by Andrew Garve
“Where are we going?” she asked as he helped her up.
“Not far—a place called the Langouste, or something, down by the river. I discovered it yesterday. Do you know it?”
“No, but I’d like to.” She held her face to the cool breeze, enjoying the feel of it in her hair. “you know, this is the first time I’ve ever been in a jeep.”
Ben laughed. “Baby, you just haven’t lived!”
They crossed the picturesque bridge over the Dordogne and a few moments later they reached the Langouste, a little auberge with a deceptively unassuming exterior. Ben parked the jeep and led the way round to the river with the air of a man who knew his way about. Tables were set out on a flowered stone terrace just above the water, and silver and glass gleamed in the light of lanterns. A dozen people, all French, were sitting around in scattered groups., sipping apéritifs and talking in lively tones.
The maître d’ hôtel came forward with a smile and held a chair for Julie. “Everything is arranged, sir,” he said to Ben. His English was perfect. “Your table is over there in the corner—whenever you are ready.” He bowed and departed. Almost at once, a waiter arrived with champagne cocktails.
Julie looked accusingly at Ben. “You must have rushed along here and fixed all this.”
“I did just look in. This is an occasion. Besides, I need someone to hold my hand over food and wine, and this head waiter knows everything. Now we can just concentrate on each other.” He handed Julie her glass and raised his own. “Happy days!”
“Happy days!” she echoed, her eyes dancing.
That was the beginning of one of the most delightful evenings that Julie could remember. Everything was marvellous, the food not least. They had écrevisses with a dry white wine; and chicken in a delicious tarragon sauce, with truffles and more white wine; and Brie with half a bottle of a specially recommended Château Latour. Ben was in the highest spirits and Julie, after her three lonely days, ecstatically gay. As the leisurely meal progressed, a sliver of moon came up over the water and threw a romantic light over everything.
About nine, the sounds of music and festivity came wafting over the warm fragrant air and they decided to go back into town and see what was happening. Ben drove with caution, easing the jeep through streets which were rapidly filling with crowds en fête. Bright arc lamps had been set up around the open space that had been turned into a fair ground; balloons and streamers hung from the trees; roundabouts shrieked and blared; and there seemed to be laughing, happy people everywhere.
“How about sampling the fun of the fair?” Ben suggested. He parked the jeep in a jam of cars and helped Julie down, taking her arm and steering her through the throng. They worked steadily through the side-shows, shying at coconuts, shooting at moving ducks, throwing hoops at bottles of cognac, even stopping to watch a sort of Punch and Judy show. Presently they came to the cleared area where the young people of Pouillac, and many of the old ones, were dancing to the music of three accordions.
Ben’s fingers closed persuasively on Julie’s arm. “How about it?”
She needed no urging, and he caught her round the waist and carried her off in a jiggy waltz. There wasn’t much room to move and that suited both of them. They circled round and round in the same spot, holding each other close, completely at one with the happy, anonymous crowd.
“That was wonderful!” said Julie, flushed and a little breathless, as the music stopped at last. “You know, I can’t remember when I last danced.”
“No kidding! I imagined you lived in quite a social whirl back home.”
“Far from it. Laurence doesn’t like his fellow men very much.”
“No? Now that’s odd—he struck me as a pretty good-mixer.”
“He does give that impression sometimes to people he meets casually, but he has to make an effort—it doesn’t come naturally to him.”
“Too bad for a public man! Must be quite a strain.”
“I think it is. He’s always worn out after a party or a meeting.” She smiled up at Ben. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to talk about him now. Do you think they’d start playing again if we clapped?”
“They’re just going to,” said Ben. The accordions went noisily into action and almost at once they were swept into a riotous French dance in which everybody seemed to be gathering the Gallic equivalent of nuts in May.
It was nearly two in the morning when the crowd at last began to thin. Ben said he’d extricate the jeep later and they walked slowly back to the hotel.
They lingered a moment in the foyer. “It’s been wonderful, Ben,” Julie said. “I feel so different. I can’t begin to thank you.”
“You don’t have to, honey. It was a privilege.”
She smiled. “Good-night, Ben.”
“Good-night, Julie.” He watched her start up the stairs. To-morrow we’ll think of something else to do.”
Chapter Five
From now on they spent all their waking hours together. Each morning at about ten the jeep would draw up outside the hotel and Ben would give a honk and Julie would join him. He would ask her what she wanted to do and they would agree on some general objective and set off hopefully without bothering too much about maps or routes. Ben seemed content to rely on signposts, and if they arrived somewhere they hadn’t intended to and at a time that didn’t fit into any schedule, it was all the same to him. In the mornings they usually just cruised along the empty secondary roads, unhurried and relaxed, stopping whenever they felt like it to admire a view or watch oxen working in a field or chat to a rustic tending his flock of goats. Then around twelve they would start to look for a shady picnic spot, which wasn’t easy to find with the sun almost vertical overhead. They would lounge for a couple of hours, and sometimes all afternoon; then drift back to the hotel, have a few drinks, dine together at some place that had caught their eye, have a few more drinks, and say good-night. It was, as Ben said, a pretty good life. From the point of view of sheer companionship it was exactly the holiday that Julie had hoped for with Laurence, but she was having it with Ben instead. She had rarely enjoyed the path of least resistance so much.
