Quest for Alexis

by Nancy Buckingham

  “We might as well face it—we’ve lost them. So we’d better decide what to do now. Give up, Gail, that’s my advice.”

  I didn’t answer him. After a moment, I said, “Will Dougal still be willing to help us, do you think?”

  “Dougal must be hopping mad at this moment. He thought he’d got an exclusive, and by now he’ll have found out that the story is blown.”

  “But he can’t blame us for that.”

  “Let’s hope not. We’ll have to see.”

  We had climbed very high. In these last moments before sunrise, the sea seemed to glow with an opalescent sheen, broken by bars of shadow. Far below a few pinpricks of light marked a small town somewhere along the coast. A car flashed past us on the road, but when the sound of its engine had faded there was only silence.

  I thought of all the other times that Brett and I had stopped by the roadside at some quiet spot. Now, in the little Renault, he and I were sitting very close but not quite touching—carefully not touching. Yet I had never been more aware of him. I had never felt more dependent on him. I was conscious of that faint elusive redolence that makes up a man—this one special man. A subtle blend impossible to define, the warm male smell of him.

  Nervously I edged away another inch and instantly experienced a curious sense of chill.

  Brett said thoughtfully, “What we need is a hideout. Somewhere that’s safe from reporters, but with a phone so we can keep in touch with Dougal. And I think I know just the place.”

  “Where, Brett?” I asked eagerly.

  “It’s not far from here, up in the hills toward the Italian border. A couple of friends of mine have a small house there—an old mas they’ve had renovated. There’s not a neighbor within miles. They’re the kind who like to get away from it all.”

  I felt dubious. “But, Brett, we can’t land ourselves on them just like that. I mean, if they like peace and quiet...”

  “Leave it all to me,” he said confidently, starting the car. “Let’s drive on until we find a cafe, and we’ll have some breakfast. Then as soon as it’s a reasonable hour to get civilized people from their beds, I’ll give the Shackletons a ring.”

  Against reason, perhaps, I felt a surge of new hope. I had actually seen Alexis, and the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Belle hadn’t told him about seeing me. It was a theory that made sense. Comforting, encouraging sense. Belle Forsyth was afraid of letting me talk to my uncle.

  The sun was coming up now. Under the shadow of the mountains it was still dark, but the sky was piling to an oyster gray, touched in the east with the faintest brushing of rose. Far out to sea the first rays of sunlight were glinting upon the water.

  As we drove on, I watched color come back to the world, the clear vivid colors of Provence. Dark burnt orange from sun-baked earth, every shade of green and gray from the trees that hugged the slopes, the white of almond blossom and the sharp spicy yellow of mimosa. And there were bushes of some waxy-looking coral flowers that I didn’t recognize. It all stood out in high relief, glowing against the early-morning purity of the sky, the deep cobalt blue of the sea.

  Soon we reached a little town called La Turbie, and Brett found somewhere to park.

  “I suppose you don’t want to look over the Roman ruins,” he said. “There’s a spot where you get a fantastic view of Monte Carlo. Especially at night, with all the lights.”

  “You’ve been here before, then?”

  “A few times. We were here in the summer, filming.”

  We? Bleakly, I thought of Brett with Elspeth Vane. She was a woman suited to the glittering life of the Cote d’Azur. Monte Carlo, Nice, St. Tropez ... World sophisticates both of them, she and Brett.

  Suddenly I became conscious of what I must look like at this moment. My clothes, straight out of a suitcase, dragged on in a rush. No time to do my hair properly or make up my face.

  I opened the car door and put a foot to the ground. “Didn’t you say something about breakfast?”

  “Yes, sure. Let’s go and find someplace.”

  A couple of minutes’ walk through the streets of the ancient town, and we came to an attractive little cafe with gay orange awnings. Table and chairs were set out in front. But at this altitude, at this time of day, it was too cold to sit in the open, so we went inside. Brett ordered coffee and croissants from the incredibly handsome, dark young waiter, who looked Italian rather than French.

