'It is five o'clock in the evening,' said the chauffeur. 'Monsieur le Comte has slept very soundly all the day. I have been waiting here since eleven o'clock this morning.'
His words held no reproach: they were merely a statement of fact. I put my hand to my head, which ached abominably. I could feel a swelling on the side of it which was agony to touch, but my head was not aching for this reason only. I thought of the drinks of the night before, and that last tooth-glass of cognac. Perhaps it was not the last? I did not remember.
'I fell,' I told the chauffeur, 'and I think I must have been drugged as well.'
'Very possibly,' he said. 'These things will happen.'
His voice had the soothing quality of an old nurse speaking to a child. I swung my legs out of bed and gazed down at the unfamiliar pyjama trousers. They fitted, yet they were not mine, and I had no recollection of putting them on. I put out my hand and touched the vest and pants at the end of the bed, a different type and texture from my own, and I recognized the dark travelling suit of my companion.
'What happened to my clothes?' I asked.
The chauffeur came forward, and, taking the suit, hung the coat on the back of the chair and smoothed the trousers.
'Monsieur le Comte was no doubt thinking of other things when he undressed,' he observed, and he glanced across at me and smiled.
'No,' I said, 'those things aren't mine. They belong to your master. Mine are probably in the wardrobe there.'
He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, making the little grimace of someone who humours a child, and crossing to the wardrobe flung it open. There was nothing hanging there. 'Open the drawers,' I said. He did so, and they were empty. I got out of bed and rummaged in the two valises, the one on the chair and the other on the floor. They were filled with the possessions of my late companion. I realized then that we must have exchanged clothes in a fit of drunken folly, and somehow the thought of it was distasteful, beastly, and I brushed it aside because I did not want to remember anything else that might have happened.
I went to the window and looked down into the street. There was a Renault drawn up in front of the hotel, and my car had gone.
'Did you see my car when you arrived?' I asked the chauffeur.
The man looked puzzled. 'Monsieur le Comte has bought a new car?' he asked. 'There was no other car when I came this morning.'
His continued self-deception irritated me. 'No,' I said impatiently, 'my car, my Ford. I am not Monsieur le Comte. Monsieur le Comte has gone out wearing my clothes. See if he left a message with anyone below. He must have taken my car too. It's a joke on his part, but I am not particularly amused.'
A new expression came into the chauffeur's eyes. He looked worried, upset. 'There is no hurry,' he said, 'if Monsieur le Comte wishes to rest a little longer.' He came to me, and very gently put out his hand and felt my head. 'Would you like me to fetch something from the pharmacie?' he asked. 'Does it hurt you when I touch it, like this?'
I knew I must be patient. 'Would you ask whoever is at the reception desk to come upstairs?' I said.
He left me and went down the stairs, and when he had gone I looked about the bedroom once again, but nowhere, neither in the wardrobe, nor in the drawers of the dressing-table, nor on the table, was there anything of mine by which I could prove my identity. My clothes had vanished, and with them my wallet, passport, money, notebook, key-ring, pen, every personal thing I was in the habit of carrying. There was not a stud or a cufflink here that was mine: everything was his. There lay his brushes on the top of the open valise, with the initials J. de G.; there was another suit of clothes; there were shoes, shaving-tackle, soap, a sponge, and on the dressing-table a wallet with money, cards with 'Comte de Gue' printed upon them and 'St Gilles, Sarthe' in the bottom left-hand corner. I tumbled out the things in the other valise in the vain hope of finding something that belonged to me, but there was nothing - only his clothes, a travelling clock, a small writing-folder, a cheque-book, various packages wrapped in paper that seemed to be presents.
I went and sat down again on the bed, my head in my hands. There was nothing I could do but wait. Presently he would come back. He must come back. He had taken my car, and I had only to go to the police, tell them the number, explain the loss of my wallet with money, travellers' cheques and passport, and they would find him. Meanwhile ... meanwhile, what?
