by Mary Stewart
A big stoutish man in shirt-sleeves and a white apron was rubbing glasses behind the bar in the shady interior. I leaned over the door of the car.
‘Monsieur …’
He put down the glass he was polishing, and came out into the sun with a grin.
‘Please, monsieur, I have a puncture as you see. Is there by any chance a garage? I see you sell petrol. Is there anyone here who could change my wheel while I have something to eat?’
He looked a little doubtful.
But he was French, and I gambled on that. I laid a hand on his arm, looked desperately up at him, and said, with a quiver in my voice that was not entirely assumed: ‘Monsieur, it’s very urgent. I – I’m running away from someone, and he isn’t far behind me. I daren’t let him see me, and if I’m stuck here with a puncture he—’
The most complete comprehension flashed across his face.
‘Your husband?’
‘Yes, my husband. He’s following me, and – and, oh, monsieur, do help me!’
He was wonderful. In two minutes we had the Riley parked round at the back of the house, in two more he had routed out a lanky and capable youth from (I think) his afternoon siesta, and started him jacking up the car. Within seven at most I was inside the house, in a cool little room at the back, and he was asking me what I would have to eat.
‘And madame need have no fear,’ he said largely, with gestures, ‘for tonight she will sleep with her lover in safety.’
I didn’t argue, but I asked for an iced mint drink, a long, long one, and whatever food he could manage in the time it would take to change the tyre.
‘An omelette? A herb omelette? It will only take five minutes. We will find something for madame. Madame is tired? She should have something reviving with her omelette, yes?’
In a very little more than five minutes it was there, a fluffy fragrant omelette, flanked with fresh rolls, butter, honey and coffee. I swallowed down my cold drink and started on it. I don’t think I have ever tasted anything so wonderful as that perfect little meal that I ate hastily in the little back room of that bistro, while Jean-Jacques, outside the window, was yanking off my wheel.
I was actually getting up to go, gulping the last of my coffee, when I heard the whine of another car coming up the hill outside, and the check and deepened note as she changed gear. Then the swish of gravel under her tyres as she turned off the road and stopped in front of the bistro.
I stood frozen, with the cup half-way to my mouth.
His voice came quite clearly through the nearly shut door. After the conventional greetings—
‘No, nothing to drink, thank you,’ he said, but I heard the rustle of notes. ‘I haven’t time. I stopped to ask you if you had seen an English car pass here within the last half-hour, a dark green car with the hood down. Did you happen to notice?’
There was another rustle.
‘A dark green car …’ repeated the patron slowly. I heard the clink of a glass, and could imagine him picking it up and deliberately starting to polish it again while he considered.
‘A dark green car, English …’ he paused, and I don’t know which must have waited in the most tension, I or Richard Byron, one on either side of the door. ‘With a young demoiselle driving?’ asked the patron.
‘Yes.’ I could almost see the flicker in Richard Byron’s eyes as he leaned forward.
The patron said, indifferently: ‘A young woman driving a dark green open car went by here some time ago. She was going fast. Would that be the one monsieur means?’
‘That’s the one. How long ago?’
In a voice that sounded like a shrug: ‘About twenty minutes, twenty-five, half an hour – who knows, monsieur? I paid no attention, but I remember the car you speak of because of the speed … and the pretty girl.’
Something passed with a rustle, I heard a mumble of thanks from the patron and then, almost immediately, the roar of the Bentley’s engine and the sound of rapidly engaged gears. The engine sang across the crest of the hill, and dwindled and died, so that soon the only sound was the rustle of the pines in the little hill-top breeze, and the clink of a glass from the bar.
The patron came back grinning.
‘He was not far behind you, that one,’ he said. ‘But if you give him time now he will lose himself ahead of you. Madame cannot go back now the way she came?’
I thought for a moment, then shook my head. I would not lead the chase back into the Avignon area, come what might.
