'What else?' he said. 'Tell me what else you've done.'
What else? I searched my mind. 'Paul,' I said, 'Paul and Renee. They're leaving the chateau, leaving St Gilles. They're going to travel, at any rate for six months or a year.'
I saw him nod. 'That will break up the marriage even sooner,' he said. 'Renee will find the lover she's been searching for, and Paul feel himself more inferior than ever. Put him in the world and he'll look what he knows he is - a provincial boor. What want of tact, if I may say so, how lacking in finesse. Tell me more.'
I remembered, as a boy, playing skittles. One bowled a ball along an alley, and the ninepin at the other end toppled and fell flat. This was what he was doing now to the plans I had conceived through love. It was not love, then, after all, but muddled sentiment.
'You turned down the Carvalet contract, didn't you?' I said. 'I signed a new one. The verrerie won't close. No one will be out of a job. You'll have to back the loss with capital.'
This time he didn't laugh. He whistled. The expression of dismay delighted me. 'I suppose I can get out of it,' he said. 'It may take time. Your other moves were minor blunders, but this is serious. Even with Francoise's money behind me, propping up a dying business is no fun. Whom did you intend to look after things, with Paul away?'
'Blanche,' I said.
He leant forward in his chair, tilting it, and thrust his face close to mine. Now I could see every feature, and his eyes as well. It was as it had been before, in the hotel in Le Mans. The likeness to myself was vile.
'You actually spoke to Blanche?' he asked. 'And she replied?'
'I did,' I said. 'She came down here this morning. I told her the verrerie was hers from now on. She can do what she likes with it, she can build it up as a dowry for Marie-Noel.'
He said nothing for a moment. The upsetting of all his preconceived ideas may have shaken him. I hoped it had. More than anything else, I wanted him to lose assurance. He did not do so.
'Do you know,' he said slowly, 'it might, in the long run, work. If Blanche took up designing again, and we could turn out cheap gimcrack stuff to attract the tourist, not bothering with Carvalet or any of the other good firms, we might attract a market in this part of the country that would undercut everyone else. Instead of every tourist driving through Villars to Le Mans down the route nationale, they would make a detour to St Gilles. I believe, without knowing it, you've hit upon a plan.' He paused. 'Yes,' he said, 'the more I think of it, the more I like the idea. What an idiot I was never to have thought of it. Blanche's intolerable attitude to me made it out of the question. How clever of you to flatter her ego, which I suppose you did. She used to think a lot of herself as a designer in old days, she and that pompous prig between them. If she comes down here to live she'll probably wear widow's weeds and pretend she married him secretly after all.' He reached in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes, and handed me one, lighting his own. 'You haven't done too badly, on the whole,' he said. 'What about Marie-Noel - where's she in the picture? Has she seen any visions this week, or dreamt any dreams?'
I did not answer. To tarnish the child was surely the ultimate evil. He might desecrate the mother, mock the sister and the brother, but to give him Marie-Noel as a butt for humour, that I would not do.
'She's all right,' I said. 'She stood yesterday's tragedy well.'
'That doesn't surprise me,' he said. 'The two of them never got on. Francoise was jealous of the child, and the child knew it. Now, at last, you understand what it means to have a possessive family. And you were prepared to endure it, for the sake of the money. You came down here to the master's house determined to kill me, so that you could keep yourself in comfort for the rest of your days.'
He tilted his chair back again, blowing smoke into the air, and his face was in shadow once more. Only his outline remained.
'You won't believe me,' I said, 'but I didn't think about the money. I happen to love your family, that's all.'
My statement made him laugh once more.
'You have the audacity to tell me,' he said, 'that you love my mother, who is without exception the most egotistical, the most rapacious, the most monstrous woman I have, in all my experience, ever known; you love Paul, who is an oaf, a weakling, and a thoroughly disagreeable personality; you love Renee - presumably for her body, which I grant you is enchanting, but she has a mind like an empty box; you love Blanche, who is so twisted with repressed sex and frustrated passion that the only stimulation she gets out of life is to kneel before a bleeding crucifix. And I suppose you'll tell me that you love my child for her sweetness and her innocence, which, let me tell you, can be put on for effect. What she really likes is being petted and admired.'