The chauffeur came back into the room, and with him a greasy, furtive-looking man whom I took to be the reception-clerk or even the patron. He had a slip of paper in his hand which he handed to me, and I saw it was the bill - the price of the single room for a night and a day.
'You have some complaint, Monsieur?' he asked.
'Where is the gentleman I was with last night?' I asked. 'Did anybody see him go out this morning?'
'You were alone when you took the room yesterday evening, Monsieur,' replied the man. 'Whether you were alone when you returned later in the evening I couldn't say. We are discreet here, we never question our clientele.'
Beneath the obsequious tone I caught the note of familiarity, of contempt. The chauffeur was staring at the floor. I saw the hotel clerk or patron glance at my tumbled bed, and from the bed to the brandy-flask on the washstand.
'I must get on to the police,' I said.
The man looked startled. 'You have been robbed, Monsieur?' he asked.
The chauffeur raised his eyes from the floor, and, still clutching his cap in his hand, came and stood beside me, as though to protect me.
'It would be better not to have any trouble, Monsieur le Comte,' he said in a low voice. 'These things are not very pleasant. In an hour or two you will be feeling more like yourself. Let me help you to dress, and then we will drive home as quickly as possible. Any argument in a place like this might be awkward, you know that very well.'
Suddenly I became angry. I thought what a fool I must look, sitting on the bed in that sordid little room, wearing a pair of pyjamas that was not my own, my identity mistaken as if it were a music-hall farce, the victim of a practical joke that was no doubt funny to my late companion but was certainly not to me. All right. If he wished to make an idiot of me, I would do the same to him. I would put on his clothes, and drive his car to hell - as he was no doubt driving mine - and have myself arrested, and then wait for him to turn up and explain his senseless action as best he could.
'Very well. Clear out and leave me,' I said to the chauffeur. He went, and the hotel-keeper with him, and with a strange distaste and fury mingled I reached for the vest and pants and began to dress.
When I was ready, and had shaved with his tackle and brushed my hair with his brushes, my reflection stared back at me from the mirror with a strange indefinable difference. My own self had become submerged. It was the man who called himself Jean de Gue who stood there now, just as I had seen him last night for the first time when he brushed against my shoulder in the station buffet. The change of clothes had brought a change of personality: my shoulders looked broader, I seemed to hold my head higher, even the expression in my eyes resembled his. I forced a smile, and the reflection in the mirror smiled back at me, a casual half-laugh that somehow went with the square padded shoulders of the coat and the bow tie so unlike any tie I had ever worn. Slowly I took his wallet and counted the notes. He had about twenty thousand francs, and some loose change that had been lying on the dressing-table. I searched the wallet carefully in case he had left a word of explanation, some scrawl admitting the joke that he had played upon me. There was nothing, no word, no clue to prove that he had ever been in the room, ever come to the hotel.
My anger grew. I foresaw the string of explanations that was going to be forced upon me - the rambling, disjointed story to the police, their bored reluctance to come with me to the station buffet and the bistro where we had dined the night before, and to hear confirmation of my evidence that two of us, identical in appearance, had been together there. How he must be laughing at me now, Jean de Gue, with nearly a whole day gone,
at the wheel of my car, driving north, east, south, or west, anywhere he pleased, with twenty-five pounds of travellers' cheques still uncashed and what other money I had, wearing my clothes, perhaps even sitting at some cafe reading my lecture notes, that look of lazy amusement on his face. He was free to enjoy his joke, to go where he pleased and return when the joke palled; while I sat in a police station or a consulate, trying to make the officials grasp my story, and very likely not even being believed.
I put the washing and shaving kit and pyjamas back into the valise, and then went downstairs and asked the furtive-looking fellow at the desk to fetch the things from the room. He still wore an expression half-familiar, half-amused, as though we shared some smutty understanding, and I wondered if this place was a haunt of Jean de Gue's, if he had been in the habit of coming here, in secret, to heaven only knew what rendezvous. And when I had paid the bill, and he had followed me out with the luggage to the ancient Renault and the waiting chauffeur, I realized that I had taken the first step in duplicity: by not protesting, by not at once demanding the police, by wearing the wrong clothes and passing myself off as Jean de Gue even for half an hour, I had put myself in the wrong. I was now the accomplice of the man who had driven away, and no longer his accuser.
