The Roses of Picardie

by Simon Raven

  ‘That depends on who has them, my dear one. For all we know they are in a hole in the ground. They’d be yours then all right. In any case, if you find them, the story, the fact of the discovery, will be worth money.’

  ‘If I find them.’

  ‘Don’t just sit there like a dying duck. Get off your botty, my old banana, and go and look.’

  All right, thought Balbo, six hours later in the Bar Ariadne; I’ll go. As Pandelios says, I haven’t got anything else on. It’ll be a change from rotting to death in Heracleion, and it is, I suppose, just conceivable that something might come of it. I shall have a purpose, however scatty; for the first time in years I shall have some kind of goal. And then it will be fun travelling round the scattered Kommingi, while looking at their museums or whatever will be very much to my taste. I have never, for example, seen Nicopolis and the ‘mosaic church’ there, of which Kyria’s brother is caretaker, is an obvious and inviting first port of call.

  Balbo finished his cognac and called for another – Metaxas Five Star instead of the usual Three Star, to celebrate his decision. There was nothing to delay him, he thought. Pandelios had promised him a sum in drachmae for the Greek part of the expedition and 300 dollars, out of a highly illicit hoard, for use beyond Greek waters. Pandelios, as he had found before, was a man of his word; Balbo could simply collect the money in the morning and go.

  But stay, he told himself: might it not be that the offer had been made out of pity, that Pandelios, having been presented with a flimsy excuse by all this waffle about Comminges and Kommingi, was merely socking him a holiday under pretence of making a business deal? Balbo called for another brandy, drank it in one, moved from his table to the bar, and ordered another.

  ‘Get a hold on yourself,’ he said aloud; ‘you can’t pass this up.’ As he drank down the brandy he thought of the fetid little room which was waiting for him, of the cracked and crusted basin with its slimy plughole and its one narrow, dribbling tap. ‘You must get out for a time,’ he said, ‘even if the offer is mere charity, you must accept. You no longer have a choice in such matters.’

  ‘Kyrie?’ said the man behind the bar.

  ‘Cognac,’ said Balbo.

  ‘I think that the Kyrios is not quite himself. Perhaps he should go away now?’

  ‘Indeed he should go away,’ said Balbo. ‘One more cognac first.’

  ‘One more, Kyrie: the last.’

  Greeks hated drunks, Balbo thought as he swallowed his Metaxas; how right they were. Drunks were dangerous and disgusting, always apt to fall or vomit or fight. What had turned him into that kind of drunk? Boredom? Disappointment? Failure as a serious scientist, a frustrated hankering after the arts? It was too late to worry about that. At least he was now a man with a mission, with something to look forward to in the morning; so now he would finish his cognac and pay for it and be a man and go. No one should accuse him of hanging about where he wasn’t wanted. Besides, he had important things to do. He had a bag to pack and a journey to make, a journey to the rainbow’s end.

  ‘What’s your programme when we get to Montreuil?’ asked Marigold Helmut.

  ‘Check the bookings at the Hôtel du Château, leave the bags and garage the car, walk round the ramparts, take a nap, then order Homard Cancalaise for dinner.’

  With this Jacquiz put the Continental Rolls into gear (he had insisted on gears when he bought it) and drove onto the Dover–Calais car ferry.

  ‘You don’t seem exactly…urgent,’ said Marigold, giggling.

  ‘The thing to do, on this kind of expedition, is not to rush round hysterically but to establish a steady speed and stick to it. When I check our bookings, I shall ask Madame the Proprietress, who is a very local lady, to find out for me whether any descendants or connections of the Vibrot family survive, and where they live. By dinnertime she will have a list ready, and we can go visiting tomorrow morning. By lunchtime tomorrow we shall have heard what the Vibrots have to say and we shall know where we must go next. We can then decide whether to start in the afternoon or to stay another night in Montreuil to try Madame’s celebrated Rognons à Trois Moutardes.’

  ‘Couldn’t we have them for lunch?’

  ‘Too heavy for lunch. We should have to stay another night for them.’

  ‘Isn’t all that rather smug?’ said Marigold as she followed Jacquiz up the stairs from the car-deck. ‘Aren’t you taking rather a lot for granted?’

  ‘You mean Madame may not have any Homards or Rognons?’

