She put the telegram in front of him and went to the door and called to her sister-in-law, Luisa, that she was at home and then came back and helped herself to a glass of marsala from the sideboard. Sitting down at the end of the dining table she raised the glass to her brother and said teasingly, “What? No explosion?”

  Sourly, he said, “Too long ago I run out of explosions over Maurice. He is a genius, and what they say about them is true. They are difficult to live with. That you will learn if you ever marry him. Every day I pray against that – because you will never be happy, never, never . . .”

  “So what? I am happy now. Does one have to look at a man who takes one’s fancy and say Will he make me happy? No, there is no saying of words.” She tapped her bosom gently. “In here . . . no matter any words there is born the beginning, like no other beginning before – and you must trust and accept it.”

  Aldo picked a bone fastidiously from his mouth and laid it on the side of his plate. He shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Cara sorella mia – you are like all women, a fool. But more so than most. And as for Maurice, one day he will find that he cannot treat the world like a coloured ball with which to make games. You think I am a pig that never looks beyond its trough. But I am a clever pig – not just to make money, but to make it so that no one ever points the finger at me without finding that before he can speak the finger is chopped off – like that!”

  He chopped the edge of his right hand down on the table and made the crockery dance. Carla smiled to herself as she noted that his free hand had held his wine glass firmly on the table so that it should not fall over. She said quietly, “Oh, Aldo – you do not deceive me. I know the truth. You love Maurice like a younger brother loves his elder. More than that. You would have liked to be as he is – with that in your eyes and hands and heart which he has before an easel. I have seen your face sometimes at the galleries . . . once I most remember at the Uffizi before Tiziano’s La Flora. Two things you showed without knowing it. . . Adoration and longing. Why do you try to make the world believe that you are an unfeeling pig? Pig, you are – but not unfeeling.”

  Aldo was silent, face expressionless, for a while and then he said gently and smiling, “My little sister, perhaps it is a good thing for men that few women have eyes like yours. But now I have had enough of your witchcraft. But first answer me a question truly. What has Maurice got in Switzerland?”

  Carla shrugged her shoulders. “Does it matter? He worked there for a long while. You know that. Maybe a woman.”

  “You don’t mind that?”

  “Why should I? Maurice needs women as you need food – unthinkingly. When the meal is finished, he is already looking forward to the next.”

  Aldo rolled his eyes. “And you would marry a man like that – you with all your money to come?”

  “What has the money to do with it? You live for making money and for your food and drink – but Luisa married you because she loved you. When I marry Maurice he can have as many women as he likes so long as he loves me and sleeps more or less regularly at home.”

  “Holy Mother – you make marriage sound like the Common Market!”

  Carla laughed. “Marriage means little. Love is all.”

  Aldo snorted. “Now you goad me for your pleasure. But enough of this nonsense. One day I shall send Maurice away.”

  “When you do then I go. But the truth is that one day Maurice will leave you. Maybe he already has.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he has curious habits. He has a bible by his bed which I have never seen him read – but written inside is a birthday greeting from his mother when he was ten years old and he once told me that it went everywhere with him when he changed jobs. Now it has gone.”

  “But how could he know he wasn’t coming back?”

  “I don’t think he did. But something made him take it.”

  “Then happily that’s the end of him for you.”

  “Oh, no. When he wants me he will send for me – and I shall go.”

  “But what about the Giuseppe Zais?”

  “Somebody else can finish the cleaning. But the copy will never be finished. All you will get is the money for restoring the original – unless you can find another Maurice.”

  She smiled gently at the almost apoplectic Aldo. On the spur of the moment she had made up the story of the bible. Now, since she could not do it openly, she mentally crossed herself and prayed that the lie never became a reality. But her uneasiness was soothed by the behaviour of Aldo – he lay back in his chair like a stricken man. She said gently, “Perhaps if you agreed to release my money now and give a blessing to our marriage he would come back.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know he would.”

  “How can you tell?”

  She put her hand over her heart, enjoying herself. “In here.” Slowly Aldo said in his head of family voice, “I shall think about it. But it would not just be for finishing the Zais.” He grinned suddenly. “For such a rich prize he would have to do a few more first.” Then suddenly bursting out laughing, he almost shouted, “You are a liar . . . a liar. I can see it in your eyes. Like the first time you told me you had never slept with him . . . like the time you said the priest was familiar with you . . . oh, and a dozen others.” He stopped suddenly, finished his glass of chianti, and then went on quite seriously, “But hear this now – and I swear to the Holy Mother that I mean it – you get Maurice back here to finish the Zais, and maybe do two or three others and you shall have my blessing and your money. And don’t tell me you have no ways and means. You know more about Maurice than you tell or he guesses. No woman can sleep with a man for more than six months and not know things he never guesses. Find him, get him back here, and you have my word.”

  “And my job?”

  “That stinking little boutique or whatever it is can sink in the Arno as far as I am concerned. I will give you the money for whatever you need.”

  Carla stood up and said, “I will think about it.”

