‘I should hate to think I was forcing you,’ Palfy said, annoyed by his silence.
‘You’re not forcing me, but I’ve got a message for you. I’m afraid that in your scurrilous scheme you‘ve treated the competition much too lightly. Apparently if you hadn’t been my friend you wouldn’t have been given a second chance.’
Palfy put down his glass without flinching. He knew how to take such shocks.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘I would be awfully grateful if you would reveal who asked you to convey this message.’
‘Is that absolutely necessary?’
‘Absolutely. If it’s the owner of some crappy little brothel, I am not scared in the slightest. But someone highly placed would definitely worry me.’
Jean did not hesitate. If he failed to reveal Salah’s role, Palfy would treat the matter as a joke. It was far better to really put him on his guard.
‘Salah.’
Palfy picked up his glass and drank its contents in a single gulp. The roast kid was served.
‘I’m not very hungry any more.’
‘Why do you think Salah’s warning is so serious?’
Palfy shrugged.
‘The reason is slightly delicate to explain.’
‘Do tell me.’
‘Your friend, the prince, is a real prince. An Egyptian title, I think, and fairly authentic, at least more so than mine. Clean hands, doubtless transparently so, though I have not seen them. Educated at a French college, then Oxford, has travelled all over the world, high society, considerable fortune. If you haven’t lived such a life, you have no idea how boring it is. So how do you distract yourself? Exploiting the stupidity and vices of men is one temptation. Sex has been an investment of his. Oh, not directly, of course … One must keep one’s hands clean, always! But through the agency of devoted aides. Salah, among others. Even that Longuet fellow from Grangeville. Do you remember telling me how surprised you were that he mentioned his name to you in his car in Rome one evening? The centre of the organisation, and his headquarters, are in Lebanon.’
In Lebanon? That explained everything: the reason for their departure, their destination.
‘How do you know?’ Jean asked.
‘Oh, little by little … In London people talked and, you know … in my free time I keep bad company … The girls sometimes talk … I’ve built up a picture of a very small part of a large network that covers several countries. Unwittingly you helped me. For example, that house in Chelsea is a cover—’
‘Does Geneviève know?’
‘No. Definitely not! But you can see that the facts prove it: the dubious butler, the different chambermaids every morning. They have work permits, “regular” employment. The famous Madame Germaine, who whipped half the masochists in London, worked under their protection. You found Salah there.’
Two American couples came into the restaurant after hesitating at the sight of its interior, which, apart from Jean and Palfy’s table, remained empty. Victoire took possession of them, lit some candles and was translating the menu into irresistible English until one of the men interrupted her in perfect French and pointed out that there was an essential difference between a rock lobster and a lobster and that only dullards would confuse one with the other, and would she please not consider them as such because it irritated them, especially as they were, all four of them, great friends of France.
‘Something of a misjudgement on her part,’ Palfy murmured. ‘A very French error that is the result of your preconceived ideas and lack of curiosity. You’re a whisker away from treating the rest of the world as fools, which is your way of reassuring yourselves about who you are. But what a letdown it will be for you when you lose the war!’
‘Do you think we’re going to lose it?’
‘Who can doubt it?’
Palfy drove slowly back down to Cannes. The cool night air, the engine turning over in near silence, the Austro-Daimler’s overpowering majesty, produced a heady sense of freedom. It would have been so pleasant just to go on living like this, not to see the clouds massing on the horizon. They stopped outside the building where Madeleine lived. There was no light at her window.
‘She can’t be asleep already,’ Palfy said.
They walked up two floors and rang her bell, but there was no answer. Palfy had a key. The apartment was in disarray, the bed unmade, the cupboards and drawers empty and wide open. A light had been left on in the bathroom. They looked at each other. Did they have to find out what had happened?
‘We risk coming across a truly revolting spectacle,’ Palfy murmured.
He was pale and calm, concentrating on how best to conduct himself, and Jean realised that this time the age of fun, the age of carelessness and excess, was over. A terrible shadow passed over them both, all the more threatening for remaining secret and invisible, for only having been hinted at. They still had time to wipe their fingerprints off everything they had touched and silently tiptoe away.
‘A little courage!’ Palfy said, his voice shaking.
He opened the bathroom door. Empty. The bath still full of water. On the glass shelf above the washbasin some perfume bottles still stood unstoppered.
‘Phew!’ Jean said.
They went back to the bedroom, and on a corner table found a sheet of paper folded in four, in Madeleine’s large round handwriting.
Constantin, I like my life. My little place in Rue Lepic’s worth more than your big place in Cannes. ‘They’ warned me. They was nicer than I expected. Usually its curtains straight away. If I was you, I’d get out fast. No hard feelings
Madeleine
‘They have been quick,’ Palfy said, a trace of admiration in his voice.
The telephone rang. It was a ‘customer’. He sent him packing.
‘The annoying thing,’ he said, as the car wound down towards the port, ‘is that I put money into the idea. The car? I won’t get a penny for it. All those panic-stricken millionaires have gone off and left dozens of unsaleable monsters behind. I settled my bill at the Carlton yesterday. I should be able to stay there another couple of weeks if I leave the weekly bill unpaid for a while, and thenmake myself scarce. A real shame that I couldn’t patent my little invention and sell it to the Americans. More difficult than the last time around. A question of morals. Very punctilious, you know, the Americans, about morality. In ten years’ time you’ll see I was right. One should never be ahead of the morals of one’s time, whether one’s selling toothpaste or pleasure. That will be my consolation: to have been a pioneer. What about you? Are you happy with your job at the agency?’
Jean agreed that it was bearable, that he had known worse and that, going out nearly every day with the tourists he looked after, he was less bored than he would be sitting behind a desk. Even so, the future seemed limited. He had no chance of getting a better job until he had done his military service, and actually the necessity for that seemed to be fast approaching. He was twenty and he could go early, before he was called up.
‘Dammit!’ Palfy said. ‘That could be a way out.’
They stopped beside one of the quays. Both French and foreign yachts were moored there. Crews were sitting drinking and eating in their cockpits, by the light of storm lanterns.
‘Usually there are ten times as many foreigners,’ Jean remarked. ‘Have they all gone? Yesterday I heard a man in the crowd say, “The rats are leaving the sinking ship!”’
‘They’re fools! A lightning war, and Europe will be German, or French. Great business opportunities are coming. It’s a good sign that the rats are leaving. Let us stay, and swear that if, in two weeks’ time, I have failed to come up with a new scheme, we shall enlist in the French army.’