  ‘I mean, suppose Madame may not have any Vibrots. Or they may not have anything to tell us.’

  ‘We know that Richard Van Hoek, Constance’s betrothed, lodged “within the castle gate”. We shall go and look in the castle.’

  ‘And suppose we draw a blank there too?

  ‘I have several more ideas for getting on to the trail, which I shall explain to you as and when it may be necessary. The thing to remember is that we must neither hasten on the one hand nor despair on the other. If the Rubies are still there, they will wait for us.’

  ‘Are you sure no one else is interested?’

  ‘If someone is, then sooner or later we shall encounter him en route. We can deal with him then.’

  ‘Suppose he’s finished the route and got to the loot before us?’

  ‘Then we shall simply follow him until we see what we should do. Time and chance will tell us. Meanwhile, first things first. Be a good girl and go to the duty-free shop. Buy two bottles of the best cognac on offer and two of white whisky.’

  ‘Money?’ said Marigold, who was rather impressed by this new Jacquiz, the suave and confident commander of their expedition.

  ‘Here. Keep five hundred francs for yourself. And I think I should also like a large flask of eau de cologne de Monsieur Givenchy.’

  Since Balbo’s one suitcase, a relic of more prosperous days, was large and leather and therefore exceedingly heavy even if he did not put much into it, he decided to take a taxi down to the harbour. But although he was starting his journey so elegantly, this was not the way, he reminded himself firmly, that he meant to go on. He had 3500 drachmae which Pandelios had given him and 500 more of his own, the aggregate being worth about sixty pounds; and for use when he left Greece he had only Pandelios’ 300 dollars. If he was to remain away for more than a very few days, he would have to pig it.

  Well, he told himself as he paid off the taxi on the quay, he was used to pigging it by now, and it would be a nice change to pig it somewhere other than in a greasy third-floor room near to leeward, in the wind which normally prevailed, of Heracleion’s abattoir. He showed his ticket, heaved his suitcase up the gang plank (cursing his thin feeble arms and the lack of stature which caused him to scuff the beautiful leather against the sharp angles of the steps), shoved it under the bench which ran round the second-class lounge, and sat down above it on the square foot of thin cush that must serve him as sole berth for the twenty-four hours which it would take the boat to reach the Peloponnesian port of Patras. From Patras there would be, he imagined, a bus to Previsa by the mouth of the Gulf of Actium, in Previsa there would be, he supposed, a gamma class hotel to suit his pocket or even with luck a delta, in the delta hotel someone would know, he hoped, the cheapest way of travelling the five miles to the ancient site of Nicopolis, and somewhere on the site, in a shack near a long-abandoned monastery, he would find – or so the Kyrios Pandelios had informed him – the Kyria’s brother, Stavros Kommingi who lived alone, guarding the fine mosaics on the broken floor of the windy basilica, and dreaming of his ancestors, rich men furnished with ability and splendid in their generation.

  PART THREE

  A Beast in View

  Quis est hic,

  Qui pulsat ad ostium,

  Noctis rumpens somnium

  Me vocat? o

  virginum pulcherrima,

  Soror, coniunx,

  gemma splendissima,

  Cito surgens

  aperi, dulcissima.

  Peter D
amian: De Beata Maria Virgine

  Who is this

  That knockest at the gate,

  Breaking the sleep of the night? That crieth

  O of all virgins fairest,

  Sister, bride,

  Gem that is rarest.

  Rise, O rise,

  Open, sweetest.

  The above lines of Peter Damian,

  translated by Helen Waddell.

  I

  CLOISTER WITH YEW TREE

  It’s going too well,’ said Marigold Helmut, ‘it’s going much too pat.’

  Jacquiz took a large mouthful of his Lobster Cancalaise, sniffed at his Montrachet ’47, sipped it, gulped it, drank the lot of it, and then remarked: ‘There’s no reason why things shouldn’t go pat. They sometimes do.’

  ‘For a bit. Then they go sour. The patter they went, the sourer they go.’

  ‘Nothing very special has happened. Madame the Proprietress has told us that there is a branch of the Vibrot family living here, as we suspected there might be. A man and wife, as was always probable. Caretakers of the Youth Hostel inside the Castle – an office comparable to keeping “lodgings within the Castle Gate”, which is what the veuve Vibrot did in the seventeenth century. I perceive a decent continuity here, nothing more. Nothing particularly pat, no necessary prospect of anything’s turning sour. What’s your worry, Marigold?’

