Wildfire Quest

by Jane Arbor

  ‘Of course not.’ Yet Maryan lingered. ‘You aren’t calling Ninon Barbe on my behalf, are you? You promised,’ she said.

  ‘And I am keeping my word,’ said Lois, dialling. ‘I am not calling her.’ But when, after some time, Maryan went back into the living-room to find Lois had finished at the telephone and was about to leave, Lois said, ‘Among other calls, I spoke to Raoul—’

  Maryan broke in hotly, ‘To Raoul? But you promised that too—that you wouldn’t approach him until I—!’

  ‘My bargain with you was that I wouldn’t contact him last night. This is another day,’ Lois pointed out undeniably.

  ‘And I thought I could trust you!’ Maryan accused her. ‘This is my affair—Raoul’s and mine. You had no right !—’ She broke off, giving in. ‘Wh—what did he say?’

  She watched Lois’s face shadow. ‘Must I tell you?’ Lois asked.

  ‘I have to know.’

  ‘Well then—he said, “If she is speaking the truth, let her prove it—always supposing she can. Until then I’ve finished with her—” Meaning you,’ Lois added, and then, ‘I’m sorry, little one. He slammed down the receiver then, but I haven’t finished with him, I promise you, and if I hadn’t to go now, I’d—’

  ‘But you have to go now,’ Maryan said almost thankfully, needing desperately to be free of ill-wishers and well-wishers alike. Tired of calumny, tired even of sympathy which had no power to help her, she watched the Renault out of sight and was glad to be alone. She tidied the little house, went shopping for food for herself and for Mackerel and was sorting some of her papers at the desk in the living-room when her eye caught a number scribbled in Lois’s writing on a pad by the telephone. She frowned, remembering it, remembering that last night Lois had wanted to know which solicitor she had consulted. It was Maitre Druot’s telephone number, so more than probably one of the calls which Lois had made had been to him.

  For what purpose? What had been the result, and what right had Lois to interfere? Just another evidence of the Leduc high-handedness, Maryan was thinking when the telephone rang and a voice she recognised as Maitre Druot’s enquired for her.

  ‘Speaking,’ said Maryan, and then, ‘It’s Maitre Druot, isn’t it, who advised me some time ago?’

  ‘That’s so. I hadn’t realised you were still in France, mademoiselle, until Mademoiselle Leduc rang, prior to my arrival at my office this morning. She spoke to my senior clerk, making a grave accusation against my junior clerk, Monsieur Tissot, and saying that though she herself was leaving at once for Germany, she wished you to be rung back at her number. This I have hastened to do at once, of course.’

  Maryan said, ‘I see, though I ought to tell you that I knew nothing of Mademoiselle Leduc’s intention to call you and she didn’t do so at any direction or suggestion from me.’

  ‘No?’ A pause. ‘All the same, you’ll appreciate that this is a grave matter of leaked confidence which we have to probe to its depth?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you must,’ Maryan agreed dully.

  ‘Thank you, mademoiselle. I hoped you would understand that we owe it to our professional integrity. Meanwhile, naturally, the young clerk in question will be suspended, and I hope very much that the outcome of our investigations may be simple; namely, that if he is guilty, he will admit it, saving you and us the embarrassment of taking it further.’

  ‘I hope so. I’d rather not be further involved.’

  ‘But of course. Though naturally we shall make you proper restitution.’ Another pause. Then, ‘Arising from this improper breach, Mademoiselle Leduc raised another matter with us—that of asking us to confirm with Monsieur Leduc, her brother, that the claim about which you consulted us had no legal validity—or at least, so we were privileged to advise you. But this, as she was told, would be highly irregular, very irregular indeed.’

  ‘And so, I hope, you refused Mademoiselle Leduc’s request?’

  ‘My senior clerk did. On at least three counts—that to do so would almost amount to our recognition that the leak came from this office; that we couldn’t possibly act without your consent, and that for us to approach Monsieur Leduc direct would be quite out of order, as we don’t act for him and could only communicate with him through his own firm of advocates. Professional etiquette, you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Though with your consent, and granted your patience with our putting it in train, the matter might be arranged. What do you say, mademoiselle?’

