The Wild Land

by Isobel Chace

  “You must be tired,” she whispered to her grandmother. “I’ll go out now and bring the car round so you won’t have to stand around any more today.”

  “Make one of the men go,” Madame whispered back.

  But Emma shook her head.

  “I’d like to go,” she insisted. “I feel like a walk.”

  She pushed her way quickly out of the Arena and walked down the almost deserted streets. They were dark and shadowy after the lights of the Arena, and she had to pick her way carefully, for the narrow pavements were apt to come to an abrupt end for no apparent reason, or a doorstep would appear from nowhere, straight on to the street, a hazard to cars and pedestrians alike.

  Once she stopped and looked back at the Arena behind her, a theatre for two thousand years and at its very best that night. The lights cast the double row of arches into sharp relief against the blackness of the sky, the stone shining yellow and gold and the music softly drifting through the night towards her. It shone out, a symbol of the land. A land so old that the Romans had come this way in but the yesterday of time, and yet so young that life was everywhere, all around her, using the same streets where the Romans had walked before them. How could she ever bear to leave it?

  The streets grew darker away from the centre of the town and she began to feel that unreasonable fear that can grip one so suddenly, making one afraid even of the noise of one’s own footsteps, just because it is dark and one is alone.

  She passed a couple of bistros and was glad of the brief strip of light that they gave out to the streets. A number of men sat at the tables outside them, playing cards and drinking pastis. One of them, she saw with a mounting sense of horror, was Monsieur Clement!

  She began to run, her high heels clattering against the uneven ground. Her ankle, still weak in moments of tension, twisted beneath her and she fell down heavily on to one arm.

  “So, it is you, mademoiselle!” his unpleasant voice said behind her. “All alone and afraid of the dark? Is that it?”

  She twisted round to look at him, now really frightened.

  “No, I’m not afraid,” she breathed.

  “Did you think I hadn’t seen you pass?” he asked. He leaned against somebody’s front door, half smiling as he looked down at her. “You saw me at the table, didn’t you? Why didn’t you say good evening? I would have been pleased to escort you to wherever it is that you’re going in such a hurry.”

  Emma struggled on to her knees.

  “That was very kind of you, monsieur,” she said as calmly as she could. “But I didn’t want to interrupt your game. I was only going to get the car.” She paused and then went on hopefully: “The others are following me as soon as the dancing stops.”

  He snuffled down his nose as he so often did.

  “I can still hear music,” he said.

  In the silence Emma could hear it too, sounding out across the small city, traditional and melodious.

  “Shall I help you up?” he asked.

  “No—no! I can manage, thank you,” she said hastily. She stood up and straightened her back, facing him with all the courage she could summon up. “Goodnight, monsieur,” she said carefully.

  She turned away and began to walk down the street, but his hand came down on her shoulder, pulling her round to face him again.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  “I don’t know,” Emma said shortly.

  “You’re hiding her from me!”

  “I am not hiding her,” she said slowly and clearly. “But I think you know where she is!”

  A whining note came into his voice. “Why should I be left all alone and without money? I brought that girl up without anyone’s help, and now she must look after me!”

  Anger began to get the better of Emma’s caution. “You could try working yourself instead of battening on her!” she said hotly.

  His smile grew wider, showing the gaps in his teeth. There was no amusement in it, it was more of a grimace.

  “I’m her father! I have rights!”

  Emma turned away.

  “Goodnight, monsieur,” she said again.

  His hand came up and struck her on the cheek. “Don’t try your high and mighty airs with me!” he shouted at her. “What kind of a fool are you? Don’t you realize that your clever Monsieur Charles Rideau will marry her?”

  “Perhaps he will,” Emma said steadily. “He has the right to marry whom he pleases.”

  He laughed.

  “Then he’s not likely to marry you! A stinking foreigner like your grandmother before you!”

  He struck her again, pushing her roughly against the wall of a house. Emma’s hands went up to protect her face just as he caught her by the hair and pushed her again.

  “I’ll make sure you never have him, anyway!”

  Emma sobbed with fear, trying to escape him into the shadows so that she could run away, but every time she did so he hauled her back towards him, bruising her arms and striking whatever part of her body he could. She struggled and at last managed to pull off one of her shoes, attacking him with that. The heel caused a long, ugly gash down one side of his face.

  “I’ll hit you again if you don’t let me go!” she threatened him.

  He laughed, and she thought she would never forget the sound of it, horrid, mirthless laughter right in her ear.

  “Not so dainty or superior now, are you?”

  In the gloaming she could see somebody’s washing hanging out of the window, in the manner of all Provencal towns. If she could reach the line, she thought, she could bring the whole lot down on his head and make her escape. But, just as she thought she had it within her grasp, he pushed her against the wall once again and she screamed.

  Then, quite suddenly, she was free. Monsieur Clement lay flat on his back in the open drain that ran along the centre of the street. Emma gazed at him for a long moment in complete disbelief, and then, much to her chagrin, sat down hard on the pavement.

  It was Charles who picked her up and Charles who carried her the whole way to the car, putting her into the front seat with gentle hands and allowing her to cry all over his coat.

