Wildfire Quest

by Jane Arbor

  ‘Probably not. It is primarily Raoul’s affair.’

  ‘As, I’d have thought, you would have realised long since and have acted accordingly. It’s too late now to expect him to be—amused. However, at least you have been warned—’

  On her way to the door Ninon paused and turned. ‘Though I wonder—?’ she added, and paused again.

  ‘You wonder what?’ Maryan queried, out of her depth, needing time to think.

  ‘Well, just whether—’ Ninon had an air of working on her supposition as she went along—‘whether, in fact, your belated confession can do so very much harm to your relationship with Raoul?’

  ‘Just now you seemed concerned that it might,’ Maryan reminded her.

  ‘Yes, but since—That is, I did get the impression before he went away that his interest in you had cracked rather badly; that currently you weren’t, as one says, one of his favourite people. In which case, he may not give you the opportunity to explain yourself to him.’

  ‘If he doesn’t, I shall make one.’

  ‘I should sleep on that, if I were you—for several nights,’ Ninon advised.

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t need to,’ Maryan said with a finality which evidently even Ninon understood as dismissal.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LATER Maryan realised she ought to have pressed Ninon as to why she had made a point of confirming the part-truth of Georges Tissot’s gossip, only to urge that the story shouldn’t reach Raoul. Of one thing Maryan felt she could be pretty certain—that the advice had stemmed from some motive other than mere disinterested kindness. But what it was she had no idea; doubted too whether even a direct question would have elicited the truth from Ninon.

  Meanwhile she looked at the honesty of her own decision to take her belated story first to Raoul, rather than to Lois.

  How far, she wondered, was that her need of an excuse to lay claim to his attention, if only for as long as it took her to make her explanations and for him to accept them? She had vowed she wouldn’t make the first move to cut the deadlock between them. But this had altered matters ... hadn’t it? This had to be told.

  She would have given a great deal to be able to go straight ahead. But with Raoul still away, this was impossible, giving her far too long to rehearse her openings, and far more nights for ‘sleeping on’ the prospect than she wanted. With no hope that she would hear from him, she kept her ear to the ground of any news of him that Lois might have. And then, to her utter surprise and near-childish delight, there was a picture postcard for her from Paris; its written message a cryptic—‘Suite ... Giroflee?’; its glossy face about as crudely coloured a photogravure of wallflowers as, probably, a chainstore or a cheap stationers’ could produce—and it couldn’t have given her more pleasure than if Raoul had sent her a priceless, original masterpiece from the galleries of the Louvre.

  ‘Suite.’ The ‘To be continued’ promise of an exciting magazine serial! And ‘Giroflee’—his last playful name for her in the beech-woods before they had been interrupted and had both dashed to the scene of Gaston Vernier’s accident! Then she must have imagined his coolness with her. His apparent avoidance of her must have been by accident, not by his design. Allowing herself nothing but hope from ‘Suite ... Giroflee?’, she watched her dread of their next meeting drop away. If she hadn’t to force him to listen to it, her story shouldn’t even be difficult to tell. She could let it fall naturally into place—and Raoul would be kind.

  Every time the telephone rang, she leaped to take the call. But he was never on the other end of the line, and she was not even thinking about him at the time of her return to the Pavilion one day when his car was parked outside.

  She had had a long day of note-taking in the Basque Museum; on the way back she had left the bus at the village of Vieux Albert to talk to an octogenarian who, Lois thought, would remember the words of a traditional song which Lois herself had forgotten; she had had to wait a long time for the next bus; she felt grubby and unkempt, but with no entrance to the little house but by the door which gave straight into the living-room, there was no escape to her own room first. She went in—and promptly forgot everything but the pleasure of seeing Raoul sitting there, across from Lois; of seeing him rise, turn and smile a welcome. ‘Alors, comment ca va—Giroflee?’ he said easily, and gave her his hand.

  Lois said, ‘You are late. Raoul was just about to leave.’

  (But waited to see me—this time!) ‘Yes, I know. The buses didn’t fit in,’ Maryan said happily, and to Raoul, ‘When did you arrive?’

