Алистер Маклин - Caravan to Vaccares

‘You seem to have lost something,’ Le Grand Duc said courteously. ‘Can I be of help?’

‘You are too kind.’ The man’s English was immaculate, Oxbridge at its most flawless. ‘It is nothing. My wife has just lost one of her earrings. But it is not here.’

‘I am sorry to hear it.’ Le Grand Duc carried on, sauntered through the patio entrance, passed by the seated wife of the Chinese and nodded fractionally in gracious acknowledgement of her presence. She was, Le Grand Duc noted, unmistakably Eurasian and quite beautiful. Not blonde, of course, but beautiful. She was also wearing two earrings. Le Grand Duc paced with measured stride across the patio and joined Lila, who was just seating herself at a table. Le Grand Duc regarded her gravely.

‘You are unhappy, my dear.’

‘No, no.’

‘Oh, yes, you are. I have an infallible instinct for such things. For some extraordinary reason you have some reservations about me. Me! Me, if I may say so, the Duc de Croytor!’ He took her hand. ‘Phone your father, my friend the Count Delafont, and phone him now. He will reassure you, you’ve my word for that. Me! The Duc de Croytor!’

‘Please, Charles. Please.’

‘That’s better. Prepare to leave at once. A matter of urgency. The gypsies are leaving – at least the ones we’re interested in are leaving – and where they go we must follow.’ Lila made to rise but he put out a restraining hand. ‘ “Urgency” is a relative term. In about, say, an hour’s time – we must have a quick snack before departing for the inhospitable wastes of the Camargue.’

To the newcomer the Camargue does indeed appear to be an inhospitable wasteland, an empty wasteland, a desolation of enormous skies and limitless horizons, a flat and arid nothingness, a land long abandoned by life and left to linger and wither and die all summer long under a pitiless sun suspended in the washed-out steel-blue dome above. But if the newcomer remains long enough, he will find that first impressions, as they almost invariably do, give a false and misleading impression. It is, it is true, a harsh land and a bleak land, but one that is neither hostile nor dead, a land that is possessed of none of the uniformly dreadful lifelessness of a tropical desert or a Siberian tundra. There is water here, and no land is dead where water is: there are large lakes and small lakes and lakes that are no lakes at all but marshes sometimes no more than fetlock deep to a horse, others deep enough to drown a house. There are colours here, the ever-changing blues and greys of the wind-rippled waters, the faded yellows of the beds of marshes that line the étangs, the near-blackness of smooth-crowned cypresses, the dark green of windbreak pines, the startlingly bright green of occasional lush grazing pastures, strikingly vivid against the brown and harsh aridity of the tough sparse vegetation and salt-flats hard-baked under the sun that occupy so much the larger part of the land area. And, above all, there is life here: birds in great number, very occasional small groups of black cattle and, even more rarely, white horses: there are farms, too, and ranches, but these are set so far back from roads or so well concealed by windbreaks that the traveller rarely sees them. But one indisputable fact about the Camargue remains, one first impression that never changes, one that wholly justifies its time-and-time again description as being an endless plain: the Camargue is as featurelessly smooth and flat as a sun-warmed summer sea.

For Cecile, as the blue Citroën moved south between Arles and Saintes-Maries, the Camargue was nothing but an increasingly featureless desolation: her spirits became correspondingly increasingly depressed. Occasionally she glanced at Bowman but found no help there: he seemed relaxed, almost cheerful, and if the consideration of the recently spilled blood he had on his hands bore heavily on him he was concealing his feelings remarkably well. Probably, Cecile thought, he had forgotten all about it: the thought had made her feel more depressed than ever. She surveyed the bleak landscape again and turned to Bowman.

‘People live here?’

‘They live here, they love here, they die here. Let’s hope we won’t today. Die here, I mean.’

‘Oh, do be quiet. Where are all the cowboys I’ve heard of – the gardiens as you call them?’

‘In the pubs, I should imagine. This is fiesta day, remember – a holiday.’ He smiled at her. ‘I wish it was for us too.’

‘But your life is one long holiday. You said so.’

‘For us, I said.’

‘A pretty compliment.’ She looked at him consideringly. ‘Can you tell me, offhand, when you last had a holiday?’

‘Offhand, no.’

Cecile nodded, looked ahead again. Half a mile away, on the left-hand side of the road, was a fairly large group of buildings, some of them quite substantial.

‘Life at last,’ she said. ‘What’s that?’

‘A mas. A farm, more of a ranch. Also a bit of a dude ranch – living accommodation, restaurant, riding school. Mas de Lavignolle, they call it.’

‘You’ve been here before, then?’

‘All those holidays,’ Bowman said apologetically.

‘What else?’ She turned her attention to the scene ahead again, then suddenly leaned forward. Just beyond the farm was a windbreak of pines and just beyond that again there was coming into view a scene that showed that there could, indeed, be plenty of life in the Camargue. At least a score of caravans and perhaps a hundred cars were parked haphazardly on the hard-packed earth on the right-hand side of the road. On the left, in a field which was more dust than grass, there were lines of what appeared to be brightly coloured tents. Some of the tents were no more than striped awnings with, below them, trestle tables which, dependent on what was piled on them, acted as either bars or snack-bars. Other and smaller canvas-topped stalls were selling souvenirs or clothes or candy, while still others had been converted into shooting galleries, roulette stands and other games of chance. There were several hundred people milling around among the stalls, obviously enjoying and making the most of the amenities offered. Cecile turned to Bowman as he slowed to let people cross the road.

‘What’s all this, then?’

‘Obvious, isn’t it? A country fair. Arles isn’t the only place in the Camargue – some of the people hereabouts don’t even consider it as being part of the Camargue and act accordingly. Some communities prefer to provide their own diversions and amusements at fiesta time – the Mas de Lavignolle is one of them.’

‘My, my, we are well-informed, aren’t we?’ She looked ahead again and pointed to a large oval-shaped arena with its sides made, apparently, of mud and wattles.

‘What’s that? A corral?’

‘That,’ Bowman said, ‘is a genuine old-fashioned bull-ring where the main attraction of the afternoon will take place.’

She made a face. ‘Drive on.’

He drove on. After less than fifteen minutes, at the end of a long straight stretch of dusty road, he pulled the blue Citroën off the road and got out. Cecile looked at him enquiringly.

‘Two straight miles of road,’ he explained. ‘Gypsy caravans travel at thirty miles an hour. So, four minutes’ warning.’

‘And a panic-stricken Bowman can be on his way in less than fifteen seconds?’

‘Less. If I haven’t finished off the champagne, longer. But enough. Come. Lunch.’

Ten miles to the north, on the same road, a long convoy of gypsy caravans were heading south, raising an immense cloud of dust in their passing. The caravans, normally far from inhibited in the brightness and diversity of their colours, seemed now, in their striking contrast to the bleakness of the landscape around them, more gay and exotic than ever.