opportunist I am—certainly from Lois in my hearing; probably from Ninon, who makes allowances—and not least on my own showing as an incorrigible rake. So what more natural than that you should wonder, “When me?”, though of course assuring yourself that in you I’d be meeting my Waterloo!’
Chilled, disappointed, she disclaimed, ‘I did nothing of the sort!’ then hastily amended, ‘That is, you’re entirely mistaken if you imagine I ever gave the—the situation a thought!’
‘Entendu! Entendu!’ His flattened hand made a soothing motion on the air. ‘Anyway, it’s over, out of the way. You can relax. Though who taught you how to kiss, dare one ask? For, whoever he was, in my view he didn’t know his job. You kiss like a schoolgirl ... mignonne!’
Whether or not he meant the endearment to temper the gibe, both took Maryan on the raw.
‘Really? You consider I lack practice, or aptitude, or both?’ she retorted.
‘Practice, without a doubt. Aptitude? Ah, that’s more tricky. Given the right man for you, you mightn’t need any tutoring; you’d know it all. Meanwhile, as I can only judge your skill on this bit of trial and error, I conclude you won’t be putting any ribbons in your hair for me? Right?’
‘Right. Shouldn’t I be rather foolish if I did, considering the competition you claim I’d have?’ she countered.
He nodded. ‘A good question—which modesty naturally forbids me to answer!’
‘Exactly. You mow them down, don’t you?’ she snapped. ‘However, as you say, since we’ve got our decks cleared of nonsense, presumably we know where we stand?’
‘For the moment, yes. We’re insulated. Though any time you feel in need of a romantic refresher course—?’
As he opened the door of the Pavilion and stood aside for her, his wry, conspiratorial grin was disarming enough. But her sore pride refused to let it beguile her. Just then all she wanted was to close the door on him, shutting him out.
CHAPTER FOUR
THAT night Maryan wondered how she could face Raoul again without embarrassment. But the mood was to pass, sent packing in time by the daylight sanity of accepting his provocative audacity at its face value.
For that was Raoul—the same Raoul who had once stated his male right to kiss a strange girl and call her ‘Darling’, and then, years later, to kiss another one—one of many?—on an equally flirtatious whim, meaning little enough by it, challenged by his belief she had been warned against him, and shrugging off his rejection with joking nonchalance designed to rub out the whole incident. And since that was the Raoul she had wishfully remembered, why should he have changed in five short years? And chance putting him in her way again, supposing he had changed, mightn’t she have felt cheated of a dream; cheated of the excitement— half pain, half ecstasy—of being captive to his charm again, reluctant of her own will to pass him by?
There was the difference between them too, that he didn’t know she was the girl he had kissed and then forgotten. To him she was just one more in the line of the many. He hadn’t known she could be hurt by being forgotten; he wasn’t to be blamed. And in the moment of forgiving him for being himself, she realised the eternal truth that, loving enough, you don’t try to patch or make-over; you accept—and go on loving.
He had promised to be in touch with her about their date for St. Jean de Luz, but before she saw him again, her chief wrote to announce his own arrival. He would be flying to Anglet, the airport for Bayonne, inviting her to meet him there and hoping she could arrange some accommodation for him in Peyrolle for the period of his stay.
Fortunately Madame Bresque of the Lion d’Or had had a cancellation by a motoring party, and with three of her rooms unexpectedly vacant, she agreed to Maryan’s booking one of them for Arnold Maddern; if only perhaps because, being a man, he could be expected to spend his quota at the bar, which apparently Maryan could not have done to Madame’s satisfaction.
Maryan liked Arnold. His demands were always reasonable; his dedication to their common work was stimulating and she had been looking forward to showing him as much as she had done with their subject so far. But it was with faint dismay that she realised he would expect to sample the St. Jean de Luz frairie with her—a somewhat de trop third to Raoul and herself. How was Raoul going to react to that? None too graciously, she surmised.
