At last it was over. He met my eyes and laughed, flushing a little. "I'm all right," he said defensively, "until they get to the nineties, and then I'm sunk. I have to make them write it down."
"I think you're wonderful. By the time you've been here another month you'll talk it like a native." I stood up. "Thank you very much for the coffee. Now you'd better not bother about me if you want to dash for that bus."
"You're right. I'm afraid I'll have to run." But he still hesitated. "It was-awfully nice meeting again… Could we-I mean, when do you have your next afternoon off?"
"I don't quite know," I said, not very truthfully. Then I relented. "But I'm often in Thonon on a Friday afternoon and -look, for goodness' sake… isn't that your bus? The driver's getting in! Go on, run! Is this yours? And this?… Goodbye! Have a good week-end!"
Somehow he dragged his paraphernalia up from the floor, lurched, with rope and rucksack perilously swaying, between the crowded tables, thrust his way through the swing door I grabbed and held wide for him, then waved a hand to me and ran. He reached the bus just as the driver's door slammed, and the engine coughed noisily to life. Then wedged-it seemed inextricably- on the narrow steps of the bus, he managed to turn and wave again cheerily as the vehicle jerked and roared away.
Feeling breathless myself, I waved back, then turned hurriedly to cross the road to where my own bus waited. But before I could step forward a big car slid to a halt beside me with a soft hush of wet tyres. A Cadillac. My heart, absurdly, began to race.
The door was pushed open from inside. His voice said: "Going my way?"
He was alone in the car. I got in beside him without a word, and the car moved off. It swung round the corner of the square where the Soubirous bus still stood beside its lamp, and turned into the tree-lined street that led south.
It was odd that I hadn't really noticed till now what a beautiful evening it was. The street-lamps glowed like ripe oranges among the bare boughs. Below in the wet street their globes glimmered down and down, to drown in their own reflections. He hangs in shades the orange bright, like golden lamps… and on the pavements there were piles of oranges, too, real ones, spilled there in prodigal piles with aubergines and green and scarlet peppers. The open door of a wine-shop glittered like Aladdin's cave with bottles from floor to roof, shelf on shelf of ruby and amber and purple, the rich heart of a hundred sun-drenched harvests. From a brightly-lit workmen's café nearby came music, the sound of voices loud in argument, and the smell of new bread.
The last lamp drowned its golden moon in the road ahead. The last house vanished and we were running between hedgeless fields. To the right a pale sky still showed clear under the western rim of the rain-clouds, and against it the bare trees that staked the road stood out black and sheer. The leaves of an ilex cut the half-light like knives. A willow streamed in the wind like a woman's hair. The road lifted itself ahead, mackerel-silver under its bending poplars. The blue hour, the lovely hour…
Then the hills were round us, and it was dark. Raoul was driving fast and did not speak. I said at last, a little shyly: "You're back soon. You haven't been to Bellevigne, then?"
"No. I had business in Paris."
I wondered what kettles of fish he'd (in Mrs. Seddon's unlikely idiom) been frying. "Did you have a good time?"
He said "Yes", but in so absent a tone that I hesitated to speak again. I leaned back in silence and gave myself up to the pleasure of being driven home.
It was not for some time that I-absorbed in my dreaming-noticed how he was driving. He always travelled fast and there was a slickness about the way the big car sliced through the dark and up the twisting valley that demonstrated how well he knew the road; but there was something in his way of handling her tonight that was different.
I stole a glance at his silent profile as we whipped round and over a narrow bridge that warped the road at right-angles. He had done nothing that was actively dangerous; in the dark we would have had ample warning of an approaching car, but we were skirting danger so closely that it now occurred to me a little sickeningly to wonder if he were drunk. But then our headlamps swung across a curve of rock overhanging a corner and in the meagre light that was reflected back into the car I saw his face. He was sober enough; but that something was the matter was quite evident. He was frowning at the road ahead, his eyes narrowed in the flying dark. He had forgotten I was there. It seemed quite simply as if something had put him into a bad temper and he was taking it out on the car.
"What were you doing down in Thonon?" The question was no more than a quid pro quo, but he spoke so abruptly out of the silence that it sounded like an accusation, and I jumped and answered almost at random.
"What? Oh, it's my afternoon off."
"What do you usually do on your afternoon off."
"Nothing very much. Shopping-a cinema, anything."
"You go out to friends sometimes?"
"No," I said, surprised. "I don't know anyone. I told you when we… I told you on Tuesday."
"Oh. Yes. So you did."
We had run into another shower, and big drops splashed and starred the windscreen. The car slewed overfast round a sharp bend in the road, and rubber whined on the wet tarmac. The headlights brushed a brilliant arc across a wall of rock. Reflected light swirled through the car, showing his face abstracted, still frowning. He hadn't once so much as glanced at me. He was probably hardly aware of who it was he had in the car. So much for Cinderella.
I sat quietly beside him and nibbled the bitter crusts of commonsense.
We had gone two-thirds of the way to Valmy before he spoke again. The question was sufficiently irrelevant and surprising.
"Who was that chap?"
I was startled and momentarily at a loss. I said stupidly; "What chap?"
"The man you were with in Thonon. You left the café with him."
"Oh, him."
"Who else?" The phrase, brief to the point of outness, made me glance at him in surprise.
I said shortly: "A friend of mine."
"You told me you didn't know anyone hereabouts."
"Well," I said childishly, "I know him."
This provoked a glance, quick and unsmiling. But he only said: "How is Philippe?"
"All right, thank you."
"And you? No more mishaps?"
"No."
My voice must have sounded subdued and even sulky, but I was having a fight to keep it level and unbetraying. Pride had joined forces with commonsense, and the two were flaying me. The phantoms of those idiotic dreams wavered, mockingly, in the dark… I don't know quite what I had expected, but… that man, and this: the change was too great; it was unnerving.
I was also making a grim little discovery that frightened me. The dreams might be moonshine, but the fact remained. I was in love with him. It hadn't been the wine and the starlight and all the trappings of romance. It hadn't even been the charm that he'd been so lavish with that night. Now I was undoubtedly sober and it was raining and the charm wasn't turned on… and I was still in love with this cold-voiced stranger who was making futile and slightly irritated conversation at me. At least I'd had the sense all along to try and laugh at my own folly, but it was no longer even remotely amusing.
I bit my lip hard, swallowed another choking morsel of that bitter bread, and wished he would stop asking questions that needed answering. But he was persisting, still in that abrupt tone that made his queries-harmless enough in themselves- sound like an inquisition.
It seemed he was still curious about William Blake, which, in view of my promise to say nothing, was awkward.
"Who is he? English?"
"Yes."
"He took the Annecy bus, didn't he? A climber?"
"He's climbing from Annecy this week-end."