Алистер Маклин - Caravan to Vaccares

‘Maybe I was confusing myself. Somewhere a flaw in the reasoning. My reasoning. But where?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t think I’m exaggerating my own importance,’ Bowman said slowly. ‘Not, at least, as far as they are concerned. I’m convinced they’re under pressure, under very heavy pressure, to kill me as quickly as humanly possible. When you’re engaged on a job of great urgency you don’t stop off and spend a peaceful summer’s afternoon watching a bullfight. You press on and with all speed. You entice Bowman to a lonely camp-site at the back of beyond where, because he’s the only person who’s not a member of your group, he can be detected and isolated with ease and disposed of at leisure. You do not stop at a fair-cum-bullfight where he would be but one among thousands of people, thereby making isolation impossible.’ Bowman paused. ‘Not, that is, unless you knew something that he didn’t know, and knew that you could isolate him even among that thousand. Do I make myself clear?’

‘This time I’m not confused.’ Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper. ‘You make yourself very clear. You’re as certain as can be that they’ll get you here. There’s only one thing you can do.’

‘Only one thing,’ Bowman agreed. He reached for the door handle. ‘I’ve got to go and find out for sure.’

‘Neil.’ She gripped his right wrist with surprising strength.

‘Well, at last. Couldn’t keep on calling me Mr Bowman in front of the kids, could you? Victorian.’

‘Neil.’ There was pleading in the green eyes, something close to desperation, and he felt suddenly ashamed of his flippancy. ‘Don’t go. Please, please, don’t go. Something dreadful is going to happen here. I know it.’ She ran the tip of her tongue over dry lips. ‘Drive away from here. Now. This moment. Please.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He forced himself to look away, her beseeching face would have weakened the resolution of an angel and he had no reason to regard himself as such. ‘I have to stay and it may as well be here. It may as well be here for a showdown there has to be, it’s inevitable, and I still think I stand a better chance here than I would on the shores of some lonely étang in the south.’

‘You said, “I have to stay”?’

‘Yes.’ He continued to look ahead. ‘There are four good reasons and they’re all in that green-and-white caravan.’ She made no reply and he went on: ‘Or just Tina alone, Tina and her flayed back. If anyone did that to you I’d kill him. I wouldn’t think about it, I’d just naturally kill him. Do you believe that?’

‘I think so.’ Her voice was very low. ‘No, I know you would.’

‘It could just as easily have been you.’ He altered his tone slightly and said: ‘Tell me, now, would you marry a man who ran away and left Tina?’

‘No, I would not.’ She spoke very matter-of-factly.

‘Ha!’ He altered his tone some more. ‘Am I to take it from that if I don’t run away and leave Tina–’ He broke off and looked at her. She was smiling at him but the green eyes were dim, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and when she spoke it could have been a catch in her voice or the beginning of laughter.

‘You’re quite, quite hopeless,’ she said.

‘You’re repeating yourself.’ He opened the door. ‘I won’t be long.’

She opened her own door. ‘We won’t be long,’ she corrected him.

‘You’re not–’

‘I am. Protecting the little woman is all very nice but not when carried to extremes. What’s going to happen in the middle of a thousand people? Besides, you said yourself they can’t possibly recognize us.’

‘If they catch you with me–’

‘If they catch you, I won’t be there, because if they can’t recognize you then their only way of getting you is when you are doing something you shouldn’t be doing, like breaking into a caravan.’

‘In broad daylight? You think I’m insane?’

‘I’m not sure.’ She took his arm firmly. ‘One thing I am sure about. Remember what I said back in Aries? You’re stuck with me, mate.’

‘For life?’

‘We’ll see about that.’

Bowman blinked in surprise and peered at her closely. ‘You make me a very happy man,’ he said. ‘When I was a little boy and I wanted something and my mother said “We’ll see about that” I knew I’d always get it. All feminine minds work the same way, don’t they?’

She smiled at him serenely, quite unperturbed. ‘At the risk of repeating myself again, Neil Bowman, you’re a lot cleverer than you look.’

‘My mother used to say that too.’

They paid their admission money, climbed steps to the top of the arena. The terraces were comfortably full, colourfully crowded with hundreds of people, very few of whom could be accused of being drably dressed: gardiens and gypsies were there in about equal proportions, there was a sprinkling of Arlésiens in their fiesta best but most of the spectators were either tourists or local people.

Between the spectators and the sanded ring itself was an area four feet wide, running the entire circumference of the ring and separated from it by a wooden barrier four feet high: it was into this area, the callajon, that the razateur leapt for safety when things were going too badly for him.

In the centre of the ring a small but uncommonly vicious-looking black Camargue bull appeared bent upon the imminent destruction of a white-costumed figure who pirouetted and swerved and twisted and turned and closely but easily avoided the rushes of the increasingly maddened bull. The crowd clapped and shouted their approval.

‘Well!’ Cecile, wide-eyed and fascinated, her fears in temporary abeyance, was almost enjoying herself. ‘This is more like a bullfight!’

‘You’d rather see the colour of the man’s blood than the bull’s?’

‘Certainly. Well, I don’t know. He hasn’t even got a sword.’

‘Swords are for the Spanish corridas where the bull gets killed. This is the Provençal cours libre where nobody gets killed although the occasional razateur – the bullfighter – does get bent a bit. See that red button tied between the horns? He’s got to pull that off first. Then the two bits of string. Then the two white tassels tied near the tips of the horns.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

‘It’s not a way of life I’d choose myself,’ Bowman admitted. He lifted his eyes from the programme note he held in his hand and looked thoughtfully at the ring.

‘Anything wrong?’ Cecile asked.

Bowman didn’t reply immediately. He was still looking at the ring where the white-clad razateur, moving in a tight circle with remarkable speed but with all the controlled grace of a ballet dancer, swerved to avoid the charging bull, leaned over at what appeared to be an impossible angle and deftly plucked away the red button secured between the bull’s horns, one of which appeared almost to brush the razateur’ s chest.

‘Well, well,’ Bowman murmured. ‘So that’s El Brocador.’

‘El who?’

‘Brocador. The lad in the ring there.’

‘You know him?’

‘We haven’t been introduced. Good, isn’t he?’

El Brocador was more than good, he was brilliant. Timing his evasive movements with ice-cold judgment and executing them with an almost contemptuous ease, he continued to avoid the bull’s furious rushes with consummate skill: in four consecutive charges he plucked away the two strings that had supported the red button and the two white tassels that had been secured to the tips of the horns. After removing the last tassel and apparently unaware of the bull’s existence, he bowed deeply and gravely to the crowd, ran lightly to the barrier and vaulted gracefully into the safety of the callajon as the bull, now only scant feet behind, charged full tilt into the barrier, splintering the top plank. The crowd clapped and roared its approval.