  Maryan said, ‘No. That is, I’d have contacted you myself if I’d thought there was any point in taking the thing further. Monsieur Leduc knows what your advice to me was and whatever it was, it is really no business of his. However, if I decide otherwise later, I’ll be in touch with you. In other words, please ignore Mademoiselle Leduc’s call.’

  ‘That is your considered instruction to us? Very well. But you will allow us to regard the leakage as an internal matter with which we have the right to deal as we think fit?’

  ‘Yes. Though I ought to warn you that it is only hearsay which Monsieur Tissot may very well deny.’

  ‘All the same—And may we give you the results of our investigation, mademoiselle?’

  ‘If you wish to. But at my address in England, please. I am leaving Peyrolle not later than a week or ten days from now.’

  The polite telephonic partings were made and Maryan rang off. Until she had said the actual words, she hadn’t realised her pride had reached the decision it had—to deny Raoul the ‘proof’ he had demanded she provide. And in any case, even Maitre Druot’s affidavit couldn’t prove that, after consulting him, she hadn’t continued to harbour the ‘something to hide’ of which Raoul had accused her.

  Throughout the day she followed in imagination Lois’s journey to meet Arnold Maddern, glad that this outcome at least had been the indirect result of her own coming to Peyrolle. She remembered Maitre Druot’s kindly diffidence in advising her to forget even the name of Feu-Follet. But disastrous, will-o’-the-wisp errand on which it had brought her, there was consolation in hoping it had borne fruit for Lois.

  She wrote a business letter to Arnold, telling him the date she proposed to return to England. A few days later there was a cryptic note from Lois—‘I am happy. Are you?’—to which she did not reply, making the excuse to herself that an answer would not reach Rudesheim before Lois was due to return. But the note set her envisaging the future. Supposing Lois married Arnold and, as was likely, made her home in England with him, that, as long as she herself remained in Arnold’s employ, would mean a continuing link with Raoul and Peyrolle. Therefore—

  Work that she loved, gone too along with everything else? Yes. There would be other work for her, and no doubt she would forget in time. But meanwhile the thought brought an ache of pain.

  It was good, that week, to have work to do and to complete. For the night of Lois’s departure broke into stormy violence. The wind changed; rose, lashing treetops to fury; lightning jagged down the angry sky; thunder clapped overhead, rolled away and returned again and again.

  And after that the rains came—the freak rains that were the chance of no more than one year in seven, according to the local grumble. Each dawn got up red and threatening; an hour or so later the rain swept up from the west, chilling and depressing a landscape whose birthright was to be bathed in sun until summer’s end. The rich open loam of the plantations absorbed the rain readily and used it, but the hard-baked earth of the village roads and lanes rejected it. Everywhere were puddles inches deep, gutters overran, and the pave was a slippery hazard. Maryan did her necessary shopping between storms and, for the rest, worked at closing her notes on the region—and found her guardianship of Mackerel something near a full-time job.

  For Mackerel, growing swiftly out of kittenhood, was becoming too venturesome by far. He had not been harried again by Ninon’s hounds, but he sought his own dangers—at the tops of trees, by getting himself shut into stables and scorning the grounds of La Domaine as bei
ng too confined for his conquest.

  He disproved all theories as to cats’ hatred of rain. He appeared to revel in getting so wet that his fur stood up in points from his bare skin. Three or four times a day Maryan would ply his towel, only for him to go out again, ignoring her bilingual calls of ‘Maquereau!’ and ‘Mackerel’ until, presumably, he had decided he had tried her patience enough.

  But by exercising her own brand of guile upon him, she had contrived that he was never abroad after dark—until the last night before she calculated Lois might be returning.

  That day the rain had only eased towards evening and she had gone late to the Shops, by Midi custom, open again after the long afternoon siesta, until no more customers called. As she returned in the dusk, she noticed that the front of Ninon’s house was dark; only as much as she could see of the kitchen quarters was lighted against the overcast night. Ninon was out, then. With Raoul? Where? Did it matter now? Or ever would again—two or three days hence?

