Caravan to Vaccares

by Alistair MacLean

‘Lila Delafont and I are down here to gather material for a book.’ She tried to be stiff but it didn’t become her.

  ‘On what?’ Bowman asked politely. ‘Provençal cookery? Publishers don’t pay that kind of speculative advance money. So who picks up the tab? Unesco? The British Council?’ Bowman peered at her closely through his horn-rimmed glasses but clearly she wasn’t the lip-biting kind. ‘Let’s all pay a silent tribute to good old Daddy, shall we? A truce, my dear. This is too good to spoil. Beautiful night, beautiful food, beautiful girl.’ Bowman adjusted his spectacles and surveyed the patio. ‘Your girl-friend’s not bad either. Who’s the slim Jim with her?’

  She didn’t answer at once, probably because she was momentarily hypnotized by the spectacle of Le Grand Duc holding an enormous balloon glass of rosé in one hand while with the other he directed the activities of a waiter who appeared to be transferring the contents of the dessert trolley on to the plate before him. Lila Delafont’s mouth had fallen slightly open.

  ‘I don’t know. He says he’s a friend of her father.’ She looked away with some difficulty, saw and beckoned the passing restaurant manager. ‘Who’s the gentleman with my friend?’

  The Duc de Croytor, madam. A very famous winegrower.’

  ‘A very famous wine-drinker, more like.’ Bowman ignored Cecile’s disapproving look. ‘Does he come here often?’

  ‘For the past three years at this time.’

  ‘The food is especially good at this time!’

  ‘The food, sir, is superb here at any time.’ The Baumaniere’s manager wasn’t amused. ‘Monsieur le Duc comes for the annual gypsy festival at Saintes-Maries.’

  Bowman peered at the Duc de Croytor again. He was spooning down his dessert with a relish matched only by his speed of operation.

  ‘You can see why he has to have an ice-bucket,’ Bowman observed. ‘To cool down his cutlery. Don’t see any signs of gypsy blood there.’

  ‘Monsieur le Duc is one of the foremost folklorists in Europe,’ the manager said severely, adding with a suave side-swipe: ‘The study of ancient customs, Mr Bowman. For centuries, now, the gypsies have come from all over Europe, at the end of May, to worship and venerate the relics of Sara, their patron saint. Monsieur le Duc is writing a book about it.’

  ‘This place,’ Bowman said, ‘is hotching with the most unlikely authors you ever saw.’

  ‘I do not understand, sir.’

  I understand all right.’ The green eyes, Bowman observed, could also be very cool.

  ‘There’s no need – what on earth is that?’

  The at first faint then gradually swelling sound of many engines in low gear sounded like a tank regiment on the move. They glanced down towards the forecourt as the first of many gypsy caravans came grinding up the steeply winding slope towards the hotel. Once in the forecourt the leading caravans began arranging themselves in neat rows round the perimeter while others passed through the archway in the hedge towards the parking lot beyond. The racket, and the stench of diesel and petrol fumes, while not exactly indescribable or unsupportable, were in marked contrast to the peaceful luxury of the hotel and disconcerting to a degree, this borne out by the fact that Le Grand Duc had momentarily stopped eating. Bowman looked at the restaurant manager, who was gazing up at the stars and obviously communing with himself.

  ‘Monsieur le Duc’s raw material?’Bowman asked.

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘And now? Entertainment? Gypsy violin music? Street roulette? Shooting galleries? Candy stalls? Palm reading?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, sir.’

  ‘My God!’

  Cecile said distinctly: ‘Snob!’

  ‘I fear, madam,’ the restaurant manager said distantly, ‘that my sympathies lie with Mr Bowman. But it is an ancient custom and we have no wish to offend either the gypsies or the local people.’ He looked down at the forecourt again and frowned. ‘Excuse me, please.’

  He hurried down the steps and made his way across the forecourt to where a group of gypsies appeared to be arguing heatedly. The main protagonists appeared to be a powerfully built hawkfaced gypsy in his middle forties and a clearly distraught and very voluble gypsy woman of the same age who seemed to be very close to tears.

  ‘Coming?’ Bowman asked Cecile.

  ‘What! Down there?’

  ‘Snob!’

