He had known, too, that water had mysteriously been procured for their luxury, though its source had not yet been revealed to him—which made it a very well-kept secret indeed.
Well, la Perrin laid a good table, even if she did have a voice that could cut glass, and a decent meal would do him no harm. By informal arrangement, she usually cooked something extra and dropped it by the rectory two or three times a week, but now that she was working full-time, that practice, and his stomach, would probably suffer.
He turned back to the automobile that had been his companion for more than a decade. Already old when he had received it secondhand from a wealthier parish, it seemed at times more of a nemesis than a helpmate. Although he had of necessity become proficient at keeping it alive, today it had struggled with him like a wild thing with a will of its own. The last spark plug was always tricky to reach. This time it had simply refused to budge until Boudrie—knowing better—applied too much pressure with the wrench and snapped the plug in half, stripping the skin off his knuckles in the process.
Whereupon, enraged, he had seized the hood and ripped it halfway off the car.
This had happened only a few minutes before the American’s arrival. Luckily, he had had time to cool down; his appearance had been embarrassment enough. He leaned under the hood and surveyed the damage. The plug would have to be drilled and tapped, the hood hinge replaced or welded. Glumly, he wondered if American priests worked on their cars. He wiped his forehead again and longed for a glass of beer.
Was it his imagination, or was there some subtle strangeness touching his little world? One could not spend thirty years in such a place, with a finger on its spiritual pulse, and not be sensitive to such things. This business with the car—it was as if some imp of perversity had goaded him on, blinding him to common sense. Yesterday evening he had seen Philippe Taillou, the well-digger’s son, hurrying off to the bistro to spend the little bit of wages his father did not deduct for room and board. At the best of times, the boy had the profile of a rodent and a furtive look—too long under his father’s heavy hand—but last night he had resembled a hunted man. And earlier that same afternoon, Boudrie had passed Melusine Devarre, the wife of the new medecin, doing her marketing. Though he did not know her well—they were not churchgoers—she was the most pleasant of women, never failing to pause and exchange a few words. But she had clearly been preoccupied, her brow furrowed, her mind elsewhere, and had passed without seeing him—considering his bulk, not an easy thing to do.
Now there was this Monsieur McTell asking about the carving—the first stranger in years to have even noticed it, let alone be interested in its significance. The little church did not get many tourists; there was nothing of particular interest. Boudrie liked it that way, and had deliberately placed the triptych screen to hide the carving from the idly curious. What instinct had led McTell directly to it?
But it was a fait accompli, and he began to segregate in his mind certain information there would be no profit in repeating—for instance, that the carving’s inscription, chiseled by a peasant stonecutter who could not even read, was a laborious copy of the last entry a fourteenth-century canon named Larmedieu had made in his journal only hours before meeting his fate at the altar—and at the hands, so legend had it, of beings that were neither human nor, strictly speaking, alive. He had always found it interesting that the name Larmedieu meant “God’s tears.”
Nor did he plan to mention that the Americans from whom he himself had learned his first English were members of an OSS unit.
Well, it was coming into the season for odd events. Though the sun continued to say summer, October was not far off, and it would bring the mistral. Many a windy autumn night he had stood by his study window with a nameless sense of unease, the restlessness of the elements seeming to find a deep, secret response in his soul. At such times it was almost possible to believe, like some of the older peasants, that the wind truly did carry the spirits of those who did not lie easy in their graves. Or had never lain in graves. It was no accident that mistral was the old langue d’oc word for master, and there was no doubt in the mind of Etien Boudrie that the gloomy autumn storms affected the living if not the dead.
But here he was, thinking dark thoughts in the middle of a scorching afternoon. He turned reluctantly back to the car, then brightened. There was no point in continuing; he had none of the proper tools. He would simply have to get old Gauthier the mechanic to perform the work for the good of his soul. Not for the first time, Boudrie admitted that the suppressed Church system of selling indulgences had had its points; it would be far easier to persuade Gauthier to fix the car free if Boudrie could guarantee a century or two eliminated from the time the mechanic most assuredly had coming in purgatory.