It was all on a day-to-day basis, of course—that was her excuse and, she was sure, her safeguard. Any evening there might be a wire from Laurence; any morning he might arrive. They were just filling in time in a mutually satisfactory manner. When he came back it would be quite easy to resume their association à trois, or not, just as they liked, but in any case without embarrassment. Ben was keeping strictly to his undertaking that it would be all “on the level.” Occasionally, perhaps, his smiling eyes did seem to say things that he wouldn’t have voiced, but his manner was easy, natural and frank. Julie found him extraordinarily restful. However much she tried not to, she couldn’t help contrasting him in her mind with Laurence, Ben was reliable and even-tempered. With him she didn’t have to watch her step and guard her tongue all the time as she did with the incalculable Laurence. She didn’t have to be always making adjustments to suit his changing moods—she could be herself, and know that he’d like it. She tried to tell herself that it might become dull in time if you could always rely on a person, but she never felt quite convinced. Ben would never be dull; he was too interested in everything, too appreciative, too eager to live each moment fully. Lapped in deep contentment, Julie thought how easy it would be to fall in love with him and wondered how many more days they would dare to tempt the fates.
With nothing much else to do but laze, they naturally talked a good deal about themselves and each other. Julie told Ben about her early life, about the parents who had died within a short while of each other when she was seventeen, and of the struggle she had had to establish herself financially. She told him about the dull but safe job she had held in a wartime organisation, arranging itineraries for public speakers, and how she had got to know Laurence that way and had accompanied him to many of his meetings and been completely enthralled by his eloquence and passionate sincerity. She told how she had given up her job
, wanting something more active for herself, and how she’d joined the Women’s Land Army, getting herself posted, she admitted with a rueful smile, to the Lake District just in order to be near Laurence when the House wasn’t sitting, and how they’d had rather a clandestine affair until his mother’s death because the old lady hadn’t approved of the association. She told about the Quilter family, and the house at Blean, and the cottage; about the excitements and tediums of political strife about Laurence’s ambitions and her hopes for him and her worries about his health. Ben was a good listener and it was pleasant to tell him about these things as they lay in the shade on the bone-dry grass, smoking and completely relaxed.
Ben did a bit of reminiscing, too, but not so much. He’d been born somewhere in the Middle West, at a place that Julie had never heard of. His father had been a small-town vet with not much money but ambitions for his son. Ben had gone to college on a shoe-string, had become interested in geology, graduated, joined an oil company, been drafted during the war and spent the best part of four years working on air-strip sites in the Far East, and then after the war rejoined the same company and gone to Trinidad.
Julie was curious to know about the life he lived there. “I know you enjoy the work,” she said, “but what sort of place is Trinidad to live in?”
He grinned. “It’s not bad if you like prickly heat, mosquitoes, sandflies, scorpions and tarantulas.”
“Ben, I don’t believe it. I’m sure that’s not what the travel folders say.”
“Well, and velvet skies, humming birds, coconut palms and sapphire seas.”
“That sounds more like it. Aren’t you forgetting the dusky beauties, though?”
“No. I’m just not telling you about them.”
“Are they very attractive?”
“They’re kind of mixed.”
“Modified rapture, I must say. Well, where do you live, Ben—do you have a company house?”
“Yes, I have a small bungalow. Quite a civilised place, actually—I’ve a couple of servants and a car, and a terrace with a view over the sea, and a fifth share in a private beach, and a garden with a mango tree.”
“It sounds wonderful. Is it?”
“Well, yes and no. I thought it was a marvellous life at first—every comfort, always someone around it you wanted to drink rum punch or have a game of tennis, nothing to worry about outside the job. Then after a while it got to feel kind of empty. It’s an artificial, frothy sort of existence except when you’re at work. I think the guys with their families out there have the best of it. I’m happier when I’m in the bush.”
This conversation took place on the second day, when they were on their way to visit an ancient monastery where there was a mural that Julie rather wanted to see. On the third day they decided to drive down to a picturesque old town called Cahors and have lunch there. As Julie climbed into the jeep, smiled upon by the Lavendou’s benevolent proprietress, who thought it a shame that any charming woman should ever be alone, Ben asked his usual question—“Any news?”
Julie shook her head. “I should think I’m bound to hear to-night, though.”
Ben gave an uncomprehending shrug. “I don’t get it,” he said, as they drove away.
“What don’t you get?”
“Well, I guess it’s none of my business, but it seems kind of odd, leaving you here all this time and not keeping in touch …”
Julie tried to make light of it. “Laurence is always like that when he gets involved in something that interests him. Politics mean so much more to him than people.”
“That’s a heck of a thing to say about anyone.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Men often have to put their jobs first.”
Ben grunted. “I’m darned sure of one thing—if I’d had the luck to marry a nice girl I’d want her around.”
“Watching you break stones?”
“Sure! It’d be twice the fun.”
“Politics and geology aren’t quite the same thing.”
“I’ll say they’re not. I may be talking out of turn, but I distrust these men who get so keen on ideas that they’ve no time to be human. They’re dangerous—always making trouble.”