I did not argue. What he said was true, according to his lights, and perhaps mine too. The point was, it did not matter.
'I agree with you,' I said, 'your family are all those things. It doesn't prevent me from loving them, that's all. Don't ask me why. I couldn't answer you.'
'I have affection for them,' he said. 'That's understandable. They happened to belong to me. But you have no reason. You've only known them six days. You're an incurable sentimentalist, of course.'
'Perhaps.'
'Did you see yourself as a saviour?'
'No. As a fool.'
'That's honest, anyway. And what do you suppose is going to happen now?'
'I don't know. It's up to you.'
He scratched his head with the butt of his revolver. I might have sprung at him then, but it wouldn't have worked.
'Exactly,' he said. 'What happens at St Gilles is up to me. I can carry through your programme if I choose. Or tear it up, depending on my mood. What about you? Shall we walk into the forest and dig a grave? I can easily burn your car. No one would look for you. You'd simply disappear. It's happened to other people before now.'
'If that's what you decide,' I said, 'then go ahead. I'm in your hands. Unless you prefer to throw me down the well.'
I couldn't see him, but I could feel his smile. 'Have you raked up that one too?' he said. 'What a ferret you are. I thought the mud had settled years ago. I suppose you were shocked?'
'I wasn't shocked,' I told him. 'Your motive puzzled me.'
'My motive?' he echoed. 'Of course it puzzled you. You haven't been invaded since 1066. Complacency makes all your countrymen smug. We may be ruthless sometimes, but thank God we're none of us hypocrites. Do you also love your image of Maurice Duval?'
I considered a moment. Was love too strong a word? 'I regretted him,' I said. 'What I heard of him seemed to be good.'
'Don't you believe it,' he said. 'He was a climber, like all his kind. Edged his way in with my father, with an eye to the future. Blanche was his greatest card, and I stopped him playing it. It's not very chic, you know, to sit back in comfort and make terms with your country's invaders to save your skin.'
I had no answer. The quarrel was not my quarrel, nor the war my war. I only knew that people had suffered and died.
'It's not much use,' I said, 'discussing Duval or your family. I have my own picture of them. Nothing you can say will break it down. If you intend to kill me, as I intended to kill you, let's get it over. I'm ready.'
'I'm not sure I want to kill you,' he said. 'It seems rather a waste. After all, we've deceived them once, we could do so again. I could let you know, we could arrange a rendezvous, I could disappear for a week or a month and you take my place. What do you think? Of course, I might have undone, in the meantime, all that you'd tried to do. But that wouldn't bother you. It might even add zest to your stay.'
I hated him so much I could not answer. And, taking my silence for consideration, he went on, 'You'd hardly have met my Bela,' he said. 'There wouldn't have been time. Nor, I dare say, the opportunity. She keeps a shop in Villars, and I call her Bela because she pretends she's descended from the kings of Hungary. Cooks like an angel, and that's not her only attraction. I visit her now and again to keep boredom at bay. Naturally, if we come to an agreem
ent, she'll be part of the bargain. You wouldn't regret a visit, I can promise you that.' Still I did not answer. 'It would even,' he said, 'add a certain piquancy when I returned, if I thought you'd been deceiving Bela with the rest.'
I got up from my chair. Instantly he rose too, covering me with the gun.
'Let's get it over,' I said. 'I've nothing more to say.'
'I have, though,' he answered. 'Do you realize you haven't asked me any questions? Don't you want to know what I've been doing the past week?'
I was not interested. He had telephoned from Deauville. I assumed, if I assumed anything, that he had been staying there. It was as good a place as any for escape.
'No,' I said. 'Frankly, I don't care. It doesn't concern me.'
'But it does concern you,' he insisted. 'It concerns you very much.'
'How?'
'Sit down again,' he said, 'and I'll enlighten you.' He snapped a lighter, which I realized, in the light of the flame, was mine. And then I saw that his coat was also mine. But not the one I had been wearing in Le Mans.