Trying not to be pleased, he hurried toward the rectory, where several frosty bottles of excellent Kronenbourg beer waited in the refrigerator. He could picture exactly where they were.
He was rounding the corner of the building when he saw Alysse walking along the street across the square. His heart jumped, as it always did, at the sight of her—as it had from the moment she had arrived in Saint-Bertrand, a bewildered five-year-old orphan, and along with the overwhelming crush of grief and guilt, he had recognized the terrible, wonderful possibility.
He stood a moment in the shadows, watching her lovely springy walk, the glorious mane of chestnut hair bouncing down her back, the flash of tanned arms and legs against her white frock. When he stepped forward, she saw him and waved.
Etien Boudrie waved back, eyes misting at the memories she brought him of her mother, who had been his lover eighteen years before.
The town was like a thousand others in France, McTell thought: the small square, the main street of shops and taverns, rows of houses enclosed by high masonry walls and iron gates painted bright green. A hundred yards to the east he could see the lazy glimmer of the Seyre, emptying its last late-summer reserves from the Alpes Maritimes into the Mediterranean. He parked the BMW in front of a dusty building with bolted wooden doors, which looked like a warehouse that had not been opened since the Revolution. Beneath the striped awning of the bistro, a parted curtain revealed several men standing at the bar.
Like most French taverns, it was too brightly lit. A large sign read SERVICE N'EST PAS COMPRIS, the Gallic way of letting customers know they were expected to tip. Silence fell as McTell entered; he felt the indirect stares of the sharpeyed faces, topped with berets, decorated with identical mustaches. The bartender was young and deeply tanned, sporting a gold chain around his neck and a carefully groomed haircut. His face was vulpine, his deference exaggerated.
“La Meuse,” McTell said, naming the first beer that came to mind. There were no women present, no sign of anything feminine. He almost smiled, remembering his first timid ventures into bars as a young man, the feeling of being measured by veterans. Conversations began again—muted, rapid, in a patois of which he caught only bits. He suspected he was their subject. The bartender opened a sweating brown bottle. McTell paid and obediently tipped, then carried the beer and glass to a table by the window. He sat with his back three-quarters turned to the gazes that had followed him, imagining with amusement the low-voiced comments: It must be nice to be a rich American, to hire a cook and do nothing all day but sit in a bistro and drink.
The beer was not cold, but it was rich and malty, soothing his throat, relaxing him. Idly, his gaze roamed the storefronts across the street—a grocery, a butcher’s, a cleaner’s—while he planned his interrogation of the priest tomorrow night. The door of the bakery opened and a young woman stepped out, calling something back over her shoulder. She wore a white summer dress and sandals; rich brown hair fell nearly to her waist. A long baguette was tucked under her arm. She shut the bakery door, glanced across the street toward where McTell sat, and turned in the direction of the square.
He remained stunned in his seat for seconds. Not until he was rising, fast, did he remember where he was. He gripped the cha
ir-back tightly, straining to see her, ignoring the stares that again swiveled toward him. She was walking rapidly away, calves slender and bronze under the hem of the dress, willowy body moving with a trace of adolescent awkwardness.
He waved, without turning, at the bartender’s obsequious “Au ’voir, monsieur,” and strode into the street. The girl had disappeared around a comer. He stopped, gradually realizing his position. He could hardly go running after her; he was behaving strangely enough as it was. (Those Americans, they cannot hold their liquor. The Monsieur from the villa came in here only this afternoon and hardly touched his beer, then rushed outside, no doubt to be sick.) He started walking, trying to appear casual, and turned down the street she had taken. She was gone.
You must have been mistaken, he told himself. You got only a glimpse. She was a hundred feet away. The sun was in your eyes.
Slowly, he turned and started back to the car.