  “Hush, ma mie,” he said at last, “it’s all over now.” His slight French accent, so much more noticeable when he spoke softly, sounded so blessedly familiar in her ears that she cried all the harder.

  He looked down at her helplessly and presented her with his handkerchief.

  “If you don’t stop crying soon, I shall kiss you—hard!” he warned her

  Her eyes widened. There was nothing she would like better, but what would Marie-Françoise say?

  “Indeed you won’t!” she retorted. She sat up straight with an agitated movement, all thought of tears forgotten. “And you’re not to tell Grand’mere, she’ll only worry about me, and I’m quite all right really.”

  He turned on the inside light of the car and looked at her carefully.

  “Are you really all right?” he insisted gently.

  She forced herself to smile.

  “Yes,” she said simply. She winced. “A little bruised and battered maybe—What did you do with him?”

  Charles carefully wound up her hair and fastened it with a couple of hairpins on the top of her head.

  “The gendarmes took him away.” He smiled at her, right into her eyes, and her whole heart turned over!

  “I’ve seen your hair all loose before,” he told her, “flying out behind you like a great black cloud.”

  She put up a hand to guide his as he found yet another pin and pushed it home.

  “Have you?” she heard herself asking. “When?” She had never been coquettish before, she thought with surprise, and what folly to begin with Charles! But she would have liked to have known. “We must get back to the Arena,” she said sharply. “Grand’mere will be waiting.”

  He kissed her lightly on the cheek. An idle kiss that meant nothing more than sympathetic understanding, and yet, to her, for that instant of time the whole world stood still.
>
  “There’s always tomorrow,” he reminded her. “You can ask me again then.”

  But tomorrow, she knew, she wouldn’t have the courage to ask.

  He drove carefully through the now crowded streets back to the Arena. The pedestrians flattened themselves against the wall as they passed and, once, they had to back into one of the many little squares as a car passed them coming the other way.

  “Wait here,” he told her. “I’ll go and find the others.”

  She waited until he was gone and then felt her arms cautiously. That horrible creature must have bruised her badly and, with the short sleeves of her dress, it would be difficult to hide the purple patches that were already beginning to appear on her skin.

  The traces of her tears still lay on her cheeks, so she did a few hasty running repairs with her powder compact and her lipstick. The shadows under her eyes would be taken for tiredness, and indeed she was tired, very tired. She felt she could sleep for a week.

  Emma tried to get out to allow her grandmother to sit in the front seat, but Charles wouldn’t hear of it; and rather to her surprise, Madame Yourievska sat meekly in the back without a single word and they drove back to the manade in silence.

  The Camargue shone white in the moonlight, the clumps of vegetation dark splodges of black, Emma sat very low down, with her head on the back of the seat. She could just see Charles’s capable hands holding the wheel. How nice he was, she thought, and how kind he had been to her. And how much she would like to put her future into those hands and never have to worry again! But that was impossible. He was going to marry Marie-Françoise. She put up her hand to her face and was almost surprised to find that her cheeks were wet once more with tears and that her heart was slowly breaking.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MONDAY, May the twenty-second—Sara’s Day—dawned fine and clear. The three gardiens looked at the sky and said the mistral would blow later, but Emma could hardly believe them. The air was like wine, soft and caressing, and she determined to be out early before the heat of the sun descended like a cloud, jading the morning. She saddled the mare, dared her to play up on that particular morning, and mounted her easily. She was stiff and sore from the beating Monsieur Clement had given her the night before, but at the moment it didn’t seem to matter. She would ride the mare straight out to the sand dunes and the sea, where she could be quite alone, away from the noises of the gipsies, away even from the first stirrings of the manade.

  To her grandmother’s delight, the Mas Camarica had been chosen to provide the bulls for the Course Libre that would round off the day’s entertainment at Les Saintes Maries, and the men were already out choosing the liveliest beasts, cutting them out of the herd, ready for the dangerous ride into the town. Emma watched them for a few seconds, wondering why Charles was not with them, and then she turned her mare and rode v swiftly away from them.

  New life was everywhere. The flamingoes stood on their sticks of legs, their young, brought up on a communal system, like a grey cloud beneath them, moving back and forth. Their beaks had not yet developed that characteristic tilt of the adults and their feathers were little more than grey fluff, but they were young and appealing. “The flowers that fly,” the Camargais had nicknamed these huge white birds with their crimson flashes, and when they took to the wing they were indeed beautiful, with a rather angular, appealing grace.

  It was impossible to get into the actual nature reserve. Visitors in the past had done so much damage that now the authorities were very wary before they would even grant a permit to bona fide naturalists, let alone those with no more than a passing interest in the multitude of birds that nested there. Emma had been told that the wild boar still roamed about the wilder parts of the Camargue, and that sometimes hunts were organized to keep them under control, but she had never seen any signs of them herself, and she couldn’t pretend to be entirely regretful.

  She rode slowly out into the sea, the choppy little waves of the Mediterranean breaking against her mare’s hocks. It really was the most gorgeous day! The mare snorted and sidled sideways. It was plain that she wanted to go towards the noise, and Emma let her have her way, allowing herself to be taken almost into the little town.