  ‘Here?’ It was Lois who answered for him. ‘I wasn’t expecting him, but he came to luncheon. We have had a long talk,’ she added a little heavily, as if she wanted Maryan to understand more than the mere words said.

  Maryan thought she did. Caught unawares as she might have been, Lois had found time to coil her hair loosely and to change from her dreary pants-and-smock gear into a crisp white short-sleeved suit. She and Raoul had been drinking wine together—a good sign. And Raoul, who hadn’t made his visit his usual brusque duty call on his sister, still seemed in no hurry to leave.

  Pouring wine for Maryan, Lois said, ‘I have been reminding Raoul that to-morrow is Peyrolle’s Fete; that you want to see it, and that he should go too.’

  Maryan said, ‘Yes, I’m looking forward to it. Did Lois tell you she is doing a programme of songs?’ she asked Raoul, adding a little recklessly, ‘It will be a kind of anniversary for me. When I was last here, I stayed over the date of that year’s Fete and as I think I told you, I joined in the street-dancing at night then.’

  Not looking at her, he twisted the stem of his wineglass. ‘And had fun, you said?

  ‘Yes, a lot.’

  ‘Though, as I remember, you didn’t say that was in Peyrolle itself?’

  ‘Oh, it was. On the Place. Just five——’

  But there Lois cut in, addressing Raoul, ‘When Maryan arrived, you hadn’t said whether you would come or not? You always used to enjoy fetes. You never missed.’

  He shrugged. ‘When to lure a pretty girl behind the bandstand for a chaste kiss was the really rarefied height of one’s abandon, yes. Later, one grows out of them somewhat.’

  ‘Though, as real Landais folk, should we?’ Lois demurred. ‘As I’ve been telling you today, I thought I had. But then—lately—as if something had twitched a thread that hadn’t quite broken, it ... held, and I found I wanted to join in again. And you escorted Maryan to St. Jean de Luz for the frairie. Why not then to Peyrolle?’

  ‘Correction,’ said Raoul coolly. ‘It was her friend the English professor who escorted Maryan that night.’

  Lois frowned. ‘Pff, what a quibble! You went to St. Jean de Luz willingly enough!’

  He grinned provocatively. ‘Perhaps because of the sophisticated company; or because I hoped for more adult entertainment in St. Jean.’

  ‘Less adult, don’t you mean? Whatever else you did there, Maryan said you took her for a ride on a gypsy roundabout.’

  ‘As part of her education on the region. Also because I was sorry for the animals. How would you like to travel round and round the same scene, year in, year out, ever since someone carved you a mane or horns or pointed ears and a tail, with even your saddle painted on you, along with your stripes or your spots? No, those wooden messieurs and mesdames had earned the compassion of a franc or two, as I’m sure Maryan would agree.’

  ‘There might well be a roundabout at Peyrolle Fete. Will you come?’

  He stood up then. ‘Sorry, you must still excuse me. Pleading a previous engagement—I have to meet and drive Ninon home from Anglet Airport.’

  Lois frowned again. ‘Ninon! It is always—but always!—Ninon.’

  ‘My fault, this time. She was in Paris for a couture show; we should have flown down together. But I had to come back by the early flight today, and I can’t do less than go to Anglet and bring her back, according to plan. But bonne chance to the Fete and to you both—enjoy yourselves, mes mie
s!’ He stooped to touch Lois’s cheeks with his lips and took Maryan’s hand. ‘See me off the premises?’ he invited lightly.

  Intrigued that he should want to separate her from Lois, if only for as long as it took to accompany him to his car and to wave him away, she went out with him into the blue evening. He did his usual vault into his seat, and when he did not switch on at once, she had a wild hope he might suggest taking her for a drive.

  He didn’t. Instead he jerked his head back towards the Pavilion. ‘I’d say you had achieved all I asked of you there,’ he said.

  Pleased, Maryan said, ‘Lois? No. Whatever has been done, she has done it herself, and time might have done it for her anyway.’

  *You still must have given time a prod in the back.’