Behind the seat, he put both hands on the wheel and stared unseeingly at the distant hills. There was not a shred of doubt. She was the young woman he had seen stepping from her bath in the empty dungeon at Montsevrain.
** ** **
As Linden strode through the living room, her eye was caught by a painting that was slightly askew. She straightened it automatically and stepped back, surveying the room sternly for any more departures from perfect order. Then, realizing what she was doing, she sighed. She made herself walk more slowly to the dining room, lit a cigarette, and stood before the sliding glass door that opened onto the patio. The vista of brightly colored mountains went on endlessly, set off by the magnificent ruined fortress and capped by the flawless Mediterranean sky. Flowers grew in profusion on the grounds; the pale purple of wild lavender sprinkled the hills; four massive, ancient cypres d’acceuil—the traditional Provencal cypress of welcome—graced the entrance to the drive. The house was lovely too, built of thick-walled stucco, with a gorgeous curving staircase and second-story balcony, ten-foot ceilings, handsome Louis XV furniture—and modem plumbing.
But on their second day of residence, she was already bored.
Although she cooked, sewed, kept a comfortable and even elegant house, and did it well, she did so out of duty; and though she had dabbled in more than one career, her inheritance had given her the luxury of doing just that, dabbling. In truth, she had been waiting for something, and when it came in the form of a somewhat cynical and too-often-drunk college professor, she knew it immediately.
McTell had needed someone to take over the reins of a career that had started brilliantly and languished; she had needed a worthy object for her organizational abilities, her drive, her skill in dealing with people. She had moved him out of his shabby old apartment and into a house, away from his reclusive habits and back into the society of his peers—and most important, had weaned him away from the bottle and back to finishing The Death of the Lance, which had lain half-completed for five years. In the process, she had developed a reputation as a hostess, and took her greatest pleasure in parties where she could let shine her wit, intelligence, and grace, qualities which in her own mind were so infinitely more important than domestic concerns.
The thought of several more months here brought her back sharply from festive memories. Her shoulders sagged a little, and she walked aimlessly through the room, stubbing out the half-smoked cigarette. Well, his work came first, and a few months of seclusion were not much of a sacrifice. Once he began to write, she would again be needed, to type, organize, research, and suggest; and the days would pass quickly. Meantime, there would be company; her halfsister, Mona, had called from Paris and would be down within the week, along with her husband and whatever entourage the two of them had collected during their endless ramblings among the wealthy of two continents. Linden’s mouth twisted. Seeing Mona was not always relaxing, but it was nearly always interesting.
Though the baggage was mostly unpacked, a thousand odd jobs waited, and she began to order them mentally. But a glance at the clock told her that only an hour remained before the new cook arrived. Almost with resignation, Linden realized that it was time to sunbathe.
She had decided to do this when she realized how much trouble John had taken over the pool. She knew it was intended mainly to pacify her. It was just like a man to try to buy you off, she thought with irritation, and with such a foolishly misguided gesture; she was not the kind of woman who enjoyed lounging in the sun while the hours slid vacantly by. But it soon seemed clear that the whole thing meant more to him than met the eye. Wasn’t that what they said when your stodgy husband, out of the blue, suddenly presented you with a sexy negligee? It might amaze you, amuse you, even anger you—but you wore it. She had not been entirely joking the previous day in her remark about men wanting their women oiled and nude; she had been probing for a response.
When the whole thing had started, when John had begun negotiating with the realtor, Linden had stepped into a hotel bathroom one afternoon and examined the skin on her arms. It looked pale—even, suddenly, unhealthy. Quickly, she had unbuttoned her blouse. The cutoff line from faintly tanned neck to white breasts and belly was clear. A feeling almost like panic touched her: She had been ignoring a hint literally as broad as a swimming pool. It was not the suntan itself—that was only a symptom, an almost laughable cosmetic. It was what might lie much deeper. Who could guess what fantasies of lissome brown-skinned girls lurked in even such a distinguished mind as her husband’s? And so, a little ruefully, she had bowed to a part of her psyche beyond rationality, and set out to reshape herself in order to please the man she loved.