'You see?' he said. 'I played the game fair, just as you did. If you were taking my place - and I couldn't be sure, it was a gamble - then it was only sporting to take yours. I went to London. I went to your flat. I only flew back today.'
I stared at him, or rather not at him but at his shadow. When I had thought of him, during the past week, it had been as a phantom, someone who existed no longer, a shadow, a wraith. And had I given the wraith substance I should have placed him perhaps in Paris, or in the south, in Italy, in Spain, anywhere but in my own life, deceiving my own world.
'You went to my flat?' I said. 'You used my things?'
The duplicity, the outrage, seemed to me overwhelming. I could not believe it. Someone would surely have prevented it.
'Why not?' he said. 'That's what you did at St Gilles. I left you my family. You used them in the way you've described. Not my way, I admit, but that was the chance I took. You can hardly blame me for playing the game in reverse.'
I tried to think. I tried to picture the scene. The hall porters would merely nod and say good morning or good night. The woman who cleaned my flat never came until after half past ten, when I had already left. In the evening, unless I dined with friends, I did for myself. Most people believed me away on the last week of holiday. There was no reason for anyone to telephone, to write. Bewildered, I still sought for proof that he was lying. 'How did you know where to go?' I said. 'How did you manage?'
'My poor idiot,' he replied, 'your card was in your valise, your notebook, your cheques, your keys, your passport - all the things I was likely to need. I was even able to transfer the date for the car - the ferry service had a vacancy. To take over your very retiring personality proved the easiest thing in the world. I enjoyed myself. Your flat was a haven of rest. After the turmoil of St Gilles I felt I was in paradise. I rifled your drawers, read all your letters, deciphered your lecture notes, cashed your cheques - fortunately your somewhat cramped signature was easy enough to imitate. I spent five days in complete and utter idleness, which was just what I needed.'
The humour, and the justice, struck me at last. I had played about with human life; he had not. I had done my best to change his household; he had merely yawned and taken his ease. I had meddled; he had only spied. Then I remembered that he had, after all, returned. The news of Francoise's death, so promptly inserted in the papers by the lawyer, had found him at Deauville.
'If you enjoyed my London solitude so much,' I asked, 'what made you come back again to France?'
I felt him watch me in the darkness. He did not answer immediately, and when he did it was almost with embarrassment.
'That's where I have to apologize,' he said, 'but not more so, I think, than you, who by altering that contract may have let me in for very heavy loss. The fact is ...' he paused, choosing his words, 'the fact is, five days in London were enough. I couldn't have continued your dull, virtuous existence. In time someone would have arrived, friends would have written, the people at the university got in touch; and though I have never before questioned either my ability to take another's part or my command of English - I had plenty of practice in both during the war - I appear to have lacked your supreme confidence. The easiest thing to do, as I intended using your name and personality, was to change your mode of living. This was, to tell you the truth, just what I did.'
I did not understand. I could not follow what he was trying to tell me.
'What do you mean?' I said. 'How could you change my life?'
I heard him sigh in the darkness. 'It may come as a shock,' he said, 'just as what you have been doing at St Gilles has come as a shock to me. First I wrote to the university, resigning your job. Then I told your landlord that I was going abroad immediately and wanted to give up the lease of your flat, and, flats being as few and far between in London as they are in Paris, he was only too glad for me - or rather you - to get out at once. I instructed a firm of auctioneers to sell your furniture. And finally, having found out from your bank statement how much money you had in the bank, I cashed a cheque for just that amount. It was, if you remember, a couple of hundred pounds. Not a fortune, but enough to tide me over comfortably for a month or two, until something else turned up.'
I tried to grasp what he was telling me, to make myself realize that he was speaking of something which had actually happened, to think myself back into the person I had been. But all I could see was this shadow, wearing my clothes, who within a number of hours had destroyed that person's life.
'The French currency,' I said. 'You couldn't do it. How could you have changed two hundred pounds into francs? They wouldn't have given you more than the tourist allowance, and I had already spent three quarters of that.'