  ‘Circumstances, then—Arnold Maddern and I happening along just when we did. Arnold particularly, wanting help with our work that only she could give. That challenged her. He challenged her—’ Maryan paused and waited. This was Raoul’s cue to say whether or not Lois had confided to him of her reaction to Arnold. If Lois hadn’t, then Maryan didn’t mean to, and when, after a moment, Raoul said merely, ‘And now he has moved on? Intending to come back?’ she deduced that Lois had said nothing of any import about Arnold.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ she answered Raoul. ‘The next time he and I meet will probably be in London.’

  ‘And that will be?’

  ‘After I have finished here, and have gone back.’

  ‘And meanwhile you correspond? Letters? Postcards—“Wish you were here”?’ Without waiting for her reply, Raoul added, ‘Did you like the postcards—“Wish you were here”?’ Without waiting Not looking at him, her voice not quite steady, ‘Very much,’ she said.

  “You should. No fewer than five Prisunic stores I turned upside down to get it. Pansies, lilies-of-the-valley, roses, lupins—everything but wallflowers to be had. Old-fashioned, they said. No demand for them nowadays, m’sieur, they said. I began to think I should have to paint my own—’ He broke off. ‘You understood “Suite?” ’

  Maryan nodded. The very air felt electric with promise. ‘I think so,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’ He switched on his engine. ‘And supposing Ninon’s plane weren’t overdue tomorrow night, would you still be at the Fete, if I decided to look in at it, after all?’

  She began to panic. ‘I—I don’t know. It depends on Lois. We’re going together. She—’

  ‘Leave Lois to me. I shall look for you. Where might I find you, I wonder? Behind the bandstand, perhaps?’

  When she blushed, he laughed and was away. Watching his car out of sight, she remembered her firm resolve which didn’t matter now. Perhaps she should have kept him long enough, saying, ‘Wait. There’s something I should have told you before now’—and have told him. But there had been no opening between the other exciting things there had been to say—and to mean without saying—and now she could hardly care. There would be other times— wouldn’t there?; other chances to broach the story of her fruitless claim to Feu-Follet, to laugh it off with Raoul as a joke against herself. She went back into the little house, wearing happiness like a cloak.

  Lois was laying the table for their supper. When Maryan told her Raoul had said he might get to the Fete, she snorted contemptuously.

  ‘But of course! Everything must wait upon Madame Ninon, must it not?’

  ‘Only if her flight is delayed, making it not worth his while to show up,’ Maryan pointed out in all fairness.

  ‘Which you may trust her to see that it is not made worth his while. Unless perhaps Madame chooses to grace the humble affair herself!’ Lois looked with absent interest at the bunch of table cutlery in her hand as she went on, ‘If it were not for his obsession with that woman, Raoul and I might understand each other a great deal better. Did he tell you we had talked for a long time and cleared up several matters between us today?’

  ‘No, but I hoped you had,’ Maryan said.

  ‘Yes. And about some of them you were right, I think. I believe now he was thinking for me when he wanted help for me with Maman; perhaps even more so when he forced me out of La Domaine by giving it up. Peculiar tactics, all the same. Why could he not have explained himself to me at the time?’

  ‘Then—would you have listened to him if he had?’ Maryan queried.

  ‘Why not? I have listened now, haven’t I?’ Lois countered.

  ‘Yes, but—’ Maryan abandoned the point in order to ask something she needed badly to know. ‘Did Raoul tell you, or did you ask him, why he rented La Domaine to Ninon Barbe when he must have known it would upset you to see her in your old home?’

  Lois returned to her task, clattering knives, forks and spoons into place with noisy vigour. ‘Ask him a question of which I already know the answer—why should I?’ she demanded.

  Maryan felt happiness begin to drop away. ‘Then you think you know he means to—?’ She stopped short of putting her fear into words.

  Lois voiced it for her. ‘Marry Ninon—what else? Or that she means to marry him—what’s the difference? I shall never see La Domaine becoming my own home again—that is very certain. Already, one hears, she plans changes to the structure—another garage, extension to the kitchen quarters. All this—by a mere tenant? No!’

  ‘And when—? That is, afterwards—will you stay on here in the Pavilion?’

  For a moment Lois did not reply. Then she said slowly, ‘I—don’t know. You will be gone, and I shall miss you. No, I think not. I shall have to make—other plans.’ She went out to the kitchen then, and in need of something to occupy her hands, if not her empty heart, Maryan followed her.