In fact, when she told him about Arnold, he was less ungracious than coolly practical, agreeing,
‘We’ll have to make a foursome of it—with another woman. I’ll rope in Ninon. She’ll affect to despise it as street-junketing she grew out of long ago. But if I put it to her that it’s an educational exercise we owe you, she’ll co-operate amiably enough.’
To Maryan’s jealous ears that ‘we’ ranged him in partnership with Ninon, and she saw her own promised tete-a tete with him dwindle to a mere ‘educational exercise’. But as obviously Arnold had to be included, she thanked Raoul and said she would be grateful if Ninon would square the party for them.
Meeting Arnold off his plane at Anglet, she was to realise that her description of him to Raoul as being nearer thirty than middle-aged had been more accurate than she knew. For Arnold, relaxed in bright shirt, well-cut twill trousers and tinted sunglasses, seemed to have shed years from the Arnold of the dark city suit and the functional horn-rims and the preoccupied air that she remembered. Even, she noted amusedly, his hair was slightly longer. Professor Arnold Maddern on a busman’s holiday was a chief she hardly recognized!
They greeted each other with pleasant eagerness. It had always been easy to talk shop with him, and this they did over the luncheon to which he took her by taxi in Bayonne. He allowed her to show off her knowledge of regional dishes by suggesting that she choose their menu, and they were enjoying their piperade—an omelette of peppers, tomatoes and Bayonne ham—when Ninon came into the dining-room with a man Maryan did not know. Passing their table, Ninon stopped, nodding to Maryan and glancing enquiringly at her companion. Maryan introduced Arnold. Ninon said to him, ‘Oh yes—aren’t you joining our party for St. Jean de Luz, escorting Maryan?’—a remark which, though it had no significance for Arnold, showed Maryan that Ninon had already decided how the party was going to arrange itself—as two sets of partners, rather than a quartet.
When the other two had moved on, Maryan explained to Arnold who Ninon was. He already knew how Maryan herself was placed in Peyrolle, and she went on to tell him more about Lois than she had done by letter. After their meal she showed him Bayonne and they browsed companionably in the Museum before taking the bus for Peyrolle. At the Lion d’Or Madame la patronne welcomed Arnold graciously, and when he had been shown to his room, Maryan took him to the Pavilion to introduce him to Lois.
They were talking as they neared the little house on foot. Suddenly Maryan halted, tilted her head in a listening attitude and touched Arnold on the arm, checking what he was saying.
‘Do you hear what I hear?’ she asked in a stage whisper.
‘What? Yes ... something. Music. Surely a guitar?’ he agreed after a moment.
‘And a voice. Well—humming. No—now she is singing words!’
They listened together. The playing stopped; the singing stopped ... began again, a different tune now, no words. Arnold looked at Maryan. ‘She?’ he queried. ‘Your hostess, you mean?’
‘Or whether this is the first time? What happens now? Do we go in and surprise her at it?’ Arnold asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Maryan hesitated, then decided, ‘I think not. I’d rather come round to the subject again in talk. Or perhaps you could when you do meet her. But if you don’t mind, I think we’d be tactful to creep away now, and I’ll ask Lois if I may invite you to lunch tomorrow instead, before we go to St. Jean de Luz. How’s that?’
‘I was hoping to persuade you to lunch with me,’ Arnold said.
Maryan thanked him. ‘Another day I’d love to. Though I warn you, you won’t lunch here very well. Lois isn’t much of a cook. Sometimes you’d think she’d only just heard about meals—the need to provide them seems to take her so much by surprise.’ Arnold laughed and they strolled back to the village. There, in the long evening shadows and mellow sunlight of the Place, they chanced upon a game of pelota about to begin and they sat on a low wall to watch it.
It brought back to Maryan memories of other matches she had watched, her excitement caught by the incredible agility and footwork of the players and the bullet-speed of the ball as it was kept in lightning-fast play by the wicker chisteras firing it back and back again for its impact on the fronton, the wall reserved for impromptu games of pelota in the Place of most Basque and Landais villages— the common man’s fives or squash-rackets and probably far older in origin than either.