  ‘But you said – ’

  ‘Idle layabout I may be but I’m a profound student of human nature.’

  ‘You mean you’re nosey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bowman took her reluctant arm and made to move off, then stepped courteously to one side to permit the passage of a bustling Le Grand Due, if a man of his build could be said to bustle, followed by a plainly reluctant Lila. He carried a notebook and had what looked to be a folklorist’s gleam in his eye. But bent though he was on the pursuit of knowledge he hadn’t forgotten to fortify himself with a large red apple at which he was munching away steadily. Le Grand Duc looked like the sort of man who would always get his priorities right.

  Bowman, a hesitant Cecile beside him, followed rather more leisurely. When they were half way down the steps a jeep was detached from the leading caravan, three men piled aboard and the jeep took off down the hill at speed. As Bowman and the girl approached the knot of people where the gypsy was vainly trying to calm the now sobbing woman, the restaurant manager broke away from them and hurried towards the steps. Bowman barred his way.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Woman says her son has disappeared. They’ve sent a search party back along the road.’

  ‘Oh?’ Bowman removed his glasses. ‘But people don’t disappear just like that.’

  ‘That’s what I say. That’s why I’m calling the police.’

  He hurried on his way. Cecile, who had followed Bowman without any great show of enthusiam, said: ‘What’s all the fuss! Why is that woman crying?’

  ‘Her son’s disappeared.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘You mean that nothing’s happened to him?’

  ‘Not that anyone seems to know.’

  ‘There could be a dozen reasons. Surely she doesn’t have to carry on like that.’

  ‘Gypsies,’ Bowman said by way of explanation. ‘Very emotional. Very attached to their offspring. Do you have any children!’

  She wasn’t as calmly composed as she looked. Even ih the lamplight it wasn’t difficult to see the red touching her cheeks. She said: ‘That wasn’t fair.’

  Bowman blinked, looked at her and said: ‘No, it wasn’t. Forgive me. I didn’t mean it that way. If you had kids and one was missing, would you react like that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I said I was sorry.’

  ‘I’d be worried, of course.’ She wasn’t a person who could maintain anger or resentment for more than a fleeting moment of time. ‘Maybe I’d be worried stiff. But I wouldn’t be so – so violently grief-stricken, so hysterical, well not unless – ’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean, if I’d reason to believe that – that – ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’

  ‘I’ll never know what women mean,’ Bowman said sadly, ‘but this time I can guess.’

  They moved on and literally bumped into Le Grand Duc and Lila. The girls spoke and introductions, Bowman saw, were inevitable and in order. Le Grand Duc shook his hand and said, ‘Charmed, charmed,’ but it was plain to see that he wasn’t in the least bit charmed, it was just that the aristocracy knew how to behave. He hadn’t, Bowman noted, the soft flabby hand one might have expected: the hand was hard and the grip that of a strong man carefully not exerting too much pressure.

  ‘Fascinating,’ he announced. He addressed himself exclusively to the two girls. ‘Do you know that all those gypsies have come from the far side of the Iron Curtain? Hungarian or Rumanian, most of them. Their leader, fellow called Czerda – me
t him last year, that’s him with that woman there – has come all the way from the Black Sea.’

  ‘But how about frontiers?’ Bowman asked. ‘Especially between East and West.’

  ‘Eh? What? Ah?’ He finally became aware of Bowman’s presence. ‘They travel without let or hindrance, most of all when people know that they are on their annual pilgrimage. Everyone fears them, thinks that they have the evil eye, that they put spells and curses on those who offend them: the Communists believe it as much as anyone, more, for all I know. Nonsense, of course, sheer balderdash. But it’s what people believe that matters. Come, Lila, come. I have the feeling that they are going to prove in a most co-operative mood tonight.’

  They moved off. After a few paces the Duke stopped and glanced round. He looked in their direction for some time, then turned away, shaking his head. ‘A pity,’ he said to Lila in what he probably imagined to be sotto voce, ‘about the colour of her hair.’ They moved on.

  ‘Never mind,’ Bowman said kindly. ‘I like you as you are.’ She compressed her lips, then laughed. Grudges were not for Cecile Dubois.