The chauffeur had put the luggage in the car and now stood by the door, holding it open. 'Monsieur le Comte is himself again?' he asked anxiously.
I could have answered, 'I am not Monsieur le Comte. Drive me to the police station at once,' but I did not. I took my second decisive step, and got into the driving seat of the Renault, which happened to be a make of car that I knew well; for in other years, if I had not brought my own car, I would generally hire one and drive to places of interest near the town or village where I was staying. The chauffeur sat in the passenger seat beside me. I started the car, filled with an intense desire to get away from that dingy, shabby hotel and never set eyes on it again, and, as my anger rose and self-disgust took possession of me, I followed the first road I saw that led out of Le Mans, away from the city and what had happened there the night before, and on to the route nationale to open country. Last evening he had let my poor Ford rip, indifferent to the consequences because it was not his; now I could return his carelessness with interest. I stepped on the accelerator, and the old car leapt in response. Whatever damage I do to her, I thought, it does not matter - she isn't mine. I am without responsibility, and the accident would be Jean de Gue's. If I turn the car deliberately into the side of the road it will be his action, not mine.
Suddenly I laughed, and the chauffeur beside me said, 'That's better. Before we left Le Mans I was afraid that Monsieur le Comte was going to be ill, and it would never have done to be found there, in that hotel. I was upset last night when you told me to fetch you there. It was a good thing Monsieur Paul did not come instead of me, but luckily he had too much to do.'
I let my third chance pass. I could have stopped the car and said to him, 'This has gone far enough. Take me back to Le Mans. I have never heard of Monsieur Paul, and I will prove it to you and to the police.' But instead I drove faster still, overtaking the cars ahead of me, possessed by a reckless feeling I had never known before, the sensation that I myself did not matter any more. I was wearing another man's clothes, driving another man's car, and no one could call me to account for any action. For the first time I was free.
I must have driven about twenty-five kilometres along the route nationale when an approaching village forced me to slow down. I saw the name of the village, but took no notice of it, and we were through and out again the other side before the chauffeur said, 'You have missed the turning, Monsieur le Comte.'
I knew then that I was committed. It was too late to retract. Some freak of fortune had brought me, at this day and hour and minute, to this place on the road, this spot on the map, to the heart of this unknown countryside, in a land to which I did not belong and which I had for years told myself I wanted to understand. For the first time I saw the point of the joke, the irony of the situation as it must have struck Jean de Gue when he left me sleeping in the hotel in Le Mans.
'The only motive force in human nature is greed,' he had said to me. 'The thing to do is to minister to the greed, and to give people what they want.' He had given me what I asked, the chance to be accepted. He had lent me his name, his possessions, his identity. I had told him my own life was empty: he had given me his. I had complained of failure: he had lifted the burden of failure when he took my clothes and my car and drove away as myself. Whatever I had to carry now, in his stead, could not matter to me because it was no longer mine. Just as an actor paints old lines upon a young face, or hides behind the part he must create, so the old anxious self that I knew too well could be submerged and forgotten, and the new self would be someone without a care, without responsibility, calling himself Jean de Gue; for whatever this false Jean de Gue did, whatever folly he committed, it could not hurt me, the living John.
Some intuition of these things flashed through my mind now as I slowed down. I had no future, except what other, unknown, people made of it, beginning with the chauffeur at my side, who had just told me, perhaps prophetically, that I had missed the turning.
'All right,' I said, stopping the car. 'You drive the rest of the way.'
He looked at me inquiringly but made no answer, and we exchanged places without a word. He turned the car back to the village we had passed and struck left, leaving the route nationale behind us.
Now that I no longer had the car like a live thing to direct I slouched in the passenger seat, a dummy figure without thought. The fever and excitement died away. Let them do their worst - but who 'they' were I did not trouble to ask myself.