He put his cigarette stub on the floor and squashed it with his foot. 'That,' he said, 'was the cream of the joke. I have a friend who arranges these things, and he did it for me in a few hours. I should never have known he was in London but for the fact that you gave him your address - I couldn't imagine why, but in the circumstances it was a heaven-sent opportunity. When he telephoned on Monday morning I was never more surprised in my life, and it was then, of course, that I realized you were at St Gilles. The point is that if I don't kill you, and if you won't agree to my little plan of deception that we share each other's lives from time to time, what are you going to do? There is no future for you.'
The full meaning of his words was forced upon me. Unless I liked to make a fool of myself by writing to the university and saying it was all a mistake - that I had decided not to resign after all - I had no work. I had no money, save for one or two modest investments. I had no flat, and if I didn't get back to London soon I should have no furniture. I did not exist. The self who had lived in London had gone forever.
'Of course,' he said, 'I didn't intend to come home. I was going to amuse myself spending your money over here. My friend is a wizard with currency, and he would have banked it anywhere - in this country or wherever I told him. Personally, I had in mind, to start off with, some little niche in Sicily or Greece. I would have taken Bela with me as a companion. She might have palled in time, but not at first. Hungarian women have the strangest charm. They get, as the Americans have it, "under the skin". But now ...' he broke off, and I could dimly see the shrug of the shoulders, 'poor Francoise dying has rather changed my plans. Instead of being an impoverished provincial count I might, with any luck, be a millionaire. Fate, or whoever arranges these things, has done what I wanted.'
He stood up, the gun still pointing at me.
'It's a curious thing,' he said, 'and shows weakness of character. But apart from the money, and the sudden upheaval of plans, while I was driving from Deauville this afternoon I felt myself moved. The country was looking beautiful, the colours were exquisite. It is, after all, my country, and where I belong. The chateau, heaven knows, is falling to pieces and the grounds are unkempt and ragged, but I don't really mind. If you've been born in a place it do
es something to you. I neglect it, and curse it, and fight against all that it does to me, just as I curse my mother, for the self-same reason. And yet ...' he laughed, and I saw him gesture with his hand, 'and yet, driving south from Deauville, I felt I wanted her. In a strange sort of way I missed her, while I was gone. She's a devil and a brute, but I understand her and she understands me, and that's more than you can say, after your seven days.'
Suddenly, with geniality, almost with affection, he shook my shoulder.
'Come on,' he said, 'I don't want to kill you. In many ways I'm grateful for what you've done.' He pulled out a wallet - mine. 'This will keep you for some considerable time,' he said. 'Naturally, there's no reason to cheat you now. At any time you decide upon deception, for a few days even, I'll be delighted to oblige. What about it? Shall we play charades again now, and start to strip?'
I thought of the cure. I tried to remember what the cure had said. Something about the future, and every day a gift. He was now back in St Gilles, putting away his tricycle. At the chateau they were waiting for dinner. They would be wondering where I had gone. Marie-Noel, anxious, perhaps, at my absence, was waiting for me on the terrace. I began to take off my coat.
The exchange of clothes in the darkness was macabre, even terrible. It meant, with every garment shed, a loss of the self I had found. When I stood in front of him at last, naked, and he had his revolver pointing at me still, I said, 'Finish me off, I don't want to live.'
'Nonsense,' he answered. 'No one refuses life. Besides, I don't want to kill you. The point has gone.'
He began throwing off his clothes as he spoke, and seeing that I fumbled with them as I put them on, he said, 'What have you done to your hand?'
'I burnt it,' I said. 'I burnt it in a fire.'
'What fire?' he asked. 'Has there been a fire at the chateau?'
'No,' I replied, 'a bonfire in the grounds.'
'How careless,' he said. 'You might have damaged your hand for good. Does it mean you're not able to drive the car?'
'No,' I said. 'It's better now.'
'You'd better hand over the dressing. I can't appear without it.'
The clothes, that had once been mine, seemed shrunken, small. The texture was too smooth. They didn't fit. The suit he had picked from my wardrobe in the flat was one I seldom wore. As I stood before him, dressed and ready, it was like wearing some sort of garment long outgrown, almost as if a man struggled once again into his schoolboy clothes.
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