Martin Walker - The Caves of Perigord

“You’ll probably run into this German chap, Horst, and into Clothilde, whom you would find amusing,” said Lydia, suddenly wondering if Manners was the French woman’s type. She smiled to herself. She wouldn’t give him much chance of escaping Clothilde’s clutches if the Frenchwoman decided on a summer fling with a dashing English officer. Dashing, there was a word she had never used before in connection with a man. She rather liked the sound of it.

“Will you take your family?” she asked, suddenly curious.

“The family isn’t really mine anymore. That is, I was married, but it didn’t survive a couple of long tours in Northern Ireland. I was divorced six years ago. My son and daughter are away at school and I only get to see them on the holidays. My ex-wife lets me take them skiing and sailing, and to pantomimes. I brought them back to my father’s place last summer and taught them to ride. We went to a Club Med the year before that, the kind of place that keeps them busy.” He looked suddenly rather sad, Lydia thought. He forced his face into a slightly twisted grin. “As you can tell, I miss them. But what about you? You said your mother was Scottish. And your father?”

“American, from Minnesota, with lots of Norwegian ancestors.”

“How did your parents meet?”

“He did his military service in the Air Force, based in Scotland, in the education branch. He told me he spent his free time helping out at some experimental theater in Edinburgh, and that’s where they met. She was a teacher. They married, went back to Minnesota, and went slowly broke running a bookstore, so he ended up teaching in the local school.” She was going to stop there, but Manners’s silence was sympathetic. She didn’t want to tell him about the cross-country skiing trips and her father’s ramshackle bookshelves and the piles of paperbacks in the bathroom and the magic of his bedtime stories. Time to change the subject. She drank some water, put the glass down decisively. “Ten thousand pounds will finance quite a luxurious jaunt around Perigord for you.” She smiled to herself, thinking that Clothilde would certainly help him to spend it.

“Eight thousand pounds. You keep forgetting your cut,” he objected. “I mean it, Lydia. We had a deal, and what’s more you gave me good and honest advice. You persuaded me that this damn rock deserves to be back in its place, rather than in my father’s old dusty study, or adorning the wall of some overpriced penthouse. And you were the one who spotted what it was, or what it might be. You gave me the courtesy of your expertise. You earned the money.”

“I told you, I couldn’t accept it.” She had been in England long enough to feel faintly embarrassed at talk of money. At least, of her money. And she wished he would not press her. It was out of his character, somehow.

“Well, I have an alternative proposal,” he suggested, tentatively. “Please don’t misunderstand this, but why don’t you come too? If you won’t accept the money, let me put it to good use by financing your trip. You are interested, and you know a damn sight more about these caves and the art than I do. I’m sure you’d like to see the caves, and you have the contacts in place, people like your Clothilde and your German chap. You say you feel responsible to the piece as a work of art, and here’s your chance to do something about it. Do come. Separate rooms, naturally.”

She looked at him, startled. What an extraordinary suggestion. She hardly knew the man. “What do you mean, a chance to do something about it? If there’s one place the rock won’t be, it’s back in its home ground in Perigord?”

“How do you know? But if there is a black market trade in the stuff, rich and secretive collectors, that’s going to be the center of it. I take your point about a million people potentially knowing that the rock was in your building on the night it was stolen. But only one in a thousand would know its value, and only one in a thousand of them would be in a position to do something about it. Burglaries aren’t set up at a moment’s notice, at least not this kind.”

“I’m no detective,” she protested. “This is something for the police.”

“And do the police know the art world as well as you do? Do the police have the slightest idea of the kind of work this is, what it comes from and what it means. Do they know its context? It will probably all fizzle out, but it will give a purpose to our trip. I’m all for learning my way around the caves and the prehistoric paintings and all that, but I always like to have some point to my holidays. I’m not one just to potter round open-jawed with a guidebook like some casual tourist.”

“Anyway, I couldn’t possibly accept your kind offer. I don’t like people-paying my way, and this is just another way for you to bestow money on me that I don’t deserve,” she said. “Nor could I get away. I have two sales here in England next week and another one in Milan.”

“Splendid, I’ll need another week to wrap up my father’s affairs with the lawyer, and you can meet me in Les Eyzies on the way back from Milan.”

“Major Manners …” She imagined her mother at her elbow, prodding her to accept, just as she had always accepted invitations on Lydia’s behalf throughout her childhood.

“Lydia, please, call me Philip.”

“Major Manners, I fear this is not a good idea.” So there, Mother. But then, even more forcefully than the thought of her mother came the thought of what Clothilde would say.

“Well, let me put it another way. I’m out of practice at this, Lydia, but I’m also asking you because I enjoy your company and I want to get to know you better. If I am going to fulfill my own responsibility to this piece of rock that my father owned, then I have to know more about it. So in your own terms, and you are the one who made me think this way, then I need your professional services, quite apart from the fact that I also find your company congenial. So please come.”

“Let me think about it,” she temporized, suddenly reminded of Clothilde’s plan to recruit clients by organizing historical tours. The caves of Perigord, good food and wine, an undemanding lecture from Clothilde, it could be an agreeable jaunt for wealthy art lovers with a vague interest in prehistory. And it would be a very useful idea to float at the auction house. A preliminary reconnaissance would certainly be required. She looked at Manners thoughtfully. “In the meantime, if you are serious about doing something about this rock of yours, there is something you could do. The place to start would be your father’s war record, what he did, with whom he worked in France, any clues to the people that he may have met, someone who might have given him the rock or showed him where to find it. As his son, presumably you could get those easily. At least it would be somewhere to start.”

“There’s a good idea,” he said. “But then in a way, I suppose I already started. I wrote off to Malrand when you first told me about the theft, asking if he could shed any light on my father’s time in Perigord. I told him about the rock, and apologized for what seemed to be a pretty shabby bit of souvenir hunting. After all, as President of France, it’s almost his property.”

The Vezere Valley, 15,000 B.C.

Deer knelt on the grassy slope before the cave, his head bowed in submission, as the shapes emerged through the morning mist. The apprentices, after a surprised glance, ignored him. The Keeper of the Bulls came to stand over him, saying nothing for a long moment, and then moved on into the cave. Then came the old man he had been waiting for, the Keeper of the Bison. To his relief, Deer saw that the Keeper of the Horses was with him, the one man he knew who would speak for him.