The setting sun dipped in our wake, and as we drove east the deep country folded upon us, forested and still. The lonely farmsteads lay oasis-like and misty, isolated patches amongst the soft red glow of fields. The acres of land were remote and beautiful as a vast ocean unexplored, and the golden asparagus fern like mermaids' hair, bordering the ribbon road that wound towards the trees. Nothing was real to me, nothing had substance. Everything I saw had the quality of a dream, from the pale stubble to the reedy stems of sunflowers long since picked and left to fall upon themselves with the first autumn frost. The solidity of haystacks, streaky white, usually hard and clear-cut on the horizon, merged into the soil, becoming part of it, and long avenues of poplars, with shivering, falling leaves, came out of nowhere and disappeared again. Ghost trees, tall and slim, closed in upon the lone figure of a peasant woman walking, head bowed, towards some unseen destination. A sudden impulse bade me tell the chauffeur to stop the car, and I stood for a moment, listening to silence, as the sun went down behind us dark and red, and the white mist rose. No traveller venturing for the first time in territory unmapped and unexplored could have felt more isolated than I did for that one moment upon the empty road. The stillness came from the land. Long centuries had moulded it, a million ages kneaded it, history had trampled upon it, men and women had fed themselves and lived and died upon it, and nothing of what we thought or said or did could trouble the brooding peace that was the soil. There beneath me and about me was the heart. I wondered how close I was, for one brief second, to an answer to my turmoil, doubt, distress; closer even amongst the patterned fields under the darkening sky than I might have been had I followed that first forgotten impulse and driven northward to la Grande-Trappe.
The chauffeur said, 'Monsieur le Comte has no great longing to go home?'
I looked down at his kind, honest face, sympathy in the depths of his brown eyes, and irony too, the gentle mockery of one who must surely love his master well, who would fight for him and die for him, yet dare to tell him when he strayed. It occurred to me that never before had I sensed devotion in anybody's eyes. His warmth brought a smile from me in answer, until I remembered that it was not me he loved but Jean de Gue. I climbed back again into the car beside him.
'It isn't always easy', I said, 'to be a family ma
n,' echoing the words that had been spoken to me the night before.
'Very true,' replied the chauffeur with a shrug and a sigh. 'There are always so many problems to solve in a household such as yours. Sometimes I wonder how Monsieur le Comte avoids disaster.'
A household such as mine ... The road topped the brow of a hill and I saw the warning sign of the approaching village of St Gilles. We passed an ancient church, a little sandy square flanked with a few worn houses and a solitary grocer's shop, a tobacconist's and a petrol pump, and swung left down an avenue of limes over a narrow bridge. And now the enormity of what I was doing, of what I had already done, hit me like a violent blow. A surging wave of apprehension, and indeed of terror, engulfed me totally. I knew the meaning of the word panic in its full sense. I had but one desire - to run, to hide, to be concealed anywhere in some ditch or hole, not to be carried forward fatefully and inevitably to the chateau I saw looming ahead of me behind ivy-covered walls, the small windows in its two foremost towers aflame with the last dying whisper of the sun. The car jolted over a wooden bridgeway spanning a moat that had once perhaps held water but was now gone to grass and nettles, and, passing swiftly through the open gate, circled the gravel approach and came to a standstill before the waiting chateau. A narrow terrace ran beneath the windows, which were already shuttered against the evening, giving a lost, dead look to the facade, and as I hesitated, still humped in the seat of the car, the figure of a man came out of the one dark door between the windows and stood there on the terrace, waiting.
'There's Monsieur Paul,' said the chauffeur. 'If he questions me later I shall say you had business in Le Mans, and that I picked you up from the Hotel de Paris.'
He got out of the car and I followed slowly.
'Gaston,' called the man on the terrace, 'don't put the car away. I shall be using it. There's something wrong with the Citroen.' He looked down at me, leaning on the balustrade. 'Well?' he said. 'You've taken your time.' And he did not smile.
The Scapegoat Page 4