Julie laughed. “Laurence would call that a very reactionary remark. He thinks the only way you get progress is by making trouble.”
“You get a lot of other things as well. I’m not saying we’d be better off without any politicians, but it would help if they’d take a bromide now and again. I’ve seen them operating at close quarters. They’ve stirred up plenty of grief in Trinidad.”
“Wasn’t it necessary?”
“I don’t think it was—not in our business, anyway. We provide good jobs for hundreds of coloured workers, pay them far better than anyone else does or ever did, build them decent houses, look after their health, help to educate their. kids, give them a standard of life they couldn’t dream of without us. What’s more, we get along well with them if we’re left alone. We know them and we like them.”
“Benevolent capitalism! That’s what Laurence would say.”
“I guess he would, but from my point of view it’s just a good human relationship. When I go out into the bush on a field job it’s with a native team, mostly, and it works fine. I know their names and their interests and how many women they’re keeping and what they do Saturday nights, and when we talk it’s all down to earth and simple and mighty satisfying. They know I’ve got a chichi bungalow and a car and a private beach, but they don’t envy me, and why should they?—they’re as happy as I am. Then the politicians come along, full of big words and always in a hurry. They tell the workers they ought to be better off, ought to emancipate themselves, ought to get the full fruits of their labour, whatever that means. Next thing someone’s inciting a mob to demonstrate, the good relationship’s spoilt, the men strike and riot, the families go hungry, oil’s set on fire and wasted, drillers are attacked and finally people get shot. Everybody’s worse off. What’s the point of it all?”
“You know,” said Julie teasingly, “I think you could be a politician after all—you’re quite angry. You’ll probably be a Senator one day.”
“Not me—I’ll stick to stone-breaking.” He gave her a rather shamefaced grin. “I guess I’m all steamed up on account of that inconsiderate husband of yours.”
She made no reply to that and he didn’t pursue the subject. For a while he looked a bit grim, and then they came to a closed level crossing, and his interest was caught by what was going on there. A very large, very fierce female who seemed to be in charge was telling a party of impatient French motorists, with much flamboyant gesture, that if she let them through before the train her employers would cut her into three separate pieces. She indicated precisely where the incisions would be made. Ben said, “Gee, isn’t she a honey?—let’s go and join in,” and a moment later he had jumped out, all his annoyance forgotten.
They had a grand day at Cahors, lunching on the ramparts of the old walls, taking photographs of the 14th century bridge and of each other and climbing afterwards to a fine viewpoint just outside the town. They stayed out late, making the most of the day in case it should be their last together, and when they got back to Pouillac Julie said goodnight and went straight upstairs to bed. There was no letter in the rack, but as she entered her room the first thing that caught her eye was a telegram on the dressing table.
She opened it and read: STILL DETAINED HOPE TO GET AWAY SUNDAY LAURENCE.
She went over to her open window and sat there for a long while, her mind full of disturbing thoughts. She had always known that Laurence had an unusual capacity to detach himself from ordinary human feelings—to concentrate on what he was doing regardless of everything else. It was one of the things she had rather admired in him—but only, she now realised, because she had never herself felt the full impact of his ruthless single-mindedness. Now that she had, it was like a blow in the face. She couldn’t imagine what was detaining him, but that seemed almost immaterial. What was importa
nt was that he could be so indifferent to her; that he didn’t even bother to explain; that he could leave her alone like this on their long-awaited holiday with nothing to sustain her but these curt uninformative messages.
She found it hard to sort out her feelings. She wanted to rush home and ask him what he thought he was playing at. She wanted to stay away from him and show him that she didn’t care. She was deeply hurt and angry and humiliated—and yet, at the back of her mind, was the assuaging thought of Ben. The more she raged inwardly at the absent Laurence, the greater comfort she found in the recollection of Ben’s gentleness and understanding. And that in itself infuriated her. Damn it, if Laurence had wanted her to have an affair he couldn’t have arranged it better.
It was a long time before she slept, and all her thoughts were of the two men.
Chapter Six
They had planned to go to Rocamadour next day if by any chance Julie was still without word, and Ben was waiting with the jeep as usual. He greeted Julie with his customary air of detached cheerfulness, but for the first time she found it hard to respond. She had pretty well come to a decision, but it wasn’t going to be easy to tell him or to carry it out. Sensing her mood, but mistaking its cause, Ben refrained from his usual “Any news?” Obviously there wasn’t any, and that was why she was looking so blue. For a moment his arm rested consolingly across her shoulder as he lit a cigarette for her, and then they were away and he was talking fast, so that she wouldn’t have to.
Julie found herself more conscious of him to-day—more conscious of his close physical presence. She noticed his hands on the wheel. They were smaller than she would have expected in a man of his build, and beautifully-shaped, with slender fingers and delicately-boned wrists. Sensitive hands—more suited certainly to the microscope than the mallet. She noticed, too, the fineness and smoothness of his brown skin where his short-sleeved shirt ended above the elbow. She realised, with a sense of something missed, that in all these days she had hardly touched him—not since they had danced in the square, and that seemed years ago.