  She had left a window open for Mackerel, but she called him experimentally as she approached the Pavilion. He did not come, nor was he in the house. As she put away her purchases she wished she had managed to corral him before she left. She called him again. This was his suppertime and his inner man usually knew it, sending him back to the tune of an expectant ‘Prrp! Prrp!’ jerked from him as he leapt the low lavender hedge.

  Maryan called again and again at intervals, peered into every neighbouring tree—though not hopefully, as he could always yell his alleged inability to descend a tree he had climbed—went back to the courtyard to call and listen at the doors of closed outhouses and looked into every haunt she knew he had made his own.

  From their kennels the Afghans had howled a chorus to her calls, so unless they had despatched Mackerel in flight much earlier, they could not be blamed. But as the lowering rain-clouds brought down full night much sooner than usual, Maryan began to panic.

  How could she possibly face Lois with the news that her pet was missing? A little cat lost! So common and trivial a happening, and yet for the losers, so implicit with regret and ‘If only—’ and hope deferred! No, she would spend all night in search if she must. But where to look next? What to do?

  Then she remembered the day, a week or so earlier, when, walking along the marsh road, she had met Mackerel nearly a kilometre from home. He had slunk out from the bamboo which bordered the road, had recognized her and had willingly followed her back for a loving scolding by Lois and a special titbit for supper.

  In the intervals of calling him tonight Maryan had half prepared her own cold supper. But she abandoned that as she pulled on boots and raincoat, tied a scarf over her hair, pocketed Lois’s half-spent electric torch and set out across the grounds.

  It was raining again and the wind was gale-high. But now she was doing something active, her hopes rose. That other time the marais would have been dry underfoot; now in places it would be a morass. But surely even water-baby Mackerel would use his instinct to avoid these?

  Shortly before she left the gardens for the road a low branch caught at her headscarf, tore it off, and before she could reach to retrieve it, the wind she was facing caught it, teasing it high into the air, back along the path by which she had come. She didn’t return for it. It had done little enough to keep her hair dry, as it was. She went on.

  The torch failed. She walked the road in darkness, as far as the boundary of Feu-Follet and back. She called, her voice mocked and belittled by the wind. Despairingly she realised she was not likely to hear Mackerel if he answered her without coming to her. And then, suddenly, in a lull in the wind, there it was—the plaintive mew she craved to hear. Mackerel, somewhere out on the marais and answering her! She called again, chokingly; this time there was no answer. The height of the bamboo was a daunting barrier, but she plunged into it, testing the ground she trod for hidden treacheries.

  Sensing bog, she avoided reed and sedge growth where she could distinguish it in the darkness. The paths she took, though muddy, were firm enough and, encouraged by another mewing, though now from farther off, she forged on recklessly, deeper and deeper, abandoning the caution of keeping to the paths, fearing to make any detour lest she lose the direction of the call.

  And then, far closer than the latest mew had led her to expect, her eye caught something at ground level ahead—a gleam, no more, but surely the flash of a cat’s eyes in the dark? Mackerel! And almost within reach! She crept forward quietly, heedless of the increasing suck of soft, deep mud at her boots. Forced to free one of them, she stooped to it, and when she straightened, she had lost the cats’-eye light.

  But she knew where it was, where Mackerel must be. She went forward in that direction, reached the spot, stooped, then knelt in the ooze and felt about her. There was no stir, no gleam, no welcoming ‘Prrp!’ There was nothing there.

  Impossible that, for all a cat’s stealth, the kitten could have whisked away while, her eyes used to the darkness now, she had kept the place in view. But on the chance that he had, she got to her feet, peered around her and ahead—and saw the light of his eyes again a short way off.

  Then he had moved! Incredulous now that he could escape her yet again, she followed, knelt again, searched, found nothing as the mew called once more, this time from far over the marshes, and the cruel, fantastic truth dawned. The mew had been a marshbird’s cry and Mackerel had never been hereabouts for her finding! She had been following the untraceable, the wild fool’s fire of the marshes, free-dancing and capricious, which led men on, only to elude them, as it had escaped her so wantonly tonight.