  ‘You. You annoy me when you’re smug.’

  ‘I’m not smug, simply logical. An informed guess has proved true. So far, so good. For the rest…we shall see tomorrow morning when we wait on M’sieur and Madame Vibrot at the Youth Hostel within the Castle Gate.’

  ‘I wonder.’

  ‘What do you wonder?’

  ‘How soon things will start turning sour. Like your stomach for instance, if you go on eating and drinking like this. About a pound of fresh foie gras, and now that lobster in a sauce of royal purple. You might give me some more of that wine.’

  ‘With pleasure, if you’ll only stop complaining.’

  ‘I never felt happier in my life. That’s the trouble. I know that if I enjoy all this too much, it’ll go wrong. So I keep pretending not to enjoy it, so that the gods won’t grudge it to me and start spoiling it. That’s all I really meant. Nice Jacquiz. Can I have Crêpes Suzettes?’

  ‘Do you think the gods would approve of that?’

  ‘I didn’t think you bothered about them.’

  ‘More than you realize. This is my last chance, Marigold, my last chance to…to make it, as the undergraduates say nowadays. In the circumstances, one must bear oneself with great caution. But I don’t think the gods will grudge us food and drink – certainly not a few pancakes. Crêpes Suzettes pour deux, Madame,’ Jacquiz called to the hovering Proprietress. ‘You are sure about the couple Vibrot.’

  ‘Mais oui, M’sieur. They are there in our Castle of Montreuil since many years, and others of the family before them. However…there is one thing of which M’sieur and Madame should be warned.’

  ‘Indeed, Madame?’

  ‘Indeed, M’sieur. They have an imbecile son.’

  ‘Here we go,’ said Marigold. ‘Poor child.’

  ‘The “child” is nearly fifty years, Madame, and will probably be visible when you visit the Vibrots, as it is their amiable custom to employ him in trivial tasks about the Castle. Now then, M’sieur, est-ce que vous voulez commander les Crêpes Suzettes pour deux?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marigold. ‘One clearly needs ample nourishment for what is in store tomorrow morning.’

  What was in store tomorrow morning was, in the first place, rain, and in the second place a notice on the Castle Gate announcing that the precinct would be closed for two weeks for works and restorations.

  ‘That was something that know-all Proprietress didn’t know,’ said Marigold, ‘though the hotel’s not a furlong away. What are we to do, Jacquiz? Sit about for the next fortnight eating fresh foie gras and lobster until they open up?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course there’s a way of getting in to see the Vibrots.’

  ‘Find it quickly, there’s a sweetheart. I’d forgotten how penetrating Northern French rain can be – it goes right through you like their voices.’

  Jacquiz yanked at a bell handle to the right of the gate. A panel slid back; a ribald face opened its mouth, revealed three widely separated teeth along with most of their roots, cackled, and slid the panel shut.

  ‘The imbecile’s doing sentinel,’ said Marigold. ‘I hope he’s getting as wet as I am.’

  Jacquiz took a ten-franc note from his pocket and yanked once more at the bell. The panel opened again. Jacquiz waved his note at the ribald face, which cackled with happiness and disappeared. A wicket in the right-hand half of the Great Gate sprang back to welcome them. As soon as they were through it, a torso like a barrel carrying the ribald face on top, supported by two stubby legs beneath and wrapped in a kind of mackintosh holdall, bowled up to them, shot out an arm through an invisible aperture in the holdall to snatch Jacquiz’s banknote, and led the way, at a rapid lurch, up a very muddy path, to the door of a small lodge which was situated some fifty yards beyond the gate and appeared to be a recently built addition to a far older wing that extended from the Gate House.

  Inside the lodge was a rack of dirty, crinkled postcards, three glass bottles of green and pink boiled sweets, and a large notice on a stand behind the counter announcing that in no circumstances would anyone be admitted to the Castle less than an hour before its official time of closure. Also behind the counter, standing shoulder to shoulder with the notice as if to reinforce its ordinance, was a woman with no chin and the pointed snout of a swordfish: Madame Vibrot.