Upstairs, she undressed, slipped on a white terrycloth wrapper, pulled her hair into a ponytail. Then she gathered up the necessary equipment for her ordeal of indolence: oil, sunglasses, cigarettes, magazines, and a glass of chilled wine. Stepping onto the patio, she hesitated; even though it was protected by a chest-high wall and there was no one around, she still never felt comfortable being naked out-of-doors. She dropped the wrapper and quickly lay down.
But the heat was pleasant, relaxing; her skin warmed quickly, beading with sweat. She took a sip of wine, then began to cover herself with Bain de Soleil. Automatically she assessed her features as her hand rubbed in the fine film of oil: legs good, belly and buttocks flat, if perhaps a little too spare. Can’t be too thin or too rich, she reminded herself. Her hand moved to her heavy breasts, and she smiled faintly, imagining her husband’s penis between them.
Through half-closed eyes she watched the shimmer of the water in the pool, hypnotic, inviting. Her sunglasses slipped partway down her nose, and she saw that a strange indefinable haze had entered the air, though the sun was still bright and fierce. Puzzled, she briefly squeezed her eyes shut. The haze remained, an almost imaginary overcast that was somehow troubling. She sat up, swaying with the sudden rush of blood from her head; a little alarmed, she decided to go back to the cool of the house.
But as she stood, she found herself thinking, You haven’t yet been in the water. The water will make everything all right. Think of all the trouble he went to, all those years of waiting. He’ll be very disappointed if you don’t go in.
The shimmering filled her vision as she moved closer, stumbling a little, and then stepped over the edge into the deep end. The cool water caressed her skin—soothing, wonderful, almost sexual. She drifted near the bottom, turning slowly, luxuriating. Somewhere far away, a pressure was building. It did not concern her; nothing was important but the mounting delicious sensations that surrounded her. There was no reason to go back. She opened her mouth to fill herself with the loveliness that urged to be inside her as well as out, to make itself hers forever.
But as the first bit of water hit her throat, a tiny red light of panic flared.
All those years of waiting. What did that mean?
Suddenly she was struggling for the surface, fighting to keep her lungs from yielding to the need to open and suck in. She turned and turned, wild-eyed, but she had lost up and down, everything was the
same pale blue. Her vision grew dimmer, and the soothing sense of a moment before was now an iron hand in a velvet glove, holding her under, forcing her to give in. At last she understood dimly that one of her thrashing feet had broken the surface. She clawed her way to it and burst free. For long seconds she hung on the side, coughing, and finally managed to pull herself out.
Slowly, trembling, she gathered her things. On the doorstep she turned to stare at the pool. The water sparkled blue and innocent. Then came the familiar sound of the BMW pulling into the drive. Glad for it, she stepped into the house, eager to tell her husband what had happened, to be held. But he stalked straight across the living room to the bar, without so much as a glance in her direction.
“John,” she said.
He swiveled and stared, then smiled. “Hello, darling,” he said, and came forward to kiss her.
But in that instant he had looked at her as if she were a stranger.
CHAPTER 4
McTell capped the bottle of Remy Martin and carried snifters across the room to Linden and Etien Boudrie. The priest was sitting upright on the couch, holding what looked like a doll-house coffee cup between his thick thumb and forefinger, regarding it as if he feared it would snap in two at any second. His black clerical suit was shiny at the knees and elbows, and while the meal had been extraordinary—McTell sensed that the cook, a dried-up little woman who could have been fifty or seventy, had outdone herself for the priest—he had eaten like a man half-starved. He had also arrived on foot, to McTeil’s acute embarrassment—only then had he remembered the damaged car—and that embarrassment had increased when Boudrie’s eyes had lingered on the swimming pool. But the priest had said nothing, and during the meal his conversation had been polite, general, and wedged in between bites of coq au vin.
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