Night Without Stars

by Winston Graham

  “That’s quite wrong,” she said with a first glint of anger. “ He’s a friend of mine.”

  “Well, that’s fair enough, too.” I wondered if it was just her loyalty that was ruffled. “I was thinking—are you doing anything Monday evening?”

  “I am busy Monday evening.”

  “Wednesday, then. Come and gamble with me on Wednesday.”

  “No, I don’t like to gamble really. It’s very dul.l”

  I drove her home in a taxi. When we got into the old town she stopped the cab and said she would get down here.

  I said: “Anyway it was a nice gesture coming out this once. Thanks for the sympathy.”

  “I didn’t come with you out of sympathy” she said with that glint again. “ I came because I wanted to come.”

  “Well, that’s pleasant to know.”

  “If you can read people so well you should have known that”

  “There’s always the danger of reading into people what you want to read.”

  “Nasty things as well as nice?”

  “Nice things as well as nasty.”

  “That’s very modest.”

  “It’s better than being pig-headed.”

  I used the word entêté and didn’t realise until after I’d spoken that it could mean infatuated as well.

  After a minute she said: “Perhaps I’ll come again sometime.”

  “On Wednesday?”

  “… Very well, then. If you will ask me.”

  “What do I say? ‘ Please, Alix?”

  “Thank you Giles.”

  “And you’ll come because you want to come?”

  “I’ll come because I want to come.”

  On Wednesday I met her in the same place. She was ten minutes late and out of breath, and explained she’d been kept at the shop, and had only had a few minutes to rush home and change. First before we were quite free, she had a little note to deliver. It was a few minutes’ walk, along the Boulevard Carabacel and then up the Rue St Laurent du Var. We stopped at what appeared to be a shop, but she led the way in at a side door and up a flight of stairs.

  She said: “I will just knock in case the servant is in, but I know Pierre is in Monte Carlo.”

  We waited. If I’d known where we were coming I should have stayed downstairs.

  She said: “I’ll push it under the door, then.”

  As we went down I said: “So that’s where Pierre lives.”

  “Yes, it is a nice flat. It goes right over Mallard’s book-shop. The shop isn’t his, but he finds it a convenient place to live.”

  “A bachelor ménage, I suppose.”

  “Yes. He has been married but is divorced. That is almost the only thing you didn’t guess with your witchcraft.”

  I wanted to ask more but decided not.

  To-night we did most of the opposite sort of things, dined in a cheap restaurant in the old town; then, since the night was cool but still, walked round the harbour and out towards Mont Boron. She guided me with a touch or two on my elbow. (Some people steer a man as if he was a farm tractor.) She chatted most of the time in her low, lively voice with its humorous overtones.

  “Someone once told me,” she said, “that Englishmen don’t really like women. Is that true, d you think?”

  “Was it an Englishman who told you that?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.”

  “But he was a Frenchman who had lived long in England. He said what Englishmen were really interested in was golf and gardening and dogs and men’s company. And of course sometimes their work—but that not very often.”

  I said: “And what do you think about that?”

  “Oh, I … I have had no experience of them until I met you—and you are one by yourself.”

  “Every man is one by himself.”

  “Yes, but some people fit in more than others. You for instance I should not have guessed as a lawyer.”

  “What then?”

  “When you came in that morning you looked … tall, a little untidy, preoccupied, a little aloof. Then when you sat down I found that was just a—shell … for protection—a thin shell It didn’t even last through buying a pair of shoes.”

  “Very ineffectual. And what does a lawyer look like?”

  “Oh, that’s not easy to say. I should have thought you lived by your brain, but something more creative perhaps.”

  “Gracious of you. I expect we all have two sides; the ‘be’ and the ‘would be’.”

  “Yes,” she said, and seemed to mean a lot by it.

  We stopped under a lamp and leaned over the wall. The frogs were croaking in the quiet night.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “Oh … its very dark. The moon won’t rise for another hour. Down there, that way, is Nice: two hundred—three hundred thousand people, lights twinkling, casinos, big hotels, poor streets, poverty, slums, pleasure steamers, fishing boats, dredgers and coal barges. Beyond that, though you can’t see it, are mountains. This way, straight ahead, it is nothing, all black. That way, to your left, the coast goes in towards Ville-franche, then out again at Cap Ferrat. Beyond that is the Tête de Chien and Monaco. I often go to Villefranche. I have relatives there.”

  “Good opening,” I said, “but even the guide books can do better than, ‘Villefranche. I have relatives there.’ ”

  “I am not a guide book. I couldn’t write one. To write a guide book you must have a flat mind. Mine is hilly.”

  “I believe you. Somebody said once: ‘The vigorous mind has mountains to climb and valleys to repose in.’ ”

  “Did they?” She was pleased. “ Someone thinks like me. Who was it?”

  “Hazlitt, I believe. Or Emerson.”

  “Shouldn’t there be a difference?”

  “There is. But not in my memory.”

  “And,” she said, “ did he add: The vigorous memory has mountains to look back on and valleys to dread, and—and beacons to keep alight!”

  “No. He didn’t say that. Do you believe that?”