I would wait here, smoke a couple of cigarettes, then drive into Marseilles by the side road, and go to ground and call Louise. And I would tell Louise everything, when I saw her again; I was tired of playing this alone. I didn’t feel that David would hold me to my promise of not speaking, after what had happened.
I said: ‘Is there another way into Marseilles besides by the main road?’
‘Yes, there are many. After one has passed Les Assassins—’
‘Les assassins?’ I asked, startled.
‘It is a place at the top of these hills, where one begins to go down into Marseilles. The road goes between walls of rock, a little gorge.’
‘But why is it called Les Assassins?’
‘Because much rock has fallen there, and the old road used to wind in among the cliffs and boulders, and it was the place where brigands waited, in ambush, for the coaches and the carts of merchants.’
‘And after that?’
‘Then there is the long run down into Marseilles, and before one reaches the suburbs there are roads which branch and which, if one has a map, will take one into the city by a different way. There is no need to go down the main road into the town.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘He is to meet you there, hein?’
‘He – who? Oh, yes, of course,’ I said. I had momentarily forgotten that I had a date with a lover in Marseilles that night. ‘You have been more than kind,’ I told the patron, and he shrugged expansively.
‘It is nothing, nothing at all. If one cannot help a belle demoiselle in distress – what would you? One might as well be dead.’
He went out, beaming good-will, and I sat for a while, quietly smoking, while time passed softly. I felt, gradually, a sense of peace descending on me, a feeling that this was a safe little harbourage that I should be sorry to leave. I sat, relaxed, and I believe I even dozed a little, for over an hour longer. And then, when I saw by my watch that it was nearly three o’clock, I rose reluctantly, and prepared to go.
I found the patron, and paid for what I had had, renewing my thanks, and including a thousand-franc note, over and above what I owed him, and a substantial tip for Jean-Jacques.
I found that the latter had occupied his time not only in changing my wheel, but, when told there was no need to hurry, in finding and mending the puncture in the discarded wheel. This, mended now and serviceable, was strapped in place as spare. I thanked him gratefully, and, pursued by good wishes, and frank promises of joy to come from the patron, I drove the Riley back round the house and out again on to the road.
Soon the little bistro was lost to sight behind us, round a bend in the track, and we were off on our travels again, with the sun for company, and the tall pines whispering above the humming engine. I did not hurry. For one thing, there was now no need, and I would not unnecessarily abuse the car on the rather stony road, and risk picking up another puncture – which I would have to deal with myself. For another, the strain of the previous night, and of the hectic and nerve-racked morning, were beginning most definitely to tell on me. My head was aching a little, and a sort of lassitude, an almost don’t-care-ishness, bred of fatigue and lack of sleep, was making itself felt. I knew that, even if the occasion should arise, I would be quite unequal now to the sort of demands that had been made on me that morning. If suddenly called upon for headlong speed, I would probably drive the car off the road at anything over fifty miles an hour.
So I nursed the engine up the long inclines, and took the car gently over the rough surface, with half of my m
ind on my driving, and the other half trying to recall the street plan of Marseilles and the way I had planned to take.
The white rocks gave way, as we climbed higher, to red. The country, deserted before, was here desolate, stripped even of its olives and its vines. The red rocks, slashed with hard cobalt shadows, rose sheer from the road on either hand, and the only green was the dark cresting of the pines, swaying richly against the dazzling blue. As we approached what appeared to be the summit of the hill, I could see how the cliffs had split and crumbled, till on either side of the road were bare boulders and pylons of rock. Among the strewn red fragments to the left I saw where the old track had wound tortuously across the hill-crest behind the pines and fallen rocks. But the new road went through the sheer red cliff like a white slash.
Les Assassins.
And, in the blue distance, the Mediterranean.
As the Riley gained the summit, I changed up, and she slipped into the long descent with a sigh. Before me the road sank in an interminable and gentle hill towards the enormous untidy sprawl of Marseilles, set on the edge of the loveliest shore in the world.
