“I see.” Marcelle didn’t sound convinced, either.
The high-pitched whine of a motorcycle cut through the noise of the wind. That was unusual. The road had almost no traffic. It got louder, then receded as the cycle whizzed by. In seconds it was gone, and we said good night.
LES BAUX
I saw the motorcyclist the next day, after we returned from Les Baux.
The weather had cleared. At breakfast Vivien kept up a stream of chatter, her eyes hectically bright. She turned to Blanche. “How did you sleep? Better?”
Blanche was listlessly pulling apart a croissant. “Not really.”
“Did you take one of the pills? You know Dr.—”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like to take pills.”
“You know the doctor said to take them if you had trouble sleeping.”
Blanche turned away from her mother with an air of detachment. Ross said, “The poor children in China would really like to have those pills, Blanche.” Blanche smiled at him, and I saw a moment of communion pass between them.
Vivien paid no attention. She got up and walked to the window. “It’s so beautiful today. Aren’t you glad the rain has stopped?” She turned and proclaimed, “We can’t possibly work when it’s this beautiful, can we, Georgia Lee?”
She gave me a look of winsome pleading. I was the mean slave driver. I was sure this evasion had nothing to do with the weather. I began, “I don’t—”
“Oh, we can’t! Let’s go somewhere. Where should we go, Blanche?”
Blanche, her eyes on her plate, shriveled. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Of course you know. You’re always reading the books. Where did the troubadours go?”
Blanche bit her lip. She looked up and said, “Well—”
So it was decided. We were off to Les Baux.
Although I wasn’t pleased at Vivien’s ditching work, I was elated to have a chance to see one of Provence’s most famous sites, the ruined medieval stronghold touted in the guidebooks. Maybe the getaway would do everybody good.
We took off within an hour. Ross drove, Vivien beside him in the front seat, while Blanche and I shared the back. It seemed understood that Pedro wasn’t invited. Although Blanche was as quiet as usual I thought she looked strange, almost feverish. When Vivien asked her to fill us in on Les Baux, Blanche didn’t seem to hear. Vivien said, “Wake up, Blanche,” and Blanche opened her guidebook and read aloud the history of the bloodthirsty lords of Baux, a quarrelsome tribe given, so legend had it, to throwing their captives off the promontory where the castle stood. Troubadours had indeed frequented the place in the thirteenth century.
It was a long drive, through fertile countryside and the bustling towns of Carpentras, Cavaillon, and St. Rémy. We didn’t talk much, and I gave myself up to gazing out at the sundrenched landscape. After St. Rémy, the road began to climb through white cliffs and evergreen forests. At last we rounded a curve and Blanche said in a taut voice, “There it is.”
The massive gray bulk rising before us first looked like a natural rock formation, craggy and forbidding. Only at second glance could I differentiate the towers and walls of the castle at the top. “Grim,” said Vivien with distaste. Blanche’s lips were parted, and she sat forward, staring avidly.
As we got closer I could see Blanche wasn’t going to have a lonely communion with the spirits of the troubadours. At the top we found a parking lot crowded with tour buses and people snapping pictures of one another. Far from being a spot of brooding isolation, Les Baux was a tourist mecca in spades. The picturesque stone cottages lining the cobbled streets of the ancient village housed snack bars, curio shops, pizza parlors, and boutiques purveying Provencal cotton fabric, Provencal pottery, Provencal soap, Provencal herbs, Provencal knick-knacks. I bought a straw hat with a green ribbon to shield my eyes from the sun’s increasing glare. Vivien bought a quilted purse printed with immense roses. Ross bought a Les Baux dish towel. Blanche clutched the guidebook and stared around her. It was difficult to know whether she saw today’s commercialism or the romantic panoply of her imagination.
By tacit consent, we split up to wander separately. Eating a ham and egg crêpe at an outdoor table, I mused: about the scene Marcelle had overheard between Vivien and Pedro, the anonymous letters I’d received, Blanche’s Book of Betrayal notebook. I felt as if I were riding a turbulent sea in a flimsy craft, uncertain whether I would stay afloat or be engulfed.