  While we waited, Brett said musingly, “God knows where that pair are going to turn up next. There are places dotted all over Europe just as eligible as Palma and Nice.”

  My mind was still occupied with thinking about Elspeth—Elspeth and Brett. I said stupidly, “What do you mean by eligible?”

  “Smart enough—fancy enough. It’s the grand style he’s been going for, isn’t it? Staying at the ritziest hotels he can find.”

  I focused my attention. “Yes, that’s what I can’t understand. It’s so completely unlike Alexis to be ostentatious.”

  “Men change, Gail. Or perhaps Alexis was like that underneath all the time.” He shot me a tentative look. “It could be Belle’s price, you know—living it up in the millionaires’ playgrounds.”

  “Belle’s price?”

  Brett drew his thumbnail across the starched checked tablecloth, making a thin rasping sound.

  “Gail, you’ve only seen Belle Forsyth as the capable, devoted nurse-companion to Madeleine. Being a man, I was shown a different side of her character. When Belle took her hair down she could be devastatingly sexy. It was enough to make any man—”

  “Not Alexis.” But a faint note of doubt had crept into my voice.

  “Any man,” Brett insisted. “If it was not for the fact that Belle isn’t my type, who knows?”

  “Then what is your type?” I threw back at him and instantly regretted it.

  When Brett looked at me it seemed that a shutter had dropped across his eyes. “You know the answer to that, Gail, don’t you?”

  Yes, I knew. We were back to Elspeth again.

  Brett inquired if he could use the telephone. He was shown through a curtained archway at the back, and I heard a door close.

  There was a sleepy hush upon the place. The only other customer, a fat, elderly man in a black beret, was studying his newspaper with deep concentration. Was he perhaps reading about Alexis? I wondered. Behind the counter, the handsome waiter was polishing glasses and kept glancing up at his reflection in a mirror. A huge, sleek tortoise-shell cat lay in a patch of sunlight by the window, lazily licking a paw. He eyed me impassively for a moment, yawned, stretched, and settled at once to sleep.

  In less than five minutes Brett was back.

  “All fixed, Gail. We’re to take some food for ourselves, though—the Shackletons aren’t prepared for unexpected guests at this time of year, and it’s a long way to the shops.”

  “Brett, are you sure they don’t mind?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve known Bill Shackleton ever since we were at Cambridge together. He writes scripts for television nowadays, and Harriet writes those madly successful children’s books. They’re a great pair.”

  “What did you tell them about us? How much did you explain?”

  “What about leaving the organizing to me, Gail? Make a big effort and trust me for once.”

  I flushed. “There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

  Brett smiled at me with maddening condescension. “Drink up your coffee like a good girl, and we’ll go and find an epicene and buy some food. I don’t know how long we’re going to be holed up, but we’d better take enough for a couple of days or so.”

  “How about letting Dougal know where we’ll be?”

  He gave me a withering look. “Bread and cheese, eggs, ham, some fruit and coffee—how’s that? And wine.”

  “I suppose so.”

  The thought of food didn’t interest me at all. I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of maybe two days’ complete inaction. But I had to go alon
g with Brett’s plan, because I knew that without him I’d get nowhere. Without Brett’s help, I wouldn’t have a hope of catching up with Alexis.

  Chapter Ten

  We were climbing higher all the time, thrusting deeper into the mountains. The road wound its way through a narrow gorge, just a rim on the edge of a seemingly vertical rockface. At one point we had to cross the ravine by a slender metal bridge that looked as if it would scarcely bear the weight of the car. Then at once we plunged into a dark tunnel where Brett needed to use the headlights.

  We emerged into a different world—a harshly arid world that had its own sort of grandeur. The wide, parched valley was encircled by distant peaks, some crested with snow. Nearer, huge outcrops of limestone rock, blindingly white, stood out like jagged scars.

  Here and there was a single olive tree, its contorted branches still winter-bare, and clusters of stunted pine shivered in the wind. In the hollows, where the sun could not penetrate, lay patches of crusted snow.