  ‘He’s right, you know.’ She took his arm, all was forgiven, and when Bowman was about to point out that the Duke’s convictions about the intrinsic superiority of blonde hair did not carry with it the stamp of divine infallibility, she went on, gesturing around her: ‘It really is quite fascinating.’

  ‘If you like the atmosphere of circuses and fairgrounds,’ Bowman said fastidiously, ‘both of which I will go a long way to avoid, I suppose it is. But I admire experts.’

  And that the gypsies were unquestionably experts at the particular task on hand was undeniable. The speed and coordinated skill with which they assembled their various stalls and other media of entertainment were remarkable. Within minutes and ready for operation they had assembled roulette stands, a shooting gallery, no fewer than four fortune-tellers’ booths, a food stall, a candy stall, two clothing stalls selling brilliantly-hued gypsy clothes and, oddly enough, a large cage of mynah birds clearly possessed of that species’ usual homicidal outlook on life. A group of four gypsies, perched on the steps of a caravan, began to play soulful mid-European music on their violins. Aready the areas of the forecourt and car-park were almost uncomfortably full of scores of people circulating slowly around, guests from the hotel, guests, one supposed, from other hotels, villagers from Les Baux, a good number of gypsies themselves. As variegated a cross-section of humanity as one could hope to find, they shared, for the moment, what appeared to be a marked unanimity of outlook – all, from Le Grand Duc downwards, were clearly enjoying themselves with the noteable exception of the restaurant manager who stood on the top of the forecourt steps surveying the scene with the broken-hearted despair and martyred resignation of a Bing watching the Metropolitan being taken over by a hippie festival.

  A policeman appeared at the entrance to the forecourt. He was large and red and perspiring freely, and clearly regarded the pushing of ancient bicycles up precipitous roads as a poor way of spending a peacefully warm May evening. He propped his bicycle against a wall just as the sobbing gypsy woman put her hands to her face, turned and ran towards a green-and-white painted caravan.

  Bowman nudged Cecile. ‘Let’s just saunter over there and join them, shall we?’

  ‘I will not. It’s rude. Besides, gypsies don’t like people who pry.’

  ‘Prying? Since when is concern about a missing man prying? But suit yourself.’

  As Bowman moved off the jeep returned, skidding to an unnecessary if highly dramatic stop on the gravel of the court. The young gypsy at the wheel jumped out and ran towards Czerda and the policeman. Bowman wasn’t far behind, halting a discreet number of feet away.

  ‘No luck, Ferenc?’ Czerda asked.

  ‘No sign anywhere, Father. We searched all the area.’

  The policeman had a black notebook out. ‘Where was he last seen?’

  ‘Less than a kilometre back, according to his mother,’ Czerda said. ‘We stopped for our evening meal not far from the caves.’

  The policeman asked Ferenc: ‘You searched in there?’

  Ferenc crossed himself and remained silent. Czerda said: ‘That’s no question to ask and you know it. No gypsy would ever enter those caves. They have an evil reputation. Alexandre – that’s the name of the missing boy – would never have gone there.’

  The policeman put his book away. ‘I wouldn’t go in there myself. Not at this time of night. The local people believe it’s cursed and haunted and – well – I was born here. Tomorrow, when it’s daylight – ’

  ‘He’ll have turned up long before them,’ Czerda said confidently. ‘Just a lot of fuss about nothing.’

  ‘Then that woman who just left – she is his mother – ’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why is she so upset?’

  ‘He’s only a boy and you know what mothers are.’ Czerda half-shrugged in resignation. ‘I suppose I’d better go and tell her.’

  He left. So did the policeman. so did Ferenc. Bowman didn’t hesitate. He could see where Czerda was going, he could guess where the policeman was heading for – the nearest estaminet – so was momentarily interested in the movements of neither. But in Ferenc he was interested, for there was something in the alacrity and purposeful-ness with which he walked quickly through the archway into the parking lot that bespoke some fixed intent. Bowman followed more leisurely and stopped in the archway.