  (If he is going to marry Ninon, what does he want with me? If he is in love with her, what did his ‘To be continued ... mean?)

  The next day, Lois was to find herself with a more immediate grievance against Ninon when the two Afghan hounds, loose and gambolling about the gardens, espied little Mackerel behind the Pavilion’s low hedge and gave playful chase.

  Mackerel, forewarned by their baying, took comfortable refuge up a tree which the frustrated hounds circled for a while before, bored with waiting, they went on their way. And though Maryan assured Lois that an agile young cat could almost always outwit any dog, Lois could hardly have been more scandalised if she had caught Ninon in the very act of making a blood sport of her pet. Meanwhile Mackerel, safe on his branch, was in no hurry to leave it, and his ultimate descent had to be encouraged with proffered dishes of chopped liver and warm milk. The incident delayed the girls’ departure for the Fete, and the opening procession was well on its way round the street when they joined the crowds.

  The whole affair was on a much more modest scale than the St. Jean de Luz frairie. The Peyrolle Fete was laid on, for the most part, by and for the villagers themselves. There were no professional dancers, no entertainments aimed directly at the tourists. After the procession, the highlight of the afternoon was a pelota match between two local teams. There were booths and a Punch and Judy show for the children. The shops were closed, but the cafe and bars, open all day, were in roaring trade, doing all they could for the appetites which, as the evening became night, would set the amateur feet dancing and the neighbourly voices joining in the songs they all knew.

  There was not even, Maryan saw with amusement, a bandstand proper—simply a dais of planking on the Place, on which Lois and the other local talent would perform. No bandstand. Therefore no ‘behind’ to it. Five years ago, Raoul had kissed her in mid-dance in full view of all the dancers round them. Where, then, had he kissed other girls in other years? Where would he look to find her tonight? If he came at all—which of course he might not.

  At one time, separated from Lois, she went nostalgically in search of the booth to which Raoul had taken her to buy her chistera. Pleased, she found the stall set up in the same place, served by the same wrinkled crone in Landais costume, selling all the same souvenirs.

  For Mackerel she bought a stone dish, glazed with a cru
de picture of a saucy Monsieur Cat in a red-striped jersey and a flat Landais beret askew over one ear. For Lois she chose a gipsy-scarlet headscarf. For herself—‘No, I have one already’, she told the old woman, anxious to sell her a chistera—and chose a pair of rope-soled espadrilles with uppers of soft goatskin. Wrapping her parcel, the crone winked at her. ‘You will be dancing in them tonight, my dear?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Maryan smiled. ‘But I shall be glad of them for the beach.’

  ‘So? A pity, that. For you will find that most of the other girls who are dancing with their boys tonight will be wearing espadrilles which they have bought from me. Yes, indeed!’ Nodding her confirmation of the popularity of her wares, Madame bustled away to serve her next customer.

  When the dancing began it did so in much the same spontaneous way as at St. Jean de Luz. At one moment there were separate knots of people standing about in the streets; at the next, hands, arms and scarves were linked to form a chain of dancers, capering to a polka step, the line lengthening at every street corner where other groups converged, the minor attaching itself to the major and the chain moving on as one. The side streets of Peyrolle were few enough for the line soon to be unbroken. When it seemed to be so, the leaders headed for the Place which was circled three times at a mad, headlong gallop before the weaker links gave way and the chain came apart, drawing much needed breath and gathering itself for whatever was to happen next.

  The band performed almost unheard against the din; people danced more to the sound of their own voices in hearty unison. But when, at a pause between dances, Lois and her guitar took the dais, there was as near-silence as the rowdy, ever-shifting crowd could achieve. As far as it was able, it listened. Hemmed in by people, Maryan’s ears half caught their comments.

  ‘Mademoiselle among us again? That’s good. It has been too long since ...’ And of a Basque lullaby that was only a soft croon, without words—‘Ah, that one! That I remember my grandmother singing to my young brother ...’ And again of Lois—‘She has taken a long time to forget, la pauvre. But this is life. Sooner or later one must come out from the dark, or die oneself, and Mademoiselle is as yet of no age for dying...—kindly, honest people welcoming Lois back as readily as they would have kept her among them if she had let them or had cared.