  I shuddered at such bleakness. Yet people lived here, somehow scratching themselves a livelihood. We passed through a village, no more than a scattering of tumbledown houses. It seemed deserted, but I sensed eyes peering secretively from behind curtains.

  Beyond the village the road divided, and Brett stopped to consult the map he’d bought in La Turbie. With the engine switched off, I could hear the wind sighing through the telephone wires beside the road. It was a mournful sound.

  “We take the right fork here,” said Brett, refolding the map. “It’s not far now. How does the thought of a blazing log fire strike you?”

  “Great.” I hugged closer into my coat. “I suppose it’s very beautiful, Brett, but...”

  He laughed. “That’s the whole idea, isn’t it? Nobody’s going to think of looking for us in this wilderness.”

  Fifteen minutes later we came to a rough track leading off to the right. A mailbox was nailed to a pole, with a hand-painted sign beneath it - La Retraite.

  “This is it,” said Brett and swung onto the track. We bumped our way along for nearly a mile, twisting and turning. Pine trees blocked our view of the house until we were almost upon it.

  La Retraite was a huddled mass of stone, crouching low upon the ground. The walls, the roof pantiles, the tufty grass around it were the same tawny gray. If I’d expected a welcome, I was disappointed. No figure stood in the doorway, no smoke curled from the squat chimney. The windows were tightly shuttered.

  “Brett, are you quite sure this is the right place?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “It... it looks so deserted. All shut up.”

  Brett made no comment as he stopped the car on the square of roughly leveled ground. For a moment or two he sat behind the wheel, making no move to get out. Then he said briskly, “Come on, let’s have a look around.”

  There was still no sign of life from the house. I expected Brett to knock at the door, but instead he poked about in a crevice between two stones in the wall and withdrew a large and rusty iron key. He thrust it in the lock and without a backward glance at me opened the door and stepped inside.

  “Brett,” I began, “ought we to ... ?”

  “Come on in, Gail. We’d better get a fire going right away. It’s like an icebox.”

  Inside, with the shutters up, it was dark. I could see very little except that we were in a large oblong room, its flagstone floor partly covered by wool rugs. It felt bitterly cold, the raw cold of a house long empty.

  “There’s no one here,” I said, dismayed. Then suddenly I understood and swung around on Brett accusingly. “You knew there’d be nobody here, didn’t you? There couldn’t have been when you were supposed to be phoning. This place hasn’t been lived in for ages.”

  “Not since autumn, actually,” he agreed. “Bill and Harriet just spend the summer here. They say it’s the only place they can escape and get some work done. Luckily for us, it’s essential that the TV people can reach Bill quickly, or there’d be no phone.” I heard a ting as he lifted the receiver. “Yes, it’s working, so we’ll be all right.”

  “You’ve got a nerve. You told me they—”

  “Keep cool, Gail. I had to spin you a yarn. I knew you wouldn’t have come at all if you’d known the Shackletons weren’t here.”

  “Too true I wouldn’t. And I’m not staying, either. You’d better think again, Brett.”

  His voice reached me out of the gloom. Calm and reasonable. “There’s nowhere else as safe as this, Gail. Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t stay.”

  “There are all sorts of reasons. The Shackletons, for one thing. What would they think if they knew you were making use of their place like this?”

  “Bill and Harriet wouldn’t care a damn. They’ve often told me that if I ever wanted somewhere quiet to go when I was on the coast, I could always come here. How else do you imagine I knew where the key was hidden?”

  I was silent. There ought to be something I could say, some retort that would crush Brett’s unbearable self-assurance. But I couldn’t think of it.

  He laughed softly. “Don’t tell me you’re having an attack of frozen virtue. I thought you and I had got past that stage long ago.”

  I felt my cheeks flame and was grateful it was too dark for him to see.

  “We’ll freeze to death if we don’t get a fire going,” said Brett, suddenly practical. “I’ll nip outside and open up the shutters, then I’ll fetch in some logs. There’s always a pile kept around at the back. Look and see if you can find some paper and kindling wood.”