  “Grazie, my dear sister. After all, we are one family. We help one another.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  HE HAD SPENT three nights in Salisbury, staying at the Red Lion Hotel, and during that time he had visited Avoncourt Abbey twice as an ordinary tourist to walk its gardens and to go round those limited parts of the house which, largely unused by the family, were open to the public in the afternoon on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. On all other days, although the house was closed to the public, the gardens which ran down the gentle valley slope to the Upper Avon were open. The guide book told him that part of the building was Elizabethan, built on the site of an even older house which had been destroyed by fire, and the rest early Georgian. Standing a little apart from the house was a late fourteenth century chapel dedicated to St John the Evangelist, the patron saint of travellers, and which was also a chapel of the Commandery of the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John. On the wall of the nave was a tablet commemorating the Commanders of Avoncourt and the earliest inscribed name was that of a Sir William Starr for the years 1326 to 1338. Other Starr names followed up until 1540 when came the dissolution of the monasteries. The tablet finished with the lines–

  The Knights are dust,

  Their swords are rust,

  Their souls are with the Saints we trust.

  The whole business, now that he was here, had originally overwhelmed him. There had been times when his instinct was to turn away and forget the uncomfortable truths which had come to him through his mother’s confession. The only time when he had felt completely at ease so that his natural opportunism was revived was when he had gone round the two large galleries of the more modern part of the Abbey which housed the collection of paintings the family had acquired over the centuries. Here he had found peace, excitingly laced with envy, and had experienced a frisson of rare humility before the works of so many masters. All this, he told himself, could one day belong to him. They were there, waiting for him to claim a right to them when one day his true father should die. His father he had now seen more than once, walking a Jack Russell terrier and a springer spaniel through the grounds and down the lower meadow slopes to the river – a tall man in his late sixties wearing khaki drill trousers, an old Harris tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, and serving a gammy right leg with the help of a long thumb stick. He sported an old fishing cap, adorned with trout flies, and smoked a pipe with a burnt-down bowl and the stem wound about with adhesive tape. The possibly eccentric English gentleman par excellence – and his father. His father. The first time he had seen him and a gardener nearby weeding a flower bed had identified him for him, he had had only one reaction – Mais, c’est ridicule!

  After his second visit to the Abbey he returned to his hotel and before dinner walked into the nearby Cathedral close, the great spire thrusting high into the late May evening sky. As he sat down on a bench to consider his course of action he automatically took a small sketch pad and pencil from his pocket and, occupied by his thoughts, began to draw the Cathedral. It was a thing he often did when he had some problem to work out and now, as he considered his plan of approach to Sir Andrew Starr, his hand moved automatically.

  His real problem lay in the embarrassment of making a direct approach. He was – and so often to his own advantage – instinctively aware of other people’s feelings. It was the first step to taking advantage of them. And there was absurdity here at the thought of writing a letter to Sir Andrew enclosing his mother’s confession and the supporting documents and politely asking for an appointment to see him. The situation was bizarre enough, and at the beginning would remain so, to call for an unusual – for him – considering of his father’s feelings. Since the situation was delicate and capable of many developments – he had even considered an offer to sell the evidence for a large sum and a promise of forgetting all about his birthright – he felt that whatever his first approach should be, there must be nothing done to prejudice his own position and freedom of choice. He could, of course, take no action at all. He had come and seen. He could just drive away without doing anything. He could, but he knew he would not. That was not in his nature. The problem was to find the right approach which would leave him scope and room to make his own decision or compact later. Oddly enough, too, he now discovered that there was a leaven of charity in him for the Starrs. They were owed the truth about that night at Aiguebelle. Once that was in the open both he and they would be free to arrange an agreed solution. Reaching this point he saw at once how he must act. Knowing what he had to do, he finished his sketch and was about to put the pad in his pocket when a voice at his side said, “I hope you will forgive me, but I wonder . . . well, I think your little drawing is marvellous, I would like to have it. Buy it, I mean. Oh God, am I sounding awful and pushing?”

  He turned and before he saw her properly he was smiling. He took his time before replying, but in that interval, his eyes went over her and he knew that any time he wanted her to return to memory in the future she would be there at recall. He knew other things, too. Things that were a matter of instinct and experience. Women’s voices and women’s eyes, the shape of their faces and the lines of their bodies, clothed or unclothed, crowded his memory ready to come forward at his call. And beyond these outward things he could always sense the emotional drive which in unguarded moments made them act sometimes a little out of character and sometimes quite contrary to their nature. Here was one, he thought, who in a few moments would be overwhelmed by her forwardness. To save her from that, and with an eye to the possible future, he said, “Do you live in Salisbury?”

  “Yes, I do. Oh, dear-you’re not annoyed with me?”

  “On the contrary. All artists live on praise.” He pulled a blank leaf from his pad and handed it to her with his pencil. “Write down your name and address. This is only a rough sketch which I want to work up properly. You shall have it when it’s done. Go on – write and I’ll bring it to you.”

  Her face hidden from him as she wrote, her fair hair falling forward a little, he saw that her hand wore no wedding ring. As she handed the paper back to him, she said, “You’re not English, are you?”

  He laughed. “Well, in a way no. But then in a way yes. Does that confuse you?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it does.”