We started slowly down the last stretch. To the left of the road, several yards ahead, I saw where the old track emerged again on to the road, behind a knot of pines. We slid past it and down.
I suppose I should have seen it coming, but I confess I had not. There was no reason I could see why Richard Byron should not believe the patron of the bistro, and race on towards Marseilles in the hope of catching me. But of course, he had not believed him.
The grey Bentley glided out of that knot of pines, and closed in behind my car without a sound.
13
Re-enter Murderer
(Stage direction)
There was nothing to be done, of course.
Even if I had not been so tired, I still could not have hoped to drive away from him with no start, and no advantage. I was beaten, and I knew it. I would go quietly.
Without thinking very much of anything at all, except that my head ached and I would be glad to stop driving and get out of the sun, I went on down the long stretch towards Marseilles as if there were no grey car behind me, and no angry man in it who had, by this time, quite a big account to settle with me.
In a very short time we were in the suburbs of Marseilles. The main road runs for perhaps two miles or more through streets of tattered houses and little grubby shops, where the plaster and the paint hangs in peeling festoons, and where beautiful ragged children and hideous mongrel dogs play together among the refuse of the gutters. Soon the tram-lines begin, and the traffic of the city begins to close in. Lorries, mules, carts of all shapes and sizes, cars of assorted vintages and nationalities – all the world on wheels seems to drive through the narrow streets of Marseilles, hooting, shouting, pushing for places, in a rich and strange confusion.
I steered mechanically through it all, changing gear, stopping, swerving, going through all the rapid actions necessary to getting a vehicle more or less undamaged through that incredible tohubohu. Behind me, like a shadow, the big grey Bentley swerved and checked and swept forward again on my track, never more than ten yards behind me, never less than four.
I didn’t even bother to watch it, except as I would watch anything so close on my tail, in order to give it the necessary signals.
I was finished. I wasn’t trying any more. My temples throbbed and I felt as if a heavy weight were pressing down on my shoulders. My mind, even had I tried to make it, would have refused to contemplate what was going to happen after this.
Which is why, when the miracle happened, I did not even notice it.
The first I knew of it was when it gradually filtered through to my stupid senses that there was no grey car reflected in the driving mirror. There was only a mule-cart, and nothing behind that that I could see.
I stared stupidly for three seconds, then I stole a look back over my shoulder. I had come about a hundred yards from where it had happened. A lorry, emerging from a blind side street, had swung across the path of the Bentley, and grazed a passing tram. The Bentley, caught between the two, had had to stop, but whether it was touched or not I could not, of course, tell. But it was stuck fast enough, that much was apparent. Already the beginnings of a crowd had gathered, and excitement was mounting … And there were the police …
It might take him minutes, or even hours, to get himself out of that.
Like a fainting man who makes a last desperate conscious effort before he goes under, I turned the Riley down a side street, and trod on the accelerator … left, right, right, left again – no, that was a cul-de-sac – right, in and out like a twisting hare … then before me was a garage, where behind a row of pumps yawned the dark cave of an enormous shed, half filled with lorries, cars, buses, in varying stages of repair. I turned in, ran the car as deep into the shadow as I could, and berthed it finally behind a solid rank of wagons.
Still mechanically, I switched off the engine, collected my bag, maps, glasses and coat, and got out of the car.
I cannot remember what instructions I gave to the proprietor, who had hurried up, but I paid him something in advance, and only just retained enough wit to ask for his card with the address of the garage. I tucked this inside my bag, and went slowly out into the sunshine of the back street.
I turned right, away from the city centre, towards where I imagined the sea to lie, and walked for some way through shabby streets that nevertheless seemed moderately respectable. And soon the name of a little hotel caught my eye, a name I had seen in the Michelin guide. It would, in that case, be clean and comfortable, so I went into its cool tiled lobby, signed my name, and climbed a steep spiral of marble steps to a stone landing on the third floor, where Madame showed me a small and spotless room.