After lunch I continued to ramble, joining the crowds in the narrow streets. Eventually I came to the entrance of the Cité Mort, the ruins of the castle and its surrounding buildings. I paid the twelve-franc admission fee, passed through the small lapidary museum, and went to see where the lords of Baux had hurled their enemies from the cliff.
I emerged on a vast field of chalky, rubble-strewn stone. The glare was almost painfully intense. The ruins of the castle and outbuildings were on my left, looking as if they’d been struck by a bomb. Doorways and windows opened through half-knocked-down walls; archways and turrets emerged from piles of unformed stone. Ahead of me, white rock and sparse ground cover stretched out to a ridge. It was difficult to imagine a civilization flowering in this bleak and inhospitable spot. Dazzled by the sun, I followed a path across the plateau, past a bust of the Provencal poet Frederic Mistral and a stone cross to the cliff’s edge. Far below were tilled fields and forested hills, lines of cypress trees, straight-rowed vineyards. The contrast of the fertile plain with this arid rock was striking.
Hot wind fanned my cheek. Except for one short iron railing, there was no safety barrier. Throwing someone over would be no more difficult today than it had been for the lords of Baux. Sightseers drifted back and forth around me, inspecting the ruins or ogling the view, but in this large space there was no crush. I wandered along the edge until I’d had my fill of vertigo, then crossed back to the ruins. I was poking around the tumbling walls when I saw Blanche.
She was standing on a flat boulder projecting over the valley, and she was dangerously close to the edge. Her back was to me. Outlined against the sky, her pink shirt fluttering in the stiff breeze, she looked ridiculously slight, as if she might sail off on the next gust. Her head was bent. As I watched, she leaned forward, almost to the point of overbalancing. The thought came to me, forcibly, that she was about to jump.
I dashed forward, careening over the pebbly, uneven ground. She bent again, farther this time, and I was sure she would topple and disappear. She straightened, though, her hair tossed by the wind. I thought she squared her shoulders.
When I had almost reached her, I called, “Blanche!” She bent rapidly forward, but I lunged, clutched at her arms, and pulled her back. The guidebook sailed out of her hands and spun downward. “Are you crazy?” I cried.
Her face was wet with tears. A few people stared as I led her away, probably thinking I was angry with her for going so close to the edge. Back at the ruins, I sat her down on a low wall and dug in my pocketbook for a tissue. I was nearly crying myself. “God, Blanche, what were you trying to do?” I babbled. “Don’t do that again. Ever.”
She was shuddering, her elbows on her knees. She took the tissue I offered and wiped her face. “Don’t tell Mother,” she gasped, when she could speak.
“I have to—”
“No!” She drew a rasping breath. “You should have left me alone.”
“Why?”
She spread her hands limply. I took her by the shoulders. “Tell me!”
So faintly I had to lean forward to hear she said, “Everything’s wrong. Everything.”
I felt helpless. Should I talk to her, try to make her feel better? Or would I blunder and make it worse? I looked around for Ross and Vivien, but they were nowhere in sight. I put my arm around her shoulders, as much to keep her from running away as to comfort her. She sobbed, “There’s never anything left for me. Since my father died, it was always Mother and Alex, Mother and Alex.”
“But surely—”
“No room for me. Ever.”
I remembered how Vivien had softened when she talked about her son. “But Alex left home years ago, didn’t he?”
“He could’ve gone to the moon, and it wouldn’t have made any difference.” Her eyes were streaming. “They’ll always have their secrets, their bonds. And now—”
She didn’t continue, but she didn’t have to. “And now there’s Ross,” I said.
She looked away. I went on, “It’s the same thing all over again, isn’t it?”
She became oddly still, as if my words had paralyzed her. Then she burst out, “Yes! Yes! How does she do it? How does she get him to love her so much? He’ll do anything for her! Lie for her—”
She broke off. Beneath my arm, her shoulders heaved. And I sat wondering, what does she mean, Ross will lie for Vivien?