  She didn’t answer, and after a minute I said: “Don’t you think there might be a risk in keeping too many beacons alight?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, it isn’t much of a profession for a young person. I’ve met confirmed fire-feeders in the past.”

  She said: “Some day I will tell you.”

  “Good. The sooner the better. I’m in rather a fog at present.”

  “A fog?”

  “Well, I’ve only the slightest idea what you look like—that one glimpse at Biffi’s. And I’ve hardly begun to know you yet.”

  “Isn’t it a little ambitions—so soon?”

  “Perhaps we can go into that sometime.… Just at the moment I get a sense of being let in to the ground floor and welcome. But there’s a basement marked ‘Staff only’.…”

  “So?”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about that, but I get glimpses of things. Something seems to be sprouting down there, and I’m sure it’s not sweet brier.”

  She laughed. Somewhere not far away music had begun. It was only radio from a house but it sounded romantic in the night

  She said: “Can I quote back to you, Giles? Don’t we say “Physician, heal thyself?”

  “Someone did.”

  “Well, then, forgive me, but aren’t we perhaps in the same boat? Yes, I’m unhappy for things that have happened to me. Sometime I’ll tell you. I’m young; I like life; I’m greedy for it all. But when I remember what I do remember, then some of that feeling shrivels up.” She shook back her hair. “ Well, isn’t that how you are? Didn’t you feel you couldn’t go on that day we met? Now you’re better, but aren’t you still unhappy about what’s happened to you? You think,‘Life’s played me a dirty trick. All right The Devil take it!’ Don’t you?”

  I thought a minute. “Yes, I suppose I do. Now the cure?”

  “Ah, I don’t know it.”

  The radio was playing a rumba. The thumping beat of th
e thing and the tinkle of the castanets came through the giant palm trees behind us.

  “Yes,” I said, “ but you know the cause of my complaints.”

  “Well, I will tell you about mine, but not now, please. I don’t want to think of it now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “As to the other fog,” she said. “ Is there nothing to be done?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “You’ve had, of course … lots of advice.”

  “Lots of advice.”

  “It’s very hard.”

  “Let’s talk about the weather.”

  “Anyway,” she said, “sometime, if it would help, to see the person you’re going out with … you have a little sight at close range?”

  “You’re very obliging.”

  “Not at all.”

  I said: “ This lamp …”

  “Oh, it would be better in the daylight.”

  “It’s not the sort of thing that should be done in a public street.”

  She laughed a little. “Nor perhaps here.”

  All the same she didn’t move when I bent to look at her.

  Her eyes were narrowed a bit in the light of the lamp, her lips turned in a faint smile that wasn’t absolutely free from shyness.

  I said pleasantly: “And in the night-time I shall not forget.”

  “What do you say?”

  “… You might be English.”

  “Is that meant to be nice or not? I don’t know.”

  “It’s a remark made in scrupulous detachment.”

  “I don’t think I want to be summed up.”

  “Privilege of my profession.”

  “Only surely for the judge.”

  “Don’t move, please.”

  She turned a little away and then, defensively, back again. It was all rather light-hearted.

  “Oh. Well.… Haven’t you seen enough?”

  I touched her forehead, brought my fingers down her cheek to her chin.

  I kissed her. After a bit the music stopped.

  She drew back against the wall. “Well, Giles.… That is very disgraceful.”

  “But why disgraceful?”

  She lifted her shoulders. “ I don’t know if I am old-fashioned or new-fashioned. Perhaps I’m just Alix fashioned. One has one’s fidelity.…”

  The music had started again. But this time it was a nasal tenor singing in Italian. The life had gone out of her. It was as if she had shivered. I didn’t feel very flattered.

  “You mean to your husband? I can advise you on that.”

  “No.… No one can. I’m—not very happy about this. I can’t explain now. I think we should go home—forget it has happened.”

  “Sorry I can’t oblige.”

  “No. It was silly to say it. At least we should go home.”

  “As you wish.”

  She took my hand. “Come, we’ll stroll back, perhaps stop at a café on the way.”

  I turned to go with her.

  “Esser in prigione [sang the tenor], e non poter fuggire. Ed ammalato e non poter guarire.”

  Or it sounded to me like that.

  Chapter 6

  I saw her about twice a week during the next month. Of course there was no future in it; but I wasn’t going to be put off by that. Each time we met there seemed to be something new to do or to talk about. Even my eyesight didn’t depress me the way it had.

  She never mentioned her husband, and neither did I. Sometimes, by her movements and arrangements, he seemed to be in the background; other times one hardly believed in his existence. When she spoke about the past it was usually about her childhood. Her father had been a country doctor near Dijon. She had gone to a convent in Paris until she was sixteen, and then on the fall of France had come to live with an aunt in Nice. Father and aunt were both dead.

  I knew she went on seeing Pierre Grognard about as often as she came out with me—and though I didn’t much like it there was nothing I could do about it. Her life was her own, and I certainly had no claims I could decently put up.