  On the right-hand side of the lot was a row of four fortune-tellers’ booths, got up in the usual garishly-coloured canvas. The first in the row was occupied, a notice said, by a certain Madame Marie-Antoinette who offered a money back if not satisfied guarantee. Bowman went inside immediately, not because of any particular predilection for royalty or parsimony or both, but because just as Ferenc was entering the most distant booth he paused and looked round directly at Bowman and Ferenc’s face was stamped with the unmistakably unpleasant characteristics of one whose suspicions could be instantly aroused. Bowman passed inside.

  Marie-Antoinette was a white-haired old crone with eyes of polished mahogany and a gin-trap for a mouth. She gazed into a cloudy crystal ball that was cloudy principally because it hadn’t been cleaned for months, spoke to Bowman encouragingly about the longevity, health, fame and happiness that could not fail to be his, took four francs from him and appeared to go into a coma, a sign Bowman took to indicate that the interview was over. He left. Cecile was standing just outside, swinging her handbag in what could have been regarded as an unnecessarily provocative fashion and looking at him with a degree of speculative amusement perhaps uncalled for in the circumstances.

  ‘Still studying human nature?’ she asked sweetly.

  ‘I should never have gone in there.’ Bowman took off his glasses and peered myopically around. The character running the shooting gallery across the parking lot, a short thick-set lad with the face of a boxer who had had a highly unspectacular career brought to an abrupt end, was regarding him with a degree of interest that verged on the impolite. Bowman put his spectacles back on and looked at Cecile.

  ‘Your fortune?’ she enquired solicitously. ‘Bad news?’

  ‘The worst. Marie-Antoinette says I will be married in two months. She must be wrong.’

  ‘And you not the marrying kind,’ she said sympathetically. She nodded at the next booth, which bore a legend above the entrance. ‘I think you should ask Madame What’s-her-name for a second opinion.’

  Bowman studied Madame Zetterling’s comeon, then looked again across the car-park. The gallery attendant appeared to be finding him as fascinating as ever. Bowman followed Cecile’s advice and went inside.

  Madame Zetterling looked like MarieAntoinette’s elder sister. Her technique was different inasmuch as the tools of her trade consisted of a pack of very greasy playing cards which she shuffled and dealt with a speed and dexterity that would have had her automatically blackballed in any casino in Europe, but the forecast for his future was exactly
the same. So was the price.

  Cecile was still waiting outside, still smiling. Ferenc was standing now by the archway in the hedge and had clearly taken over the eye-riveting stint from the shooting-stall attendant. Bowman polished his glasses some more.

  ‘God help us,’ Bowman said. ‘This is nothing but a matrimonial agency. Extraordinary. Uncanny.’ He replaced his glasses. Lot’s wife had nothing on Ferenc. ‘Quite incredible, in fact.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Your resemblance,’ Bowman said solemnly, ‘to the person I’m supposed to marry.’

  ‘My, my!’ She laughed, pleasantly and with genuine amusement. ‘You do have an original mind, Mr Bowman.’

  ‘Neil,’ Bowman said, and without waiting for further advice entered the next booth. In the comparative obscurity of the entrance he looked round in time to see Ferenc shrug his shoulders and move off into the forecourt.

  The third fortune-teller made up the cast for the three witches of Macbeth. She used tarot cards and ended up by telling Bowman that he would shortly be journeying across the seas where he would meet and marry a raven-haired beauty and when he said he was getting married to a blonde the following month she just smiled sadly and took his money.

  Cecile, who now clearly regarded him as the best source of light entertainment around, had a look of frankly malicious amusement on her face.

  ‘What shattering revelations this time?’

  Bowman took his glasses off again and shook his head in perplexity: as far as he could see he was no longer the object of anyone’s attention. ‘I don’t understand. She said: “Her father was a great seaman, as was his, as was his.” Doesn’t make any kind of sense to me.’

  It did to Cecile. She touched a switch somewhere and the smile went out. She stared at Bowman, green eyes full of perplexed uncertainty.

  ‘My father is an admiral,’ she said slowly. ‘So was my grandfather. And great-grandfather. You – you could have found this out.’

  ‘Sure, sure. I carry a complete dossier on every girl I’m about to meet for the first time. Come up to my room and I’ll show you my filing cabinets – I carry them about in a pantechnicon. And wait, there’s more. I quote again: “She has a roseshaped strawberry birthmark in a place where it can’t be seen.”’