RETURN TO MAS ROSE
She wouldn’t tell me. She clammed up completely, shaking her head to my questions. I was in turmoil. Would Blanche really have jumped, I tortured myself by wondering, or had the episode been an exercise in dramatics complicated by my arrival? Gradually, her sobs lessened. When had Ross lied for Vivien? The night Carey was murdered?
Blanche moved away from me and sat with her head in her hands. My body was so stiff I might’ve been carrying her on my back. She straightened and blew her nose. She said, “I have to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“I wasn’t going to jump, if that’s what you thought.”
“Of course that’s what I thought.”
She shook her head. “I wanted to see how it felt to be so close. That’s all.”
“I see.”
“There’s no need to mention it to my mother.”
Sweat was trickling down my brow. I took off my hat and let the wind cool my damp hair. “I don’t believe you,” I said.
“It’s true. Please.”
“No.”
I could have sworn she looked satisfied. Blanche felt left out and unloved. This episode could have been a twisted way of putting herself in the limelight. The thought infuriated me until I looked at her trembling hands and swollen eyes. The misery was real, whatever it might have driven her to do.
We left the Cité Mort. In the winding streets below we came across Ross and Vivien, and shortly afterward started home. Blanche was now in possession of herself. I’d wait and talk to Vivien in private. When Vivien asked where the guidebook was, Blanche, without a glance at me, said she’d forgotten it in a cafe. I’d never known people so at home with lies.
On the road up the hill to Mas Rose, I saw the motorcyclist. He appeared behind us, reminding me immediately of the engine I’d heard the night before. I stared at him through the back window. He wore a faded denim jacket and jeans, a red handkerchief knotted around his neck, a black helmet with a smoked plastic face guard. None of us mentioned him. Blanche, depleted, was dozing next to me. Ross drove in silence and Vivien sagged against her window. When we turned in at the gate, the cyclist roared past.
I followed Vivien to her room and told her about the episode with Blanche. She listened stony-eyed, standing in the middle of the room, her hands shoved in the pockets of her black slacks. When I finished the story she said, “That’s great. Just great.”
I had imagined several possible reactions. Bald fury wasn’t one of them. She began to pace. “Do you know why we’re here?” she flung at me. “Here in Provence, on a trip I can’t afford? Because of Blanche. Because Carey, that son of a bitch, wouldn’t pay for Blanche to come to Avignon, and Blanche never got over it. And so now she pulls this emotional blackmail—”
Maybe Blanche had been right about telling Vivien. “I don’t think—” I ventured.
She wheeled on me. “You don’t know anything about it! The therapists. The bills for the clinic. All the time she’s claiming I don’t love her, I only love Alex. What does she want most in the world? A trip to Provence. So I do that for her. It isn’t easy, but I work it out. And what do you tell me? That she’s pulled it all over again!”
She dropped on the bed and pressed her fists against her forehead, her eyes squeezed shut. I said, “You mean she’s ‘pulled it’ before?”
“Slashed her wrists six months ago. Superficial cuts, but it scared everybody to death.”
I needed to sit down, too. I got a rattan chair from the alcove and sank into it.
Vivien sat slumped on the bed. “If only Carey hadn’t made Blanche the issue when he dug his heels in,” she said.
“He used her to hurt you.”
“Oh, sure. He knew I was sleeping with Ross. We were heading for divorce. Why should he pay for Blanche to come to Avignon, even if it was the one thing— the one thing— she’d gotten really interested in since Denis died?”
“Her father’s death hit her hard?”
“It hit both of the kids hard. Alex got defiant, rebellious. Blanche withdrew.” She shook her head, some of her anger and animation returning. “I’ve got bills you wouldn’t believe. And she promised me. She promised—”
Her anger worried me. “I don’t think you should take it out on Blanche.”
“Right,” she said sarcastically. “And when does Blanche stop taking it out on me?” She went on, in a calmer tone, “I’d better try to get her therapist on the phone. Her therapist thought this adventure would do Blanche a world of good.”