  I used to think of Rachel sometimes and try to compare Alix with her. It didn’t get far because there wasn’t much common ground, but I did find that companionship with Alix brought up thoughts about that old affair. I dug out a snap of Rachel with some idea that it might help me to feel more clearly, but the face was too small for me to see.

  By this time I was running short of money. It was awkward, because now more than at any other time I was anxious not to go to England; in fact I was determined to stay. I’d written Cousin Lewis on it asking if he could see any way round the difficulty, but he hadn’t been helpful. There was always the fathomless hospitality of the Wintertons to fall back on, but it was a hospitality not without some obligations. I couldn’t go to them and then rush off to Nice twice a week on secret business of my own. So when I went to see them I was careful to keep right off the subject.

  One morning I had a visitor. I was just writing to Lewis again with the suggestion that he might try to do something for me on health grounds, and had got the magnifying glass over the paper to see whether the writing was straight or whether it climbed all over the sheet, when Old Larosse the concierge tapped at the door and said M. Grognard had called.

  I was standing against the mantelpiece when he came in. We said good day in the usual way, but I noticed he didn’t attempt to shake hands. When I offered him a chair he said no, he’d rather stand. So—ho, I thought.

  After a bit he came back from the window and said: “ You have a pleasant flat here, monsieur.”

  “Pleasant enough.”

  “Nice is empty now. The summer season has not yet begun.”

  “I hope it will be a good one.”

  “On the contrary. The world is still very much upset. We have all suffered much from the war.”

  “Of course,” I said sympathetically. “ Comrades in arms, and all that.”

  I could tell he was eyeing me.

  He said “You’re blind, aren’t you, M. Gordon. You disguise it well.”

  “I get along.”

  “Yes,” he said, “Alix told me. Women are sympathetic creatures.”

  “I know. The surest way to their hearts is through a hard-luck story.”

  “Ah? You’ve found it so. A psychologist once told me that a woman is never happy unless she has something or someone to mother.”

  “There’s a profound truth hidden in that.”

  He was ill at ease; I could hear him rubbing the shaved skin of his cheek.

  “Of course,” he said, “ in a woman there are the two interests. There is the pity for a lame dog. And there is the love for a whole man. Unfortunately there are some who might confuse the two. That could lead to trouble all round.”

  “Only trouble surely,” I said, “for the lame dog?”

  He thought that one out. “ Yes. Trouble for the lame dog if you prefer it.”

  “But supposing the lame dog has nothing to lose and is willing to risk it?”

  “Everyone has something to lose, monsieur. Even if it is only his self-respect”

  It was a good reply. I offered him a cigarette, which he refused, and then lit one myself.

  I said: “ The parable’s so thin that the bones stick through. Can’t we do without it?”

  He napped the table with something—his gloves, I think.

  “Yes, we can. Alix belongs to me, M. Gordon. I have come to tell you to keep your hands off my property.”

  “That’s rather a big claim, isn’t it? What’s your title: absolute, qualified or possessory?”

  “It will soon be absolute, since you choose those terms.”

  “Does Alix know?”

  “Naturally”

  “I congratulate you.”

  “Thank you.”

  He waited and scraped his chin again. “And now …”

  “Now?”

  “I should like your promise to keep out of my affairs.”

  “I don’t understand. What h
ave you to fear from a—lame dog?”

  “Nothing. But I find your interference offensive.”

  “I could say the same about your visit this morning.”

  “I am sorry to be discourteous. But you have brought it on yourself.”

  I drew at the cigarette but didn’t get much fun out of it. Half the enjoyment goes when you can’t see the smoke.

  “Of course Alix knows you’ve come to see me?”

  He hesitated. “ Of course.”

  “She approves?”

  “Well … naturally she is still sorry for you.”

  “Well,” I said, “you’ve made the situation quite clear, as you see it. Probably that’s just as well. It saves misunderstanding.”

  “I should like some assurance from you, monsieur.”

  “I think you’re a very lucky man.”

  “That may be. But it doesn’t alter the fact that—”

  “It doesn’t alter the fact that that’s all the assurance you’ll get. I think you’re a very lucky man. Now good morning.”

  He didn’t like leaving on that but I wasn’t having any further luck with him. After he’d gone I lit another cigarette rather miserably and shoved the unfinished letter in a drawer. I didn’t feel like doing any more at it just then.

  A couple of days later I had the long-promised meal with John Chapel. As it happened his wife was indoors with a sore throat, so we ate by ourselves.

  It seemed to me that John, with his special consular knowledge, might be the right person to advise on the currency business—also he might know something of Grognard. John was the sort of man who never lived in a town a week without knowing the right place to eat, the safest place to have your shirts laundered, the man to go to if you wanted seats for something that was all booked up, where to find the finest local wines and, probably, the best-dressed cabaret show.

  Marriage, I thought, had toned him down. Or perhaps it was just that I hadn’t met him since he was twenty-one.

  After we’d talked over, rather unfruitfully, the flight from the pound I said:

  “There was another thing I wanted to see you about Johnny. D’you by any chance know a man called Pierre Grognard?”

  “Grognard?” he said. “It’s not a common name. Is that the fellow who’s in the catering business?”

  “It could be.…”