  Searching, I discovered the full extent of the mas, and it wasn’t much. Opening off the living room was a room with a large double bed. I shut the door quickly, wondering about sleeping arrangements. The tiny lean-to kitchen contained a shallow stone sink with no taps, a contraption that looked like a primitive oil stove, a cupboard with cleaning things, and a larder that was bare except for, on the bottom shelf, the very things I wanted.

  I had paper and sticks piled ready in the grate when Brett came back with an armful of split logs. In about three minutes the fire was roaring up the wide-throated chimney. With the sun coming in through the open shutters, the room began to look more cheerful. I was forced to admit that it possessed a certain charm.

  It was furnished very simply, the walls painted white, the floor rugs and curtains in strong bright colors —orange, lime green and yellow. There was a circular dining table of natural pine and four matching ladder-back chairs, a deep, soft couch with a scattering of cushions, which Brett dragged around to face the fire.

  He disappeared outside again and returned with the carton of food we’d bought, the two long French loaves sticking out of the top.

  “I think an early lunch is indicated, don’t you, Gail? What do you say to canned soup? I fancy kidney myself, followed by some of that nice ripe Camembert. And we’ll break open a bottle of the Chablis.”

  With the warmth of the fire beginning to penetrate my frozen bones, and the prospect of food, I was feeling mellowed, more human. I suddenly realized that I was devastatingly hungry. I’d scarcely eaten any breakfast.

  I followed Brett through to the kitchen, leaving the door wide open to take some of the fire’s heat with us.

  “I’ll see to it, Brett. That is, if I can manage the oil stove.”

  “It’s not difficult once it knows who’s boss. I’ll show you. Then I’ll get a bucket of water from the hand pump, which incidentally doubles as the bathroom.”

  “Bathroom? I could just do with ...”

  Brett grinned maliciously. “You strip and crouch under the spout while somebody pumps for you. Bill and Harriet swear by it. They say it’s most invigorating. Care to try?”

  “Thanks, I’ll do without. Look, Brett, hadn’t you better phone Dougal before we do anything else?”

  “I’ve done it already, from the cafe.”

  “When you were supposed to be ringing here and fixing it with the Shackletons.” On an impulse, I added, “I’
m sorry for being bitchy, Brett. You’re doing your best to help me, and heaven knows why you should.”

  He smiled at me briefly. Or perhaps it was a rueful smile against himself.

  “I was dead lucky and caught Dougal just as he got back to his hotel in Cannes. He was flaming mad about his exclusive story going bust, but he’s promised that he’ll ring us at this number as soon as he hears anything more.”

  After we had eaten, I heated some water and washed the dishes, then returned to the couch to relax and let the fire soak into me. There was nothing I could do, no action I could take. Until Dougal phoned with fresh news, I would just have to curb my impatience and wait. In fact, this brief respite from rush and activity was rather delicious.

  I drifted into a light doze, conscious of Brett moving around the room, doing this and that. In the end, I fell deeply asleep.

  The sound of the door being closed aroused me. Opening my eyes, I saw that Brett had just come in from outside. The fire was a glow of red embers, and I realized the daylight was fading.

  “What time is it?” I asked drowsily.

  He flicked his wrist in a gesture that I’d seen him make a hundred times before. “Just on five-fifteen. You had a good sleep. You must have needed it.”

  I snapped wide awake. “Hasn’t Dougal phoned yet? It’s hours since we got here.”

  “He will—the second there’s anything to tell us. But it may be that Alexis has really gone to ground this time.”

  “Oh no. You don’t really think that, do you, Brett?”

  He shrugged. “It might be best all around if he vanished, considering the trouble he’s causing everyone. Just now, while you were asleep, I was thinking what a terrible fraud that man is. I remembered the touching little gathering at Deer’s Leap on Christmas Eve. Both families gathered around the fire, with the radio tuned to the BBC European service to hear Alexis giving his annual message of hope and comfort to his fellow countrymen. The famous Wenceslas Message. At the end, my father was so moved that he couldn’t speak for a minute. There were actually tears in the old chap’s eyes as he silently produced the bottle of slivovice he’d bought specially for the occasion. Oh, it makes me sick.”