She stood, and so did I. I remembered something. I hadn’t mentioned Blanche’s remark about Ross lying for Vivien. I hadn’t mentioned Ross at all. I didn’t say anything more.
THE BOOK OF BETRAYAL
Cool, fragrant air eddied through my half-open windows as I lay watching the pattern moonlight made on the ceiling. Nothing could seem more peaceful than this clean, bare room, this quiet house. My head pulsed. The emotional pressures within the walls of Mas Rose seemed strong enough to explode them, leaving rubble and empty windows like the ruins at Les Baux.
My encounters with Blanche and Vivien had unnerved me, left me feeling both helpless and responsible. I was obsessively fearful Blanche would try again, was trying again at this very moment, swallowing handfuls of her sleeping pills. I could hardly prevent myself from running down the hall to her room to make sure she was all right.
The hell of it was, I could see Vivien’s side, too. Dealing with Blanche couldn’t have been easy. I wondered if Vivien knew Blanche was in love with Ross, and how she felt about it if she did.
Which brought us back to Ross. He’ll do anything for her! Lie for her… What had Blanche meant?
So far, I had suppressed the question of who had killed Carey Howard. The murder was unsolved. Vivien had an alibi. I was being paid to write her memoirs, not delve into the crime, and I was comfortable with that— as long as the facts didn’t get shaky.
I barely knew Blanche. She could be neurotic enough to cast suspicion on her mother because of grudges and traumas left over from childhood.
I wanted to find out the truth, because I didn’t intend to write and put my name on a pack of lies. Moral questions aside, how would it look if Vivien and I produced a self-serving volume that was later discredited? I wouldn’t be played for that kind of fool, so I’d have to probe, in order to protect myself. Now, though, I wished I would fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
I stared at the ceiling. Before I got involved, I hadn’t realized how damaged these people would be by the past: Ross’s inability to continue with art, Blanche’s suicidal tendencies, Vivien’s unsettled emotional state, Pedro’s—
What about Pedro? His encounter with Vivien had made her cry. I saw Pedro’s leering face, heard him say he guessed this book would be worth a bundle.
I tossed restlessly and heard a faint whining sound through the night. A motorcycle again. It got louder, passed by, faded out. I turned on my side so I could stare at the wall instead of the ceiling. Eventually I fell into not a dreamless sleep but a troubled doze.
I woke the next morning feeling heavy-headed and woozy
. Eager to know if Blanche was all right, I pulled on my robe and got up to see. When I opened my bedroom door, I was met by the strains of Bernart de Ventadorn, an indication of normalcy. I went down the hall to her room.
The volume swelled as I got closer. I tapped, then knocked, then pounded on her door without getting a response, so I pushed it open and looked in. She was sitting up in bed, in a white nightgown, writing madly in The Book of Betrayal. “Blanche!” I cried.
She must have heard me, because she glanced up. She looked pale in the light-flooded room. Her mouth formed the word “Hi.”
I pointed to the cassette player on her bedside table, then to my ear, and she obediently turned the volume down to a faint drone. “Hope it didn’t wake you up,” she said.
“No. I stopped by to see how you are.”
She shrugged, her eyes cast down. “I’m fine.”
“I was worried.”
She repeated, “I’m fine.”
She was pulling back from me, whether from embarrassment or a belief I’d let her down by talking with Vivien. To keep the conversation alive, I said, “What are you writing?”
I thought she wasn’t going to answer. She drew her knees up in a self-protective gesture. But she said, with an embarrassed smile, “This dumb thing. It’s terrible.”
I was gratified. She’d given me an opening. “What is it?”
“Sort of a play. A dialogue in blank verse. It’s really stupid.”
“A dialogue between who?”
“Eleanor of Aquitaine and Bernart de Ventadorn.”
I remembered Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor in the movie The Lion in Winter. I said, “Eleanor of Aquitaine? She was married to—”
“Henry the Second of England. She was the mother of Richard the Lion-Hearted.”
“And she knew Bernart?”
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 28