  She knelt up, stood up, calling now in a cracked, despairing voice. She looked about her, saw the gleam again, but this time she did not follow, realising to her horror that she could not. She was held fast by her boots, her weight pressing them down into the mud, deep into the marsh version of a quicksand.

  Though the ooze was already up to her calves, she knew she must not panic, must not fight for foothold. She tried to remember the technique of rescuers on broken ice—they distributed their weight, didn’t they? Here, that meant lying flat in this hideous mess of mud, and though her senses revolted, she did it, clawing at sedges as she tried to ease her feet free.

  If only she could catch at that bunch of tall reeds, it would give her purchase! She reached for it again and again, making a longer arm than she knew she had; caught at last at one stalk, held on until she could curl her fingers round another and another, and pulled, dragged herself forward a few inches, felt the imprisoning mud yield slightly, rested, turning her face on to her aching shoulder, then dragged again—and heard the very last sound she had hoped to hear at that hour and in that waste—a human voice!

  The voice shouted, ‘Hola! Hola! Is anyone there?’; was silent as if its owner listened, then called the same again. A torch ranged the darkness. Freed by her last effort, Maryan got to her knees, then stood. ‘Yes! Yes! Au secours! Help!’ she croaked, mixing French and English wildly as reaction caught her.

  ‘Coming! Stay where you are and call again!’ the voice ordered.

  She obeyed. Silence. Then the voice, less peremptory, questioned, ‘Maryan? You?’ The torch ranged again, finding her, blinding her, and it was Raoul (by what miracle?) who came plunging through the huddle of reeds to where she was.

  ‘Maryan! What the—?’ He caught her as she reeled towards him. The metal of the torch he held pressed painfully into her back as his arms went round her. He said to her wearily bent head, ‘I heard someone call a while back. Was that you?’ She pulled back from him, running a feeble finger over the mud she had left on his light suit. Remembering her last call to Mackerel, she nodded, ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what were you thinking of? What are you doing out here on such a night? Or on any night? I went to the Pavilion to find you. Lois not there. Nor you. But the door on the latch; a meal for one half-laid on the table, and only Lois’s whatever-his-name-is slinking round, howling to be fed—’

  Maryan startled,
clutched at his lapel and held on. ‘Mackerel? At home—all the while? Or he had come back while I—? But he was lost! I came out here to find him, sure I could hear him answer when I called him, and sure that I saw him once ... twice. And he—he was never here at all. I had been calling a seabird and I was finding ... finding nothing but—your feu-follet. Feu-Follet! Feu-Follet! That’s funny, isn’t it? Feu—!’ She heard her voice crack on a note of hysteria and instantly felt tears of shock start to her eyes as Raoul’s palm came down smartly on her muddy cheek.

  ‘That’s enough from you for now,’ he said. ‘Come home.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Her control regained, Maryan had murmured, ‘I’m sorry,’ to which Raoul’s only reply had been to take her by the arm and guide her back to the road. They came out on it at a point which surprised her. She had expected to reach it from a totally different direction. Had she then so completely lost her bearings that she might have wandered the marshes for hours, if Raoul had not found her?

  She had been grateful that on the way back to the Pavilion he had not plied her with the questions he was entitled to ask. Arrived there, they had been greeted by Mackerel, indignant that there had been no one to serve his supper on his own return home, and it had helped Maryan’s embarrassment to hasten to rectify this. But Raoul had intervened.

  ‘Show me what the creature is supposed to have, and I’ll feed him. You—’ he had looked her critically up and down, ‘go and take a bath. You’ll see from your mirror that you need one.’ That was all before he busied himself with the kitten’s dish, and Maryan had meekly obeyed.

  When she had rejoined him, bathed and freshly dressed, again his glance had been critical. ‘You could have worn a robe. You aren’t going anywhere else tonight. Believe it or not, I’ve seen a girl in her dressing-gown before,’ he had said as he handed her a stiff cognac with the order, ‘Drink that.’

  She had done so, choking a little on its strength, but grateful for its warmth. Raoul had heated canned soup, had found butter and carved hunks of bread. Saying he had dined himself, he put the food before her, watching as she ate and drank, which she did slowly, postponing the ordeal.