The Caves of Perigord

by Martin Walker

  “Until the newspapers got hold of it, you mean.”

  “Yes, until then.” He ate neatly, she noticed, without paying much attention to the food. Lydia was getting rather tired of foodies; men who made exaggerated talk of sauces and dishes and treated fashionable restaurants as if they were something to do with art.

  “Did Malrand come to your house after the funeral?” she asked, making the question casual. She felt uncomfortable, turning the conversation into an interrogation.

  “Of course, took a drink, said some gracious things. Stayed about ten minutes. He’d said a few words at the grave, about my father being a great friend of France. That sort of thing. Spoke very good English.”

  “Did he look around the house, go to your father’s study? I’m wondering whether he may have seen the rock-I presume it was on display in your father’s room.”

  “No, I don’t recall him being anywhere but the hall and the main drawing room. He strolled around the garden with me a bit, saying he remembered it from the war. Apparently he’d been to stay with my father. He spoke about my grandmother and her garden, made me walk him up the drive to the lodge, where she lived when the Americans took over the house.” He put down his knife and fork, finished his champagne.

  “But I see what you mean. If my father had picked it up in France, that was the time they were working together in Perigord. He may have known something about it. But if my father was up to no good and pinching bits of France’s glorious heritage, then the President of France would hardly have gone out of his way to honor the memory of someone he suspected as a thief. As for the old man’s study, it was a bit of a mess. Books and maps everywhere. He always had some thought of writing his memoirs. Never did, or at least nothing I ever saw or found beyond some notes. There were maps of the Western Desert all over the place, spread on tables and window ledges. The rock was behind one of them, on a bookcase. But it wasn’t in plain sight, even if Malrand had looked in. He did ask me, though, if my father had ever finished his memoirs. They knew one another well enough for that. The only other sign of his time in France was his copies of Malrand’s books; each signed by the author. I started one of his novels, but couldn’t finish it. Not my kind of thing. But I liked his book about the war in Spain back in the 1930s.

  “You seem jolly interested in all this,” he went on, picking at the salad the waiter had brought them. He didn’t seem very pleased with it. But he had not been much interested in the food, simply ordering what she had already chosen. “It must be your American curiosity.”

  “Nothing American about it,” she said, suddenly conscious of her accent. “Anyway, my mother’s Scottish.”

  “But you are American, or Canadian. And not just by your speech. It’s your manner-you are very direct, very determined, going straight to the point. Look at the way you put me to the question all through lunch. And your interest in the origins of this rock of mine is a lot more than I’d have expected.”

  “Why do you say that? That ‘rock of yours’ was entrusted to our care. We lost it. And the police do not seem at all hopeful of getting it back. They said it was a very professional job, by someone who knew what he was looking for and exactly where to find it.”

  “That must narrow down the list of suspects,” he said.

  “Well, it narrows it down to those people who had seen a copy of the next day’s Times, and the first edition was on sale in London by eleven P.M. on the night of the theft. And then it was on the paper’s Internet site before midnight and on the BBC Radio news at the same time. A million people could have seen or heard it, noticed the reference to the auction house and me. There are some very alert thieves in the art world.”

  “But you are not responsible for its loss. It was stolen. There’s a difference,” he protested.

  “I still feel responsible, and not only to you. There’s a responsibility to the thing itself, as a piece of history or a work of art. We still don’t know if it’s genuine. We still don’t know its provenance. There may be a marvelous cave out there somewhere. That’s what my German expert says, and he seems pretty keen on tracking it down.”

  “What about that French woman from the museum?”

  “Clothilde-she was quite ready to pay you an honorarium for the piece. And she has arranged for the museum to offer a reward for its return, which may be the best chance of getting it back. She wanted it, just from seeing the photographs. But she said they are always looking for new caves, some long-term project with an echo sounder or something. It was all a bit technical for me. She seemed pretty confident they’d find it eventually, if it is there to be found. But what do you do now, cash the check and forget it?”