  “It does me too.” He put the paper into his pocket without looking at it, and went on, “When is the best time to bring it to you?”

  After a moment or two of hesitation she said, “In the evening. After I get back from work.”

  “I will come soon, and you shall have your cathedral.”

  “Oh, dear. I do feel awful.”

  He shook his head. “No, not awful. Not that. I know what you feel. I have suffered from it all my life. Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point”

  * * * *

  Sir Andrew Starr knew that the man was waiting for him. There had been too many times in his life when he had known that men were waiting for him – men seen perhaps only once or twice, but no matter how briefly some instinct signalled that their presence went beyond coincidence. There was always this bond between the hunter and the hunted. Not that now – as in the old days – the presence of the other carried menace. Life was full of pleasanter encounters. At a hundred yards he could now pick out an Abbey visitor who stood waiting, debating between propriety and natural diffidence to establish the impulse to step forward and ask for an autograph. But this man wanted no autograph. He had seen him before. Today he had followed him down through the grounds to the river and then sat on the fishing path stile to let him take his walk up the river, and now was here still, his back turned to him but – he knew – perfectly aware of his coming.

  He moved downstream unhurriedly, the two dogs behind him. May was on its way out, the river ran with a smooth, green-glass gentleness. There had been a hatch of mayfly further upstream and the water surface was pocked with the greedy rise of trout and grayling. A cuckoo called up on the valley slope. The wild garlic was in flower and bees were working over the blossoms of rest harrow and bugle. Once in France . . . how many lost years ago? . . . he had walked down a river somewhat like this to find a man waiting for him and had known there was no turning, only a going on to kill or be killed, to defeat betrayal or be killed by it. He lived still but his gammy left leg was a souvenir of the encounter which carried no gain for him except that it was a reliable barometer of changing weather. That other, long ago, had kept his hands in his pockets until the last moment. This one’s hands were free from the pockets of the suede jacket he wore and there was no bulge in either of the pockets of the neatly pressed, cream coloured jean-type trousers. Continental. Clothes make a man – and if he were foolish could unmake him.

  As he came up to the stile the man stepped down and stood aside a little to give him passage, but not immediately because one hand was moving inside his jacket to an inner pocket. The movement wakened a remote but no longer important frisson of expectancy in him. Those days were long gone. Only when he went back to France did the smell of them sometimes catch him . . . Gauloise smoke, sour wine odour from the sabot roughened floor, the aroma of potage and fritures moving from the kitchen into the bar.

  The man said, “Monsieur, may I have a small moment or two of your time?”

  The voice told him enough to place him, and the hand coming free of the inner pocket, holding a long manilla envelope, removed the tired frisson of memory.

  Sir Andrew said, “My days are full of it. So I have plenty to spare.” He spoke in French.

  The man smiled and tapping his chin with the edge of the envelope said, “Is it so obvious?” He spoke now in French.

  “Few people can truly escape from their mother tongue into another. God likes us to keep our place in the world.”

  The other laughed. “Can the leopard change his spots?”

  “No. But they are hard to see against the right background. What is it that you want from me?”

  “I would like you to have this and read it when you get back to the Abbey. My name is Crillon. Maurice Crillon. And I am staying at the Red Lion Hotel in Salisbury. I shall be there when you want me.”

  He took the offered envelope and put it in the pocket of his Harris tweed jacket. “Very well.”

  “Thank you, monsieur.” Crillon stood aside to let Sir Andrew cross the stile.

  Sir Andrew climbed over, the dogs slipped through underneath. Without looking back Sir Andrew followed the path up through a coppice of young spruce. He followed his routine; a talk with the head gardener, a visit to the stables, and then the morning fifteen minutes he spent in the old chapel – some little time of it spent in his own form of prayer and devotion, but now more in considering a growing feeling in him, the mysterious human condition of sensing change, some slip in the working of time. Something was happening today. . . He had had such days before. Many and more frequent when young as though the Fates – and, God, how often had that happened during the war years? – were bungling some message, some warning that they wanted him to have, but were not using the true code for the day.

  He went up to his sitting room in the private part of the Abbey and Hanson, his butler, brought him his mid-morning coffee and biscuits and the first of his three prescribed medicine doses for the day. Before leaving Hanson said, “Her Ladyship telephoned from London, Sir Andrew, to say that she won’t be back until the end of the week.”

  “Thank you, Hanson. Did she say why not?”

  “Yes, sir. There’s some auction she wants to go to on Friday.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  When Hanson had gone, Sir Andrew drank his coffee – the unopened envelope he had been given on the table before him. When he had finished, he filled a pipe and, not until it was going well, did he open the envelope and lay its contents on the table before him. There were two letters, a long one and a short one, written in French, and two certificates, one for a birth and one for a death, both registered at Toulon. Neglecting his pipe he read the letters and then examined the certificates. He then read the two letters again. Putting them down he waited for some emotion to take him, but nothing came. Nothing could in these moments. There was some rising spate waiting to break in him, to surge high and fast and flush the old bed of time past and then drop back between its banks where the waters would clear so that a man could see distinctly every rock and river-smoothed pebble of its floor.