We sat down in the sun. "What will you have?" He was carefully disposing his life-saving parcels on an empty chair.
"Do you suppose they serve coffee?"
“Surely." And it seemed, indeed, that they did. It arrived in large yellow cups, with three wrapped oblongs of sugar in each saucer.
Now that we were facing one another more or less formally across a café table, my companion seemed to have retreated once more behind a rather English shyness. He said, stirring his coffee hard: 'My name's Blake. William Blake." On this last he looked up with a trace of defiance.
I said: "That's a good name to have, isn't it? Mine's only Belinda Martin. Linda for short-or for pretty, my mother used to say."
He smiled. "Thank you."
"For what? Making you free of my name?"
"Oh-yes, of course. But I meant for not making a crack about the Songs of Innocence."
" 'Little lamb, who made thee?'"
"That one exactly. You'd be surprised how many people can't resist it."
I laughed. "How awfully trying! But me, I prefer tigers. No thank you, Mr. Blake"-this to a proffered cigarette-"I don't smoke."
"Mind if I do?"
"Of course not."
Across the spluttering flare of a French match he was looking a question. "If one may ask-what are you doing in Soubirous? Not a holiday, I take it?"
"No. I'm here on a job, too. I'm a governess."
"Of course. You must be the English girl from the Château Valmy."
"Yes. You know about me?"
"Everybody knows everybody else hereabouts. Anyway I'm a near neighbour, as things go round here. I'm working on the next estate, in the plantations west of the Merlon."
"Oh," I said, interested. "Dieudonné?"
"That's it. The château-it's only a country-house really, a quarter the size of Valmy-lies in the valley a bit beyond the village. The owner's hardly ever there. His name's St. Vire. He seems to spend most of his time in Paris or down near Bordeaux. Like your boss, he gets a lot of his money from his timber and his vineyards."
"Vineyards? Valmy?"
"Oh, yes. They own chunks of Provence, I believe."
"Of course," I said. "Bellevigne. But that's Monsieur de Valmy's own property, and Valmy isn't. Even he wouldn't spend its income on Valmy."
"Even he?"
To my surprise my voice sounded defensive. "I believe he's an awfully good landlord."
"Oh, that. Yes, second to none, I imagine. He's pretty highly thought of hereabouts, I can tell you. And the gossip goes that most of the Bellevigne income did get diverted up here until a few years back; there used to be plenty of money, anyway."
"There still is," I said, "or so it seems."
"Yes. Things are waking up again, I gather. Two good vintages, and you get the roof repaired…He laughed.
“Funny how everyone in these places minds everyone else’s business, isn’t it?” He looked at me. "Governessing. Now that's a heck of a life, isn't it?"
"In story-books, yes; and I suppose it could be in real life. But I like it. I like Philippe-my pupil-and I love the place."
"You're not lonely-so far from home, I mean, and England?"
I laughed. "If you only knew! My 'home in England' was seven years in an orphanage. Governessing or not, Valmy's a wild adventure to me!"
"I suppose so. Is that what you want, adventure?"
"Of course! Who doesn't?"
"Me, for one," said Mr. Blake firmly.
"Oh? But I thought all men saw themselves hacking their way with machetes through the mangrove swamps and shooting rapids and things. You know, all hairy knees and camp-fires and the wide wide world."
He grinned. "I got over that pretty young. And just exactly what is a machete?"
"Goodness knows. They always have them. But seriously-"
"Seriously," he said, ‘I don't know. I'd like to get around, yes, and I like travel and change and seeing new things, but- well, roots are a good thing to have." He stopped himself there and flushed a little. "I'm sorry. That was tactless."
"It's all right. And I do see what you mean. Everybody needs a-a centre. Somewhere to go out from and come back to. And I suppose as you get older you enjoy the coming back more than the going out."
He gave me his shy, rather charming smile. "Yes, I think so. But don't listen to me, Miss Martin. I have a stick-in-the-mud disposition. You go ahead and chase your tigers. After all, you've done pretty well up to now. You've found one already, haven't you?"
"Monsieur de Valmy?"
His eyebrows lifted. "You were quick onto that. He is a tiger, then?"
"You did mean him? Why?"
"Only that he seems a little fierce and incalculable by reputation. How do you get on with him? What's he
like?"
"I-he's very polite and kind-I'd even say charming. Yes, certainly he's charming. He and Madame seem terribly anxious that I should really feel at home here. I don't see an awful lot of them, of course, but when I do they're awfully nice…”
I looked away from him across the square. Two women came out of the boulangerie, and paused to glance at us curiously before they moved off, their sabots noisy on the stones. Someone called, shrilly, and the group of children broke up, chattering and screaming like jays. Two of them raced past us, bare feet slapping the warm cobbles. The clock in the church, tower clanged the half-hour.
I said: "And what made you come here? Tell me about your job."
"There's nothing much to tell." He was drawing little patterns on the table-top with the handle of his spoon. And indeed, the way he told it, his life had taken a very ordered course. A pleasant, reasonably well-to-do suburban home; a small public school; two years in the Army, doing nothing more eventful than manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain; then the University-four years' hard work, with holidays (more or less of the busman variety) in Scandinavia and Germany; finally a good degree and the decision to go on to a further two years' research on some Conifer diseases, which he proceeded to explain to me very carefully and with much enthusiasm… Far from lacking adventure, it appeared that (what with butt rot, drought crack, larch canker, spruce bark beetle, and things with names like Phomopsis and Megastismus and even lps) life in a conifer forest could positively teem with excitement. I gathered that Mr. Blake himself was seriously involved with the Pine Weevil… there was a magnificent infestation of these creatures (Hylobius, mark you, not Pissodes), in a plantation west of the
Merlon…
But here he recollected himself and flushed slightly, grinning at me. "Well, anyway," he finished, "that's why I'm here. I'm busy getting the best of both worlds-thanks to Monsieur de St. Vire, who's a remarkably decent chap for a Frenchman." He added, seeming to think this phenomenon worth explaining: "My father knew him in the War. He's given me a job here' of a sort-at any rate I'm paid a bit for doing what's really my own research programme anyway. I'm getting some valuable material as well as experience, and I like working in this country. It's small-scale stuff hereabouts, but these people-at any rate the Valmys and St. Vires, really do care about their land. But there's a lot to learn." He looked wistful. "Including the language. It seems to escape me, somehow. Perhaps I've no ear. But it would be a help."
"If you're living alone, with thermometers," I said, "I can't see why."
"Oh, I'm not up at the hut all the time. I work up there mostly, because it's near the plantation I'm 'on' at present, and it's quiet; I keep all my stuff up there, and I sleep there when I'm short of cash." He grinned. "That's quite often, of course. But I do come down to the Coq Hardi pretty frequently. It's noisy, but the boss speaks English and the food's good… ah, is that your little boy?"