  He sat back and looked her squarely in the eye. “Cash the check, certainly. Send you your commission. But then-well, I’m between postings and have some leave. I was in Bosnia for eighteen months, and then I start a staff college course in September. I thought I might spend some of this windfall on a trip to Perigord, look around my father’s old stamping ground. Visit a few of these caves and see what all the fuss is about.”

  “You’ll probably run into this German chap, Horst, and into Clothilde, whom you would find amusing,” said Lydia, suddenly wondering if Manners was the French woman’s type. She smiled to herself. She wouldn’t give him much chance of escaping Clothilde’s clutches if the Frenchwoman decided on a summer fling with a dashing English officer. Dashing, there was a word she had never used before in connection with a man. She rather liked the sound of it.

  “Will you take your family?” she asked, suddenly curious.

  “The family isn’t really mine anymore. That is, I was married, but it didn’t survive a couple of long tours in Northern Ireland. I was divorced six years ago. My son and daughter are away at school and I only get to see them on the holidays. My ex-wife lets me take them skiing and sailing, and to pantomimes. I brought them back to my father’s place last summer and taught them to ride. We went to a Club Med the year before that, the kind of place that keeps them busy.” He looked suddenly rather sad, Lydia thought. He forced his face into a slightly twisted grin. “As you can tell, I miss them. But what about you? You said your mother was Scottish. And your father?”

  “American, from Minnesota, with lots of Norwegian ancestors.”

  “How did your parents meet?”

  “He did his military service in the Air Force, based in Scotland, in the education branch. He told me he spent his free time helping out at some experimental theater in Edinburgh, and that’s where they met. She was a teacher. They married, went back to Minnesota, and went slowly broke running a bookstore, so he ended up teaching in the local school.” She was going to stop there, but Manners’s silence was sympathetic. She didn’t want to tell him about the cross-country skiing trips and her father’s ramshackle bookshelves and the piles of paperbacks in the bathroom and the magic of his bedtime stories. Time to change the subject. She drank some water, put the glass down decisively. “Ten thousand pounds will finance quite a luxurious jaunt around Perigord for you.” She smiled to herself, thinking that Clothilde would certainly help him to spend it.

  “Eight thousand pounds. You keep forgetting your cut,” he objected. “I mean it, Lydia. We had a deal, and what’s more you gave me good and honest advice. You persuaded me that this damn rock deserves to be back in its place, rather than in my father’s old dusty study, or adorning the wall of some overpriced penthouse. And you were the one who spotted what it was, or what it might be. You gave me the courtesy of your expertise. You earned the money.”

  “I told you, I couldn’t accept it.” She had been in England long enough to feel faintly embarrassed at talk of money. At least, of her money. And she wished he would not press her. It was out of his character, somehow.

  “Well, I have an alternative proposal,” he suggested, tentatively. “Please don’t misunderstand this, but why don’t you come too? If you won’t accept the money, let me put it to good use by financing your trip. You are interested,
and you know a damn sight more about these caves and the art than I do. I’m sure you’d like to see the caves, and you have the contacts in place, people like your Clothilde and your German chap. You say you feel responsible to the piece as a work of art, and here’s your chance to do something about it. Do come. Separate rooms, naturally.”

  She looked at him, startled. What an extraordinary suggestion. She hardly knew the man. “What do you mean, a chance to do something about it? If there’s one place the rock won’t be, it’s back in its home ground in Perigord?”

  “How do you know? But if there is a black market trade in the stuff, rich and secretive collectors, that’s going to be the center of it. I take your point about a million people potentially knowing that the rock was in your building on the night it was stolen. But only one in a thousand would know its value, and only one in a thousand of them would be in a position to do something about it. Burglaries aren’t set up at a moment’s notice, at least not this kind.”

  “I’m no detective,” she protested. “This is something for the police.”