It was here, on this Place, just by the very wall which she and Arnold had made their grandstand, that Maryan had met Raoul and had afterwards bought herself one of the hollow, hand-fitting chisteras as a memento of the night of that Bastille Day which Peyrolle was feteing. While they danced, she had told Raoul she wanted one. He had pointed out a booth where she could get one, but had teased her that it was a very tourist thing to do, and daring her to let a real pelota-player guess that, back in England, she would use it as a fruit-basket. But when he had moved on and away, she had bought one all the same. She had it still, though with some idea of placating his scorn, she had never used it for anything.
Arnold gave her dinner at the Lion d’Or and afterwards walked her back to the Pavilion in the late evening dusk. Anticipating Lois’s agreement, she asked him to lunch the next day. They would be going to St. Jean de Luz in Ninon’s big car, leaving in the late afternoon.
The luncheon—tinned vichysoisse soup which Lois hadn’t bothered to chill, a tough ragout, and entirely innocent of a sweet or savoury course—passed off less awkwardly than Maryan had expected it might. Neither she nor Arnold mentioned the guitar incident and Lois gave no sign of its having happened. But Maryan had the impression that in that very short time, Arnold had managed to establish more rapport with Lois than Maryan herself had achieved during her whole stay.
She had to admire Arnold’s finesse in pretending such ignorance of the region that Lois was virtually forced to put him right. Watching, and listening to Arnold tut-tutting in wonder over facts which Maryan knew he already had at his fingertips, she gave him full marks for his approach, though his master-stroke—his bland assumption that Lois was to be of the evening’s party—was to fail, quashed by Lois’s cold ‘I, monsieur? Do you suppose I need to travel a hundred kilometres to join in nonsense I tired of years ago?’ But as Arnold said hopefully to Maryan later, Lois hadn’t proved the complete clam, and she certainly had, hadn’t she, been playing that guitar?
Raoul was at the wheel of Ninon’s car, with Ninon beside him. She wore a silver grey trouser suit with a cape-hood which she drew over her remarkable hair as the car took to the open road. Maryan, in the back seat with Arnold, was in a sleeveless yellow dress with a matching coat. She had brought with her a headscarf, but she was not wearing it, revelling in the tear of the warm wind through her hair, streaming it behind her or capriciously whipping it across her face.
Once, when it whipped into Arnold’s eyes instead and she turned to him with a laughing, ‘I’m Sorry—!’ he said, ‘Don’t be. I don’t know that I’ve ever driven in a car with a Valkyrie before. It’s quite an experience!’ that was the unfamiliar, relaxed Arnold speaking, she realised. Such an apt bit of gallantry would never have occurred to him at his office desk. Once or twice during the drive she caught Raoul’s glance in the driving mirror. But each time, not fully at ease with him in Ninon’s company, she looked away.
They came into St. Jean de Luz as the sun was setting, lighting to flame the ochre sails of the tunny fishing-boats in the bay. The whole town was alive with the spirit of carnival; crowds pushed good-humouredly both ways along its narrow streets and every bar was full to overflowing on to its pavement space. The centre point of interest was the Place Louis XIV, named for the royal marriage in St. Jean de Luz of the Sun King and his Spanish bride. There, every building was floodlit, their outlines silhouetted against the sky, their facades strung with bunting, and almost every window showing a flag. Everywhere were booths, selling everything from the day’s catch of sardines to Basque honey; from trays of coloured balloons for bursting at the climax of the evening, to rope-soled espadrilles for ease of night-long dancing on cobbled streets and squares.
When they had parked the car, at Ninon’s suggestion that four abreast in such crowds was too many, they broke up for a while, making a rendezvous for supper at the restaurant of Raoul’s choice. The ‘break up’ naturally meant the two-and-two of Maryan with Arnold and Ninon with Raoul; Maryan had expected this.