The door clicked shut behind her. I sat down slowly on the bed, and for a full five minutes I don’t suppose I even moved an eyelash. The shutters were closed against the sun, and so were the windows, so that the hum and clash of traffic from Europe’s noisiest city surged up, muted and drowsy, into the high little room. There was a wash-basin, a foot-bath, a narrow comfortable bed with a snow-white cover, a carafe of water on the table beside the bed …
I drank deeply. I stood up, and after I had locked the door, I slowly undressed, shaking out my clothes one by one, and laying them neatly on the bed. I had a leisurely cool wash, bathing and drying my whole body, standing on the warm floor with the slatted sunlight barring me from head to foot. Then I slipped on my fresh nylon nightdress, and brushed my hair thoroughly.
I moved my clothes to the back of a chair, had another long drink, and lay down on the bed.
The day began to recede, grow confused, grow dim, as the sound of the traffic blurred with distance … Richard Byron might be miles away, he might be in jail, he might be just outside the door … it didn’t matter at all.
I slept.
It was just before six when I awoke, and at first, swimming up from the warm depths of sleep, I could not tell where I was, lying on a strange bed with the deepening rays of the sun slanting through the shutters. The light had mellowed from gold to amber, and the sound of the traffic below, too, seemed to have mellowed its note to a subdued rushing like the rushing of an underground sea.
I lay still for a while, enjoying the relaxed warmth of my body and the softness of the bed. Then I got up and began leisurely to dress again in the green frock. It looked fresh enough, considering the wear and tear of the last night and day, I thought, as I buckled the wide belt round it, and slipped into my shoes.
I was hungry, and the first problem I intended to face was that of finding a meal. I toyed with the idea of buying food and wine, and locking myself safely in my room to eat, but decided I might as well eat at a café if I was going out to buy food. And Marseilles was a big and crowded city, not like Nîmes, or Avignon. I would go out, avoiding the main streets, and dine in some small restaurant where I was not likely to be seen. Then I would come back to the hotel and ring up Loui
se.
I remembered what I had read of Marseilles – that the city was sliced in two by the straight line of the Canebière, the busiest street in Europe, where, sooner or later, all the world passed by. It was said that if you sat in the Canebière long enough, you would see passing by you every soul that you knew. If I were Richard Byron, I thought, that’s where I’d go. I’d select a table in a boulevard café on the Canebière, and sit and watch for the girl in the pale green dress.
So the girl in the pale green dress would go elsewhere.
I took my key downstairs, spoke politely to Madame and the marmalade cat in the foyer, and went down the three stone steps into the street. It was still warm, but the sunlight was deep copper-gold, and the shadows lay long on the pavements.
The exhausted feeling had passed, leaving only, as an aftermath of that deep sleep, a profound sensation of unreality, as if I were moving, effortlessly and bodiless, through a dream. People passed me, traffic rattled by, but these movements seemed to have no connection with the world in which I found myself; men were ‘like trees walking’, without character or feature or sound, irrelevant creations in the background of my nightmare. The only living person was myself, Charity Selborne, to whom none of these things could possibly be happening …
I walked fairly rapidly to the end of the street and glanced to right and left. To the right a vista of still meaner streets and warehouses met my eyes, so I turned left through a narrow way towards the sea. After a while I realized that I was making for the harbour – I could see masts and the gleam of a gull’s wing and a flash of early neon lights at the end of the street.
I hesitated. One had heard such tales of Marseilles, the wicked city … and was it not near the harbour that the wickedness congregated? A street led off to my left, and I paused in my walk, and glanced up it.
Then made for the harbour without another second’s hesitation. For he was there, my enemy, hesitating like myself at the far corner of that street, which, I found later, gave straight on to the Canebière: – I had been right, as far as it went. I did not think he had seen me, but the hunt was up again, and I made for the Old Port of Marseilles without another thought of the wickedness there abounding. I believe I would almost have welcomed the offer of a free trip to Buenos Aires at that moment.