  “And do the police know the art world as well as you do? Do the police have the slightest idea of the kind of work this is, what it comes from and what it means. Do they know its context? It will probably all fizzle out, but it will give a purpose to our trip. I’m all for learning my way around the caves and the prehistoric paintings and all that, but I always like to have some point to my holidays. I’m not one just to potter round open-jawed with a guidebook like some casual tourist.”

  “Anyway, I couldn’t possibly accept your kind offer. I don’t like people-paying my way, and this is just another way for you to bestow money on me that I don’t deserve,” she said. “Nor could I get away. I have two sales here in England next week and another one in Milan.”

  “Splendid, I’ll need another week to wrap up my father’s affairs with the lawyer, and you can meet me in Les Eyzies on the way back from Milan.”

  “Major Manners …” She imagined her mother at her elbow, prodding her to accept, just as she had always accepted invitations on Lydia’s behalf throughout her childhood.

  “Lydia, please, call me Philip.”

  “Major Manners, I fear this is not a good idea.” So there, Mother. But then, even more forcefully than the thought of her mother came the thought of what Clothilde would say.

  “Well, let me put it another way. I’m out of practice at this, Lydia, but I’m also asking you because I enjoy your company and I want to get to know you better. If I am going to fulfill my own responsibility to this piece of rock that my father owned, then I have to know more about it. So in your own terms, and you are the one who made me think this way, then I need your professional services, quite apart from the fact that I also find your company congenial. So please come.”

  “Let me think about it,” she temporized, suddenly reminded of Clothilde’s plan to recruit clients by organizing historical tours. The caves of Perigord, good food and wine, an undemanding lecture from Clothilde, it could be an agreeable jaunt for wealthy art lovers with a vague interest in prehistory. And it would be a very useful idea to float at the auction house. A preliminary reconnaissance would certainly be required. She looked at Manners thoughtfully. “In the meantime, if you are serious about doing something about this rock of yours, there is something you could do. The place to start would be your father’s war record, what he did, with whom he worked in France, any clues to the people that he may have met, someone who might have given him the rock or showed him where to find it. As his son, presumably you could get those easily. At least it would be somewhere to start.”

  “There’s a good idea,” he said. “But then in a way, I suppose I already started. I wrote off to Malrand when you first told me about the theft, asking if he could shed any light on my father’s time in Perigord. I told him about the rock, and apologized for what seemed to be a pretty shabby bit of souvenir hunting. After all, as President of France, it’s almost his property.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The Vezere Valley, 15,000 B.C.

  Deer knelt on the grassy slope before the cave, his head bowed in submission, as the shapes emerged through the morning mist. The apprentices, after a surprised glance, ignored him. The Keeper of the Bulls came to stand over him, saying nothing for a long moment, and then moved on into the cave. Then came the old man he had been waiting for, the Keeper of the Bison. To his relief, Deer saw that the Keeper of the Horses was with him, the one man he knew who would speak for him.

  “I seek your pardon for my clumsiness and anger,” Deer said as the Keeper of the Bison stood before him. The old man leaned on his stick, studying the youth as his breathing eased. Then he hawked and spat to one side. Deer kept down the blaze of anger. The old fool must know that he had simply slipped and fallen, that Deer had not jolted him from his perch. Maybe by now he had convinced himself it really was Deer’s fault. He kept his eyes downcast.

  “I collected these, to ease your bruises,” Deer went on, proffering the three kinds of herbs on the flat stone. The old woman had told him what kind to gather, and he had been in the woods before dawn broke to seek them.

  Seeing the old man remain immobile, the Keeper of the Horses bent and took the flat stone. “The boy has some sense, after all. These are the same that I was given, when I fell from the honey tree,” he said. “It seems he means it, his apology.”

  “Perhaps,” said the old man, studying Deer. “How good do you think he is?”