  ‘You are the English,’ she proclaimed. ‘Madame the Proprietress of the hotel has telephoned that you are coming. That is why Auguste here was waiting for you. Otherwise, no one is admitted during the restorations.’

  ‘What is being restored?’ asked Jacquiz politely.

  ‘Nothing is being restored. The students who have stayed in the Hostel during the summer have blocked the conveniences with throwing down rubbish. The conveniences are being cleared.’

  ‘Why close the Castle,’ said Marigold, ‘just for that?’

  ‘Because the law says it must be closed when there are restorations.’

  ‘But you just said that nothing is being restored. It’s only that the conveniences –’

  ‘– The workmen insist on the work being called “restorations”. Otherwise they would feel foolish, clearing conveniences and perhaps being seen to do so by the public. So not to épater the foolish workers we are having “restorations” and the Castle is therefore closed by law from this morning when the workers at last consent to begin. What is it you want, M’sieur?’

  Jacquiz started to explain about Constance Fauvrelle and how the last person she was known to have been in touch with was (very probably) a distant ancestor of Madame’s husband, M’sieur Vibrot.

  ‘If of ’im, then of me,’ said Madame. ‘We are cousins.’

  Auguste chortled.

  ‘Tais-toi,’ snarled Madame.

  Auguste started to cry. Snot ran from his nose in streams. He bent his head down towards the mackintosh holdall, in which he was still encased, and tried to wipe his nose on it. Marigold nudged him and found him a handkerchief. Auguste looked at the handkerchief uncertainly, until Marigold applied another to her own nose and blew it, whereupon her pupil imitated her with noisy gusto, examined the contents of the handkerchief immediately afterwards, and whimpered with pleasure. Madame pursed her lips as at an example of wicked waste, and turned to Jacquiz.

  ‘So what do you wish of me?’ she inquired.

  Was there still by any chance any knowledge within the family of the seventeenth-century Veuve Vibrot’s connection with Constance Fauvrelle, or any surviving example of their correspondence?

  ‘Yes…in a sort, M’sieur,’ said Madame Vibrot indifferently. ‘You shall hear.’

  Auguste looked at her
reproachfully. She moved along the counter, opened a door, and called into vacancy: ‘Auguste.’

  The père Auguste appeared instantly, jerking through the doorway like a doll propelled from the interior of some ingenious toy. He looked flimsy and benign, with a thin, silken beard, for all his age like Christ talking to the little children in a cheap coloured picture book.

  ‘The letters of Constance Fauvrelle, Auguste,’ Madame stated with malicious aplomb.

  Auguste fils shifted unhappily. His father cleared his throat and began to explain mournfully and with no immediate relevance that certain exceedingly simple tasks in the administration of the Youth Hostel were assigned to ‘that boy there’. (More unhappy fidgeting from Auguste junior.) Among other things, ‘that boy there’ was entrusted with the care of the lavatories. On an occasion early in September, finding that the stock of newspapers in the lavatories was exhausted, ‘that boy there’ had been in a quandary about servicing the conveniences and had lost his head.

  At this stage in the narrative, Auguste minor began to sniff vibrantly, but desisted when encouraged by a smile of sympathy from Marigold.

  ‘Surely,’ she said, ‘you could have sent him to the chemist to buy the – er – commodity required?’

  ‘Prudence, chère Madame,’ grated la Vibrot, ‘does not sanction the provision of luxuries for students.’

  Marigold crumpled but was somewhat restored by a reciprocal grin from Auguste fils.

  ‘In any case,’ Monsieur Vibrot pursued, ‘that boy there, being in his way exceedingly conscientious, was determined to provide for his clients. He therefore went to the bureau in my office where he found some large sheets of paper which he thought would serve.’

  The point of the story was now becoming clearer.

  ‘Large, very thick sheets?’ Jacquiz said.

  Auguste fils nodded repentance.

  ‘Sheets that had been written on?’

  Auguste fils nodded with infinite sadness, though smiled on once more by Marigold.

  ‘In short, the letters of which you speak,’ yapped Madame. ‘It is they wherewith the students have blocked the conveniences last month. Auguste has destroyed them,’ she intoned, her eyes shining with pleasure and spite. ‘So you see, we cannot oblige you.’