She and Arnold had a drink in a bar, made a tour of some of the booths and watched some of the spontaneous dancing which, among groups of seemingly static people, appeared to erupt quite suddenly, to be abandoned later equally abruptly. Maryan recognized a sideways-executed polka as the Cap d’Ail and as the Peirotoun, a dance done wholly on the heels. There was singing too, and though the words were inaudible in the hubbub, she and Arnold both got flash shots of the dancers. Once, when Arnold moved away to get a better angle on a shot, he disappeared in the crowds and when he rejoined Maryan, there was a curiously blank look on his face.
‘What is it?’ she questioned the look.
He bit his lip, frowning. ‘Well—I don’t know. An odd thing—back there,’ he jerked his head across the Place, ‘I could swear I saw your landlady! Standing alone in the crowd, watching the dancing before she moved on and I lost sight of her.’
‘Lois? But that’s impossible. How could she be? You must be mistaken!’
Arnold agreed, ‘That’s what I should have said, if you claimed to have seen her. And perhaps I didn’t. Though is it so impossible? She has a car of her own, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes, but—Well, you heard her opinion of our coming. Besides, she has never been out anywhere at night in my whole experience of her,’ said Maryan.
‘Then I was probably mistaken. Meanwhile, do we mention it or not?’
‘To Raoul?’ Maryan hesitated. ‘Perhaps not. By which I mean, if you were mistaken, there’s no point, and if you weren’t, wouldn’t you say that her coming alone means that she would rather no one knew she had?’
‘You think she’d contrive to get back before us, and keep mum that she had been?’
‘Well, don’t you? If she wants me to know, she may tell me. But if she doesn’t—or she wasn’t here at all, then there’s no harm done. If she did come, for whatever reason, I wouldn’t have her think we had spied on her.’
They had just agreed on that when they were rejoined by the other two and Raoul suggested they adjourn for supper.
‘I’ve ordered you a typically Basque meal at the Maison Ecarte,’ he told Maryan. ‘The chef is attending to it personally, so even if you don’t recognise all of it, you’d better toy with it at least, if you aren’t to offend him mortally.’
Inevitably there was to be a pate stuffed with truffles followed by ttoro, a fish stew. The entree was local teal, the mai
n dish Basque chicken with asparagus; the cheese course was a choice of Roquefort and Larun ewe-cheese; the dessert an assortment of honey and nougat and marzipan gateaux. Raoul discussed his choice of wines knowledgeably and fastidiously with Ninon, only insisting that they be local, from Bearn or Jurancon, rather than anything more world-renowned.
It was while they were idling over their coffee that Raoul signalled to the girl who was circling the tables, selling carnival favours and souvenirs from her shoulder-hung tray. He pored over the tray for a few minutes, then selected something and passed it to Maryan. ‘Do you know what it is?’ he asked.
She did. ‘Isn’t it a miniature makhila—the cane carried by some of the characters in the Mascarade? I think they carve the actual canes in the living wood, before they cut the branch from the tree, don’t they?’ she queried.
‘What tree?’
‘The medlar, I think.’
‘Would you know a medlar if you saw one?’
‘Yes. They’re not very common in England, but they’re short-trunked and spreading, with white blossoms and glorious crimson foliage in autumn.’
Raoul pulled a face. ‘And an overrated fruit that’s strictly for the birds. However, go to the top of the class on local lore—’ Leaving the little carved cane with Maryan, he asked its price, then paused to finger something else on the girl’s tray. ‘Unless you’d prefer one of these?’ he offered.
‘One of these’ was an equally miniature pelota bat, and Maryan knew she flushed as she met his eyes across the table. ‘A chistera? No, I already have one, thank you—a full-sized one, not a miniature,’ she told him.
‘You’re bought one for yourself?’ He dropped the miniature back on the tray and paid the girl for the makhila.
‘Not this time,’ Maryan said. ‘You remember—I told you, I was once in the region before, and I bought one as a memento then.’