  “At the work? I don’t have to tell you. I’ll show you,” and the two Keepers walked uphill into the cave. Deer remained on his knees, waiting, knowing that the old man was being taken far into the cave, down the cluster of rocks at the end, and around the narrow twist into the next chamber to see the deer he had painted, swimming in the river of rock. He hoped the old man kept his feet. Deer’s knees hurt him, although he had thought to bring handfuls of soft leaves to kneel on. As he waited, he fingered his bare neck, wondering whether this would be enough to let him wear the feather of the apprentice painter again.

  They kept him waiting all through the day, as the sun rose high in the sky to clear the mist. He could see the fishers haul the long, curving fence of woven reeds and twigs deep into the water, as the older children were sent upstream to splash and throw stones and drive the fish into the calm water where the fishers waited, their spears poised. As the excited children came closer, shrieking and tossing great fans of water droplets into the air to catch the sunlight, Deer saw the boiling on the surface of the water as the fish darted for cover. The spears of the fishers rose and fell, like herons’ beaks. The boiling suddenly became intense inside the lagoon made by the reed fence, and the men in midstream began pushing the end of the fence back to the shore, turning it back upon itself to capture the fish within. The women clambered into the river, pushing their reed baskets beneath the surface and then hauling them out, gleaming flashes of silver as the fish jerked and tossed as they were carried back to the bank.

  The distraction took his mind from the numbing pain in his knees and the heat of the sun upon his sweating body. There were two bright fires inside each of his knees, burning deep into the bone. If he sank back to rest his weight on his haunches, his feet blazed with agony from the tiny pebbles on the ground. If he rose to ease his feet, his thighs groaned achingly. He dared not lean forward to rest his weight upon his hands. Twice, he heard a shuffling sound from the mouth of the cave, as if someone had come out to watch him. Once, he saw a flash of eyes in the woods to his left. He kept his gaze firmly forward, wondering if the children might start throwing stones to torment him, hoping that the fishing would keep them down by the river all day.

  He was still there at dusk, when the Keepers came out of the cave, and the fires down by the river were beginning to flare in the long twilight of summer. The other apprentices were told to go home, and three Keepers suddenly loomed over him.

  “I am getting old, and need young bones to fetch my water and take the ache
from my shoulders after a day in the cave,” said the Keeper of the Bison. “You seem to have some knowledge of the healing plants. You will come with me and do my bidding, but you are too clumsy to work with me in the cave.”

  His head still bowed in contrition, Deer fought to understand. He was no longer to serve the women, but to be nursemaid to an old man. That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to get back to the work of the cave. His face twisted, and he began to shake his head.

  “You will be apprenticed to me in the cave,” said Keeper of the Horses, quickly, warningly. “I have much work to do, and need the extra hands.”

  “Here,” said the Keeper of the Bulls, holding out a leather thong with a small feather attached. “Go with the Keeper of the Bison, and give him your young arm to clamber back up the hill tomorrow. Then make colors, and when they are done, join your new master. He spoke for you. And remember this time of your banishment from the cave. One more mistake, and out you go, forever.”

  As they walked off, Deer collapsed onto his side, trying to roll onto his back, but his legs would not obey him. His knees would not straighten. He groaned aloud as he tried to shuffle on his hands down the hill after the Keepers, dragging his useless, fiery legs behind him. Suddenly there were feet beside him, the shocking coolness of water splashed onto his back, a great handful of dripping moss wiped across his face and he sucked greedily at the moisture as firm hands began to slap and grip his thighs. He felt a great softness as someone sat on his legs, trying to straighten his locked knees. His joints blazed with a final pain, and then eased, and Little Moon helped him stagger to his feet and down the hill to the river.

  At his sister’s fire, the Keeper of the Bulls sat watching his newborn daughter gurgle in her sleep. He had taken her to his chest, listened to her heart, acknowledging that she was his, wondering if in some years to come she would grow to resemble her mother, and benefit some future man with her advice as her mother had helped him. The baby stirred, and his sister casually put the infant to her breast.