  Excitement was reaching fever point. The square in front of the church was packed with gipsies waiting to catch a glimpse of the statue of their patron, and the first of the gardiens, who traditionally joined in the ceremony, had already arrived. Perhaps that was where Charles was, Emma thought. She was fortunate in passing at exactly the right moment and had a wonderful view of the little figure, dressed in silver brocade, as she was carefully carried out in procession together with the priests and the Bishop of Aix-en-Provence for the traditional blessing of the sea.

  Thousands of gipsies lined the route, with thousands more standing on the dyke to get a better view. The procession wended its way down to the sea and straight on into the water until they were all in it up to their thighs.

  “Salu! Salu! Viva les Saintes! Viva Sara! SARA!” came floating across the land towards her. The gipsies,

  no matter what nationality they had written on their passports, were temporarily one people again.

  Emma wheeled her mare away from them, suddenly conscious of the full strength of the now blazing sun, and made for home.

  The herd had been brought right in to the home paddocks when she got back to the manade. Her grandmother was supervising the cutting out of the bulls, sitting very straight in her saddle and with a slight . flush of excitement on her cheeks, her eyes screwed up with concentration.

  “Get that big fellow! No, not him! Get Cyclone, he has a better reputation!”

  The heavy animal was separated from the rest by clever riding and a clever use of tridents in the gardiens’ hands.

  “Are you riding with us this afternoon?” Guy asked Emma with a smile.

  She flushed with pleasure.

  “May I? I thought I’d have to be one of the spectators.”

  He grinned, smoothing down the mane of his sweating horse.

  “We’ll need everyone we can get for the abrivado,” he told her. “We can’t have the town beating us today! Not with all the tourists about!”

  She saw Charles then and her attention was immediately diverted. He raised his hat to her courteously, and she sat there, stupidly smiling at him, thinking how very like the photograph she had had of him he was.

  “You look fine,” he said. “I wondered if we should see you in the saddle at all today.”

  “Of course she looks fine!” Madame retorted. “Why shouldn’t she? She’s a very pretty girl. Charles, go and sort out that muddle before I go mad! We do not need that mangy-looking beast Jean-Claude is so set on, but nothing I say seems to have the faintest effect on him!”

  Charles and Emma exchanged little smiles of amusement.

  “It will be like this all day,” he sighed, his eyes twinkling. “Being bossed about and having no time at all to talk to my girl friends!”

  Girl friends! Emma looked down at her saddle. There was safety in numbers for him, perhaps, but what about her? She gave her horse a little nudge forward.

  “Will you be riding this afternoon?” she asked him.

  “Of course.” He grinned at her, turned his pony as if on a sixpence, and rode off into the centre of the herd.

  Madame Yourievska watched him go.

  “He rides well, that one,” she commented. “But don’t you go telling him I said so! Being bossed about, indeed! And where has he been all morning?”

  Emma leaned back in her saddle, stretching her legs forward, and laughed. Madame gave her a fierce glance.

  “And you are mighty saucy this morning!” she said gruffly. “It’s a good thing you are riding this afternoon. Nursing the bulls through the streets of Les Saintes Maries, with the entire town trying to stop you getting them into the Arena, will take some of the spice out of you!”

  Emma screwed up her nose and laughed again.

  “Oui, Grand’mer
e,” she said demurely.

  “Oh, go away!” her grandmother said petulantly. “Go and talk to Marie-Françoise! She is in the kitchen waiting for you—in a fine state! That Sam is with her. But of course nobody will tell me what is going on!”

  Emma blew her a light kiss and went into the yard, slipping the reins over her mare’s head and seeing that she had something to munch while she was gone. She went into the house in a rather more sober mood. She didn’t know what to say to the French girl—what could one say? It was not her fault that her father had been so unpleasant. And who could even guess at all what she must have suffered from him all these years?

  Sam and Marie-Françoise sat side by side in the deserted kitchen, holding hands. They both looked tense and a little unhappy.

  “I have come to apologize,” Marie-Françoise said immediately. “It was an abominable thing to happen. I blame myself. I should have seen that he would do something stupid! Are you badly hurt? Charles was so angry this morning that I could not understand what had happened.”

  “Charles was angry?” Emma asked, bewildered.

  “He was damned unpleasant!” Sam said bitterly. “He upset Marie-Françoise pretty badly!”

  The French girl bit her lip.

  “He came for my father’s things—what are left of them.” She hesitated. “The gendarmes kept him last night,” she went on quietly. “Charles said you would not prefer any charges, but they kept him all the same. The good nuns are going to look after him. It is beautiful, the place where he will live. They looked after Van Gogh there too, you know.”

  “But Van Gogh was mad! Your father isn’t mad!”

  “Not mad, perhaps, but it is better that he should be looked after.”

  Emma looked as appalled as she felt. “Oh, Marie-Françoise, I am so sorry!” she exclaimed.

  It was Sam who answered, a bitter look in his eyes. “I can’t be entirely sorry myself,” he said. “He’d been giving Marie-Françoise hell for years. He was an animal!”

  Emma felt again, in memory, his violent hands on her arms.