‘My uncle Joseph Sandilands. Commander Sandilands of Scotland Yard,’ was all the introduction Dorcas was prepared to supply when she felt their travelling arrangements called for clarification. But it was all the reassurance people seemed to need. The suggestion of a blood relationship and an impressive title put Joe beyond reproach or even question. Particularly when he hurried to add, allowing just the briefest flicker of martyrdom to flit across his agreeable features, that he was escorting his niece down to her father who was spending the summer at the Château du Diable — or whatever its pantomime name was-in Provence. Dropping her off as he himself flighted south to the delights of the Riviera. As he’d jokingly told his sister Lydia who’d engineered the unwelcome escort duty, he would be held up as an example from Calais to Cannes of self-sacrificing unclehood. And so, to his surprise, it had proved. The slight deceit, embarked on in the interests of an oversensitive English concern for the proprieties, had gone unchallenged and undiscovered.
Uncle Joseph! The word made him feel old. In his world, uncles were elderly and rather decrepit survivors of the war before the last. They sat in armchairs, smiling benignly at their descendants, muttering of Mafeking, their lower limbs rugged up in tartan. After a shifty glance to make certain Dorcas still had her eyes closed, Joe pushed his sun goggles on to his forehead, tilted his head and squinted critically into the useful mirror he’d had fixed to his wind-screen in Lyon to keep an eye on traffic behind. They were all there on his face: the lines and the crow’s feet sketched in by a tough life lived mostly outdoors. And undeniably on the advance. But at least his grey eyes were taking on an interesting brilliance as his face grew darker in the southern sun. He narrowed his eyes, trying on an air of menace and mystery. All too easily achieved when the left side of your face was slightly distorted. He’d never found the time to have the battlefield surgery corrected and now it was too late-he’d grown into his shrapnel-scarred features. He wore the damage like a medal-with a silent and bitter pride.
‘For goodness’ sake, Joe! Book yourself into St Mary’s and have that repaired,’ his sister Lydia constantly urged. ‘Surgeons are so much more skilled these days. They can rebuild whole faces-your little piece of mis-stitching would hardly begin to test them. You’d be in and out in no time and we’d have our handsome old Joe back again the moment the bandages came off.’ She’d waggle a minatory finger at him and add: ‘And never forget what they say! “The face is the mirror of the soul.” A platitude, I agree, but a sentiment I’ve always put some store by. It’s deceitful of you to present this distorted funfair reflection of yourself to the world.’
But he’d resisted. Quibbled. Procrastinated. In eight years of police work, he’d discovered the power of intimidation he could exert by presenting his battered left side to the suspects he was interrogating. It spoke of battles survived, pain endured, experience acquired. With a turn of the head, he could trump the villainy of any man he’d confronted across the interview table. ‘You think you’re tough?’ he challenged silently. ‘How tough? As tough as this?’ Men who’d evaded the draft found themselves wrong-footed, fellow soldiers recognized an officer who’d clearly led from the front and accorded him a measure of silent respect.
Joe underlined the effect of the drama he was assessing in his rear-viewing mirror with the cruel grin and slanting flash of white teeth of a music-hall villain. Not quite Ramon Novarro in Scaramouche but, even so-not bad! Not bad at all! He could use that sardonic look at the casino or strolling along the promenade in Nice. He recalled, with a stir of excitement, the words his superior in the War Office had used when encouraging him, for Reasons of State, to undertake this journey to France: ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, Sandilands, that female companionship-if that’s what you’re after-is available and of a superior style in France.’ The Brigadier’s remark was uncharacteristically indiscreet, unwittingly arousing. Joe had been surprised, amused and then dismissive but the titillating notion had stayed with him. His foot unconsciously increased its pressure on the accelerator. Yes, he was eager to be down there, sipping his first pastis under a blistering Riviera sun, eyeing pretty women parading about in tennis skirts and swimming costumes. And if they were enticing your ear with a French accent-so much the better.
‘Ah! Bulldog Drummond races south, pistol in his hip pocket, ready for a shoot-out with Le Bossu Masqué,’ commented a lazily teasing voice. Dorcas gave a showy yawn to indicate she was open to conversation. ‘Only one thing wrong. Pulling a face like that, you really ought to be driving a Sports Bentley. You don’t cut much of a dash in a Morris.’
‘Two things wrong. My female companion-that’s you- ought to be bound and gagged and wriggling helplessly on the back seat with her head in a bag.’
‘Le Bossu’s wicked accomplice whom you’ve taken hostage?’
‘Very likely. Female of the species being what she is and all that …’
Dorcas looked about her. ‘Oy! Didn’t I ask you to be sure and tell me when we got to Valence?’
‘I was just about to wake you, though I can’t imagine why I should bother. It’s not much of a place and we’re driving straight by it.’
‘Family tradition! Father always marks our passage through the town by shouting, “A Valence, le Midi commence!” Though at the speed my family plods along in a horse-drawn caravan we have more time to enjoy the moment. Listen, Joe! In a minute or so, if you slow down a bit, you’ll hear them. The cicadas. The sound of Provence.’
Joe smiled. She was right. In a strange way, everything behind them was of the north: green and quiet. The snow-clad Alps still funnelled their cold breath down the valley of the river the road was following. But the land ahead was tilted towards the sun. The atmosphere grew suddenly more brilliant, the rush of air warmer. The vegetation was changing and he welcomed the sight of the first outlying umbrella pines and the narrow dark fingers of cypress trees leaning gently before the wind, beckoning them on. Soon there would be olives fluttering the silvery underside of their leaves at him.
He took his foot off the accelerator and, hearing his first cicada, decided to stand in for her absent father, Orlando. The girl had little enough in the way of family life; the least he could do was reinforce the few happy memories she chose to share with him. ‘Le Midi commence!’ he shouted. ‘Here comes the South!’
Satisfied, the ritual complete, Dorcas breathed in the changing perfumes and asked for the umpteenth time: ‘Are we nearly there, Joe?’ to annoy him.
He decided to bore her back to sleep again with a recitation of distances, speeds and map references but a rush of good humour cut him short. ‘No! Miles to go before bedtime. Big place, Provence. I was planning to spend the night in Avignon then set off into the hills straight after breakfast to track down your pa. Silmont? That’s the place we have to find. Outskirts of the Lubéron hills. Olive-silvery Silmont?’ he speculated. ‘I wonder if there’ll be vines growing there? And lavender. Honeysuckle. All those herbs … wild thyme … rosemary … oregano,’ he murmured. ‘Dorcas?’
She was feigning sleep again. Botany also was a bore, clearly.
Joe fought down a spurt of irritation with the child’s father. As a friend, Orlando Joliffe came in for a good measure of regard, even affection, from Joe. Joe found-and was surprised to find-that he admired his skills as an artist but he also enjoyed the man’s company. He appreciated his intelligence and his worldly ways. When Joe made himself evaluate the relationship which would have been frowned on in his own staid professional circle, he came reluctantly to the conclusion that there was in Orlando a quality of raffish insouciance, a childlike delight in sensual indulgence that struck a chord in Joe’s being, that spoke to something long buried under layers of Quaker respectability.